by M. F. Lorson
Her face flooded with relief when she spotted me walking toward her.
“You haven’t got any ice cream,” I said, my best attempt at small talk.
“I’m lactose intolerant, actually,” said Carter.
She must have read the confusion on my face because she quickly continued, “But I can get ice cream if you want to. If it would be weird if I didn’t.” Carter embodied every one of my sophomore year fears. She didn’t like her roommate. She was afraid she wouldn’t fit in, and she was willing to do whatever anyone told her to avoid things staying that way.
I didn’t exactly want to be her Rachel, but I felt obligated to keep her from ruin. “You do not need to poison yourself to hang out at this party.”
A faint blush scattered across her freckled cheeks. “Alright. I just already feel stupid in this uniform.”
I glanced around the room. Her roommate Lydia was in the corner chatting with a group of girls.
“I’m surprised Lydia didn’t give you a heads up.”
“She did,” admitted Carter. “I didn’t know if she was telling the truth. She always dresses so weirdly.” She had a point. I probably wouldn’t have taken Lydia’s word for it either. She was a nice girl, but she was also modern goth. Once the term started and she was obligated to dress like the masses it wouldn’t be so bad, but right now she was fishnet stockings and blood-red lipstick, not exactly the warmest face to welcome you into a new school.
Carter and I meandered around the party. I introduced her to as many underclassmen as I could, but it wasn’t easy. I didn’t typically hang out with people younger than me. Ashley was an anomaly. I was about ready to call it a night when Will and Christopher entered the party side by side. Funny how they looked like friends but were still rivals. I got the impression that Will was keeping Christopher under close surveillance. Like a moth to a flame, Will made a beeline to where I stood.
“Who is your new friend, Anne?” he asked, looking Carter up and down in a way that made my stomach turn. With considerable effort, I held back an aggressive eye roll as I introduced the two. Poor unsuspecting Carter was thrilled to have Will talk to her. So thrilled that she immediately accepted his invitation to hop in the ice cream line. I sincerely hoped her lactose intolerance was an inconvenience and not a serious medical condition because she was sure putting away that mound of chocolate chip. I thought about rescuing her, but Christopher was standing right in front of me, and thanks to Rachel’s outfit, I was feeling a lot better about making a new impression on him.
“I was hoping I’d get a chance to talk to you,” I started. Christopher looked everywhere but at me, so I tried a little louder, “I think we got off on the wrong—”
“If you’ll excuse me,” interrupted Christopher. His eyes passed over me without pause. “There is someone I was hoping to talk to.”
“Of course,” I replied, stepping aside so he could go by. His words stung. No, he didn’t say, “Anne Bennet, I hate your guts,” but he might as well have. I felt lower than low watching him mill about the party, talking to everyone else with that easy smile I couldn’t seem to pry out of him anymore.
Even Lydia Musgrove was having better luck talking to Christopher than me. I was too far away to hear what they were saying but that big laugh of his carried.
I missed the boy it belonged to. The boy who had spent an entire summer showing me cat fail videos commute after commute. Maybe he was still in there buried under all that armor, but it felt like he was lost.
Chapter Six
Seeing as how I was in all honors classes, and Ashley implied that Christopher was one step away from remedial everything, third-period leadership class was likely to be the only class we shared. It was a relief knowing I wouldn’t be staring at the back of his head all day, but it didn’t make me feel any better about walking into third period. I only signed up for leadership because it looked good on college applications. Now that I was fully accepted to Boise State University, I could just drop the class. I should drop the class, right? Give Christopher his space? He obviously didn’t want to share the same anything with me. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it.
I’d walked past the registration office so many times that Ms. Bev came out to ask if I was okay. I should have told her the truth: ‘Sorry, ma'am. Existential crisis here,’ but instead I shook my head and plastered a fake smile on my face. I just couldn’t seem to pull the trigger on dropping the class. Part of me felt like I deserved to be tortured by Christopher’s presence, and the other part just wanted to gaze into his eyes.
I pulled up a seat in the back of the room next to Violet. She was new this year and super shy. I hadn’t even realized she lived in the room next door until this term. This made her the perfect person to sit next to. I could avoid conversation if I didn’t feel like having it, and I didn’t.
Looking out of the side of my eye so he wouldn’t see me searching, I scanned the room for Christopher. He had positioned himself in the very back corner of the room. Apparently getting his grades up wasn’t a priority. Just like in orientation, a set of earbuds were tucked into the collar of his shirt. Even from across the room, I could hear the tinny sound of something loud and clashy coming from his headphones. That was definitely not easy acoustic.
Mr. Croft entered at the back, tugging an earbud from Christopher’s ear on the way up to the front of the classroom.
“Put those away please,” he said sternly. I watched as Christopher wound up his headphones and shoved them into the side pocket of his backpack.
“Welcome to Senior Leadership,” began Mr. Croft. “Each winter I get a new bundle of you, eager to score an easy A, and dare I say, appear ambitious on your college applications. Am I right?” he asked, looking around the room for confirmation. We nodded our heads affirmatively. I guess we couldn’t expect our motivations to be secretive to the guy who’d taught the class the last decade. “Well, it is my job to lead you to think otherwise. See what I did there?” The class grinned appreciatively. Mr. Croft was corny, but at least he kept it interesting. “This isn’t the class where you learn to lead others. This is the class where you learn to represent yourself, to be your own brand if you will, and then, once you really know yourself, that is when you can expect to raise those around you. Does that make sense?”
At the front of the class, Will snickered.
“Do you have something to say, Mr. Brooke?”
“Just that my personal brand might be a little too steamy for the classroom,” said Will, glancing around the room for approval. The girls in the desks surrounding him burst into a stereotypical fit of giggles.
Mr. Croft, however, was less impressed, “Glad to see you will be taking this class every bit as seriously as I expected,” said Mr. Croft, looking down his nose at Will before returning his attention to the rest of the class. “Speaking of taking things seriously, if you think this class is a good way to inflate your grade point average, think again. We are going to start today with a personal branding exercise. Grab a pen and get ready to take notes.” Mr. Croft turned to the front of the room to cue the assignment up on the smartboard. The rest of the class fired up tablets, laptops, whatever ridiculously expensive and unnecessary device they’d managed to convince their parents to buy for “note-taking purposes.” Mr. Croft may have been teaching here for ten years, but he had yet to learn to adapt his terminology to match the student body.
Beside me, Violet pulled out a pen and spiral notebook. Apparently dating Owen Duke hadn’t morphed her into a member of the Snub Club just yet. The assignment, as Mr. Croft described through a series of slides, was to create an 8x11 poster that represented us as a person. For comparison, we looked at advertisements Mr. Croft considered highly effective branding.
There were cigarette ads that gave the impression that smoking made you cool, body spray ads that implied using their scent would make you irresistible to women, and a totally bonkers ad involving an oversized gummy bear, essential oils, and a llama. The latter
was supposed to serve as an example of what not to do, but as I looked around the room, I saw a lot of llamas making their way onto posters.
“Remember,” said Mr. Croft, “when I look up at the wall and see your poster, I should be able to tell at a glance what matters to you. Your illustration should be your brand.”
I spent the next twenty minutes attempting to create ‘my brand,’ but the exercise made it painfully apparent that I didn’t have a brand. I settled on a large cursive letter A surrounded by things I enjoyed. A poorly drawn runner, two girls with their arms slung around one another’s shoulders, and a big ole cup of steaming coffee. It was real, real bad, no denying it, but not doing the in-class assignment wasn’t an option. I hung mine on the wall next to Violet’s. Hers made mine look like kindergarten art.
“I like it,” I said, looking up at her poster. “That’s the symbol for Gemini, right?”
Violet nodded, “I’m a twin. This side of the poster is me,” she said, her finger tracing along drums and a guitar. “And this side is my brother, Sebastian.” She pointed to a cartoon saxophone. “He likes this hoaky old-timey music. We’re completely different, and completely the same. That’s my brand, I guess.”
“I love it,” I answered. “Better than mine anyway.”
Violet laughed, “This may not be your skill.” I could not agree more. Together the two of us circled the classroom looking at what the other students had come up with. Will’s poster was a farce, of course. I was pretty sure it was supposed to be some kind of sex god, but it also looked like the dad on The Little Mermaid, so it was hard to say what ‘brand’ he was going for. I did appreciate the detail on his long flowing locks.
I tried not to look too interested as I positioned myself in front of Christopher’s poster, examining its details for signs of the boy I used to know. It struck me that there were no people on his poster. Instead, he had drawn the letter W formed entirely of surprisingly well-drawn lacrosse sticks. Apparently Ashley wasn’t the only one in their family who had the art gene. I wondered if his brand was meant to be sporty or maybe, like me, he didn’t yet know what his brand was. I could have asked him if he were talking to me, but talking to me required looking at me, and he was still avoiding both.
Three posters down, Christopher was chatting with Lydia. There was a girl who understood herself. Her poster was so clearly Lydia. She had turned the L in her name into one of those rising fists from all the protest posters you see online. The bottom of the arm was wrapped in vines and flowers that extended to the side to make the rest of the L shape. It was both strong and feminine, just like Lydia.
Eavesdropping wasn’t exactly my style, but bits and pieces of their conversation carried, and my heart panged as I listened to him tell her how much he liked her design, how much he appreciated a girl who speaks her mind. Basically how impressed he was that she wasn’t me.
Lydia blended in better in her Shelfbrooke uniform, but there was still something unique about her. You’d never mistake her for a friend of mine, and I was beginning to get the impression that is the part Christopher found appealing. I didn’t have to hear all the words between them to know that Lydia was offering a full-fledged explanation of her cause of the moment. She always had a cause whether it was starving children in Africa or ‘our bodies our rights’ stuff here in the States.
I pretended to carefully study one of the other student's posters, but what I was really studying was Lydia handing Christopher a pamphlet from inside her desk. Her fingers just barely touched his forearm in the process, but it was enough to draw their eyes up at the same time.
That fun-loving grin spread across his face. Even from behind him I could tell that it was there.
I knew that being jealous was stupid and pointless, but I was sickeningly jealous, watching the two of them connect so easily. Three years ago it had been easy for us too. Now, every time I spoke to him, I felt like I was trying too hard to be likable.
When the bell finally rang to signal the end of class, I was filled with relief. I wanted to sprint through the classroom, down the hallway, and out into the open air. To escape, I pushed my way through the jumble of students taking their sweet time to exit. I was deterred, however, when I spotted Christopher’s poster lying on the edge of his desk. He must have taken it down after we went around evaluating one another’s work. I quickly scooped the poster into my bag. We didn’t have to turn it in, and he didn’t care about his work. I knew it was wrong, but I took it anyway.
Once outside the classroom, I watched through the large square windows as Christopher searched his desk for the poster. When he realized it was gone, he shrugged indifferently and packed to go. He didn’t miss it so what harm could my taking it cause?
Later that night, I tucked the poster into my sock drawer next to my Fort Warren concert T-shirt and our photo strip, all the while ignoring the stalker look Rachel gave me over the top of her paperback.
Chapter Seven
I woke up the following morning shocked to find Rachel already awake. She was sitting at her desk, staring at me like a total weirdo with a coffee in one hand and a notebook resting on her lap.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said, giving me no time to adjust to the morning.
“That’s original,” I mumbled, pushing myself into a sitting position and rubbing the sleep from my eyes.
Rachel glared at me. “You are in a funk. A totally unacceptable, ruining my ever-present good mood funk!”
“It’s a little early to evaluate my mental state,” I said, covering my mouth as a giant yawn slipped out.
“This is serious,” said Rachel, looking at me scrutinizingly. “Like, even your pajamas have a stain.” I looked down at the gross remnants of my peanut butter and jelly Uncrustable. Lately, I had taken to eating my meals in our dorm room, which was great for avoiding people but terrible for selection. I’d already had three of the frozen atrocities this week. The worst part was they were beginning to grow on me. Just last night I thought to myself, PB and J for breakfast doesn’t sound so bad.
“Your pajamas have a stain!” I retorted, fully aware that my morning brain was negatively impacting my arguing skills.
Rachel sighed, “This is bad. Worse than the time your dad showed up unexpected on parents day and saw your nose piercing.”
I shrugged, brushing the crumbs off my sheets “I don’t know if it’s that bad,”
“Oh it is,” said Rachel. “If I had to put it on par with something I would rank it right up there with Will posting a pic of your bra on Knight Watch and implying he’d acquired it after a lacrosse victory.”
Ugh, I cringed. He had actually just stolen it from the laundry room, but that didn’t stop the gossips from taking the post as gospel. I’d been the brunt of every hoe joke for a week. But, even that didn’t feel as bad as being rejected by Christopher.
“I’ve taken the liberty of forming a plan,” said Rachel, looking down at the scribbled lines in her notebook.
I raised one eyebrow. “Is that a plan or just what happens when a blindfolded person tries to write left-handed?”
“Very funny. Do you want to hear my plan, or would you rather continue pouting and hiding from the general public?”
“Let’s hear it,” I said, figuring it was better to let her get it out now than wait till later.
“Ahem,” she coughed, clearing her throat as if she were about to give a tremendously important speech. “The problem: You are in deep unadulterated crush with...brace yourself...a manchild who seems to have overlooked some of your finer qualities.
I snorted. “Like all of them, all of my finer qualities.”
“Shush, allow me to finish.” I pulled an invisible zipper over my lips and settled in for the long haul. “This problem is exacerbated by the fact that: You did a bad thing many years ago.”
“A bad thing prompted by you,” I said, momentarily forgetting my vow of silence.
“Tisk, tisk,” she scolded. “No more from the peanut galler
y.”
I let out an irritated sigh. “Carry on then. I anxiously await your solution to all of this.”
“Good, because I think it is pretty masterful myself.”
“Of course you do,” I laughed, Rachel never had an idea she didn’t think was solid gold.
“And, just to be perfectly clear,” she said, locking eyes with me. “The creation and facilitation of this plan is officially apology number three. Just two more to go!”
I rolled my eyes, but secretly, I loved every second of this. Part of what made Rachel so clutch was the fact that she always apologized when she was wrong and never devalued my feelings. Even when I was ridiculous, she took me seriously. This wasn’t the first time Rachel had handcrafted a plan to pull me from the depths of despair, and it wasn’t likely to be the last.
“You’re gonna get this boy back!” she declared holding her pencil in the air like the Olympic torch.
I narrowed my eyes and shook my head. “Nope, not gonna happen.”
“Why not?” grumbled Rachel. “That’s what you want, isn't it? You’re keeping his picture in your sock drawer along with some other concerning items, you little creepster!”
I chose to ignore her last comment. “It pretty much doesn’t matter what I want, Rachel. There is no sense dwelling on things you want but can’t have.”
She pressed her lips into a frown. “Oh, is that what you are doing? Not dwelling?”
“Trying,” I admitted.
Rachel stood, “Alright then. Why can’t you have him back?”
