There was this tug in my gut like I was supposed to be there with them. Like they weren’t strangers or random classmates, but people I was supposed to know.
Except I didn’t know them. I didn’t know Lily, who wasn’t dating Adam and who lived two doors down and dressed amazing and always had something interesting to say—but never had anything to say to me.
Instead, I knew Friya, who was always begging Ethan to airdrop her his Spanish homework, and Whitney, who put mustard on her french fries because ketchup has too many carbs.
Every night, I’d go home and fall face-first into my enormous pile of homework and endure my grandmother’s endless questions. The one thing I’d look forward to was getting the texts Cole sent before bed. Evening soundtrack, he’d say, sending me a retro music video. I’d curl up in bed with my phone, watching, knowing that he was waiting on the other end. He figured out that I was into weird news articles, and he’d send those too.
What’s the verdict, Fresh? he’d write. And I knew that was my opportunity to steer us into having a real conversation, instead of just the joking opener to one. But I always held back, sending a clever comment instead of an honest answer.
I wished he wasn’t putting all the pressure on me to take the conversation from friendship to something more. That for once he’d be the one to confess something meaningful. To assure me that he was someone I could really talk to. But he never did, no matter how much I imagined it.
But once I pictured one thing different, I started picturing others. What it would be like, for example, to belong to a different school club. To have different friends.
Lily was right there. I saw her every day, across the locker room in Phys Ed, in black lace bras and striped boyshort underwear, scraping her hair into a bun as she laughed over something with Mabel. Or else she was across the room in Studio Art, deep in concentration as she sat next to Ryland, her modicum of artistic talent eclipsed by his. Rarely, I saw her in the quad, or her car, or in the backyard on that enormous trampoline. And I’d wish I could wave and go over. I’d wish and I’d wish and I’d wish.
I’d wish my mom was still alive, because the thoughts I kept trying to shove down about Lily were thoughts that my mom would have been cool with. And I wasn’t sure I could say the same thing about my grandparents.
Most nights, I’d hear them watching TV downstairs, and I’d know they were nodding in agreement when the president said he didn’t need to release his tax returns, and I’d wonder what else they were nodding in agreement with. And the despair would creep in, and I’d remind myself that I was fine not having things I wanted.
Chapter 13
THE WEEK OF THE HOMECOMING GAME kicked off with a pep rally, which in and of itself wasn’t terrible. The terrible part was that the pep rally took place at eight a.m. on Monday. Which meant that Whitney, Friya, and I slouched in the stands, yawning, with zero pep to rally.
From the way everyone around us looked half asleep, I gathered they felt the same. At my old school, we’d had pep rallies right before lunch. The same boys would always heckle, and the cheerleaders would do a dance routine full of strategic high kicks, and I’d stand off to the side with the yearbook camera, secretly relieved that I didn’t have to participate.
It felt different to sit in the stands with my friends instead of taking pictures. I looked around at the sea of students, who were only just now starting to coalesce into something recognizable. People looked familiar in the halls now, not strangers anymore but classmates: the quiet boy who ate nothing but hot dogs, the loudmouth girl who loved horses, the impossibly tall drama kid who wore three-piece suits, and the emo girls who hung on his every word.
Enormous butcher-paper banners hung above the bleachers, decorated in class colors. Ours was green and featured an enormous painting of a box of Junior Mints, which was either clever or terrible, I couldn’t decide. It was spirit week, apparently. The run-up to the homecoming game, wherein we were supposed to get really amped about our football team, and being juniors, I think simultaneously.
“Get ready to have some spirit,” Whitney whispered, rolling her eyes.
“I’m literally still asleep,” Friya complained.
The boys joined us, Cole stepping over everyone so he could sit next to me, instead of just taking the end. His hair was still wet from the shower, which killed me, and he was wearing his soccer warmups, gray with sky-blue stripes, which brought out the green in his eyes.
“Too early,” Ethan complained, yawning.
“Nah, ya gotta rally,” Cole said, grinning. “Get it? Rally?”
“Terrible,” I told him, and he gave me a soft punch in the shoulder. My sleeve felt warm even after he moved his hand away.
And then Adam bounded onto the floor of the gym dressed in head-to-toe green, like a deranged leprechaun. There was even green in his hair. He was in his element, I had to give him that. Unfortunately, we were expected to be in it along with him.
“Come on, freshmen!” the cheer started. “Wake up those sophomores!”
And then it was upon us, a wall of pep, an entire bleacher section of screaming, flailing freshmen. By the time it got to the sophomores (“Wake up those juniors!”), Cole was drumming his palms on his knees, going, “We gotta win this, guys,” and when it came to us, his scream was deafening.
After the requisite “You can do better than that,” Cole turned toward us, pleading for us to step it up.
So I screamed, feeling ridiculous. But then I caught Cole’s eye, his mouth wide open, screaming even louder than me, and we locked eyes, shouting together, and I was surprised that it was actually kind of fun. My heart was pounding, and I felt alive.
“See?” he whispered after it was over, his lips thrillingly close to my ear. “You just had to rally.”
“No one actually goes to the homecoming dance, right?” I asked at lunch on Tuesday.
I’d spent the past day quietly freaking out and wondering if my friends were planning to go without me, and I was the last person in the world to realize.
“God no,” Friya assured me.
“Total waste of a Saturday night,” Ethan promised.
At my old school, homecoming had been a thing. I’d covered it for yearbook, getting shots of the seniors who’d been voted king and queen, watching all of the friend groups pose in front of the canvas backdrop, finding out from Instagram who had been at the wild afterparties.
“We’re going to the game, though,” Whitney said. “Our football team’s terrible since Archer graduated, so it’s like . . .” She trailed off, frowning.
“Schadenfreude?” I supplied, at the same moment Whitney said, “Acceptable.”
Cole laughed, throwing his head back, and I felt my cheeks heat up.
“God, Freshman, what would we do without you?” he teased, patting me on the shoulder.
There was some commotion on the opposite side of the quad, where a few members of the football team had decided to have an impromptu hot dog eating contest.
We all glanced over, weirdly fascinated by the spectacle.
Schadenfreude, I thought again. Pleasure at the misfortune of others. A removed sort of amusement, exactly like what we were experiencing now.
My grandparents seemed surprised that I wasn’t going to the homecoming dance. They’d seen it on the school’s Facebook page apparently, and my grandmother was all excited about helping me choose a dress and going to the salon together for manicures.
I actually felt bad explaining to her that we were just going to the game and then getting together at someone’s house. She couldn’t quite understand the concept, and I was worried that if I kept trying, suddenly she’d understand too well that Cole was having a legit house party, where there weren’t going to be teacher chaperones. So I told her that he was taking me to the game.
“Sounds like things are getting serious,” she said, immediately brightening. “And he’s considering asking you to go steady.”
I don’t know how I kept
a straight face.
“Wow, that would be so great,” I said.
My mom would have given me a look, detecting the thick layer of sarcasm. But my grandmother just smiled even wider, and I could practically hear her thinking about how much easier it was to get what she wanted the second time around.
On Thursday, Mr. Miller made us run laps in gym. Someone had stolen the Frisbee apparently, which meant our unit on Ultimate Frisbee had to hit pause. In honor of spirit week, there had been one-dollar cupcakes on sale in the quad, and after eating those, the last thing any of us felt like doing was laps.
“This is how they exercise inmates,” I overheard Mabel complain.
“High school is such a panopticon,” Lily agreed, tying her hair up into a knot.
I watched the two of them link arms and set off toward the field.
Mabel was part of the drama crowd, even though she also did Art Club. She was a sort of minimalist, high-fashion goth, with a pageboy haircut and an Instagram full of exquisite flat lays. She was almost as intimidating as Lily.
Except Lily wasn’t intimidating. She was more than that. She was a force.
I jogged the first lap, because Mr. Miller was blowing his whistle and calling out anyone who wasn’t hustling. A few of my classmates gave him the finger when his back was turned.
Ahead of me, two senior boys were laughing. One of them stopped to tie his shoe, and the other waited for him, jogging comically in place. The boy who was in no way tying his shoe reached down beneath a bush and unearthed a soggy, bloated tennis ball. He grimaced and tossed it to his friend.
“Gross,” his friend complained, laughing, as he caught it.
“Pick up the pace, Natasha!” Mr. Miller yelled.
For a moment, I thought he’d said Sasha. I glanced over at him, confused, since I was jogging. And that was when I felt my ankle roll over something small and hard and spherical.
The tennis ball.
I went down, landing on my side in the ochre sand. I was so surprised by it that I couldn’t breathe. My ankle throbbed. I felt nauseated from the pain.
“Shit, you all right?” one of the boys called.
“Hey, toss back the ball,” the other one urged, cupping his hands.
“Grow up,” Mabel called, kicking the ball back into the bushes.
And then she stood over me, holding out her hand.
“Here,” she said, helping me up. “Go slow in case it’s broken.”
“It’s probably fine,” I said, which was more wishful thinking than empirical observation.
A flash of pain shot up my ankle when I put weight on it.
“That’s definitely a sprain,” said Lily, who had joined us. “You have to ice it, or else it’ll puff up.”
“Like a frittata,” I said stupidly.
No one knew what to do with that, and honestly, neither did I.
“We’ll take you to the nurse,” Lily said. “Here, put your weight on me.”
I stared at her in surprise. But it made sense. Mabel was so much taller, while Lily and I were almost the same height.
“Um, thanks,” I mumbled, my cheeks turning red as I slung my arm around her shoulder.
I’d barely even spoken to Lily before, and now I could feel the warm, soft fabric of her T-shirt under my bare arm. I was close enough to smell her shampoo, or deodorant, or whatever it was that hinted of sandalwood. I felt dizzy, and my heart was racing.
Oh god, I hoped I didn’t smell like my lunch. Or my gym clothes, since I hadn’t washed them this week. Because “Sasha Bloom smells like BO” was the last thing I wanted Lily to think of me.
Thankfully, the nurse’s office wasn’t too far. I got set up with some ice packs on the world’s most uncomfortable cot, and Mabel and Lily hung around for a while, in no hurry to get back. I didn’t blame them.
“Who steals a gym Frisbee?” I wondered aloud.
“Who tosses around a soggy tennis ball?” Lily returned.
“Yeah, someone might get hurt,” I said, deadpan. Lily snorted.
“Can you drive home on that?” Mabel asked, nodding at my right ankle.
“I actually walk,” I said.
“I’ll give you a ride,” Lily offered.
“Um, you don’t have to,” I said, hoping it hadn’t sounded like I was angling for her to offer.
“You live two houses down,” she said, like I was being ridiculous.
And maybe I was. So I smiled and said thanks, and after the bell rang, Lily followed me to my locker, watching as I unloaded books into my bag.
“Which class is that for?” she asked, nodding at a Diane Arbus art book I’d gotten from our school library.
“It’s not,” I said. “I mean, um, it’s just for me.”
“You’re into photography?” Lily asked, sounding surprised. “Do you take photos as well?”
I nodded, even though it had been a while. I used to take my camera everywhere, but that was back in a different life.
“Well, I mostly take portraits,” I said. “I read somewhere that a good portrait is like a quiet epiphany. So that’s what I try to photograph. Epiphanies people don’t even realize they’re having.”
I’d said too much about myself, I realized. I broke off, horribly embarrassed.
“Epiphanies people don’t even realize they’re having,” Lily repeated. “That’s one of the better descriptions I’ve heard of art.”
“Um, thanks,” I said, surprised. I’d been afraid that I’d gone too cerebral, talking about photography. The girls at my lunch table would have laughed. But Lily was totally here for it.
“You’ll have to show me your portraits sometime,” Lily said.
“I could show you now,” I offered. I wasn’t sure she’d talk to me again, and anyway, what did I have to lose?
I took out my phone, opening an album of my favorites.
“Wow,” she said softly, enlarging a photo of an elderly woman staring up at an enormous taxidermy buffalo. It was black and white, shot from below, her face rippling in shadow. “Grandparent?”
“Just a docent,” I said. “I took that in the museum where I used to work.”
“You worked in a museum.” She didn’t say it as a question.
“Before I moved here,” I said, not wanting to get into it.
Lily kept scrolling, looking at the portrait I’d taken of a cheerleader during a football game. I’d used a long exposure, which had created trails of light and color whenever she moved. Her pom-poms were a soft blur, her smile in sharp focus. It had been too experimental for the yearbook.
“Friend of yours?” she asked.
“Not really. I just thought—you see how her smile’s the only thing that isn’t moving?” I said.
Lily snorted and shook her head.
“You should join Art Club,” she said.
“Yeah, well.” I shifted my backpack onto one shoulder. “It’s at the same time as Mock Trial.”
Lily frowned.
“You’re doing Mock Trial?” she asked, surprised. “What for?”
“Pre-law,” I said, shrugging.
“Weird.” Lily made a face. “Wouldn’t have pegged you as the future-lawyer type.”
“I’m not,” I said. “I’m just doing it because, well, it’s complicated.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Lily said, digging out her keys.
Adam was waiting for us in the lot, and when he saw me, he started waving vigorously, with zero embarrassment.
A couple of people were staring, and Adam gave them a head-nod. “What’s up?” he said pleasantly. “Don’t forget to buy tickets to the homecoming dance!”
And then he frowned in my direction.
“What’s with the limp?” Adam asked.
“Some dicks in our gym class,” Lily said. “We’re giving her a ride.”
“But it’s so out of the way,” he said, deadpan.
Her car was ridiculous inside, with buttery leather seats and one of those fancy backup c
ameras that helps you park.
“Nice car,” I said, since I couldn’t not say it.
“It used to be my mom’s,” Lily explained. “She had to get an SUV for the soccer carpool.”
“She calls it her suburban hell vehicle,” said Adam. “Even though she secretly loves it.”
“She really does,” Lily agreed.
Adam reached for the console to plug in his phone, but Lily swatted his hand away.
“We’re not listening to your dumb podcasts,” she told him, plugging in her own phone. “We have time for one good song.”
“Then how come you never play any?” Adam retorted over the opening bars of Dua Lipa’s newest single.
Lily turned it up savagely, until it was more noise than music.
I watched them from the back seat, fascinated. They were every inch bickering siblings, and I couldn’t figure out how I’d missed it at first. How I’d seen them sprawled on their backyard trampoline, sunglasses and headphones on, ignoring each other, and had mistaken it for some grand romantic moment.
“Hey, Sasha, are you going to the homecoming dance?” Adam asked.
“Um,” I said, trying to figure out how honest to be without hurting his feelings. “Well, my friends aren’t, so . . .”
“I knew it! No one’s going,” Adam said, slouching down dramatically. “Freaking Felicia Sawyer never should have been elected homecoming chair.”
“That dance is a lost cause,” Lily said. “Who wants to pay fifty bucks to hang around an overly chaperoned gym full of freshmen?”
“When you put it that way,” Adam said, glaring.
“Is there another way to put it?” Lily asked. “Besides, Sasha’s probably going to Cole’s party.”
I was surprised she even knew about that. It didn’t seem like her scene.
“I was planning to,” I said. “You?”
“Maybe,” Lily said.
“I have to help out at the dance,” Adam said. “Although I’ll be devastated if I miss the return of Grilled Cheezus.”
“Grilled Cheezus?” I asked.
Apparently, at Cole’s last party, Ethan had gotten so drunk that he’d hatched an elaborate plan to cook everyone grilled cheese sandwiches and parachute them off the third-floor balcony.
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