by Bella Thorne
“Nobody moves!” Reenzie roars. “Not until you answer a question. Who hates me?”
“What, you want the whole list?” Amalita asks.
“You mean, like, who has ever hated you, or who hates you now?” Jack asks. “ ’Cause they’re different. I mean, I hated you freshman year, and no doubt Autumn hated you sophomore, and—”
Reenzie silences him with her hand in the air. Her other hand shows us her cell phone. “I just got a call from the head of the Admissions Office at Stanford. They told me they got a letter—from me—asking them to reject me because I don’t really want to go to the school. They called to make sure I sent it, because it sounded like the complete opposite of what I said in my application.”
I work really hard to make my eyes wide and surprised. “Wow,” I say, trying not to let my voice waver. “Did you send it?”
“No, I didn’t send it!” Reenzie roars. “I would never send it, and the only person who would think to send it would have to be someone who knows I applied early to Stanford!”
She glares daggers at us, one at a time.
“Which is everyone,” Taylor reminds Reenzie. “You shouted it out loud on the lunch lawn the day you sent it in.”
Reenzie’s face softens a little. “I guess. Doesn’t really matter anyway. I told the admissions person the letter was a complete fake…and they told me to expect good news in a couple weeks!”
Taylor squeals and jumps up and down with Reenzie. I try to look happy, too, but all I can think about is Reenzie, pale and spent, her wrists wrapped in gauze.
“It’s terrific,” I say with as much enthusiasm as I can muster, “but…you know…I hear that school is really high-pressure. You sure you want to go?”
“Why?” Reenzie’s eyes become slits, then quickly widen in horror. “Oh my God, was it you? Did you sabotage me like you sabotaged Sean?”
“No!” I lie. “And I didn’t sabotage Sean! That was an accident! I’m just saying…” I sigh and deflate. All of a sudden I feel like I’m going to cry. I know what she’s in for, and there’s no way I can warn her or steer her away from it. Even if I told her the complete truth, she’d never believe me.
“Autumn?” she asks. “Are you okay?”
I nod, and a germ of an idea pops into my head. When I look back at Reenzie, I know my eyes are watery and I probably look a little desperate and crazy, but maybe I can make all that make sense.
“It’s just…,” I start, and my voice cracks without me even trying. “I’ve been meeting with Mr. Winthrop about colleges, and he told me these stories about people who get to a big-deal school and they think it’ll be easy and perfect, and when it isn’t…they sometimes lose it. He said he knew one student who got so overwhelmed by everything…he tried to kill himself.”
Reenzie tilts her head and smiles sympathetically. “Sweetie, he was just telling you that because you can’t get into those schools. He made it sound worse so you wouldn’t feel bad.”
Ugh. She’s not getting it.
“It’s not that!” I say too quickly and loudly.
Reenzie raises an eyebrow.
“Okay, maybe it’s partially that,” I say, “but it got me worried about you. Just promise me that no matter what happens when you get to college, no matter how much you feel like you can’t tell anyone if you’re having trouble…just know you can pick up the phone and call any one of us. We’re all here for you.”
I turn to Ames, Jack, and Taylor for confirmation, but they’re looking at me like I just sprouted a duck bill. I ignore them and look plaintively back at Reenzie.
She puts her hands on my shoulders and looks deep into my eyes.
“I love you. And, yes, if I ever have a freak-out panic attack—which I won’t—I will call you.”
“You promise?”
“If it means we can end this conversation, yes, I promise.”
I nod. It’s not exactly what I wanted, but maybe it’s enough. Maybe when things get bad she’ll remember this and reach out. Maybe I’ll find out next time I jump.
The bell rings and we head off to class. “I expect you all at the game tonight,” Reenzie says as we go. “Play-offs—it’s a huge deal for Sean.”
“Which means I’m sure he doesn’t want me there,” I say.
“Whatever. He accepted a full ride to UNH like a month ago. Division Two school, he’ll get actual play time; he’s good. Still pissed at you on principle, but he’s good.”
“What?!” I look at all my friends. “How did nobody tell me this?”
“Didn’t come up.” Ames shrugs, then turns to Reenzie. “You know I’ll be there. We’re cheering.”
“Autumn, Jack, and I will be there too,” Taylor says. “Save us seats. And one for Drew.”
“But not one for me,” Jack says. “I’m going with J.J.”
“And you’re not sitting with us?” I ask.
Jack looks uncomfortably at me for a split second before he and all my other friends race off to class.
“So now J.J.’s even avoiding me at places I don’t plan on being!” I vent to Jenna as I walk home from school that afternoon. “I wasn’t going to this game at all. I still don’t want to go. Taylor, Reenzie, and Ames are making me.”
“Maybe it’ll be fun,” Jenna offers.
“Fun would be tweezing every hair off my body, one by one,” I say. “This is three hours of self-torture. You really think I’ll be able to concentrate on the game?”
“Do you ever concentrate on the game?”
“No, but this’ll be worse. All I’ll be doing is searching for J.J., then psychically willing my memories of our future into his brain.”
“Maybe it’s not all about you,” Jenna offers. “Maybe J.J.’s sitting with Jack to help him. So Jack can be near wherever Tom sits, without anyone getting suspicious.”
“I doubt J.J. knows about Tom,” I scoff. “And Tom won’t even be in the bleachers. He’s an A/V guy. He’s up in the booth doing all the music stuff between plays….”
My voice fades away, pushed out by an idea brewing in my head.
“Autumn?” Jenna eventually asks.
“Not Autumn,” I answer. “Lloyd. Lloyd Dobler.”
I hang up with Jenna and immediately call Jack.
“You know you owe me,” I say, and when he doesn’t balk at that, I make him promise to text me once he and J.J. find seats, then let me know exactly where they are. I also make him give me Tom’s cell phone number, and I ask him to text Tom himself to let Tom know that when my call comes in, he should take it.
“Should I be frightened about whatever you’re planning to do?” Jack asks.
“Best not to think too much about it,” I say. Then I hang up and change into turquoise shorts and a turquoise spaghetti-string tank top, with a wide-collar off-one-shoulder purple tee over the whole thing. Plus purple and turquoise ribbons to hold up my ponytail. It’s like Rainbow Dash threw up all over me, but those are our school colors, so everyone looks just as ridiculous on game days. By the time I’m decked out, I figure Jack had time to talk to Tom, so I pick up my phone.
“Tom!” I shout when he answers. “I desperately need you.”
“Aw, see, and here I am all taken,” he says.
“Not what I meant,” I say. “Just tell me if you can make this happen.”
He doesn’t say anything for a while after I finish, and I worry I lost the connection or totally freaked him out.
“Tom? You there?”
“Oh, I’m here,” he says.
“So?” I ask. “Can you help me?”
“Pretty sure you’re beyond help,” he says, “but I’m a sucker for a good love story. Send me the file, then come to the booth at the beginning of halftime.”
I squeal and thank him, then hang up and finish getting ready, which today means sending Tom the file and doing some major anagram research. I barely finish in time for Taylor and Drew to pick me up. I’m thrilled the two of them are so blissfully in love they don’
t even notice me in the backseat, because I’m a mess. I can’t sit still. I jounce my knees, check random apps on my phone, fix my hair, pop mints, and unbuckle a couple times to shift to the other side of the car just so I can move. When we get to the field, I leap out of the car. My heart is pounding so hard it’s like I’m being chased by lions, and I still have an hour before the game starts and the entire first half. I have to calm down…but I can’t.
I think I speak to Reenzie, Taylor, and Drew during the next couple hours. I’m pretty sure I stand up and cheer when the rest of the stadium does. And I definitely sing the fight song two or three times, because our team scores points and we always sing when they score points. But I’m doing it all on autopilot. I’m actually paying attention to the big screens at each end of the stadium. They’re not big like NFL screens—at least, that’s what Reenzie says—but they’re big enough, and the A/V team uses them to show big moments on the field, or put up things like “DE-FENSE” to get us to cheer, or little animations of horrible things happening to cartoon guys in the opposing team’s jerseys. So I watch the screens and I listen to the sounds the booth projects through the stadium: the snippets of songs, the ba-da-da-da-da-da! that gets us all to shout “CHARGE!” and the fight song that plays when we all sing.
The more I watch and listen, the more nervous I get about what I’m planning to do at halftime.
It’s important, though. Unless I do something big and daring, J.J. will avoid me until we graduate and any chance of us having a future will be gone. I’m going to do something crazy, but I’ll do it for the greater good, and it’ll make things better. Just like I made things better for Ames, and Sean, and my mom, and Carrie, and Jack. This is a proven formula that works!
As halftime nears, I excuse myself, ostensibly to hit the restrooms, but instead I head to the A/V booth. I find Tom inside with three other people from the A/V group, all of whom hoot and applaud when I walk in.
“You’ve got guts, girl,” says Emma Stubens, a girl in a red-checked romper and thick-rimmed glasses. “I like that.”
Emma walks with purpose in my direction, getting so close I think she wants to hug me. I awkwardly put out my arms, but she ignores them and clips a small microphone to the spaghetti strap of my turquoise tank. Then she hands me a little box. “The mic is wireless. The box goes in your back pocket. When you hear the music start, flip the switch.” She shows me a tiny “on” switch on the box. “Then you’re live.”
“Ben Yates is already down there with a camera,” Tom says. “He’s got a great zoom, so he can stay far enough away that he won’t spoil anything. You ready?”
I take a deep breath and blow it out. “Yeah,” I say. “I’m good.”
“Sweet,” Tom says. “You’re up right after the marching band. Better get in place.”
I nod, then thank everyone and rush out of the booth. I check my phone and look once more at the text Jack sent me with his and J.J.’s section. It’s on the other side of the stadium from where I am now, but I have time. The air horn signaling halftime just blew, and I can hear the marching band make their way onto the field. I swim upstream through an endless river of people heading for the bathrooms and snacks, then take a position a few rows back from Jack and J.J.’s seats. I tuck myself behind a support beam so they won’t see me if they turn around. I peer out to check on them…but Jack’s there alone. For just a second I freak out and I’m about to call Tom and cancel everything when I realize Jack would have told me in his text if J.J. wasn’t there. He’s at the game; he just got up for halftime.
I shift anxiously from side to side as the marching band plays and I watch for J.J. What if he doesn’t come back before it’s time? I can’t do this if he’s not there. I’ll have to call the whole thing off.
Finally, I see him coming back toward his seat, his arms full of a giant tub of popcorn and two sodas. He sits next to Jack just as the band finishes their final note and the stadium erupts with the kind of hoots and applause the marching band never gets unless there’s a giant board with graphics telling everyone to “Scream! Real! Loud!”
My heart is thumping so loud it echoes in my ears. There’s just two minutes left of halftime, and they’re all me.
“And now,” Emma Stubens’s voice echoes through the stadium, “a special message of love and reconciliation from one of our own. You go, girl!”
I freeze. Why did she say that? I didn’t tell her to say that! But now I hear the music, and I see everyone in the whole stadium looking around and craning their necks and twisting in their seats, and I see the big screens filled with me. Or more specifically, the pole I’m hiding behind, with wisps of my orange hair and purple-and-turquoise clothes peeking out from it.
The box, I think. I need to turn on the box.
I dig it out of my back pocket and manage to flick it on, but my hands are so shaky I drop it, sending a massive SQUEE of feedback through the loudspeakers.
“Sorry!” My voice echoes through the crowd as I retrieve the box and slip it in my back pocket. The music has already moved slightly ahead of where I was supposed to start. I have to jump in now or I never will. I step out from behind the pole…and sing.
“Your eyes on mine, the day we met…”
It’s the opening line of Kyler Leeds’s “As You Wish,” the song he wrote to help me express how I feel about J.J. I downloaded the karaoke version and sent it to Tom, so that’s what I’m singing to. At the time Kyler wrote it, the song was all about how much I loved J.J. as a friend. For this occasion, though, I tweaked some of the words to make it clear that it’s not just friendship I want anymore. Now it’s a song that says loud and clear that I’ve seen the light, and J.J. is the one I want forever.
As I sing, I walk slowly down the aisles, making my way to J.J., and I quickly realize a few things:
1. I’m a horrible singer. Oh, sure, I’m awesome when I’m in the shower belting at the top of my lungs. Or screaming along to the radio? No one better. But now that I hear my voice echoing back to me through the stadium loudspeakers, I hear it’s small and tinny and kinda off-key. Plus I’m so busy listening to myself echo back to me that I’m always a little behind the actual music and have to rush words together in bunches to catch up.
2. It is majorly distracting having my face staring back at me, giant-sized, from two stadium screens. Not only is it eerie, but I also keep catching glimpses of myself that make me realize I probably need a consult with a professional hair and makeup artist. I mean, I’ve always thought I was pretty good at those things, and I get the Amalita Seal of Approval, which is huge, but there’s nothing like seeing myself in Jumbotron to get the full effect.
3. I’m a klutz. Which means I can’t walk through the aisles and stare at my screen-self at the same time without tripping and stumbling. It happens at least six times, and each time I catch myself on someone sitting in an aisle. This leads to spilled sodas, popcorns, and in one case a spilled hot dog that somehow splatters ketchup and mustard all over my purple T-shirt.
4. “As You Wish” was a pretty big hit for Kyler…last year. Now everyone’s over it and they think it’s pretty cheesy.
All these things combine to make the next minute not quite what I had in mind. I’d kind of imagined everything would stop and the whole stadium would hold their breath while they watched me make this grand gesture that any one of them would die to have happen to them. Instead I’m pretty sure no one can hear my tweaked-out lyrics because they’re drowned out by people booing, laughing, or shouting helpful notes like “Go home!” and “Train wreck!”
I decide not to hear any of it. I concentrate on J.J. I see him, just a few rows down from me. He’s staring, jaw dropped, clearly impressed by what I’m willing to go through just to prove how I feel. I lock eyes with him—which makes me trip even more as I make way to his tier, but whatever, can’t be helped—and emphasize all my changed words so he will hear them, even if no one else does, and he’ll know exactly how much he means to me.
&n
bsp; I get to his row—of course he’s sitting in the middle—and have to skip a few bars of the song to sidle past everyone else. “Excuse me…excuse me…coming through…sorry, excuse me…” But then I’m at his side. He’s in his seat, I’m smiling down at him, and I finish the last line of the song (the shortened song—I cut it down since I knew I had limited time): “Aaaaaas youuuuuu wish.”
Even with everything, I still kinda expect thunderous applause. It doesn’t come, but nobody’s booing either. It’s like now that I’ve reached my target, the whole stadium really is holding its breath, waiting to see what’ll happen next.
“J.J.,” I say, and the words echo back to me a million times over. I know what I want to say next, but it’s hard. Not because I don’t feel it, but because I feel it so much I don’t even know if I can get the words out without crying. To help me, I think about the moment I saw in the future, with him proposing. I smile and the words spill out easily. “I’m in love with you. I was in love with you even when I thought I wasn’t. You’re my best friend in the world. And I came out here to tell you that in front of everyone. And to ask you, ‘Can iguana wet goo?’ ”
J.J. looks at me blankly, as does I’m pretty sure the entire stadium.
“It means—”
“ ‘Can we go out again?’ ” J.J. says.
Explosive fireworks of happiness erupt inside me. “Yes!” I shout. “We can!”
I lean down to throw my arms around him, but he jumps up and recoils away.
“No,” he says firmly, and he’s close enough to my mic now that his words echo through the stadium. “I was saying I get the anagram—‘Can we go out again?’ But I’m not insane, Autumn. I’m done. The answer is no.” He turns as if he’s going to walk away, then changes his mind and leans close again. “And if you really want to do ‘as I wish’? Never make me hear that song again!”
The stadium erupts into cheers and applause. Now J.J. turns his back on me, pushes his way through the aisle, and storms out of the stadium, the camera on his back the whole way. I’m still staring after him in shock when the air horn blows and the football teams race onto the field to start the second half.
