Attachments(18)
Author: Rainbow Rowell

Lincoln was still trying to monitor their progress and to help, but they avoided him. He was pretty sure they knew he wasn’t one of them, that he’d never actually taken a computer course, and that he’d scored higher on the verbal section of the SAT. The IT kids all wore off-brand Polo shirts and New Balance tennis shoes and the same smug look. Lincoln refused to ask for their help with the digital color printer upstairs, even though he was at his wit’s end with the damn thing. Every few days it would have a crazy spell and start spitting out page after page of bright magenta.

“How can we prepare for the worst-case scenario,” Kristi was saying, “if we don’t understand the worst-case scenario?”

Lincoln was itching to open the WebFence folder. Dying to open it.

Greg said he didn’t have to drive his Nissan into the river to know it would be a f**king disaster.

“That doesn’t even compare,” Kristi said, and then she said she wished Greg wouldn’t curse. Right at the moment, Lincoln was wishing that the system really would fail at 12:01, January 1. That it would fail spectacularly. And that he’d be fired and replaced by one of the Strike Force, probably the Bosnian. But first, he wanted to check the WebFence folder. Now.

Maybe he didn’t have to wait for everyone to leave …It wasn’t a secret that he checked the WebFence folder. It’s nothing, he told himself, checking WebFence is my job. Which was such a lame rationalization that he decided not to let himself check it, even after everybody else went home.

When he finally opened the folder, sometime after midnight, he told himself not to expect a revelation like last night’s. What were the chances that Beth would be talking about him again? What were the chances that she’d seen him again? If she had seen him, would she have noticed that he was wearing a nice shirt and that he’d spent twenty minutes that afternoon combing his hair?

CHAPTER 42

From: Beth Fremont

To: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder

Sent: Thurs, 11/18/1999 10:16 AM

Subject: You.

Hey, how are you feeling?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Fine. Normal. The same.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Really?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Really? No.

Really, I feel a little bit like a suicide bomber. Like I’m walking around pretending to be normal, all the while knowing that I’m carrying something that is going to change—possibly destroy—the world as I know it.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> “Destroy” seems like kind of a strong word.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Everyone keeps telling me that everything is going to change when the baby gets here, that my whole life will be different. That, I think, implies that the life I have now will be gone. Destroyed.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> When you fell in love with Mitch, he changed your whole life, right? He didn’t destroy it.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Sure, he did, but that was okay. My life before Mitch sucked.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> So gloomy. If you had bunked next to the Little Orphan Annie, Annie wouldn’t have been a musical.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Would anyone really miss it?

CHAPTER 43

OKAY, SO SHE hadn’t written more about him. But at least she hadn’t written, “I got a better look at that guy, and he’s not as cute as I thought. Not by half.” He played online Scrabble until his shift was up and fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

“You’re up early,” his mother said, when he came downstairs the next morning at nine.

“Yeah, I think I’m going to go work out.”

“Really.”

“Yes.”

“Where are you going to do that?” she asked suspiciously, as if the answer might be “the casino” or “a massage parlor.”

“The gym,” he said.

“Which gym?”

“Superior Bodies.”

“Superior Bodies?” she asked.

“It’s right up the street.”

“I know. I’ve seen it. Do you want a bagel?”

“Sure.” He smiled. Because that was all he did lately. And because he’d given up on asking her not to feed him, especially after the confrontation with Eve. Food had always been something good between him and his mom. Something without strings. “Thanks.”

She started fixing him a bagel, thick with cream cheese, smoked salmon, and red onions. “Superior Bodies,” she said again. “Isn’t that one of those meat markets?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve only been there once, and there were mostly elderly people there.

Maybe the meat market starts when people get off work.”

“Hmmm,” his mother said, looking obviously thoughtful. Lincoln pretended not to notice.

“It’s just,” his mother said, “that name. It puts so much emphasis on the body. As if that’s why people should exercise, to have a good body. Not even a good body. A superior body. As if people should go around looking at each other and thinking, ‘My body is so far superior to yours.’”

“I love you, Mom,” he said. He meant it. “Thanks for breakfast. I’m going to the gym.”

“Do you shower there? Don’t use the shower. Imagine the fungus, Lincoln.”

“I will now.”

IT WASN’T HARD going to the gym, as long as he went as soon as he woke up, before he had time to think about not going. Those morning workouts made him feel like he was starting his day like a pinball, with a giant shot of momentum. The feeling sometimes didn’t wear off until six or seven at night (when it was usually overtaken by the feeling that he was just bouncing haplessly from one situation to the next without any real purpose or direction).

Lincoln liked all the machines at the gym. He liked weights and pulleys and instructional diagrams.

It was easy to spend an hour or two going from machine to machine. He thought about trying the free weights, just to live up to Beth’s impression of him. But he would have had to ask someone for help, and Lincoln didn’t want to talk to anyone at the gym. Especially not the personal trainers who were always gossiping at the front desk when he picked up a towel.

He liked how clean he felt when he left. How loose his legs and arms were. How cold the air felt when his hair was wet. He found himself moving even when he didn’t have to, running across the street even if there wasn’t a car coming, bounding up the steps just because.

THAT WEEKEND, AT Dungeons & Dragons, Lincoln made Rick laugh so hard that Mountain Dew came up his nose. It was an orc joke, hard to explain, but Christine giggled for the rest of the night, and even Larry laughed.

Maybe Lincoln was the Funny One.

CHAPTER 44

From: Beth Fremont

To: Jennifer Scribner-Snyder

Sent: Mon, 11/29/1999 1:44 PM

Subject: The next time my sister gets married …

Remind me that I hate weddings. And my sister.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I happen to know that you love weddings—that you give movies a one-star upgrade for even having a wedding scene. Wasn’t that the rule that forced you to give Four Weddings and a Funeral four stars even though you thought Andie MacDowell was a disaster?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> You’re right. I love weddings. I hate my sister.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Why?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Basically …because she’s getting married before me. I’m like the petty older sister in a period drama. “But Papa, she can’t get married before me. I’m the eldest.”

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Oh, I love period dramas, especially period dramas starring Colin Firth. I’m like Bridget Jones if she were actually fat.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Oh …Colin Firth. He should only do period dramas. And period dramas should only star Colin Firth. (One-star upgrade for Colin Firth. Two stars for Colin Firth in a waistcoat.)

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Keep typing his name, even his name is handsome.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I think we’ve discovered the only guy we’d ever fight over at an airport bar.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> You’re forgetting about Ben Affleck.

You’re also forgetting to complain to me about your sister’s wedding.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Ben Affleck! Are you sure I can’t talk you into Matt Damon? We could double-date …

I didn’t forget. I just figured you were trying to change the subject because I was being ridiculous. I don’t have anything real to complain about. My complaint is: I always thought I’d be married by now.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> That’s not so ridiculous.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> No, it is. I had this whole plan when I graduated from high school: I was going to go to college, date a few guys, and then meet the guy at the end of my freshman year, maybe at the beginning of my sophomore year. We’d be engaged by graduation and married the next year. And then, after some traveling, we’d start our family. Four kids, three years apart. I wanted to be done by the time I was 35.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Four kids? Isn’t that a little extreme?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> It doesn’t matter. It’s no longer mathematically possible.

I’m not married. I’m not even close. Even if I were to break up with Chris tomorrow and meet someone new the very next day, my plan still wouldn’t be salvageable. It would take a year or two to figure out whether we were right for each other, at least six months to be engaged …That puts me at 31, 32 before I can get pregnant.

And that’s being overly optimistic. If I broke up with Chris tomorrow, I’d be a mess for a year (30).

Then it might take another year to meet somebody else (31). It might take six years to meet somebody else (36). How can I plan around those variables?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> I’m confused. I thought you were 28.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Maybe my plan was never possible. Maybe I would have figured all this out sooner if I hadn’t spent trigonometry passing notes to my 10th-grade boyfriend.

That’s the thing of it—the really petty thing of it—I can’t help but feel like this wasn’t supposed to happen to me. I’ve never worried about finding a guy.

In sixth grade, I dated the nicest cute boy in class. We talked on the phone twice over six months and held hands at an afternoon showing of Superman III. I always had a date, the right date, for every dance. I fell in love for the first time in the 10th grade with the guy I was supposed to fall in love with.

I broke up with him after a year, and that was supposed to happen, too.

I was pretty sure I would never have to worry about finding the right guy. I thought it would happen for me the way it happened for my parents and for my grandparents. They got to the right age, they found the right person, they got married, they had kids.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> You’re kind of making me hate you.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> For being the kind of girl who always had a boyfriend?

<<Jennifer to Beth>> Kind of …I never had a date to any dance. I never took it for granted that any guy would ever fall in love with me. Let alone, the right guy.

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I don’t blame you for kind of hating me. But I kind of hate you, too. You did meet exactly the right person at exactly the right time. You married the nicest cute boy in class. And now you’re pregnant.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> But you met the right person, too, didn’t you?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> I don’t know if I even believe in that anymore. The right guy. The perfect guy. The one. I’ve lost faith in “the.”

<<Jennifer to Beth>> How do you feel about “a” and “an”?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> Indifferent.

<<Jennifer to Beth>> So you’re considering a life without articles?

<<Beth to Jennifer>> And true love.

CHAPTER 45

LINCOLN ATE DINNER in the break room at the same time every night now, thinking that might increase his chances of seeing Beth. Doris appreciated the company. She liked to take her break at nine sharp.

She always brought a turkey sandwich on white bread and bought herself a Diet Slice from the machine.

“Does your girlfriend make you those huge dinners?” she asked one night as he was heating up a plate of spinach-and-potato pizza.

“My mom does,” he said. Sheepishly.

“No wonder you’re so big,” Doris said.

He took his plate out of the microwave and looked at it. It really was an awful lot of pizza. He’d heard people say their appetite decreased when they exercised a lot, but he was hungrier than ever.

He’d started taking bananas with him to the gym so that he’d have something to eat in the car as soon as he left.

“She must be a good cook, your mother. It always smells like a fancy restaurant when you’re in here.”

“Definitely. She’s a great cook.”

“I’ve never been much in the kitchen. I can make meat loaf and pork chops and green-bean casserole, but Paul had to cook for himself if he wanted something fancy. What is that? It looks like a giant sandwich.”

“It’s pizza,” Lincoln said. “Double-crust, spinach and potato. I think it’s an Italian thing. Would you like to try some?”

“If you’re offering,” Doris said eagerly. He pulled off a slice of his pizza for her. There was still plenty left on his plate.

“Oh, that’s good,” Doris said after a bite, “and I don’t even like spinach. Are you Italian?”

“No,” he said, “German mostly, a little Irish. My mom just likes to cook.”

“Lucky you,” she said, taking another big bite.

“Do you have children?” Lincoln asked.

“Nyah. Paul and I never had kids. I guess we did the same thing as everybody else does, but nothing ever happened. In those days, if you didn’t have kids, you didn’t have kids. You didn’t go to a doctor to see who was responsible. My sister was married for fifteen years before she got pregnant. I thought that might happen to us, too, but it never did …Just as well, I guess.”