by Halli Gomez
4. Find a babysitter for Jude
I had no clue where to look since the neighborhood kids were out. Maybe Khory would know. Bam, I just gave myself a conversation starter.
5. See the space shuttle—ASK DAD TONIGHT
Seeing the shuttle was my one peek into the career I would have strived for. But the thought of going to the Air and Space Museum, with thousands more people than a Taco Bell and city bus put together, made me dizzy. I told myself it didn’t matter what people thought. People were idiots, and after my list was complete, I’d never see them again.
So why did I care?
I tapped my pencil ten times. Counted to ten. Nothing worked. The invisible hand squeezed my chest tighter. Damn Hardly Qualified. What were you good for? I squeezed my hands together and closed my eyes.
“Mr. Hayes.”
My name floated around my head like a dream.
“Mr. Hayes.”
Smack. My eyes popped open. Mr. Nagel stood in front of my desk.
“Were you sleeping in my class?”
“No, Sir.”
He glanced at my paper as all the air left my lungs. If I tried to cover it, he’d snatch it and read it aloud to everyone. He was a jerk like that. I hoped his upside-down reading skills were as crappy as his social skills.
He stared at the notebook, then peered up at me. If mind texting didn’t work with Mrs. Frances, it had no hope with him. I tried to fool my neck twitch by daring it to stay away from my shoulder for sixty seconds. Only an asshole would stare at me that long. I crossed my ankles for luck and prayed he didn’t stop me on an odd number.
One, two, three . . .
I counted. I started the second round of ten when he cleared his throat. “Please continue working on your math classwork.”
I nodded. He tromped back to his desk. My body relaxed, but that presented another problem. It had only been eleven seconds, but it felt like my neck had been still for eleven hours and had to make up for lost time.
A shooting pain traveled from the base of my head down my neck to my shoulder blade, where it stopped and dug itself in. We’re talking a rating of ninety at least. I rested my forehead on my hand and focused on the paper. With my head turned down, maybe no one would notice the tears.
“Busted.” Jay came up to my desk after the bell rang. “Were you writing a note to Khory?”
I tilted my head. “What? Oh, no. Why?” I swung my backpack over my shoulder and headed for the door.
“I thought it was a love note or something,” Jay said. “You guys are going out, right? Just tell me so I’m not the guy who sits between two couples making out.”
I froze outside the doorway with my mouth hanging open. Was it that obvious I liked her?
“She wouldn’t . . . she doesn’t like me.”
“You’re clueless, dude. You practically drool on her. And she likes you, too. I’ve been friends with her and Rainn for so long, I know more about girls than girls do.” He shivered. “Sometimes it has its advantages, but most of the time, no.”
Were there signs for the average guy to know if a girl liked him? If so, I completely missed them. Now, if they were the “get away from me” kind, I would have been all over that.
I felt like floating as we moved down the hallway. At eight steps I moved to the wall. “Jay, wait. What do I do?” My neck twitched. Numbers swirled in my brain. “You have to help me.”
“Dude, come on. Ask her out. Kiss her,” he said. “I gotta go. Geography. Mrs. Hill is crankier than Mr. Nagel.”
He left me alone in the hallway with those terrifying choices. My only defenses were twitching, scrunching, and counting.
Khory was deep into a novel by the time I got to Chemistry, but she glanced up and smiled. Her eyes twinkled. Mine squeezed closed. Please not a new tic. Not now! Damn stress. I was already a pudgy teenager with more disorder abbreviations after my name than Stephen Hawking had honorary degrees. I didn’t need to add anything else right before I asked out the girl of my dreams.
I sank into my chair while Mrs. Frances struggled with the smart board and tried to talk. She wasn’t talented enough to do both.
“Class registration cards for next year go out on March first. Remember the astronomy summer program when choosing your science.”
I pushed my feet into the floor to keep from leaping up and straightening the crooked display.
“Troy, did you hear me?” Mrs. Frances asked. “The summer program. I hope you are thinking about it.”
“Yes, ma’am, I am,” I said.
How could I not? But the astronomy program I’d miss and Khory liking me were too overwhelming. The shooting pain in my neck was back.
“Is everything okay?” Khory asked.
“Yes.” I swallowed, then took a deep breath. “Do you want to study Saturday? Then do something. Out. That night?” Tongue-tied again.
“Out? On a date?” she asked.
Damn. Did Jay want me to make a fool of myself? Because I just did. I squeezed my hands together and fumbled with my notebook.
“Never mind.”
“Yes, I want to go out with you.” She brushed her hair from her face. Her cheeks were pink.
I smiled, nodded, and tried to act like going on a date was a normal thing for me. But inside my body was supercharged. It made my legs weak, and I was grateful to be sitting, or I would have fallen on my face.
. . . . . . . . . .
Dad scrambled around the kitchen. Took preshredded lettuce, precut tomatoes, and cheese from the fridge. Taco meat from the microwave and shells from the oven. He trekked back and forth to the table.
As we sat and stuffed tacos, Dad and I went through the regular conversations: work, the same, school, the same. Except it really wasn’t. I took a big bite so that my smile wouldn’t creep through. I wasn’t ready to share, but I had to swallow sometime.
“What’s the smile for?” Dad asked.
“So, there’s this girl,” I started. That sounded like a movie line.
“And . . .” Dad prompted.
“Nothing big. I’m tutoring her in math, and she’s in my Chemistry class.” My hand squeezed the taco shell and shattered it. No big deal. Taco salads were good, too. I wiped the meat and cheese off my hand.
“Is she the girl you went out with a couple weeks ago?”
“Yes. And some of her friends. We may go out this Saturday if that’s okay.” I mixed in a few sprigs of lettuce to make it an actual salad.
“Of course. I’m happy you’re making friends and going out. Before you met her . . . what’s her name?”
“Khory,” I said.
He tilted his head. “Khory. Well, I hated how you stayed home most of the time.”
“I took Jude to the park,” I said in my happy voice, as if the Tourette and hiding at home were jokes. Apparently they bombed, because Dad shook his head. He was right, my life was not funny.
“You know what I mean. It’s not healthy to stay home all the time. You should go out and have fun.” He sighed and stared at his plate.
Of course I should, but we both knew I wasn’t a regular kid. Really, what mentally stable person would make a bucket list at sixteen?
“Okay, how about this for going out? I want to go to the Air and Space Museum. It’s not too far. We could probably do it in a day.”
His head jerked up, and he smiled. “Wow, all or nothing for you. Why there?”
“I like space. Jude likes space.”
He nodded. “The Air and Space Museum is a great idea. We’ll look at the calendar to see when your next break is. We can make a weekend of it.”
“Thanks.”
I ate with a new passion. The space shuttle. I pushed away the thought of people staring, pointing, and laughing. At me. Instead I replaced the scene with my own visual.
A humongous warehouse, cement floors, and an open ceiling. The kind where you can see the air ducts and metal frames. And in the middle was the shuttle. A thick gray rope surrounded it to kee
p people at a safe distance. No touching, climbing, or vandalism allowed. Because it was my fantasy, the room was empty. Visitors hadn’t made it here yet, so there were no little kids running around and no families taking selfies. It was there. Alone.
An American flag stood to my right just inside the warehouse doors. The slap of my sneakers echoed in the room as I stepped toward the shuttle. There were goosebumps on my arms. My hands opened and reached toward the gray rope, but they grabbed air.
“Troy? You okay?”
I opened my eyes. My body warmed. Good thing it was Dad. I wasn’t interested in a repeat of today’s math class.
“Everything’s great. I was just dreaming of seeing the shuttle.”
Dad grinned. “It’s going to be a great trip.”
“Yeah.” My hands crushed another taco. Good stress.
. . . . . . . . . .
Today was another one for the this-can’t-be-my-reality list. A date. The space shuttle. No way! I tried to focus on my homework, but that was not going to happen.
It wasn’t wrong to have fun while I checked items off my list. Even date. I’m pretty sure that’s what this thing with Khory was. I’d asked her out, and she’d said yes.
My hand squeezed around my phone. Did that give me an open invitation to call her? I did have a reason, a legitimate question. Of course I couldn’t tell her why I wanted to know, and maybe I’d be lucky and she wouldn’t ask. Ha! I doubted it, but I texted her anyway.
ME: Random question. How can I find a babysitter for my brother?
KHORY: I can ask some friends. Why?
Lame, lame, lame! Why didn’t I think of an excuse first?
ME: Just curious
And then a quick change of subject.
ME: Have any math questions?
KHORY: No. It was easy tonight.
Then my phone vibrated, and her name popped up.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi. I still need math help though. You are coming over on Saturday, right?”
“Of course.”
“And we’re going out Saturday night?” Khory asked.
“Whatever you want. I’ll let you decide.” But please don’t say a movie. I should have said no movie. “What’s on Krista’s list? Maybe that will give us an idea.”
“Well, let’s see, there’s bungee jumping, but I really don’t want to do that. I’ll have to think about it. What would you put on the list?”
“List? I don’t have one.”
“I know. I meant if you added to mine. Just for fun.”
My hand squeezed the phone. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Lists weren’t a game for me.
“Oh, right. Well, I don’t know.”
“Come on, okay, how about this? If you could do one thing, what would it be? Like your deepest dream.”
My list? My deepest dream? That would be number ten. Or live happily ever after with Khory like the couples in romance movies. My neck twitched. I couldn’t say either of those.
“Um . . . see the space shuttle,” I said. A small lie, which, shockingly, was easy to tell.
“I bet you’re excited about Mrs. Frances’s astronomy program.”
“Yeah.” And if things had been different, I would have begged Dad to let me go.
“Well should we add seeing the space shuttle to the list?”
“Sure,” I said. A twinge of guilt pinched my heart. A girl who wanted to live for two people would never understand me giving up my one life.
FEBRUARY 27
Just do it.
Jay’s words spurred me on like the slogan splashed across the TV screen. She likes you, he said. I questioned the word of a guy who sat by himself Saturday night, but she did agree to go out with me.
So today I was going to kiss her. It was time. And it was on my list.
Why was I such a scaredy-cat? As I rode my bike to Khory’s house, I raised my hand in the air and tried a pep talk. “Troy! Be confident. Face your fears. This is not the time to hide.” It came out more like a lecture, and now I was scared of myself and Khory slapping me in the face.
I dropped my bike on the sidewalk, careful of her Dad’s pristine yard. How did he get each blade of grass exactly the same height?
“What are you thinking about?” Khory asked from the doorway.
“Nothing,” I lied. Telling her I was obsessed about grass height might ruin my plans for today.
She tilted her head and squinted her eyes but met me on the walkway and led me inside.
“My parents went to the store, so it’s just us. But they said they’d be home soon.”
Was that her way of saying not to try anything or to do it fast? My hands squeezed together. She couldn’t know what I planned. I didn’t tell anyone. Girls were so confusing. Life would have been so much easier if I was home playing video games.
I dropped my backpack on the dining room table next to her laptop, followed her to the kitchen, and leaned against the counter. She took two glasses from the cabinet and filled them with water. She grinned like she had a secret, and I could have sworn her hands were shaking. My neck twitched sixty times in sixty seconds, so my eyes were probably bouncing in their sockets making everything seem shaky.
I was nervous enough about being alone with her and now terrified my hand-squeeze tic would break the glass. What if it was a family heirloom passed down from her great-grandmother or her dad’s favorite cup from his one and only trip to Disney World?
We went to the dining room, and I put my glass in the center of the table, hidden by my backpack. I hoped my brain would forget it was even there, but suddenly I was parched.
During my “should I touch the glass or not” internal debate, I took out my notebook and a pencil. Khory flipped through notes in hers. I leaned on my right arm and studied her. Her eyes moved quickly across the pages taking in the numbers, letters, and equations. She sat up straight, completely engrossed in math. I liked math, but come on, it wasn’t that exciting.
My legs bounced ten times. Ten left. Ten right. I switched to the hand-squeeze tic before the bouncing annoyed her. Open, closed. Open, closed. Repeat.
She leaned over her notebook, and her hair fell over her face. As if I didn’t have enough problems already. From the first day I met her, the hair was my downfall. She pushed a lock behind her ear, revealing the blue earring and a twinkle in her eye.
“I thought you focused,” she said.
I’m pretty sure I never told her that. Not with my ADD. She put her pen down and turned to face me. Her lips were together, but her eyes were bright.
“I’m going to find a new tutor,” she said.
I picked up my pen and scooted closer to the table. “Okay, fine. I’m good now. Just a minor distraction. Your hair.” I cleared my throat. “I thought you had something in your hair. It’s good though.”
But I still couldn’t focus. I was obsessed with something else. And I knew better than to argue with an obsession. It wouldn’t rest until it was satisfied. Screw the math.
I shifted in my seat and grabbed her hand. Her eyes opened wide. Don’t think. Don’t analyze. Don’t obsess. Just do it. Thanks Jay. Ugh. Don’t think about Jay. I stood, halfway, because the table jammed into my stomach and blocked my way. I leaned toward her, and the arm of the chair dug into my hip. I pushed the pain to the back of my brain, which let self-doubt move to the empty space up front. The obstacles of solid wood were a clear sign to abandon the idea.
So there I was, half standing with no logical explanation. She didn’t move. Not toward me or away. I stood there for what seemed like ten rounds of ten, but then I realized I wasn’t counting. Me, not counting. Huh.
I moved my face as close to hers as I could and just did it. My lips brushed hers. They were soft and smooth. With a hint of strawberry.
My first kiss.
My insides were twitching like crazy, and my body was warm from head to toe like electricity was coursing through me. I opened my eyes. Khory stared at m
e. Her lips parted. Not frowning, not smiling.
She closed her mouth and rubbed her lips together. My shoulders sank. Was it the ham sandwich I had for lunch?
Khory scooted her chair back and turned toward me. She smiled. Okay, that was better. A smile wasn’t the action of someone disgusted with me. I knew about that. I’d studied peoples’ reactions toward me since I was six. I could teach a class. The Emotional and Physical Reactions to Meeting Troy Hayes. I could give myself an honorary PhD.
I slid my chair back so I wouldn’t stab myself again. We leaned in. She tilted her head a little to the right, and I did the same. Weird what pops into your mind at times like this. Like how awesome it was we bent our heads to the right or I may have neck-twitch-head-butted her with my left side.
We moved closer. Our lips touched. Harder this time. Definitely pressure. If the first kiss was questionable, this one definitely qualified as real. Real enough to taste the strawberry.
I pressed my lips harder, fumbled for her hand, and felt her fingers. Mine brushed over hers. Her skin was smooth, and my fingertips craved the feeling. I pressed harder.
A door slammed. Khory jumped back, grinning under the hair that partially covered her red cheeks.
I froze, not wanting to put more distance between us, but I wanted to be invited back again. I took a deep breath, and the twitching slowed down.
“Khory?” her mother asked. Keys clanked on the kitchen counter.
“In the dining room,” Khory said.
She flashed me a warning smile and refocused on her notebook. I shifted toward mine.
“Hi Troy. Are you guys making progress?” Mrs. Price asked.
Yes, yes we were. I almost screamed that I just kissed the most beautiful girl but caught myself just in time. Instead I gave myself a mental high five.
. . . . . . . . . .
Because Khory’s parents thought we didn’t do anything more exciting than study earlier today, they gave the okay for us to go on a date. Of course, the phrase “go out on a date” was open to interpretation. Khory hoped it meant a restaurant, then a movie, but her parents defined it as a home-cooked dinner and Netflix.
