Kissing Ted Callahan (and Other Guys)

by Amy Spalding

  This was Lucy.

  Things were happening with a boy. With Nathan. And my very best friend in the whole wide world hadn’t told me anything.

  And if Reid and I hadn’t walked in on them… maybe she never would have.

  I hadn’t even known I should have been on the lookout for this stuff. Lucy and I talked lots about the kinds of girls who always had boyfriends. We weren’t like them, distracted by kissing and jealousy and birth-control options. That stuff could all wait until college or a national tour—whichever came first—when our band was established and we were Serious Musicians Without Curfews.

  Reid clearly felt the same way. He couldn’t even talk to girls in class without sweating, after all. And grown-ups always acted like peaking in college was way better than peaking in high school, so we had all the time in the world to worry about it. Sure, there were some rumors about Nathan and assorted girls at assorted parties, but he never brought them up, and I dismissed rumors as rumors.

  It wasn’t as if I didn’t get it. Lucy is the kind of girl who could be a Career Princess at Disneyland if she weren’t planning on being a rock-star-slash-sociologist. She has almost black hair and delicate, fair skin. She wears dresses with color-coordinated flats just because, and she’s tiny in the way people think is cute and not shrimpy. While I’m of perfectly average height and size, next to Lucy I’m this lumbering giant. And even when I’m determined to get up early and put effort into how I look, I basically stick to a uniform of a T-shirt, jeans—on crazy days a jean skirt—and a pair of Vans or Chucks. And I’m great with this! I am who I am, and whatever other lame identity slogans, but sometimes I see pictures of Lucy and me and wonder what guy in his right mind would pick anyone but the princess.

  And I can’t lie. Before catching him mid-grope with Lucy, I’d wondered what it would be like to kiss Nathan. (It seems from Lucy’s frequent glazy expression and regular application of lip gloss, that the answer is good.) Nathan is one of those guys who hits all the marks, if charting guys were like bird watching or stamp collecting. He’s tall, and he probably works out, and he gets good grades but doesn’t seem to take that too seriously.

  Still, this wasn’t supposed to be the track Lucy and I were on, and so it wasn’t just that she didn’t tell me, and it wasn’t just that it was Nathan. It was that my friend was going against so many things we’d talked about, like our two AM conversations suddenly didn’t matter at all.

  After the Incident, I considered hooking up with Reid to make things even, but I’m not into Reid, not like that. Reid is cute, but I mean that: cute. He’s shorter than me, but I’m not short, so maybe that’s not a big deal. His hair is better than it used to be, but it’s boring brown and fluffy like a baby chick’s, and that’s not the kind of hair I go for in a guy. Not that that’s a deal breaker, but also Reid gets really emotional and worked up over the tiniest incidents—like the time Lucy suggested he buy one big bottle of orange juice instead of two small bottles and he thought we all considered him financially irresponsible.

  Plus, from his total disinterest that time my white shirt accidentally got soaked—and everyone could see my bra—I know that Reid doesn’t want to hook up with me, either. And while I don’t have any sentimental attachment to my virginity, I don’t want it taken by an act of retaliation against Lucy and Nathan. I’m not holding out for love, but I should probably aim for higher than spite.

  After all, there are plenty of reasons besides revenge for wanting a boyfriend. Love, sex, a guaranteed person to hang out with, et cetera. And by the time you’re sixteen—if you like boys—having a boyfriend is something you might as well try out.

  And I’m a musician! Musicians are not supposed to be virgins who throw up the first and only time they drink beer from a keg. Musicians are not supposed to keep a secret diary in their dresser that dates back to the fourth grade and includes a list of perfect names for kittens. (Top contenders: Captain Fluffington, Mittens, and Meowser.) And speaking of, while musicians are supposed to rail against their parental dictators, their main fights are not supposed to revolve around getting said kitten.

  Also, a lot of guys are pretty great. Not just Nathan and Ted, but guys. Guys are around, abound, aplenty. I’ve yet to connect with one in any significant way. But they are there.

  So I’d already been thinking about them—guys—hypothetically, in general, and thinking about Ted—the guy—specifically. Ted is so many things a guy should be. He has great hair. It’s light brown and just long enough that it gets wavy near his ears and collar, and it looks soft, like in a fancy conditioner commercial. He’s in extracurriculars, which means he cares about the world or at least his college applications. Midway through sophomore year he still looked like a boy in a sea of almost-men, but then he got a little taller and a little filled out. I noticed, but then, suddenly, I Noticed.

  And while I’m great at what seems like enough things—drums, making smoothies, flying kites (not that I’d done that in a while)—I’m unskilled in the ways of boys, plural, and definitely in the ways of boy, singular.

  Reid is, undeniably, a guy, and he’s around. I realized if I were to need advice about guys, there was one right in my midst. So, on the first day of school this year, I decided to ask Reid what guys were looking for in a girl. Instead of just answering, he handed me one of his beaten-up notebooks, the ones that he carried with him everywhere. Turns out that Reid wasn’t just writing lyrics for the Gold Diggers. He was also writing about girls.

  Right then, over lunch, we made a pact: We’d help each other figure out the opposite sex and write about it in the notebook. Reid says that “writing keeps us honest,” whatever that means.

  Neither of us wanted to turn into Lucy or Nathan, even if maybe the unspoken truth was that we were jealous of them and what they had. Nathan was the hot guy in the band, and I guess for some reason I thought maybe I’d be the one to eventually land him. It was probably the same reason that Reid thought the hot girl of the group might be his one day. (The lyrics in “Sugar,” one of our earlier songs, about indigo eyes and dreams of demise couldn’t be about anyone but blue-eyed, cults-obsessed Lucy, come on.)

  Still, jealousy wasn’t going to make us liars. And that was something we promised to each other.

  * * *

  Mom’s grading papers at our dining room table when I get home. She teaches gender studies at USC, which means she’d be disappointed if she knew I had a notebook with detailed outlines of how to make boys fall in love with me and ways to make Reid appealing to girls. Romance plans in general are probably looked down upon by college professors, so I’m not about to tell Dad, either, even though he’s just a professor of American history.

  “Riley,” she greets me. “You’re late.”

  “Reid wanted to meet me,” I say, instead of THERE WAS A HORRIBLE INCIDENT WITH TED CALLAHAN, BUT ALSO HE WAS IN MY CAR. “He needed help with our English lit homework.”

  “Really?” Her eyebrows knit together. Worry is Mom’s default emotion for me. Probably when she was my age she was already dissecting the world for gender analysis, not playing in a band and trying to do just enough work in school to get by. “It wasn’t about the Gold Diggers?”

  “Definitely not.” I get a root beer out of the refrigerator and swing the door shut with my foot. “Can I skip dinner? I just ate a waffle.”

  “A waffle? For dinner?”

  “No, not for dinner; it’s just, now I’m not hungry for dinner.” I make an expression I hope makes me seem like a silly kid who doesn’t understand how eating and getting full works. “I just want to do my homework and practice for a while.”

  Her eyes are back on the stack of papers in front of her. “Okay.”

  “You should do that on your computer,” I tell her for the billionth time.

  “Eye strain,” we say together, and Mom gives me a little smile before I head up to my room.

  I speed through my homework and head out to the guesthouse. It sounds swank, but it’
s hardly bigger than our garage. Mom and Dad had just used it for storage before I’d gotten my first drums, and it took only a week of me playing inside the house for them to consolidate the boxes and crates and move me out here.

  I never took offense; I was crappy for a while, and even good drumming is loud and distracting. Plus, having my own space was freeing. Since I wasn’t worried about anyone hearing me, I could try anything and everything, and while a lot of it sucked, a lot of it was me getting better.

  I was obnoxious about it at first. I wore T-shirts with the Zildjian logo or cutesy illustrations of drum kits. I took my sticks with me everywhere, and when I couldn’t get them out, in lieu I’d use two pens on my desktops before, after, and—sometimes—during classes. It was dumb that I was so desperate for everyone to know I was a drummer, but honestly? The only reason I stopped literally wearing it around like an identity was that people finally knew.

  My phone buzzes on the floor as I’m practicing rolls. I pick it up and see that it’s Lucy. I haven’t figured out how to talk to her normally since the Incident. Lucy and I had been on the same page in life since we met. Now I’m trudging along at the same speed, while Lucy is for all intents and purposes an adult.

  Before I can even put my phone back it rings again, but this time it isn’t someone whose sexual experience intimidates me. It’s just Garrick.

  “Hi, Riley,” he says. “Did you want to review our chemistry notes?”

  Poor Garrick is stuck with me for a lab partner. The only experiments I like are the ones where something lights up or changes colors or produces an odor. I thought that was all there was to chemistry, but instead it’s usually about measuring liquid into beakers and weighing it before and after you do something that seems inconsequential.

  Garrick likes it all. He’s going to be a geneticist someday, after he takes a billion more years of school.

  “I guess.” I work on my double bass technique on my practice pedal, a safe drumming activity to maintain while on the phone. “I think we’re okay, though. The test isn’t for another week and a half.”

  “True.” He says it like I’m a contestant on a game show, and he’s the host congratulating me for getting a question correct. “But I think we should definitely study this weekend.”

  “I have band practice on Saturday afternoon,” I say, “but other than that I’m free.” When all I have is band practice, I usually try to fluff up my weekend, make it sound more exciting than it is. Garrick doesn’t draw that out of me, though.

  “Great, maybe you can come over. My mom will bake cookies.” He stops for a moment. “That’s lame. I don’t know why I said that.”

  “I like cookies,” I say instead of agreeing. Future geneticists are not required to be cool. “So we can review then?”

  “Sure. Saturday night?”

  When you’re in middle school dreaming about being a teenager, you do not expect that instead of going to dances and kissing boys in parked cars, you’ll spend your Saturday nights reviewing chem notes.

  “Saturday night. Cookies and chemistry.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Top Girls--by Reid

  Jane Myatt

  Jane is firstly really pretty. She has good taste in music (evident by the Le Butcherettes sticker on her car), she dresses cool, and I’ve been told she has a cat with only three legs she rescued from a shelter, which means she’s a good person. Once last year I made a joke about Macbeth, and she said, “That was really funny, Reeve!” It’s more important that she thinks that I’m funny than that she gets my name right.

  Jennie Leung

  Jennie is also really pretty, maybe prettier than Jane. Last year she ran a bake sale that benefited the environment, and she didn’t act like it was weird I kept coming back to buy more cookies from her.

  Erika Ennis

  Erika is hot, but in a cool, understated way. Which is less intimidating. She’s in the Edendale Spirit Club, which for a lot of people would be pathetic, but it’s cool she probably doesn’t care what people think. Since she’s really smart, I’m hoping she’ll be our class valedictorian so our yearbook will document our class as really attractive.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The next morning, I spy Ted alone by his locker. He’s methodically organizing his books on a blue plastic shelf that he must have installed himself. I’ve never used the term smitten before, but I am positive I am smitten. If I were a cartoon character, my eyes would be shaped like hearts.

  “Hi,” I say, and when he doesn’t look up, I add, “Ted.”

  “Hi, Riley.” He looks right at me. I did not know eye contact could feel intimate.

  “Hi,” I say again.

  “What’s up?” He’s rummaging through his locker, so I have to watch the back of his head. His hair isn’t long, exactly, just a little overgrown. It’s like a garden whose owners went out of town for a week. I would like to reach out and touch it, but I don’t.

  “I, um, the blog?” I bite my lip because no one who isn’t a freshman or a transfer student calls it that within the walls of Edendale High School. It was by code name only. “The Fenching Club. FENCING, I MEAN!”

  What the hell was FENCHING! It sounded like Frenching. Also I was shouting, and Ted’s shoulders shot up like he was under attack. Oh my god.

  “Do you want to join?” he asks, as if I hadn’t called it by its real name or said Fenching.

  “I do.” Then it’s weird in my head because saying I do to a cute guy conjures up visions of wedding dresses and floral arrangements. I think of Ted in a tux—hair still ungardened—and he’s so cute I smile to myself. Brain Number Two regains control.

  “Email me.” He emerges from his locker with a stack of textbooks and binders. “Ted at Edendale Fencing Club dot com. I’ll send you everything you need.” He’s off down the hallway.

  I’ve wanted to be a part of the blog since I was a freshman. It’s the most countercultural thing our school has to offer, but I’ve never known how to get involved. Edendale’s a private school, but unlike private schools on TV, we don’t have to wear goofy uniforms and no one seems freakishly overachieving. It’s obviously been perfectly acceptable for me to be doing only one extracurricular, since the free time I have is supposed to go toward the band. But this is a mission, and I am on it.

  “Hey.” Lucy bounds up next to me. “Did you get my message last night?”

  She still acts like maybe it’s bad cell-phone reception. By now I feel like she’d ask if something was wrong, though she should already know what she did and how small and pointless it made me feel.

  “No, sorry.” I shrug. Inside my chest, my heart feels caged. Life is basically good: Ashley is annoying, but Mom and Dad are fine, school is also fine, Ted is awkward but maybe attainable (!!!), the band is okay. But without Lucy, I’m not fine. Up until this school year started, there wasn’t a single day when I didn’t risk getting a late slip in one of my classes because it was so much more important to talk to Lucy at her locker instead.

  “Did you have Yearbook yesterday?”

  I’m pretty sure somewhere Lucy has a list of topics she can still discuss with me. Getting her voice mails, Yearbook, our mutual classes, the band—sort of. The music part of it at least.

  “I did. It was mostly boring.” If things hadn’t changed, I know I’d be dying to tell Lucy every last bit of the car ride with Ted. She’d know everything about Ted! As things stand now, she doesn’t even know I like him. And now that she’s a lady of experience, I’m too embarrassed to tell her about crushes and nonaction and mermaid books.

  “Too bad. Normally, Yearbook’s probably a big bucket of excitement,” she says.

  “You can’t carry excitement in a bucket.”

  “A backpack? A… what do you call those bandanas hobos carry on sticks? A bindle?”

  “Excitement can’t be contained.” I nod toward my chemistry classroom. “See you in English lit?”

  “Oh, sure,” Lucy says with a nod, and I can see ho
w she didn’t think our conversation was over yet. She waves before heading off down the hallway. I watch her instead of walking into chemistry, but it’s like all I can see is our paths away from each other, dotted lines tracing how separate we’ve become.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Top Guys--by Riley

  I think this is way too personal of feelings to put in a list! Reid is making me do this.

  The Crush

  He is smart, handsome, principled, and he has good taste in music. The end!

  Everyone else

  Not even worth discussing!

  CHAPTER TEN

  to: ted@edendalefencingclub.com

  from: riley.crowe-ellerman@email.com

  subject: fencing club!!

  hi ted!!

  Why am I using so many exclamation points!?! Delete!

  to: ted@edendalefencingclub.com

  from: riley.crowe-ellerman@email.com

  subject: fencing club

  dear ted,

  how are you today? i’m pretty good. i’m writing to you about fencing club.

  Why do I sound like he’s my pen pal forced upon me from an interschool correspondence league? Delete!

  to: ted@edendalefencingclub.com

  from: riley.crowe-ellerman@email.com

  subject: fencHing club

  just kidding!! what’s up for fencing club?

  Maybe I shouldn’t remind him of how I can barely speak English in his presence and how just maybe that was some kind of Freudian slip brought on by how badly I would like to, among other things, French-kiss him. Wait. Does anyone even call it that? Or was that just in books about teenagers I read when I was twelve?

  to: ted@edendalefencingclub.com

  from: riley.crowe-ellerman@email.com

  subject: anything + everything

  you are so smart and so cute and i like your messenger bag and someone told me they saw you at sunset junction last summer so i have a feeling you might have great taste in music and the way i’ve seen you put on Burt’s Bees beeswax lip balm makes me think you’re probably a really great kisser so can we just DO THIS, TED, CAN WE?