Tell Me Three Things

by Julie Buxbaum

  “Yup. Are you sure you’re okay? I whacked you hard.”

  “I’ll live.” He puts out his hand and helps me stand up, and I find I’m more stable on my feet than I would have guessed.

  “I’m really sorry. Totally my fault.” He pockets his phone—maybe he was walking and texting too?—and puts his guitar down against one of the stacks. There’s a WHVS sticker on his case. Ah, now I place him. Of course. He was witness to my very first, but not last, Wood Valley humiliation. The guy who interned at Google and traveled around India. He looks different in this context.

  “Just thought of some lyrics and wanted to get them down before I forgot.”

  “Wait, you’re Liam, right?” I ask.

  “That depends on whether you’re planning to sue me,” he says. Now that I’ve put two and two together, I can see his mother in his face. The same generous grin. I wonder what kind of music his band plays. I bet it’s something folksy, and that they’re not half bad. Surely he should practice more.

  “Nope.” I smile.

  “Well then, what can I do for you? I clearly owe you one.”

  I hear Scar loud and clear in my head: Be undeniable. And so I am.

  —

  “I got a job!” I announce when I get back to Rachel’s later. I’m so excited that I have to tell someone, even if that someone is my disinterested stepbrother, who would never lower himself to do something as mundane as work. I find him on his bed, playing with his laptop. “And before you throw another fit, it’s not at Ralph’s. It’s a place you and your friends will never, ever go. So don’t you worry.”

  “I’ve never seen you so animated. It’s kind of adorable,” Theo says. “So where will I never ever go? Oh wait, let me guess.”

  He puts down his laptop and puts his hands to his head, as if he’s thinking very hard.

  “KFC?”

  “Nope.”

  “The batting cages?”

  “Nope. But I like this game.”

  “The ridiculously delicious pretzel place.”

  “Not even close.”

  Rachel sticks her head in the door, and I feel that squeeze in my stomach that always accompanies an interaction with her. I’m smart enough to know it’s not really her fault, that my feelings toward her probably have little to do with the reality of who she is, but still, I can’t help it. I don’t want to know her, don’t want this random person my father has inexplicably chosen to marry to be an integral part of my life.

  “What happened? I heard happy squeals!” she says. She can’t help herself; she looks from Theo to me and me to Theo, and her smile is so emphatic that I can see the fillings in the back of her mouth. She is almost thinking out loud: Maybe this whole thing will work after all.

  “Nothing,” I say, and when her face falls, I feel guilty. I don’t mean to cut her down, but I just don’t have it in me to give her this. To hand over the one good thing that has happened since I moved here.

  “Sorry. I’ll leave you guys to it!” she says, as always too loud, and continues down the hall. I wonder if I’ll hear about this later from my dad, if she’ll tell him that I was rude and he’ll ask me to be nicer.

  I should be nicer.

  “All right, I give up. Tell your big brother,” Theo says, not at all seeming to notice how I talked to his mother, or maybe not much caring.

  “Ew, that sounds so wrong.”

  “I know, right? Okay, so where?”

  “Book Out Below! You know, the bookstore?”

  “Ah, how appropriate. But I actually have been there, if you must know. I am highly literate.”

  “I’m sure you are,” I say, which is the truth. Theo recently beat me on a physics quiz, even though I know for a fact he didn’t study the night before. The kid is smart. It seems, with the possible exception of Tweedledee and Tweedledumber, everyone at Wood Valley is smart, or at least motivated. Here it’s cool to try, which is funny, because trying is why I wasn’t particularly cool in Chicago. By the transitive property you would think I’d be cool here, but no. Then again, I casually reference things like the transitive property, so maybe there are other, more valid reasons for my lack of popularity.

  “So, what the hell happened to your face?” Theo asks.

  CHAPTER 11

  Ethan: You. Me. “The Waste Land.” Library. Friday 3:30. Work for you?

  Me: Sure.

  Ethan: Cool beans.

  How does he make something like “cool beans,” perhaps the dorkiest expression ever uttered, sound acceptable? Do I write more to keep the conversation going? I’m better writing than I am talking in person. Maybe this is my shot to show who I actually am, not the weird loser I morph into around people who make me nervous. Will I still have this bulbous bruise on Friday?

  This is ridiculous. This is so not a big deal.

  We are working on a project together.

  He doesn’t like you. You certainly do not like him.

  Get over yourself, Jessie.

  Grow up.

  Scarlett: School sucks balls without you. I had to sit with Deena today and hear all about her gymnastics meet. How’s your head?

  Me: Swollen. Blue. I took your hat suggestion. Got alternately mocked and complimented.

  Scarlett: If I were there, I’d give those two girls a knuckle sandwich.

  Me: Not worth hurting your hands.

  Scarlett: You okay? I worry.

  Me: Don’t. Fine. Making friends with Dri.

  Scarlett: Just don’t like her better than me.

  Me: Never.

  Scarlett: And how’s Mr. Holmes?

  Me: No idea. He’s always with the stepmonster. Rather not deal.

  Scarlett: Adam Kravitz wants to take me to homecoming.

  Me: WHAT?!? Took you long enough to tell me. And?

  Scarlett: We’ll see.

  Me: How’d he ask?

  Scarlett: Text. But cute text. You know. He’s shy.

  Me: I bet he’s a better kisser now.

  Scarlett: I’ll let you know. Maybe. You know he only asked me bc you’re not here.

  Me: Not true.

  Scarlett: I bet we spend the whole time talking about how much we miss you.

  Me: No way. Go forth and prosper.

  Scarlett: Nerd.

  Me: If I used the expression “cool beans,” I’d sound like an even bigger nerd than I already am, right?

  Scarlett: OMG. Seriously, unless you want to be bullied forever, DO NOT USE “COOL BEANS.”

  Me: Yeah, that’s what I thought.

  • • •

  SN: nice hat.

  Me: Thanks. Actually, that’s kind of creepy. You know what I wore today, but I still have no idea who you are?

  SN: jeans, a t-shirt, sneakers. same as yesterday and tomorrow. you missed nothing.

  Me: Not the point.

  SN: what happened to your head? do I need to beat someone up for you?

  Me: You know, that’s the second time today someone has offered to defend my honor. Makes a girl feel special. But no. Culprit was a guitar case.

  SN: OUCH.

  Me: Not my finest moment. I’m not usually that clumsy. Felt like a rom-com heroine, except it wasn’t romantic or funny. And I hate that trope.

  SN: sorry for delay. was looking up the word “trope.” don’t think less of me.

  Me: Ha. I’m not a word snob. I just like them.

  SN: me too. who else offered to defend your honor? do I need to beat him up?

  Me: No. My best friend from home. Scarlett.

  SN: I like her.

  Me: Is it weird for me to say that I think you actually would?

  SN: Nope.

  Me: How was your day?

  SN: fine. just some stuff on the home front.

  Me: Want to talk about it? Or write about it, I should say?

  SN: not really. just my mom. she’s…going through a tough time.

  Me: Yeah. I know how that is.

  SN: going through a tough time? or having a mom
who is?

  Me: Both, actually.

  Me: Well, sort of.

  Me: It’s complicated.

  SN: me too. it’s all f’ing complicated.

  Me: Hey, what’s your favorite word?

  SN: why.

  Me: Just thought it was something I should know about you.

  SN: no, I mean my favorite word is why.

  Me: It’s a good word. Why.

  SN: right? right. a word and a whole question. and yours?

  Me: Waffle.

  SN: huh. a great breakfast food. and of course dictionary.com reminds me that it also means “to speak or write equivocally.”

  Me: exactly.

  SN: i think one day we should eat waffles together.

  Me: equivocally yes.

  —

  Next day at lunch I sit with Dri and her friend Agnes, who is probably her Scarlett. I’m still too new here to see where this table fits into the high school hierarchy. It seems none of my old rules apply. Back in Chicago, the athletes, who gathered Saturday nights in the bowling alley parking lot to sit in open hatchbacks and drink cheap beer by the case and toss their empty cans at the Dumpster were the popular kids, and the theater dorks, who had ill-placed piercings and one silly streak of cotton-candy-colored hair, were, well, the dorks. Theo and Agnes wouldn’t have even rated. Here, it’s the opposite; theater is an actual graded class and an after-school activity, and both are considered cool.

  Back home, I was neither athlete nor theater dork. Instead, I was in that middle clique that every school needs to function efficiently: the worker bees. We took the honors classes, ran the newspaper and the yearbook and the student government. Not popular, not even close, but at least indispensible. (Back at my old school, it was important to distinguish the worker bees from the straight-up nerds: the nerds were even less cool than the theater dorks, but they were too busy learning how to write code and nurturing dot-com fantasies to care.)

  The truth is it doesn’t matter to me where Dri and Agnes fit in, because this sure as hell beats sitting on my bench alone outside. Anything is a step up.

  “I just think that if you’re going to post that kind of nasty shit on Instagram, own it,” Agnes says. I have no idea what she and Dri are debating, only that they each seem invested in their side of the argument. Agnes is a tiny girl with a dyed red bob, plastic-framed glasses similar to Dri’s, and a nose that looks like someone pinched it too hard and it stuck. She’s not beautiful, not necessarily even pretty, but cute. What happens when you take something full-sized and remake it in miniature.

  Okay, I’ll just admit something here. Something I’ve never told anyone, not even Scar. Whenever I meet someone new, I silently ask that inevitable catty girl question: is she prettier than me? The truth is, the answer is often yes, which I think makes my even asking the question in the first place a little less offensive. I know I am not ugly—my features all fall within the normal range (nothing grossly oversized, nothing too small), but I definitely look different from the girls here.

  I imagine, or I hope, that one day I will be discovered—that I will actually be seen—not as a sidekick, or as a study buddy, or as background furniture, but as someone to like, maybe even to love. Still, I’ve come to accept that high school is not my forum. Bookish is not even on the list of the top ten things high school boys look for in a girl. I’m pretty sure boobs, on the other hand, rank pretty high.

  If you must know: a B cup on a good day.

  Agnes is probably an A but makes up for it by being adorable. That is, until she starts talking.

  “Like, what do you think, Jessie? Am I right?” I wasn’t listening. I was looking at all the other kids in the cafeteria, at all these strangers, thinking how intimate it felt to be sitting there together shoveling our food into our mouths. Wondering whether this place would ever start to feel familiar. And true, I was also watching Ethan, Ethan Marks through the window, sitting alone near the Koffee Kart, another book in hand, though I can’t see the title. “If you’re going to say something online, be prepared to say it to my face.”

  “Yeah, I guess,” I say, a good waffle. They’ve saved me on more than one of these lost-in-thought occasions. I’m pretty sure I don’t agree with Agnes, if only because she seems to be the type of girl to make all sorts of silly pronouncements. (“Mr. Greene is such a bitch. He said I plagiarized, just because I borrowed a couple of sentences from someone else’s blog post. It’s called pastiche, dude.” Or “Only wannabes wear Doc Martens.” Or “Jessie, you’d look so pretty with a little makeup.”)

  “Agnes, sometimes people are shy. She didn’t say anything bad. She just said you hurt her feelings, which you did. Some people find it easier to write than to say it to your face,” Dri says. She looks to me to back her up, and I wonder if my existence is a problem for her friendship with Agnes. Scar and I always sat alone at lunch. We weren’t really interested in talking to anyone else. To be honest, I’m not sure how I’d feel if she had invited some new girl to sit with us. Dri not only invited me, but did so excitedly.

  “Obviously, I don’t know the full story, but I’m definitely like that. I’m so much more comfortable writing than saying things out loud. I wish I could live my whole life on paper.” I consider telling them about Somebody/Nobody. I wish I could explain how “talking” to him is so easy the words flow in a way they never do when I have to talk out loud. I also wouldn’t mind some help figuring out who he is. Then again, maybe I don’t want to know. SN may be right: the not knowing is what keeps us connected. It would be so much harder writing to someone I knew I’d see the next day. And I wonder if it works the other way too. Even though he knows who I am, maybe not having to face me makes the conversation flow for him as well.

  Of course, Agnes is wrong—words are no less courageous for having been written rather than spoken—and I’m all set to say that to her, out loud and with conviction, when I hear my name being yelled from across the cafeteria.

  “Jessie!” At first, I assume the voice is calling someone else—on account of my having no friends at this school—but the voice is so insistent, and even vaguely familiar, that I look up. Shaggy hair and a smile.

  “Hey, Jessie,” Liam says, now next to our table, having jogged over with Earl again thrown over his shoulder. He pushes his bangs out of his eyes and then points to his forehead. “How’s the wound?”

  “Almost gone. But if you bring that guitar any closer, I’m going to have to get a restraining order,” I say, which even to my own ears almost sounds like flirting. I blush. I don’t know how to flirt. I always feel like an impostor. And I don’t even want to flirt with Liam. He’s kind of my boss.

  “Ha. Listen, we’re still on for training this afternoon, right? Expect to be there till closing.”

  “Sure. Thanks again for the job. I really appreciate it.”

  “No problem. Least I could do after maiming you.” He smiles, then does this strange little arm-punch thing, which actually kind of hurts, and then hurries off, Earl flopping behind him.

  “Shut the front door.” Dri grabs my hand in a vise grip. “How do you know Liam Sandler?” she asks. Her eyebrows practically touch her hairline. “No effin’ way. Liam. Sandler.”

  “Relax. He’s not Ryan Gosling.” Agnes rolls her eyes at Dri. “I’ll never understand what you like about him.”

  Dri ignores her. Waits for me to answer.

  “I got a job at his mom’s bookstore, basically because he hit me in the head with his guitar case. Embarrassing but true.”

  “And?” Dri says.

  “And what?”

  “And everything.”

  “And everything like…”

  “What did he say? What did you say? Can you introduce me? Have you heard his band? Oh. My. God. Orgasmville.”

  “Ew,” I say. “I mean, he’s not bad, but really?”

  “No, that’s his band’s name. Orgasmville.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yup. And he is. That. Cut
e. You have to see him onstage. I’ve been, like, in love with him for forever. He’s never said a word to me. Not one. Until right now.”

  “He didn’t technically say anything to you,” Agnes informs her.

  “He spoke in my vicinity, which is more than he’s spoken to me in the last two years. I’ll take it,” Dri says, and tightens her grip on my hand. That hurts too. “Eeeeee!”

  “He has a girlfriend,” Agnes says, and I wonder about her need to piss all over Dri’s parade. If Pete McManning, the senior Scar was obsessed with all of freshman year, had ever talked within her vicinity, I would have squeed right along with her, even though I never quite got Scar’s interest in him. I can’t handle a wispy mustache, even if it’s for the hipster cause.

  “Whatever. Gem can kiss my ass.”

  “He’s dating Gem?” I ask, and realize just how much I have to catch up on. I know nothing about this school. Forget the honor code; there should be a book that chronicles all this stuff. So, Liam and Gem. Huh. If I had thought about it, I would have figured Liam might have a girlfriend, but I wouldn’t have paired him with Gem. And not because she’s hot—he’s the type to have a beautiful girlfriend—but because she’s nasty. I had him pegged as better than that.

  “I know, right? It’s the only thing I don’t like about him,” Dri says.

  “Dri is, like, totally obsessed with him. Literally obsessed. She even took up the ukulele to get him to notice her. Hashtag fail.”

  “I went through a twee phase. Whatever,” Dri says to me, and gives me a hug. “Arrgghh! You are now my favorite person in the world.”

  I smile. Pretend not to notice Agnes’s dirty look.

  SN: how’s your day, Ms. Holmes?

  Me: Not bad. Yours?

  SN: good. been doing my homework in listicle form, because, you know, anything to make it more interesting.

  Me: Do you think college will actually be better? For real?

  SN: hope so. but then again, I just read about a guy who lost a ball in a frat hazing incident.

  Me: Seriously? What is wrong with people?

  SN: can you imagine wanting to be liked so badly that you’d give up one of your testicles?