Me You Us

by Aaron Karo

  I spot Rebecca exiting the school and heading toward us.

  “I was happy to help,” I say. “But she’s coming.”

  Adam turns around and waves to his girlfriend. I’m glad we cleared the air. When Rebecca reaches the table, pretty in pink seersucker shorts and a white polo shirt, I can’t help but beam with pride at how well that doofus has made out.

  “Hey, babe,” she says to Adam. He gives her a kiss without standing up because he’s almost already at her eye level anyway. She says hi to me and then sits down.

  “What are you two doing?”

  “Oh, you know, just guy talk,” I say.

  “Did you know that Shane is in love with Jak?” Adam says.

  Rebecca gasps. “You are?”

  “Adam, what the hell, man?”

  “Was that supposed to be a secret?”

  “I mean, I guess not.” I’m surprised Rebecca doesn’t already know. Seems like the rest of the planet does.

  “So what’s going on with you guys?” Rebecca asks.

  “Nothing right now.”

  “I could totally see you together,” she adds.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I know.”

  I observe Rebecca and Adam nuzzle and smile at each other for a few moments. Another reminder of what I don’t have. I’m about to leave and give them a little privacy when I look up, and my stomach sinks.

  “Crap.”

  “What?” Adam says.

  I motion to the side of the courtyard. Harrison is stomping toward our table. He’s only wearing the top half of his baseball uniform, boxers, and untied cleats. The latter click-clack against the courtyard floor.

  We all stand up as he approaches, a weird move by us that’s equal parts fear and deference.

  “I’m about to play the biggest game of my life,” Harrison says, “and I have to hear about you guys hanging out out here?”

  It’s unclear if the “you guys” he’s referring to is Adam and Rebecca or me and Rebecca or just anyone with a pulse.

  I, for one, am sick of this nonsense.

  “How did you even know where we were?” I say pointedly. “We’ve been here for like five minutes.”

  “You know what, Chambliss,” Harrison says, “I never got to congratulate you on that little write-up in the Chronicle. Good job, Romeo.”

  “I think you mean Cupid.”

  “Shut up,” Harrison snarls. Then he turns to Rebecca: “Rebecca, why are you doing this to me?”

  I find myself actually feeling bad for Harrison. Sure, he’s got a funny way of showing it, but obviously he has strong feelings for Rebecca. Why else would he be out here half-naked? Meatheads get lovesick too.

  “Harrison,” Rebecca says, “we’ve been over this a million times.”

  Adam steps in front of Rebecca, like a boss. “Leave her alone,” he says. I’m pretty impressed.

  Harrison is undeterred. “Rebecca, you know why we had to be a secret. You can’t blame me for that.”

  “Well, we don’t know why,” I say. “Why don’t you tell us what the hell is going on?”

  Harrison starts to crack his knuckles. Rebecca turns to me.

  “My dad works for Pacifica Oil.”

  “Um,” I say. “Okay. I don’t know what that is.”

  “It’s a giant, horrible oil company that pollutes the air,” Harrison says. “My moms have been protesting them for years.”

  I remember spying on Harrison and Rebecca at the house party. This is what they were arguing about.

  “It’s an energy company, Harrison,” Rebecca says. “And I’m sorry your moms don’t like it, but I bet they like computers and air-conditioning and gas for their cars.”

  “I couldn’t have them find out about us,” he says. “They would have killed me. It’s like dating the enemy’s daughter. And you know we drive electric cars.”

  Adam isn’t quite sure what to make of all this, so he stays silent.

  “Harrison, don’t you think you’re taking this a little too far?” I say.

  “What? You think I’m some dumb jock? You think just ’cause I play baseball I don’t care about Mother Earth? What do you think the field is made of?”

  “Um . . . earth?” I stammer.

  “Grass, you idiot!”

  I recoil. I really have no idea what to do at this point.

  “Everything was fine until I started seeing you around,” Harrison says to me.

  “Harrison, I had nothing to do with any of this. Are you still carrying a grudge from seventh grade? Because I didn’t even see the girl you were talking about. Ask the rabbi! I’m sure he remembers. It’s probably the only time he’s ever had to eject someone from the synagogue.”

  Harrison evaluates the situation in front of him. There’s no logical way out. If anything he should be mad at Adam, but instead he’s just mad at the world.

  “You all think you’re better than me, don’t you?” he steams. “You all think you’re better than me! But you’re not! Especially not you!”

  He shoves his finger in Rebecca’s face.

  Adam pushes Harrison’s arm away.

  Harrison shoves Adam.

  Rebecca pleads, “Leave him alone!”

  Adam’s adrenaline surges, and I can’t believe it . . . but he throws a punch!

  Unfortunately, it’s a wild haymaker that Harrison easily sidesteps.

  Now Adam is off-balance, and Harrison effortlessly pushes him to the ground.

  Then Harrison turns his attention to me.

  “This is your fault, Shane! You did this! You think you’re better than me!”

  He’s screaming at me in his underwear and the whole thing is just insane. I try to reason with him with the only advice I can think of that seems tailor-made for this situation.

  “Listen, Harrison. Relax. I don’t think I’m better than you. We all put our pants on one leg at a time.”

  And that’s when he winds up and punches me in the face.

  42

  GETTING CLOBBERED IN THE face is not as dramatic as it looks in the movies. I didn’t heroically absorb the blow like Liam Neeson. No, I immediately crumpled to the ground in a heap. I bled. I whimpered. Harrison fled the scene immediately. I later found out that he hurt his hand on my skull, couldn’t pitch, and we lost the playoff game. So, good times had by all.

  Adam and Rebecca helped me get home, but I got the feeling they couldn’t wait to be alone together. Adam stood up for Rebecca and threw the first punch. Even though he missed by a long shot and got shoved to the pavement instead, he scored major points. I expect him and Rebecca to have a long and happy relationship.

  I’m not so fortunate. I’m lying on the floor of my bedroom with an ice pack on my eye. I’m trying to keep the swelling down as much as possible. If I’m lucky, it won’t look so bad by the time my parents come home from work. The last thing I need is for them to make a big deal out of it or call the school. I’ll just tell them I fell. I was never the most coordinated kid anyway.

  There’s a crack in my ceiling that I’ve never noticed before, probably because I don’t usually lie on the floor. It starts off pretty small and then forks into a bunch of secondary cracks. It gets worse the farther you go. Kind of like my high school career and my life in general.

  My phone rings, and I see that it’s a FaceTime request from Jak. I hold the ice pack on my eye with one hand, hold up my phone with the other, and accept the request. She gasps when she sees me on-screen.

  “Oh my God! I just heard. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “It looks worse than it is.”

  “Take the ice pack off so I can see your eye.”

  I do.

  She gasps again.

  “Is it bad?” I ask. It’s hard to tell on the tiny image of myself in the corner of the screen.

  “Well,” Jak says, “that depends on your definition of bad.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “The good news is that you can’t get any uglier.”

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nbsp; “That’s a relief.”

  I put the ice pack back on.

  An outside observer might not sense anything amiss in this conversation. But I can tell that things are not the same. In the week since our encounter in the street, Jak and I have pretended to go about things like normal. But Jak is faced with the twin burdens of still being annoyed with me about the Galgorithm and knowing that I’m in love with her. Yes, we’re joking around on the phone. But it’s not as fluid and familiar as it once was.

  “Do you need anything?” Jak asks. “Do you want me to come over?”

  “No. It’s okay.”

  My head is starting to throb.

  “Shane?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You can’t be mad at me,” she says.

  “I’m not mad at you. What makes you think I’m mad at you?”

  “I know you, Shane.”

  “You know how I feel.”

  “You promised me it wouldn’t be weird.”

  I did promise that. But it’s just been getting weirder and weirder each day.

  “I know,” I say. “I’m trying. It’s hard.”

  “I don’t want to fight with you anymore,” Jak says. “But don’t think this has been easy for me, either. I’m the responsible one in our friendship. It’s the worst.”

  “Really? You’re the responsible one, Jak?”

  “Shane, you do realize that you’re not supposed to put the ice pack directly on your face, right? You’re supposed to put a towel under it. You’re turning red.”

  “You put a towel under it.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  There’s a lull in the conversation. There never used to be any lulls in our conversations. We could talk for hours without anyone ever taking a breath. But now we’re just staring at each other via FaceTime and neither of us knows what to say.

  I feel like senioritis is pervading all aspects of my life. I can barely bring myself to go to class anymore. And me and Jak . . . now that I know that we can’t be together, it seems like we’re just going through the motions.

  Jak sighs. “It’s tough for me to see you like this,” she says.

  “You can fix that, Jak. You can change it. You can tell me you feel the same way about me. Then I won’t look so depressed.”

  “I meant it’s tough for me to see you with a swollen eye.”

  “Oh.”

  Another lull. We’re trying too hard. We’re not on the same page. Our best friend telepathy is gone. It makes me ­incredibly sad.

  “I wish we could go back in time,” I say. “Before I said anything, before I was outed, before the Galgorithm, before Voldemort. Before everything changed.”

  “So, like eighth grade?”

  “Exactly. Eighth grade. I think that’s when life peaked. Girls weren’t an issue. Me and you were buddies.”

  “It was simple.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Of course,” Jak adds, “in eighth grade you were covered in acne. Like, head to toe. I didn’t even want to be seen with you.”

  “I’ll take acne over this any day.”

  I remove the ice pack from my face again.

  “How does it look now?”

  “You’ve still got a couple of pimples. One on your nose—”

  “Not my acne! My eye!”

  “Go easy, Chambliss. I’m just messin’ with you.”

  “I know.”

  I’m glad Jak still cares enough to tease me.

  “You want to know how it looks?” she says. “It looks like you got punched in the face by the starting pitcher of the baseball team. Or former starting pitcher, now that we lost.”

  Another lull.

  Jak looks at me, and all I want to know is what she’s thinking. Deep down I hope and pray that she’s not telling me everything. She’s ten blocks away, yet her image is being bounced to space and back. There’s meaning in her face that’s lost in the journey, that I can’t parse right now and may never be able to.

  My friendship with Jak has survived tough times. But not anything like this. We’re out of sync and out of sorts. I want her to forgive me. I want her to love me back. I want her to be lying next to me.

  Alas, as the girl with the bar code tattoo once told me: Life is easier said than done.

  43

  I’M SITTING IN THE CAFETERIA by myself with a black eye and a broken heart.

  All the upperclassmen who have off this period have left campus to get lunch, and most of the underclassmen, who technically aren’t allowed to leave school grounds, have joined them. It’s the first of June, and with summer so perilously close all rules are going out the window.

  I haven’t brought food with me, nor have I bought anything. I’m not hungry. I’m just staring out at the sun-drenched lawn that borders the cafeteria. Even the squirrels scatter at the sight of me, probably noticing my eye and thinking I’m a giant raccoon.

  I’ve been beaten up inside and out. Besides the occasional nerd who solicits me for dating advice (which I don’t give) and the handful of allies who have remained loyal, I am essentially a pariah in Kingsview. I’ve resolved to serve out the rest of my time in high school as a weird loner.

  My parents warily accepted my explanation that my injury was the result of an errant doorknob. Harrison told his coaches he injured his hand during a bench-clearing brawl (that he himself sparked) earlier in the playoffs. I guess that was better than admitting he got into a fight off the field. I told Adam and Rebecca not to snitch on him. Things are bad enough. I don’t need to get blamed for the misfortunes of our baseball team too.

  This may be the lowest point of my entire life. I’m just plain wallowing in it.

  But even the darkest days can be brightened. Even the gloomiest forecast can be wrong.

  And today that hope, that ray of sunlight, comes in the form of two bubbly sophomores who enter the cafeteria holding hands and looking for me.

  Hedgehog and Balloon.

  I can’t believe my eye (the other is swollen shut) when they sit down across from me. I haven’t seen either of them in weeks.

  “Please tell me this isn’t some sort of sick joke,” I say.

  Anthony shakes his head. “Nope. Hedgehog and Balloon are back!”

  I still think they’re playing a trick on me until Brooke starts to nod.

  “It’s true,” she says.

  I literally pump my fists overhead and cheer. “Yes! You don’t understand how happy this makes me.”

  Brooke smiles and rubs the back of Anthony’s neck, below his spiky hair.

  “So . . . ,” I say, “are you gonna make me beg? Tell me what happened!”

  “Well, ever since the article came out, I’ve been thinking,” Brooke says. “What’s the most important part of a relationship? Is it how you got there? Or is it that you got there at all?” She looks lovingly at Anthony. “And I realized that it doesn’t matter how Hedghog and I got together. All that matters is that we are together and we belong together.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”

  “I know, Shane. But I had to figure it out for myself. I got a little caught up in the scandal of it all. And I still think the whole Galgorithm thing is a bit creepy. But you’re right, the fact that Anthony cared enough about me to be creepy in the first place is pretty darn romantic.”

  She kisses him on the cheek.

  “And you told her . . . ?” I ask Anthony.

  “Everything,” he says. “I told her everything. That you helped me figure out what her interests were. That you helped me write all those text messages. Everything.”

  “They were your words,” Brooke says to me, “but they were coming from Hedghog’s heart. So I guess what I want to say to you, Shane, is thank you. Thank you for being ­Anthony’s guide and advisor and messenger. Thank you for bringing us together.”

  “Yeah, man,” Anthony adds, “thank you. Me and Balloon have had our ups and downs. But we would be nothing without you.”
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  “It was my pleasure, guys. Really. I’m glad it all worked out.”

  I can’t tell if I’m tearing up or if my shoddy eyelid is just leaking. Probably a little of both.

  “Is your eye okay?” Anthony asks. “We heard the rumors about Harrison. What a tool.”

  “Yeah, yeah, it’s nothing,” I say. “Sometimes a good punch clears your head.” (This has not been the case with me, of course. Things are hazier than ever.)

  “I also wanted to let you know that I took the article off the newspaper website,” Brooke says. “I know that’s probably too little too late, but I thought it was the right thing to do since I kinda didn’t ask you for your side before publishing it. Also, possibly committing libel in high school probably won’t help my investigative reporting career.”

  I chuckle. “I appreciate that, Brooke.”

  “The comments section was quite . . . colorful, to say the least,” she adds. “But with it all gone at least you’ll be that much harder to google.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Um, and . . . ,” Anthony starts.

  “Don’t,” I say. “You don’t need to apologize for being one of Brooke’s sources for the article. If I were in your shoes, I would have also spilled my guts. ‘Deny till you die’ is just a stupid saying.”

  “Oh, thank God,” Anthony says. “I have been racked with guilt for weeks. My hair has been falling out.”

  I can only imagine what that nightmare scenario looks like.

  “It’s all good, buddy. I like to think you two did me a huge favor. Me? A dating guru? What a joke. I don’t know anything. And I can’t even get my own life in order.”

  “Shane,” Brooke says, “that’s crazy. Think about how many people you’ve helped.”

  “Yeah,” Anthony says, “you can’t retire. Guys like me need you!”

  “Hmmm,” I say. “Well, maybe I could get an eye patch and be the dating pirate. ‘Excuse me, arrr! you a Gemini?’”

  Brooke breaks out laughing at my imitation. And, wouldn’t you know it, she sounds exactly like a squeaky balloon.

  “So what’s next for you, Shane?” Anthony asks.

  “Well, first I’m gonna take some Advil because right now I see two Hedgehogs and three Balloons. After that, well, we’ll see. You guys have given me a little bit of hope.”