*
After school that Friday, Bay headed to the last meeting of the decorating committee in the school gymnasium—a state-of-the-art, embarrassingly large facility that dwarfed the three other academic buildings of Bascom High. A few years ago, the high school booster club had raised the funds for the gym in less than six months. Apparently, there were a lot of parents with deep pockets and memories of their glory years in sports here. The place smelled like fresh paint and new rubber and missed opportunities.
At the first after-school decorating committee meeting a month ago, Riva Alexander had let Bay sketch out how she’d wanted the gym to be decorated, then she had Bay make a list of things to buy, while the other girls on the committee talked about the costumes they were going to wear. At the second meeting, Bay did her chemistry homework while Riva regaled the committee with what food and drinks she and her mother were bringing: flaky pastries that looked like knobby, weathered fingers, with slivered almonds for fingernails; big plastic drink dispensers with plastic eyeballs floating inside the punch. They’d spent the entire two hours huddled around Riva’s laptop, looking up where Riva had gotten her ideas on Pinterest.
When Riva had asked Bay to help decorate, she’d hinted that she’d hoped Bay would get her aunt Claire to cater the dance, too. Riva loved food, and she would have loved to have spent hours talking to Claire about menus, going off on tangents about flan and crème fra?che and pink Himalayan salt. But Riva was out of luck. If it wasn’t about candy, Claire didn’t have time for it.
Claire normally would have a lot of catering work this time of year. She used to have a party to cater almost every night in October. Bay remembered the Waverley house full of pumpkin pie scents in the fall. There had been mountains of maple cakes with violets hidden inside, lakes of butternut soups with chrysanthemum petals floating on top. But not this year. When Claire wasn’t making candy, she was on the phone, talking about the candy, or filling out orders for the candy, or boxing up the candy. There were even companies calling, asking about buying Waverley’s Candies. The way Bay saw it, Claire making candy was like the perfect chair in the perfect color in the perfect place in a room—only it was made of the wrong fabric. And when something that small was wrong, most people didn’t bother fixing it.
The dance decorations had arrived that week, so this final committee meeting was to be spent putting them up. Bay tried to do her homework on the bleachers, but the other girls kept interrupting her, asking where everything belonged. She finally put her books away and joined them. Some boys from the soccer team—boyfriends and want-to-be boyfriends—showed up with duct tape and butcher’s twine and ladders pilfered from the janitor’s closet, acting very manly about it.
Bay stood in the middle of the gymnasium, directing them all, feeling like an ice skater in a snow globe, spinning and spinning. It was nice. She always had this image in her head, the end product when everything was where it was supposed to be, and it was thrilling when she could actually make it happen in real life.
She didn’t realize at first when everyone had gone quiet. The music from Riva’s laptop was still blasting. Bay was admiring the lighted ball that was hanging from the steel rafters. It was shrouded in paper cut-outs that cast shadows on the walls, which looked like a dark forest. Surrounding it were glittery paper bats chasing full moons made from wrapped, store-bought popcorn balls, which students could reach up and pluck from their strings from the ceiling. She finally looked around with a smile, only to see the whole group staring at the gymnasium doors.
There was Josh Matteson, bits of stray smoke curling off his shoulders, smoke only she could see. Her hand almost went to her heart, but she stopped herself halfway and pretended to scratch her neck instead.
He, too, seemed confused as to why everyone had gone silent. That’s when he saw Bay.
Bay cursed that stupid note. It had taken her weeks to write. When school had started in August, she’d seen Josh in the hallway on that first day, and suddenly she’d had honey in her veins. The note had laid it all out as passionately and sincerely as she could make it. She’d described her feelings as best she could, though she wasn’t sure she’d gotten it just right. She’d told him she’d be outside on the front steps after school every day, waiting for him if he ever wanted to talk—which she was still doing, almost making her late to her job at her aunt Claire’s house every afternoon, but she couldn’t help herself.
Funny, when she’d given him the note—in front of his friends, which had been her first mistake—it had never occurred to her that he wouldn’t believe her.
To Josh’s credit, he smiled from the gymnasium doors. “I was wondering where everyone went,” he said in that deep, bright voice of his, like fresh water in a dark cavern.
“We’ll be out at your house later,” Riva said, quickly stepping forward. Riva looked like she was already wearing a costume. She favored billowy skirts with colorful scarves tied around her waist. Her eyes were slightly tilted in a way that gave her an exotic, gypsy-ish air, despite her fair, WASP-y coloring. There was something about her that was just slightly west of center, making her the odd one out in her group, the one gotten mad at the most and excommunicated for days on end for mysterious mean-girl reasons.
“Want to stay and help decorate?” Riva added, but it was said insincerely, because if she had wanted him there, she would have asked him before now. But she hadn’t. Because of Bay. Josh was avoiding seeing her, and his friends knew that. And what Josh thought mattered to them. Josh was a star soccer player, class vice president, and he had been voted most likely to succeed in the senior superlatives—based entirely on his last name, some conjectured. But they only saw how perfect and beautiful and easygoing he was. They couldn’t see him burning with unhappiness.
“No,” Josh said. “I’m not very good at that kind of stuff. I’ll just watch.”
Everyone tried to act normal, giving Josh deference while still trying not to slight Bay, presumably so Bay wouldn’t run out and leave them in a lurch. They needed her. All the county high schools had been invited to this soiree, so it had to be special, it had to be the best, to show off to their rivals.
But Bay would never do that—would never run from herself.
It was so excruciatingly awkward that everyone, Bay most of all, was relieved when it was over and they all went their separate ways, Josh leaving a trail of soot behind him that blew away in the breeze.