I spotted Ronni sitting at our usual table, alone so far and completely unembarrassed by it. Even though I’d seen her last weekend, at the last club tournament of the year, I rushed toward her like it had been months. When Ronni saw me, she cupped a hand around her mouth and yelled “RYAN!” at the same time as I yelled “DAVIS!”
Ronni Davis was my first real best friend, long before I ever met Jamie. We met in sixth grade, when I finally made the Surf Club’s premier soccer team after spending two years stuck on the Triple-A team. Ronni had made the premier team from the start, way back in fourth grade, and when I moved up, she was the only girl who said hi to me on the first day of practice. Everyone else ignored me, laughing too loud at their dumb, private middle-school jokes, throwing me and my floppy boy’s bowl cut the occasional skeptical glare. After a week or two I was one of them, having proved I was good enough to be there, but at the time, it felt like earning their approval took years. If it hadn’t been for Ronni, I might have quit, or begged to be put back on my old team, where at least I was the very best player on the medium-good team. We were inseparable, until I met Jamie. Jamie eclipsed everyone and everything, for me.
Oh God, I thought. Keep it together, Ryan.
As I reached our lunch table, I dipped into a subservient bow before Ronni. “My liege.”
Ronni shook her head. “You are so corny.”
At the end of our junior year, Ronni had been elected captain of our high school team over me, and I was devastated. I’d expected her to be chosen as club captain, which she also was, but I’d hoped somehow that I could be captain at school. Being captain didn’t mean much of anything as far as college recruiters cared, but I wanted it anyway. I had never been the head of anything. I wanted the word captain printed below my name in the yearbook as a matter of public record: I meant something.
Now all my short-term hopes and dreams rested on being named the United Soccer Coaches National Player of the Year, or Gatorade Player of the Year, like Ashlyn Harris, UNC alum and butch style icon, who earned both when she was in high school.
In the end, of course, I wanted to be Megan Rapinoe: World Cup champion, Golden Boot and Golden Ball winner, the best and most beloved player in the world. I wanted my name on jerseys and my face on girls’ walls. There was still time.
In any case, I got over the lost election after a week or so. For one thing, it quickly became obvious that Ronni would be a better captain than I ever could have been. Unlike me, she wasn’t afraid of our coach, even though Coach was objectively terrifying. At our last few school-season games as juniors, when she was captain-elect if not yet captain in practice, she stood next to Coach on the sidelines on the rare occasion she wasn’t playing, and together they assessed the rest of us with their arms crossed. Ronni looked so grown-up and official, exactly in the right place. Besides, the captain couldn’t be everyone’s best friend, just like a boss could never be real friends with her employees. Free of the responsibility to critique my teammates when they messed up a play, I could instead be the one who cheered them up after.
I unwrapped my sandwich and took a bite, hoping food would soothe the anxiety humming in my chest. Now that I was sitting down, I felt trapped—and paranoid. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the cafeteria doors. Ronni smacked a hand on the table.
“I thought we agreed: no liverwurst!”
“It’s the first day of school!” I protested. “It’s a special occasion!”
Ronni made a face. “Fine, but I don’t want to smell that smell again before your birthday.”
“What about your birthday?” I countered, and it was at that moment that I saw Jamie out of the corner of my eye. She’d just walked in with Alexis. I swallowed fast, too fast, and tried to obscure my small coughing fit in the crook of my elbow.
“You okay?” said Jamie.
How dare you, I thought. Ronni clapped me on the back, which only made me cough more. So far, this was going extremely well.
“Do you need the Heimlich? I’m still certified from my Red Cross babysitter training…,” offered Alexis.
“Someone who actually needs the Heimlich isn’t gonna be like, ‘Yes, thanks, that would be great,’ ” said Jamie.
“I’m fine,” I rasped.
“You sure?” asked Jamie.
It was clear from the way she asked that Jamie wasn’t just wondering whether or not I was done choking in front of her. Maybe she was trying to be nice, but as far as I was concerned, she could pluck those pity eyes right out of her head. I couldn’t make her un-break up with me, but I could certainly deny her the pleasure of knowing how much it still hurt. I could be friendly, but she couldn’t rush me right into unloaded friendship, either. I nodded quickly and changed the subject.
“Alexis,” I said, “give us the goods. What have you heard so far?”
Alexis was our school’s own Us Weekly. If anyone in our class hooked up with anyone, or got in a fight with anyone, or got detention, or got wasted over the weekend, Alexis knew about it, and she would relay the episode to us in more detail than anyone needed, and often more than anyone wanted. She had sources in every social group. People told her things because she had a small mouth and huge, understanding blue eyes, but also because she told them things in return. People only pretended to care when their secrets got out. We all knew that to get the best gossip you also had to give it. And there was no day better for the very best gossip than the first day back after summer break.
“Well,” said Alexis, eyes gleaming. She leaned over the table conspiratorially, and I breathed in relief. For as long as Alexis talked, I would be safe: I wouldn’t have to look at Jamie, or think of what to say to her, or notice Ronni and Alexis watching us interact, trying to judge whether or not we were “okay” yet. What would that look like, anyway? We weren’t together anymore, but we were both here. I wasn’t yelling and I wasn’t crying. If they expected more from me than that, I’d go sit somewhere else. No—they could sit somewhere else. No, wait—that would leave just me and Jamie. Ugh.
“—and, Ruby and Mikey broke up,” Alexis was saying. “A few weeks ago, apparently.”
“Wait,” I said. “What?” Jamie and I made eye contact for only an instant, but it was long enough to know we’d both had the same exact thought: Ruby Ocampo, number one on the list of Straight Girls We Wish Weren’t. I hadn’t thought about that list in a year.
Alexis misinterpreted my confusion as shock and clapped her hands in delight. “I know!”
“What about Sweets?” Jamie asked.
“Who broke up with who?” I asked.
Sweets was the name of a band composed of four Westville seniors: Mikey Vingiano on bass, Ben Cooper on drums, David Tovar on guitar, and Ruby Ocampo on vocals. Like many of our classmates, Jamie was obsessed with them. She’d sent me links to their SoundCloud page about a dozen times before I actually clicked on one, and even then I only lasted about twenty seconds. Ruby had a nice voice, but calling the noise underneath it a “song” felt generous. Jamie had told me I had to see them live to get it, but I often had soccer games when they had shows, and the rest of the time I invented menstrual cramps. They played most of their shows at the Six-Pack, which was the idiotic name given to the dilapidated old house in which Mikey’s older brother lived with three other college sophomores. Jamie said it wasn’t so bad, but when I pictured it I saw a dark and sweaty basement overflowing with smelly boys nodding to the music and drinking flat beer. I’d asked her if that sounded right and she agreed: it was more or less just like that. So, no thank you.