The Big F

by Maggie Ann Martin

  “It was tough leaving here,” he said, looking around. “It was hard on her.”

  “But eventually everyone adjusts,” I said, thinking back to how difficult it was to connect with another friend. Zoe was my first best friend after Olivia—and that was a year after she left. I sort of floated between friend groups in that time, which was challenging starting middle school. I missed having a best friend that I could share all my secrets with and her mom being my second mom. I could tell Carrie Upton more than I could tell my own mom.

  From above us we heard a small click as the room went black. Darn those motion-sensor lights! I hopped up and started waving my arms around like one of those inflatable tube men outside of car dealerships. As they turned back on, Luke started cackling, actually cackling, at how ridiculous I looked.

  “These are some of my best moves,” I said.

  “Remind me to never take you dancing,” he said, his cackle dying down.

  “Trust me, that won’t be an issue,” I said. I sat back down and let the embarrassment of the moment roll off me. Was it hot in here? It was definitely hot in here.

  “How about you?” he asked. “Why did you come to DCC?”

  I sighed. I wasn’t sure how honest I wanted to be with him. If I told him the truth, undoubtedly he’d think I was a loser incapable of planning out my future. I could lie and say that I wanted to take all my general education courses for cheaper than at a state school. Or that I wanted to stay home with my aging parents and see my brother’s acting career blossom in front of my eyes. But if Luke remembered anything from my past, it was that I felt disconnected from my family and spent most of my free time at the Uptons’ consequently. He’d never believe that.

  “I’m still trying to figure myself out,” I replied. “And I’m cutting down on my future student loans in the process.”

  “Fair enough,” he said. We sat in silence again for a long moment, letting the smell of the old textbooks and greasy pizza sink into our pores. I’m sure I smelled awful with the combination of the musty book perfume and the sweat that still clung to my clothes. Luke wasn’t wearing anything special either, thank God. Just normal basketball shorts and a Clemons High Cougars shirt. “How’s your arm?”

  “Better,” I said, looking down on it. The blood had stopped seeping through the bandage and it barely stung anymore. I grabbed another piece of pizza from the box and replaced my soaked papers with new ones. I hadn’t had the heart to tell him that we had paper towels in the back that we could have used. He was so proud of his printer paper.

  “So how did you end up meeting Porter?” I asked.

  “Random roommate,” he replied. “He seems like a decent enough guy—funny as hell. A little moody, which you probably already know.”

  “Oh yes,” I said. I almost brought up a few examples of how moody he’d been in the few days I’d known him when Luke cut in.

  “We’ve been talking about me for too long. What have you been up to since we left?” he asked.

  I was terribly uninteresting. I’d basically made my way through middle school and high school floating under the radar with a few core friends. I joined the design club junior year and helped make T-shirts for different school groups. I watched reality TV with Zoe on the weekends. I fought with my cousin-slash-enemy about twice a month and sometimes helped cook dinner with my mom. Also, I became a chauffeur to my brother and helped him with his math homework.

  “Nothing too exciting,” I replied. “You know, school, family—pretty normal.”

  “How old is Noah now?” he asked.

  “Fourteen. He’ll be starting his freshman year of high school. I can’t believe how fast he’s growing up.”

  “And he’s been healthy?” he asked.

  Noah used to be sick all the time as a little kid. Eventually they figured out that he needed to get his tonsils taken out and have some major inner-ear surgery to fix everything. Mom kind of treats him as her miracle child now that he’s been healthy for so long. She acts like he had cancer or something.

  “Yeah, he’s been great. He’s actually been starring in a few commercials for businesses around town.” I smiled.

  “No way! That’s actually pretty cool,” Luke said.

  “And a little weird.” I laughed. “Mom’s really into all of it, though. It’s nice to see her excited about something.”

  “I bet they’re happy that you’re staying close to home,” he said.

  I sighed. “More than close. I’m still living at the house.”

  “Well, that way you don’t have to pay for rent. It really takes a huge chunk out of your pizza budget,” he said. “If you ever need a place to hide out for a while you can always come to our place. We live in the complex on Hillis.”

  I blushed a little. “That’s really nice. I might take you up on that.”

  “I’m really glad that I saw you at that party the other night,” he said. My stomach did that fluttering thing, and I could feel my face reaching a new shade of red. I hadn’t realized how close we were to each other now, leaning forward on our book boxes, only inches away.

  “Me too.” We stared at each other for all too long before I coughed and we both backed away. I looked down at my phone to see the time, and I squealed a little bit. “Oh man, I should have been home like an hour ago.”

  “Darn that curfew,” he said. I could have sworn he winked.

  “This was so fun,” I said. He stood up from his box and held out his hand for mine to help me stand up.

  “I had a good time too,” he said. We stood in that awkward limbo between a hug and a kiss, and I couldn’t read what he wanted from me. I stuck out my hand and firmly shook his, kicking myself on the inside for being so shy.

  “Thanks for the pizza,” I said, turning away. “I’ve gotta go.”

  My face got bright red, and I started to shuffle my way to the front of the store. “Wait! Don’t you have to lock up?” he yelled after me.

  “Shit,” I whispered. “Yep, yes I do.”

  He pushed the boxes to the side of the room and picked up the leftover pizza to take with him. I scrounged for the keys in the back room and thankfully found them in under a minute. We didn’t talk as I led him to the front of the store and eventually out the door. He waited patiently with the pizza in hand as I locked the door and turned around to him.

  “Can I have your phone number?” he asked. “You know, in case I’m ever in need of some help with a pizza?”

  “Um, yeah, of course.” I blushed. He held out his phone, and I nervously typed in my number as quickly as possible. “Should I be Dani or Danielle?”

  “Danielle,” he replied. “Remember, Dani is afraid to talk to me.”

  “Good point.” I handed him his phone back, and we stood there again, without knowing how to proceed.

  “Good night, Danielle,” he said.

  “’Night, Luke,” I replied. “Drive safe.”

  “Always do.”

  FLUKE:

  something surprising or unexpected that happens by accident.

  I woke up to the feeling of something sticking to my forehead. I swatted at it only to find that a sticky note had been plastered to my head. Reaching up to rub the sleep out of my eyes, I tried to make out what it said.

  Good luck on your first day, loser.

  One of Noah’s favorite pastimes was leaving things on my face while I slept. I envisioned Mom asking him to set it on my nightstand or to post it on my bathroom mirror, but the face was his signature. The most disturbing item-to-face interaction occurred when he was five years old and decided to sling-shot my training bra onto my forehead in my sleep. I slept with a pillow over my head for weeks after that.

  Voices filtered up to my room located above Mom’s office. She was starting early today. The end of summer was her busiest time—parents tried to get their seniors in before they went back to high school. These moments were the only times I heard my mom’s voice. Otherwise she ignored me. Last week I had tried to
have a conversation with her about everything—about how I’d gotten my life together—but she just stared blankly at me.

  I knocked my phone off my nightstand and had to get out of the comfort of my bed to pick it up. At least a thousand messages from a very persistent Zoe flashed across the screen, but no text from Luke. Not that I’d expected one. Maybe a little part of me did. This was the part that I hated most about a new romantic prospect—waiting to see if he felt the same way without being overly clingy. If Zoe were a person I was romantically interested in, she would be completely failing in that respect.

  Sorry about being MIA. Come over for some breakfast?

  Within seconds, Zoe responded. Be there in 20.

  Twenty minutes gave me just enough time to throw some clothes on and attempt to manage the tangled mess on top of my head. But if my senior year of high school was any indication, my physical appearance at school had become less and less important. Most DCC students opted for sweatpants and T-shirts during the school day, waiting to become presentable at night or at parties. That was a system I could be down with.

  I brushed my teeth and rolled on deodorant before changing into running shorts and a tank top. My hair refused to cooperate so it stayed in a messy bun on the top of my head, chunks of my shorter layers sticking out in all directions. I practically crawled down the stairs and into the kitchen to inspect the food that we had left in the pantry. There were three almost-empty cereal boxes along with a variety of granola bars. In the fridge we had expired eggs, soy milk, and leftover Chinese food my family must have gotten last night. Maybe if I added a side of syrup to the lo mein noodles we could pass it off as breakfast.

  Where my family lacked food, we made up for it in coffee. A fresh pot sat in the coffeemaker and it smelled like my mom’s favorite cinnamon-bun kind. It was so delicious that it didn’t need any of the sweeteners or milk—even though Zoe would probably end up adding some anyway. Her coffee ends up becoming as white as those expired eggshells after she’s put all her creamers into it.

  My DCC schedule sat on the kitchen counter. Today I had my first calculus class and my literature theory class. Literature theory brought a nervous feeling to the pit of my stomach that was tinged with anger. If it wasn’t for this class, I’d be off at Ohio State. I’d be out of the house and finally out of my parents’ hair. I’d make them happy. They would be proud of me.

  The doorbell rang, and I almost skipped as I went to answer it. Zoe flew through the front door and wrapped me in a large and unexpected hug. “Oh my God, tell me everything!” she said. She pulled me back into the kitchen and I laughed. She sat down on one of the stools and placed her elbows on the counter, face resting in her hands.

  “So, get this. My coworker Porter and Luke are roommates,” I said.

  “Shut up,” Zoe said.

  “It gets better,” I said. “So Luke pulls up to the bookstore right after we closed, pizza in hand, and I really embarrassingly go out and ask him if he’s delivering. And then he says that he’s bringing pizza for his hungry roommate, Porter!”

  “That’s some freaky fate,” she said.

  “Right?” I said. “And then Porter says that he has a date or whatever and that we should finish the pizza together. Luke was super charming and embarrassed that he didn’t remember who I was, and we had a pizza date in the middle of the bookstore.”

  “That is too perfect,” she said. She dramatically sank her head down to the top of the counter and let out a fake cry. “Of course this would happen the moment you decided to go to DCC. You’re so lucky.”

  “I consider this a fluke,” I said. “There’s no way that I should have this much luck out of my own careless mistake. This was never my plan.”

  “What do they say about doors opening and closing?” she asked.

  “When God closes one door he opens a window?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but you’re not very into the whole God thing. Let’s just say that the stars have smiled on you this year.” She looked up to the ceiling and lifted her arms into the air. “If you could send me some of her good mojo that would be greatly appreciated.”

  “Trust me, the mojo won’t last long,” I said. I grabbed the three boxes of cereal out from the pantry and set them in front of her. “How do you feel about a mix of random cereal this morning?”

  “As long as none of them are high in fiber. That stuff messes with me,” she said.

  “You, Zoe Cabot, are eternally classy,” I said.

  “I try, I try.” She smiled.

  We ate the cereal at extreme speed and sipped the milk from the bottom of the bowls before we left in Zoe’s car. One of the many perks of being best friends with Zoe Cabot was her own car. Where I had to borrow my parents’ cars to get around, Zoe had sole control over her vehicle since she’d paid for it herself. She barely even let her mom drive it. The little gray compact car weathered many a rough time while living on Zoe’s street, including three separate times that her neighbor backed into it. By the third time, Mrs. Carlson decided that she was too old to be behind the wheel anyway.

  “So are you two a thing now?” Zoe asked.

  “As in dating? No,” I said, smiling a little. “Not yet, at least.”

  “I hope we run into him today,” she said. “I haven’t officially met him. Apparently you’ve already met his best friend, and I feel like I deserve an introduction.”

  “I wouldn’t want to scare him off,” I said.

  “Ouch! That really hurts, Danielle. After I helped you find the party where you eventually reconnected, you should be indebted to me,” she said.

  I smacked her arm. “You better not tell him that’s what happened that night. I have a lot worse on you.”

  “Blackmail is unattractive, Dan,” she said. “And of course I wouldn’t. I’m not completely inept.”

  “Just making sure,” I said, leaning back in my seat. The campus came into view and more cars filled the parking lot that had been so empty just over a week ago. We found a spot fairly close to the front door, and we each took our time grabbing our backpacks. As many times as I’d passed Denton Community College, I’d never guess that I would be attending school here. Growing up, my parents drilled into my brain that I would be a legacy at the Ohio State (strange emphasis on the “the”) and I, not knowing any better, thought that was where I belonged. Everyone told me it was my destiny—that I’d follow in my parents’ footsteps. When it’s your mom’s job to place kids in the college best suited for them, you tend to believe her.

  Zoe’s first class was in the east portion of the building, while mine was west. We parted ways with a quick hug and wished each other good luck. My first class of the day was literature. My stomach had churned all night over this class. I had a very detailed plan worked out in my head: I would come early and meet the professor. I’d ask about office hours and how I could be the best student possible. I would not let the Franco fiasco of last semester repeat itself. No matter how much I hated it, I would ask for as much help as it took for me to pass this class.

  The classroom was empty when I walked in, with the exception of the professor, who sat with his feet up on the desk, reading the paper and sipping from a plastic coffee mug. His hair barely poked over the top of the newspaper, and his face wasn’t visible to me. I looked down at the schedule that I had in my hand and read the name: Finn Harrisburg.

  “Uh, Professor Harrisburg?” I asked.

  The newspaper moved down slowly until his eyes found mine. I anticipated him at least saying “hello” or “yep, that’s me,” but he continued to stare at me with a lazy look.

  “I’m Danielle Cavanaugh. I’m in your literature theory class,” I said.

  He shifted in his chair, setting the paper down and taking a look at his watch. “You mean the class that doesn’t start for another twenty minutes?”

  “You know what they say, early is on time,” I said, laughing nervously and throwing in a jovial arm hook like a sailor.

  “And who
are ‘they’?” he asked. His almost beady brown eyes kept staring at me over the top of his glasses, and his eyebrows furrowed deeper as he waited for my reply.

  “That was a bad joke,” I said. My phone started sliding from my palms with all the nervous sweat I had accumulated, and I cringed as it clanged on the floor. I bent down to pick it up and noticed the glass had shattered in the corner and erupted into a spiderweb of cracks across the screen. Professor Harrisburg had to notice the horror on my face after seeing my phone. That would be the last time I let myself get a cheap plastic case from the mall. “Sorry about that. I just wanted to introduce myself before class started. I, well, I’ll just sit here until it starts.”

  He watched me sit down in the second seat in the front row and pull out a book from my backpack. The only thing I brought was a nineteenth-century anthology that the class required, and the first page I turned to was a Walt Whitman poem where he spouted off about grass and nature in ways that made zero sense to me. The words all seemed to jumble in front of me, and I silently hoped for one of my classmates to join us ASAP.

  “We’re looking at Hawthorne today, if you really want to get ahead,” he said from behind the paper.

  “Yes, great, thank you,” I replied.

  As I read about a man’s trip into the forest and his visit with the devil, more students started filing into the room. I recognized some of them from high school and wondered if they also failed Franco’s class. The clock ticked down until it reached 10:00. Someone coughed, and Finn Harrisburg looked up from the newspaper and back to the clock before grunting. He folded the paper and placed it inside his desk. He scribbled “Mr. Harrisburg” onto the chalkboard and then turned around to face the class.

  “So I know how today is supposed to work,” he started. “You’re supposed to sit back absentmindedly while I read through a sheet of paper you’ll never read again. Why don’t we skip over that pretense and get right to the heart of the class. I know that most of you took this class out of general education requirements. Some of you despise the thought of reading and writing. Tell me what you hate most about English. What makes your blood boil when you think about it? You, with the broken phone.”