“The earthquake,” Marcos says. “It’s what they do for Andreas.”
As soon as the final buzzer goes off, the stands erupt. Juliana grabs Cassie’s hand, Cassie pulls the elbow of my sweatshirt, and we roll with the crowd onto the field, a maroon-and-white landslide of noise. The field lights dazzle, and when I blink, I see white explosions.
Damp arms around my shoulders and rock-solid chests against my face. It’s one tidal group hug and no one’s left out. The mascot, Dashing the Dolphin, leaps across the field. So many high-fives that my hands hurt. The guys don’t discriminate against those who didn’t play.
“Over here!” Preston Bolivar lifts his phone to his glasses. I reach for Cassie and instead catch jersey, slick in my hands. Andreas, the star. I try to wriggle away, but his arm captures my shoulders–we see eye to eye–and Marcos appears on my other side. Andreas makes a sound like a wolf howling to the moon, and I crack up; everyone does. The vibration makes the whole line buckle. The phone’s camera flashes and another cheer rises.
It’s almost like something worth being a part of.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“WHAT’S UP WITH Marcos?” Cassie says, spinning her sunglasses between her thumb and index finger.
I take a gulp of iced black coffee (blegh) and return to typing. I’m not used to this much caffeine, and my fingers keep misfiring on the keyboard as a result. At some point, my thesis statement referred to Hamlet as “Hamster.” Ten minutes before the first bell, I’m still only two pages deep. I’d completely forgotten about the assignment until I woke up this morning. So much for that GPA that’s kept what’s left of my pride afloat.
I fumble for one of Cassie’s ubiquitous Post-It notes. There are no blank ones, so I scrawl “Real madness or fake?” on one that reads, “Do I dare to eat a peach?” It slips out of my fingers and tumbles into the abyss of scarves and flip-flops on the floor.
“The madness thing has been overdone,” Cass says, reading over my shoulder. “Although you know that Beth O’Leary is going to act like she’s the first person to wonder if Hamlet was faking it.”
I stab at the screen. “Here I discuss how Ophelia should have told Hamlet to screw off.”
Cassie snorts. “The assignment’s a textual analysis. Good luck with that.”
“Then what’s the point of all of the coffee mugs with Shakespearean insults if Ophelia never got to use them? Fuck the nunnery, man.” This is the worst. I need days of preparation, not the last-minute dance that Cassie thrives on. “What’d you write about?”
She tugs the coffee from me and takes a noisy slurp. “C’mon, Savs. You know me better than that.”
AKA she didn’t do the essay. Even after Mr. Riley’s meeting. I should ask why not, but with another page to write, I need to stay focused.
“Seems like you and Marcos hit it off swimmingly,” she says.
“I guess.” Thanks to you talking to Juliana the entire night.
Nine minutes until the bell.
I had to bribe Cassie with the promise of buying her coffee in exchange for her picking me up so early. Driving out to Montauk for the sunrise? No problem for Cass. Waking up early for school? Forget it.
“Ugh, I forgot Ophelia in my intro.” Amateur mistake. Scroll, scroll, accidentally exit the document– “You have to be kidding me!”
Cassie shuts off the radio. This means trouble. Now my palms are sweating enough that the keyboard glistens. “Can I be honest with you for a second?” she says.
Can I be honest? she’d asked when I’d attempted eye shadow in sixth grade and smeared blue up to my eyebrows. Or when I’d missed a spot of sunscreen and had an odd shaped patch of brilliant red skin on my back.
I’m not going to like this. I know it already.
She adjusts my ponytail, smoothing down the free-flying pieces. “Marcos is nice and all, but can you imagine Papa Gregory dropping you off for a date in El Pueblo?”
Whoa, whoa. She’s rolling down a mighty slippery slope here. (I didn’t hit my head hard enough to actually nap against Marcos’s laundry-fresh sweatshirt, right?) In the flat area between Main Street and the bay, down the hill from the mansions, tiny bungalows are crammed together on barely paved roads. It’s the place my classmates call El Pueblo, where many of the immigrant families squeeze together.
“Hold up.” I raise my hand for further emphasis. “First of all, El Pueblo is not an official place.”
Cassie sighs. Two weeks older, so much wiser. “Just because it’s not on your precious Google Maps doesn’t mean that–”
“Secondly, what date?” Let’s be honest, at the first notion of a date, Dad would log into the school system to check the guy’s GPA.
“You’re kidding, right? Marcos didn’t take his eyes off you the entire night. Even Juliana noticed.” A wicked glint in her eyes. “After your super-hot ‘make-out session.’”
I roll my eyes. “Oh, God, don’t bring that up ever again.” Which is basically my way of saying, I know you’ll never let me forget it.
She cracks herself up, tipping her head back. “It was adorable. You were like a fawn standing on your legs for the first time.”
I try not to smile; I really do. Then I recall the stunned look on Marcos’s face, combined with the caffeine in my system, and I start laughing with her.
A knock on the window.
Cassie screams in surprise, I yelp, and then we’re cracking up afresh. It’s like the sleepovers when we’ve been up far too late and something that isn’t funny at all gains hilarity the more we laugh.
“Holy shit, we summoned him.” Her eyes bug out comically, and as she rolls down the window, I can barely look Marcos in the eye for fear of laughing again.
He rests his forearms on the window frame and smiles at both of us. I’m distracted by that single crooked front tooth. It’s so damn cute, I bet he got out of trouble all the time as a little kid.
“You smell baby fresh,” Cassie greets him. “What’s your secret?”