“Oh my God,” I said, cackling and then clapping a hand over my mouth, not wanting Kristin or Ashley to overhear us. Mel Dunbar had been the most popular girl in our seventh-grade class a hundred years ago. Her thirteenth birthday was a town over at her dad and stepmom’s house, which boasted an aboveground pool that looked constantly on the verge of collapse. I’d been eating my weight in barbecue potato chips when I’d spotted Olivia signaling me wildly from an upstairs window: she’d gotten her period for the first time ever, and neither one of us was prepared. We went on a reconnaissance mission into Mrs. Dunbar’s vanity, where we found no tampons but enough prescription painkillers to take down a large animal. Eventually we’d improvised with a wad of toilet paper, but Olivia was convinced everyone was going to find out, so I created a diversion by falling into the pool and faking a charley horse until her mom could come pick us up. “That was truly my finest best-friend hour, it’s true.” I looked at her now. I wasn’t ready to just let this go. “I wish you’d told me,” I said finally.
“Dana.” She shrugged, tracing the pattern in the floor tile with one finger. “I’m saying, there’s nothing to tell.”
“Okay,” I said, not quite believing her. “But, like, if there was. It’s just me. I’m not going to give you a hard time, or judge you, or whatever. I didn’t even know what a bidet was, remember?”
Olivia laughed at that, looking me in the face for the first time since I’d come in here, and the sound of it was reassuring. “Fsssshhhh,” she said goofily, and after a moment, I laughed, too.
TWENTY
“Okay, okay, okay,” I said to Alex on Thursday; we were sprawled on the sofa in the apartment he shared with Trevor, the hum of the air-conditioning and one of my old mixtapes on the boom box, Alex’s mouth pressed warm and wet against the hollow of my throat. “That’s good, that’s good, but I want to talk for a second, though.”
“You do, huh?” Alex asked, pulling back and smiling, his cheeks flushed pink and the baby hairs around his face frizzing up in the humidity. I could feel his heart tapping eagerly away under my palms. “Whatcha wanna talk about?”
“I don’t know,” I said, leaning back against the arm of the couch. “Anything.” I meant it, too: I wanted to know everything there was to know about him, wanted to hear every single one of his stories and learn all his memories well enough that they became my memories, too, until there’d never been a time when we didn’t know each other.
“Anything?” Alex asked, making for my neck again.
I laughed, pushed him gently away. “Anything,” I said, rubbing my thumb over his collarbone, like I was polishing a worry stone. “Or, okay, tell me about your family. Are your brothers singers like you?”
“Kyle and Eric?” Alex smirked like I’d said something funny. “Nah. They think I’m a total freak. But, you know, a lovable one.”
“Obviously,” I echoed, smiling at him. “When I was really little I always wanted brothers or sisters. Then I met Olivia, though, and it’s kind of the same.”
Alex smiled. “You guys are really close, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said, crossing my ankles in his lap, shivering as his fingertips brushed gently over my calves. “There are two kinds of friends in life, I figure. There are the ones who you have fun and party with, right? And those friends are great and all. But then there’s the other kind—like, people you can go to the bathroom in front of and who tell you if your shirt is giving you a uniboob, and who have heard your parents fight and don’t care.” And who’ll keep all your secrets, I thought uneasily, remembering the other night.
Alex tilted his head to the side. “You go to the bathroom in front of Olivia?” he asked.
I kicked him in the ribs. “You’re missing the point.”
“I’m not,” Alex promised. “I’m just teasing, I swear. That’s awesome, that you guys have that.”
I felt a hollow twist in my stomach. I was dying to tell Olivia about Alex. It finally felt like things were back to normal between us, and I hated keeping this huge secret from her. Still, every time I opened my mouth to confess I thought of finding her on the bathroom floor, hunched over the toilet, and just like that I couldn’t make myself do it. I was terrified of hurting her.
I looked up at Alex. “Anyway, I don’t expect you to get it,” I teased him. “You probably had a zillion best friends growing up. You were probably the most popular person in your grade.”
Alex scoffed. “I wasn’t the most popular person in my grade,” he protested, but from the way his voice got a little higher I could tell he was lying.
“You were!” I accused, sitting up straight again.
“I was not,” Alex said. “Do you not remember that story I told you about singing to myself during math tests?”
But I wasn’t buying. “Uh-huh. And now you’re the hot singer kid everybody’s obsessed with. I’m dating, like, the Conrad Birdie of Galveston High.”
“Conrad Birdie didn’t go to their high school,” Alex informed me. “He was the visiting celebrity.”
“Which you’d know, because you were probably in the revival of Bye Bye Birdie on Broadway or something.” I rolled my eyes, then kissed him to show I was teasing. “What about your parents?” I asked. “What are they like?”
Alex shrugged. “They’re nice,” he said. “Just regular parents. Kind of worried about me doing all this.”
“How come?” I asked; then, remembering his dad was a minister: “Like, the sin and degradation of it?”
“Yeah, kind of.” Alex looked embarrassed. “They’d like you, though.”
I snorted. “Doubtful.”
“Why?”
“Parents never like me,” I explained. “I give off a vibe.”
“What vibe is that, exactly?” Alex asked, tipping his face close to mine.
“A shame and degradation vibe,” I shot back.
Alex leaned back then, frowning, looking me right in the eyes. “Can you do something for me?” he asked. “Can you allow for the possibility that you’re more special than you give yourself credit for?”
“I like this motivational speech you’re giving me,” I teased. “It’s very charming.”
“It’s not a motivational speech,” Alex said, sounding hurt. “It’s what I think.” His accent got a little thicker when he was passionate about something, ah instead of I, that Texas lilt. I could tell he was being sincere, and I felt like a jerk about it. It wasn’t Alex’s fault we came from completely different universes. I could picture him at home with his family, all of them gathered for an after-church meal around a table with a lace cloth, a golden retriever snoozing in the corner for good measure. For a moment I wondered what would have happened if we’d met back in Jessell, if we’d have had anything to say to each other.
But we never would have met back in Jessell, I reminded myself. Our paths would never have crossed.
Alex didn’t seem concerned about that, though. “I am, like, really into you,” he told me urgently. “And it’s not ’cause of how you look, and it’s not ’cause I think I can get something from you. It’s ’cause I’m into you.” He wrinkled up his nose a little, like he was waiting for me to make fun of him. “Is that corny?”
“Really corny,” I said, and smiled. I kissed him to show I didn’t mind. Still, I couldn’t shake the creeping notion that what Alex and I had was specific to us being here in this place together, that it might not survive a change of time or venue. It made things feel fragile and important. It made me want to hold on tight.