The Boy Next Story

by Tiffany Schmidt

  This felt like the sort of thing other people just knew. The kind of thing where they’d say, “Who cares, wear whatever.” But the reason they could say “who cares” was that their “whatever” would instinctively be the same as everyone else’s.

  I’d been told to report to the main office, and even stranger than walking across an empty campus was listening to my footsteps echo in the empty hallways. I paused before the dark oak doors, taking a deep breath and swiping my damp palms on my pants before I pushed it open.

  “Sign in.” A bored-looking woman slid a clipboard across the receptionist’s desk. I hadn’t noticed her the only other time I’d been in this office—the day I’d gotten this punishment—but I couldn’t imagine she normally wore a teal sweat suit to work. Her weekend casual wear made this whole scene feel more like a fever dream. Past her desk, through the large windows that overlooked the south hallway, I could see students forming groups and huddling up. I wasn’t late, but apparently I hadn’t known everyone else was showing up early.

  “Hey!” I looked up from my shaky signature to see Huck leaning in the door from the south hallway. I exhaled my relief at seeing any familiar face, but then my stomach clenched as I crossed to him and noticed he was frowning. “Listen, I’m sorry if I came on too strong with the whole Let’s be friends thing yesterday. I hate being the new kid, and it was ten times worse being the new kid in a class full of resentful upperclassmen. I thought you might too.” He paused, waiting for me to contradict him, say anything. But I was too dumbfounded. Was he withdrawing his proposal of friendship? No. Wait. Stop.

  Huck sighed and gave me a small dimpleless smile. “Anyway, you said you didn’t drink coffee and I saw you had this at lunch, so . . . peace offering.”

  I didn’t look to see what he was holding. I was too busy rehearsing what I’d say. It came out as a blurt, the words smearing together. “I-want-to-be-friends-promise!”

  “Oh.” Huck brightened. “Good.”

  I took the bottle of my favorite brand of kombucha and clinked it against the glass of the second one he was holding. “No peace offering necessary. But thanks. Also, you’re really observant, aren’t you?”

  He shrugged sheepishly. “So they say. I don’t mean to notice things; I can’t help it. Also, what is this stuff?” I heard a crinkle of plastic, then a pop! as Huck removed the cap from his bottle. The telltale hiss of carbonation was lost underneath the other students’ chatter. Before I could warn him it was a bit of an acquired taste, he’d taken a huge gulp.

  Then there was a bottle being thrust into my free hand, and he was dashing for the bathroom.

  I was so aware of every pair of eyes that swiveled toward our spectacle. Thanks for that, Huck. My nails made quick work of the labels on the bottles and rang against the glass underneath in a rhythmless jittery beat. I studied the floor. In the administration building—the fanciest on campus—it was marble or some other hard stone that was mottled and swirled in shades from white to gray to black. My nervous habit was to figure out how I’d draw things, and I did that now, picking out shapes and gradients of color, starting at the slab beneath my paint-spattered sneakers and working my way out in ripples.

  “Is he okay?” asked a girl with delicate features and dark skin and hair.

  “I hope so?” I answered, my voice too soft.

  Apparently that was a good enough answer, because people resumed their conversations, only to turn back when Huck reappeared. He gagged and pointed to the bottle he’d handed me. “That’s gone bad.”

  I unscrewed the top. It smelled fine to me, but maybe it had fermented too much? Chancing it, I raised the bottle and took a sip. “It’s fine.”

  “No.” Huck shook his head. “That can’t be how it’s supposed to taste—like ginger, vinegar, and dirty tea. You like that?” He screwed his mouth into a grimace. “Not judging you, just . . . Ugh, I want to scrape it off my tongue.”

  Before I could defend my favorite drink, or tell him he’d basically gotten it right, it was fermented tea, another door opened and out stepped Headmaster Williams. Unlike his receptionist, he had not dressed down for the weekend: navy suit, crisp white shirt, shiny shoes. Even his tie was knotted firmly in place. I’d have to ask Fielding if his dad even owned clothing without creases. He cleared his throat and folded his hands in front of his stomach, waiting for everyone to stop talking and acknowledge his presence.

  “Good morning. I trust you all came ready to work and atone for your misdeeds at the party last weekend. You’ll be working in pairs on a variety of tasks. Line up with your partner and I’ll assign your job.”

  I wanted to stop and say a prayer of gratitude for Huck being dropped into Advanced Art and my life yesterday, because my anxiety was screaming with the could have been of searching for a partner among strangers—but there was no time because the line was forming and he and I were at the end of it. He was still scraping his tongue against his teeth. “They should call it kom-dontcha.”

  I snorted. “That was terrible.”

  He looked pleased with himself. “It really was, wasn’t it? I’m practicing for my distant future as king of the dad jokers.”

  The pair in front of us moved, and suddenly I was face-to-face with Headmaster Williams. One last giggle slipped out before I had time to flip my expression to dread.

  “Miss Campbell, it’s good to see you’re looking properly penitent.” Was that sarcasm? Were headmasters allowed to be sarcastic with their students? I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter—I no longer felt like laughing. “I’ve saved the perfect task for the recalcitrant freshmen.” He looked between Huck and me and amped his disapproval. “You’ll be cleaning the spilled paint off the stage. I’ve had the custodial staff unlock the theater’s janitorial closet. Make sure to test the solvents before you use them. Wouldn’t want you making things worse, would we?”

  I bit the inside of my cheek. Worse? Was that possible?

  If so, I was pretty sure I was capable of achieving it.

  7

  Huck was in charge of testing the different cleaners.

  He did this by sniffing them and rejecting the ones that smelled the worst. I was pretty sure the one he picked was glass cleaner. Or maybe car wash? He dumped the bright blue liquid in a bucket, then filled it with hot water until bubbles cascaded over the top and sloshed with each step as he carried it down the aisle of the theater. He plopped it on the stage, causing suds to slop over and pool beside the dried puddle of yellow paint.

  I followed with an arsenal of brushes, rags, and sponges.

  “Let’s get our scrub on.” Huck clapped once, then paused. “Oh, wait—” He pulled a pair of bright yellow rubber gloves from his back pocket, slipped them on, then clapped again. They matched the paint.

  I shifted restlessly on the stage. Just standing in the same space where Monroe had been so cruel brought out goose bumps on my arms. I’d been a moron for buying into his charm and believing that he’d needed my help to paint backdrops for his Rogue Romeo performance. “I heard you’re the best artist on campus. Merri brags about you nonstop.”

  I kicked at the dried paint. Monroe had wanted me at the party to be a pawn, not an artist. I was part of his revenge plan, payback for my sister breaking up with him. This paint stain was my proof I’d fought back.

  Huck used a scrub brush to push the spilled water onto the paint. It splashed onto my sneakers, making me jump and bringing me back to the present. He grinned up at me. “Want to play the question game?”

  “I have no idea what that means.”

  “I’ll ask you a question, you answer, I answer. You ask me a question and I answer, you answer. Simple.”

  “Sure.” Anything that replaced me having to come up with hours of small talk was an excellent idea. I knelt and picked up a rough sponge, dipping it into the sudsy water and bringing it over to one of the paw prints Gatsby had tracked across the stage during Merri’s rescue mission.

  “Favorite artist—No, that’s t
oo hard. Let’s work up to that.” He tapped a yellow-gloved finger against his lips. “Favorite pasta shape.”

  I laughed. “Angel hair, I guess. Or farfalle, because they look like butterflies.”

  “Cool. I’m a fusilli guy. Your turn.”

  I settled onto my knees and began to scrub. Glass cleaner or car wash, whatever it was might work. “Favorite place on earth?”

  “I’m pretty partial to where we just moved from: Rio Grande.” I made a face and he laughed. “Spelled like the river it’s nowhere near, but pronounced like that, I promise.”

  “Rye-o Grand.” I tried it out and nodded as his outsider status made more sense. “Where is it?”

  “Ohio. Until last month I was a Buckeye. It’s weird coming from a really small town to this. My parents worked at the local university, but they got jobs at schools out here. Mostly because they have tuition reciprocity with more colleges. I bet they wished they’d figured that out before my brother graduated from NYU last year.” He shrugged. “What’s your favorite place?”

  “New York, the city.” My parents loved our town. Merri too. She knew the name of our mailman, of practically every customer who walked through the door of Haute Dog. She definitely knew the names of their dogs. If we went to Cool Beans, they wrote her name on a pink cup before she placed her order. She wanted to grow up, go to college, then come back here—like my parents had.

  I didn’t. I wanted skyscrapers and steel bridges. I wanted subway cars that were too cold in the summer and stifling in the winter and the subway platforms that were the reverse. I wanted galleries and pop-up performances and street art that made me cry. I wanted to get to the point where I could give directions to tourists because I considered myself a local.

  “My turn,” said Huck. “Why were you at the party?”

  “Ha. Um.” Which version of the truth did I share? That Merri had mocked my ability to make my own friends, so I went to spite her? That her ex had flattered me? That Rogue Romeo had sounded like the sort of avant-garde art I wanted to see in New York? Or that I wanted Toby to see me as cooler and older and thought an upperclassman party might help?

  I had dozens of reasons for going, but none of them were Because I wanted to be at the party.

  “Um,” I repeated, studying the bucket of suds, like the answer might be in the bubbles.

  “How about I go first.” He cleared his throat and drummed his yellow gloves on his knees. “I wasn’t invited. I overheard some guys on the lacrosse team talking about it—and I couldn’t deal with another Friday night at home. My friends in Ohio were talking about how great high school was, and my dad was getting on my case about ‘putting myself out there’ . . . so I party-crashed. Whoops.” His voice was light, but the sponge in his left hand was squeezed dry. “The good news is, after getting busted at an upperclassman party and being bumped up to varsity lacrosse, my dad thinks I’m super popular and he’s stopped bugging me.” He turned to the floor and scrubbed it with a vengeance that moved paint. “Your turn.”

  I sat back on my heels and put down my brush. His words had earned some sort of reciprocal honesty and the idea of spilling a truth wasn’t horrible. Because everyone around us had great friends, best friends—people who already knew all their secrets and flaws and had a shared history. I’d always had a collection of acquaintances. I’d spent my life being a really good third wheel. The chance to be someone’s first choice was so tempting it made my throat ache—like friendship was a thirst that confession could quench.

  “I don’t have a good reason. I don’t like meeting new people. Or making stupid small talk. And I mean, I really don’t like it. I have nightmares about the day I’m old enough to work in my parents’ dog boutique alone, because waiting on customers leaves me in a cold sweat. I won’t go get the mail if Mrs. Shadid across the street is watering her plants, because I know she’ll talk to me. Walking into the office this morning—that was way worse than any cleaning task. And every day in art class? I hate it so much.”

  Wait. That was more than I’d meant to share. Once I’d gotten started, I couldn’t stop. I bit my lip to prevent anything else from spilling out.

  He grimaced. “So, the combination of social anxiety and starting at a new school where most of the kids aren’t new to each other . . . that sounds super fun.”

  “It’s the best,” I said with a fake smile. And he didn’t know the half of it, that Merri and I had only been accepted because Lilly’s future mother-in-law had pulled strings. “Especially when in my family, anything less than being super outgoing is classified as an ‘attitude problem’ or ‘being antisocial.’” I swallowed and sat back. “‘Surly’ is another favorite.”

  “Well, I find surly interesting. And you’ve already tried to poison me with kombucha and I’m still here, so . . .” Huck blew a handful of soapsuds at me.

  “I don’t even like parties,” I added. Dangit, Rory, let it go! New topic. “I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I promise I’m not always this awkward.” Shut up. Shut up. Shut up!

  “I’ve got that thing—that Nick Carraway thing from Gatsby—people are always telling me secrets. It’s the dimples.” He flashed them as he dumped more water on the stage and pushed it around with his brush, not noticing the mess he was making. “You and Gatsby have that in common, by the way—the parties thing. Oh, that was a spoiler.” Huck cringed. “Sorry. I read ahead. Should I warn you I’m a nerd like that?”

  “Gatsby, the character we still haven’t met? The one who throws parties that need endless description—that Gatsby doesn’t like them?” I rinsed my scrub brush, then started on a new section of the stain. “How soon until we learn that?” Maybe Ms. Gregoire would think party-hating was an acceptable personal connection?

  “Not too much longer. I thought I’d get ahead before exams. I heard the first round is killer for freshmen—Dante told me they use it to weed out the kids who can’t cut it.”

  Well, that was just fantastic. Maybe once I flunked out of high school I could get a job in paint removal, because my ferocious-anxious scrubbing was pretty effective.

  “My turn.” I was taking this conversation to safer, non-academic topics before I went full-panic. “Favorite animal?”

  “Cat—specifically my cat. Her name is Luna.”

  He won all the points for not being a dog person. “I have a fish and a snail. Klee the Fifth and Ariel the Eighth.”

  “Klee sounds heartier,” Huck commented. “I’m assuming he’s a goldfish?”

  I nodded, loving that he knew the reference. The original Klee and Ariel and the bowl itself had been eighth-birthday gifts from Toby. I’d been obsessed with Paul Klee’s The Goldfish . . . and Disney’s The Little Mermaid.

  Huck rubbed his gloves together; they squeaked and he dimpled. “Celebrity crush?”

  I groaned. I was so bad at all things pop culture. I tried to think of the name of any cute actor or the last movie I’d enjoyed. It was some superhero thing last spring with Toby. “Um, the guy that played Captain America.”

  “Ah, one of the Super Chrises, good choice. I’m more partial to a dark, broody Dr. Strange. Also, Wonder Woman.”

  “My sister has her costume,” I admitted, which was all I knew about the superheroine. “And I can’t remember which guy was Dr. Strange . . . but maybe we could watch it sometime.”

  Huck frowned and my stomach dropped. This was why I never put myself out there; if I never tried to make friends, I could never be rejected.

  “You can’t remember Benedict?” he asked. “That’s a crime against humanity. Name the time and place. I’ll bring the snacks.”

  I exhaled my relief into a handful of soap bubbles. Maybe sometimes taking a risk paid off. “Deal.”

  8

  The afternoon was a repeat of the morning, only with prunier fingers. By the end of the day, Huck had me laughing until I was tearing up, and it felt like maybe we could actually be friends, real friends, not just lifeboat friends who bonded out of
necessity. The thought made Hero High a little less menacing.

  “They may need to change the fall play from Romeo and Juliet to Macbeth,” said Huck as he tossed his scrub brush in the dirty water. “Because this stage has got ‘Out damn spot’ all over it.”

  I snorted. “Are dad jokes cool in Ohio?”

  He winked. “The coolest.”

  The stain had shrunk. It had gone from being Hula-Hoop size to Frisbee. Well, Frisbee plus paw prints, plus spatter. “Good thing we have another week to work on it,” I chirped with false enthusiasm.

  Huck rolled his neck and it cracked and popped like Rice Krispies. “I like paint more when I’m applying it, not removing it.”

  “Agreed.” I was going to have to spend some serious time on my yoga mat to counteract all the hours crouching. I bent over and dangled my arms, and the relief as my muscles unlocked was almost painful. Still upside down, I asked, “Are you walking home, or is someone picking you up?”

  “Hey, um, Rory? Do you know Tobias May? Because I was JV until he got injured, so I’m pretty sure he’s not here to see me.”

  “What?” All the blood rushed to my head when I flipped upright and I staggered from dizziness. Toby. Right there at the foot of the stage. Boosting himself onto the stage next to me. “Oh. Yeah.” If I aimed at pathetically bored, maybe I’d manage to hit somewhere close to not-swooning? “He’s my next-door neighbor. Um, hey?”

  “Ouch.” Toby slung an arm around my shoulder and any hope I’d had of faking indifference exploded into a racing heart and flushed cheeks. “‘Next-door neighbor’? You classify me by geography? Not by friends since before you were potty-trained? I can still sing your tinkle song if you need proof.”

  “Not necessary!”

  He began to hum the opening notes of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and stepped out of reach when I tried to cover his mouth. “Tinkle, tinkle, Aurora Leigh—time to go in the pot-ty.”