“It doesn’t matter. Do what you want.” Ryan falls silent then.
This feels weirdly like an argument, but I have no idea what it’s—and then it dawns on me. “Are you jealous?”
Possibly not in a romantic sense, but Ryan’s used to being the only star in my firmament. Maybe he’s worried the Sage and Ryan Show can’t withstand Special Guest Shane. Who is totally uninterested in the role, believe me. Besides being the new kid, he’s got other problems, most of whom wear lettermen jackets.
“Do I need to be?”
Huh. That’s not a no.
“You’ll always be my best friend, no matter how many others I make.” Is that what he wants to hear?
Maybe I’m paying more attention than I usually do, but his face falls a fraction, and then he pulls on a goofy smile. “Obviously. Who could ever replace me?”
“Nobody.”
Ryan slings an arm around my shoulders on the way to chemistry. It occurs to me that people are used to seeing this because it doesn’t earn us a second glance. In chem, we’re lab partners, and if I’m honest, Ryan does most of the work. I’m not good with hard sciences or math; this frustrates me because I feel like I’m letting women down all over the world by feeding existing stereotypes. I wish I rocked at physics and could do differential equations, but I don’t have that type of intelligence. In fact, it’s likely I’ll never even get to physics or calculus.
Mr. Oscar teaches all the advanced science classes. You’d think that’s a first name, not last, but in his case, you’d be wrong. He’s thirty-something, and he thinks he’s cool, which means he’s always telling people, “Call me Tom,” but he doesn’t notice that everyone still calls him Mr. Oscar and only laughs at his jokes to be polite. I laze through a lab experiment while Ryan does all the measuring, mixing, and pouring. I pull my weight with excellent note-taking, however, and then I log our result. Chemistry is boring, but since it’s after lunch it means there’s only three periods to go.
The rest of the day, every time I see Shane, he’s getting a different kind of crap from the jock squad. At this point, if he was anybody else, I’d have already put a pink Post-it on his locker, but it feels like it would be too personal now. I mean, I could totally write, Your eyes take my breath away, in purple glitter pen, and I’d mean every word, but that would be so weird now that I’ve hung out with him. He’d probably take it wrong, not realizing this is what I do, and other people would see it, Ryan would hear about it, and it would become a thing—
No. I’m definitely not writing about his eyes. That’s a quiet truth, just for me, hugged to my chest like the hitching breath I can’t control when I glimpse him. He’s like a hunk of chocolate cake slathered in frosting that I’m not supposed to have, but can’t help wanting.
When I walk past the music room, I hear something that stills me in my tracks. People push past; I’ve become a rock in the middle of a rushing stream, but I can’t move. Then someone shoves me from behind, not on purpose, but the result is the same. I slam into the lockers past the classroom and bounce. The underclassmen who were wrestling don’t even notice that my brain has stopped firing.
Shane Cavendish plays like it’s his reason for living.