by Meg Leder
I hated that small part of my heart.
As I reached for my chemistry book from my locker, I saw a hole in the armpit of the shirt I was wearing—my favorite, a vintage They Might Be Giants T-shirt—the perfect crescendo to the morning’s symphony of crappiness. I picked up the subway token from the chain under my shirt and rubbed it between my thumbs, praying to the Bearded Lady: Please, let me spontaneously combust like some boring old Dickens character (Note: Bleak House, you are the worst). Right now, in the hallway, before I have to go to chemistry.
I waited.
Nothing.
Instead I heard an anxious voice say my name.
I turned and Audrey was standing there, hugging her books against her chest. She met my eyes and shifted from foot to foot anxiously. Her brown eyes were big and watery, like she was a deer caught out.
I broke eye contact, pretending to be really focused on putting the books from my bag in my locker.
“Hey, Pen, can we talk?”
I shrugged.
“I’m really sorry about yesterday. Everything I was saying was coming out wrong, and I hate that things are weird with us—it feels really, really terrible.”
Inside me I felt something small and invisible relax just a little bit.
“I feel pretty terrible too,” I admitted, meeting her gaze this time.
She brightened slightly, her face cautiously opening, tentative sun after a storm.
“I’m so glad I found you this morning. Cherisse told me I should give it some time, but I didn’t feel right waiting—”
“Wait, you talked to Cherisse about us?”
“Well, yeah, she was there when you left yesterday . . .”
“Did you tell her about me and Keats?”
She nodded carefully, but her voice was steady. “She’s my friend, Pen. I was upset about our fight. Of course I talked with her.”
I turned back to my locker, chewing on my lip and feeling a mortifying impulse to burst into tears.
Instead I said, “I wish you weren’t friends with Cherisse. I wish you’d just pick me.”
I immediately wanted to take it back. I hated how pathetic I sounded. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t nice. It wasn’t who Audrey and I were. But before I could say anything, Audrey shook her head at me.
“God, it’s really hard to be your friend sometimes. You know that? I can be friends with more than you and Eph! You can too! You have this stupid set of expectations and rules about how everyone should act and how life should be, and they’re so damn impossible, you shut out everything.” She choked back an angry sob, her face red. “You know what? Cherisse doesn’t make me watch David Lynch movies. Cherisse likes to go dancing and try new things. Cherisse called my grandma to see how she was doing in her new home. And you know what else? Cherisse isn’t fixated on some stupid unrealistic Leonardo DiCaprio movie we watched in seventh grade.”
I clapped my hand over my mouth. “If it’s so hard to be my friend, then maybe we shouldn’t be friends anymore,” I said, my eyes stinging.
Her face went stunned and white, like I’d slapped her, like I’d pulled out her heart instead of mine. I turned toward chemistry, leaving behind Tonka trucks and Vivien and Delphine and M&M’S.
I waited for her to call my name.
The first bell rang.
I listened.
The second bell rang.
I felt Eph’s subway token against my chest.
At that point the Bearded Lady sent me a little gift. It wasn’t the bursting into unexplainable flames I’d been hoping for, but it was a spark.
I was angry.
Yesterday Audrey should have been excited for me, not judgmental.
And Cherisse was mean and terrible and I didn’t want to be around her at all, and if she was such a good friend, Audrey could keep her.
Maybe we shouldn’t be friends anymore. Maybe that was just better.
And I was going to talk to Keats, today, right now—bad morning, Cherisse history, armpit hole be danged.
When I stepped inside the classroom, I saw him sitting by the window, so I sucked in my breath, made sure I held the sleeve with the armpit hole close against my side, and slid into the desk in front of him.
Talk to him. Talk to him.
“Hey, Keats,” I said.
He met my eyes and I held my breath, and oh man, there it was: that half smile, that slight turn up of one side of his grin.
“Hey, Scout.”
The fire sparked further, bolder, encouraged.
“So, how’d the rest of the party go?” I asked, making myself talk slowly, trying to ignore the way all the blood in my body was rushing to the very tips of me.
He rolled his eyes. “There was puke in the backyard and two busted wine glasses, but I got everyone cleared out by four and no cops, so all in all, not so bad.”
“Oh, good, good. It was a really good party, good and all, um . . . ,” I said, thinking, Don’t be pathetic—stop saying “good”!
Mrs. Carroll entered the room and began handing out quizzes.
He cleared his throat. “So, how’s On the Road going?”
“Thanks for that, by the way! I haven’t started yet, but I’m planning to tonight.”
His face fell. “You hate it, don’t you? First I forget your name at the party, then I give you a book you hate . . .”
“No! I honestly haven’t started it yet. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to give you the wrong impression, honestly.”
He shook his head. “Really? You don’t hate it? Because my ex, Emily, hated it.”
Turns out Keats was a little bit nervous too.
“No, I haven’t even cracked the spine. I’m sure I’m going to fall totally in love with it.”
His eyes widened at the phrase, and I clamped my mouth shut and turned around.
A big bucket of water fell on the little spark that couldn’t.
What was wrong with me?
From the front of the room Mrs. Carroll cleared her throat. “Let’s start with last night’s reading. Who wants to tell me about covalent bonds?”
I am pathetic, I thought, the words cold and final.
But then, from behind, someone took my hand and pressed something into it, something small and square, folding my fingers over it one by one.
A shiver ran up my arm.
A small miracle.
I slid my hand into my lap and opened the tiny square as the girl in front of me raised her hand and started reciting facts about electron pairs and valences.
COFFEE ON SATURDAY? I WANT TO HEAR MORE ABOUT KEROUAC.
2PM, CAFE GITANE, SOHO?
K
Sunshine exploded in my heart and out my mouth and my ears and from my chest, and it blinded everyone in the class, setting the world on fire.
I turned my head slightly over my shoulder.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“It’s a date, Scout.”
My heart was a goner.
• • •
I left chemistry ablaze with miracles and luck, waving good-bye to Keats as he walked down the hallway, then waving again. I hated the word “squee,” but at that second I couldn’t think of a better description for what I wanted to do.
I had to find Audrey. The note was in the palm of my hand, like a talisman, like an honest-to-God real-life miracle, and I wanted to show her Keats’s handwriting—proof it was happening—so we could erase the fight, so everything could go back to normal, the way it always had been.
But when I got to the cafeteria, PB&J and Diet Coke in hand, she was sitting across from Cherisse.
I stopped, watching them.
Cherisse was making funny faces at Audrey, and even though Audrey clearly had been crying earlier—her face was puffy and her makeup streaked—she was currently laughing so hard she was holding her stomach like it hurt.
Backing up, before Audrey could see me, I turned and walked down the hall. It was too chilly to sit outside. Eph didn’t have the same lunch period
as me. As far as I could tell, Keats wasn’t in my lunch period, but even if he were, how weird and stalkery would that be? Hey, you asked me out but I don’t have anyone else to sit with so can I sit with you? And forget a bathroom stall—every time I saw someone do that in movies, I couldn’t stop thinking about how gross it was.
I was so busy freaking out about where to eat, I didn’t realize I had stopped in front of a doorway until someone said, “You joining us for Nevermore, Penelope?”
Mr. Garfield, my English teacher, was waiting behind me, holding a lunch tray, beard crinkled around his smile. He was my favorite teacher, despite the aforementioned Bleak House assignment.
“I didn’t know you did this,” I said.
“I’m their advisor, though they can handle it without me. I’m only here for tiebreaker purposes, which happens more than you might think.” He motioned me in. “Come on . . . it’d be nice to have another neutral party.”
When I entered, Grace grinned hugely.
“Hey, Penelope! So happy to see you! You joining us? Grab a chair.”
The room we were in was tiny, with crowded bulletin boards, a giant poster of a raven, and a mess of papers on a round table.
“Guys, this is Penelope, the most generous donor from the Dead Poets Phone Drive, as well as a fellow attender of parties. You remember Miles?”
Miles’s Mohawk was currently tipped green, and he was wearing a Joy Division T-shirt. “Nice one,” he said, nodding appreciatively at my They Might Be Giants shirt.
I blushed. “Thanks. You too.”
“This is Oscar,” Grace said, pointing to the short guy with close-cropped black curly hair, and wire-rimmed, dadlike glasses. “He’s our new art director.”
“Hey,” he said.
“And May,” Grace said, as the tall girl across from me stretched her hand out, “is our esteemed copy editor.”
“Hi,” I said, shaking her hand, admiring the several dozen chunky silver rings she had on.
“You know Mr. Garfield, I’m guessing?”
He was at his desk, settling back with a stack of blue composition notebooks.
“Yeah, I’m in his junior English lit class.”
“Oh God, Bleak House?” Miles asked.
“You’ll thank me during the AP test,” Mr. Garfield said sternly, lowering his glasses.
Hated it, Miles mouthed to me.
“So this is how this works. We all have copies of the same stuff to read, so each submission gets at least four people reviewing it,” Grace explained.
“Five today with you,” Oscar added.
“And each submission is numbered—no contributor information—so you can read without knowing who wrote it,” Grace said. “That way the entry can stand on its own merits, whether the creator is your best friend or your archnemesis from third grade.”
“Misty Cooper,” Miles said. “Asked me why I didn’t wear dresses.”
“Pete Franklin,” I replied without missing a beat. “Asked me why my nose was ugly.”
“Bastard person,” Miles said disgustedly.
“All right, enough talking, people,” Grace said.
Miles wiggled his eyebrows at me. “I think she means us.”
“Sorry,” I said to Grace, as she handed each of us a stack of submissions. She smiled, shaking her head. “It’s not you.”
“I can hear you, Gracie.”
She ignored him. “Remember, check ‘publish-worthy,’ ‘not sure,’ or ‘nope’ on a reader report after you finish an entry. And anything you want to talk or share or ask about, feel free to bring up now, though we’ll also leave the last fifteen minutes to go over stuff.”
Thirty minutes later I was in a groove. I loved everything about the process: reading the overwrought, melodramatic heartbreak poems and the words in a short story that took my breath away, Oscar’s appreciative nods over a beautiful black-and-white photo of a tree, May pointing out humorous typos, even Grace and Miles arguing passionately about whether or not to run a collage featuring hundreds of Miley Cyrus faces—small and big, upside down and cut apart, glitter in between.
“It’s rad,” Grace said.
“Hate it,” Miles said.
“I don’t know,” May said, chewing on the edge of a pencil.
“Who’s Miley Cyrus?” Oscar asked without looking up from the photos he was shifting back and forth on the table.
Miles’s pen clattered on the table. “What? You’re kidding, right?”
Oscar looked up and seemed surprised to see the entire staff looking at him.
“Hannah Montana? ‘Party in the USA’? ‘Wrecking Ball’? Billy Ray Cyrus’s daughter?” Miles asked.
Oscar scrunched his face. “Is Billy Ray Cyrus that Republican guy from Texas?”
Miles threw his head in his hands, muttering, “How is this even possible?”
Oscar glanced at Miles and shrugged, then winked at the rest of us, something sly and secret and unexpected.
Grace burst out laughing. “You are totally messing with us, aren’t you?”
Miles looked up, confused, while May leaned across and high-fived Oscar. He raised an eyebrow archly at Miles.
“Third row at Madison Square Garden last month,” he said.
Miles opened his mouth to say something, shut it, opened it, and shut it again. When he was flummoxed, all his villainous looks disappeared, and his face got super red.
“I say we vote,” Grace said. “All for including it?”
She and Oscar raised their hands.
“Nos?”
May raised hers reluctantly, and Miles, starting to recover, shot his arm straight up.
“What d’you think, Penelope?” May asked, turning to me, her long hair shadowing the desk, and I could tell she genuinely wanted to know.
“Well, it could just be fan art,” I said.
Miles nodded vehemently in agreement, his Mohawk bobbing. “See?” he said to Grace and Oscar, lingering a little longer on Oscar’s face.
“But you can also read it as a commentary on celebrity, and how there are so many images of things, we lose who the real person is.”
“Exactly!” Grace said.
“So, I think yes. Sorry, guys.”
“Ugh,” Miles said, burying his head in his hands.
“Overruled, Miles and May,” Mr. Garfield called from his desk, as Grace added the image to the yes pile and Oscar looked quietly triumphant. “And it’s about time to wrap up . . . ten minutes till first bell.”
I started gathering the extra copies for the recycling bin.
“So how was the rest of the party on Saturday? Did you find your friends?” Grace asked.
“Actually, I got to talk to the guy throwing the party for a while.” I tried to keep my voice nonchalant. “He’s pretty nice.”
Miles shoved a stack of submissions in Grace’s arms. “Pretty nice? Please. I can tell by the way you’re all sparkly. You like him.”
I blushed and my smile got all big.
“How did you know?”
“Psychic.”
Grace laughed. “I think it’s more the fact that he recognizes a fellow romantic when he sees one. You guys are like a club.”
Miles rolled his eyes at Grace, but when she turned back to what she was reading, he winked at me. Little bluebirds of happiness danced around me, making me dizzy.
“Speaking of, Miles, any sighting of Starbucks Guy?” May asked.
Miles let out a weary sigh. “No. But I forgot to tell you he was wearing those awesome double-laced black leather Converse last week. He has the best taste in footwear.”
“Converse are supposed to be really bad for your arches,” Oscar called out nonchalantly.
For the second time that afternoon, Miles opened his mouth and shut it, speechless.
May wiggled her eyebrows at us, pointing in Oscar’s general direction and giving him a thumbs-up before following him out the door.
“Holy Batman, he’s knocked all the infinite words righ
t out of you,” Grace said.
“No, he hasn’t!” Miles burst out, then blushed. “God, that was loud, sorry.”
“You were saying about Starbucks Guy . . . ,” I prompted.
He gave me a grateful look. “I’m not asking Starbucks Guy out yet because I have to wait for the perfect moment.”
“No such thing as the perfect moment in real life,” Grace said. “If I had waited for the perfect moment with Kieran, he would never have asked me out!”
Miles narrowed his eyes at her. “Ick.”
“I’m with Miles on this one,” I said.
“I forgive you for the Miley vote,” he immediately offered.
“Don’t encourage him,” Grace said sternly.
“I think . . . ,” I started, thinking of Eph’s parents, of Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet, of Jack and Rose, of Keats. “I believe in meant to be . . . that when you find the right person, it’s a little bit like opening the door to Narnia—it’s all lampposts and snow and Turkish delight. It’s meant to be.”
Miles grinned and clapped his hands.
Grace smacked her forehead. “Pen, Edmund has to be a slave to the White Witch. Mr. Tumnus gets turned to stone. The lion dies.”
“Okay, bad metaphor,” I said, right as Miles said, “Willing suspension of disbelief, Gracie. Remember from sophomore English class?”
“That doesn’t even make sense,” she pointed out.
Miles glared at her and grabbed his stuff. “Good-bye, Pen. I will miss you and you alone in this room.”
“You know I love you, Miles,” Grace called out at his retreating form.
“Um,” I started sheepishly, chewing on my lip, suddenly nervous even though everyone had been so nice. “Can I join you guys again?”
Grace grinned. “Of course! Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday—and on Fridays Mr. Garfield gets us pizza.”
“Thanks!”
“See you around, Penelope,” Mr. Garfield called from behind a stack of papers as Grace waved.
As I walked to World History, I couldn’t stop smiling.
I tried, literally, but the corners of my mouth kept pulling up and my Docs felt like they had coils on the bottom, like the potential for springs in my step was now infinite.
