Only Mostly Devastated

by Sophie Gonzales

  One of the letterman guys sidled up beside Will. He was half a foot taller than Will, with deep brown skin and the kind of jawline people write Tumblr posts about. “By the way, Lara,” he said, apparently continuing a conversation that had been underway when I got here, “how come you didn’t sit with me in Biology? I saved you a seat and everything.”

  Lara softened. So she could be sweet. “You did? I was so tired this morning, I sleepwalked into class.”

  I tuned the conversation out and stole a glance at Will. His mouth hung slightly open, and his stare was fixed on a spot in the distance. “Will, seriously. I had no idea they’d know you. It didn’t even occur to me, I—”

  He held up a hand. “It’s cool. Whatever. Just, uh … just keep your voice down, okay?”

  “Yeah, of course. So … where have you been, anyway? When I didn’t hear from you, I figured you were … I dunno …”

  Will’s face was still blank. “I was busy. Sorry. Anyway, good to see you. I’ll catch you around.”

  And he turned his back on me to talk to someone else. Just like that. Something deep inside me snagged, like a loose thread catching. I stared at the back of his head with my mouth hanging open. He did not just do that. I was imagining this right now. I had to be.

  Juliette and Niamh had watched the whole thing. Juliette twisted her mouth, shot Will’s back a dirty glare, then led me away by my elbow with Niamh, leaving Lara behind with Matt. “God, he can be a real dick,” Juliette said, as quietly as she could, given the music volume. “Ignore him, please. The basketball guys are all a little funny when they’re around each other.”

  “A little funny,” I echoed. Every step we took away from them felt like that thread inside of me was unraveling more and more. Like my soul was unspooling.

  Time to make an excuse to get out of here, now.

  I think the girls might’ve been talking to me, but it was hard to say. The crowd was blurring, and everyone was moving in slow motion. A few people bumped into me as we moved through the living room, or maybe I bumped into them. Who knows if they apologized? Who even knows if I did?

  Around the time we got to the refreshments table, I’d convinced myself this was a dream after all, and dug my fingernails hard into my palm to prove it. Unfortunately, the only thing it proved was that I was: a) awake, and b) still at the damn party. Abort mission. Now. Screw the repercussions.

  “Come on, I’m sure it’s not that bad for you,” Juliette was saying to Niamh, holding out a ladle. “It’s just some punch.”

  “I’m trying to cut down on carbs. Hence, vodka shots.”

  “Vodka has carbs. It’s super carbed-up.”

  Niamh scoffed. “It’s definitely not.”

  “It’s got potatoes in it. What are potatoes made of? Carbs, Niamh.”

  I cleared my throat, hovering like an awkward stalker behind them.

  “Vodka doesn’t have potatoes in it,” Niamh shot back, “it—”

  “Hey, I’ll be back, okay?” I cut her off.

  The only acknowledgment I got was a vague nod from both of them. Guess that was my pass. I broke off and wandered through the living room, pushing past body after body after unfamiliar body.

  I had the desperate urge to go outside and call Ryan, or Hayley, or anyone, really. Just to hear a familiar voice. To drown out the fact that I’d screwed up my first day at school, and I’d outed Will, and that if he hadn’t wanted to shut me out after all, he definitely did now. And it was all my fault.

  Out in the front yard, I sucked in a lungful of air and narrowly avoided passing out. That might sound melodramatic, but I hadn’t realized how stifling the smoke and body heat and beer fumes were until they contrasted with clean, crisp air. I trotted down the steps and continued around the house until I found a spot where I could slot myself between the shrubs and flower beds to lean against the cool brick wall. Suddenly, I didn’t even want to call Ryan. I had to get out of here. I sent Mom a quick S.O.S. text, and settled back against the wall to wait.

  A familiar voice to my right made me start. Will. Of course it was. I couldn’t have five minutes’ reprieve from this absolute bad joke of a day, huh? He must be near the front door, from the sound of his voice. I couldn’t let him see me here alone. No way. If we were playing the “I don’t care about you” game, the best possible way for me to lose was to be caught friendless and feeling sorry for myself. I’d rather dive into the writhing sea of hormones back inside, thanks all the same.

  His voice was getting closer. That left me with two options. One, find a way to climb inside the rosebush and pretend to be a rose. I’d been a bush in a school play once, and, not to brag, but I’d been told I was a natural at it, so option one was solid. Two, flee to the backyard.

  I fled. I fled like a bigot dodging the concept of equality.

  Luckily, I acted quickly enough to escape undetected. I dove into the crowd in the backyard until I couldn’t see anything but the bodies sandwiching me. I clutched onto my phone as if it was a life raft, pinballing between random groups while I killed time until Mom arrived. Then suddenly I spotted someone I knew making out with some willowy redheaded girl. Not Will, thankfully. Someone with long, chestnut brown curls, and a leather jacket, and a lavender dress.

  Lara.

  I froze, confused as all hell. Then I noticed what I hadn’t caught to begin with. Lara’s same-sex make-out session was taking place in the middle of a ring of students. Mostly guys, if it needed to be spelled out. They were cheering, and fist-pumping, and generally being gross about it. So, what, Lara was doing this for show? Maybe. Except she looked like she was into it. Like, super into it. Not that I was any expert on kissing girls, but that was my layman’s opinion. Her hand was on the girl’s shoulder, the other wrapped up in her hair, and she hadn’t peeked once. Also, I’d been staring for a solid fifteen seconds now and she still hadn’t come up for air.

  When they finally tore apart, the redhead burst out laughing, throwing her head back. Lara laughed, too, but it was a smaller one, and she bent forward to hide her face. She lifted her chin, watched the other girl for a moment with a pleased smile, then tossed her hair and turned to her audience, as if to say I kissed a girl, and you liked it.

  Before she saw me, I blended back in with the crowd. It’s fairly easy to disappear when barely anyone knows you, it turns out. I walked aimlessly for a bit, dodging spilled drinks and staggering groups, until I found myself in the front yard again. Will was nowhere in sight. Neither was anyone else, for that matter. With a heavy sigh I sat on the curb with my feet in the gutter and settled in for the wait for Mom’s rescue chariot.

  Way to utterly fail, Ollie.

  Slow clap. Encore. Et cetera.

  4

  Tuesday, 9:23 PM

  Ollie? Where’d you go?

  Tuesday, 9:37 PM

  Are you still here?

  Tuesday, 9:51 PM

  Are you mad at us?

  Tuesday, 9:56 PM

  Please reply. I’m sorry. Pick up?

  Tuesday, 10:24 PM

  Is this Juliette? I don’t have

  your number saved. I’m not

  mad. Sorry, I went home. I

  think I have salmonella.

  Read Tuesday, 10:25 PM

  Even though Juliette and I had sent a few back-and-forth texts on Tuesday night, I still wasn’t totally convinced everything was okay with me and the girls until I got into homeroom on Wednesday. On time, I might add. Early, even. I’d barely sat down at my desk when they swarmed. Anyone would think I was Harry Styles.

  Juliette spoke first. “Ollie-oop! I didn’t think you’d come in. What with the salmonella and all.”

  Well, from her sarcastic tone it almost sounded like she doubted the validity of my food poisoning. “It was the mild kind of salmonella poisoning. Like, the two-hour-long kind.”

  Juliette and Niamh nodded like this was completely understandable. Lara watched me like a cat stalking a fly.

  “Okie doke,” J
uliette said, scooting onto my desk again. “First up, the whole Will thing … you can trust us to keep it a secret. He knows we wouldn’t tell anyone.”

  I tossed up whether or not to insist they had the wrong idea about Will. Only problem was I couldn’t really remember how much I’d told them in the first place, and to be honest, it was probably too late to backtrack now. So I nodded and glanced around to make sure no one had overheard.

  “Also,” said Niamh, “we found out why he disappeared off Instagram.”

  “Did you speak to him?” I asked quickly, half-horrified, half-eager.

  The girls looked offended. “Please. You’re as subtle as a sledgehammer,” Lara said.

  “We have our ways,” Juliette added.

  “Lara’s close with his friend Matt,” Niamh said. “Matt said that apparently Will got his phone confiscated for coming home at four in the morning before his family was supposed to drive home. So, we figured that was probably right around the time you stopped hearing from him, right?”

  “Right.” Shit, did I look like I was thinking about Will naked? Because I was most definitely thinking about Will naked. I couldn’t help it. That night brought back memories. And I knew damn well why he didn’t get home until almost dawn that night.

  “Apparently he was skinny-dipping with a bunch of girls from the lake houses,” Lara added with a smirk. “Did you and Will spend much time with all of those girls?”

  Like I said, I knew damn well what he was doing that night, and it wasn’t a girl, that was for sure. If Lara was trying to upset me it was working. So this was the story he was telling everyone? I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me so much. It’s not like he could say what had really happened. But shit. It hurt anyway. I wrung my hands, furrowing my brow.

  “Oh, sorry … did you not know?” Lara asked, all fake concern.

  I plastered a smile on my face and looked back up. “It’s fine. How was your night? I saw you with a girl before I left the party.”

  It was petty, but hey. It’s not like that was private. She’d done it with thirty-odd people practically munching popcorn in the front row.

  Niamh snorted, and Juliette grinned, nudging Lara. “Did you get too drunk again, by any chance, Miss Lara?”

  Lara held my gaze. I could read her expression fluently: “challenge accepted.” Uh-oh. “Maaaayybbeeee,” Lara said to Juliette.

  “Lara kisses girls sometimes when she’s drunk,” Niamh said. “And we know it’s because the guy she likes gets off on it, but she won’t admit which guy it is.”

  “My bet’s on Matt,” Juliette said.

  Lara scoffed. “Please, peasants. Also, I don’t kiss ‘girls’ plural. Just Renee. We have a symbiotic relationship.”

  Juliette shook her head. “Yeah, well, I hope you’ve at least disclosed which guy you’re trying to impress to her. It’d be awkward if you both had the same conquest in mind, don’t you think?”

  “Ask me no question, I’ll tell you no lie,” Lara said, glancing at me as Ms. Hurstenwild gestured for everyone to take their seats. I raised my eyebrow at her. Ever so briefly, she looked rattled. Then she turned away from me without a word.

  I had a feeling I knew what she was trying to achieve by kissing Renee.

  And I had a feeling I knew why it was such a secret.

  Guess the secret was ours, for now.

  To my relief, I still hadn’t run into Will. I knew it’d happen eventually, inevitably, but I wasn’t ready for that encounter yet. It was overwhelming enough trying to navigate my way from class to class. Which, I might add, had so far been distinctly Will-l ess. So far, our timetables hadn’t crossed paths once, and I only had my English and Music Appreciation virginities to go. As of right now, Will was nowhere to be seen in English, and class was due to start any minute. And no way in hell would Will be caught dead in Music Appreciation. He hadn’t even known the difference between a piano and a keyboard last time we talked about music. Looked like I was about to hit a home run. No shared classes with Will Tavares.

  Question is, was I thankful or disappointed?

  Before I decided, the question became redundant. The teacher, a man who was so young he could’ve been any of our slightly older brothers, had just gone to close the door when a group of guys skidded through, ducking under his arm like a high-speed game of limbo.

  It was Will. Will, and a couple other guys I remembered him standing with last night. He didn’t seem to have noticed me yet. He and Matt had spotted a lone desk in the back of the classroom, and they were in the process of racing each other to it, each pulling the other back by their T-shirt to gain distance. God, he looked beautiful. He looked confident. He looked like the kind of guy I’d never, ever, in a million, jillion years think I’d have a chance with.

  Matt beat Will to the desk by half a foot, and dove into the chair. Will grabbed his arm and yanked it playfully, offering bribes to convince him to give it up.

  “Will, sit down,” the teacher said wearily from the front of the classroom.

  Will straightened and whirled around. “Hey, Mr. Theo, what’s up? I didn’t know we were gonna have another year together. Sweet!”

  Matt covered up a laugh with an obvious cough, and Will shoved him, smirking.

  “I was hoping you might have been kept back a year. I prayed for escape,” Mr. Theo said. “But once again, the fates mock me. Take a seat.” He indicated a desk in the second row, a few chairs to my right. It was too tight an angle for me to stare at the back of Will’s head for long. How disappointing.

  Will swung his backpack as he walked, the straps clacking against the metal desks and chair legs. “Anyone would think you weren’t happy to see me,” Will said in a fake hurt voice, pressing his free hand to his chest.

  “I’ve never been much of a masochist, Will.”

  The classroom hummed with soft laughter, but it didn’t seem to be at Will’s expense. There was clearly some sort of inside joke here that I was missing. Which, to be fair, effectively described 90 percent of my “new-kid” experience to date.

  “It’s an acquired taste, but keep working at it and you might be surprised,” Will said, and the class broke up again. He shot a cheeky smile to Mr. Theo, and glanced around the room to bask in the spotlight. That’s when he noticed me. All at once, the grin slipped off his face like it’d been glued on with grease. He cut the bravado act short and slumped into the chair, angling himself away from me while Mr. Theo held up his hands for quiet.

  Back in California, there was a guy in my class. Pierce, his name was. He was one of those guys. The ones who swagger instead of walking, and always have a smartass remark stored for ammo, and photosynthesize attention. Pierce was popular. Like, super popular. My crowd didn’t have anything to do with him and his friends. Just in case insufferable smugness was contagious, I guess. Besides, we figured Pierce wasn’t going to achieve much of anything with his life.

  Somewhere up there, the Ethereal Being was smirking down at me from the sky with a handful of popcorn, because Will was Pierce. I’d spent all summer with a guy who was sweet, and thoughtful, and … and respectful. Only to find out he was the antithesis in real life. A guy who ignored my texts, and shunned me in front of his friends, and, apparently, had a bit of a superiority complex.

  Because the lake wasn’t real life. It had felt like a movie, anyway. Everything was suspiciously perfect. How many times had I thought Will seemed too perfect to exist?

  Well, joke was on me, in the end.

  He was.

  5

  A week later, and I was still getting lost more often than the girl in the Labyrinth movie, except I didn’t even have David Bowie in tights as a reward for my efforts. I was on my way to third period—at least, I thought I was on my way, but it might very well turn out I was walking in the exact wrong direction—when I noticed a sign on a bulletin board. BASSIST WANTED.

  The words were accompanied by a blurry picture of a bass guitar with a Getty Images watermark printed acros
s the middle, the name Izzy, and a cell number. I forgot all about my class and gave into a thrill of excitement. I usually played guitar, but I had a solid handle on bass. To be quite frank, I’d learn to play the harp if it meant I could get involved in a band again. Riffing with my bedroom wall didn’t really cut it for inspiration, and my parents were as reluctant an audience as you could find.

  I texted the number.

  I play bass. In the right circumstances. What did you guys have in mind?

  “You guys” ended up being a rainbow-haired girl called Izzy, a round-faced guy in a hoodie called Emerson, and a mostly-skinny dude with impeccable biceps named Sayid. When I finally found room 13b (which turned out to be a basement, something I felt Izzy could’ve mentioned in her text to save everyone’s time since I had to follow the distant hum of music to find it), they were already rehearsing a cover song I vaguely recognized. The room looked like it was probably a classroom for music students, with a grand piano in the corner, various instrument cases propped up against the wall, and several amps older than I was. It was too bad my Music Appreciation classes weren’t held in here. I kind of loved it.

  They were playing against the far wall. Izzy was on drums, Sayid had the keyboard and clean vocals, and Emerson took lead guitar and the screamed vocals. They could definitely use more bass, but overall they did a solidly decent job at metalcore. I was instantly impressed. This was worth sacrificing my lunch break for after all.

  I didn’t have my own bass with me, because I didn’t go to school carrying it every morning in case someone asked me to jump in on their impromptu musical number, but Sayid grabbed one of the school ones for me. It was kind of cheap and out of tune, but I was still able to knock out a few lines.

  “Not bad,” Izzy said, twirling a drumstick. “Can you improv?” Without waiting for me to reply, she hopped onto the drums and jumped straight into a beat. I matched her as tightly as I could, making up the tune as I went along and ignoring the closely watching eyes of Emerson and Sayid. Before long, I stopped noticing them anyway. All I knew was the beat, and the bass under my fingers, and the perfect intermingling of the two instruments. It’d only been a couple of months since I’d played with others, but I’d forgotten how awesome it was. Like blending your soul with someone else’s for three and a half minutes. For the first time since I stepped foot in this school, I felt comfortable and calm. I could picture the tension pouring out of my pores like a noxious gas.