Cell phone, headphones, and book bag collected, I left my room and headed down into the kitchen. I avoided my usual far right barstool; it was the same place I’d sat that morning. With my dream fresh on my mind, I wanted to distance myself from anything even remotely related. My dad was standing at the counter with a pan frying bacon, the smell of which made my stomach growl at me.
I perched my head in my hand. “Is it too late to ask for bacon?”
My dad looked over his shoulder at me. “It’s never too late to ask for bacon.” He turned his attention back to the pan. “Are you feeling okay this morning?”
My dad was hyper-observant, always had been. He always said that it was because Portuguese men had no choice but to always have their eyes open. I wish he’d taught me that lesson a little sooner. He’d put the skills to good use as a surveyor for the Orchard Mesa Public School district.
“I didn’t sleep well,” I lied. “I’m okay.”
“Well, young women who don’t sleep well get extra bacon.” He pulled the pieces he’d already been working on from the pan, set them on a napkin, and slid them over to me. “Careful.”
I waited a few seconds for a little more of the bacon’s grease to soak into the napkin before nibbling. “Thanks.”
“Let me just get some more done for your mother, then we’ll go.” Even as a licensed 17-year-old in the state of Colorado, my dad still insisted on driving me to school.
“I’ll be in the car.” I swiped up the napkin of bacon and made my way out into the cooling Colorado air.
Fall was well underway in Orchard Mesa, and the tall trees and gulch-esque. shrubs were going from a lush green to an autumn palette of red, orange, and gold. The ones that had already fell from the branches crunched under my feet as I made myself comfortable in the front passenger’s seat of my dad’s car; the same old Corolla I’d remembered in my dream. At least some things never changed. The door, I left, tipped open with my leg sticking out and stuck my earbuds in.
Time seemed to flow at a different pace when I had my music playing in my ears. One second I was sitting and waiting for my dad to come out, then next I was sitting in the lunchroom at school with four periods already in my rearview mirror. The only thing I ever counted down the minutes to didn’t happen until the second half of my day, so I didn’t pay much attention to the first half. I’d hide an earbud behind my back-length tresses, and treat my teachers like all the adults from a Charlie Brown cartoon. Most of the school work was so easy for me that I could do it without the aid of an instructor anyway, and even if it wasn’t, I still probably wouldn’t care.
I sat at a table in the corner alone until I was finally joined by my only friend to speak of, Billy Bento, aka Wet Willy Billy, the school freak who made the egregious mistake of peeing his pants during a school play in the sixth grade. There wasn’t much wrong with him, not like a movie where the school rejects were covered in pimples and taped together glasses. Billy had a regular head of blond hair, gelled and styled to stand up slightly before swooping off to the right. He had a blemish free face and was an average weight and height for his age. His voice wasn’t overly nasally, though he did have braces. I guess in Orchard Mesa if you tick just one of the boxes, you might as well tick all of them? Between his wire-covered teeth and tragic backstory, he was Orchard Mesa’s mocked mascot.
He sat down next to me. “Hey, Tati.”
I finally pulled out my earbuds for the first time since I put them in that morning. “Hey.”
“Are you busy after school today? I wanted to try and get our History project charted out.” He was already pulling the textbook out of his bag, ignoring his nutritious plate of macaroni or maybe corn. “I was thinking we could do a flip book and while I’m flipping it you could do a speed read like warnings at the end of a commercial. It’d be funny and we’d be done in like two minutes.”
“Can we do it tomorrow? I have physics after school today.” I said it halfheartedly even though we both knew it was heavier than what it sounded like.
“You’re still… tutoring?” Billy’s blue eyes had deep concern seated just behind them.
I shrugged. “I need it.”
Billy shook his head. “No, you don’t.”
“Yeah, I do.” I fanned around the lunchroom. “One of them is going to tutor me?”
He looked around. “I mean… I’ve heard some of them are good… tutors.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “Uh huh, and how do you suggest I get around the fact that most of them hate me, and those who don’t are just stuck at ‘tolerating me’ until their tires are replaced and they can continue towards hate?”
Billy threw his hands above his head with his fingers fanned out. “You could perform a sultry dance! The dance of the ‘Don’t hate me, I’m just misunderstood!” He started to pinch his fingers like he was clapping castanets in his hands. I’d showed him once that I knew how to perform flamenco and he never let me live it down.
I started to chuckle. “You’re so fucking weird.”
“Or ya know,” Billy said, returning to normal, “try and shed your title as the school bitch.” Easier said than done. It ran through my veins these days.
The doors to the lunchroom opened and the proverbial music in the lunchroom of chatter and eating screeched to a halt. It happened every single day at this exact time; the moment the popular kids progressed to their coveted table and ate lunch amongst us mere mortals. Like any other school, a select group of students, most of them via their involvement in sports, had earned themselves some false notoriety. Orchard Mesa was progressive in that some of the ‘nerdier’ clubs like Mathletes and Debate had popular representatives as well, having earned the school several accolades, but a majority of the sector was made up of the cheerleaders and the varsity sports teams. This of course meant that, focused right around the middle of the pack, with his even longer brown hair hanging messy and free around his head, was Colin Undinger; head quarterback for the Orchard Mesa varsity football team and the man who’d shattered my heart.
In the five years since we’d last spoken, he’d developed quite a bit of bulk, with full, toned arms and broad shoulders. The already tall 5’ 11” he’d been in middle school had spiked to close to well over six feet and he kept an understated goatee on his face. My internal temperature definitely still spiked whenever I saw him. Poor, 12-year-old me couldn’t believe how gorgeous her childhood crush had gotten, especially considering the fact that she thought he was gorgeous before he settled into puberty.
He was walking hand-in-hand with Harlie Jones, the football team manager, and a woman most closely associated with the devil. People thought I was evil, but she only ever did things to elevate her own status, including dating the star quarterback. She had a short, black pixie cut and piercing yellow eyes that should have been enough of a clue that she had her pitchfork hidden under her sluttily short skirt.
Colin looked over at me, and I ignored the leap in my heart rate and quickly threw up a middle finger. He scrunched his nose and threw one up to match mine.
Harlie peeked around him and glared at me. “Crawl in a hole and die.”