by Jaime Reed
I tried to answer her as best I could but the words were difficult to say. I was writing the book for this exact reason.
“What book?” she asked from her side of the couch.
My head whipped in her direction. I must’ve said the last part out loud. Clearing my throat, I laid everything out on the table. “I’m writing a book about us. That way you can have all your questions answered without odd segues and distractions.”
She remained still for a moment, then asked, “Can I read it?”
“When it’s done, yeah. It’s like half finished.”
“So you write? Can I read some of your other stuff?”
“Again?” I asked, and her annoyed look told me that it was a stupid question.
“Yes. Again,” she said.
I shifted on the couch to face her head-on. “Okay. But on two conditions.”
She rolled her eyes. “I promise I won’t laugh.”
“Wouldn’t matter if you did,” I assured her. “Condition one: You agree to hang out with me again—outside of tutoring. We can chill here or somewhere else. Agreed?”
She nodded. “And condition two?”
I moved slowly to her end of the couch, not wanting to scare her. If she wanted to break away, she had every opportunity, but she didn’t take it.
With my face mere inches from hers, I made my request. “For once and for all, let’s make the matter plain so there’re no further misunderstandings. You answer one simple question: Is there any chance of us getting back together?”
I couldn’t answer that question. Not yet. But for the next two weeks I kept to his first condition. We went back to the park a few more times and rode bikes on the promenade. As we roamed around different parts of Quintero, Liam told me about his parents and why they split up. He let me read some of his poems. Some were pretty good; some were really good. When I told him that, it was the first time I’d ever seen a guy blush. Adorable.
One afternoon, Liam invited me to sit in on one of his practices after school. The track encircled the football field. Just being out in the sunshine among yells, cheers, and whistle blowing made me ache for the real high school experience. Ah, the smell of teen spirit: cheerleaders doing kicks and waving pom-poms, and guys in tight uniforms chasing other guys in tight uniforms. I was missing out on the action. As for short-distance running, well, it was about as riveting as watching car races on TV.
I sat on the grass around the thirty-yard line, my laptop rested on my crossed legs as I did my best to stave off the boredom by doing homework.
The team had a big meet in San Luis Obispo this week for what was supposed to be the smackdown of the decade. I listened to the coach trash talk the competition, stating that León was going to crush them, pulverize them, and other demolition terms on the field.
I felt compelled to show my support from the grass. “Um, yeah. Kill ’em! Go, Conquistadors. Rah. Rah.”
Between drills, Liam would run over and try to entertain me and help me with my reading assignment. My grades were improving thanks to his tutoring and even now he offered useful study tips.
“The key is to read a chapter three times—once,” he said as he bent down to touch his toes. “Most people remember the beginning and end, but forget the middle. So read from the beginning to middle. Take a break. Then go back to the quarter mark and read to the three-fourths mark. Take a break. Then reread the middle and keep going all the way to the end. Works like a charm.”
I tried to follow his instructions, but it was hard to focus. I won’t lie; Liam looked scrumptious in his running shorts.
He knelt down and faced me. He had a clean, aquatic scent with a hint of sweat, and I wanted so badly to kiss him. But that might send the wrong message.
“So are you going to answer my question?” he asked.
I blinked. “What question?”
“You want to be my girlfriend, or nah?”
I tugged on a blade of grass. “Do we have to put a label on things?”
“Table salt and sugar don’t need a label to know their own flavor. It’s for the rest of us so as not to confuse the two.”
I rolled my eyes. He was forever spitting out parables. “Look, I’m not seeing anyone. Cody and I are just friends with special needs and I spend all my free time with your crazy butt, so what does that tell you?”
“It tells me that the question is even more relevant,” he countered. “You got any idea how frustrating this is?”
“Look, I’m gonna be real with you. I can’t give you an answer because I don’t have one. And seeing as I just got my outdoor privileges not even a month ago, I don’t think I need to. If I was in the boyfriend business, you’d be first on my list, but right now I need a friend more than anything else. If this is a problem for you, let me know.” I waited.
He seemed to understand my explanation, but his frown stayed put.
“For what it’s worth, I think you’re sweet and cute, especially when you wear your hipster glasses,” I added in an effort to make him smile, but I soon found out that was the wrong thing to say.
His hands balled into fists, his face tight. “What did you call me?”
“Cute?” I guessed.
“No. A hipster. A hipster? Those are fighting words. Do you see me sporting a Paul Bunyan beard and plaid? I listen to metal, punk, and underground hip-hop. I don’t knit, or whittle, or grow my own food. I wouldn’t be caught dead in skinny jeans. I’ll have you know, madam, that I only wear my specs for reading. They’re prescription glasses for farsightedness. I’m not trendy. I’m just visually impaired.”
Wow. I definitely hit a nerve. I’d have to make a note of that. “All these flavors in the world and you choose to be salty.”
“I’m not salty!” he yelled, further proving my point.
“Is that why you’re turning red? ’Cause your sodium intake is sky-high. They’ve got anger management classes for this kind of thing.”
“I just. Hate. Hipsters,” he said. “This town is infested with them and their arts and crafts and ukuleles. There are more bike racks than there are parking lots. If I see one more dude with a fedora and vest, you will truly see what salty looks like.”
I leaned back with a gasp and clutched my invisible pearls. “You know, you’re rather dashing when you’re mad. So aggressive. So virile.”
“Again with the flirting.” He threw up his hands in frustration. “You can see how a guy can get mixed signals, right?”
A whistle blow came from the track. We turned and saw a boy heading toward us. Two weeks ago, Liam had introduced, or re-introduced me to his uncle Wade, along with an origin story that gave me a newfound appreciation for my own family. Standing a few inches shorter with dark hair, Wade was the night to Liam’s day. However, once their relation was brought to my attention, it was hard not to see the resemblance.
Wade trotted over and rested his hands on his knees to catch his breath. “Hey, you’re up, man,” he told Liam.
When Liam left, Wade claimed his spot on the grass next to me. “Ella-Bella. Oh man, are you a sight for sore eyes. So, is it true that you’re part bald?” he asked.
The question was spoken with a childlike curiosity that made it hard to take offense. “Yeah. Mostly in the front, though.”
“That is so cool. You should wear it out.” He lifted his hands, but stopped. “I probably shouldn’t touch it. I know how black girls feel about their hair.”
A wise move. “Who told you that?”
“You did,” he replied with a hint to fright. “I tried it once and you nearly broke my wrist. But, why is that a thing, though?”
“The same reason you don’t just walk up to a pregnant lady and start rubbing her belly. How would you feel if somebody mistook you for a petting zoo? You don’t know where their hands have been. I’d spend hours setting a style and one stroke, one splash of water will ruin the whole thing. No me gusta,” I explained, though I had a suspicion there was a reason for this conversation. When I call
ed him on it, he poured out his heart all over the Astroturf.
“I’ve been hanging out with Kendra Bailey a lot and she has hair like yours, but straight. I think she puts stuff in it to make it that way. We went to the beach a few times and she won’t put her head in the water and she’d freak out and run whenever the waves got too high. Weird.”
The dreamy glaze in his eyes made me smile. The last time I saw Wade, he was honoring his ex with a fiery send-off and he now showed signs of a heart on the mend. “You like Kendra Bailey?”
His body tightened up, taking the defensive. “You got a problem with that?”
“Not at all. She’s really nice. I think she’s just a little on the naïve side, but sweet.”
“Naïve? Oh, it’s much worse than that,” he said. “She asked Liam one time why astronauts couldn’t travel to the sun and it shouldn’t be an issue if they went at night. She said that with a straight face, El.”
I whistled. “Wow.”
Wade kept going. “She’s into philosophy, right? She’s reading all these famous quotes and stuff about life. She was telling me about this Greek philosopher named Aéropostale.”
“Oooh.” I curled inward. “Okay, fine. She’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but she’s cool people. Don’t pick on her.”
“I’m not! I’m taking her to the movies tonight. I dunno, I just like her. She’s fun and … wait, there’s a word Liam uses a lot to describe her.” His face scrunched up in thought. “Cloying. That’s it. Sickeningly sweet. That’s Kendra.”
“Which says more about you than it does about her,” I said.
He shrugged. “I can use some sweetness in my life. Wash down some of this bitterness.”
When he didn’t unpack that ominous statement, I asked, “You wanna keep going with that thought or just let it float away on the breeze?”
“Let’s just say that I don’t have the best luck with girls,” he began. “That’s why Liam and I are so tight. The women in our lives don’t stick around very long. Sometimes they forget we exist.”
He didn’t elaborate and I knew at least part of it was about me. But Wade had to be referring to Liam’s mom as well as his own. Liam would talk about his dad and the divorce, but the other half of that severed union was barely mentioned.
Not that Liam’s family was the only unconventional one around. I’d recently learned that Trish Montego’s dad was involved in some insider trading and had been “vacationing abroad” for the past five years. Stacey’s parents fought like heavyweights to the point where divorce was one of her frequent prayers, yet they insisted on staying together for her and her little brother’s sake. My family was on that low-key crazy and for them to come off normal by comparison brought a chill to my spine.
That evening’s struggle meal with the parents left me irritable. So after the dishes were cleaned, I locked myself in my room and talked to Liam on the phone. While he finished up his homework, we discussed my recovery, and he encouraged me to keep hope alive. I tried to do some sketches, but they all turned out cartoonish and god-awful. I tossed sheet after balled-up sheet in the trash.
“I gotta ask you something. It’s been killing me for weeks now,” I began.
“Shoot.”
“What is Lessthanthree? I see it on every email and old texts. You wrote it under our Facebook pictures. What is that?”
He laughed. “You know how the less-than sign and the number three make a heart?”
“Ohhh,” I said. “Yeah.”
“So yeah,” Liam echoed. “It’s the written-out version of that. Also, the next number that’s less than three is two. As in, a couple. A couple, as in me and you.”
Silence filled the line for a long time before I broke into laughter. “Seriously? That was our thing? Why couldn’t we do the name mash-up like normal couples?”
“I guess we weren’t really a normal couple … ” Liam said, but I detected humor in his voice.
“Was I a bad girlfriend?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“You know those girls that walk all over their boyfriends, make them carry her purse and make a scene.”
“No—wait. Yes. You were definitely known for making a scene.” He chuckled.
“Did we ever get into fights?” I asked.
“All couples get into fights.”
“Yeah, but what was our nastiest one?”
“Me being jealous over another guy. You getting jealous over another girl. Me being obnoxious and clingy in public. You sneaking off to a frat party and not telling me.”
“Oh! I heard about that,” I jumped in.
“Uh-huh. I had to sneak out of the house and come get you and Stacey in the middle of the night.” Liam sighed. “It’s all explained in the book.”
“For real though, are all the stories true?” I asked.
“Depends on what you’ve heard.”
“Let’s see. There was one where I snuck into LA Fashion Week and punched out a model on the runway?”
I wasn’t sure if he laughed or coughed. “LA? You wish. It was a model search competition here in Quintero. And you didn’t throw a punch. You threw a folding chair.” In the stunned quiet that followed, he added, “The other girl pushed you and made you trip on the runway, and you—in your special way—made your objection known. You’re a bit of a firecracker, El.”
I frowned. “I think you mean a violent psychopath. I’m getting tire-slashing, rabbit-boiling, crazy ex-girlfriend vibes here, Liam. Or maybe I had a death wish. I read one post about me riding around with a dead homeless guy in the trunk of my parents’ car.”
“Nope. Not true,” he said.
I lifted my head to the ceiling. “Oh thank God—”
“He was alive in the trunk.”
“What!” I sat straight up in my bed.
“You felt sorry for the guy and offered him a ride to the bus station, but he smelled really bad. It was his idea to ride in the trunk.” He tacked that on as if this was just another day at the office.
My brain was about to explode. “You were in the car with us?”
“Uh-huh. We had a fight about that little caper, too. Anything could’ve happened to us. Like I said, you’ll have to wait until the book is finished for the gritty details.”
I groaned into my pillow. “Why can’t you just tell me?”
“That’s what the book is for,” he replied. “It’s like that thing you told me about Cody’s phone. He reads a few notes to get caught up so you don’t have to repeat yourself. Same concept; just a longer read.”
This was killing me. I blew a raspberry at him through the phone. “You’re such a tease.”
There was a long stretch of silence on the line, and I thought he’d hung up.
“Liam? You there?”
“Yeah. I’m here,” he spoke up, though he sounded distracted. “Just thinking about stuff. I’ve had a lot of wild moments with you. Some good, some bad, some made me question your sanity, and others made me question my own. In all those things, my heart never stopped racing.”
“You really are a romantic, aren’t you?” I teased.
I expected Liam to deny it or crack a joke. Instead, he went the straightforward route with a reply that hit me right in the feels. After we hung up, I stayed awake for hours obsessing over his answer.
All of a sudden, I was thirteen again, hugging my pillow and pretending it was a boy, my first kiss made of cotton and feathers. This boy felt too soft with no arms to hold me back. But behind my eyelids, imagination filled the gaps and my fingers searched the bumps in the pillow for his cheeks and mouth. His fabric lips would part with a smile. His breath would push out a whisper and repeat Liam’s words in my ear. “I learned it from you.”
My Saturdays were sacred—everyone knew this. I didn’t run, walk, or anything that involved me getting up before noon or leaving the house. If friends wanted to hang out, it had to happen on a Friday or be planned days ahead of schedule. You didn’t just spring
stuff on me on my special day. Calling me four times in a row wouldn’t make me answer the phone if I had no desire to speak. Recruiting relatives to break into my room and drag me out of bed to attend a secret meeting would only incur my wrath. But then I wouldn’t expect anything less from Stacey Levine.
At the queen’s behest, we gathered at Wade’s guesthouse. Various school pranks had been devised here, including the department store mannequin abduction, and a car wash fundraiser that nearly got the football coach fired. Either Stacey or Ellia was always at the helm of these escapades. Sometimes, if the job was really big, both would lead the charge, equipped with blueprints or dioramas.
The usual crew was in attendance. Nina Hahn—the skeptic who always appeared bored, even while laughing—sat in the armchair to my left. On the sofa’s arm sat Trish Montego, a cantankerous redhead and drama magnet. At my right, Kendra Bailey was parked on Wade’s lap; they were officially dating. Lastly, Ellia slumped beside me on the couch, no doubt wondering why we’d assembled in this small dwelling like some random goon squad.
I knew the purpose. Posters had been plastered on every wall in school for a week. The guy who did the morning announcements wouldn’t shut up about it.
Next week would begin the proceedings for León High School’s annual Decades Celebration. What started as a means to bridge the generation gap between teachers and students had now turned into a battle among the classes. Alliances were formed, loyalties were tested, ethical lines were blurred in the quest to win the best costume award. The grand prize: exemption from a final exam of your choice, and a $100 Amazon gift card. Those who participated in the death games had to submit their costume idea to the main office by Monday to prevent students from showing up with the same outfit.
I had hoped to avoid the madness after last year’s fiasco. Stacey was determined to keep the tradition alive and was now disclosing her plan of attack through an elaborate PowerPoint presentation.
“Now, I know we had a few setbacks last year. I take full responsibility for the glue-gun incident, and the principal already sent out a notice that there will be no hair spray or flammable hair products on school property,” Stacey announced as she paced in front of the TV.