Jesse laid his hand on my arm, and instantly the nerves in my stomach vanished. “It was great. So was English 12. Toile’s in my class.”
I snorted. “That space cadet from homeroom?” I was suddenly grateful I was on the AP track.
“Yeah,” Jesse said. “She’s pretty cool. She lived in Hawaii before she came here. Honolulu, I think. She’s really into singing and she knows how to surf.”
“Wow,” Spencer said, “did you read her autobiography?”
Jesse laughed. “No, we just talked a lot.”
He meant that she had talked a lot. I pictured Jesse smiling and nodding and hardly following along with her mindless chatter.
“Oh,” he continued, as if he’d just remembered another factoid, “and she collects hats. It’s kind of her signature thing.”
“Signature crazy is more like it,” I said.
Jesse shrugged.
“Guess what?” Gabe dropped his lunch tray on the table. “Mr. Poston wants me to be the editor of the Herald.”
“That’s amazing!” I squealed. “You’ll make a kick-ass editor.”
“Thanks. He told me there’s another applicant and he’s thinking about making us coeditors, which blows, but it’s someone who hasn’t been in journalism before and he wants my experienced eye on the editorial side. So basically I’ll still be in charge.”
I laughed. “Can’t share the spotlight, can you?”
“Shouldn’t have to.” Gabe flipped imaginary hair out from his face. “But it gets better. Poston wants me to submit an article to the Orange County Register for their high school internship program. He’s going to personally recommend me! That could totally be my ticket to—”
The giant black-and-white brim of a sun hat appeared out of nowhere. “Hi, Jesse!”
“Hey!” Jesse shot to his feet.
Toile placed a dainty hand on his arm, and I felt my body tense up. “Thank you so much for showing me around this morning. I really appreciate it.”
“No problem,” he said.
Was that a blush creeping up Jesse’s neck?
“It’s so amazing here,” Toile continued. “How can you guys stand to go to school in such a beautiful place? There’s this secret patch of wildflowers on the hillside next to the track. Have you seen it? It’s like a little oasis! And we’re doing a whole two weeks on Tennyson in English 12. I just adore Tennyson.”
“So I’ve heard,” I muttered.
“And did you know,” she barreled on, “that Fullerton Hills has one of the best show choirs in Orange County? I don’t even mind that it’s first period. Kinda warms me up for the day. I don’t have much of a voice, but I love to sing, and we do all these cool dance moves. Sometimes, I just need to get up and move, you know?”
Yeah, it’s called walking.
She stretched her arms out to either side of her body and started waving them back and forth like an octopus, then she broke into some outlandish choreography, culminating in an off-balance pirouette. She stumbled, bracing herself against Jesse’s chest. Everyone was staring at her, including Michael Torres, who I noticed lingering near the entrance to the north room, but instead of being self-conscious or embarrassed by the attention, Toile threw her head back and laughed. Not a cute, twittering kind of laugh, but a hearty guffaw that seemed more appropriate coming from your great-uncle after he made an off-color joke.
Our daily lunchtime goal was to attract as little attention as was humanly possible, but Toile had 40 percent of the cafeteria focused on us. To make matters worse, Cassilyn Cairns was making a beeline for our table.
Blond and blue-eyed, Cassilyn could have been the poster child for Orange County. Her skin was perfectly tanned at all times, her makeup perfectly applied. Her hair was perfectly curled in loose ringlets that framed her face, and her outfits were perfectly stylish without being gaudy, flirtatious without being lewd. I was pretty sure she’d never voluntarily said a word to either me or my friends in our three years at school together, but Toile had attracted her attention, and she was coming over. This wasn’t going to end well.
“Sit down,” I hissed. Maybe Cassilyn would get distracted and go back to her own table.
“You’re sweet,” Toile said with a delicate smile, misinterpreting my comment for an invitation. “But I promised some new friends I’d eat with them.”
“Toile!” Cassilyn grabbed Toile’s hands and kissed her on both cheeks as if she were greeting an old friend. “Our table’s over here.” She tugged her toward the main room.
“You know each other?” I blurted out. Cassilyn wouldn’t have invited a complete stranger to eat at her table. Maybe they went way back? Childhood friends?
Toile laughed again, loud and carefree. “We have algebra together. Totally bonded over our mutual dislike of numbers.”
“Dislike of numbers,” I repeated slowly. Who the hell were these people?
Cassilyn scanned our table; her eyes lingered on Spencer.
“Have you guys met?” Toile asked.
I wanted to scream. Fifty percent of me was irritated by her disparagement of algebra, and 50 percent of me was insulted that the new girl was trying to introduce us to the most popular person in school. “Yes,” I said through clenched teeth.
Which wasn’t a lie. I’d introduced myself to Cassilyn freshman year, back before I learned that talking to my fellow students was a bad idea. But clearly, Cassilyn had no memory of this meeting. She cocked her head to the side and stared at me with vacant blue eyes.
“Math Girl,” she said at last.
Fibonacci’s balls.
“I’m Jesse,” my boyfriend volunteered.
“Hey,” Cassilyn said, smiling weakly. “Nice meeting you guys.” Then she quickly dragged Toile away.
Jesse’s eyes trailed after them as he sank back into the booth.
“That went well.” Spencer smirked at me. “She even knew your name.”
“No,” Jesse said, still glancing over his shoulder. “She didn’t.”
“Which one of you is Gabriel Muñoz?”
I’d been so pissed off about Toile and Cassilyn, I hadn’t seen Milo Morris, Thad Everett, or a half dozen other members of the Fullerton Hills football team approach our secluded table until it was too late. They surrounded us, cutting off our escape, and judging by their combative stances, they were out for blood. Gabe’s blood.
“Who?” I said, trying to display a mix of nonthreatening confidence and upbeat naïveté. Despite multiple confrontations over our high school career, Thad and Milo didn’t actually know Gabe’s name. Maybe I could stall them until a teacher walked by?
Milo nodded behind him. “Some geek over there said that Gabriel Muñoz was sitting at this table. That bitch got Coach fired.”
I saw Michael Torres waving at me from the main room of the cafeteria. He’d led Milo and Thad right to Gabe. I knew he hated me, but what did he have against my friends?
No time to puzzle it out. I had to soothe the angry beast.
“May I inquire as to the nature of your question?” I began.
Thad pointed his forefinger at me. “Is it you?”
“You think Gabriel’s a girl?” Gabe snorted. “Dumber than I thought,” he said to Spencer out of the side of his mouth. Only too loud. Loud enough for everyone to hear.
Shit.
Milo’s dark skin flushed red as he grabbed the collar of Gabe’s flannel shirt. “What did you say?”
“Leave him alone!” I cried.
Thad glared at me. “Shut the fuck up, Math Girl.”
“She has a name, you know.” Spencer stared hard at Thad, refusing to look away. I saw the lines of his jaw ripple as he clenched.
“Yeah?” Milo said, loosening his grip on Gabe’s shirt. “And do you have a name? Wouldn’t happen to be Pussy, would it?”
Here we go again. Same church, different pew. We were starting senior year as victims, the one role we were trying to avoid. But I’d promised my friends that things could be differ
ent this year. Just like in the hallway this morning, I had to do something.
“Look, gentlemen,” I said, kneeling on the bench to make myself look taller. “I understand that feelings were hurt by Gabe’s article last year, but those are the risks we take to live in a society where we enjoy freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Gabe is entitled to his opinion—”
“Based on facts,” Gabe added.
“Bea,” Jesse whispered. “Don’t.”
Seriously? He’d gushed when I’d stood up for Spencer this morning but now he wanted me to back down? “And you are entitled to yours.”
Gabe spread his hands wide. “Based on bullshit.”
There was a split second where Gabe’s quip seemed to hang suspended in space and time, an elongated moment where I almost thought he might not have said it and I’d just imagined that my friend had waved a red flag in front of an angry bull. Then the world shifted back to regular speed, and as Thad, Milo, and their goons lunged at Gabe, I was sure the next red thing I saw would be blood.
Instead, I heard a high-pitched voice piercing the angry shouts.
“Here he is, Mr. Poston,” someone said. Then I saw Kurt Heinzmueller’s round baby face pushing through the crowd with the journalism teacher in tow. “Gabe’s right over here.”
The instant a faculty member arrived, it was as if a bomb had been defused. Football players scattered, the pitch of tension lessened, and all around us, the student body turned back to their lunches as if no one wanted to get caught rubbernecking.
“Thanks, Kurt,” Gabe said with a huge sigh the second Milo and Thad backed away.
Kurt’s face relaxed. “No problem.”
“Is everything okay here?” Mr. Poston asked.
Gabe nodded. “Don’t worry. I can handle them.”
But not to be completely emasculated in front of the student body, just before Milo disappeared into the hallway, he turned and shouted one final threat across the cafeteria. “Watch your backs, losers. I’m coming for you.”
FIVE
“SO DO YOU think Milo meant it?” Jesse asked as he drove us to Spencer’s after school.
I cringed at the name. All my hopes that somehow my friends and I would fly under the radar this year and emerge at graduation physically and emotionally unscathed from the bullying of the jocktocracy had gone up in flames the moment Thad and Milo appeared at our lunch table. They were never going to leave us alone, and if Milo was true to his word, senior year would be our worst yet.
“I’m sure he’ll forget about us in a day or two,” I lied. Jesse didn’t respond right away and I felt the need to fill the uncomfortable silence. “By Monday, I bet. Totally back to normal.” Normal isn’t actually a good thing, Bea. “I mean, not normal like we’ll get picked on in the halls all the time kind of normal. More like we’ll go back to being invisible. Which sounds really awful, but actually isn’t so bad at all.”
I was talking fast, the words tumbling one upon another. Was I afraid Jesse wouldn’t like me anymore if he thought I was going to be even less popular this year than I had been before? And if so, what did that say about our relationship?
“Normal,” he mused. Then he cleared his throat. “I was thinking, maybe at lunch you and me could find our own table. You know, in the main cafeteria maybe?”
My eyes grew wide. “With all the popular kids?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, why not?”
I could think of twenty-seven reasons right off the top of my head, including but not limited to the almost 100 percent chance of daily humiliation at the hands of Milo and Thad.
But instead of admitting that, I made a more practical argument against Jesse’s plan. “There wouldn’t be room for all four of us,” I said. “And I can’t abandon my friends.”
“Oh.” He paused. “And why are we hanging out with them after school?”
“Because I always do,” I blurted out. That was the norm. Homework for me, while Spencer painted and Gabe worked on his newest article.
Jesse eased the car to a stop at the next light and turned to me for the first time since we left school. “I was thinking maybe we could go to D’Caffeinated,” he said, naming the coffee shop where Cassilyn and her friends sometimes hung out.
I’d never set foot in D’Caffeinated: not on the way to school, when businessmen and -women were lined up out the door for their daily fix, not on the weekends, when it was mostly college students working on research papers or screenplays that were going to take Hollywood by storm, and certainly not after school, when Fullerton Hills wannabes camped out around the lacquered wood tables hoping to be seen in the same vicinity as the most popular girls in school. “I guess we could go sometime.”
“Today?” he asked eagerly.
Why was he suddenly so interested in artisanal coffee beverages? “Spencer and Gabe are waiting for us.”
“Oh.” Jesse sat up, eyes back on the road. “Right.”
Gabe was slumped in the corner of the sofa, head resting against the torn fabric of the arm with his knees drawn up to his chest when Jesse and I arrived at Spencer’s studio.
He heaved a sigh. “I’m sorry I ever wrote that stupid article.”
“No, you’re not,” I said quickly.
“You shouldn’t be seen with me in public,” he continued, wallowing in the drama. “You should cut ties with me to save yourselves.”
Spencer leaned back against the sink, preparing for one of Gabe’s monologues. “Here we go again.”
“I mean it,” Gabe continued. “I’m an albatross around your necks. Without me, you have a chance. I’ll just start eating lunch in the journalism classroom. Or . . .” He placed his hand on his chest. “Under the football bleachers like a true outcast.”
I sat down beside him. “You’re being ridiculous.”
“Am I?” He cocked his head to the side. “And what, exactly, do you suggest we do?”
“Move to Siberia,” Spencer said, “and pray they don’t find us.”
I smirked. “Funny.”
Jesse checked his phone. “You could transfer,” he suggested, typing as he talked. “Or maybe try homeschooling?”
He was attempting to be helpful, but those were cowardly options, bordering on insensitive. “We can’t run away from this,” I said. “There’s got to be a solution we’re missing.”
“Like what?” Gabe uncurled his legs and planted his feet on the ground. “Talk to them? My mom suggested that freshman year. ‘Just have a conversation with them, mijito. They’ll understand.’” He snorted. “I came home with a wedgie so deep I had to send in spelunkers to get it out.”
“Go to the principal?” Jesse said.
“We’ve already tried to get Ramos involved,” I explained. “We’re not important enough for her to discipline her championship football team.”
“See?” Spencer said. “Siberia doesn’t sound so bad.”
Jesse shoved his phone into his pocket. “I have to go,” he said.
I turned to him, confused. “What? Why?”
“I forgot I have an appointment,” he said. “Do you want me to take you to your mom’s?”
“She’s at her dad’s tonight,” Spencer said before I could answer. Three and a half days split evenly between the two households, and Spencer always remembered when I was where. “I’ll take her home.”
“I’ll call you later, okay?” Jesse took my chin in his hand, angling it up toward him. “Meanwhile, you can use that math brain of yours to figure out this problem. Bye!”
I stood rigid beside the sofa, Jesse’s words echoing in my ears. Figure out this problem.
“You okay, Bea?” Gabe asked.
I nodded. Problems had solutions. Solutions were equations. And who was better at solving equations than I was? No one. Without thinking, I moved toward my wheelie bag and pulled out a notebook and pen, then sat down on the sofa next to Gabe.
“What is it?” Spencer squeezed in beside me.
Something was percolating
inside me, that familiar flutter of excitement I got whenever I was on the brink of a mathematical breakthrough. There was always a moment when I shifted my perspective, and in an instant, all the elements would come together with a beautiful simplicity that made me feel like a moron for not having seen it before.
This was one of those moments.
Our current sociological predicament could be boiled down to a simple linear equation. We knew the result, i.e., a tolerable school environment where we weren’t living in fear of an ass kicking every five minutes. I just had to work backward from there.
“We’ve been looking at this all wrong,” I said, noting the tremor in my own voice.
“How?” Spencer asked. “Milo and Thad are misunderstood? They just need a hug and everything will be fine?”
“No one has to hug anyone,” I said. My pen began to fly over the page, an automatic flow of symbols and letters. “Unless you’re both hugging me in gratitude.”
Spencer leaned over my shoulder and glanced at my preliminary scribbles. “For what?”
I held my notebook out in front of me. “The Formula for Happiness in High School.”
The Formula™:
If F is a continuous real-valued function defined on a closed interval [f, s] between freshman and senior years of high school, R is the social role played based on v, the relative void in which R does or does not exist, then the exponential product Rv is equal to the empty set, i.e., “eternal happiness.”1
Or, in layman’s terms:
(1) Find the niche.
(2) Play the role.
(3) Fill the void.
1. Taken from Smullyan’s ham sandwich argument to present eternal happiness as an empty set.
SIX
SPENCER AND GABE stared up at me from the sofa with looks of abject confusion on their faces while I math-splained my new baby in what I hoped were easily understandable terms.
Gabe’s eyes slowly crossed. “I literally have no idea what you just said. Was that even English?”
I'm Not Your Manic Pixie Dream Girl Page 3
