“How was it?”
He groans, annoyed that his deflection hasn’t ricocheted the question into the upper stratosphere, where he doesn’t have to deal with it. “Truth? It sucked. Boring as hell. God, I hate rich kids.”
“Self-loathing is a strange trait in you.”
A grunt and half-smile. “Tell me about your summer.”
“You saw it. It was online.” But I go ahead and give him the basic history of it all, how it started, how it progressed.
He eyes me warily, regarding me with the sort of penetrating vision and comprehension only a longtime friend can muster and project. “There’s more to it than pizza. You’re into this girl, aren’t you?”
By now we’ve walked deeper into the park, not really paying attention to our path. We’ve played here since we were kids; we know this place better than we know our backyards. I manage a halfhearted shrug, an unspoken nondenial.
“Have you been, like, with a girl all summer long and you didn’t tell me?” he demands, half in excitement, half in outrage. “Dude!”
We close in on the fountain at the center of the park, ringed by six benches, each with a dedication plaque set into it. I can recite them all from memory.
“Not so loud,” I reprimand, and sit on TO THE MEMORY OF ALLEN HALEY.
Evan drops a coin into the fountain. The town actually prefers that people not do that, and there is a sign posted to that effect, but Evan does it every time we come here anyway. He leans against the fountain’s rampart and crosses his arms over his chest. “You have a girlfriend. Wild.”
I shake my head. “Nah. Not yet.” And then I proceed to fill him in on all things Aneesa-related that are not specifically pizza-related. Our Fourth of July together. Our sharing of old movies and TV shows (at my suggestion, but she enjoys them). The way she took my hand.
“I’m just waiting for the perfect moment,” I tell him. “To make my move. You know?”
Evan worries his upper lip with his teeth, then shrugs. “Look, I don’t know how to say this, but… you’ve been friend-zoned, man.”
“Have not.” There is more heat in my voice than I intend. How would he know? He doesn’t have a girlfriend. And he’s never met Aneesa.
“Hey, you would know better than me.” He shrugs again. “I’m just saying—you wait too long, they start to think you’re not interested. They stick you in the friend-zone. You know?”
Evan is my best friend and Evan is rich and Evan is smart, but Evan doesn’t know everything. He doesn’t know Aneesa.
“Just… never mind about her, okay?”
“Okay,” he says with equanimity. Equanimity comes easy to Evan. He’s never disturbed by anything. “What classes did you pull this semester?”
Our schedules are e-mailed to us a week before school starts, along with recommended reading lists and, if the teacher is on the ball, a class syllabus. We dig into our pockets for our phones so that we can see which classes we’ll have together.
We’ve managed to land in the same Algebra II class, as well as Chemistry I. We’ve also managed to sync up on World History I, Economics, and lunch.
“Who do you have for English?” I ask.
Evan grins, folds his hands over his heart, and gazes with gratitude toward the heavens. “Miss Powell. There is a God, Sebastian, and He has bestowed upon me Miss Powell.”
Miss Powell is not just the hottest teacher at South Brook High—it’s entirely possible she is the hottest teacher in the world. Her hotness is bolstered by the fact that she dresses like a nineteen-year-old and aims her flirting at the whole class at the same time, probably barely skirting the edge of laws designed to keep teachers and students from clawing each other’s clothes off.
“Wow,” I say, for there’s nothing else to add.
“Wow, indeed. Wow, indeed. How about you?”
I look down at my schedule, even though I have it memorized. I’ve got Ms. Benitez for English. More specifically, for a class called “Accelerated Composition and Structure.”
“Tough pull.” Evan winces. “My brother had Benitez for ACAS. She’s a hard-ass.”
“I can handle it.”
“That’s a senior-level class. Why are you taking it early?”
“To get it out of the way, I guess.” The truth is, I’m not sure why I signed up for ACAS so early. I didn’t even think I’d get in as a sophomore. I’ve always taken the toughest classes, the most advanced ones. There’s never been a question. Otherwise, I get bored. So I just figured, Why not? Maybe I should have asked why instead.
“It’ll work out,” I tell Evan.
He comes closer and stares at me for an uncomfortable moment. “Your summer was good?”
“Well, yeah.” I’m a little flustered by his sudden intensity. “I told you.”
“Okay. You just seem different.”
“Different good or different bad?”
He takes long enough to answer that I know he’s actually considering. “I can’t tell,” he confesses. “I guess that’s why I had to ask.”
The plan is to record episodes once a week on the weekends during the school year, but for Aneesa’s live-stream idea, we do it the evening before school starts. Mom helps us out since Aneesa needs to be able to ask me questions and hold the microphone to me—we don’t have a clip-on, and I can’t cook and hold a microphone at the same time. We show Mom the best angles to use, and she manages to keep out of our way while still keeping everything in frame.
Aneesa has an iPad with an app where the questions come in. She shadows me, trying to keep from distracting me too much while also staying out of Mom’s shot. We manage to keep things moving, and the few times we collide, it’s funny rather than hazardous. We laugh a lot, and Mom laughs, too, even though we tell her to stay quiet.
By the end, I’ve answered about twenty questions from live viewers, and I take my first on-screen bite of pizza. A basic whole-wheat crust topped with a bianca sauce, wilted spinach, shrimp, and shredded Romano cheese.
“That’s amazing,” Aneesa says as she chews on her slice.
“It’s not bad,” I concede.
“Talent and humility!” Aneesa crows at the camera. “You’ve witnessed it here, folks! Keep watching—it’s school time, but there’s still more to come!”
That night, after kissing my forehead, Mom says, “I really like her.”
“So do I, Mom.”
First day of school, following a summer I couldn’t have expected or anticipated. It happened so fast that I don’t even know what to think of it. And now I have to decide: Sit with Evan or with Aneesa on the bus?
Evan makes it easy for me—he’s on the bus already and sits with another kid, on the aisle. Aneesa and I slip into the empty seat across from him. I make introductions. They nod politely at each other.
“Strange to see you without pizza,” Evan teases gently.
Aneesa flashes her teeth at him and shoots back, “I thought Sebastian invented you.”
They laugh at each other, and I release a breath I can’t remember holding in the first place.