Trouble.
Sure enough, Jason gets to his feet.
“Sit down, Mr. Eisler.” Ms. Henley’s voice is sharp but exasperated. Predictably, Jason acts as if he hasn’t heard her.
He turns to face the class, one hand waving in the air, the other one reaching behind his back, presumably keeping that shiny, cylindrical, candy-apple-red thing from falling out beneath his hoodie. A few giggles echo around the room. Several people suck their teeth.
“Guess what, everybody?” he yells. “It’s my birthday!”
It isn’t his birthday. Today is March 25, and he turns seventeen on April 10. But this bald-faced lie isn’t the biggest problem at hand.
Ms. Henley knows it, because she sighs and pushes her glasses up onto her head. When she pinches the bridge of her nose, her eyes close just long enough to miss the moment when Jason whips out the cylinder. It’s about two feet long, with the words party popper emblazoned on the side.
A confetti cannon.
This should be fun.
“Let’s have a party!” he yells.
A split second later, there’s a deafening crack. Ms. Henley shrieks, sounding exactly like Ms. Chen did in the second grade. The classroom is showered with colorful tissue paper. It flits through the air, glittering in the fluorescent overhead lights, pink and blue and silver and gold. It lands in our hair, on our clothes, all over our desks and the floor. Our boring social studies lesson has been transformed into the grand finale of a Taylor Swift concert.
It’s actually kind of magical. I can’t help smiling.
Everyone else is smiling, too, even the people who were sucking their teeth ten seconds ago. Chatter and laughter erupt. A few daredevils reach for their phones, but Ms. Henley immediately puts the kibosh on that.
“Don’t even think about taking pictures or I’ll lock up your phones until you return from spring break!”
Dmitry’s phone is already out of sight. He’s all innocence and wonder now, playfully tossing handfuls of confetti at Rachel Gibbons, as if he hadn’t been the designated camera-man for this spectacle.
I wonder how Jason convinced him to do it. Probably cash. All those hours Jason spends stocking shelves with me at the Shop Rite, only to throw it away making these videos.
See, last year Jason decided to broaden his audience and expand his reach from our overstuffed Brooklyn high school to the entire world—or, at least, to anyone with internet access. He has dreams of going viral.
Lately, these videos have taken over his life. He doesn’t participate in a single legitimate extracurricular activity—you know, something he can list on his college applications. Me? I’m a peer math tutor, a Mathlete, and a member of the Coding Club. And while I do enjoy these extracurriculars, I also chose them very deliberately, to show prospective universities how serious I am about pursuing a STEM degree. They’re strategic moves.
Jason never does anything strategically.
Case in point: the current debacle in our confetti-covered classroom.
“Unacceptable!” Ms. Henley’s face is as red as the now-empty cardboard tube dangling from Jason’s right hand. “You’ll be lucky if you don’t get expelled!”
“For a few scraps of tissue paper?”
Her face grows redder still. “In this day and age, Mr. Eisler, the sound of a firecracker is not to be taken lightly, particularly inside a school. The threat of violence is real, and it is no laughing matter!”
For the first time, his confidence wavers. I can tell because the glimmer is gone and his lips twitch the tiniest bit. Imperceptible to most; unmistakable to me.
“But I wasn’t threatening anything,” he says. “I was just—”
“To say nothing of the mess you’ve created in my classroom!”
She’s breathing heavily now, the wheeze of her smoker’s lungs audible from halfway across the suddenly silent room. Jason’s lip twitches again, and I wonder if maybe he’s feeling a twinge of regret.
I steal a glance at Walker, but he doesn’t seem to care about the drama unfolding before our eyes. Instead, he’s looking down at his lap, where his thumbs tap frantically against his phone screen.
It’s a bold move to be texting in Henley’s class. Then again, she’s dealing with more pressing matters right now, and Walker’s discreet. He may be breaking the rules, but it’s a quiet, clever defiance.
Walker Beech is strategic.
“You know what?” Jason says. “You’re right. I didn’t realize there was gonna be so much confetti in this thing. Lemme run to the custodian’s office real quick to grab a broom so I can clean it up.”
Ms. Henley looks personally offended. “Oh no. You’re going to the dean, immediately.” She walks over to the wall-mounted landline beside the door and jabs at the keypad. “I’m calling him now so he knows to expect you.”
As she grouses into the handset, Rachel Gibbons calls out, “Happy birthday, Jason!”
Just like that, the glimmer in his eyes is back.
Rachel knows it’s not really his birthday. At least, she should know—she’s his ex-girlfriend, after all. They dated for eight months, from the end of last school year until the beginning of January. I’m tempted to call her out on it, but then I realize she might be in on this prank. She’s the whole reason he decided to start recording these videos in the first place.
Soon the whole class starts singing the birthday song. I don’t want to seem like a wet blanket, so I mumble along. Then Ms. Henley slams the phone back on the wall and spins around. “Quiet down!” The singing ends abruptly. She points one stubby finger toward the door and glares at Jason. “Dean Ross is waiting for you, Mr. Eisler. I suggest you leave immediately.”
“Will do.” He slings the cardboard tube over his shoulder like a hobo stick and turns to leave. With his hand on the door-knob, he pauses and looks back at me, the glimmer dancing in his eyes.
“Out!” Ms. Henley shrieks, and he’s gone.
If the prank itself was the finale of a Taylor Swift concert, then the present moment is fifteen minutes after the encore, when the lights are too bright and the floor is a mess and you’re trapped in a bottleneck of hundreds of people trying to cram themselves through a few narrow stadium doors. The mundane reality of life is painful after such an extravagant show.
Maybe Ms. Henley feels the same way. Maybe the silver lining on this confetti cloud is a temporary reprieve from history class. With all the excitement—not to mention the mess—surely there’s no way we could be expected to continue with this lesson.
“Don’t think you’re getting out of this lesson!” Ms. Henley sweeps a few stray pieces of tissue paper off her laptop and taps the trackpad. On the whiteboard, the map of Cuba is replaced with a bullet-pointed list of keywords beside a black-and-white photo of JFK. “I’ll clean this all up after the period’s over. Right now, it’s back to work.”
So much for a silver lining.
Everyone settles down so Ms. Henley can resume her lecture, but I’m too amped up to concentrate. There’s a buzzing in my ears, almost like I’d actually been to a concert, and my brain feels fuzzy. Even if I was interested in the intricacies of the Cold War, I probably couldn’t process a word coming out of Ms. Henley’s mouth right now.
My eyes slide to Walker, who’s back to being focused and disciplined. Notebook open, pen at the ready, phone nowhere to be seen. Ever the opposite of trouble.
Not for the first time, I wonder what his hair feels like. Is it soft and silky, or sticky with product? If I sank my fingers into those thick, brown curls, would they slide through easily or get tangled up in knots?
And I just now noticed: his hands are impeccable. Square palms. Strong knuckles. Clean, trim fingernails. He grips his ballpoint pen with purpose as it glides across his college-ruled paper. I can’t see what he’s writing, but I’m sure his notes are insightful interpretation
s of whatever Ms. Henley is blathering about.
Suddenly, his pen stops moving, which is weird because Ms. Henley’s still talking. My gaze drifts upward from his hand to his face and oh god those hazel eyes are aimed right at me.
I’ve been caught staring.
This is a disaster.
My brain screams, Look away, Ashley! But I can’t. The magnetic force of his body has pulled me in.
His brows knot together—confused, amused, who can tell?—and then the corners of his perfect mouth turn up. I’m not sure if he’s laughing at me or with me, but I do know this is the first time he’s ever looked at me. Like, really looked at me.
My breath comes fast and shallow, and when Walker drops his pen on his notebook, I stop breathing altogether. Because his impeccable hand is reaching across the aisle, and now it’s in my hair, and it’s possible I may pass out from lack of oxygen.
When he pulls his hand away, there’s a slender scrap of pink paper pinched between his thumb and forefinger. He shows it to me with a smile, then lets it flutter to the floor.
Immediately, he resumes his note-taking, but I’m not even in the classroom anymore. I’m at the finale of a Taylor Swift concert.
No, scratch that. I’m in Times Square on New Year’s Eve. The ball’s just dropped and everyone’s cheering and confetti is flying around like magic pixie dust.
Walker Beech touched me.
There’s my silver lining.
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11 Paper Hearts (Underlined Paperbacks) Page 22