by S. Celi
“What? What is it?” I only asked it to start the conversation. I already knew what they would say.
“Nothing,” Josh said, but his bright voice seemed fake. I knew right away that he had something more to say, but that he couldn’t figure out how to tell me. “Nothin’ at all, dude.”
“Come on.” Nathan socked him in the arm. “We’re his friends. We should tell him.”
“Tell me what?” I shifted my backpack from one shoulder to the other.
Josh looked away from me. “It’s Laine. She’s back with . . .”
“She’s back with Evan?” In my head, I sounded flip. I hoped that’s how I came across to them. “They got back together?”
“Yeah, they did.” Nathan clapped me on my shoulder. “You okay about it?”
“That’s not the only thing, though,” Josh said, raising his voice. “They aren’t . . . well . . . everyone is sayin’ . . .”
“Saying what?” I tapped my foot.
“They’re saying she stood you up. That you showed up at her house, and she was there with Evan, and that you looked stupid because you had flowers and thought she would actually want to go out with you. And that Evan had to tell you the truth.”
I sucked in a hard breath. They knew this would hurt me, and it did. This could only have come from Evan himself. Laine wouldn’t spread a stupid rumor like that, but Evan would. What an asshole. Why did everybody act like this guy had been crowned king of Robert Hill?
“Nice,” I replied. I chose my next words with the precision of a surgeon. I needed to hide the pain I felt from them, and fast. “Just so you guys know, we did go on a date. And it was great, until she took a phone call from that jerk-off.”
“A date?” Josh asked.
“Yep.”
Nathan and Josh exchanged glances as the bell rang.
“Okay,” Josh said. “Whatever you say. Just wanted you to know what people were saying about you.”
I answered with a fake laugh, and motioned for us to walk the rest of the way to class. Since when had I really cared what people thought? Well, I did care, but I also knew where I stood with most of them. My classmates didn’t understand me, and never would. They thought of me as some kind of smart geek who did nothing but study, as he treaded water somewhere in the middle tier of Heritage High’s social hierarchy. Whatever. I’d be out of there in less than three months, anyway, and on my way to UVA while they floated around wondering what to do next with their lives.
As for Laine? I had been an idiot once again. What I thought was a date with the hottest girl in school had turned out to be just a distraction for her. She didn’t think it was a date, not in the least, and I should have known that. It was just what I deserved for thinking I could have someone like her.
I squared my shoulders and walked into class, three steps behind Josh and Nathan. Everyone else had taken their seats, so we made an entrance.
“Nice of you boys to join us,” Mr. Langston said from behind his podium. “It’s not like we have a major test to take in just over two months.”
“Sorry, Mr. Langston,” Nathan muttered, making it clear he spoke for all of us.
“Turn to page 295 in your text,” Mr. Langston said to the rest of the class. He clapped his hands. “Wake up, everyone. Every second of the next few weeks count. No more sleepwalking through Mondays.”
I threw my book bag down next to my desk. As I did, my eyes caught Laine’s gaze. She bit her lower lip, and her eyes looked bigger than usual. “I’m sorry,” she mouthed after a moment.
All I did was shrug and slide into the desk. I could have been mad or upset, but I didn’t feel like it. I just wanted to stay numb and make it through the rest of high school. Whatever.
TUESDAY, MARCH 12
JOSH HAD WIDE eyes and a snide smile when he set his tray down at our table for lunch. In fact, a red blush rimmed his round face, and I wondered for a half second if he had some kind of strange disease. I hadn’t heard anything about him getting sick, though.
“Dude,” Nathan said, in between bites of his apple. “You look weird.”
“Do I?” Josh replied as he sat down. His eyes danced, the same way a lot of people’s did when they got the Christmas present they’d wanted, or found $20 dollars in their pocket. I’d seen Josh excited before, but not often like this.
“What’s up?” I asked. “Something’s up.”
Josh glanced at the other tables close to ours. Around us, students did the usual. They chattered about their day, and ate lunch without paying attention to us.
“I had to go to the nurse’s office this morning because I thought I was getting a migraine in Spanish,” Josh said, after he was satisfied no else wanted to listen to our conversation. “You know. Mom sent up some medication at the beginning of year, and they keep it there.”
“Right,” I said, prompting Josh to continue his story. He got migraines about three times a year, and we all knew about it. Old news.
“Anyway, when Mrs. Turner went to the get the medicine out of the back, I noticed an open box on the floor by her desk.” He bit back a smile. “Know what was in it?”
Nathan sighed, his attention still on his half eaten lunch. “What?”
Josh looked around again as the rest of the bustling lunchroom. “Okay, you guys can’t tell anyone.” With a dramatic flourish, he reached in to his back pocket, then slowly slid a small red square packet along the edge of the table, letting just enough show so that Mark, Nathan and I would see it.
Nathan’s fork fell out of his hand, and clattered onto his tray. “Whoa. Is that what I think it is?”
Mark nodded, and choked on his orange juice.
Josh grinned at all of us. “Yep. It’s what you think it is.” He leaned in closer to us, and the words tumbled out of his mouth. “It was a whole box of condoms. I have no idea why she had them, but she did. There must have been five hundred in there.”
“How many did you take?” I asked.
“I grabbed a handful before she came back in.” He nodded at us, as if he wanted to back up what he was saying. “Four of them. One for each of us.”
Mark sat back, crossed his arms, and his mouth hung open. He didn’t speak for about thirty seconds. “Wow. Man. You are amazing.”
“Well done,” Nathan said.
“But we don’t need them,” I pointed out. “We’re not getting any.”
“Shut up.” Josh glared at me. “You might not be getting any, but it won’t always be that way. And it’s not that way for me.”
“Whoa,” I said. “Mister Confident. Maybe I’ll call Allison over here and tell her you just said that.”
“Just take one,” Josh said. He fished around in his jeans pocket again, pulled out the other three, and handed one to each of us under the table, as if they were drugs or stolen merchandise. “You’ll thank me later.”
I stifled my laughter as I put one in my wallet. The way things were going in my life I wouldn’t need this stupid condom for at least five years. By then, it would probably just be an expired shred of latex.
She caught me at my locker after the last bell. I didn’t get my stuff fast enough, and she found me there, switching out books, about five minutes after the last bell sounded.
“So. I guess you heard,” she said, as she leaned up against the locker next to mine and bit her lip. “I mean, it’s been all over the place for the last week.”
I slammed my locker door shut. “What? About you and Evan? Yeah, I heard.”
“I felt so bad about that Saturday. I shouldn’t have taken that call, but I didn’t know what to do, and his text said it was important.”
“Whatever,” I said, as I scooped my backpack up off the floor. “He’s your boyfriend. It happens.”
She nodded. “I had a really fun time with you that night. It was great.”
“Me, too.” By now I had the backpack on both of my shoulders, so I started my walk to the car. She followed me, her small booted feet working overtime to k
eep up with my longer strides. “But you know, it was all in my imagination, right?”
“You’ve heard the rumors?” When I nodded my head, yes, she continued. “I hate people sometimes. Listen, it’s not what you—”
“You really like him, don’t you?” I stopped walking just after we made it out of Heritage’s front door, and she almost ran into me. “Evan. You really like him. Because you didn’t seem like you did when we were over in Mt. Adams at the overlook.”
“Yeah—about that phone call . . . Evan had some stuff going on, and I didn’t want to make it worse. He’d already send me a bunch of text message about it, and I felt so bad about ignoring him.” Her eyes shifted away from mine. “So I had to go.”
“Whatever. You don’t have to make up excuses.”
“He needs me, Geoff.” She turned her head. “And he’s been my boyfriend for so long. It’s what I’m used to. And what everyone expects.”
“You don’t have to do what everyone expects all the time, Laine.” I reached over and turned her gaze back to mine with a swipe of my finger. “And look—Saturday was a friend thing, right? Two friends, having fun.”
Lying to myself like this made things easier. If we were just friends, then it didn’t hurt so much that she’d ditched me for Evan. Friends didn’t get hurt when someone got back together with their boyfriend, even if they didn’t like that boyfriend. Friends just carried on as if nothing happened.
“Friends.” She said the word slowly. “Yeah. I guess.”
“We’ll still talk,” I said. “Of course we will.”
“Sure,” she said, but her voice sounded hollow.
In fact, she sounded about as convinced as I felt—which was not very.
FRIDAY, MARCH 22
BLAKE, BRUCE AND I settled into a tenuous routine by the end of March. We gathered around the breakfast table in the house three times a week for a two-hour tutoring lesson on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. They listened to me about 45 percent of the time. Most of the sessions consisted of them rolling their eyes, and making the usual snide comments. I found out a few things about them, though.
Blake liked English, but he didn’t want his brother to know. In fact, I suspected he got bad grades on tests just to please his twin, who had a hard time reading above the fifth grade level. Bruce did better in Science and Math.
They didn’t like each other all the time, either. In fact, they hated the endless comparisons to each other almost as much as they hated the fact that my mother had married their father, and ended any hope of reconciliation for their parents.
The best part of all, though, was how much my intelligence threatened them. They hated that. Once I found that out, I used it to my advantage in any way I could.
Like today.
“So,” I said, as the two of them struggled to write down a readable synopsis of The Great Gatsby. They had a test coming up on the material the following Monday. “Tell me one of the most famous quotes from that book.”
Bruce looked up from his notebook, and blinked at me. “Quote?”
“Sure.” I leaned back against my chair and calmly took a sip of the Diet Coke in front of me. “That book is full of them.”
“I don’t remember any quotes,” Bruce said after a few seconds, and this comment didn’t surprise me.
“Here’s one,” I said, after another swallow of Diet Coke. “Her voice was full of money.”
Blank stares answered my words.
“And another. Rich girls don’t marry poor boys, Jay Gatsby.” I tapped my fingers on the table. I liked F.Scott more than most kids in my class, and it annoyed me that my stepbrothers couldn’t see anything about the deeper meaning of his words. “Think that one is true? F. Scott Fitzgerald sure did.”
Blake snickered. “It’s true in Robert Hill.” He paused. “Well, at least at Heritage. Not that anyone’s getting married. But when it comes to dating, yeah.”
“You guys date whoever you want.”
“But that’s just it.” Blake cleared his throat. “There are certain girls I can’t get, even if I want them.”
“Come on. Really?” I cocked my head and raised my eyebrow at him. I’d never heard him speak candidly about any of the social shit at Heritage. So why was he doing it now?
“He’s right,” Bruce said. “That’s just how it is right now. How it has always been at school.”
“What do you mean?” I asked Bruce. I’d always lumped them together as two tumors in my life that I couldn’t cut out. I hadn’t stopped to think that they might have their own perspectives on life.
Bruce tapped his pen on the edge of the table. “One thing about school is how people just assume you’re one way. Like us. They think we’re just rich meatheads. And there’s nothing to change that.”
“But why would you want to change it?”
“Because it sucks, sometimes,” Bruce said after a moment. “And like, with girls, that just means the only girls who want anything to do with either of us,” he pointed to himself, and then his brother, “are the airheads.”
I grinned. “Like Monica.”
“She’s a bitch, but she gives it up,” Blake said. “Of course, she’s nothing like Laine. Laine would never look twice at guys like us. Just Evan.”
“I wish it wasn’t like that,” I muttered before I could stop myself.
“Oooh,” Blake said, closing his notebook. “I knew it. You totally thought you had a chance with her.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Somebody really should put Laine in her place,” Blake muttered. I didn’t try to hide the glare I shot him.
“It’ll be better for you once you realize she wants nothing to do with someone like you,” Bruce added. “She’s a Disney Princess. And you’re a frog.
“Thanks for reminding me.”
“Look, there’s just no other way to really say it.” Bruce replied. “We’ve all been in school together, ever since we were in kindergarten. Twelve years in the Robert Hill Independent School system. You should know this right now.”
Blake nodded, and pushed his chair back from the table with a loud scrape.
I motioned to the textbook. “You’re not done, Blake. You’ve still got all those worksheets to fill out.”
He sighed. “Can’t we just pay you to do it?”
“Like the chores?”
“Sure. Like the chores, you asshole.”
“Nope. Only your father pays me.” I grinned from the satisfaction of saying that. I might not have had much hold over them, but when it came to being smarter, I always won.
MONDAY, APRIL 15TH
IT RAINED FOR the first two weeks in April; a cold, continuous, dull system wrapped itself around Greater Cincinnati and hung on to everything. No designer rain boots or all-weather jackets could shut out the spring dreariness, and the lack of sunlight added to what, by then, had become a decent depression. Getting out of bed took more effort than brain surgery. Studying for classes and keeping up with assignments required more focus than I wanted to expend, and at dinner a few times my mother accused me of having a bad case of senioritis.
“You’re not yourself,” she said in early April, over a plate of burned roast chicken and limp green beans.
“Sure I am,” I dismissed her. “It’s just that high school is too easy.”
Better to lie than tell her the truth. And the truth was, I’d given up any pretense of trying to be happy in this hellhole. I started wearing all black. The fake smile I often wore as a shield against the teasing and taunts of my peers had disappeared from my face. And, as I walked the halls, I glared at all the underclassmen. By the middle of the month, it was working pretty well.
Geoff Megadeth had finally appeared.
“Dude, you’re a fucking nightmare to those freshmen.” Josh poked me with his shoulder after my latest glare scared away a fat girl with a lacrosse hoodie. She had given me one of those looks that said she’d never glance my way again. Just what I wanted.
I lo
oked at him sideways as I turned and shut my locker. “That’s the idea.”
He sighed when the warning bell rang for first period. From there, we had four minutes to scamper to class before being late. “Let’s go. Can’t wait to hear what school has waiting for us today. The more you know—”
My snicker interrupted him, and I slammed my locker closed. “Whatever. I just like fucking with them.”
I fell into step next to him, and we walked down the long hallway to our first class. Around us the crowd thinned, as students entered classrooms to start another week of learning geometric equations, Spanish verbs and chemistry terms. I didn’t make eye contact with anyone, preferring to keep my head down. Less than four weeks to go, and summer would be here. I could make it.
Couldn’t I?
“Oh shit,” Josh said under his breath as we rounded the corner that linked the main hallway with two others. Heritage High was nothing if not a mix of spidery hallways that wrapped through the Gothic architecture. I looked up in time to regret right away that we’d taken this route. About fifteen students remained in what had been a hallway of dozens five minutes ago.
Laine and Evan were two of those fifteen.
He had her up against the locker, one arm pressed against the metal just above her shoulder, body language that told everyone she was his. Her backpack and lightweight tan jacket lay in a large pile by her feet, which she’d encased in a pair of high-heeled tan rubber boots. One of her legs pressed perpendicularly against the locker, too, and that made her black cotton dress ride up her thighs.
The two of them might have been an ad for a designer perfume.
Even worse, we had no other way to get to our first class. We had to walk right by them, even though all I wanted to do was disappear. Christ. Why did I keep on having this kind of horrible luck?
