(And Boyd.)
(I think he’s mostly friends with her out of pity, and the fact that they are the same year.)
Anyway. I know deep down Mel’s just terrified of rejection. She’s really pretty and everything, even though she says her nose is too crooked, but it just goes to show that even people who look great on the outside are sometimes hot messes on the inside. And lately, it has seemed worse, like even though she puts on a great show, she’s fragile and could shatter. I don’t know when that happened, or why. All I know is, I’m her buffer.
Also, whatever. I don’t have anything better to do.
This is not going to be easy, though. I mean, we’re a full week into sophomore year and I’ve seen this guy speak maybe three or four times so far (including the geometry cylinder thing).
Also? He’s been sitting alone every day during lunch. People are actually afraid of him, haha!
But he doesn’t really look like a criminal to me. He has the scruffy jeans and messy hair (again, hot) but up close (in math class—he sits behind me), I could see he has these freckles that make him seem like just a kid.
To try to warm things up earlier today, I turned around and offered to lend him a pencil, since Mrs. Gluckman was all “Why aren’t you people taking notes?” He gave me this half grin and held up his own. It’s seriously like he has mastered the Zen Art of Avoiding Speaking Altogether. I swiveled back around and wrote him a note during Gluck’s mind-numbing lecture. “Do you have a girlfriend—yes/no.” While she was handing quizzes back (I got a B!!!!), I dropped it on his desk.
BUT HE NEVER ANSWERED IT.
And I swear I could feel his eyes boring into the back of my neck for the rest of class and okay, the note was very immature, but it’s still MORE immature not to respond at all, isn’t it? Like, he could have just said yes even if it wasn’t true and I would have gotten the hint. But noooo.
RUDE.
The guy is a jerk. It’s unequivocal. Or equivocal. I forget which means which. Dear Diary, do not ever let Kit read you, she will scream at the bad grammar and it will be the first and last scream from her pure, untouched being, a scream of torment and despair. Children will weep and flowers will wilt.
What was I talking about? Oh yeah, math class. Well, anyway, who cares what Patrick thinks of me? I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing it for Mel, so I may as well get it over with. . . .
“So what’s our move?” Mel asked, poking Lilly in the rib with a plastic fork.
“Ow.” She sat up and closed her diary, tucking it into her backpack where it was safe. “I’m still working on it. But really, you’re going to regret this. Best-case scenario, he says yes—and then you’re actually stuck going out with him!”
Dar played with her bangs. “Do you think he really went to juvie?”
Mel shook her head. “That’s a rumor. He got expelled over a fistfight last year, that’s all I know for sure.”
“Oh,” Dar said. “Just a fistfight.”
Lilly laughed and Mel folded her arms, fake pouting. “Fine. You guys can laugh all you want.” But behind the pout, Lilly could sense something else—a flicker of something real. Sadness? Loneliness? Doubt?
“Oh, Mel.” Dar sighed, breaking the spell, and Mel shoved her in the shoulder.
Lilly took a deep breath, stood up, and began walking over to Patrick. As much as she didn’t want to interact with him, it was better than disappointing Mel. Ever since last year and their “vow,” the girl had dated five boys without ever asking a single one of them out. It was kind of like how she lined up all her lip gloss along her sink at home, from darkest to light. It looked like a makeup museum. You had to be super careful, because if you knocked one over, you’d knock over all of them.
As Lilly made her way through the crowded field, she was aware of Tessa sitting at one of the picnic tables near the cafeteria door, blowing a spitball at Boyd. Almost everyone ate lunch in the quad until the last possible moment. Sometimes even when it snowed last winter, Lilly would find Tess eating her lunch outside at the picnic table, bundled in a parka that made her hair go staticky.
She didn’t see Kit anywhere, but that was not surprising. She was usually tutoring or on a planning committee or catching up on homework in the library—a missed opportunity, from Lilly’s point of view. Kit could easily be DLHS royalty—center quad status, homecoming queen material, and everything else that came with being pretty, smart, and liked by literally everyone. But Kit acted like those things didn’t matter.
It was high school: what else did matter?
As Lilly came closer to Tessa’s table, she caught Boyd’s eye. She smiled but kept walking, hoping he got a good look at the cutout in her T-shirt, exposing her back, which stopped just above the line of her shorts. She’d cut it herself over the summer.
Passing by, she felt something wet smack against the small of her bare back. She yelped and turned.
Tessa was grinning as she threw a straw under the table. Too late, though. Lilly saw.
She scraped the slobbery blob from her skin and marched over to Tessa and Boyd and the weirdo table. “Tess, what the hell?”
Tessa laughed. “Oh, relax, we were just playing around.”
Lilly’s face went hot at the word we. Like Boyd was automatically on Tessa’s side. The side making fun of her. Treating her like a kid they could just pick on when they wanted to. She took a deep breath. “Tessa, why don’t you just grow up and find a hobby or something?”
“Why would I, when I’m having so much fun bugging you, sis?” Tessa was smirking like it was the permanent shape of her face, which maybe it was.
But then Boyd wrapped his big arm around Lilly’s waist. “Chill, little Lill. I will personally make sure that no further saliva-covered items touch your delicate skin.”
A giant shiver raced through Lilly’s body. This was the thing with Boyd: he was always so casual with all of them. Throwing his arm around them like a protective brother. Wrestling in the yard. Teasing them. How could they ever tell if it was more than that?
And what was that he’d just said about saliva and skin?
“Fine.” She turned to face him, blocking out Tessa on purpose. “If you promise.” She leaned toward him, wondering if he could see her cleavage and if that was gross and eager of her to think.
“I promise.” He reached up and mussed her hair. Great. Just like that she was the baby all over again. But before she could figure out what to say next, she caught Mel’s eye across the quad. She still had a job to do.
“Gotta go.”
“You’re always in high demand,” said Tessa, but not as a compliment. She tore a piece of celery in half and crunched on one end of it. For such a tiny girl, she had all the grace of a horse.
“Actually, I’m about to ask that guy out,” Lilly said, seeing an opportunity. She tilted her head in the direction of Patrick, who was no longer leaning against his tree but was, in fact, in the process of shoving his book into his bag.
“Ooooh, good luck,” Tessa called to her back, which was still faintly damp in one spot, as though she’d been marked.
Lilly had to run to catch up with Patrick just as he was rounding the far end of the quad, toward the parking lot. She grabbed on to his shoulder. “Hey.”