Christy waves me down toward our usual table with Lindsey and Rachel. I am about to join them when I see a flash of long dark hair and bright red nails at the Coke machine. Something loosens in my chest—a knot I hadn’t realized was there. Stacey is here after all. I turn toward her as she grabs her Diet Coke and spins around—but it isn’t her after all. It’s a freshman I remember from JV tryouts when I helped Coach Hendrix time the hundred-meter dash. She was fast, but afraid of getting kicked. I knew she didn’t stand a chance once scrimmages began.
There are two types of team hopefuls: those who pull up short, close their eyes, and brace for impact, and those who race toward the ball almost longing for the possible pain of a collision.
Only the latter makes a good soccer player.
I walk down the stairs with my taco salad and sit across from Christy, who is finishing off everyone’s fruit cup. I hand her mine without a word and begin fishing the tortilla strips out of the lettuce. Every other Monday, I ask them to put the tortilla chip strips on the side. Every other Monday, I am ignored. As I quickly as I pick them out, Christy crunches them down. This is our system.
Lindsey and Rachel are both staring at their phones. We only have these scant twenty minutes to tap and tweet and text before fifth period begins and our blinking handheld portals to Anywhere But Here must be switched to silent in our lockers for another fifty minutes.
“What’s with everyone today?” I ask Christy.
She shrugs, chewing. “Whadayamean?”
I point my fork toward Lindsey and Rachel. “Everybody with their faces buried in their screens. Is everyone looking for clues to find the horcrux? What’s so interesting?”
“Just catching up on Dooney’s party,” says Rachel, without looking up. “Hashtag ‘doonestown.’ Some crazy pictures.”
“As long as none of them are of me.”
Rachel laughs it off, but it makes me nervous.
“Hey—what’s this hashtag?” Lindsey holds her phone out to Christy, who takes it from her and shows me. The picture of Stacey passed out is somehow worse now that I know she’s not at school today. There are three hashtags: #doonestown #buccs #r&p. I shrug and keep taking bites of my salad, but the ground beef is tough. I think of Ben’s contention that the tacos are made of cats and start smiling to myself.
“What’s so funny?” Lindsey misses nothing.
“Huh? Oh—nothing. Just . . . thinking about something . . .”
All three of them start in at once:
“Oh, I’ll bet you are.”
“You mean someone.”
“I won’t tell you his full name, but his initials are B-E-N-C-O-D-Y.”
I am laughing because what else can you do when your friends torment you, and they’re right? My phone buzzes in my purse. I fish it out and see a text.
Can I talk 2 u? Sr. stairs.
Lindsey sees the name before I can shield the screen. “It’s from Ben!”
The volume from Christy only goes one way in these situations: up. As quickly as I can, I drop my phone into my purse and pick up my tray. Rachel squeezes my arm and raises her eyebrows in excitement as I slip away from the table. The catcalls from Christy follow me, and are met with a general wave of noise from the rest of the cafeteria—as the corn syrup of every Coke and cookie ingested hits the collective bloodstream of Coral Sands High. The strange hush is over. The tipping point toward bedlam has been achieved.
The tone will pulse to end lunch in exactly four minutes. It will take me one minute to drop off my tray and walk to the senior stairwell. There will be three minutes of relative quiet before the wave crests and tears through the halls.
I walk as quickly as I can. I see him as I pass beneath the stairwell and pause in the shadow. He is leaning against my locker, staring at his phone. Is he swiping through the same hashtags Lindsey is patrolling? Or is he waiting for a text from me?
The straps of his backpack frame his chest in a way that makes my knees weak. Better keep walking or you might fall down.
He glances up as I approach and slips into an easy smile that warms me from the inside out. Once more, I’m reminded why all the guys on the team look up to him—even the seniors.
“There you are.”
Was there ever a more perfect greeting? Not a grunted “hey” or a “where’ve you been?” but There you are.
As if he couldn’t go on until I arrived.
As if he’d have waited forever, but is so happy he won’t have to.
“In the flesh.” I smile back, and what possesses me I cannot say, but right there, four feet away from him and closing in, I spin on the toe of my flats. Just once.
I am not a girl for cutesy. I am not a girl for foundation on school days or mascara on weekends or fingernails that hamper typing. But here, in the hallway, this guy who leans on my locker like he owns that space—like he belongs in my world—has inspired me to whimsy.
He laughs at my twirl, his head thrown back slightly, a strand of his bangs falling down into his eyes. I reach up before my brain can stop my arm and tuck it back into the pile.
“You needed to see me?”
He nods, and exhales like he’s got something important to say—something he’s worried about. “Wanted to ask you a question,” he says, then bites his lip.
“Shoot.”
He glances over my head with a little boy’s shy smile and a squirm I remember seeing a long time ago.