It Had to Be You Read online

  Phase two of my plan was to avoid Kyle for the rest of the summer. That wouldn’t be too hard. I would just spend as much time as possible over at Caitlyn’s. Hopefully by the time classes started in September, whatever feelings I’d had for Kyle would be gone and seeing him around wouldn’t hurt as much.

  Of course, I’d have to deal with seeing him with Ravishing Red but I’d worry about that later.

  Today I had his jacket to return.

  The last thing I wanted to do was run into him so I’d have to time things carefully. I positioned myself in my bedroom, pressed against the side of my window where I had been the day before when I’d been spying on Kyle and Ravishing Red. After an hour I finally got lucky when Kyle’s father left the house with Megan, followed a few minutes later by Kyle and Tommy. I’d bet money that Tommy loved Ravishing Red. Why wouldn’t he? She wasn’t me!

  Once the coast was clear I grabbed Kyle’s jacket and headed next door. I knew Mrs. O’Reilly was still home because her car was in the driveway. I knocked on the back door and waited for her to answer. When no one came to the door, I knocked again. Finally, I knocked a third time and then tried the door. It was open.

  I walked inside and called out, “Hello? Anyone home?”

  I could hear the sound of the washing machine coming from the basement. I walked to the door at the end of the kitchen and stuck my head in. “Hello! Mrs. O’Reilly?”

  She turned from a pile of laundry she was sorting through and gave me a smile. “Hi, Emma!”

  I held up Kyle’s baseball jacket. “Kyle lent me this last night. I wanted to return it.”

  “You can just toss it in his bedroom. It’s upstairs at the end of the hall.”

  After leaving Mrs. O’Reilly, I headed upstairs and found Kyle’s bedroom. I don’t know what I was expecting but Kyle’s bedroom was no different than my brothers’. Clothes were tossed everywhere. There were piles of DVDs and CDs on the floor. Magazines and newspapers and messy piles of paper were scattered across his desk. There was a computer in one corner and a TV in the other.

  I tossed Kyle’s jacket on his unmade bed, wanting to get out of his house as quickly as possible. As I headed out of the room, I noticed a sketchbook on the top of his desk. Remembering how he said he wanted to be a cartoonist, I couldn’t resist taking a peek. What could it hurt?

  As I flipped through the pages of the sketchbook, my mouth dropped open.

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

  Was it possible to be shocked two days in a row?

  The sketches in the book were caricatures.

  The first sketch was called “The Girl with the Clay Face” and it was the image of a girl with a huge mudpack on her face.

  The second sketch was “The Dust Diva,” followed by “The Thing That Came to Shop.”

  A fourth sketch, which wasn’t finished yet, was called “Aqua Girl” and it showed a girl in all her soaking-wet glory at a county fair.

  Clearly, the girl in every sketch was me.

  And in every sketch, Kyle had captured me at my absolute worst!

  I was angry.

  Very angry.

  Who did Kyle think he was, making fun of me this way?

  I flipped through a few more pages but they were blank. Naturally there were no caricatures of Ravishing Red. Of course not. She was Miss Perfect. Miss Mysterious. She wasn’t a walking joke who provided Kyle with hours of sketching material. Not like me, Miss Wacky Neighbor!

  At that moment all I wanted to do was rip each and every page out of his sketchbook and rip them into teeny-tiny shreds. But I couldn’t do that.

  Instead I threw the sketchbook back down on Kyle’s desk and stormed out of his bedroom.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I was so angry, I felt like steam was coming out of my ears.

  I wanted to scream.

  How could Kyle do this to me? I thought he was a nice guy, but obviously he wasn’t. He saw me as nothing more than a joke!

  I stomped downstairs and hurried through the kitchen, wanting to get as far away from his house as possible. But my progress was halted when I stormed out the back door and found myself crashing into a wall of solid muscle.

  Correction.

  A wall of solid crunchy muscle.

  Kyle and I stood face-to-face, our bodies pressed together.

  Between us was a sopping-wet bag of groceries filled with a dozen broken eggs.

  We were both a gooey, eggy mess.

  I pulled away from Kyle and saw that my tank top was all wet from the smashed eggs. So was his.

  “Hey!” Tommy shouted, popping out from behind Kyle. “She broke our eggs!”

  Kyle stared at me without saying anything and then he started laughing. “I guess she was so egg-cited to see us, she couldn’t stop running.”

  It’s very rare that I lose my temper. Even with Rob, Michael, and Aaron constantly driving me crazy, I never lose it.

  But Kyle’s laughter pushed me over the edge and I exploded.

  “You think this is funny? You think I’m a joke?” I shouted. “Are you going to draw a sketch of me all covered with eggs and call it ‘Ms. Eggcentric’? I bet you haven’t been drawing caricatures of your mystery girl, have you?”

  Kyle, stunned at my anger, stopped laughing and stared at me in confusion. “Mystery girl? What mystery girl?”

  His question only made me angrier. How dumb did he think I was?

  “This mystery girl!” I announced, waving the email I had found in his jacket. I should have thrown it out but instead I’d been carrying it around since this morning, picking it up off my bedroom floor from where I’d thrown it the night before. I must have reread it at least fifty times, each time hating myself for telling Kyle to give Ravishing Red another chance. “Don’t try and deny it. I know all about her because you’ve been writing to Dear Daisy.” To prove it, I began quoting from some of Kyle’s other emails.

  A look of panic crossed Kyle’s face as my words sunk in.

  Aha! Caught!

  Kyle snatched the piece of paper out of my hand. “How do you know I’ve been writing to Daisy? Who told you?” He gasped. “Did she tell you?”

  I knew I was supposed to keep it a secret. I knew I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone. But I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to shock him. Big-time.

  “No one had to tell me.”

  “Then how do you know?” He waved the email in my face. “How?”

  “I know because I’m Daisy!” I announced smugly.

  Tommy tugged on the bottom of Kyle’s tank top. “I thought her name was Emma,” he said. “How come she doesn’t know her name is Emma? Is she crazy? She looks crazy,” he said, staring at me warily as he edged himself behind his big brother.

  That’s right, I’m crazy. Crazy for your brother and look where it’s gotten me. All covered with eggs and ranting like a crazy girl on your back porch. I’m surprised the neighbors aren’t watching. A real live soap opera. With no commercial interruptions!

  “You’re Daisy?” Kyle whispered, looking first at me and then at the email he was holding. Then back at me and back at the email.

  “Uh-huh. And if I’d known it was you who was asking for advice, I never would have given it!”

  “How come?” he asked. “I thought Daisy was supposed to help the people who wrote to her. Why wouldn’t you want to help me?”

  The words were on the tip of my tongue. Because I like you, I wanted to say. I like you so much but you don’t like me. You like someone else. But I couldn’t get the words out. I couldn’t allow myself to be humiliated any more than I already was.

  So instead of answering I turned my back on Kyle and ran across our yards and into my house without looking back.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Nothing hurts more than a broken heart. There’s no way to really describe the pain. It’s not a physical pain. I’ve experienced that. I’ve skinned my knees and elbows while Rollerblading more times than I can count. When I was seven I
broke my arm when I crashed into an apple tree (Aaron and I were racing our bikes). I’ve fallen on my chin and bitten my tongue while ice-skating. When those things happened, I was instantly in pain. The pain was sharp. Jabbing. Excruciating. I screamed. I cried. But eventually the pain went away and I felt better.

  But this was different.

  It was like a dull ache throughout my entire body.

  And it didn’t go away immediately.

  Almost like it’s reminding you of what you’ve lost.

  And I’d lost Kyle.

  As a friend and as a possible boyfriend.

  I wondered how long I was going to feel this way because I was not liking it. It had been hours since my confrontation with Kyle and I was still a jumble of emotions. If only I could turn back the clock and be honest with him. Tell him how I really felt. Maybe things would be different.

  I couldn’t stop thinking of Ravishing Red. I was so jealous of her. Because she had Kyle. If only I’d told him my feelings, I might have had a chance with him. Why hadn’t I followed my own advice? What had I been afraid of? What was the worst thing that could have happened? Kyle would have said he didn’t feel the same way about me. That would have been it. I would have felt lousy for a day or two, a week tops, but then I would have moved on. Now I’d always be wondering:

  What if?

  What if?

  What if?

  What if I’d told him how I really felt?

  But it was too late.

  What’s done is done.

  Caitlyn stopped by the house after dinner with a pint of strawberry ice cream, my favorite. She’d called me that afternoon to tell me what had happened with her sister, Tess (they had a major fight, with Tess calling Caitlyn a thief and demanding she pay for the shoe she’d broken. Caitlyn’s parents backed up Tess and now Caitlyn had to cough up the cash). As soon as I said hello she could hear something was wrong and began asking me questions. I told her that everything was fine and got off the phone as quickly as I could. I was afraid if I stayed on I would crack and tell her everything. Obviously I hadn’t convinced her.

  “Tell me what’s wrong,” she insisted, handing me the pint of ice cream while she rummaged through our refrigerator for whipped cream and chocolate syrup. She found the ice-cream scooper in a drawer and took two bowls out of the cabinet over the stove.

  “Fill me in,” she said as she began scooping out ice cream.

  Thinking it might help to tell her the entire story, I started from the beginning, confessing about being Daisy and ending with how I had sabotaged myself with Kyle.

  “Oh, sweetie,” Caitlyn said, forgetting all about the ice-cream sundaes she’d been making and giving me a huge hug. “I’m so sorry! Is there anything I can do?”

  Before I could respond, Aaron sauntered into the kitchen and began helping himself to the ice cream that Caitlyn had brought for me. Without even asking!

  “That’s my ice cream,” I said, snatching a bowl away from him. “Caitlyn brought it over to cheer me up.”

  “Why? What’s wrong?”

  “Hi, Aaron,” Caitlyn said in the flirty voice she uses whenever she’s around a guy she likes.

  “Hey, Caitlyn.”

  I had to say, my brother looked good for a change. He was wearing a sleeveless black T-shirt, which showed off his muscular arms, and a new pair of jeans. He must have just taken a shower, because he looked clean for once. “Where are you going all dressed up?” I asked.

  “My friend Ryan is having a party. He said some cute girls might be there.”

  There was no mistaking the hurt look that washed over Caitlyn’s face when she heard those words. I wanted to scream at her: If you don’t want to lose him to someone else, tell him you like him!

  What happened next left me speechless. It was like Caitlyn had read my mind seconds earlier.

  “Aaron, I have to tell you something,” she said.

  “What?” he asked, holding the can of whipped cream over his mouth and giving himself a big squirt. So big that it spilled over the sides of his mouth. Ugh! So juvenile.

  “I like you,” she announced. “And I want to go out with you. I know you probably think of me as another bratty sister, but I’m not. I think you’re really, really cute. So, what do you think about that?”

  I looked at my brother and I had an expression on my face that warned him he’d better think very carefully about what he said. Not that it would have made any difference. Aaron answers to no one, but no one hurts my best friend!

  For a second he just stood still. Then he shrugged, licking whipped cream off the sides of his mouth with his tongue. “I’d be up for a movie. Maybe grab a burger afterward?”

  Caitlyn’s mouth dropped open and she looked stunned. I have to admit, I felt pretty stunned myself. I hadn’t expected Aaron to say what he did.

  “Does that sound good?” he asked.

  Caitlyn found her voice. “Sure.”

  “How about tonight? I really didn’t want to go to Ryan’s party anyway. Got any plans?”

  “No!” she answered right away.

  “Let me go online and see what’s playing at the multiplex.”

  After he left, I asked Caitlyn, “What just happened here?”

  “Your brother asked me out on a date!”

  “Duh! I know that. But what made you decide to confess how you felt?”

  “It was you.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. If you’d told Kyle the way you felt, maybe you would have had a chance with him.”

  I put my head down on the kitchen table and moaned, “I know. I know. Don’t remind me.”

  “I know this sounds mean and horrible and selfish and I don’t mean it to. But I didn’t want what happened to you to happen to me so I decided to be honest with Aaron. You scared me straight! Actually, it’s what you’ve been telling me to do all along. I just didn’t have the courage to do it until I saw how miserable you were.”

  I lifted my head off the table. “And it’s my own fault. Well, I’m glad something good came out of my stupidity.”

  “You’re not stupid!”

  “Yes, I am. Here I am giving advice to everyone else about their love life and I make a mess out of mine! I shouldn’t even be writing a column. What do I know about love?” I didn’t wait for Caitlyn to answer. “Nothing!”

  “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” Caitlyn said, giving me a hug. “Sometimes it’s easier to figure things out for other people instead of yourself. You really are good at this advice stuff!”

  If only I was!

  After Caitlyn and Aaron left for the movies (Caitlyn decided they should go see a horror movie. “That way I can wrap my arm around his and bury my face in his shoulder during the scary parts!” she confided to me), I went up to my room and turned on my computer. I was trying very hard not to feel sorry for myself. If only I’d done what Caitlyn had done with Aaron. Maybe I wouldn’t be home alone. Maybe I’d be with someone special.

  I don’t know why I did it, but I decided to check Daisy’s email account. When I did, I found an email waiting from Romeo.

  It had been sent that afternoon.

  At first I wanted to delete it. What could Kyle possibly have to say to me? And how much more pain did I want to subject myself to?

  And if he did have something to say to me, why hadn’t he just picked up the phone? Or better yet, just knocked on my door?

  It did make sense, though. After all, this whole mess had started online. Why not finish it the same way?

  I hesitated before clicking the email open. I should just delete it. But part of me wanted to read it. I was curious.

  So I opened it up.

  Dear Daisy: Remember that crazy girl I told you about? Well, I still like her. I really like her. Any advice?

  Advice?! He wanted advice from me about Ravishing Red? Hadn’t I been tortured enough? Was this his idea of some sick joke?

  Red had won!

  Game over!

  To the
victor belong the spoils!

  Or did Red have so many guys to choose from that Kyle felt he didn’t have a chance with her? Was he feeling insecure? Was that what this was all about? Was I supposed to be his “coach” and stroke his ego so he’d feel good about himself and confident enough to go after Red?

  I angrily deleted the email. He could figure things out with Red on his own!

  But no sooner had I deleted his email then another one arrived seconds later. Like the first email, I couldn’t just delete it. I wanted to, but at the same time, I wanted to know what he had to say. Because this time I was going to answer him back.

  Dear Daisy: I really need your advice. This girl that I like thinks that I like someone else but there is no Mystery Girl. The girl I like is the girl next door.

  My mouth dropped open as I reread the words on the screen in front of me.

  The girl I like is the girl next door.

  I was the girl next door.

  What?

  Wait. Wait.

  Kyle liked me??

  ME!!!

  Chapter Fifteen

  Even though the words were right in front of me, I still couldn’t believe it.

  Kyle liked me.

  HE LIKED ME!!!

  But how could that be? What about Ravishing Red?

  I knew I had to respond to Kyle’s email, but I didn’t know what to say. Should I admit that I liked him too? I was just getting ready to start typing when the doorbell rang, breaking my concentration. Rats!

  Then the doorbell rang again.

  And again.

  “Will someone please answer the door?” I called out, trying to sound sweet and not bossy. “I’m in the middle of doing something very important.”

  My fingers hovered over my keyboard. What was I supposed to write back? I almost felt like I was being given a second chance with Kyle. I didn’t want to mess things up!

  Before I could start typing, the doorbell rang again, only this time the ring was drawn out. Like the person ringing the doorbell was keeping their finger on the bell for a really long time.