After some goodbyes and a quick kiss on the cheek from my mom, I shut the door after them and head back to the den to curl up on the couch. With the house empty, it almost feels like my mom is at work. Almost. But she’s not, and so I feel lonelier than I would if she were busy taking temperatures and checking blood pressures. I watch television but whenever a kissing scene comes on, I change the channel. Finally I give up and go to bed. Later that night when I hear my mom coming back in the house alone, I make sure the lights are off and I’m buried deep under my bedspread even though I’m still awake.
The date with John is still on my mind Monday morning as I make my way into school. The hearts and stars from the first issue of Moxie are long gone from the hands of the few girls who drew them. It was cool that the drawings gave me and Lucy a chance to meet and Kiera and me a moment to talk for the first time in years, but nothing has really changed at East Rockport. Mitchell and his buddies are still gross and the football team still rules all (even though their record is only 3–2). Yesterday while my mom was at work I spent the afternoon digging through her MY MISSPENT YOUTH box, but this time, even when I held the zines and flyers in my hands, they felt like something I couldn’t touch.
They are artifacts from a different time and I’m a girl today, right now, in East Rockport, Texas, and I’d better just accept it.
As I walk toward the main building shrouded in my sour mood, I hear a “hey” very clearly directed at me. A guy “hey,” not a girl “hey.” I look up to see where it came from.
He’s standing in the doorway of the school like some modern sort of James Dean, a phone in his hand instead of a cigarette.
Hearts-and-Stars New Boy Seth Acosta.
“Oh!” I say, jumping a bit. “Hey.” All the other students milling around East Rockport High’s front walkway disappear into the ether. I don’t hear them or see them.
Seth’s eyebrows dart up and hold there for a minute. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Oh, you didn’t scare me. Just rendered me mute. Give me like five years, and it should wear off.
“I’m fine,” I manage.
“That’s good.”
SILENCE. Awkward silence. Please, God, don’t let me be getting those freaky hives on my chest and neck like I sometimes do when I’m nervous. I glance down to check.
My chest looks like a strawberry farm had a bumper crop.
Dang it.
“We’re in the same English class, right?” Seth asks. He shifts his weight a little. He doesn’t seem to notice the hives. Probably he’s just too cool to say anything.
“Yeah, I think we are,” I say, faking uncertainty.
“Do you remember what the homework was for last night?” he asks. He bends over and fumbles through a few binders and notebooks, finally pulling out a slim green assignment book. His actions are so weirdly pedestrian and normal that I find myself relaxing a little bit.
“Uh, he assigned the grammar exercises on page 250 and 251, the stuff on adjective clauses,” I say from memory before I have a chance to worry if my ability to memorize homework makes me look like a total weirdo.
“Yeah, that’s what I had written down,” Seth says, shutting his assignment book and sliding it into his backpack. That’s when I notice a Runaways sticker on the corner of one of his binders, sticking out of his backpack like it’s waving hi.
“You like the Runaways?” I ask. “They’re so cool.”
Seth’s eyebrows pop up again, then he looks down and notices the sticker.
“Oh, yeah. That. My mom put that on there. They’re okay, I guess.”
“So your mom likes them?” I try. I can feel the strawberry field in full bloom. It’s probably super impressive to Seth that I like the same music as his mom.
“Yeah,” Seth says, and he cracks half a smile. “She used to play them for me when I was a kid. Like, constantly.”
Standing there listening to Seth, it’s almost as if I can visualize myself in the future relating this conversation to Claudia, reviewing point-by-point the brilliant ways I kept conversation going.
For instance: 1) My mom is also into the Runaways, and she would also play them for me as a kid or 2) Why did you move here? or 3) So what do you listen to other than your mom’s old music? or 4) Hey, do you want to make out?
Okay, maybe not the last one. But any of the others would have worked.
Instead, this is what I say:
“That’s cool. Well, see you later.”
That’s.
Cool.
Well.
See.
You.
Later.
And I walk away. I just stroll off, like I can’t be fucking bothered. I can’t decide if I’m the biggest idiot ever or if my anxiety levels are so high they decided to do me a favor and just end the conversation before I turned into one giant pink hive.
Either way, my neck and chest and even my cheeks are still burning as I walk into school. It’s been this way for me with guys ever since I was the tall girl in middle school and never got asked to dance by boys at the sock hops, so I’d hide in the bathroom during the slow songs, practicing my excited face in a stall so I wouldn’t look jealous or fake when Claudia told me about dancing with Scott Schnabel.
Heading down the main hallway, I spot Claudia by her locker, and she tucks in next to me as we make our way to first period American history.
“Listen, you will never believe the shirt I just saw Jason Garza wearing,” she says. I’m grateful she doesn’t seem to notice how worked up I am so I don’t have to explain my stupid social faux pas with Seth.
“Does he have on the one about what time a girl’s legs open?” I offer, still a little jittery.
“No,” Claudia says. “This one is worse. There’s a big red arrow on it pointing to his junk, and it says Free Breathalyzer Test Blow Here.”
I scowl. “God, really?”
“Yes,” Claudia says.
“Gross.”
“Yup.”
We slide into American history and take our seats at the back. As the bell rings Mrs. Robbins announces a pop quiz on our reading from last night, and all of us collectively groan, like we’re actors in a bad sitcom about high school.
“If you read the chapters, you have no reason to be worried,” Mrs. Robbins says, playing her part perfectly.
As she starts handing out the papers, there’s a knock on the door, but the knocker doesn’t wait for Mrs. Robbins. The door pops open, revealing Mr. Shelly, one of Mr. Wilson’s assistant principals. Whereas Mr. Wilson actually wields legitimate—if ridiculous—power over the high school, Mr. Shelly is just some second-in-command worker ant. But he walks around with a pathetic amount of swagger like he gets off on ruling a bunch of captive adolescents. Probably because he does.
“Doing a dress code check, Mrs. Robbins,” Mr. Shelly barks, letting his eyes skate over us. Mrs. Robbins sighs and waits, then jumps a bit just like the rest of us when he says, “Lady in the back. Is that you, Jana Sykes? Stand up, dear.” He’s got a piggish little face and beady eyes, and it’s hard to imagine him ever looking any different. Like his mother gave birth to a fiftysomething assistant principal with a hair loss problem and rosacea.
Of course we all turn and look, and Jana Sykes stands up uncertainly, shrugging her shoulders. As it turns out, her shoulders are the problem.
“Jana, those straps on your shirt are pretty thin, aren’t they?”