by M. F. Lorson
“I’m not convinced that you’re this bad,” she blurted out just before slapping her hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. You just don’t normally struggle, and—”
“You’re right,” I said, jumping right into this opportunity to finally come clean about the anchor thing. “I am struggling, but not because I’m a bad anchor.”
“Then...what is it?” She twisted her lips into a tight knot, fidgeting with the case on her phone which is what she did when I could tell she was hiding something she wanted to say.
It occured to me that Becca, once again, blamed herself. Like any of this could be her fault.
There was literally a now or never moment sitting right in front of me, and it wasn’t about the anchor thing anymore or even the party.
“I didn’t want to be anchor, and I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to hurt your feelings.”
Her face fell, and there was a hint of clarity. I could see her mind processing the thing she already knew to be true, and it crushed me to watch her accept it.
“It feels like there’s a lot you keep from me to save my feelings.”
“Becca…” I said, not knowing how to finish. She was right, of course.
“Why can’t you talk to me?” It was staggering how quickly the mood changed in our conversation from playful couple to serious, about-to-end-it couple. It was terrifying in a there’s-no-going-back-now way.
“I don’t know,” I mumbled, which was the lamest of all boyfriend responses, but it was true. I didn’t know why I couldn’t make things work with Becca. I didn’t know why I wanted Sloane more, and I still wasn’t quite clear on whether or not that made me the biggest A-hole at Grover High.
“Maybe…” Her hands busied themselves with the hem of her purple top while her eyes strayed from mine. “This relationship just couldn’t last after so long apart.”
“No—” I blurted because, yes, even after she was practically handing me this breakup, I was such a wimp, I was going to try and back out of it. But before I could say another word, she put her hand up.
“Don’t save my feelings, Gabe. I know it’s true. I’ve known it for a while. I wanted it to work, but when you made excuses to get out of having to makeout with me in the dugouts, I figured it out.”
“I’m sorry.” Which was very true.
Finally, after a long moment of avoiding my eye contact, she smiled, biting her lip and reminding me why she was the most pined after girl in the school. “You’re so freaking wholesome, Gabe Maxwell. Too nice for your own good.”
“Yeah, so I’ve been told.”
Then, she gently punched me in the shoulder, like a newly broken up rite of passage—a physical indication that we don’t hold hands or kiss anymore, so we have to start treating each other like barely friends.
“Will you do me a favor?” she asked just as the bell rang. The room cleared out around us, but we stayed still as stone as they passed.
“Actually two favors,” she added.
“Anything.”
“One: please don’t make a big deal out of this yet. I mean...don’t tell anyone. With homecoming coming up—”
“Becca, I’m still taking you to Homecoming...if you’ll let me.” Bending forward, I made her look me in the eye. She finally smiled when she did, and it was a nice smile. Not a fake smile meant for appearances. It was a guard-down smile.
“Thanks.”
As the next period’s students started filling the room, Becca grabbed her things and started toward the door. “What’s the second favor?” I asked.
“Oh yeah,” she called back. “Quit being an anchor! Do what you really want.”
As she passed through the doorway into the horde of students, I noticed her pausing in the hallway, and I took a step forward to see that Parker had been waiting for her. The two of them glanced back at me, but the curly-headed digital media kid smirked like he expected me to walk with them. Instead, I waved them away and pretended I needed to get something from the room.
As I grabbed my backpack, my instincts made me want to find Sloane. I wanted to tell her I was finally going to start writing pieces for the show. Someone would replace me as anchor, and then I would tell her that Becca and I were finally split…
Then I remembered my favor to Becca. Did my sworn silence include Sloane?
Sloane
I could see why Gabe thought I was pulling a Ferris Bueller. We had been talking about the movie pretty much non-stop and last he saw me I was smiling and laughing, no signs of illness to indicate that I would miss school.
But that was Friday. I was like half-dead now. My plans to spend the weekend watching movies with the girls had turned into me heaving over the lip of my bedroom wastebasket, over and over and over again. Reagan and Harper had all but climbed out the second story window to get away from me. My stomach was back to normal, but walking across the room to change the TV from Netflix to Hulu still felt like running the Boston Marathon. I had determined school was out of the question pretty early on.
By 4:15 Monday, I had a real look about me. The look being girl who hasn’t showered, girl whose body has created a permanent shadow upon the basement couch, girl who...you get the point. It was rugged.
When the doorbell rang, I assumed it was UPS. That would have made sense because in my misery, I had one-clicked my way from a healthy savings account to one of those notifications from my banking app, “Your account balance is lower than the amount we recommended when opening your always green online checking account.”
UPS required little more than a grunt. I was prepared to snag the package out of the delivery man’s waiting arms, growl at him like the feral animal I was quickly becoming and scurry back to the basement.
It was pretty awkward when I flung open the door and came face to face with Gabe.
“Oh wow,” he said, taking in my appearance with a wide-eyed shocked expression. “You really are sick.”
I wanted to say something smart, but no words were forming in my brain. I could blame that on the fever, right? It definitely wasn’t his super cute face that was making me speechless.
“Um...can I come in?” he asked, pushing the door backward gently with the tips of his fingers. His eyes darted around the foyer, like he expected someone else to be with me. Dad, as it was, was still at work.
I’m ashamed to admit it, but I had fantasized a little about Gabe Maxwell knocking on my door while my Dad was nowhere to be found. It was just that none of those fantasies involved the flu or body odor.
“You can,” I said. “But I could be contagious. It might be better if you come back at a different time.” I could tell my voice sounded a little too hopeful on that last part, but I couldn’t think of anything more embarrassing than holding a full-fledged conversation with Gabe in my current state.
“I’ll take my chances,” he replied with a smirk.
Mortified, but with no recourse, I led Gabe down the stairs and into my basement lair. I hadn’t noticed before but the closer we got to the bottom step the staler the air seemed to get. My energy was still at a subterranean level, but I forced myself to pull open the sliding glass doors and let some fresh air in.
Gabe sat on the couch, his elbows resting on his knees, his hands dangling between them. He looked like he belonged there, like he was destined to make a second shadow on the couch beside me. The fever must have really been taking hold because I had a sudden urge to thread my arm through the crook of his and pull him back into the overstuffed cushions.
The way he was looking at me, even with my gross hair and pink pajama set, I kinda thought he might go for it.
As if reading my mind, Gabe quickly turned his attention to the half empty bottle of tums on the coffee table.
“Stomach stuff?”
I let out a deep breath, then raised my hand to cover my mouth. I literally could not remember if I had brushed my teeth yet today.
“It started that way. Now it is just soul-consuming exhaus
tion,”
“Is that all?” laughed Gabe.
It occurred to me then that Gabe probably had a reason for visiting and that reason probably wasn’t that he missed my face.
“So. Here you are. In my basement,” I began, pausing for him to enlighten me as to why.
Gabe offered a small, a very adorable smile, just a quirk of the lips really, but they were nice lips.
“You missed school today. I thought you might be taking your namesake seriously for once.”
“What a sad way to spend a day of hooky,” I said, my eyes drifting around the lifeless basement.
“Well, if you were,” said Gabe tilting his head to bring my attention back to him. “I was gonna give you a serious lecture about leaving your friends behind. You should know I have genuine FOMO.”
I rolled my eyes. I had only recently discovered that FOMO meant fear of missing out. Before that I was certain it was one of those random student service groups, like FHA or MUN. Does anyone even know what those groups do? A Maxwell with FOMO was laughable. Everyone wanted to include or be included by them. Even people that didn’t like them wanted an invitation to that Homecoming party.
Which reminded me. Gabe was supposed to be interviewing Landon for our segment.
“Hey, now that you know I’m actually doing nothing cool with my time, can we talk about the project? Where are we at now? I got some good footage of Reagan and Harper pre-pukathon. Did you have any luck with Landon and Becca?”
The smile left Gabe’s face, replaced by a worried look I was beginning to become very familiar with.
“I’ll take that as a no then.”
“I’m still working on it.” His hands, loose just minutes ago, were now clasped tightly. Any time I mentioned his brother or his girlfriend his demeanor changed from natural to stonelike. I hated that change.
I wanted to remind him for what felt like the zillionth time that not only were Becca and Landon essential to the video, it was obvious that he needed to talk to them. Based on Landon and Becca’s most recent Instagram posts Gabe had not come clean to either of them about wanting to cancel the party.
I didn’t get a chance for that reminder though, because the next words to come out of his mouth took me completely and utterly by surprise.
Gabe
“I think you should be in the video.”
There was a long moment of silence in which I could watch the features of her face change from exhausted and concerned to exhausted and appalled.
“Say what?” she asked, her voice a little more hoarse than usual.
It might have been a little bit of an intrusion to just barge in on someone when they were sick, but for reasons I couldn’t explain, I wanted to see Sloane at her best and her worst. Her unwashed hair, her makeup-less face, her laziest pajamas. If this was Sloane’s most vulnerable state, I wanted to be the person she let in.
“I’m serious,” I continued, trying to keep my attention on the video and not on the way her eyes were somehow greener than usual.
“Why me?” she asked, curling into a ball in the corner of her sofa.
Seeing her in those pajamas on her basement couch—while we were alone—was doing things to my head. This was like breaking a whole new threshold of friendship, and even though we were talking shop, it didn’t feel like I was here on business.
“Why not you?” I asked, leaning back and perching my elbow up on the back of the couch. “You’re a student at Grover High.”
“Yes, a student. A nobody.”
If I could have stopped my eyes from rolling clear to the back of my head, I would have. A nobody? What universe was she living in?
“You don’t see the people who watch you as you walk down the hall, but I do. You have a style all your own, something no one could recreate, and they envy you for that. You have easily the best laugh in the school. You’re not nobody, Sloane. You’re unique, unpredictable, and deserve to be the center of attention just as much as, if not more than, Becca Landry.”
The last part came out a little too fast, and I had to look away to reset my intentions. I wanted to tell Sloane about Becca and me so bad, and for a moment, when she first mentioned her, I almost did. I made a promise to Becca...but not telling Sloane felt like lying.
When I looked back at Sloane, her cheeks were pinker than normal.
Did I say too much?
“Fine, but if you even think about recording anything before I freshen up, I will murder you, Gabe Maxwell.”
I held up my hands, unable to resist the smile on my face. “Deal.”
Suddenly, Sloane had all the energy in the world as she bounded up the stairs and disappeared for the next eight minutes. The girl who came bouncing down was not the same girl who went up. She had a layer of warm powder on her face, a worn-looking Jem T-shirt, and cut-off shorts that made not looking at her legs thoroughly impossible.
“Ready?” I asked as she sat back down on the oversized couch, curling her legs under her.
“Ready.”
It took me a minute to set up my phone with the camera app recording from just the right angle. I wanted it to catch the array of colors in her hair perfectly, and I had to open every small window to do it.
“How does it feel to be in front of the camera for once?”
“Very weird,” she answered.
“Okay. I’m not prepared so I’m going off script with these questions.” Sitting next to her on the couch, I mentally ran through the questions I had been preparing in my mind. There were so many that were great interview questions, but most were just things I wanted to know.
“If your time at Grover High was made into a movie, what would it be called?”
She laughed, then I caught her glancing at the camera. “Just pretend it’s us hanging out. No camera,” I said.
“Fine. This is so weird, but I guess…” then I watched her thinking for a moment, twirling the rust-colored waves that hung over her eyes. “Crazy Times at Grover High.”
My laugh came out in a loud cackle. “Would it be a comedy, drama, or romcom?”
She eyed me sideways with a sly smirk. “Definitely a comedy.”
“What? No romance?” I asked, shamelessly. Sloane had never really mentioned a boyfriend, and if she had had one, I was dying to know all the important details: who, what, when, where, how.
“Ha!” She rolled her eyes and suddenly, she was the most natural version of Sloane I’d seen. Maybe her Nyquil was kicking in or maybe she was made for the camera, more than she’d ever believe. “No,” she continued. “No romance for me.”
“Have something against relationships? Or just no suitable bachelors at GHS?”
She chewed the inside of her lip as she scrutinized me, looking for the motive behind my questions.
“Boys are never like they are in movies, and I guess my standards are too high. It’s just that I want the real deal. The guy who fights for you. Sticks up for you. Stands outside your window with Peter Gabriel blaring. The big stuff. It’s not that I don’t like relationships. It’s just...the guys around here...don’t get it.”
My eyes stayed trained on her, hanging on every word and suddenly feeling far too inadequate for this moment. I wasn’t a grand gesture guy—not by a long shot.
Suddenly, Sloane broke the silence when she looked directly at my phone and said, “Sorry, boys.”
I let out a small chuckle—and a sigh of relief.
“Which year has been your favorite so far?”
“This one,” she said instantly, her eyes meeting mine. There was a beat of silence before she added, “Being in Media Studies...of course.”
The room filled with that loaded silence again. My ears were constantly perking to listen for sounds of her dad coming home, finding me in her basement and assuming the worst. But I never heard anything, reminding me once again that I was alone-alone with Sloane.
I knew what Becca would want to do in this situation. I found myself wondering what Sloane would want. Was she more o
f a movie and cuddling on the couch kind of girl? Or was she more like Becca, wanting nothing but boundary-pushing kissing on the couch?
God, I hoped it was the former.
Not that it mattered to me. Even if Sloane knew I was single, she wouldn’t be interested, not like that. She couldn’t get over the fact that I was a Maxwell, some cliche Jake Ryan type. The rich, popular guy who was as flat and predictable as the poster of The Outsiders staring at me from across the room.
To Sloane, I lived in another world, and the distance between us was too wide to cross.
Sloane
I can now say, based on scientific evidence, that cute boys are vital to the healing process. By Wednesday morning, I was able to roam about the house without keeping a wastebasket nearby, and by Friday I was ready to brave the halls of Grover High School. I might have milked the illness a little longer if it weren’t for my Dad’s 48 hour rule. For as long as I could remember Dad had insisted that I attend two days of school after any illness before being allowed to go to a sleepover.
With Homecoming on Saturday, and Gabe’s party afterwards I could not afford to risk being held in quarantine. Also, I was pretty sure Harper was going to fully replace me as a friend if I left her to scavenge for a ride to school another day.
“You look very well for someone who has just had a near death experience,” she said, eyeing me sideways as she stepped out of the Gremlin in a wicked new pair of black suede ankle boots.
Usually, I would see those boots and immediately be green with envy. She made bold and pretty work together in a way that made me feel dull in comparison, but not today. Today Gabe’s words were front and center in my mind, “You have a style of your own, something no one could recreate.” He probably said things like that to Becca all the time; it probably meant nothing. But it had put a perma-smile on my face, and nothing, not even watching Becca go on and on about Homecoming during Media Studies could diminish the feeling it left me with.
Gabe and I were supposed to be interviewing Reagan and Harper for the video after school, but we had to cancel the interview when Reagan texted Harper that tragedy had arrived on her doorstep in the place Fed-Ex was supposed to drop her Homecoming dress.