Smooth

by Matt Burns

  I shook myself from that thought and went back to Alex. She’d get switched into my classes and she’d be my partner on every project. I wouldn’t have to go up to teachers anymore and ask if Luke, Will, and I can be a group of three instead of two, and they say no, and then one of us has to partner with some kid who cusses way too much or won’t stop summarizing TV episodes we’ve both already seen.

  Alex and I would work together and the projects would give us things to talk about. We’d put jokes in the presentations that no one else would get and we’d wink at each other while standing up in front of the class and everyone else would be confused and not know what the hell we were talking about, but we’d get the joke and have our own secret language of references and we’d have to go over to each other’s houses after school to work on projects and that would give us legitimate, not-weird reasons to be in each other’s bedrooms, since that’s where my computer is, and then we’d make out all afternoon under the cover of the greatest alibi of them all: It’s for school.

  The check came just as I was starting to get a boner, which is usually a good time to wrap up a family dinner.

  At school the next morning while I stood in the circle with the guys, I kept looking over my shoulder to check for Alex. Every passing minute made me more worried something had happened to her — car wreck? House burned down? She was so weirded out by me waiting for her at the bathroom yesterday that she transferred back to her old school?

  The bell rang and my paranoia festered through every class until lunch. Since I brought food from home, I always sat down at our table first while the guys waited in line defending their crotches from Patrick’s snapping fingers while he said, “Let me pinch that ’ner.” I was at our table peeling my banana when Alex emerged through the swarm of generic kids crowding the cafeteria and walked toward me.

  “I’m a bringer, too,” she said when she sat down. “This looks exactly like my old school, but, like, completely different. I went up to the line and asked about you, and people told me this is where you sit. I just met Luke, Will, Patrick, and — ”

  Shit. They met her before I’d explained anything to them. I should have given them some reason why I knew her. They were probably making up stories right then that she’d helped me locate the extra-small condoms at CVS. I guess telling them the truth was an option: It wouldn’t surprise anyone to find out I was on Accutane. But even if I was fine with people knowing I was on it, Alex probably wouldn’t want that to be the first thing everyone knew about her.

  “Cool, cool,” I said. “Wait, so, what did you tell the guys about, like . . . how we know each other?”

  “Oh, I didn’t. I just asked if anyone knew you and they said they were your friends and pointed me this way.”

  I wasn’t sure what to talk to her about when we were surrounded by random other kids who could hear everything we said. When I looked up, the guys were sitting down with their trays of chicken fingers, pizza, and fries.

  “Sorry,” Alex said to Sam, “but remind me what your name is?”

  Patrick pointed to Sam and said, “Rickets. We call him rickets because he has rickets, like a guy from the Great Depression.” Alex laughed.

  Sam shook his head and pointed at himself and said, “Sam.”

  I’d never heard that stupid nickname before. I think Patrick was just making up dumb bullshit in a desperate attempt to make the new girl laugh.

  Luke said, “So you transferred into our ridiculous school?”

  What was ridiculous about our completely average, normal school?

  “Yeah, and they messed up my schedule and put me in the wrong classes yesterday, but they changed it this morning and now I’m in this lunch. Surprise!” She laughed nervously, looking at me.

  “Cool . . .” I said again, and I realized this might be my only opportunity to find out why she transferred without having to explain to her I hadn’t been listening when she told me at our appointments. “So, uh . . . why don’t you, like, tell the guys why you go here now? Just to, like, catch them up and stuff?”

  She squinted at me like she was confused or maybe even hurt. “Uh, all right,” she said. “My parents just . . . they got divorced and my dad wanted a smaller place, so we moved. Now it’s just me and him in an apartment.”

  She looked down and a silence fell over the table. Fuck. I was supposed to know that already, and now she must have thought I was a piece of shit for making her tell everyone.

  Luke said, “Damn. Sorry.”

  She smiled at him and shook her head. “No worries. Anything I should know about this place? Kids to avoid? Teachers to be scared of?”

  Luke’s eyes lit up. “Our math teacher, Mr. Randolph, wears pants that are way too tight. Keep your eyes above his belt.”

  Alex laughed. Sweat drops fell out of my armpits, and my face got fifteen degrees hotter. I don’t think what Luke said was true or even based on anything. All of them were like jackass chimpanzees trying to grunt the loudest for the new female.

  “You’re in their math class?” I said.

  “I just got switched into it today,” she said, and handed me her new schedule. The only period we had together was lunch. She was in the same math as Luke and Will and she had a couple classes each with Sam and Patrick.

  “Since when does Mr. Randolph wear tight pants?” I asked Luke.

  “Since, like, 1978, when he put them on. He probably hasn’t been able to take them off since.”

  Alex laughed again. Even louder than before. It seemed like she was nervous and trying to make the guys like her.

  I said, “I guess I just never noticed. He wore a suit to the last pep rally, so he must have changed out of them.”

  The guys glared at me, but I didn’t care. Reality was wrapping its claws around me, perforating my daydreams from last night. I wanted Alex to be my secret girlfriend, but this wasn’t the waiting room. I couldn’t spill my emotional guts to her in front of an audience. The fantasies I’d had of us being in school together hadn’t included Michaela Barton sitting four chairs down from Alex and staring at us, slack-jawed and unashamed, while picking god knows what out of her braces. They also didn’t include Cody Dometti’s blue-jean-shorted ass scraping the back of my head when he scooted by to get to his seat, or Tyler Liu screaming from the table behind us, “What if you could fart out of your dick?” There’s a reason people in romantic movies don’t go on dates in high-school cafeterias.

  And forget about introspective Alex from the waiting room. Social Butterfly Alex — Alex June, from the pictures online — was there.

  “Kevin told me about the movie you guys are making. About the singer, with the Russia stuff and the trains?”

  Luke grinned. “Oh, you mean Kevin’s film Italian Hospital, based on his intense knowledge of Italian hospitals?”

  “What? No,” I said. “We split up. We’re not a group anymore.” I really didn’t want to get into an argument about our abandoned project in front of her. “Did any of you start the chemistry lab homewor —? ”

  “Wait, how do you two know each other?” Luke asked. “Kevin’s never mentioned — ”

  “We, uh . . .” I muttered, but I still had no goddamned idea what to tell them. Alex looked at me. Neither of us knew what the other was comfortable admitting. So I blurted, “We’re both taking this class in, uh . . . writing. This thing my mom signed me up for. It’s nothing. Just . . . don’t worry about it.”

  She looked at me for a second; then she shrugged, accepting the lie I’d roped her into. “Yeah . . . well, Kevin actually wrote this story I liked, this thing about the driver’s ed class he was in and this teacher who . . . You should tell them,” she said to me.

  “It was nothing. Just this . . . thing. It was stupid. Seriously. Just forget it.”

  Alex’s eyes widened. “Sorry . . . Jeez.”

  Patrick said, “Sounds cool,” and I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. I stuffed my sandwich into my mouth. I’d written that story for A
lex. I didn’t want anyone else to see it or even know it existed.

  I didn’t say much after that. Alex filled everyone in on her old schools and the places she’d lived. She revealed more information in ten minutes than I’d been able to gather over the past six months. She mentioned a performing arts camp she’d gone to in sixth grade, and Will went to the same one. They didn’t remember each other, but it still annoyed me. They had something in common that stretched back four years. It was like she’d technically known him longer than me.

  The other guys told her ancient stories about kids from our school for the rest of lunch and I didn’t really look at Alex the whole time.

  In seventh period, I had to go to math by myself while Alex went to her class with Luke and Will. I couldn’t pay attention. I could only worry about their conversation. What was she telling them about me? Or worse, what were they telling her about me? They knew every embarrassing and stupid thing I’d ever done. The time I woke Will up at a sleepover by squatting over him like a catcher and farting directly onto his face. The afternoon we spent at Best Buy drawing penises into Microsoft Paint on laptops. Things Alex didn’t need to know.

  Halfway through seventh period I couldn’t take the worrying anymore, so I got a bathroom pass and wandered over to Alex, Luke, and Will’s math class.

  She’ll be sitting apart from them. She’ll be by herself. She’ll be alone and quiet and mine again.

  She wasn’t sitting with Luke or Will, but she wasn’t alone, either. She was at a desk in the front row, spun around to talk to the guy behind her — Jordan Breyer, a dumb-ass junior whose defining trait was a pair of orange sunglasses worn backward and upside down across the back of his greasy buzz cut. She was drawing on his worksheet. They were laughing together. Their faces were three inches apart.

  It felt like one of her fingers slipped out of my grip in the hurricane.

  She eventually noticed me and waved. Jordan Breyer looked up at me, too. I stood there with my mouth hanging open for a second, and then I walked back to my math class, thinking about how nothing was stopping me from walking out the doors, through the parking lot, onto the highway, and starting a new life for myself off Exit 11. I could become a silent man who works behind the scenes at Costco and has no interpersonal problems because he only interacts with cardboard cases of laundry detergent.

  The worry that Alex wasn’t Alex anymore wrapped around me. She was becoming the girl from the pictures online that everyone loved, and I was just one of a thousand idiots in khaki shorts at her school. We’d never be project partners, we’d never do homework together, she’d never have a reason to come up to my room.

  I should have clarified our relationship the minute she showed up at school. I should have asked her to be my girlfriend right there, instead of stuttering dumbfounded like I’d been fooled by a magic trick. It was messy now. She was at my school and she knew every person I knew.

  The next morning I walked into the hallway where everyone loitered before first period and saw Alex standing with the God Squad. They laughed at everything Alex said. Their eyes were wide. They were just as enamored of her as I’d been. I didn’t want to bother them, so I kept my head down and walked past.

  I was a gawky disaster compared to everyone else she was meeting at school. I couldn’t compete with them in the hallways; I couldn’t prove I was worth her time with a mumbled self-deprecating joke that would be inaudible under athletes’ confident laughter booming through their polo-shirt-filling chest muscles. There was no point in trying to make school feel like the waiting room. I had to focus on what I was good at and wait until I had the home field advantage again.

  What she liked most about me was that story I’d written. I could do that again, no problem. I’d crush it. To stand out from the noise at school, I’d write her something new, something important, profound, blow her away with writing none of the morons in our grade could ever do and give it to her at our next appointment — in secret and away from everyone.

  Throughout January I worked at night and on the weekends on a story for Alex inspired by Meyer’s assignments. I used interesting literary techniques and referenced books and poems I’d been reading.

  At school I carried a small notebook everywhere and observed Luke, Will, Sam, Patrick, and every other kid, writing descriptions of how they thought and acted. I mined jewels out of nothing, putting a fresh perspective on the monotony surrounding us and turning it into something interesting, something profound.

  My story was dark and kind of serious. It was the best, most interesting thing I’d ever written. It felt important, and I was proud. I revised it over and over, marking down the days until I’d get to show her at our appointment.

  Sometimes she’d stand with us in the mornings before first period and eat lunch at our table, and I’d drop references the guys didn’t get to Rushmore or Neutral Milk Hotel into conversations and she’d smile.

  Gradually, though, she started spending more time with the God Squad. She handed out Veronica Wesson’s unnecessarily aggressive “Don’t Be an Idiot, You Moron. Just Recycle — It’s Not Hard” flyers in the hallway and partnered with Haley Jackson on chemistry labs. I’d talk to her sometimes, but not for too long. I didn’t want to say anything stupid and risk blowing whatever chance I still had with her before I could show her my writing.

  The other guys were still dialing their jokes up to full blast when she was around, but I didn’t make a big deal out of her. I put all my energy into writing at night, waiting for our next appointment, when we could be ourselves. I knew I could email her, but it wouldn’t be the same. It had to be in our waiting room.

  I found the good printer paper Dad used for work, printed my story onto it, hid it in a neat folder in my backpack all day, and brought it with me to our January blood test. When I stepped inside, Alex wasn’t there. They called me to the back and I started breathing hard, worried I’d missed her.

  But she was in the waiting room when I came back out. “Hey, I was hoping I’d catch you,” she said. “Want to head outside for a little while?”

  I nodded stupidly and felt my heart hit my ribs like a mallet on a gong.

  We sat across from each other. It was cold and gray outside and every bush was dead. I put my folder on the bench beside me and buried my hands in my black hoodie pocket. Her red sweater popped out of the dull background. Nerves rattled me from the inside. I blurted, “Finally we’re away from all the riffraff.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just . . . I like it here, when it’s just us, you know?” My chest got itchy and my throat went dry; I was allergic to my own voice.

  But she nodded. She also likes it here when it’s just us.

  She said, “Have you been writing more? Assignments for our . . . outside-of-school writing class? Our cover story? Isn’t that where we are now?”

  “Yeah, sorry if that was weird. I just . . . don’t like the idea of the guys knowing I’m on Accutane.”

  “I get it. Your secret’s safe.”

  “Oh, but yeah, I have been writing. A lot.” I opened my folder and handed the pages to her. I savored the moment as her eyes took in my words.

  She finished the first page of prose, and then quickly flipped past the page that only had three words on it, carefully designed for poetic impact. She barely glanced at the page covered in the phrase “it’s all a performance” typed eighty times. She didn’t laugh at anything in the conversation part that was supposed to be funny, and she didn’t linger long enough on the two-page-long sentence comparing the social groups clustered in our school’s hallways to the Dutch colonial empire to have actually understood it. I watched her blank face. When she got to page five, not even halfway through, she looked up. “It’s interesting, yeah,” she said. “I’m a little confused about what’s going on or, like, where this is supposed to be. The characters all seem really mean to each other. Are they friends?”

  “I mean, yeah, but I’m kind of playing with the perspecti
ves, and — ”

  “It’s just not clear, I guess. Maybe you could work on that. And the, like, sort-of poem stuff? I don’t know. I mean, it’s . . . interesting. But — I don’t know, maybe this is just me, but it was kind of confusing. I mean, it’s good. You should definitely keep — ”

  “Okay, sure. I’ll fix it. I’ll just rewrite it. Forget it.” I took the pages out of her hands.

  “You don’t want me to finish?”

  “Just forget it. It’s fine.”

  The whole fucking world had crumbled under my feet. Everything seemed off. Wrong. I felt queasy and light-headed. The safe place where I was in control, where I was the best version of myself, was now just another location I’d ruined by embarrassing myself, stained my memories of it, turned them all warped and blood red.

  I’d been such an idiot. I wasn’t a natural at writing. That first story I wrote was a fluke, a lucky shot. I was the one monkey out of a million who’d accidentally written Shakespeare.

  She looked into my eyes, disappointed. “You know this is my last appointment?”

  “Wait, what? Like, ever?”

  “Yeah . . . well, for now, anyway. I may go back on it at some point if my skin gets bad again, but this is the end of my treatment.”

  “Oh,” I said. No more waiting-room conversations. No more picnic-table talks or aimless drives around town in her Jeep. I should’ve been devastated, but I felt . . . nothing. “All right.” I told her I had to go and I’d see her at school tomorrow and walked back to the parking deck.

  I asked Mom to drive and I sat there staring out the window listening to radio ads.

  That night Alex texted: you okay?