by Kasie West
The waiting line thought this was the funniest thing they’d seen. There was an excited buzz of talking and laughter.
Frank splashed water out the open door and all over Alana. He seemed mad at first but when I sent a splash his way, his face melted into a smile. He returned his own splash. Then he climbed out of the tank fast and chased Alana down. When he finally caught her, he smashed her into a big, wet hug, while Alana shrieked.
I wasn’t sure if my time was up in the booth, but my head hurt so I climbed out. Diego waited with a towel open for me. I stepped into it, and he wrapped it around my shoulders.
“You okay?” he asked. “You kind of have a bad habit of hitting your head on metal objects.”
“Only when you’re around, it seems.”
He chuckled. “Does it hurt?”
“Maybe.”
“You need some of my magic, right?”
I knew he was kidding but I leaned forward anyway and he drew a V on the top of my head.
“All better,” I said, stepping back and trying not to blush. “By the way, I used that on Cora the other day and it totally worked.”
“You did?” he asked as if this surprised him.
“Yes, I think your mom’s tradition is cute.”
“She’d be happy to hear that.”
What was I doing? He was so easy to be around. Too easy. I took another step away from him.
“Kate!” Alana called. “Save me!”
Frank still had her in a bear hug and was now shaking his wet hair all over her. She pushed out of his hold and ran to hide behind Diego. She grabbed hold of the sides of his T-shirt and I averted my gaze.
“Saved by the only one here who doesn’t deserve to get wet,” Frank said.
“I need to go change before the bell rings,” I said.
I headed toward the locker room and they all followed me. Alana had linked her arm through Diego’s, for protection or closeness I wasn’t sure. Probably a little of both.
Frank was walking on Alana’s other side. I met his eyes. I cleared my throat, then cleared my throat again.
“Just spit it out,” Alana said.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“What?” Frank asked. “Was that for me?”
“Yes. I’m sorry for making it seem like you didn’t care if we all got in trouble last Friday.”
“Oh. Right.” We walked a few more steps toward the gym and he said, “It’s hard to break our habit of saying whatever jerky things we want to each other.”
I laughed a little. “It is.”
“I’m glad we’re trying.”
“Me too.” And I meant it.
In the parking lot after school, Alana handed me a grocery bag full of Post-it notes. “Are you sure Diego works at the tutoring center today?” she asked me.
“Yes.”
“Okay, after lab, Frank and I will meet you over there. Will Diego see you?”
“No, I think they make employees park in back to save the spots out front for customers.”
She nodded.
“Which color am I using to spell out the words?” I asked, putting the bag in my car.
“The blue is to spell festival and the question mark. The orange is to cover the rest of the car.”
“This is going to be cool,” I said.
“Let’s pray for no wind.” Alana grinned at me. “Anyway, I think he’ll be so surprised he’ll have to say yes.”
An hour later, Alana and Frank met me behind the tutoring center, where I still hadn’t finished covering Diego’s car.
Alana snatched a packet of Post-its out of the bag by my feet and threw the packet to Frank. “Start coating, baby.”
The three of us got to work. A few minutes passed, and Alana said, “Post-its always remind me of Hawaii.”
“They have a lot of Post-its in Hawaii?” Frank asked.
“No, but they have these open-air markets where locals sell trinkets and jewelry,” Alana explained. “Mainly to tourists. My mom used to help set up. There was this one lady who loved Post-its and she’d use them to price all her stuff. One day I was bored and I switched all the price tags around. Every time that lady saw me after that, she shooed me away while mumbling something in Pidgin.”
“So you’ve always been a brat,” Frank said.
Alana backhanded him across the chest but then said, “Yes.”
I laughed.
It took us nearly another hour to finish Diego’s car. Then we moved to the back fence and sat down on the curb to wait for Diego to come out.
“Are you nervous?” I asked Alana.
“Of course not,” she said, and I completely believed her. I would’ve been nervous. Who was I kidding. I was nervous. In the darkest reaches of my obviously horrible heart, I wanted Diego to turn her down. This made me an awful friend.
No. I wanted him to say yes. Then my horrible heart would get the hint. Then I would know, beyond a doubt, that Diego had been talking about her on the podcast all this time.
Frank had been pretty quiet during the whole car decorating and I wondered why.
When he spoke, he seemed to answer my unspoken question.
“And after weeks of calling in to the show, he finally gets his girl.”
I widened my eyes and looked at Alana.
“Seriously?” Frank said. “You thought I didn’t know it was him? I do know the guy. And us podcasters do not, in fact, manipulate the voices until after the fact.”
“We don’t?” Alana asked in mock surprise.
“You’re not going to tell him, are you?” I asked Frank.
“She still thinks I have no integrity,” he said to no one in particular.
“No, it’s not that. I just think … I don’t know.” I was rambling. “I don’t want him to find out that we’ve all known all this time.” I couldn’t imagine he’d feel good about that. Why hadn’t we told him again?
“He won’t find out from me,” Frank said.
I squeezed his arm. “Thank you.”
“How’s your phone, Frank?” Alana asked with a smile.
He bumped his leg into hers. “Totally dead, courtesy of the dunking booth incident, thank you very much.”
We all heard the back door open, and we all jumped up simultaneously.
Diego saw the car first. How could he not? His whole face lit up with a smile. Then he searched the surrounding area until his eyes locked on to the three of us, standing against the fence.
“So?” Alana asked when he didn’t say anything at first.
“Oh! Yes!” he said.
Alana ran forward and threw her arms around his neck in a hug.
My heart seemed to fall to my feet.
At least it got the hint.
“Wait here,” Frank said to me. Before I could ask him what he was doing, he ran the ten feet to his car and started rooting around in the trunk. Meanwhile, Alana and Diego walked over to me. She held Diego’s hand in hers and she was beaming.
Okay. Alana and Diego. It was about time this thing between them started moving forward again. It felt stalled for a while there, which was odd for Alana. She always got her man, and usually fast. This one had been a little more work. But, by the look on her face, it had obviously been worth it.
“I hope you guys are sticking around to help me clean this up,” Diego said, meeting my eyes.
“Of course,” Alana said.
Frank headed back toward us, one of his hands behind his back.
“Kat,” he said, breathless.
“Kate,” both Diego and I said at the same time.
I gave him a playful nudge with my elbow. “Jinx.”
“Kate. Right, sorry. I just listen to a lot of podcast talk.” Frank had a weird smile plastered on his face, and I couldn’t figure out why. Alana seemed to be confused by this interaction, too, because she dropped Diego’s hand and crossed her arms.
“What?” I asked Frank. “Do I have something on my face?”
Diego chuckled. “That’s my line,�
� he said.
“No.” Frank removed his hand from behind his back, revealing a long-stem red rose. “Will you go to the Fall Festival with me?”
My stomach tightened. What?
“Oh. I …”
Frank bit his lip. “I know I should’ve asked in a more elaborate way. I had something planned but it didn’t work out last minute. The phones were busy.”
“You were going to call in to the podcast?” I asked.
He shrugged and a cute, shy smirk took over his face. I was glad the phones had been busy. That would’ve been so embarrassing. I didn’t need the whole high school and town listening to someone ask me out.
I couldn’t help but glance at Alana. Her expression was unreadable. I refused to glance at Diego. Then I looked back at Frank.
“Um … yes,” I finally said. Why not? My heart was already on the floor. Maybe going to the festival with Frank would help matters. And we seemed to be getting along better lately.
“Yes, you’ll go with me?” he asked in surprise.
I nodded.
He grabbed my hand, kissed my knuckles, then said, “I’ll pick you up at five thirty for dinner before the game.” He turned toward Alana and Diego. “Should we all go together?”
Alana nodded. “That would be fun.”
“Okay,” I said.
Frank flashed one last smile at me, then backed toward his car. “I’m going to leave before you change your mind.” He nodded toward Alana. “You can get a ride home with Kate?”
“Of course.”
With that, he got into his car and drove away.
I took a small breath and stared at the rose in my hand. The bud flopped over a bit. “That was weird.”
“Good weird?” Alana asked.
“Well, it’s Frank Young … but I guess we called a truce, right?” I said.
Alana shrugged. The fact that she seemed as unsure as I was about this whole thing made me question myself. Maybe I shouldn’t have said yes.
I set the rose down by the fence, picked up the empty grocery bag, and began undoing our hard work. Alana and Diego joined me. As we cleaned, Alana would wad up notes and throw them at either Diego or me, which for a while started a bit of a war. When I realized this was creating more work for us, I stopped.
I got to the back bumper and Diego sidled up beside me. “Did you get to take care of the bully thing you were worried about on the podcast yesterday?” he asked.
I brought my hand to my forehead. “I completely forgot. I usually just let Victoria lead, so I’m not used to introducing a topic. I’ll have to think about how to do that for next week.” How could I have forgotten something so important? This kid was getting bullied, and it completely slipped my mind.
“I’m sure you’ll figure it out.” He took off another row of orange Post-its and added them to his growing stack. “You and Frank, huh?”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
“Everything starts somewhere.” He looked over at me through his long lashes, his soft brown eyes lit with a smile.
He was right. Everything did start somewhere. And as I stood there beside my best friend’s crush, removing sticky notes from his old Corolla, I knew exactly when I had started liking him. It was when he drew a V on my temple standing in that empty school hallway. It was when those same brown eyes had met mine that day, all sweet and caring.
We know where we stand, I reminded my heart. Firmly in friend territory.
“I’m going to kiss Diego tonight.”
I dropped the mascara wand I’d been holding.
Alana and I had gone straight from school to her house and were now sitting in front of the mirror in her bedroom, getting ready for the Fall Festival. Alana’s room was various shades of pink. I wasn’t sure if it was the lighting or the background color, but my skin always seemed to have a healthy glow there. Maybe I needed to change the paint in my room.
I now had a large black streak across my bare leg from the mascara. I picked the wand up from where it had landed on the ground. “Um … okay.”
Alana took the cap off her eyeliner. “Where would be the most romantic place to do that?”
Did I really have to give her advice on this? “Probably anywhere it happens will be romantic.”
She gave a dreamy sigh. “So true.” She leaned forward and applied her eyeliner. “What about you?”
“What about me?” I retrieved a makeup wipe and scrubbed at my leg.
“Are you going to kiss Frank tonight?”
“No!”
“That horrific of a thought, huh?”
“Yes. I mean … no, not really, it’s just, give me a minute here. I hated the guy like a week ago.”
“Why did you say yes, then?”
“Should I have said no?”
“Well, no. But if he likes you, you’re kind of leading him on.”
“I don’t think he likes me. I think he asked me because there was no one left to ask.”
The football game was loud. It had been a while since I’d been to one and I’d forgotten. But here I was at a football game with the guy I used to hate, the guy I needed to start hating for my own sanity, and my best friend.
Frank pointed up ahead and yelled over the noise of the crowd. “Look, they lit up the Ferris wheel.”
Alana clapped. “Oh! That looks fun! That’s so awesome of your dad to pay for the rides.”
I leaned forward so I could yell to Alana, past Frank, who stood between us. “You and me on the roller coaster later?”
“For sure.”
“What?” Diego yelled. He was on the far side of Alana and probably hadn’t heard a word we’d said.
“Ferris wheel!” Alana said. “Let’s ride it later.”
“Sure,” he responded.
I wondered if that’s where the kissing would happen. At the top of the Ferris wheel. I wasn’t going to think about that.
“I’m going to get a soda!” I yelled.
“Okay,” Alana called back. Frank moved like he was going to come with me, but she grabbed his wrist and said something I couldn’t hear.
He laughed and stayed.
Why had she done that? Was she worried about Frank’s feelings? That I was leading him on? Maybe it was me she was worried about. I did have a horrified reaction to the kissing question earlier. Maybe she was trying to save me. I took the stairs up the bleachers, then down the back side. I drew in a deep breath.
“Kat! Hi!” someone called as I walked by. “I loved your carpool advice!”
“Oh. Thanks!” I said.
“That’s Kat from the podcast!” I heard someone else call.
Then I heard another voice.
“Kate! Wait up.”
I turned to see Diego following after me. My heart liked this development. I tried to talk it down. Diego wanting a soda did not equal a declaration of any kind.
“It’s so loud in there,” he said. “I needed to give my eardrums a break.”
Where we now stood, in the back of the stadium, it was still loud but not deafening. “I know,” I said.
“You too?”
“I came to get a drink.”
“Let’s get in line, then.”
We joined the back of a long line at the snack hut and proceeded to not say anything at all. I usually had no problem talking to Diego. I was making it weird because I liked him. I needed to make it un-weird.
I thought about the last time we’d really talked, on that hill behind the stadium. How he got so guarded. Why was he so guarded? “Tell me about your last relationship,” I said because that was apparently the most un-weird thing I could think of. I cringed. “Or don’t. I’m sorry.”
He smiled. “Don’t be sorry. It’s a valid question. When I’m done talking about mine, I will return the same question.”
Hunter. He wanted to know about Hunter? “Okay. It’s pretty boring, but that’s fair.”
“Ditto. I dated Pam Argyle last year for a couple months. Do you know her
?”
“Not really. What happened?”
He looked up at the sky, pursed his lips, and then met my eyes. “Good question. I’m not really sure. I don’t have a lot of spare time.”
“The schedule thing with your parents?”
“Yes. I think that bothered her. Plus, she complained that I never told her anything.”
We inched forward in the line. “You’re private.”
“That or I just have nothing going on in my head.”
I laughed. “Right. That’s probably it.”
Diego ran a hand through his hair. “Sometimes I hesitate to share important things because … I don’t think people will care about them as much as I do. And then when I do share, the things are out there to be judged, or never thought about again. And I can’t decide which outcome is worse.”
“That’s understandable. I pretty much judge everything you say.”
“I figured.”
I gave him a gentle elbow to his ribs. “You know I’m kidding, right?”
“Yes, Kate. I know when you’re kidding. It’s kind of your defense.”
I started to argue but then nodded. It was very unfair that he seemed to know me so well. “Yes. It is.”
The girl in front of us in line turned around. “I thought I recognized your voice,” she said to me. “Hi, Kat. I love the show.”
“Hi, thanks.”
“Did you give the football players any advice before the big game tonight?”
“Um … no. Their coach didn’t think to ask me. Go figure.”
She laughed. “I’m going to come to your live show later.”
“Thanks.”
She turned back around.
“I’m sorry for what I said a minute ago,” Diego said, his voice softer. “Was that rude?”
“No. It’s true. Humor is my defense. It makes things easier sometimes.”
“What things?”
I thought about it. “Pretty much everything.”
He smiled. “So, your turn. Tell me about your most recent relationship.”
I looked at the girl in front of me, wondering if she was listening in, waiting to share this with everyone. Thankfully, she was talking to someone in front of her now.
“Hunter Eller. Last year. We dated for a while. It was good. We got each other. And then he moved away and stopped texting or calling.”