by Donna Cooner
She stepped to the side and waited for the brilliance to flow freely from the blank faces staring back at her. Seriously? I almost groaned out loud. When no one answered, Ms. Garcia started lecturing us about paying attention.
I snuck another peek at my phone, hoping to see that apology text from Jameson. Instead, it was just a text from Caitlin of a football emoji. Great.
“Can you close your locker?” Caitlin asked me. We’d met up right after first period at our lockers. Luna would be here any minute. “It’s blocking my view.”
“He isn’t going anywhere.” I pulled one more book out, glancing at the mirror on the inside of my locker door. My hair was a disaster. I tucked one dirty-blond strand behind my ear and grimaced at my reflection. If only filters existed in real life.
“Who are we looking at?” Luna asked, walking up to join us. Her long, curly dark hair was in a side fishtail braid I knew took her an extra hour of prep time. She wore tights, a bright blue skirt, and a too-big gray hoodie. Of the three of us, I thought she was the true beauty, even though most people looked at me first. She had dark perceptive eyes, light brown skin, and the kind of big, confident smile that I always wished I could flash, too. Caitlin was slim and deceptively fragile-looking, with skin so pale it was almost translucent, hazel eyes, and wavy brown hair. Today, she wore jeans and a chunky cropped sweater that showed off her toned stomach. People always thought Caitlin was younger than she actually was, which was hilarious, because Cait was actually older than both me and Luna by almost a year.
I jerked my head toward the end of the hall, where a gaggle of admirers surrounded Milo Moretti. The football team had been ecstatic when Milo moved here from California this fall and majorly upped their chances of a winning season. Evidently, he had some mad skills and was so fast even the coach couldn’t believe the stopwatch in his hand. At least that’s what Cait said, and she knew everything about football. And now everyone in the school thought Milo was the coolest.
I thought I heard murmurs from the crowd around him talking about a “big party tonight,” but I couldn’t be sure. It would be just like Milo to throw a party on a school night.
“We’re hate-watching Milo,” Caitlin explained. “Look at his fans hanging on to his every word.” She rolled her eyes.
“You’re just jealous,” Luna said.
Caitlin considered. “Probably. You’ll never see anyone from the girls’ soccer team getting that kind of attention.”
She was right. I watched the Milo show for a few more minutes, then turned back to my locker and dug around in the bottom for a hair tie. The pink one would do, although it didn’t match anything I was wearing. I slipped it around my wrist for later when my hair felt overpowering and unmanageable. It was bound to happen after lunch.
“Did you see his latest ChitChat post?” Caitlin asked, waving her phone. I closed my locker and turned around to look at Caitlin’s screen. Milo’s post was a photo of himself in midair, catching a pass in the end zone, from last week’s game. I saw that Jameson had commented beneath it with a “100” emoji. I knew Jameson really wanted to be Milo’s friend. The thought of Jameson made my stomach clench. I still hadn’t heard from him, and he usually texted me by now.
“Okay, but let’s talk about something more important,” Luna said. She gave a big puff of air to clear her face of random strands of hair that had escaped from her braid. “Tamar called that emergency newspaper meeting this morning because she’s moving next month.”
“She’s leaving?” Caitlin asked, surprised. Tamar was the editor in chief of the newspaper, and Luna had always looked up to her.
Luna nodded, her expression serious. “And she needs a new editor in chief to replace her.” Luna put a hand over her heart, then said, “If I become editor in chief, I can finally tell important stories about things that matter. Stories that can change people’s lives.”
“That’s amazing,” I said, knowing how much this meant to Luna. “How is she going to choose the new editor in chief?”
Luna looked nervous. She always wore her expressions easily on her face. “Well, our assignment is to write the best story we can on a topic of our choosing, and submit it to Tamar at the end of October. She’ll choose based on whomever submits the best story.”
“You totally got this,” Caitlin said, and I nodded.
“What are you going to write about?” I asked.
Luna smiled. “I have one idea. A bunch of desks are piled up outside the band room, yet people are having to share desks in English class.”
Caitlin frowned. “There’s a desk conspiracy?”
Luna shrugged. “Could be.”
“Why would anyone hoard desks?” Caitlin asked, bewildered.
“Never mind.” Luna’s happy look was gone. “Maybe that’s not the best idea.”
“You’ll come up with something great,” I assured her.
Luna looked unconvinced. “But what if I don’t?” she asked.
“You will,” I said, and I held out my fist for our traditional three-way fist bump. “You can do anything you set your mind to.”
And I believed it, too. I only wished I could be as sure of myself as I was of my friends.
After school, Caitlin and I sat on a metal bench listening to Cait’s dad yell at high school boys. When we were about twelve, I realized for the first time that Caitlin’s father was not like other fathers. Her dad was Coach Stone. Not the part-time, summer-league kind of coach with a regular job at the bank. No, her dad was a real coach—the head football coach at Fort Collins High School.
I glanced over at Caitlin. She didn’t look bored at all. Instead, she looked totally fascinated. Not a surprise. She spent her whole life watching football, talking about football, or playing football with the boys in the neighborhood. And she’d been going to every single Friday night game so far this year.
I looked back toward the field just as Iain hiked the ball. Milo ran out toward the goalposts, and the quarterback, Davis Jenkins, stepped back with the ball in his hand, looking for a receiver. Caitlin cupped her hands around her mouth and yelled, “He’s open.”
Milo jumped into the air, hands outstretched, and pulled in the football from an almost-impossible angle. Cait’s dad shouted his approval, then blew a whistle to gather up the team.
I checked my phone. Still no text from Jameson. I’d seen him, briefly, at lunch—he’d come up to me in the cafeteria to say he had to practice with his band and we’d catch up later. He’d given me a quick kiss on the cheek, but things still felt … different.
Out on the field, Davis pulled off his helmet and jogged over to me and Caitlin. “What do you think?” he asked, sitting down beside Caitlin. He picked up a plastic squirt bottle and sprayed a stream of water into his mouth. Half of it splashed onto his face and he used the hem of his T-shirt to wipe it off, revealing a ripped stomach from hours of lifting weights in the off-season.
I knew he was waiting for Caitlin to pile on the compliments, but she was making him wait for it.
I filled in the silence between them. “Great throw.”
Davis nodded at me, but his eyes still watched Cait.
“The offense looks good. You’ve got a lot of protection from your line,” she finally said.
He frowned at her. “And?”
Cait closed her eyes for a beat, and I chewed awkwardly on the corner of my lip. Then Caitlin turned her head and opened her eyes to stare at Davis. “What can I say? The out route was on target. You put the ball right in Milo’s hands when he cut to the sideline? This is definitely going to be your year and you are the accuracy master.” She said it all in a monotone, but Davis’s dark brown eyes lit up. Just like me, he knew Caitlin was the best judge of talent here today. And it didn’t hurt that she might mention some of her opinions to the coach.
“Accuracy master. I like the sound of that,” Davis said, and grinned like the sun had just popped out above the foothills. He lifted a hand and waved to the cheerleaders practicing o
n the track. Ben Kahale, Davis’s boyfriend, waved back, then executed a perfect tumbling sequence ending in a backflip.
Davis cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Show-off.”
Davis and Ben were super sweet together. It made me think of Jameson again. Ugh. To distract myself, I glanced back at the practice. Eli Vernon kicked a field goal from the twenty-yard line. It was shaky, but it went through the goalposts. Barely.
“Oof,” I said. Even I knew that wasn’t great.
“He’s getting better,” Davis said.
Caitlin shook her head. “Not really.”
“You’re right,” Davis said. “But he’s all we have.”
“I bet you could do that, Cait,” I said, thinking of how amazing Caitlin was out on the soccer field. She made scoring goals look easy. “I mean, is kicking a soccer ball that different from kicking a football?”
Davis looked like I had just said something weird and magnificent at the same time. “Wait,” he whispered. He turned to Caitlin. “Annie’s right. Cait, you should be our kicker.”
Caitlin rolled her eyes and made a face like it was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. “Yeah. Sure. I’ll do it,” she muttered.
“Dare you.” Davis’s grin spread.
Caitlin shook her head. “Come on. A girl joining the football team?” she said. “I don’t think my dad would go for it.”
“You never know,” I said.
Caitlin shrugged. “Well, all the guys would go ballistic. Especially Milo.”
“Maybe he’s not as bad as you think,” Davis said.
“Come on,” I said. “You’re not a Milo fan, too, are you?”
“I’m withholding judgment,” Davis said.
I looked at Caitlin, but she was staring out at the field with a fierceness I knew all too well.
“If you want something, Cait, you have to go for it,” I told her. “The fact that there’s never been a girl on the football team at Fort Collins High School just means it hasn’t happened yet.”
Cait looked thoughtful. She pulled out her phone, tapped at it for a few minutes, then showed the screen to me and Davis. She’d created a poll, but she hadn’t posted it on ChitChat yet.
SHOULD A GIRL BE ALLOWED ON THE FOOTBALL TEAM?
Yes
No
Undecided
Davis looked impressed. “I have to admit, Cait. You got guts,” he said. “But if the odds are in your favor, you have to talk with your dad.” He pulled his helmet on over his head and ran back out onto the field.
I glanced at Caitlin, then nodded down at her phone. “Are you really going to post that?”
She took a deep breath. “I think so. What do I have to lose?”
I watched as she hit post, and the poll went out into the world. Now we would wait to see what people said. ChitChat always had the answers.
What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
—Mary Oliver
At home, after dinner, I flopped onto my bed, scrolling through ChitChat and—okay, maybe—waiting for Jameson to text me.
I voted yes on Caitlin’s poll, then checked the results. A lot of people had liked the post and commented, but not that many had voted yet. (There were five yeses and one no.) The poll would run for the rest of the week, though. I hoped Caitlin wasn’t watching it obsessively. She probably was.
I stared up at the black-and-white poster of the Eiffel Tower on the ceiling above my bed. That image was always the last thing I saw before I closed my eyes at night and the first thing I saw when I woke up in the morning. It was iconic, classic, and everyone who went anywhere went to the Eiffel Tower.
Luna once told me that an average human spent six whole years dreaming. (It was one of those random facts she always seemed to have floating about in her brain from researching some story.) And yet, with all that dreaming I did every night, I never once dreamed of Paris when I slept. Only when I was fully awake.
I looked down at ChitChat again. I went to the page of one of my favorite travel accounts, and scrolled to a video of the real Eiffel Tower just as the sun set over Paris. The lights of the tower twinkled to life, illuminating the boats on the river below. My breathing slowed. Even if I never had the chance to see it in real life, it was here in my hand.
My finger pushed up on the screen to reveal a photo of a waterfall dropping off the cliffs on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. Next I scrolled down to a video of a dense jungle in Costa Rica. I turned up the sound to hear the roar of howler monkeys as they jumped from treetop to treetop. My mouth twitched into a smile. So many places waited for me with just a skimming touch of my finger. Next was a photo of a rooftop pool in Singapore. I imagined how the water might feel lapping at my manicured toes high above the multicolored lights of the glass-and-steel skyline.
I’d never been over the Colorado state line except when my father accidentally drove five miles into Kansas looking for a gas station. But one day, I hoped, I’d see the real-life version of the tiny houses set out on stilts over the turquoise-blue waters of Tahiti. The world was bigger than my room … my house … and my town.
Unfortunately, my family couldn’t afford to take lavish trips, or really any trips at all. My mom was a nurse and my dad drove a Morningside Dairy delivery truck. It was all my parents could do to raise me and my sister. A Paris vacation, or any kind of vacation, wasn’t a financial possibility. My dad worked. My mom worked. Then my dad worked again at the university as a parking attendant on football weekends.
There was a knock on my bedroom door.
“What?” I called, already knowing who was standing outside.
The door swung open, and my older sister, Savanna, came in carrying a stack of bridal magazines. Savanna and I looked the same, but different. She was taller and thinner, but we both had wavy blond hair and eyes the color of faded blue jeans. I think our eyes were what made people sometimes stop and turn around when they saw us. Savanna was comfortable with that. I was not.
“Can you look at these dresses?” Savanna asked. “I want to narrow down some options before we go shopping on Saturday. If not, we’ll be there all day.”
I did not want to spend my Saturday at a bridal shop, but I knew I had to be there for my sister. Savanna and Miguel had announced their engagement last month and the wedding plans were consuming every family conversation and activity. When Savanna transferred back home to Colorado her junior year of college last year, I thought we’d spend more time together. But of course she ended up spending almost all her time with her high school sweetheart, Miguel. And now they were getting married. The wedding would be this summer, after they’d both graduated from college.
I liked Miguel and I was happy for Savanna, but sometimes I wanted to talk about something besides color schemes and flower choices with her.
“Not now,” I said. “I’m doing my homework.”
“Doesn’t look like it,” Savanna said.
I made a big production of putting my phone down, sitting up, and reaching to grab my backpack off the floor. I pulled out my geometry textbook and held it up to my sister.
“See?” I said.
Savanna was peering at my phone where it lay faceup on my bed. “Somebody’s texting you,” she said. “A lot.”
It was probably Jameson. Finally.
“It’s just something on ChitChat,” I told her, then waved her off toward the door, magazines and all. “Go on. I’ll look at your first choices later. Promise.”
After Savanna left, I picked up my phone. Milo Moretti, of all people, had posted a new video on ChitChat, and tagged me in it, so I was getting all the notifications of likes and comments. He’d used the hashtag #Annson. Why?
I pushed the black triangle on the middle of the screen to bring the video to life.
The first thing I noticed was the unusual angle—almost like the camera or phone was in someone’s lap shooting straight up. It was in the back seat of a car. Jameson’s face was clearly recognizab
le, his blond hair thick and curly. I always told him he spent more money on hair products than I did. It was a running joke between us, and it made me smile to think of it.
“Are you coming with us or not?” The question came from a voice off camera, but I recognized it as Milo’s.
On the screen, Jameson shrugged and smiled. My heart melted a little like it always did when Jameson smiled. His familiar face filled the screen—square jaw, long nose, and beautiful golden-brown eyes that crinkled up just right when he laughed. I wanted to reach into the screen and brush away his hair from his eyes. Instead, I sat mesmerized and unmoving. Something wasn’t right.
Milo’s voice jerked me back to reality. “This is going to be an amazing party—and you’re going to miss out because you have a girlfriend?”
My eyes widened in disbelief. I cringed at the tone in Milo’s voice, and even though he was out of sight, I could imagine the sneer on his face when he asked, “Do you have to ask permission?”
Jameson frowned. He didn’t look at the camera. It was as though he didn’t even know it was there. “She doesn’t tell me what to do,” he said.
I realized I was holding my breath. He was talking about me. I knew it, but couldn’t wrap my head around it. I leaned forward, my face almost touching the screen.
“Really? That’s not what I hear.” Milo was goading him, but Jameson wasn’t going to take the bait.
My heart beat so loudly in my ears that it sounded like someone knocking incessantly on the door. Say something, I begged silently to the screen.
And then he did.
“Look, she’s not going to be my girlfriend much longer. Okay?” Jameson said. “I just have to figure out how to tell her.”
“Dude,” Milo laughed. “I think you just did.”
The screen went black and the comments poured in like tiny knives stabbing into an already open wound.
UH-OH. TROUBLE IN PARADISE. #ANNSON
WHAT A WAY TO FIND OUT! #ANNSON
