“You do! You have a date! Holy Virgin Mary!” and then she lifts up a hand to heaven because she says it’s not taking her name in vain if you acknowledge her, like, What, I’m only proclaiming she exists. “Who? Who are you going out with?”
“Yeah, who’s the lucky guy?” Jake says, walking up. The friendly way he says it—curious, with zero jealousy—makes me a little sad.
“Hey, Jake,” I say, “this is Lydia. Lydia, meet Jake. He just started at Maritime this week.”
She looks from me to him to me again. I shake my head, but she slaps her hand to her mouth, and I’m so embarrassed, I could die. I’m hoping the khaki lockers camouflage my khaki pants. “Holaaaa,” she says to him like we’re in some telenovela, and for whatever reason it makes me burst out laughing.
“Oh my gosh, Lydia, Jake’s new, so I’m showing him around. And no, you know I don’t have a date.”
“Right.” Lydia rolls her eyes in Jake’s direction. “Everyone knows she’s, like, ‘dating Jesus’ or whatever.” Part of me’s grateful that Lydia’s getting this out on the table for me. This is what I want, right? “What’s our tour guide Lovette shown you so far?”
He looks from the left to the right of the hallway and says, “You’re looking at it.”
“Figures,” Lydia says. Wait. My chin pulls back into my neck, and I look at her like, What’s that supposed to mean? She ignores me and focuses on Jake. “How would you like to come to the Venue this Friday night?”
“Lydia, we wash dishes!”
“Not the whole night,” she counters.
“I really don’t think he wants to spend his Friday—”
“I’d love to.” My jaw drops. First, because he sounds so charming. How does he do that? And second, because it works! Lydia’s instantly charmed.
“Perfecto,” she says. “We’re usually there at seven thirty, near the back entrance.”
“The Venue,” he repeats. “Got it.”
“Seriously?” I say. “We really do dishes.”
“Real, actual dishes?”
It takes me a second before I realize he’s making fun of me. “Okay. Ha. Ha.” I want to punch him playfully, but I don’t. I start to throw my hands up in surrender, but then remember my sweat issue and squeeze my arms against my sides. Now I’m a clothespin. “Just remember I gave you fair warning.”
The bell rings. “Great. It’s a date.” Then he grins at Lydia and says, “I mean, not a date. Lovette’s taken.” He points up, and that cracks Lydia up, and he laughs a little. Then he waves, turns the corner, and disappears.
Lydia squeals and kisses me on both cheeks, slaps me on the butt, and pulls out her cross necklace, the kind with Jesus on the cross. She holds it to my lips and squeals, “Kiss it! For luck,” and before I can say “No, gracias,” I find my lips smushed up against a half-naked dead man’s chest, which, if I were Catholic, might feel inappropriate. “Yes! Yes! Yes! YASSSS!” she yells and prances away, leaving me stunned.
Chapter Seven
In the cafeteria at lunch, I arrive at our table and for the first time in three years, I don’t know what to do.
Every day it’s Lydia, Lydia’s boyfriend Kaj, and Kaj’s best friend Niles on one bench. On the opposite bench are me and Kelly. But today, Jake’s sitting in my spot next to Kelly. I would squish in with them, but Niles is also on their side. It’s a Jake sandwich, which makes me a side dish, but Lydia scoots Kaj over to make room for me.
Everyone acts like this is the most normal thing in the world, like we haven’t broken a three-year tradition. I’m sitting across from my usual seat, seeing a side of the cafeteria I’ve never even looked at. This feels wrong. We might as well be sipping from plastic straws in front of a sea turtle.
I’m sure it’s Lydia who dragged Jake over to join us, and of course my friends make it look like no big deal. Lydia and Kelly are the only other Christians in the group, but honestly, my friends are better followers of Jesus than me sometimes. Here I am flipping out about different seating arrangements. Meanwhile, Kaj and Niles are laughing at something Jake said, treating him like the three guys have been besties for years.
“Lovette,” Kelly says, “did you know Jake lived in Oahu?”
“Hawaii,” Niles adds, in case I forgot my brain.
“The cockroaches there are the size of my middle finger!” Kaj says, holding up his middle finger in my face and cracking up. Lydia swats him. “Hey, I was just showing her the size of the cockroaches.”
Niles says, “Three inches? Just unzip, bro,” and the whole table erupts in laughter, and Kaj throws a tater tot at him but laughs, too.
“Where in Hawaii?” I ask. “Barbers Point?” I feel Kelly’s eyes on me. Am I allowed to talk to him?
“Well,” Jake says. “Someone knows her naval bases.” I only know because Dad would talk about moving the family there when we were young, when he still had dreams of my brother becoming a pro surfer.
Jake shakes his head. “Nah, MCBH. East side.”
Ah. His dad’s a marine. “Semper Fi,” I say.
“Ooh-rah,” he answers but half-heartedly. He mumbles, “First on foot and—”
“Right of the line,” I say at the same time he does. He looks at me funny. “What?”
“Did you ever feel like you were gonna die while surfing?” Kelly pipes in. “Six- to ten-foot waves? I’d die!” She’s never surfed, so she probably would.
“Yeah, sometimes,” Jake answers. He turns to me. “You ever ride that high?”
Lydia sucks in her breath. Everyone’s eyeing one another, no points for subtlety. I shake my head.
I swear he can see all the way to my sadness because he says, “Yeah, me neither.”
Kelly starts, “I thought you said—”
“Hell, no! I only watched at the marine base. I surfed Oahu but the smaller breaks. You seen the coral there? I don’t have a death wish.”
He means it jokingly, but the table goes awkwardly quiet. He sweeps his eyes across our group, curious. I feel bad for him. “My brother was in a bad surfing accident,” I say. Everyone freezes. Kelly’s eyes are saucers. They know I never talk about this, and I don’t know why, but it feels okay right now. “When I was in seventh grade. Board knocked him out. Hit him real weird. He was in a coma. Not forever, he’s fine,” I say when I see Jake’s alarmed face. “Like, totally fine now. But he had to repeat eleventh grade. You know, to relearn everything. Walking, talking, catching a ball.” I open my sack lunch and pull out my peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. “Anyone want my Hot Cheetos?” Kaj throws an arm up, and I toss them over Lydia’s head, but Niles intercepts them.