“Gael,” Anika blurted out. “What are you doing here? You’re never here this early.”
“Neither is he.” Gael spit the words at his friend. “I came to surprise you.”
“Oh,” she said, looking down at the flowers in Gael’s hand. They were pointed at the floor, like even they had lost hope—Gael instantly felt ridiculous. He opened his backpack and shoved them in—he couldn’t look at them anymore.
Mason shifted on his huge, long legs. “Listen, man . . .”
Anika snapped into action. “Gael, we should probably talk alone.”
Mason hesitated, but then Anika narrowed her eyes at him and drew her lips together just like she did when she wanted Gael to stop talking about classic movies—apparently, the wordless language Gael and Anika shared belonged to Mason now.
Mason nodded and shuffled away. Part of Gael wanted to chase after him, grab him, ask him what the hell he thought he was doing with her, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from Anika.
She took a deep breath, running her finger along the top slat of her locker. Then, fixing her eyes on him and holding his gaze, she gave him her “let’s talk” face. It was one of the things Gael liked about her most, how serious she could be. Anika had gumption. Not a lot of high school girls had gumption.
Enough gumption to cheat on her boyfriend with his best friend, Gael wondered.
“What is going on?” he asked. “Are you, like, with Mason now? Are you joking?” To his embarrassment, he realized his voice was trembling.
Anika looked down to her scuffed-up red Mary Janes, the ones she’d found in Goodwill the day Gael scored a faded Taxi Driver shirt. “I’m sorry.”
The first thing: a thump and a shaking all over, like an earthquake only Gael could feel.
The second thing: her eyes lifting to his in confirmation. Something so impossible it had occupied exactly zero percent of his mental space had actually happened, just like that.
The third thing: people on the periphery, staring. Flashes of humans who had nothing to do with him and Anika. Devon Johnson. Mark Kaplan. Amberleigh Shotwell, reigning first-chair flute in band. He suddenly wondered how many of these people had known this was happening—it wasn’t as if Anika and Mason were exactly being discreet. Gael imagined them laughing at him over greasy cafeteria grilled cheese: stupid, starry-eyed Gael who didn’t have a clue what his girlfriend and best friend were doing behind his back.
“You have to be kidding,” he said, his voice wavering and the first tear spilling down his cheek. Gael couldn’t believe she was doing this to him, especially after everything that had happened with his parents. It was like it was her personal mission to confirm his biggest fear: that love wasn’t real. How could it be if two people who’d seemed happy for his entire life suddenly weren’t?
“How long has this been going on?” he asked, desperately praying that what he’d just witnessed was a brief moment of weakness, a fluke.
Anika bit her lip. “I don’t know,” she said. “A week, I guess.”
A week? Anika and Mason had been doing who knows what for an entire week?
Gael grabbed Anika’s shoulder, hanging on as if for dear life, and wrestled to get control of himself. “Look, you’re confused and freaked out by what I said. Maybe if we just talk about this. What do you say? We’ll ditch first period.” Gael had never ditched a period in his life. Anika had, though, when she had waited in line for Flaming Lips tickets.
Anika always got what she wanted. And now she no longer wanted him.
“No, Gael. I can’t.” She tried to shrug his hand off.
Instead of letting go, Gael grabbed her other arm, desperately looking into her face. “Please.”
For a second, there was sympathy in her dark brown eyes, and Anika almost looked like she was going to change her mind, like she suddenly realized that trading what she and Gael had for whatever the hell was going on with Mason was the stupidest thing in the world. Then a commanding “Excuse me!” broke the moment, the onlookers quickly dispersed, and Mrs. Channing materialized, looking at Gael sternly through frameless glasses. “Is there a problem here?”
Gael let Anika go, surreptitiously wiped the moisture from his eyes, and shoved his wet hand in his jacket pocket, where he fingered a mini-pack of tissues that he hadn’t remembered putting there. (You’re welcome, Gael.)
“Anika?” Mrs. Channing asked.
Anika hesitated. She actually hesitated. “No,” she said finally. Meekly. Un-Anika-ly.
Mrs. Channing turned to Gael. “Can I see you in my office, Gael?”
“I have to go to class,” he said. His eyes flitted back to Anika.
“I’ll write you a pass,” Mrs. Channing said. “Come on.”
So Gael followed her down the hall, biting the insides of his cheeks to stop himself from falling apart in front of everyone.
He glanced back at Anika, but instead of looking sympathetic, she was rushing to her first class without so much as a glance back.
Anika had always marched to the beat of her own drum.
Only now, she was marching away from him.