“I was going to wait ’til after school, but when I got here, I couldn’t wait.” She starts drawing a heart on the concrete with her foot.
It takes everything I have not to throw my arms around her and kiss her right on the lips, right there, right in front of everybody. I settle for just throwing my arms around her and sneaking a kiss on her ear as I whisper, “Thanks. It’s perfect.”
When I finally let go, Jamie’s eyes are shining, and I risk a Meaningful Gaze into them. Just for a moment. But as we’re gazing meaningfully into each other’s eyes, I see her focus shift, and a split second later, a pair of leather-clad arms wraps themselves around me and a pair of lips kisses me on the cheek. Oh, my God. Oh, no. Oh-no-oh-no-oh-no-oh-no.
“Hey,” says Caleb, kissing me again.
Jamie’s Meaningful Gaze has turned into a Blank Stare.
My senses, which seem to have fled when Caleb appeared, come rushing back, and I wriggle myself awkwardly out of his embrace.
“Ha-ha! Hey, what’d you do that for?” I squeak.
“What, I can’t kiss my own girlfriend?” He drapes his arm over my shoulder and smiles down at me.
“Your girlfriend? Are you two like, . . . together?” Jamie’s eyes are wide.
“No, no, not really,” I stammer.
“Yeah,” says Caleb at the same time, with a quick, confused glance at me. “We are ‘like, together.’”
The world starts closing in on me like it did when Jamie and I first kissed, only this time it’s a bad closing in. My head starts to pound. I’m dimly aware of other kids filing past us, glancing over their shoulders and sticking around to see the action.
“Since when?” Jamie’s shock is morphing into anger with alarming speed; her wide eyes are narrowing and her voice has taken on a steely edge.
“Since Friday,” Caleb says. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Actually, it is my business.”
Oh, God. I have to stop this. I have to stop this now. “Um. Can’t we do this another time? Like somewhere more private?”
“No,” says Jamie, “I don’t think we can. I think we’re going to do this now—it shouldn’t take long.”
“Sana, what the fuck is going on?”
“Yeah, Sana. Please explain.”
How can I explain? How can I make them see that it’s all just a horrible mistake? “Okay, it’s not—it’s not what you think. It’s not what it looks like.” I’m scrambling for words, searching, searching, but I can’t find anything that sounds right. “I, I—”
“She was with me before she was with you. While she was with you, in fact.” Jamie looks at me. “Right?”
I look at Caleb, who’s staring at me, his eyes wide with disbelief, and nod miserably. “But it’s more complicated than that! I mean, it wasn’t cheating, exactly—” Jamie scoffs. “No, Jamie, for real. It happened when you were out with Kelsey. You even said! You even said you shouldn’t have, you said it was wrong and that she totally wanted to hook up with you. I mean, that was obvious—ask anyone! And then, so . . . I thought you were going to break up with me. I thought—you didn’t answer my texts—you said you should have, right? I just—I wasn’t sure if you wanted to be with me anymore. I thought maybe you were getting back together with Kelsey. And then Caleb—” I turn to him. “Caleb, I don’t know what happened. I mean, my friends were all—they wanted you and me to get together, and I thought that Jamie was breaking up with me . . . and you were so nice—are so nice—and you’re cute, and I meant what I said about you being a good kisser, and I’d totally be into you if I were straight—”
Oh, my God, what am I saying? All this stuff that no one needs to know, and I can’t shut up—it’s like that awful racial profiling argument with Christina. Like someone turned a faucet on full blast and the handle fell off. “I feel terrible . . . I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings because, well, I could tell you liked me, like, a lot—and I didn’t tell you, Jamie, because I meant to—I was going to—but then I thought I’d break it off with Caleb right away and it wouldn’t matter. Like it doesn’t matter to me that—I mean if—you kissed Kelsey, because you said you wanted to be with me in the end, and that’s how I feel about you. You’re the one I want to be with, I knew it the moment I kissed Caleb—oh, God, Caleb, that’s not what I meant!” Caleb has gone pale. He shakes his head, as if to clear it of all the crap I just poured into it. Jamie, on the other hand, has gone red and is staring off across the quad.
“So let me get this straight,” says Caleb in a low voice. “You’re a lesbian. You thought your girlfriend was going to break up with you, so you got together with me because—what, your friends told you to? Because I was better than nothing? And then it turned out she wasn’t breaking up with you after all, so you’ve been getting ready to dump me and get back together with her this whole time? And it doesn’t matter? And you feel sorry for me? Because you can tell that I like you a lot?”
Ouch. “You make it sound like I used you, like I don’t even care about what I did.”
Caleb considers this for a second. “That’s about right.”
“But you make it sound like I’m this horrible, self-centered bitch.”
“Not a bitch. Just horrible and self-centered. And conceited.”
I look at Jamie. Caleb was totally innocent, but Jamie had a part in all of this. Plus I just told her that she’s the one I want to be with. Maybe . . . but she shakes her head.
“I was honest with you. I told you everything. And you totally played me. You cheated on me, you lied to me—why would you do that, Sana? How could you act like that?”
“Jamie—”
“I liked you so much, Sana. I trusted you.”
“Jamie, please—”
“I gotta go to class.” And she walks away.
“Fuck.” Caleb exhales and says quietly, “You know, I thought you were different. I thought you were honest about who you were, not like all the other girls. What a load of bullshit. I’m so fucking stupid.” He turns and wades his way through groups of kids standing in aimless, eavesdropping clumps, drops into his chair, and stares dully ahead.
I stand there, frozen. This can’t be happening.
The bell rings, and Mr. Green appears and starts herding everyone toward their seats. They fan out across the classroom, murmuring to each other and stealing glances at Caleb, and at me. Reggie, Hanh, and Elaine are the only ones looking directly at me. They look stricken—Reggie actually has her hand over her mouth.
Mr. Green is leaning over Caleb, his face etched with concern. Caleb appears to be ignoring him. When Mr. Green looks up at me, it dawns on me that I’m still rooted to the spot where Jamie and Caleb left me. I’m going to have to walk all the way across the classroom, through a thicket of stares and whispers, and sit for the next eighty minutes right in front of a guy who hates me.