And then we’re okay again. We’re Elise and Tabitha.
“This is like margin notes times a million,” Elise says when the techie talks about how black nail polish doesn’t make her goth. “This is like if we had a copy of the Bible and the entire school had marked it up with their own thoughts on everything important, you know?”
I mean, that’s why I’m friends with Elise, right? And it’s why she’ll get into Harvard. She can take the biggest, craziest day our school has ever experienced and break it down into one perfect sentence.
“It’s exactly like that,” I say.
Twenty-Seven.
It’s one in the afternoon when assembly is over. Five hours have passed, and Headmaster Brownser let every last person talk. Teachers, administrators, and more students than I could count got up onstage to speak.
“I don’t think we need to go to classes today,” Headmaster Brownser says when the last kid has spoken and we all have grumbling stomachs and dried-out eyes. He doesn’t dismiss us right away, after declaring the school day officially over. I think he must be deeply tempted to put a cap on the whole day, to give a profound speech and wrap it all up. But there’s no way to contextualize that many stories and epiphanies and secrets.
He shrugs. And that shrug says it all.
We don’t go straight home. A lot of the underclassmen have working parents who can’t pick them up until later anyway, and there’s no bus to Circle Community, and those of us with driver’s licenses are too worn out to consider driving anywhere.
“I’ll make us sandwiches,” Elise says when I collapse onto one of the atrium benches. “You nap or whatever. I’ll be right back.” The deli meat bar is one of the only not-disgusting options at the cafeteria, so I nod and close my eyes. Normally, I’d watch myself. Wouldn’t want to drool or talk in my sleep or be caught quite so exposed. But today pretty much anything is cool, so I curl into a ball, just like I would do in my bed at home, and get ready to take a power nap.
I’m practically asleep when I feel someone hovering over me. I know who it is before opening my eyes. I can smell his berry ChapStick and his Old Spice deodorant.
Joe.
“That was some performance,” he says. He’s looking at me like he’s never seen me before, like everything from my eye color to the shape of my hips is a mystery.
“I wish you’d gotten up there,” I say. I fidget and stretch like I’m just waking up from the world’s longest nap. I rub imaginary sleep from my eyes. I find his gaze so he knows I mean it.
“Why?”
“Would have liked to know what you have to say.” I’m still in the gold dress, and he’s in pen-stained khakis and a white shirt that hasn’t been bleached enough, so it has dingy stains around the collar and sleeves. I run a hand through my hair and hope it looks as messy-sexy-voluminous as it feels.
I hate that I still care if he thinks my hair is sexy.
“I already told you all my secrets,” Joe says. It’s a quiet voice, one I haven’t heard lately. It’s the voice I imagined when we chatted online late at night. It’s the voice I heard in my ear, the one that kept me falling for him. The little part of my heart he still occupies lights up, then dims again. Someday soon, it won’t flash for him at all.
I expect him to yell at me. The whole hallway is expecting him to yell at me. There’s a stream of students pacing the hallways: making plans to head home, hugging one another, hunting for their backpacks in the pile near my bench, walking to the cafeteria so they can enjoy crappy food while they wait for their rides to come. The movement hasn’t stopped, but it’s slowed while Joe and I talk. Now that my dirty laundry is aired, the whole school knows what might happen.
Joe doesn’t yell.
Elise emerges with sandwiches in hand but keeps her distance. Even she is afraid of the explosion.
Joe’s eyelashes are so long, I wonder if they’ve grown over time, a version of Pinocchio’s nose. He bats them, and his brown eyes go a little watery and he steps in closer to me. Just that one step brings in another wave of smells. I shut my eyes against the force. When I open them again, his face is close to mine.
“You shouldn’t have told everyone everything. But. I’ll tell you all my secrets,” he says. Softer. Lower. Closer to my ear.
It feels good, that whisper. I feel it on my spine, his words like a feather sliding up and down the places on my back that tickle. I shimmy against it, a spasm in my shoulders so intense we both laugh. I almost want to kiss him. I think of the silvery font of my Assignment to Kiss Him Again, and wonder what would have happened if that was always my Assignment, if I’d been told to kiss him again and again and again.
I could do it right now. He’d give in, I think. He’d let me pull his face to mine.