by Cassie Mae
“What food do you have in your kitchen?” I ask, throwing her off so that she takes a second to answer.
“Uh… leftovers, probably. Stuff you can’t eat. Some stuff that you can.”
I push my knuckles into the mattress and hoist myself to my feet. “Let’s go raid.” Even though food is the last thing I need, it seems to be the only thing that understands me.
We head down the stairs, me slipping in my fuzzy socks and letting out a loud snort with my laughter. Tiff turns the light on in her huge kitchen that my mom has always been envious of and opens up her snack cupboard. Behind the abundance of food that I wish I could bathe myself in, she finds something that won’t twist my intestines into a devil’s noose, and we park our butts on the island counter, swinging our legs off the edge.
“Kay,” she says, dipping a celery stalk into a jar of Skippy, “you owe me just one thing that you like about him.” She flourishes her celery like a wand, and I fear that peanut butter will pelt me in the face. “Just one…little…thing.”
Oh, there goes my goofy grin. I can feel it show off my celery teeth, push my cheeks into my eyes, and if I didn’t feel foreign enough already, I certainly do now as I open my mouth and say, “He’s so huggable.”
She mimics my grin, only her teeth have peanut butter in the mix. “Really?”
I give her a look. “You saw him, Tiff.”
“Yeah…” she says, dragging the word out. “But what do you mean by ‘huggable’?”
“I mean…” What do I mean? I jam the rest of my celery stalk in my mouth to buy me some time to think on it… and also phrase it in a way that isn’t so embarrassing. “Okay, so you know my aversion to people touching me?”
“Oh yeah.” She laughs, then tries to poke just under my rib, but I dodge her. If she feels the duct tape, she’ll definitely ask questions about it.
“Well, and don’t make a big deal out of this, but if he tried to hug me, I think I’d…”
“Let him?” Her voice goes up an octave.
“It’s worse than that,” I admit. “I might actually initiate it.”
She shoves off the kitchen island and whips open the fridge.
“Oh gosh,” I say, watching her fumble around, clinking glass and cans. “What now?”
“It’s drinking time.”
“That’s just water,” I say through a laugh as she pulls out a couple of Perriers.
“It’s sparkling, which means it’s special.” She pours it into some plastic cups that she’s had since she was little. I shake my head as I watch. Why couldn’t I have been a better friend about all this crushed-out, boy talk stuff when it was her? I stare at the cup on the island and watch the bubbles fizz to the top.
“What do you like about Marcus?” I ask, pushing back the disgust I feel at the mere mention of my cousin.
Tiff’s eyebrows rise. “I… I guess… he’s huggable, too.”
I picture my tall cousin with a lean build and muscle sewn into practically every inch—it hasn’t been a wonder that all the girls flock to him—and I think that "huggable" is the last word I’d use to describe him.
But it’s not about me.
“You can’t steal my answer,” I tease, and her surprised eyes relax as she props back up next to me.
“I just don’t want to see that grossed-out face.”
“I promise I will try to contain it.”
She lets out a chuckle. “Well, I like a lot of things about him, but mostly just the way he makes me feel. It’s kind of like living on another planet, and he looks at me like I’m the queen of it.” Her eyes drift down to her lap. “Gotta say, it’s nice to be looked at like that when I feel so…” She waves her hand around at her body, as if it’s something undesirable. She must be wearing crazy pants.
“Good,” I say, finally sipping on the celebratory water. “You know I’ll kill him if he’s a complete butthole to you. Just give the order.”
She knocks her shoulder into mine, her pajama shirt bunching a little against my overlarge papa tee, then takes another giant bite of celery that is mostly peanut butter.
“Do you… feel like that around Oliver?”
I shrug. To be honest, I don’t know what the heck I’m feeling around him since it hasn’t happened before. Because I’m still getting to know the guy, I have no idea if the way he looks at me is… queenish, or however she put it.
He makes me feel like I can be me, though, and that’s something I’m not too familiar with lately. Even when I’m by myself.
“Okay,” she says through a shaky sigh, “I’m going to try to ask what I wanted to before, and try not to take this the wrong way or anything.”
I stick my pinky out, and she locks hers with it.
“So, you don’t know much about him, right? Like other than he’s your coach’s son?”
“Hey now,” I say, pointing a half-eaten celery stalk at her, “I know where he lives.”
She shakes her head at my lame attempt at humor. “What I’m getting at is… are you attracted to him?”
The celery in my mouth gets lodged somewhere in my esophagus, causing a major, choking, laughing fit. She slams a hand against my back, making the food travel down the right passageway.
“Are…” cough, cough, drink, swallow. “Are you saying that you think I’m shallow?” Yeah, hello, Oliver is older and hot and tall with amazing hair and adorable grins and fascinating eyes—okay, maybe she has a point—but I also like our conversations. Or non-conversations. What do you call sticky notes in a graveyard?
“No.” Her brows meet in the middle of her forehead. “I’m… just curious if you’re attracted to him. Because you don’t know much else, and so all that’s left is his looks, and he’s…”
She drops off, and now I’m the one left in a puddle of confusion.
“He’s…?” I prod.
“He’s kinda…” She drops her voice to a whisper. “Big.”
My insides curl up and choke what I’ve eaten in the celery. Tiff’s face is apologetic, but also genuinely curious. Like it’s so impossible to be attracted to bigger people.
What is going on with my friends? First the cross country team calls Coach Fox a fatty, and now my best friend is questioning someone’s appeal based on his weight.
It cuts me to the very core, and I realize deep down that I’m no better. I’ve got ten feet of duct tape around me just so that I can pretend my body is something other than what it is.
“I guess I didn’t notice,” I tell her. It’s a lie. I do notice.
I just don’t care.
She smiles, twisting around to grab the peanut butter lid. “Come on. I want to go Facebook stalking.”
And as much as I’d like to just cut the night short, I follow her upstairs and search for Oliver online. I mean, I’m only human, right?
18
A Couple of Weirdoes
“Ginger, honey! Take the trash out with you!”
“I got it!”
I twist the red handles on the Glad bag, trying to avoid the yucky garbage water so it doesn’t drip on my pink running shoes. I jog it out the door, anxious to get to the cemetery this morning. After my flip-floppity moods yesterday in Coach’s office, I’m dying to talk to Oliver. It’s my hope that he doesn’t think I’m so weird that he doesn’t want to hang out with me anymore. Or even worse, what if he caught Tiff and me being very stalkerish?
If he’s even at the cemetery, I will count that as a good sign.
Not that I’m the only reason he goes to the cemetery. I mean… he’s not the reason I’m going.
Okay, maybe he is today.
I’m so distracted that I don’t even see Jamal next to me as I lift the bag up into the green can.
“Heya.”
“Gosh, give me a heart attack.”
He grins. “Nah, I think I’ll keep you around for a while.” His smile fades, and he scratches the back of his head. “That is… if we’re not fighting.”
“Are you still
being a jerk?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then we are not fighting.”
He lets out a large breath. “Phew. I’ve been feeling like crap over it.”
I want to say “Good,” but I keep my mouth shut. I don’t feel like arguing more, and the best thing about having nearly all guy friends is that if you do get in a fight, it’s over within a day or two. Sometimes an hour or two.
Even though he didn’t exactly apologize, but whatever. I’m over it.
“You feel like proving that you got that time?” he asks, bending his knees as he gears up to outrun me. I jam my earbuds in and turn up my Disney track so loud it drowns him out, then I take off.
Okay… complete honesty here. I’m not running at a full-fledged Olympian pace right now to impress or prove Jamal wrong in anyway. I’m not sprinting as hard as I can because I know that I have to in order to keep up with the rest of the team. All this speed? Yeah, it’s all because of a darn boy.
I’ve become one of those people. It’s been less than twenty-four hours since I’ve heard Oliver’s obviously-older-than-me voice, and I want to hear it again. Even though part of me wonders if I’ll hear it today, or if we’ll do our sticky note thing, but either way I’m good with it. And the faster I get to that fork in the park, the faster I get to The Rolling Scones, and the faster I get to Cayenne’s grave.
I send out mental apologies to my sister for being more excited about seeing Oliver than I am her. Pretty sure she forgives me because the next thing I know, Jamal is calling out to me from a few yards back.
“Hold up, hold up, hold up…” he pants. I skid to a halt and backtrack.
“You okay?” I ask his bent figure. He shakes his head at the sidewalk.
“I’m… gonna… head back.”
“Can’t take a little competition, eh?” I laugh, and he straightens, his face flushed almost totally of all color. “Whoa…”
“I just gotta head back,” he says.
“Get water in your system!” I call after him. It’s a good thing we haven’t gone too far… oh no wait. We’re at tenth street. Guess I was running even faster than I thought I was. A smile forms itself on my lips—running is a lot more fun when you aren’t thinking about it.
I wait till I see him round the corner onto our block. His pace was a little slow, but fast enough that I’m not too worried. I pull out my phone and tell him to text me after he’s hydrated. He sends me back an “OK, sry for bailing!” message, and then I’m off to The Rolling Scones.
Marcel left some raspberry cream cheese danishes today. I practically drool my way to the cemetery. Oliver isn’t here—yet, I’m not giving up hope—so I plop down between Cayenne and her neighbor and pull out an earbud to have one of our chats.
“I’m pretty sure Jamal might be getting sick,” I tell them, setting down a danish on each of their headstones. “Did you do that with your magic powers? Because he did apologize for making me cry.” Not that he knew I was crying. A lot of people still don’t even think I’m capable of that act.
I lean back on my hands, letting my fingers run through the overgrown grass. There’s a gluten-free danish in my lap—free of cream cheese, but still looks ravishing—but I’m using all my energy and self-restraint so that I save it. Possibly share it.
I’ve doggone lost my mind.
“You know what stinks?” I tell Cayenne. “Crushing on a guy. It’s like he takes up all your headspace when I should be concentrating on much more important things.” I pause to look down at my legs. I missed a spot during my shave. “Like State,” I tell her. “I’m going to take State this year, I swear it. Then Nationals. I just have to make sure my body cooperates. Running with Ds is a lot more painful than I thought. And running with taped Ds helps, but is in no way less painful.”
It’s the first time I’ve said all of that out loud. It doesn’t feel very good though. More like I’m making it all the more real.
I adjust the duct tape I currently have around the Sharpies, hissing when it rubs against my ever-growing rash. I’m wearing a tighter shirt today. Tighter, as in only one size too big instead of two. Thought I’d dress up for the occasion. Stupid.
My bottom lip gets a good nibble while the track on my iPod switches from Colors of the Wind to Let it Go. I kinda laugh to myself and close my eyes.
“I never understood how Elsa could walk in high heels across ice,” I tell Cayenne, tearing off a piece of my danish. “Like, yeah, the ‘cold never bothered her,’ but does she have incredible coordination? Is that part of her ice powers?”
The wind rustles, and I love when Cayenne speaks to me via wind, but this time she’s blown something into my forehead. I open my eyes, and my vision is obstructed by orange corners of very small paper.
I reach up and pull the sticky from my face.
I never understood that either.
Partly embarrassed, partly thrilled, and partly something else I can’t put my finger on but it gives me major tummy flutters, I let my eyes drift over my shoulder to meet Oliver’s.
“Hey, look who it is.” Oh man, if I wasn’t already blushing, I’m sure my face would go up in smoke right now. Oliver awards my very girly blush with one of his very guy smiles and sits down next to me in the grass. Like really next to me. His sleeve is brushing against my arm. I’m totally not freaking out about that. My stomach on the other hand…
“Danish?” I ask, holding up the measly piece I saved him. He raises his eyebrow at it, and I hang my head. “I tried really hard not to eat it all.”
His laughter is so amazing that it takes me a couple of seconds to join in with him.
“I’ll still take it,” he says, and I plop the tiny piece into the palm of his hand. His skin is warm and surprisingly soft, and though I only touched it for a second, I can still feel it even after I pull my hand back and stick it in my pocket.
I watch him grin and pop the danish into his mouth. His eyes widen, and he gives me this look like I just gave him the last food on the planet.
“What?” he says, and it’s the cutest thing I’ve ever heard. “What is this?”
I laugh, stretching my legs out on the grass. “It’s gluten free even.”
He swallows, showing off his Adam’s apple, and he licks away some raspberry sauce that got caught in the corner of his mouth. Normally I find that kind of thing gross—whenever Rodney misses his mouth by stuffing too much food in it, I make gagging noises or cringe away—but on Oliver, he pulls it off.
He pushes up on his knee, bringing his face closer to mine, and I realize that I’m breathing way too hard for just sitting here.
“You have to take me to the place that makes these,” he says.
“The Rolling Scones?” I say, my voice far too squeaky than it is normally. Then I jerk my head a little to the right. “It’s just down that pathway on Main Street.”
“No…” he says, running a hand through his floppy black hair. “I mean it. I want you to show me.”
“Right now?”
“Yeah. You sort of ran out yesterday. Never really got an answer about us hanging out.” He tilts his head, and his eyebrows waggle. “I took it as a yes. So let’s hang out.”
It’s so hard to keep a straight face around him. My lips are twitching up, and my girly sensors are pinging under my skin, and I’ve fallen off a cliff and skyrocketed to the moon. I’m in the bottom of the ocean and on top of a cloud all at once. And this is so not real, and I shake my head back and forth, laughing at my knees, suddenly wishing that Tiff was here so I could ask her to make sense of this.
“Right now?” I ask. “Because I kinda told my friend that we’d double…”
The sweetest grin slowly forms on his lips. “You want me to meet your friends?”
“Is that okay?”
He lets out a surprised laugh. “Uh, yeah.” His hand runs over one of his biceps and scratches an itch. “Can we do that tomorrow? I got plans later today. Came up last minute. Promise I’m not try
ing to get out of it. I’ve wanted to ask you out all week, and if you don’t stop me from talking, I’m just gonna keep on jamming my foot farther and farther down my throat—”
“It can’t be an official date, yet,” I say, unable to tell him right in the eyes. “I’m still going to that dance, and I don’t want it to get messy, and I’m going to start babbling again if you don’t interrupt me—”
“Friends,” he quickly interjects, and we share a smile that feels like a secret somehow. “We can hang out as friends, yeah?”
“Are we friends?” I ask. “Seems like we’re just two weirdoes who hang out at the cemetery.”
“I’m okay hanging out as weirdoes, too.” He looks down at the food on Cayenne’s name. “Especially if it means I’ll get another one of those danishes.”
“Oh, I see. You’re just in it for the goods.” I laugh and then take one look at his face before I catch the accidental innuendo. “Baked goods. Never mind.” I shove off the grass and wipe my butt free of dew. “Let’s go, weirdo.”
“How long you lived here?” he asks as we make our way toward Main at a leisurely pace.
“Kicking off the getting-to-know-you portion of the day, huh?”
“Well, I already know that you’re a runner,” he says, ticking the list off on his thick fingers. “That you’ve lost someone very important to you. And your handwriting is incredibly… non-loopy.”
“Non-loopy?”
“It was my substitute for saying it’s not very—”
“Girly?”
“Yes.” He laughs, and that adorable as all heck blush goes through his ears. “It’s like Lucida Sans when most girls have Lucida Handwriting.”
“Ooh, those must be senior-in-high-school terms. Or I’ve fallen asleep one too many times during vocabulary day in English.”
He laughs with his whole body, eyes jutting over to me like I’m not such bad company. Even though I have no clue what the heck he’s talking about.
