Crushes, Codas, and Corsages #4

by Michelle Schusterman

  Mrs. Driscoll nodded. “We had two more pairs chosen, both in eighth grade. I’m so proud of you both!”

  She, along with our parents, stood there beaming proudly at us. Owen ducked his head to look at his laptop screen, but I could tell he was smiling.

  The judges showed up, and the gray-haired man rubbed his hands together when he saw the television. This time, I saw his name tag: MR. GILL. “All right, the cartoon! I should’ve brought popcorn,” he said, and I giggled.

  This time, our parents, the judges, and Mrs. Driscoll weren’t the only ones watching. At least a dozen other kids and parents crowded around our table—I recognized one of the boys with the robot-arm project laughing at the UFO slingshot in the commercial. I was halfway through describing the Mercury habitat before I realized my note cards were still sitting on the table. But instead of panicking, it made me feel more confident. At some point, I must have memorized the whole presentation.

  After we finished and the judges moved on to the next table, Owen and I headed back over to the main gym with our parents, Megan, and Mrs. Driscoll. The registration table was cleared, and I could see a stack of certificates. Before long, the woman with the braid and glasses was calling all the finalists forward to line up. I stood next to Owen, making a conscious effort not to bounce up and down on my toes again. Having all forty of us up there made me realize how slim our chances of winning were. Mr. Gill stepped forward.

  “First of all, let’s have a round of applause for all of the finalists in the Fifteenth Annual Oak Point School District Science Fair!” He clapped along with everyone else. “I can tell you, we had a pretty hard time narrowing these down,” he went on. “We’re so impressed with the quality of the projects here today.”

  The woman with the braid handed him a certificate, and he cleared his throat.

  “Third place, with a prize of two hundred dollars, is awarded to . . . Alien Park! By Holly Mead and Owen Reynolds from Millican Middle School.”

  My breath flew out in a whoosh. Beaming, I walked forward with Owen to take the paper and shake hands with the other judges. We studied the certificate while Mr. Gill continued talking.

  “Third place!” Owen’s eyes were shining. “Wow.”

  “I know.” I couldn’t stop smiling. “So what are we gonna do with two hundred dollars?”

  He shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  We watched as the two boys with the robot arm were given the second-place certificate. “And now, the grand prize,” Mr. Gill announced. “A private tour of the NASA Space Center in Houston. And the winner is . . .” He paused, clearly enjoying the dramatic effect. “Little Shop of Horrors! By Valerie Wenger and Sarita Bose from Forest Hill Middle School!”

  “The Venus flytrap!” I exclaimed, clapping extra loudly as the two girls stepped forward with huge grins. “That’s so cool. I’m glad they won.”

  As soon as Mr. Gill finished talking, Mom and Dad came over for hugs, and Mrs. Driscoll insisted on taking a few pictures of Owen and me with the certificate. After she left, we walked back to the other gym with Steve, while Mrs. Grady hurried Megan to the restroom. “Way too much juice at lunch!” Mrs. Grady exclaimed. I snickered, watching Megan do a funny, hopping dance down the hall.

  When Dad and Steve started wheeling the television stand back to the faculty room, Mom turned to me. “I think I’ll go pull the car up,” she said. “We had to park pretty far away.”

  “Okay!” I waved as she walked off. Owen was shutting down his laptop, so I started to take down the display board and accidentally knocked my note cards all over the floor. “Whoops.”

  Kneeling, I gathered the cards up, reading a few as I did. I was actually going to miss working on this project. Then I remembered something that made me laugh.

  “I was failing this class,” I told Owen, grinning. “At the beginning of the year. Isn’t that weird?”

  He glanced over from his laptop. “Just the first quiz, though,” he said, coming around the table to help me.

  “Yeah, but . . .” I gestured to the flash cards in my hand. “I don’t know. It’s funny how it changed without me even realizing it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that I hated science,” I said, stacking the cards together. “And now it’s my favorite subject. I mean, after band, obviously.”

  Owen smiled. “Really?”

  “Yeah.” We stood up, and I set the cards back on the table.

  “It’s my favorite class, too,” Owen told me.

  I laughed. “Well, yeah. I kind of figured that.”

  “No, I mean . . .” Owen hesitated. “It’s my favorite class because you’re in it.”

  And suddenly, I realized this was the moment I was supposed to tell him. I like you! Three words, dancing around in my head. But my brain just wouldn’t make my mouth actually say it.

  So instead, I kissed him.

  A wave of warmth washed over me, like a head-to-toe blush. Stepping back, I opened my eyes—when had I even closed them?—and stared at my sandals.

  That did not happen. I so did not just kiss Owen in the middle of the gym.

  Except I had.

  All of a sudden, my hands were sweaty and my heart was pounding way too loudly in my ears. Whywhywhy did I do that? Did I freak him out? Probably. I’d certainly freaked myself out. He was probably setting a blinking record right now. I should check. Okay. Time for damage control.

  Taking a deep breath, I looked up at Owen. He was just staring at me, eyes wide. Not a single blink.

  Oh my God. I broke his eyelids.

  “Um . . .” Panicking, I wiped my hands on my shorts and took another step back. My elbow bumped the display board, which wobbled precariously for a second before falling backward. It knocked into the board set up on the table behind ours, and they both toppled over, taking the tub of biodegradable plastic goo with them.

  “Watch out!” A tall blond girl pulled her partner, a glasses-wearing round-faced boy crouched in front of their table, out of the way just in time. The container hit the ground with a loud thump, and they both leaped back as the yellowish goo splashed all over the floor.

  I stood frozen, hands pressed to my mouth. My face was still hot, although for entirely different reasons. After a few seconds of mortified silence, I lowered my hands. “I’m so sorry,” I started, and the girl laughed.

  “Hey, better now than before the judges saw it!” she said cheerfully. “No worries, it was an accident.”

  Leaning forward, I looked at the floor and winced. The plastic was still pouring from the overturned tub, which the boy quickly uprighted. Both our display boards were ruined.

  Gingerly, the boy pulled a flash card from the mess, grinning as a long strand of yellow goo clung to it. “Wicked.”

  I forced a laugh. My relief that they weren’t upset didn’t make this any less humiliating. I couldn’t bring myself to look at Owen, but I was acutely aware of him still standing next to me. Walking around the tables, I looked up and down the aisle and spotted a teacher. “I’ll go get something to clean this up,” I told the girl, my voice shaking a little.

  “Okay! Hey . . .” She caught up with me after a few steps, looking concerned. “Are you all right? It’s really not a big deal, you know. It’s not like we were gonna keep the slime.”

  This time I laughed for real. “Okay. And yeah, I’m fine. Thanks.”

  She smiled, and I hurried down the aisle, feeling very much not fine at all.

  A few minutes later, I returned with a few teachers carrying a bunch of cleaning supplies from the custodian’s closet. Owen was nowhere to be seen, which made me equal parts relieved and terrified. Did he actually leave?

  Apparently, the blond girl had noticed me looking around. “He’s just throwing the display boards away,” she explained, grabbing a roll of paper towels.

 
“Oh, okay.”

  We had to scrape up most of the plastic stuff with dustpans before getting started with the mops. I was wiping off the table when Owen came back. I glanced at him just long enough to notice some of the yellow goo had gotten on his Cyborgs T-shirt. Stellar.

  Dad and Steve showed up with Mrs. Grady and Megan, and they helped us finish cleaning up. Once the teachers left to return the supplies, I apologized to the blond girl and her partner again. I could sense Owen watching me.

  Suddenly, I wanted nothing more than to not be in this gym anymore. Making an effort to sound as normal as possible, I turned to Dad and smiled. “Ready? Mom pulled the car up, she’s probably wondering where we are.”

  We walked out with Owen’s family, and I was relieved to see Mom’s car right outside the entrance. “Bye!” I waved at Owen without actually looking at him, then slipped into the backseat and slammed the door closed.

  Mom was beaming at me in the rearview mirror. “Third place! I can’t get over it. Do you and Owen know what you want to do with the prize money?” Her brow furrowed, and she twisted around in her seat. “Holly, are you okay?”

  “Yup!” Fake confidence. I had it down to an art form. “I don’t know what we’re going to do with it! I guess we’ll talk about it Monday.” Among other things, I added silently. My stomach started knotting up. “Hey, is it okay if I spend the night at Natasha’s?”

  Mom glanced at Dad. “I don’t see why not,” she said, and he nodded in agreement.

  “Thanks!” Drumming my fingers on my knee, I stared out the window as our car joined the line leaving the parking lot.

  I needed to talk to Julia and Natasha, stat.

  The knots in my stomach hadn’t loosened one bit by the time I got to Natasha’s house. Ringing the bell, I took a slow, deep breath and tried to relax. It didn’t work.

  Mrs. Prynne opened the front door, holding her purse. “Oh, Holly!” she smiled, standing back to let me in. “Thought you were the pizza guy. How’s everything?”

  “Good,” I lied. “How are you?”

  “Fine, thanks.” She set her purse on a small table in the foyer. “The girls are upstairs—I’ll let you know when the food’s here.”

  “Thank you!” I said, even though just the thought of pizza made my stomach feel ten times worse. Clutching my overnight bag, I raced up the stairs and burst into Natasha’s room.

  Julia looked up from where she sat on the floor, painting Natasha’s toes. “Hey!” she exclaimed. “So how’d it go?”

  It took me a second to realize she meant the awards. “Oh, that,” I said. “Good. We got third place.”

  Natasha’s mouth fell open. “Whoa, really? That’s awesome!”

  “Nice!” Julia grinned. “That was what, two hundred dollars? Do you—” She stopped, squinting at me. “What’s wrong? You look all . . . freaked out.”

  “I, um . . .” Sighing, I dropped my bag on the floor and braced myself. “I kissed Owen.”

  I’d spent the whole car ride over preparing myself for a lot of teasing. Instead . . . nothing. I thought I saw a flicker of excitement on Natasha’s face, but Julia’s expression didn’t change at all. No one spoke for what felt like ages, until I couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Hello?” I cried. “Did you not hear me? I kissed Owen.”

  Julia nodded slowly. “But, I mean . . . just as friends, right?”

  At that, Natasha started laughing so hard she fell to one side and knocked over the bottle of nail polish. Julia looked at me expectantly, although now I could tell she was trying not to laugh, too. Despite everything, I couldn’t help but smile.

  “Pretty sure it wasn’t a ‘just friends’ thing.” Kneeling, I uprighted the bottle. Frosty pink polish was spreading out over the paper towels they’d used to cover the rug. “Here’s the funny part—and by funny, I mean completely and totally humiliating,” I added, gesturing to the spilled nail polish. “This is kind of what happened right after I kissed him. Only, like, a hundred times messier.”

  Natasha sat up straight again. “What are you talking about?”

  So I told them the whole story about the plastic goo. When I finished, Natasha’s eyes were tearing up from trying not to laugh again. Julia patted my knee sympathetically.

  “That’s rough,” she said. “But you talked to him after, right?”

  “Hang on, hang on!” Natasha nudged my arm. “Forget the embarrassing part for a sec and rewind to the kissing.”

  I picked at a loose thread in the rug. “I just kind of did it without thinking. I wanted to tell him that . . . you know, that I like him, but . . .”

  “Well, I’m pretty sure he knows now,” Natasha said, giggling. “So?”

  I blinked. “So?”

  “So how was it?” She paused before adding: “Plastic goo spilling and all that aside.” Julia snickered, and I smiled down at the rug, feeling my cheeks warm up again.

  “It was . . . really, really nice,” I admitted. After a few seconds, Julia grabbed a pillow and whacked me upside the head. “Hey!” I yelped. “What was that for?”

  “You said you’d tell us if you liked Owen!” Julia said accusingly, although she looked more amused than mad. “I mean, we already knew because . . . well, duh. And we’ve been trying to lay off teasing you since spring break because I thought for sure you’d tell us when you were ready. Why didn’t you say anything?”

  “I’m sorry! I don’t know.” I grabbed a bottle of purple polish and unscrewed the top. “It took a while for me to figure it out, I guess. I didn’t really decide I wanted to tell him until the dance last night.” Making a face, I started applying a coat of polish to my thumbnail. “Now I’ve messed everything up.”

  Julia arched an eyebrow. “How? I mean, the goo thing was embarrassing and all, but it doesn’t change the fact that you like each other. Oh . . .” Leaning against her bed, she gave me a knowing smile. “Let me guess. You took off without talking to him about it, right?”

  I cringed. “Yeah. How’d you know?”

  “Seth did the same thing,” she said with a laugh. “Remember when I asked him to the winter dance during PE? And he accidentally—”

  “Almost broke your foot,” Natasha interjected, snickering.

  “Accidentally dropped a weight on my foot, which could happen to anyone,” Julia went on, sticking her tongue out at Natasha. “He helped me get to the nurse’s office, but then he took off. Because he was embarrassed.” She gave me a pointed look. “But when I finally left, he was waiting out in the hall, and . . .” Shrugging, Julia grinned. “Well, it all turned out okay, right? We ended up laughing about it.”

  The knots in my stomach finally started to loosen. “So you think I can fix this?”

  “Of course!” Natasha said. “Just talk to him.”

  “And tell him you’re sorry for bailing,” Julia added. “I’m sure he’ll understand.”

  I nodded, feeling my shoulders relax. “Okay. Thanks, guys.”

  “Of course.” Julia studied her pinky nail. “Hey, you don’t mind if I tell Seth about you knocking over the plastic goo, right?” she asked, and I could hear the laughter in her voice. “It might make him feel better about dropping that w—”

  The rest of her sentence was cut off by the pillow I’d launched at her head.

  When I got home late Sunday afternoon, Chad was leaving for work. Mom and I waved as he drove off.

  “Has he re-trashed the Trash Mobile yet?” I asked, grabbing my overnight bag out of the backseat.

  Mom laughed. “Actually, I peeked in yesterday afternoon and it looked pretty clean. Certainly cleaner than his bedroom,” she added. “Any chance you want to tackle that?”

  I made a gagging noise. “Not in a million years.”

  Upstairs, I flopped down on my bed with every intention of taking a nap. Julia and Natasha and I had st
ayed up way too late talking. Julia told us her dad was thinking of quitting his job to open a bakery, which her mom was nervous about but we all thought was awesome. Natasha told us she’d hung out with Gabe most of the morning at the science fair, and I had a feeling my hunch about them at the dance might be right. She also mentioned that he was thinking of running for student-council treasurer next year—apparently Ms. Gardner, her debate teacher, was already handing out election information packets. I made a joke about running for president, and we spent almost an hour coming up with silly campaign slogans. (Although in all honesty, I really was considering picking up one of those packets).

  But my eyes were so grainy and scratchy, I couldn’t fall asleep. Instead, I squinted at the Summer Countdown Calendar on my bulletin board. Only a week and a half till school was out. I remembered Owen inviting me to go to Houston and visit NASA over the summer, and found myself staring at the ghost-alligator drawing. Then I sat up. Sleep was definitely a lost cause.

  After a minute, I decided to get out my horn. Chad wasn’t home, so I could practice as much as I wanted without dealing with him kicking the wall. And tomorrow was our last chair test. Since it was also going to count as our audition for band next year, Mr. Dante had asked all of us, including the students in symphonic band and beginner band, to sign up for times to play before and after school for the next few days before the spring concert Thursday. I’d scheduled myself to play first thing tomorrow morning.

  The étude didn’t look all that difficult. But I’d practiced it a few times since Mr. Dante handed it out, and it was kind of . . . boring. Or at least, the way I played it was boring. Last semester, I’d had the same problem with a chorale for one of our chair tests. Mr. Dante had pointed out that even if I played it perfectly, that didn’t mean I was making music out of it.

  So I decided to forget about “perfect” and just have fun.

  First, I played the whole étude as loud and fast as I could, which left me breathless and laughing. Then I played it like a slow funeral march, holding out all the notes way too long. I tried flipping the dynamics, playing quiet when it was marked loud, and vice versa. I played the first half of the étude as one long crescendo, getting louder and louder until I reached the middle, then starting to decrescendo until the last measure was so soft I was barely playing at all. I messed with the tempo, too, speeding up in some places, slowing down in others.