Excited and scared.
She was both at the same time.
Austin and his spotlight and his voice and his smile and the way his body felt next to hers—and the way her body felt next to his—was the most thrilling and terrifying thing that had happened to Zoe in a very long time.
Quite possibly, ever.
157 days until graduation . . .
EMMA had been tossing and turning for what felt like forever.
She rolled over and glanced at her digital alarm clock.
12:02 a.m.
It was already tomorrow, and she was still awake . . .
Clearly something was bothering her.
She’d been in an especially bad mood for the past few weeks or maybe even the past few months. Basically since the very beginning of the school year. She was pretty confident that it all had something to do with the calendar and the unwavering finality of G-day, and the way the future simply wouldn’t stop approaching the present, but she didn’t know what to do about it.
All she wanted to do was go to sleep, but she couldn’t manage to turn off her brain. She was having too many thoughts and feelings—and overthinking and overfeeling all of them. Sometimes, when Emma really couldn’t sleep and just needed to take a break from herself, and her thoughts, and her brain and everything, she would masturbate.
But right now that didn’t even sound like fun.
Even if Emma somehow managed to get up enough excitement to actually go for it, she didn’t feel like she was going to be able to finish it . . . and the thought of ending up without any, well, fireworks made her more frustrated than anything else.
Still, she took her vibrator out of the bottom drawer of her nightstand and turned it on, hoping maybe the sound would unfrustrate her. Or at least just unfrustrate her enough to get her in the mood. Sometimes that worked.
This time it didn’t.
* * *
ZOE wanted to go to sleep, but she couldn’t stop staring at her phone.
It was almost 12:15 a.m., and Zoe’s phone had been buzzing for the last few minutes as Layla sent a string of motivational quotes to The Chat. Layla loved quotes. And she seemed to love them even more when they were displayed on abstract pictures or on top of sunsets or on seascapes or color backgrounds. Zoe liked Layla’s quotes, but she was much more partial to song lyrics. Something about the music made the words feel more important, Zoe thought.
She was almost always listening to music, and tonight she’d made it all the way through her Songs of the Moment playlist twice. Zoe was constantly updating her SOTM mix, but it always consisted of about two hours of pop songs, classic favorites, and show tunes. She could happily listen to her mix, almost endlessly, but at this point, she was just stalling and waiting for Dylan’s nightly Ready? text message. It was Dylan’s job to text first, but it was already much later than usual, so Zoe figured if there was gonna be a phonefall, she’d have to break tradition.
Ready? she texted him.
Ten minutes passed. No response.
Just as she was about to give up and go to sleep, her phone rang.
She picked up on the first ring. “Sorry,” Dylan said—instead of his usual ‘hey, hey’—before Zoe even had a chance to say hello. “I just got off the phone with Caroline, I swear . . .”
“Everything okay?”
“She was being dramatic . . .” Dylan was clearly in a mood.
“I’m glad you’re all right. I was starting to think you might be lying in a ditch somewhere.”
“No ditch, just my bed,” he said, softening ever so slightly.
“Oh, okay, so then you basically forgot about me. That’s cool too,” Zoe teased, still trying to pull Dylan out of his bad mood.
“Z. Puh-lease. I could never forget about you,” Dylan replied, sounding a bit more like his goofy self again. “I’m sorry. It was just stupid Caroline bullshit that went on for way too long. It’s fine. Whatever. What’s up with you?”
“So much,” Zoe said excitedly, thrilled to finally have Dylan’s attention. “At rehearsal this afternoon, the lighting designer—Austin—do you know him?”
“Do I?”
“I don’t know. Austin Jones. He’s tall-ish. Cute. Black. He’s a theater kid.”
“Oh yeah, one of those losers . . .” Dylan chuckled.
Zoe knew Dylan was just teasing, but she’d been waiting so patiently to tell him about the paint and the concert and the spotlight and the way everything with Austin was both exciting and scary, so Dylan’s jab seemed rather insensitive. “We’re going to see The Other Team on Saturday,” she replied.
“Which team?”
“The Other Team. It’s a band, not an actual team. Some of the other tech people are coming to the concert too, so it’s like a group thing, but still . . .”
Zoe waited, hoping for even just a medium amount of excitement from Dylan, but all she got was a little bit of a grunt. It might even have just been a cough.
“Well. It was cute.”
“I’m sure.”
“And then he asked me to stand in his spotlight,” Zoe added, as if that might mean something to Dylan.
It didn’t.
And Zoe couldn’t figure out how to explain it to him.
155 days until graduation . . .
EMMA still had no idea what was bothering her.
The girls were seated at their usual froyo table, phones stacked in the middle as always, listening to Zoe recount all the adorable details of her first date with Austin. Like the way she’d done her hair—half up and half down—and how he’d nervously rung her doorbell and then had been forced to talk to Zoe’s dad, who wasn’t really intimidating, but his broad shoulders and full beard seemed to make teenage boys rather anxious. But then it turned out that Austin’s dad was driving them to the concert, so that made Zoe’s dad like the situation a whole lot more. Zoe and Austin hadn’t kissed, which Alex assessed was mostly due to the fact that Austin’s dad was their carpool driver. Zoe explained that they kind-of almost held hands a couple of times during the concert and stood next to each other the entire time. It was all cute sounding, and very “Zoe” and Emma wanted to get excited about the date night like Layla and Alex seemed to be, but she was mostly just distracted and frustrated. It wasn’t Zoe’s fault.
It wasn’t anyone’s fault.
At this point Emma was even annoying herself.
After Zoe finished her story, Layla turned her attention to Emma and asked her for a “progress report” on the sex pact. Layla meant well enough, but it was exactly the opposite of what Emma needed right now. Layla had asked Zoe the same question, but the difference was that Zoe had some actual progress—an entire date night—to report.
Right now Emma had nothing.
She could barely even figure out how to complete a sentence.
“I don’t . . . I just . . .” Okay, forget finishing a sentence, apparently Emma couldn’t even figure out how to start one.
All she knew for sure was that Layla wasn’t helping.
“I just . . . I think you’re making this whole thing very stressful,” Emma finally managed to “report” between bites of caramel frozen yogurt.
“What whole thing?”
“The pact. Obviously,” Emma huffed.
“Not obviously. Em, lately you think everything is stressful.”
“Yes, but . . . ,” Emma said, attempting to start another sentence, but trailed off, deciding to focus on her rainbow sprinkles instead.
“Maybe there’s a better phrase we could be using instead of ‘progress report,’” Zoe chimed in, trying to help.
“The problem isn’t what we’re calling it.” Emma could feel a bit of sharpness in her voice, and she didn’t like it at all.
“Then what is the problem?” Layla pushed back.
“I don’t know . . .” Emma exhaled. “It’s only been two weeks since you first said the words ‘sex pact’ and it’s like you’re already expecting us to have it all figured out. Yo
u’re the only one who has a boyfriend.”
“Aw. No. I don’t mean it like that,” Layla said sweetly. “I just want to know where your head’s at.”
Yeah.
That was pretty much the only thing anybody—her parents, her friends, her teachers—wanted to know these days: Where was Emma’s head?
Literally: It was sitting on top of her shoulders.
Beyond that . . . she had no clue.
The clock was ticking and time was flying and there was nothing Emma could do to stop it. She wanted to enjoy the second semester of her senior year and have fun with her best friends and laugh about boys and penises and sex pacts, but she just . . . couldn’t.
“Everything is just feeling like a lot right now.”
“All the feels?” Layla asked with a smile.
“Something like that . . . ,” Emma said, forcing a smile in return. Layla’s heart was in the right place, but Emma’s heart and head, and whatever else was involved in her decision making process, had already reached peak emotional capacity. There simply wasn’t room for anything else. Not a Sex Doc. Or weekly progress reports. And especially not all the feels, either.
Honestly, Emma didn’t have room for any of the feels. She would’ve been perfectly happy to give them all back, but that didn’t seem to be an option.
* * *
ZOE had already spent too many hours waiting for Dylan’s You ready? text message.
Again, he was running late.
And, again, she felt like an idiot.
All she wanted to do was tell him about her date with Austin, but he wasn’t responding to any of her text messages. She sent a text to The Chat—Dylan’s avoiding me—just to make sure her cell phone worked and it had service and the ability to deliver messages to other cell phones.
He’s jealous, Alex texted back immediately.
Then Layla chatted a picture of a typewriter with the quote “Love means never having to ask ‘Did you get my text message?’” written on it.
Zoe wanted to text back that Dylan clearly didn’t love her, non-mystery solved, but that seemed like too much effort. Mostly she wished she could forget about Dylan entirely. He’d been so distracted by Caroline recently that she could barely remember the last time they had a real, satisfying conversation. Now she finally, actually had something worthwhile to tell him and didn’t want to miss her chance.
She tried sending Dylan one more text: Are you okay?
Still nothing.
She put her phone down on her desk, willing it to buzz.
Just as she was about to give up entirely, it did.
Hey.
That was it. The incoming text was one word, three letters, one period.
Zoe had to recheck the text and then re-recheck it, three times altogether, before realizing that the incoming message wasn’t from Dylan.
It was from Austin.
Ohmigod.
Hi, she texted back, laughing at herself for how much time and energy it took her to settle on that one word, two letters, no punctuation reply.
Thanks for last night!!!!! he responded almost immediately.
Zoe noticed all the exclamation points. She started to type back You’re welcome but erased it before she even had time to consider using exclamation points of her own.
Before she could come up with a better, flirtier response, she got another text from Austin: We should do it again sometime . . .
Zoe noticed the dot dot dot. She loved all three of the dots very much. And then promptly freaked out, running around her bedroom, doing a full-on happy dance, until she realized Austin had no clue how happy she actually was, because he couldn’t see her victory dance and she hadn’t managed to respond to either of his last two text messages.
So far all she’d actually said was Hi.
One word. Two letters. No punctuation.
That was it.
Zoe really was just horrible at texting.
Yes! she typed as quickly as possible, pressing send before she could overanalyze anything.
Then, even more quickly, she added a bunch of extra exclamation points—!!!!—as their own separate text message.
Then she wished there were a text erase button so she could get rid of all those extra exclamation points, but it was too late. She’d already sent them.
Whatever.
Honestly? She didn’t even care.
Alex would’ve said she was disrupting the delicate “flirting power balance” between them or something, which might’ve even been accurate, but Zoe didn’t want to play games right now.
Luckily, Austin didn’t either. He quickly sent back a smiley face.
Zoe very much appreciated that Austin was also a beginner level flirt and added her own smiley face to the conversation.
Then she also added: But only if your dad doesn’t drive this time.
Deal, Austin texted back.
She took a screenshot of their conversation, mildly embarrassed by all the exclamation points and smiley faces, but mostly too proud to care. As soon as she sent the Austin screenshot to The Chat, she received another incoming text.
This one was from Dylan: Caroline and I broke up.
At least that explained why he hadn’t responded to her sooner.
Wanna talk? She texted back, already certain the answer was no.
As anticipated, Dylan didn’t respond to Zoe’s text, but the truth was his silence didn’t bother her nearly as much as it might’ve in the past. Zoe had seen Dylan go through enough breakups to know that he was hurting right now and just wanted to be left alone. In a couple of days, or weeks, he’d snap out of it and wonder how he ever let himself get so consumed by Insert-Ex-Girlfriend-Name-Here and all of her stupid bullshit. Then, maybe a couple of days or weeks after that, he’d be back to his cheerful self—and ready to move on to the next skinny blond girl.
At least once all that happened, Zoe and Dylan could go back to their regularly scheduled phonefalls. For now, she had Austin and his exclamation points, and a fresh batch of excited text messages pouring into The Chat from her girls. For now, that was more than enough.
153 days until graduation . . .
EMMA was only really happy in the yearbook room.
Lately, it was the only activity that managed to distract her from herself, so she’d been spending almost all of her free time there. She might not be able to give Layla a progress report on the sex pact, but at least she could make progress on something worthwhile. Today she was working on the layout for the Senior Superlative page. They hadn’t voted on the Superlatives yet, but Emma knew they would soon and they’d need a layout. Might as well get a jump on it now. Someone would be voted Most Likely to Succeed. Someone would have the Best Eyes and the Cutest Smile. Emma thought she should nominate herself Most Likely to Have a Nervous Breakdown Slash Panic Attack Before Graduation.
“Your photo layout looks good,” Savannah said as she sat down at the computer next to Emma.
“My photo layout looks excellent, thankyouverymuch,” Emma confirmed playfully. “It’s just . . . it’s the rest of my everything that’s all over the place.”
“I swear you don’t look like you’re all over the place.”
“Yeah, well, you can’t see or hear any of the thoughts inside my head.”
“Yeah, well, I think if I could really see or hear them, we’d have some sort of intense medical emergency on our hands,” Savannah said with a laugh.
Emma loved Savannah’s laugh.
It was substantial and unapologetic and always the perfect pitch.
Savannah flipped open her notebook, and Emma couldn’t help but notice an impressive collection of doodles and scribbles interspersed with a smattering of notes about the boys’ soccer game. “I’m sports news editor,” Savannah explained.
“Really? Sports?”
“Yes. Really.”
“I mean. You just look like such a huge sports fan . . .”
“Little known fact: The sports section is th
e busiest beat on the paper. There are dozens of sports teams, and they all have dozens of games. There’s always something to write about.” Emma nodded, sensing there was something more to the story. “Anddddd, yeah. I didn’t get my shit together fast enough at the start of the school year, and all the other editorial beats were already taken.”
“So, we’re saying my judgments are quite accurate?”
“If we must.”
“Oh, we must.” Emma laughed again.
Savannah laughed again too. Emma appreciated her laugh more and more each time.
“What’s so funny?” Nick asked on his way into the room.
“Sports,” Savannah said in a deep voice that made Emma laugh even harder.
“All right,” Nick said, clearly missing the inside joke. He grabbed his binder off the counter and then noticed the Superlative layout on Emma’s screen. “Oh, whoa . . . ,” he said as leaned down, right over Emma’s left shoulder, to get a better look. He didn’t need to be quite so close to see it, but Emma would’ve been lying if she said she didn’t like that he was standing there. “It’s brilliant,” he concluded after another long look. “Em, your layouts are always worth geeking out about. Every single time . . .” Emma smiled, trying not to blush. Nick squeezed her shoulder and then hustled out the door. The girls watched him leave.
“I officially nominate him for Best Butt,” Savannah announced.
“Unfortunately juniors don’t get to vote for superlatives.”
“What. Ever. You should add his butt to your layout. It’s that good.” Emma hadn’t really noticed his butt before . . . His lips? All the time. But never his butt.
Savannah’s lips cracked into an embarrassed smirk. “I’m actually the weirdest,” she blurted out as if she simply couldn’t keep the words inside for a moment longer. “Butts aren’t even my thing, like, sexually speaking or whatever. It’s not like the thought of them turns me on or anything, but I always feel as if I want to put my hand inside people’s back pants pockets. It’s not even that I really want to touch their butts or anything, but I just, like, need to know what my hand would feel like inside their pocket. Don’t worry, I’m super normal . . .”
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