“Well, see you later, ’gator,” he says, giving my hand a squeeze.
I’ll never wash that hand, I think. I never imagined I’d catch myself thinking something like that. I run across the clearing to the Blazer. Thank God Jessie is there, ready and waiting—and smiling, because she knows I am going to tell her all about it, every detail.
We board the chariot, and it takes us rambling down the road, seemingly right into the huge harvest moon.
4
The following Monday, I arrive at school still tired from all the excitement of the weekend. Jessie is already at our locker, and her eyes grow wide when she sees me.
“You know what?” she says in a low voice that makes my hair stand on end. “I heard Tomper Sandel talking about you this morning.”
“About me?” I croak. That I’m loose? That he doesn’t like me? That he likes me?
“Get this,” Jessie says. “I was in the bathroom, and you know how you can hear stuff in the hall through the grates in the door? Well, I overheard Miss Priss-face Marsha Randall talking to Tomper, and I heard your name.”
“My name?” I yelp. Is that good or bad?
“Yeah, Marsha said to Tomper, ‘I heard you were with Ellen Sung on Friday night.’”
“How does she know?” I cut in.
“Maybe she saw you two together,” Jessie says.
“What’d Tomper say?”
“He said, ‘Yeah, I was.’ Then Marsha said, ‘Do you like her or something?’”
Or something. I visualize her delicate pink lips curling into a sneer. I’m just an insignificant gnat not worth Tomper’s time.
“Then he said, ‘If I do, Marsha, everyone will know in their own sweet time’—that sounds encouraging, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know,” I say hopelessly. I think of inquisitive lips and hands touching in the night. Funny how life can swivel you around so dramatically from moment to moment. People in car crashes must feel like this: everything’s fine one moment, then—crash!
I arrive at chem before Tomper, and I sit in the back of the room with Beth. He saunters in late and sits in one of the desks up front. His golden hair lies in agitated waves, as if he’s just been out in the wind.
Normally, I take assiduous notes, especially because this class is so important for a future premed student. But today, all I can do is stare at the back of Tomper’s head and try to keep from sighing. There’s plenty of feeling left from Friday night—enough to last a good part of the year. What should I do with it if he doesn’t like me? Maybe I should buy a pet. I chuckle half out loud at this thought, and Beth shoots me a disapproving look. Mechanically, I finish copying down the carbon-atom roundup that Mr. Borglund is demonstrating on the board.
When the bell rings, Tomper evaporates. I rush out into the hall, but then feel silly. Why, though, would he kiss me like that on Friday and not talk to me on Monday?
In English class, he is late again. He doesn’t look at me when he goes to sit down. Beads of frustration form on my upper lip.
“Instead of the usual Monday grammar test, we’ll do an exercise,” Mrs. K. says. “I’ve taken these sentences out of The Good Earth. Make each underlined adjective into an adverb and put it in a sentence of your own, preferably one that has something to do with the story. We’ll do this with partners. Just push your desk over to the person on your left.”
The person on my left is Beth. When I look behind me, I see that the person on Tomper’s left is Marsha Randall. They are already leaning over each other’s desks and laughing.
Beth and I dutifully add an ly to all the words and make sentences with them. We’re finished before everyone else, so Beth sits serenely, completing her homework while I sit and try not to think about what’s going on behind me.
When the hour is finally over, I gather my stuff and march toward the door. Then, because I can’t stand it any longer, I pretend to pick a piece of lint off my shoulder and look back.
Tomper and Marsha are still laughing away. In fact, their desks are still pushed together and their heads are close, his golden hair and her albino-white hair mixing, like the pile of gold the girl spun from straw in the fairy tale. I guess that makes me Rumpelstiltskin.
I love gymnastics because any hurts that I feel come right out when I leap through the air. I can stretch and stretch my muscles to the breaking point, until they hurt more than my feelings.
But today, in the locker room, I hear Marsha say to a friend that she has suddenly decided to “go for” Tomper. When I watch her during practice—her beautiful hair and long, strong body—I can’t see how Tomper could possibly like me if he can have her. Jubilantly, she does a row of perfect back handsprings and then a back somersault. She has three stars on her leotard because she’s lettered every year. I don’t have any stars on mine, but I’m working on it.
“Did you do the calc homework?” Beth’s squirrely voice is behind me. Even her leotard has one star sewn on it.
“No,” I say, sighing. “I guess I’ll go home and do it now.”
5
It is lab day again in chem. Beth and I are hustling, bumping elbows because there is a lot to set up in this experiment. We are supposed to suspend a stoppered test tube over a Bunsen burner. I adjust the clamp on the test-tube holder and then concentrate on sticking the thin glass pipette through the hole in the rubber stopper. I must have pushed too hard because I hear a splintering crack from inside the stopper.
“Argh,” I say, removing the pipette. Small shards of glass tinkle out.
“What’s up, girls?” asks Mr. Borglund as he lumbers over to our lab station.
“I broke a pipette,” I say. “I’ll pay for it.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that.” He peers strangely at Beth and me through his Coke-bottle glasses. “You Orientals are always trying to save money,” he says, smiling a suddenly evil grin.
“Huh?” I say.
“Are you Chinese or Japanese?” he asks. I look at him. Then I turn and see that Tomper has stopped what he’s doing and is looking straight at me. Right into my eyes.
“Korean,” I say softly.
“Oho, you Koreans!” Mr. Borglund rumbles like a thunderstorm gathering speed. A few curious heads pop up in the lab.
“You Koreans wok your dogs!” He explodes into high-pitched giggles, his mirthful face inches from mine.
This can’t be happening, I think. I have a crazy urge to pull the chain of the emergency shower so I can melt and flow down the drain.