Tuesday, April 11
Six
The Burnout
In the morning, I consider skipping school entirely, but I can’t risk getting into more trouble. Of course they noticed that I wasn’t there all afternoon yesterday. (They being Principal Scott and the guidance counselor, probably my classmates too.) Principal Scott said I wasn’t in trouble this time—I’d never done it before and with everything that was going on, they knew it was a difficult time for the entire student body—but she encouraged me not to make a habit of it.
It wasn’t like I did anything all that bad with my free afternoon. Hiram drove to the beach and parked. Neither of us made a move to get out of the car. It was April in Northern California, a sunny day after a rainy winter. The waves crashed on the beach. The water didn’t look inviting, but I still kept my seat belt fastened because I was so tempted to dive in.
Hiram whistled. “Mike Parker, man,” he said. “Never liked him.”
I shook my head. “What are you talking about? Everyone likes him.”
“Not me.”
“You barely know him.”
Hiram shrugged. “Guess no one knew him as well as they thought, huh?”
“Everyone loves him,” I said reflexively. I gestured to the air in front of me as though we were looking not at a storm-tossed ocean but the school parking lot, just a stone’s throw from Mike and his friends eating lunch at their usual table outside the school. I shuddered and the image disappeared. School—Mike, his friends, everyone but Hiram—suddenly seemed very far away, like a life I’d merely imagined, or a story I’d heard.
“Even his girlfriend,” I added softly. “She still loves him.”
Hiram looked at me sharply. For a second I thought he was going to take my hand, but he kept his limbs on his side of the car.
“Well, even if that’s true,” Hiram said finally, “he doesn’t love her.”
I shook my head. “Sure he does. Everyone knows he was so in love.”
It was true. All of our classmates stepped aside when Mike walked through the halls, holding hands with the girl he loved so much. Other girls looked on wistfully. Even guys who talked a good game about not wanting to be tied down would occasionally concede that they’d give up their freedom for something as good as that.
Staring at the ocean from the passenger seat of Hiram’s car, I shook my head and swallowed, then slid off my sneakers and put my feet up on the dashboard so that I was curled into a ball. I bent my neck, letting my long hair fall forward so Hiram couldn’t see my face.
“That’s not love,” Hiram said firmly.
“How do you know?” I asked softly.
Through my hair, I saw Hiram shrug. We watched the waves crash, one right after another. I remembered reading somewhere that waves come in sets, but these waves didn’t look nearly so organized. The water looked messy. Falling on top of itself over and over again.
“Maybe it was love,” I tried. My voice sounded small, far away somehow. I pulled my sleeves down over my wrists, but my skin felt suddenly itchy beneath the fabric. So I pushed the sleeves up again and leaned my head back, staring at the car’s ceiling. “But maybe it wasn’t good love.”
“Maybe,” Hiram agreed, then added, “but maybe that’s just as bad as not being love at all.”
We stayed at the beach until it got dark, and then he drove me home. Until then, I hadn’t realized Hiram knew where I lived.
Seven
The Popular Girl
I head toward our usual table outside for lunch the next day. I keep my eyes focused straight ahead so I won’t have to see the Looks from all my classmates.
I got dressed carefully this morning. I know clothes can’t actually speak, but when you’re one of the most popular girls in school, people tend to look at you and now that all this is going on, I knew they’d be looking even more than usual. Besides, I like clothes. They let me express myself without saying a word.
So I’m wearing dark blue jeans with my favorite high-heeled clogs. A bright white T-shirt with the name of an old band (Led Zeppelin) scrawled across the front; I ordered it after I saw it in a picture from Teen Vogue. I leave my long brown hair down, but I’m wearing a pair of sunglasses as a headband even though the fog is thick today and the Weather Channel app on my phone said it might rain later. California cool. California casual. There’s a chill in the air, but I didn’t bring a jacket or sweater with me to school today. I didn’t want to look like I was hiding anything, hiding from anyone.
Even though I keep my eyes focused straight ahead, it’s impossible to avoid all of the sympathetic smiles, the raised eyebrows, occasionally even a hand on my arm followed by How’re you doing? or sometimes How’s Mike doing? I tell them I’d rather not talk about it.
Mike’s already sitting at our usual lunch table, flanked on either side by his two best friends. I wonder if Anil and Kyle have been getting as many questions from our classmates as I have. Then again, they’re a lot more intimidating than I am, so maybe not. In fact, maybe they’re sitting beside Mike now expressly to stop people from asking questions.
They’ve always sat like that. We picked this table freshman year and haven’t moved since. (We’re juniors now.) Every so often an unknowing group of underclassmen will sit down, and all Mike has to do is throw them a look—he doesn’t even have to say a word—and they move.
Mike always seemed so much more grown-up than the rest of us. Even in kindergarten, when most boys could barely keep still for more than a few minutes at a time, Mike sat at the same table for lunch every day, and he never tried to get up until the teacher clapped her hands and announced that it was time for recess. Then he sped off like a shot and won every game of tag, every relay race. I used to think he was so fast because, unlike the other boys, he held still the rest of the time, like he’d made the decision to store up his energy for when it mattered.
I linger near the school entrance, one hand against a stucco pillar. Our school is only one story tall, spread out so that it’s long and curvy like a snake. On one side of the snake is the track where Mike runs almost every day, the parking lot beyond it. There are tables on either end of the school, but anyone worth anything sits at the tables on the south side like we do.
There aren’t any girls sitting at our table. Maybe none of the female students will want to sit with Mike now. Or maybe they just haven’t gotten here yet.
Someone grabs me from behind. I spin around.
“You scared me,” I say. It’s my best friend, Junie.
“Let’s eat in the library today,” she suggests. “I mean, who wants to deal with all that drama?” She gestures with her chin to the table where the boys are sitting. I see that a girl has sat down across from Mike and his friends. So much for female solidarity. It’s a sophomore whose name I think is Eva Mercado. She’s always had a crush on Mike. He never so much as smiled at her, though. I mean, he wasn’t rude about it or anything, he was just a really faithful boyfriend.