I WASN’T SURE WHETHER I was angrier at Calvin for calling me a slut—even if he was only joking—only minutes after I’d blown him, or at myself for so easily forgetting about Tommy. Either way, I’d deleted Calvin’s texts unread for the rest of winter break, though I didn’t know what I was going to say to him now that we were back in school.
Thankfully, Dustin arrived to physics before Calvin and regaled me with tales of his vacation at his grandparents’ house.
“So then Bubbe runs out of her bedroom, flapping her arms, yelling like the house is on fire about how the toilet’s overflowing, and Zayde marches in, suited up with yellow dish gloves and armed with a plunger, and comes out ten minutes later holding three wet Barbie heads, asking Bubbe what the hell she’s been eating.”
It felt good to laugh, and I loved hearing stories about Dustin’s crazy family. “Barbie heads?”
Dustin nodded. “Apparently, Sasha didn’t like the way Avi’s Barbies were looking at her, so she decapitated them and flushed the heads down the toilet.”
“Your cousins are so weird.”
“You have no idea, Pinks,” Dustin said. “Graeme’s going through this phase where he wants to be a comedian, so he spent the entire vacation telling the worst jokes.”
“Come on. That’s kind of adorable.”
“Did you hear about the man who stole a calendar?” Dustin said, deadpan. “He got twelve months.”
I busted up laughing.
“Seriously, two weeks of that crap,” Dustin said. “It actually made me look forward to working with Ortiz. If he shows up.” Dustin looked over his shoulder at his still-empty lab table. “What’d you do? Anything good? Renny shipped off, didn’t he?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Fifteen weeks. If he survives that long.”
Dustin clapped me on the back. “You worry too much. He’ll be fine.”
I didn’t expect anything too terrible to happen to Warren—other than possibly having to spend fifteen weeks cleaning latrines with a toothbrush as punishment for oversleeping. It was what happened after basic that scared me. But I didn’t want to talk about that, so I changed the subject. “You missed an amazing show on New Year’s Eve. Lua and the band blew a/s/l away. For real. Their set was hands-down the best.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Dustin said. “Our Lua’s gonna be famous one day.”
“Other than that . . .” I considered telling Dustin about Calvin, but the final bell saved me from oversharing. Anyway, Dustin had never had a girlfriend, so I doubted he would have had any useful advice for me. He left for his table as Calvin slid into class at the bell and took his seat. Ms. Fuentes dove into the next chapter, hinting she’d be quizzing us on the material sooner rather than later.
I refused to look at Calvin. What we’d done had definitely been a mistake. Maybe. Definitely probably. I’d been lonely and horny, and I couldn’t even begin to guess what kind of demented thoughts had been going through his brain that night. For all I knew, Trent had been right and Calvin was a pathological liar.
All morning I’d half expected to find out Calvin had told the whole school what we’d done, the way Alex Molitor had done to Shay Kristoff after she gave him a hand job in the theater during rehearsals for And Then There Were None, but I would’ve heard about it by now if he had. Calvin kept his head down and his mouth shut throughout class, and he ran off when the bell rang.
I made it through the rest of the day, though I couldn’t remember anything that my teachers had talked about during my last two classes, since all I could think about was going home, locking myself in my room, and sleeping until the weekend. When the last bell finally rang, I grabbed my bag and headed toward the parking lot.
Lua caught up with me in front of the library. She was decked out in striped leggings and a black dress that skirted the school’s rule on appropriate length.
“I’ve been dying to talk to you,” Lua said.
“About what?”
“I would’ve told you at lunch, but Dustin was there and I wanted you to be the first to know.”
Lua’s coyness was bordering on annoying. “Is this about Jaime? You’ve broken up and gotten back together so many times, I’m not sure I want to hear it if it’s about Jaime.”
Lua grabbed my hand and pulled me to a stop. “It’s not about that,” she said. “But I did break up with Jaime for good.”
“Oh.”
“I didn’t want to string him along, since I’m going on tour.”
I started to tell her I was glad she’d been straight with Jaime—finally—but I stopped when the last thing she’d said registered in my brain. “Tour?”
Lua nodded, grinning madly. “The lead singer of Cinderfellas invited the band to open for them on their tour at the end of the summer.”
“You’re going on tour?”
“We’re going on tour.”
“You’re going on tour!” I grabbed Lua’s other hand and jumped up and down. She screamed and we laughed and I didn’t even care that it meant I’d soon lose her, because how could I stand in the way of her dreams?
“Holy shit, you guys are fucking losers.” Trent Williams stood in the grass sneering at me and Lua.
“Go fuck yourself with a power drill, asshole,” Lua said, still smiling, still grinning her face off.
Trent muttered something and trudged away.
“He totally wants you.”
Lua rolled her eyes. “As if.”
“I can’t believe it’s really happening,” I said. “We should celebrate. We’ll get Chinese and you can tell me everything. I want all the details.”
“I can’t tonight,” Lua said. “Rehearsals. I’ve got to write some new songs and we only have a few months to practice.” She stopped for a moment. “Shit, Ozzie. This is real.”
I held my smile even though it was already starting. Lua was leaving. “Whatever. This weekend, then. And don’t say no.”
“Yes,” Lua said. “This weekend. You and me and MSG.”
We kept walking toward where I’d parked, both of us repeating some version of “I can’t believe this is happening” over and over until I saw Calvin Frye leaning against the hood of my car. Lua flashed me a questioning look.
“Leave me alone,” I said when I got near enough.
“Ozzie, just listen, all right? Give me one minute to explain.”
“If you want to discuss our roller coaster, fine. Otherwise I have nothing to say to you.” I opened the door and threw my backpack in the backseat. Lua stood to the side all narrowed eyes and jutting hips, like she might beat the crap out of Calvin if she had any idea what was going on.
Calvin straightened and turned toward me. “What I said . . . it was a joke. A bad one. I didn’t mean it. I’m so stupid and I ruin everything and I shouldn’t have said it.” His shoulders drooped. “I’m sorry, Ozzie. I really am.”
I stood in front of the driver’s side door, clutching the handle, gripping it so tightly my fingers hurt. “Fine,” I said. “Thanks for the apology.” I opened the door but didn’t get in.
“Can we at least meet to work on our project?” Calvin sounded so pathetic, I almost believed he was actually sorry.
“Sure. The quicker we get it done, the quicker we never have to speak again.”
Calvin nodded. “Okay. I’ll wait for you to call me.” He walked away. I watched him until he turned the corner at the end of the sidewalk by the library before getting in the car and starting the engine.