“I don’t know. Maybe because today’s the first time I heard her say something since ninth grade?”
“All righty then. We’ll talk in gym I guess.”
I catch Sandra’s eye and point to the spot next to me. She shakes her head.
I shrug and pull my lunch out of my backpack. “Are we allowed to check our e-mail? Or is that part of the ban?”
“I checked mine.” Tats chews on a carrot stick.
I read Dad’s message: Take your reward when you see it within reach. Don’t question your luck. Success belongs to you.
A bag is placed on the table next to my Tupperware of rice. Sandra slumps into the chair beside me.
I talk about the woes of living at Fairchild Towers for the rest of lunch period with Tats acting out the more colorful neighbors. Sandra sits and watches us, laughing once in a while.
? ? ?
Ms. Eisen informs us that we’re going to continue our weights unit until Tuesday, after which point whoever shows up for the last classes will play softball in the field. “Tomorrow we’ll be recording our abilities. I’ll use the results as an evaluation for your final grade.”
Tats raises her hand. “Can we have new partners?”
“No, everyone back to your assigned partners.”
Tats and I say good-bye to each other, and I head to where Simone is waiting for me, soccer legs planted firm, mat spread out.
The only thing to do now is to meet Tats on the roof after school.
Only seventeen people, seventeen untouchable people, know about the roof. Even Lauren isn’t in that high of an echelon.
Since Tats’s brother was a member of the untouchable crew during his time at Fenway High, and since she heard him in his senior year bragging about it one day to his girlfriend, when Tats was hiding in his room, back when she was in the eighth grade, to see what her brother did there with his GF, and since she wrote the exact method of getting up on the roof in her diary to preserve it until we got to Fenway, we became the sixteenth and seventeenth people to make it to the top of the school. When he graduated, her brother handed over the key, dangling on an Espa?a key chain, to the old teacher’s storage room, through which you could access the roof hatch.
It’s apparent we’re the only ones who hang out there just to talk, judging by the paraphernalia cluttered around the place. Some of the items, I have no idea what use they had. But if it’s on the roof, it’s probably illegal in some way.
By being there simply to talk, peacefully talk, we’re almost blessing the place, you know?
“First,” Tats says, settling against the itty-bitty vent, the safest place not to be seen from below, “did you know Matt sort of waved at me today? Like this.”
She stands up, gets a guy swagger on, and then picks up a hand for a second, up to her hips, and drops it.
“And it was from across the hallway,” she says proudly. “The two girls with him even looked me over. All because our families ate at Wishbone’s at the same exact time. That is what is called cosmic.”
I want to jump topics but I know she needs to unload, so I look impressed.
“And my mom’s joined his mom’s book club. That’s the bad part,” she adds, sitting down again.
“Why’s that bad?” I say, thinking Muhammad would get so excited if Mom joined something with Saint Sarah’s mom. It would get them to be friends and then pave the way for him and her to live happily ever after.
“Um, don’t you know what those book clubs are for? They’re therapy sessions. She’ll be talking about her problems, me included, and next thing you know, Matt’s going to hear all about it. It’s at his house every two weeks.” Tats sighs. “I tried to stop my mom. That’s why she joined for real.”
“Maybe he’ll like you more, the more he hears about you secondhand. It’s worked for others,” I say, thinking again of Muhammad and his weird claim that my talking about Saint Sarah had prodded him into falling for her.
“Oh yeah, I’m sure he’s going to like hearing about my ‘learning’ condition,” Tats says. “Mom never lets up on that.”
“Oh,” I say. “Want some halal gummy bears? No piggy gelatin.”
She takes a handful, picks a green one out, and bites off its head.
“Ugh, these aren’t real gummy bears,” she says, flinging them away. The headless one lands next to the remains of a joint. Evicted for being different.
“So,” I say. “Jeremy?” I slowly arrange the remaining halal gummy bears in a circle on the roof in front of me, to contain myself, to bring myself down to earth. Actually, below earth, sublevel, into the depths of unfortunate occurrences.
I have this thing I do when I’m looking forward to something, when I notice myself getting overexcited, where I don’t think of the great possibilities in detail—only the awful ones—so that when it turns out to be something amazing, I’m genuinely surprised. In an unpracticed kind of way. It may not be part of Dad’s prescription for living successfully, but it’s kind of the best thing if you have an active imagination.
These are the possibilities I’ve been wallowing in regarding Jeremy and me:
1) Tats told him I liked him. He said he’d walk by the sophomore hallway to give me my eyeful for the day, because he’s into charity.
2) Tats mentioned my name as a potential photographer for end-of-year drama club pics, and he said he wanted to know how to spell such an interesting name. She told him to check with me as she had no clue.
And the last, most terrible one:
3) Tats mentioned my name as a potential photographer for end-of-year drama club pics, and he said he knows the right guy for me. His good friend Farooq.
I clear my head of that possibility.
“Oh, yeah,” Tats says. “Okay, so, we’re on a cleanup break at drama club and Jeremy’s doing inventory of the lighting equipment with Ms. Jones and I kind of stand by, pretending to wait to talk to Ms. Jones, but I’m really observing him, right?”
I nod. I’m evening out the colors in the gummy bear circle, so it’s balanced.
“And then he turns to me and smiles. This really nice smile.”
I suppress the stab of jealousy that immediately makes itself known, right below my heart.
“I wave and say, ‘Are you Jeremy?’?” Tats continues, with this faraway smile on her face. “Because I’ve heard about what you did with the lights last year for Macbeth.”
The knife of jealousy is reaching up. If it actually pierces my heart, I think I’ll throw the gummies at Tats.
“He says yeah,” Tats says. “And then, get this, we get dismissed early, and as we’re leaving, he says, ‘You’re the girl who hangs around with Janna, right?’?”
I freeze and stare at Tats. “What?”
And then I understand.
“Oh, wait, I know,” I say. “It’s because he’s friends with this guy, Fizz’s cousin. That’s why.”
Tats blinks at me.
“So you’re going to finish my story for me?” she asks.
“Okay, finish,” I say, settling back to continue the gummy bear collective.