by Adi Alsaid
He took a step closer to her and pulled the book up to read the title, California Real Estate Law 1987–1992. At this distance, it was hard not to notice Gretchen in her entirety. He’d always seen her out of the corner of his eyes, blond locks and not much more, talkative, active at school in the way that he and Julia inherently disapproved of. Her legs were tan from soccer practices in the sun, and she wore scuffed beige sneakers that didn’t really go with her dress. “This one’s an adventure-slash-love story,” he said, looking at the faint dimple in her chin.
“Ooh, that’s my favorite genre! And here I was judging the book by its cover.”
“What was your guess? Judging by the cover.”
“Erotica,” she said, nodding. “I would have definitely thought hard-core erotica.”
He laughed, the image of her reforming itself, starting to fill up with color.
“So tell me about this adventure-slash-love story.”
Maybe for the first time, he looked at her and saw more than just her face. The words that he would have used to describe her yesterday—that she was just another popular pretty girl, a soccer player who maybe ran for student council or worked on the yearbook or something like that—suddenly seemed to lack any real description. That was true of many of the people at the party, he realized. It was like he’d been carrying around a coloring book that hadn’t yet been drawn in. He and Julia knew the outlines of people, but not much more.
“Well,” he said, and he took a seat on the leather couch behind them. Gretchen sat down next to him, the space between them hard to distinguish because of how her dress fell onto his jeans. “It’s about this guy named...” He struggled for a name, then grabbed the book from Gretchen’s hand and flipped to a random page. “A guy named Californian Tort Law.”
“He sounds cute.”
“So cute.”
“Is there a girl?”
Dave smiled at her, at the way she’d positioned herself to face him, at the way she was smiling back, at all the unexpected turns his night had taken, normal as it may have been to everyone else at the Kapoor house. He wondered only briefly about how Julia’s night had gone since they’d split, whether she’d discovered some of the same things he had about their classmates.
“Well, I wouldn’t want to give it away. You’ll just have to read it yourself.”
“No! Don’t be like that. I want to hear the whole story tonight.”
“I don’t think there’s much left of tonight,” Dave said, looking back toward the living room, which had definitely quieted down. The party was emptying out. Julia must have left to go home by now, and he should probably do the same soon.
“Come on. Tell me about the girl. What was her name?”
“Her name,” Dave said, looking down at the open book in his lap, “was Section 16520 of the Family Code.”
“Interesting name.”
“Swedish,” Dave explained.
Gretchen beamed a smile at him and gave him a head nod to continue. With a quick, appreciative thought for the Nevers list he’d found stuck in his locker, Dave continued his story.
o o o
When Dave walked out of the Kapoor house, it was past three in the morning. Tiredness was starting to dull the edges around the thrill of the night, a faint headache building up as payback for all that beer. He was so ready to go to bed that he almost missed Julia sitting on the curb in front of the house, her head on her knees, arms curled around herself. He leaned over and could hear her softly breathing, asleep.
“Julia,” he said, putting an arm on her shoulder. When she stirred, eyes darting, confused, he asked her how long she’d been waiting for him.
“I don’t know. An hour, maybe. Where the hell did you run off to?”
“Nowhere. I was in the den downstairs.”
“You weren’t answering my calls.” She put her hands on either side of her and stretched her back out. “What gives?”
“My phone died, sorry.”
“Fuck, Dave, you couldn’t have come to tell me that?”
“I tried.” He stuck his hands in his pockets, not knowing what else to do with them. He hated making her upset. “I couldn’t find you anywhere, so I thought you’d left.”
“Without you? Please.” She yawned. “You know you’re an awful human being for letting your phone run out of battery. Come on, David Montgomery Burns, it’s the twenty-first century. Stay plugged in. You made your friend worry.”
“Why didn’t you go home?”
“Again. Without you?” She let out a groan and then reached her hand out. “Help me up, you forsaken supposed friend.”
“I’m sorry,” Dave said, pulling her up gently. “I feel like shit.”
“Good. Wallow in that for a second.”
They started walking down the middle of the road, the streetlights casting hazy shadows. Earlier in the night, it had felt so bizarre to be walking toward a party. Now the fog was starting to roll in and the trees looked beautiful. Julia’s arms were crossed in front of her chest, her jaw tense. He tried to read her silence, just how angry she was at him. But the booze was interfering, making his mind return to the wonders of street lighting at three a.m. Feeling guilty, Dave cast his eyes down at his shoes.
“Well, don’t look so freakin’ glum,” Julia said, rolling her eyes when he looked up. “Come on, let’s go have coffee at the diner.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Julia said. “If you buy me a slice of pie, all is forgiven. We still have to exchange stories from the night.”
Dave thought of Gretchen, the strange appeal of those crooked teeth. It felt weird to bring her up, though; he’d never talked to Julia about girls. She’d talked to him about the few guys she’d fleetingly dated, and had on occasion tried to pry out from him some admittance of a crush on anyone. But for obvious reasons he’d always said there was no one he was interested in. Bringing it up now felt somehow wrong. Plus “a girl and I talked for a while” was not much of a story, so the next thing that came to mind was the flip-cup tournament. He chuckled to himself, though a distinct feeling of shame goose-bumped up his arms. “Embarrassing is good, right? We were here to fit in in an almost gross way?”
“Oh God, what’d you do?”
“Let’s say I really embraced the spirit of the Kapoor party.”
“Eww, Dave, did you buy a polo shirt? I’m going to have to cut you out of my life, aren’t I?”
Dave put his hands in his pockets, turning the corner toward the street where the diner stood, lit up against all the darkened storefronts. “I don’t think I’m ready for that,” Dave said, adding a chuckle.
HOMEROOM
& HAPPY HOUR
THERE WAS NO greater proof of an underlying human connection than the universal hatred of Monday mornings. Everyone wore it on their faces: students with hair sticking out in every direction, as if trying to get away. Teachers sat at their desks scowling at their lesson plans. The principal looked as if he was suffering a nervous breakdown. The halls were practically an obstacle course with people lying down with their legs sprawled out, backpacks tossed in front of their lockers as pillows.
Dave had slept in most of the day Saturday and then stayed up on Sunday night supposedly trying to do homework, but really just rebelling against the thought that they were still assigning homework to seniors in March. He’d gotten into college—couldn’t they just accept that he’d succeeded at this whole high school thing and leave him alone?
He’d slept less than four hours, and when Ms. Romero took attendance in homeroom, saying “here” physically hurt. Julia arrived a couple of minutes late, her earphones still in, a yellow tardy sheet from the office in hand. She hadn’t bothered to change out of her pajama pants, and her hastily combed hair made Dave think of what it would be like to wake up next to her
. She gave the tardy slip to Ms. Romero wordlessly and then plopped down next to Dave, pulling one of the earphones out and handing it over, as per tradition.
Julia hated talking in the mornings, and so Dave knew to listen to the music until she was ready. Neko Case crooned beautifully for a while as Ms. Romero struggled to put the morning’s announcements up on the projector. This was how to combat the awfulness of Monday mornings. The PA went off, but no one cared to listen. A succession of yawns made its way across the room, knocking a couple of heads down to rest on their desks.
“I’ll be right back,” Ms. Romero said, at which point the silence in the room started coming apart. Bouts of isolated whispering grew into all-out conversations that filled the room.
Neko Case’s voice stopped abruptly, and Dave heard Julia’s sandals fall to the floor. He kept the muted earphone in, always happy to be tied together to her.
“How was Carmel?” Dave asked. She’d left early Saturday morning with her dads to go visit her grandparents, returning on Sunday when Dave was knee-deep in unjust homework assignments.
“Pretty. It’s always pretty.” She put her arms on her desk and lowered her head down, looking up at Dave with tired eyes. “I was thinking more about the party.”
Dave raised an eyebrow at her. At the diner after the party, Julia had told him about her misadventures while they were split: a couple of guys’ awful attempts to make out with her, their worse attempts at interesting conversation. She’d ended up playing video games in the basement with a group of juniors—stoner clichés that she hadn’t expected to run into at the party, but clichés nonetheless. They’d joked about Dave’s embarrassing flip-cup skills. Throughout the weekend, Dave’s thoughts had returned to Gretchen, how he’d kind of fallen in love with the mood of the party. He’d assumed Julia had talked it all out of her system, though.
“Really? What were you thinking? How much fun you had?”
He smirked, but Julia surprised him by answering, “God, yes. It was so awful, I couldn’t help but enjoy myself.”
She pulled out her earphone and then plucked Dave’s out, wrapping the cord around her phone. “There were so many clichés, I don’t think we even touched on all of them at the diner. Did you see the girl puking in the bushes? I thought it was you for a second and I was really proud of you, but then I realized that she was five feet tall and had red curly hair and way bigger boobs than you do.”
“You mean April Holmes? She was in a miniskirt.”
“You could have been in a miniskirt. I think you have the legs for it.” She sat up and put her phone away in her bag, which was this hand-stitched, colorful knapsack thing that her mom had sent her as a gift from Ecuador. “Anyway! I think we should do more.” She’d talked herself fully awake now. In the background, Ms. Romero had finally succeeded in getting the projector to work and was asking if anyone had any questions about the bulletin. She said it in a way that made it sound like she had no interest in answering any of those questions.
“More parties?”
“No. Well, yes. But I was thinking of more Nevers. Do you have the list?”
Dave rummaged through his backpack until he found the folded sheet of paper, a little bent at the corners from whatever it is that happens inside backpacks that ensures all papers get ruined. He pulled out a chocolate muffin as well and peeled off the Saran Wrap while Julia looked at the Nevers. His mom had loved those chocolate muffins, and now his dad kept them stocked in the house, making trips to Costco specifically to get them. Dave made eye contact with Nicky Marquez across the room, whom he had talked to at some point at the party. He hadn’t known a thing about Nicky before, but now he knew that his parents were migrant workers, and that he hadn’t learned English until he was nine.
Julia drew a red line across Never number three. “We can have so much fun with these.” She brought the paper closer to Dave, so he could read with her. It always drove him crazy how easily she minimized the distance between them, as if it didn’t mean anything. And then, almost out of nowhere, he thought about sitting next to Gretchen, how he was looking forward to seeing her in chemistry third period.
“We’re definitely dying our hair crazy colors.”
“We are?”
“This week,” she said, folding both hands on the desk and resting her chin on top of them, continuing to read the list, the matter not up for discussion. “Actually, we’re doing all of them.” She sat back up quickly, smiling. “It’s the perfect way to end the year,” she said. “It’s been so boring; this’ll be the perfect end-of-high-school celebration. Embrace the clichés so tightly they’ll suffocate. I think my mom would approve.”
Dave eyed the clock. Homeroom was almost over. His tired brain tried to process doing all the Nevers, and the first thing he could think of was the chance at running into Gretchen more often. He grabbed a chunk of his muffin and chewed on it.
Julia was eyeing the list, chewing on her lip. He did one of those mouth-shrug-raised-eyebrow things that meant, “Sure, why not?” Which he immediately regretted when Julia spoke again.
“Mom’ll probably want to be here to see her daughter go to the prom with the prom king. Side note: You’re definitely running for prom king.”
Muffin crumbs fell out of his mouth. “Is that so?”
“Yeah. That hasn’t happened yet, right?” She tapped the girl next to her on the arm. “When do we vote for prom king stuff?”
Margot—petite, nerdy, shy—had never looked so confused in her life. “Uhh, prom, I think?”
Julia turned back to Dave. “We’ll have to research with Brett. I’m already seeing big things for your campaign. Fund-raising galas.” Her leg started racing up and down under the table. She was radiant when she got excited about something. Her mouth scrunched over to one side of her face but somehow remained a smile. It was indescribably cute.
He watched her eyes go wide, a smile that was about ninety-five percent mischief spreading her thin lips. “Marroney. Number seven.” Her finger pointed at the line. Never hook up with a teacher.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Julia, the man collects food in his mustache. He wears pocket protectors, which I’m pretty certain have been out of production since the eighties, right around the time his kind-of-sometimes mullet-hairdo thing went out of style. He makes jokes about irrational numbers. He’s a total cliché of a math teacher. I’m almost certain that he’s not a real person; he’s Frankenstein’s monster but made up of math-teacher clichés. I heard a rumor that he’s got all the known numbers of pi tattooed on his ass.”
“That’s a stupid rumor. And I can’t wait until I undress him and dispel it once and for all.”
Dave was mostly sure the comment was a joke, but he still felt a pang of jealousy. The bell rang, and everyone gathered their belongings, rushing toward the door as if already free for the day. Jenny Owens said, “Shit,” and tried to scribble in a few last-second answers.
Julia stood up, folding the Nevers list neatly and grabbing her belongings. She stepped into her sandals and gave Ms. Romero a little wave as they walked out into the hallway. Dave followed behind, still trying to figure out if Julia was joking.
o o o
“I’ve never been a stalker before,” Dave said. They waited for the Chili’s hostess to find them a table near where Marroney and a handful of other teachers had gathered to enjoy a Friday afternoon happy hour.
“This isn’t stalking. This is organizing a coincidental run-in.”
“That’s a stalkerish way to put it.”
After obsessing for the rest of the week over how to best seduce Marroney (Dave shuddered every time she said it), Julia declared Friday to be a Never day. After school, they’d go to Julia’s house and dye their hair in a bright display of their individuality—individuality purchased
from a box at the CVS. But before they could do that, Julia and Marroney had to have their meet-cute. “Prepare for a lot of flirtatious giggling and some charming repartee,” Julia had said when they were outside the school, waiting for Marroney to leave so they could follow him. “And that’ll just be coming from him.”
Now Dave watched Marroney struggle to find the straw in his margarita, his tongue flicking out blindly. He wondered if Julia would call her own bluff anytime soon. Marroney was wearing a mustard-colored short-sleeved button-up shirt with a coffee stain on his collar. His tie had little calculators on it. Five other teachers were at the table, including Ms. Romero and Dave’s AP Chem teacher, Mr. Kahn. Each of them had a giant fluorescent-colored frozen margarita in front of them.
Dave and Julia sat in a booth perpendicular to the teachers so they could both see as the teachers delved into a bottomless basket of chips and salsa. On his first attempt, a fat blob of red salsa fell from Marroney’s chips and landed squarely on his tie.
“You know, I didn’t get it at first,” Dave said, turning to look at Julia, who was smiling in Marroney’s direction, “but you’re right. This has the makings of a great seduction.”
“Your tone says you’re trying to be sarcastic, but I’m failing to understand the joke.”
“Julia, he’s hideous.”
“That’s an ugly thing to say.” Julia picked up her menu and propped it up so she could stare without being caught. “Okay, so here’s the plan.” She leaned across the table conspiratorially, refusing to speak until Dave leaned down, too. It was their classic pose for plotting mischief; they’d done it when figuring out which movie to go to, or when planning the surprise party for Julia’s dads. They’d huddled together like this when they wrote the Nevers on their bench in Morro Bay. Dave loved seeing the details on her fingers when she put them flat on the table in front of her, the way her orangey smell seemed stronger in just those instances. They always adopted a tone more serious than was called for, whispering to each other, craning their necks around, pretending to study the room skittishly, as if someone was after them. The rest of the world felt exterior to them, like their friendship was some idyllic cove only they had access to.
