by Jo Noelle
Liar! It’s pathetic, I know. If I could feel another way, I would. And I do love my little sister, at home, when her friends aren’t around, but I don’t want to share my school with her. I tried talking her into going to a charter school across town. But why would she, when she’ll own this place in a couple of years? We haven’t been in the same school since I was in sixth grade and she was in fourth. Now I’ll get to watch her bubble and shine for my last two years of high school. I already feel a neon sign pulsing above my head reading, “You don’t know me, but I’m Lexi, Tifani’s sister?” Ugh.
How does she know that’s the spot where cool is made? It must be the same way butterflies find Santa Cruz, or turtles find the Transatlantic Current. If you’re meant to know, then it’s part of your DNA to gravitate toward it.
And the radar in Tifani’s DNA is incredible. I would have wondered if we had the same contributing parents if we didn’t look so much alike. We both have shoulder-length brown hair, fair complexions, just a few freckles, and brown eyes. Even still, she wears my face better than I do.
But wait, there’s more. At five, I wanted to be a dancer. She was a natural. At seven, I wanted to learn to ride a two-wheeler. After I crashed, she jumped on my bike and zoomed off. At ten, I wanted a pet. My parents bought me a dog, but every night it whined at my bedroom door so it could go to sleep on Tifani’s bed. At thirteen, I wanted to take piano lessons—right—she has a concert every six months. When I started high school, I wanted to stand out and be noticed, and she became a cheerleader at her junior high. Okay, so my theory falls apart a bit there, but the principle is the same: My wishes equal her life.
And those are just the big events. Lately, even my small wishes happen to her before I ever get a chance to have them. I would never admit I feel jealous—no, too strong. Resentful? Maybe. Really, both. That’s why I’m standing here torturing myself, making a list of her accomplishments again.
I can’t help it—I’m a lister. Each August, I make a list in my diary of the things I want to do during the school year, my own little New Year’s resolutions. My current list includes having a real date to a dance, with flowers and longingly looking in each other’s eyes. The second bullet point is that I want to be noticed. I don’t know if I should have written that one down at all. I was feeling bold that day, while I usually feel like standing back or disappearing.
The one thing I have is my writing, my only gift, my hobby and my escape. Writers spend large chunks of time alone, typing, considering how another life might be if they were the ones living it. Ooh, that sounds more like the result of a compulsion spell than a talent—especially when I compare my life to Tifani’s.
She has it all—a cheer uniform, control of the microphone at the assemblies, and loads of friends. She’s one of the social directors of Red Rock High School.
Maybe I imagine the coincidences because I’m good at observation. A small voice in my brain wonders if it’s the same as being a spectator. Do I even know the difference? Tillie and Asha, my best friends, sit at our table before I notice their approach. So much for my observational superpowers.
I shove my notebook into my backpack, hoping neither of them see it.
“Too late. What are you writing?” Asha leans over the table to take a look.
“Nothing,” I lie, as always. She smiles encouragingly as my stomach cringes from lying or from fright at being caught. Not that I’m bad at writing. Well, I don’t really know. My teachers are complimentary, but they’re teachers—they’re paid to encourage kids.
Asha opens her lunch, which is always an event. Last year she was on a hummus binge for almost a month. She blended her own garbanzo beans then mixed in something different each day. The day she tried it with sardines, the stench cleared all the tables near us for the whole lunch period. I lean over to get a look at today’s surprise. Thinly sliced carrots, celery, cucumber, and…
“What is that?” Tillie gasps, covering her nose with her hand.
“Sashimi.” Asha’s lunch looks like it popped out of a pescatarian Pinterest board: vivid colors, artfully arranged, and uniform in size and shape.
“Looks like raw fish,” Riker comments, dropping in next to Asha, sliding his trumpet case under the table.
“Dude, it is.” Gabe rounds out our group, sitting down next to me. Tillie shoots Gabe a slight smile and raises one eyebrow.
What’s that about? Gabe’s been sitting next to me since eighth grade. In fact, we’ve all been sitting in the same order since eighth grade. We don’t change much. Tillie doesn’t even try to be sneaky any more. Gabe’s ears used to turn red whenever she teased him. Now he just ignores it and looks away until the subject changes.
“Ooh, I know, let’s play a game.” Tillie nearly bounces in her chair. Gabe looks suspicious, but we’re all quiet since there’s no stopping Tillie. If we choose not to play her games, she plays anyway and makes up our answers. It’s never good. We all look at each other and Tillie launches into the game.
“Riker, what if you could go see any band, who would it be?”
“Dead or alive?”
“Who’s that?” I ask and immediately regret it as Riker laughs. I laugh with him like I was teasing, which makes everyone at the table laugh even more since we all know I’m clueless about music.
“No, I mean can the band be dead or would they have to be alive now?” he asks.
Everyone looks at Tillie to answer since she’s the game master for this. She plays up having all of our attention, looking up and tapping her chin as she thinks. “Dead or alive—doesn’t matter.”
“Jimi Hendrix.” Riker acts like that’s enough and stuffs a corndog in his mouth. The name sounds familiar to me, but I’ll have to Google it later.
This might be the easiest game Tillie has thought up so far. But she’s not done yet, and you never want to be the last person in her games—that’s when she changes the rules. Tillie turns to Asha. Oh no, that means either Gabe or I am the target today. “If you could choose your next family vacation, where would you go?”
“Easy. I’ve been trying to get my family to go to Tanzania for years to help build wells. Clean water should be a basic human right. We take it for granted that it’s something everyone has. There are people who have to bathe in the same water they drink from and wash their clothes in.”
Tillie looks disgusted. I’m probably wearing the same look when she continues, “Asha, vacation. Where would you go on a va-ca-tion?”
“That’s the answer. We should do that for our senior trip. We could all go together.”
“Yes, well no, Asha.” Tillie pats the back of her shoulder. “Oh! So cute, you think I would have a vacation outside of a hotel. Love you, really, but a luxury hotel is not optional.” She spins to face me. Poor Gabe, he’s going to be last. “Lexi, if you could choose any car you wanted, what would you choose?”
I’d love to blurt out a Mini-Cooper convertible. It never rains here, or next to never, so I could drive around with the top down. And the gumball blue color is amazing. “Maybe…” Do five people even fit in the car though? I would have to leave out one of my friends. “A Honda Accord.”
Tillie’s eyebrows scrunch a bit. “Okay, that one surprises me. You never look twice at those. I thought for sure it’d be a Cooper.”
I’m a little offended that she asked me a question that she knew the answer to.
“It’s a sensible choice. Maybe you could get the hybrid model.” Trust Asha to see the possibilities of saving the planet in my car of choice.
I try to save a bit of my true dream car. “In blue, with a moon roof.” Yeah, even that wouldn’t make it less lame.
Tillie launches the next question at Gabe. “What if there’s this guy, who’s a junior, and he secretly loves a girl who thinks they are just friends, but he’s in love and won’t say anything. He’s good looking, blond and tall. She’s pretty too—which he knows because he’s always stealing glances her way and smiles at everything she says. In
fact, he pretends he’s not in love, but his friends see how he looks at her when she’s not looking, and it is soooo obvious. Should he say something?” Tillie smiles sweetly, props her elbow onto the table and rests her chin in her palm, staring across the table. “Like soon?” She begins nodding a yes, as if she’s giving him the right answer. Her eyes are fixed on Gabe, but he never looks up from where he seems to be studying his knees. Tillie prompts again. “Like now? Now would be good.”
Gabe ignores her question, at least officially, but the tips of his ears begin turning pink. Yeah, Tillie has a talent for the most random thoughts. Gabe finally begins speaking, but instead of answering the question he says, “Hey. It’s on for wakeboarding next Saturday. You’re all coming, right?”
Tillie and Asha slump a little and exchange glances. I chuckle a bit at the way he got out of the game without having to answer. Riker throws props toward Gabe. “Yeah, I’ll be there,” he says as their knuckles tap.
“I’m in,” Asha adds.
“Me too. How ‘bout you, Lexi?” Tillie asks, her eyebrows quirked up again.
Checking the clock, I rise from my chair and gather my lunch trash. “Yup. I wouldn’t miss your birthday, Gabe.”
Tanner’s eyes are the sky, water-colored in values of blue—the outer rim as dark as midnight; the narrow band lying just inside blue-gray like a summer storm. The largest band in the center is a warm winter sky striped with cirrus clouds. If you look into them close enough, long enough, you can almost see flecks of ice melting between the thick, black fringes of lash.
It isn’t that I’ve been close enough to look intimately into his eyes. I haven’t. Lately. I know because I sat opposite him at a table in kindergarten and throughout elementary school. He’s been in at least half my classes in junior high and high school. So I’ve continued a stealthy study of those eyes, one glance at a time. Hundreds of glances a year
“Lexi, bring your writer’s notebook.” Ms. Danou’s voice jerks my attention from my writing. I throw a period behind the last word and pick up the notebook. Ms. Danou sits at her desk in the corner of the classroom, pointing to the chair beside her. She is mid-fortyish with long, salt-and-pepper hair. She is one of my few teachers who really know what they’re teaching. She’s an author. Not in the sense that “we are all authors here,” but she writes novels someone published, someone paid for, and someone read.
My chemistry teacher isn’t a researcher. My math teacher doesn’t earn a paycheck as an engineer. And my business teacher drives the rustiest car in the teacher’s parking lot—pretty sure he doesn’t get Wall Street.
It feels as if the whole class is watching me move to the front of the room. And this is why I hate sitting in the back. If I ever have to go to the front of the room, I can’t help wondering if my hair is wonky or my shirt has ridden up and the kids whispering behind me have noticed. I watch my feet take each step as I weave through the cluttered aisles, across the gray and white linoleum tiles littered with backpacks, jackets and notebooks.
I tug at my shirt and slip into the chair beside Ms. Danou, perching on the edge, curiosity and fear warring in my mind. She knows writing techniques and secrets I crave. Right now, I’m just toying with the idea of being an author. There’s less potential disappointment if it’s just a casual interest—for the last six years. Fine, not casual. It freaks me out to think my heart and soul could be smeared on paper for others to read—way, way in the future—and be judged by my metaphors or punctuation.
Each time I sit in this chair, I worry I don’t measure up, that someday Ms. Danou will shake her head and suggest I become an entomologist instead of a writer. I guess I would have to make the best of it, live deep in a rain forest, discover new bug species, write an encyclopedia for cataloging insects…
I hate bugs.
“What are you working on today?” she asks.
Opening my notebook between us, I say, “A characterization. It’s just brainstorming right now.” I’m fidgeting in my chair like I need to go to the little girls’ room—just nerves. Pressing my sweaty palms to my jeans, I force my legs to stop moving. “I don’t have a story for this character yet, and it isn’t finished.”
“Read me what you have so far.” Mrs. Danou leans forward and tilts her ear toward me. She says you can tell a lot about a story when you listen to it from the author’s voice.
I begin reading. “Tanner’s eyes are the sky.” Would anyone recognize this description as being Brendon Michaels? Duh—of course they would. I immediately drop my voice to a whisper to continue, “If you look into them close enough, long enough, you can almost see flecks of ice melting.” Ms. Danou looks up at me and I feel my cheeks blush warmly, but I continue reading.
As I finish, Mrs. Danou leans away, theatrically fanning herself. “Please tell me this is the antagonist. Good looks on a bad boy is money.”
No. How could she think that? He’s angelic. “I was thinking the hero, actually.”
“Well, you’re not done yet. You have time to rough up his edges a bit so he’s not quite perfect. We women love a few imperfections.”
“Like, he has no butt?” I say with a smirk.
She smiles but shakes her head slightly. “No need to be hasty. Something will present itself as you begin developing his personality. Just stay open to a flaw or two.” Ms. Danou taps her pen on Tanner’s name. “Writing is observation. Maybe it would help to choose someone to borrow characteristics from as you continue.”
“Observation.” I smile and nod. Don’t you worry—I’ve got that one covered. I head back to my desk, considering what deficit I could possibly write into the story, thinking this is where the “fiction” part must come in. Well, and the fact that Brendon’s character will be falling in love with a character like me. Maybe I could cast myself as a young starlet or a model, someone out of his league.
After lunch on Friday I walk to chemistry, but Friday is lab day, so instead of turning right into our classroom, I make a left and stand along the wall in the science lab, passing Brendon Michaels on my way. Our teacher begins calling pairs and assigning tables.
“Michaels, Middleton, table five.”
Yes! Alphabetical order—genius. Because of the alphabet fetish teachers seem to have, if Brendon is in my class, there’s a good chance I’ll sit in front of, beside, or behind him.
“Didn’t we have science together last year, and the year before?” Brendon asks, falling in behind me.
Right behind me. I feel a slight flush on my neck and cheeks, which I hope isn’t turning red. We cross the room toward our assigned lab seats. “Yes, I think you must be following me.” Ugh, I sound formal. Relax. I drop into my seat and place my books on the table in front of me as Brendon sits down.
“There are worse things to do.” The dimple in his left cheek deepens as he smiles, then he winks at me.
Excitement lurches through my heart until I reminded myself, of course he winked—he’s good at being a high school celebrity. I’m not going to get my hopes up. I’ve got nothing to say, especially while my voice box is melting down my throat and my mind slams into neutral. It’s who he is, and it works for him. Often. I blush anyway and reach out to square up the corners of my books while we wait for our teacher to finish lab partner assignments.
Science labs are the reward for taking extra science credits. And given this class is advanced chemistry, there’s an added element of curiosity and danger. I’m not excited yet. In a few days we’ll break out the equipment and the fun will start, but this is the first day our class has come into the lab, and our teacher, Mr. Williams, doesn’t disappoint—or does, depending on how you look at it. He takes the full seventy minutes droning out thou-shalt-nots for using the equipment and materials in the lab.
The clock is moving toward the last gasp of his lecture when Brendon turns his notebook my way: Did he forget to tell us not to taste the chemicals this year?
A small spark of excitement for breaking note-passing rules makes me smil
e as I pull his notebook toward me to answer: Yes. And don’t sniff, snuff, huff, or inhale them, either.
Just as Brendon reads my reply, Mr. Williams intones, “Don’t sniff, touch, or taste chemicals.”
We both cover a snicker. Brendon writes, Our world is safe once more.
From the back of the room, James yells, “If we bring our own chemicals, can we sniff those?”
“Shut up, James,” Mr. Williams says without emotion.
“It’s good to be back, Mr. Williams.”
When the bell rings, Amberlee Williams materializes between Brendon and me. Her table assignment is two rows behind ours on the other side of the room. She must have hurdled a couple of tables to reach us before we could even stand. My body recoils swiftly from her.
“I’m having a little back-to-school celebration at my house this weekend. Can you make it?” Her head tips to the right, and golden waves shimmer over her shoulders. Her smile broadens as her eyes sparkle.
Brendon looks at me. I look at him. He seems as surprised as I am at her appearance. My surprise quickly become annoyance when Amberlee slides into the space between our chairs and turns her back so I’m blocked from Brendon’s view—and from intruding on her invitation.
I rise from my seat. My brain warns me that Amberlee has her sights on Brendon this year.
“Sure. Sounds fun,” Brendon answers as I join the flow of the masses moving through the halls. With a pang, I realize he’s all in for her party. Yeah, this is not over.
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A special thanks to you, our readers, for choosing our books. Much thanks also to our families for the time we spent away from you for writing, editing and our crazy path to publishing. We want to express appreciation to Jenni and Kristy for being our beta-readers, for your encouragement, insights and reactions. Thanks to our editors Tristi Pinkston and Heidi Brockban and Danyelle Ferguson, our formatter Ali Cross, our cover designer Bret Henderson, who helped Newbie become the amazing book you have read. Also, thank you to the many friends who have supported us and given comments in our online writing groups—iWriteNetwork and Authors Incognito.
