by Cyn Balog
My flip-flops touch down on the sidewalk and I look at them like they’re alien feet. They’re ever so cute, but they can’t belong to my body. My body would have had the sense to stay home today. To stay home forever.
My heart is drumming out a Sousa march. I plaster a fake-confident smile on my face and carefully navigate around a few people, whose backs are to me. A girl in one tight circle runs her fingers through her long hair, and they catch on a knot at the very end so that when she pulls her hand loose, she does it with such force that she accidentally scrapes my cheek with her vulture claws. Ouch, ouch, ouch! It’s like someone sliced my cheek with a razor blade. She turns, smiling, as if to say, “Sorry,” but then decides not to when she realizes it’s just me. I rub the skin over my mouth, then inspect my fingers. Blood. The hoochie with the fingernails of death has drawn blood. Drawn blood and not even apologized.
And it isn’t just a little scratch. I feel something wet sliding down my chin, a few drops collecting there before diving off onto the concrete. As I’m searching through my bag for a tissue, I tilt my head, so the blood starts to slide down my neck, onto my frilly white blouse. Were those fingernails or miniature chain saws?
I clamp the tissue over my cheek, but not soon enough. A few people notice. They break out of the circles, not to offer me a Band-Aid, but to gawk. Even the girl with the mongo fingernails turns to look, batting her eyelashes innocently, as if she has no idea what happened. “Um,” someone says, tugging on my sleeve. I turn to see a cute freshman, wide-eyed, innocent, giving me a wholesome, friendly Noxzema-faced grin.
Finally, someone to offer a nice word. “Yes?”
She points to my middle. “Your fly is open.”
I look down. It isn’t just my fly that’s open. That would be an easy fix. Below my frilly blouse, my jeans are sitting there, wide open, on my hips. You can see my orange underwear. A flashback of Wish seeing my peace undies in the restroom of the Cellarton Country Club floods my mind. The tissue in my hand flutters to the floor and I hoist the jeans up toward my waist, then try to button them. But I can’t. The button must have popped off somewhere. And without that button, the zipper can’t hold the fort. Without that button, the pants are doomed to go the way of the Alamo.
Little freshman goes back to her group, but they’re still all laughing and whispering. By then, I have a bit of an audience. A few more drops of blood hit the pavement. I clasp together my pants with one hand, then lean over to grab the tissue I dropped. Because my books are so heavy, I nearly topple forward as I do, and force myself right into the middle of one of the closed circles, one of the only closed circles that heretofore had been unaware of my existence.
“Gwen?”
It’s almost like a beam of sunlight falls upon me before I even raise my head, because I begin to feel warm and feverish at once. I close my eyes. Oh, no. No. No. No.
I take a breath. Another. And straighten. And turn toward him.
“Um. Hi.”
13
THE MORNING AIR of early September is cool, but my face is all asizzle. My body starts to ache, starting with a pounding in my head. I hear some voices, a little laughter in my ears, but I can’t tell if the titters are directed at me. My vision is blurred, and I can’t lift my eyes from a lopsided smiley face that my blood has made on the cement between my feet. Even my own bodily fluids seem to find the humor in this situation.
“Damn, Gwen, are you okay?” His voice is a lot smoother in person, when it’s not distorted by the crackle of the phone. I still can’t bring myself to look at him, but I feel his hand on the sleeve of my blouse. He gently tugs me toward an empty bench and sits me down. “What happened?”
I’m still holding on to my pants for dear life. When I sit, I let them go and, saying a prayer of thanks for my having worn a loose, flowy shirt with lots of extra material, billow my blouse out in front of me so that my undies don’t show. Then I stare at my lap, trying to muster up the courage to peek at him. Meanwhile, I feel my temperature rising, the back of my neck burning as if it’s against an open flame. I don’t think I can live if I see disappointment in his face. Finally, I do it. I look up.
Just for a second.
And it’s him, but not him. Not the Wish I knew way back when. The eyes are the same shape, the nose, too, but everything else is foreign. I’ve seen this Wish in pictures, but pictures never convey a whole person. He has more definition to his jawline, light stubble on his chin, and a perfectly even California tan. His skin is exquisite—it almost looks airbrushed—which is weird considering that when he left four years ago, he was already starting to get acne. Now he looks like he doesn’t even have pores. Maybe if I squint just right, I can see past the golden aura surrounding him. Maybe, somewhere, I can find the geeky boy from elementary school. Please?
“I got … mauled,” I say, pointing to my face. I’m about to point to my stomach and my problem there, but I stop myself. Do I really want him looking at my stomach? “And, um, having a wardrobe malfunction.”
“Do you need stitches?” he asks. “Here. Let me see.”
A couple of guys from his group, who were gawking at the whole sordid incident, turn away. One slaps him on the back and says, “See you, man.” Wish gives a nod, gently places his hand on the bloody tissue clamped onto my face, then puts a finger on my chin. I flinch; his touch feels like a red-hot poker. “Ouch.”
He quickly removes his hand and gives me a sheepish look. “Oh. Sorry.”
People begin to filter through the doors, and I still can’t look at him. I look up, at one of the downspouts coming off the roof of the school. It is badly in need of repair and obviously very exciting. Then I look at his shirt. It’s a long-sleeved black oxford, buttoned all the way up to the neck. Since it’s still eighty degrees out, that’s kind of weird, but who am I to talk about weirdness? He’s sitting beside me, so close, looking at the scratch on my face, but I can’t look any higher than the collar of his shirt. Why can’t I look at him?
“It’s stopped bleeding,” he says, crumpling the tissue in his hand. “As for the wardrobe malfunction …”
“I have shorts in my gym locker,” I say, eyes fastened on the dingy gray brickwork outside the building. “I can get them after homeroom.”
“You have a shirt, too?” he asks, his finger moving toward me. At first I think he’s going to touch me with his red-hot-poker fingers, which will likely make me pee my pants, but instead he just points at my arm, where a couple of quarter-sized bloodstains are already starting to turn brown on my white blouse.
“Oh. Yeah.”
“Okay, then. Cool. Everything else okay? What’s up with your eye?”
I think one of them might be twitching from the stress. Great, I look totally insane; I might as well wear my backpack on my head and start bock-bock-bocking like a chicken and complete the picture. I blink. “Nothing.”
“It’s good to see you,” he says brightly. “Finally.”
“Oh, I know,” I say, even though I’m really not doing much “seeing” of him. “I …”
He moves closer to me, maybe coming in for a hug. It nearly makes me jump off the bench. This is all incredibly weird. I slide off the seat, clutching my hands over my midsection to keep my pants up. “I’d better get to homeroom,” I say, but my mouth feels thick and numb, so it comes out like “hummer rum.” Kill me now.
“Wait, when can we compare schedules? Do we have any classes together?” He springs up next to me, and I realize how tall he’s gotten. He could probably rest his chin on the top of my head. This is a good thing; I can look at his chest instead of into his face, since that’s what’s at eye level. But how did his chest get to be so big? Beyond the shirt that used to hang lifelessly over his bony limbs are … muscles?
Okay, yeah. I was expecting him to be hot. I knew he’d be out of my league. But I don’t think anything could have prepared me for this. Even if I were still my skinny old self, I’d be self-conscious. Wish isn’t just hot. He’s beau
tiful.
And even stranger, he hasn’t yet run away screaming from me. He wants to compare schedules with me. As in see me again.
Which, for some reason, makes me want to run away screaming from him.
“Um. After homeroom?” I enunciate the word slowly, like I’m learning to pronounce it for the first time.
He nods. “Yeah. I’ll meet you outside the girls’ locker room.”
I expect him to finish that off with a “Not!” but he doesn’t. He just stands there, and as I’m beginning to believe that this is an imposter, not my best friend, he begins to fidget. I’d know the Wish Fidget anywhere; it’s goofy and awkward and always used to make me laugh, but somehow, on this version of Wish, it’s ultra-adorable. I try to look up to his eyes, but only make it as far as the brown sugar stubble on his chin before I chicken out. Wish has stubble. Wish has become a full-grown god, while I’ve become a logo for snack cakes.
We stand there for a moment longer, both kind of fidgeting now, and then I realize something. What was the first thing he wanted to do when he saw me? The thing he’s been waiting for all these years?
Oh, hell.
I start to hyperventilate. My breath is sweet with maple syrup, from the Eggo I had earlier today. Guess it could be worse. But since yesterday, I’ve gnawed my lips to sandpaper.
“Um, yeah,” I mutter. It must be the most awkward parting line in history. Then I just turn and waddle away, dragging my pants and packed bag of books with me.
14
MY PINK SWEAT SHORTS are only slightly better than my popped-open jeans with a window to my undies. They’re hopelessly tight, clinging to the folds around my hips like plastic wrap over Silly Putty. My legs poke out of them like two buffet lines filled with nothing but cottage cheese. I’m not sure what Wish was thinking earlier when he met me outside, but maybe there was sun glare or his sense of reason was thrown off by the six-hour plane ride. Of course, when he sees me looking like an aerobics instructor who accidentally Botoxed her butt, he will probably come to his senses.
I step outside, yanking the shorts down as far as I possibly can manage without allowing my stomach to spring free of the waistband. These shorts give me a major crotch wedgie. Yes, this will make Wish wake up. There is no man alive who can be turned on by a crotch wedgie.
I see him down the hallway. Actually, I don’t see him; I just see the burnt orange shock of hair that belongs to him peeking out from the middle of a crowd of girls. Well, not exactly a crowd, but three. As I get closer, I realize that two of them are Erica and Terra. There’s also a girl named Destiny, who bears an uncanny resemblance to Barbie, right down to the skinny waist that cannot possibly hold all the required internal organs. Terra whinnies loudly, her horse nostrils flaring. Erica stares up at Wish with sultry, “take me now” eyes. Wish isn’t really looking at them; he’s telling them about his eventful plane ride and is completely into his story, gesturing with both hands in classic Wish fashion. He could always spin a great yarn. But he’d always been the funny Mr. Personality, not Mr. GQ. Still, as I get closer, I can almost make out a little glistening something in the corner of Erica’s mouth.
I stand outside the circle, ready to bolt down the hall, when Wish notices me. There’s no sun glare or bad lighting or large objects in the way or anything whatsoever that would stop him from seeing me in all my chunky glory, but contrary to what I was expecting, no disgust registers on his face. “Oh, hey, Gwen, what’s the name of that place in Princeton? Where we used to get the ice cream?”
Three sets of eyes turn in unison to glare at me. And is it me, or do they all narrow to evil slits?
“Um. Thomas Sweet,” I squeak, remembering when his mother, who was working on her thesis, would take us up there on Saturdays. We would walk around the campus, eating giant vanilla Blend-Ins with M&M’s and Butterfinger and Oreo pieces until we nearly puked. I’m kind of flattered that he can remember it, that he can think of anything at all with Erica’s sex eyes focused on him.
“Right. So yeah, they make the best ice cream. Like, sell-your-mother-for-it good. And then this guy in the seat next to me says …”
Wish yanks me into the circle, where I stand like an uneven table. At that point I lose track of the story. I lose track of pretty much everything, including how to breathe, because I begin to hyperventilate again. I have no idea what the bridge was between his plane ride here and Thomas Sweet, but I don’t care. Those three sets of eyes keep trailing toward me, running over the length of my body, narrowing and widening whenever they stop on my goose-pimply white legs. Clearly, I have invaded their circle. The story seems to go on forever; then finally he gets to the punch line and the girls laugh at him like they’re on speed. I muster a few polite “heh’s.”
Then, suddenly, all four sets of eyes trail back to me. Uncomfortable silence sets in.
“Hey!” Wish says, pulling me to his side like I’m his bookend. “You guys know Gwen, don’t you?”
Erica and Destiny mumble yeses, and Terra blurts out the sunniest, fakest “Oh, yeah, hey!” She reaches over and swipes her ice-cold hand over my arm as if she’s flicking dust from it. “What’s up?”
Nobody seems to notice the irony. Wish, who has been away for years, introducing me. Me. As if he’s been here all along and I just arrived from Planet Fat.
More uncomfortable silence. Finally, Wish says something like “I’ll catch you later,” and the girls head down the hallway, whispering, shoulders touching. I am sure words like “hottie” and “gorgeous” are being freely batted about.
I turn toward Wish and he’s looking at me. Again, I dart my eyes away. “You okay?” he asks.
He probably keeps asking that because I look anything but. “Great,” I mutter.
He reaches into the pocket of his baggy pants and pulls out a folded sheet of paper. “Your schedule?”
“Oh.” I search clumsily through my bag and pull it out. There are a crushed Skittle and one of my mousy brown hairs attached to it, but I pick them off and hand it over.
He studies the papers. For a minute I think he must be carefully deciding how to diplomatically tell his hippo girlfriend to buzz off, but then he says, “Cool! We have lunch together.” Then he shrugs. “Nothing else, though. Why do you have to be so smart?”
“Er …” I’m so smart that speech escapes me. “You’re in honors precalc; I’m in honors English.”
See? I’m not smarter, just different.
“Still, lunch is good.”
Oh, sure, lunch is just great. After sitting alone for the entire period yesterday, I planned to eat the rest of my lunches in the music wing bathroom. Now Wish will probably encourage me to sit with Terra and Erica and other people I clearly don’t fit in with, and they’ll likely spend the entire time watching me and my cheese sandwich and wondering why we infiltrated their lofty domain. My sandwich and I would much prefer the company of a toilet.
“Well, I’d better get going to English for Dummies. You’d better get going to …” He checks my schedule. “Ooh. Creative writing. Write a poem about me, okay?”
I stand there in my little shorts, dumbfounded. Why is he acting like there’s nothing wrong with this picture? Like everything’s exactly as we left it?
He clears his throat, then looks down at his shirt and adjusts his cuffs as if he’s self-conscious. Then he grins at me, and for the second time today, my eyes briefly meet his. Gorgeous as they are, there’s something not right about them. Somehow it seems like he’s not all there. Like he’s looking through me.
But he has to see it. Has to. Right?
15
AT LUNCH, I skulk through the cafeteria doors late. I purposely spent a few extra minutes at my locker, because I didn’t want to get there first and have Wish see everyone whizzing around to avoid me like I’m a smoking car in the breakdown lane. The moment I walk in, Wish waves to me with both arms. He’s excited to see me. How can that be? Do I have season passes to the Flyers stapled to my forehead or somethi
ng?
I am acutely aware that the farther away I am from him, the more obvious my cottage-cheese legs are in this horrid fluorescent light. They’re like a beacon in the night. If he’s standing right next to me, it’s harder for him to see them. So that’s why I sprint over to him, like Jesse Owens. It’s only a short trip, but I’m still out of breath by the time I get there.
“There” is a table right in the center of the commotion, where people who don’t mind being seen like to sit. I never venture there. Yet here I am, in all my goose-pimply glory, being given the once-over by two long rows of popular kids. Erica is there, and a bunch of hot guys who don’t know I exist. And—oh, great. Perfect. Rick. He’s farther down the row, surrounded by girls, and he’s the only one besides Wish who doesn’t seem ready to puke because of my presence. Probably because he’s too busy telling a story to his entourage, likely involving himself and his awesomeness.
“Hey, what’s up?” Wish asks casually.
“Um, nothing.” I’m clutching my books so close to my chest that I think my skin might absorb them and they’ll get stuck in my intestines.
He looks around, and I can tell he’s trying to find a seat for me. Nope, no seat. No dice. Guess I’ll just keep my date with the toilet. No biggie.
Then, before I know it, he grabs my sleeve and I lose my balance for a second but end up awkwardly plopping into his lap. But not really into it. I don’t fit neatly into anything. I kind of sit there on one of his knees, balancing precariously. I can’t believe it. I am going to cripple my boyfriend on his very first full day back east.
I can tell that people around the table are just as flabbergasted as I am. Their eyes widen even farther than when the goose-pimply fatty showed up at their table. Erica turns toward the windows, like she’s watching her sterling, geek-free reputation fluttering out of them.
Wish wraps his arms around my fat and pulls me closer, as if he isn’t in the worst pain of his life. He laughs, and his voice is completely unstrained when he says, “There. Problem solved.”
