“One of these days I’m gonna tell my parents about this,” she threatens, then rolls her eyes. “Actually, it wouldn’t matter. You could murder a drifter and they’d still love you.”
She might act cranky, but she likes doing it. She told me once that it’s relaxing to do my tests because they’re so easy that it’s like a form of supersmart-person meditation. Not that she said it in those words, she’s always been way too modest. (If Ave had invented fire, she’d introduce it to the Cro-Magnons by whispering, “Um, hey, I made this thing, it’s kinda cool, it might be sorta helpful for our continued evolution, if that makes any sense.”)
As Ave whizzes through my test, occasionally sipping one of the many cans of Diet Coke she guzzles all day, there’s a shuffling behind us, then a shadow over poor Got Her Period on Her Pants and Nobody Told Her Leslie like one cast by the side of a mountain.
It’s Mike Neckekis, a tree-trunk-neck jock who in the days of yore might have been called “simple.” Ave doesn’t notice.
I nudge her. “Um . . . Avery?”
She glances up and around. Looks at Mike. Waits expectantly. Generally speaking, the Populars approach Avery only if they want to buy Adderall, pay her to write their college essay, or ask if she and Ashley are really sisters.
“I wanted to say that uh, uh . . .” He breathes heavily, in what would seem like a sigh if it was not just his natural state of Pop-Tarts-infused mouth breathing. “Uh . . .”
We all stare.
“I agreed with you in sociology when Mrs. Donovan was talking about Twitter outrage, and you argued that was a privileged point of view.”
“I didn’t . . . did I argue that?”
“Well, you sort of mumbled it. You mumble stuff.”
“I do?”
“Yeah, you mumble stuff, and you scratch your forehead with your pen, and sometimes the cap is off, so you get, um . . .” He runs his finger over his hairline. “Ink stains. Not right now, but sometimes.”
Avery stares at him for a second, touching her forehead self-consciously. She looks perplexed, but sort of . . . happy? How can she not be laughing her ass off at him right now?
“Anyways, I agree with you. I think, like, Twitter totally scares snobs like Mrs. Donovan who live in, like, mansions in Short Hills and commute here to teach because they want to feel like they’re helping out less rich people without actually having to, like, think about them all that much. So. Yeah.”
Avery breaks into a smile.
“I was wondering—I saw you talking to some older guy when you were getting off the Princeton bus, and I wasn’t sure if you were, like, dating . . .”
“We’re not,” Ave says, still smiling, seeming shell-shocked. “I mean. No. Nothing is—he’s not my boyfriend. Or anything. I was asking him if we’ll still have a free period.”
“Oh! Okay. Well. I guess, then, do you want to go to the dance with me?”
Avery’s jaw drops in the briefest expression of pure joy before she tamps it down, undoubtedly due to the numerous dating-advice listicles Dawn posts on our Facebook walls with headlines like “17 Ways to Win at Love by Pretending You Don’t Give a Crap.”
“I wasn’t gonna go, but . . . if you think that would be fun, then sure, why not,” she says casually. Seriously, does everybody know how to fake unenthusiasm but me?
Mike actually does sigh this time, I think, of relief. “Cool. Okay. I got your number from Ashley.”
Our entire table simultaneously looks over at Ashley, who’s already been glaring at us with comical menace, like an owl antagonist in a children’s movie about mice.
“So, I’ll text you my number, and, like, then we can have each other’s . . . numbers? So we can text?”
Avery nods, smiles. “Sounds good.”
As soon as he walks away, I nearly blow a gasket finally letting my derision fly. “Mike fucking Neckekis?!”
“Chill out.” Avery lets out a breathless laugh and drops her head in her hands. I watch her shoulders shaking with laughter. But it’s not the derisive kind I expected. It’s more like “just got off a roller coaster” exhilaration.
I’m wounded. She’s been holding out on me.
“And you never told me abou—who’s the guy in your math class at Princeton?” Everybody else at our table is poker-faced because they are all basically feral brains without bodies.
“We’re auditing,” Ave says, pulling a lip balm out of her book bag’s front pocket and pouting to nonchalantly apply it. Two boys say hi to her, and suddenly she’s Lana Del Rey. “Technically none of us are in our math class at Princeton.”
“Come on, you know what I mean.”
“Yes, he tested out of the math classes. Same as me.”
“Well, that makes a little more sense, doesn’t it?”
Ave looks pointedly at me. “What do you mean?”
“What do you mean, what do I mean? That means he’s smart, and probably more right for you than Mike Neckekis, who is Comic Sans in human form.”
She shrugs. “We obviously agree on some stuff.”