by B. B. Easton
Skinny? Knight thinks I’m skinny? I wonder if Lance thinks I’m skinny…
Before I could come up with another lame deflection, the bell rang. I jumped to my feet and Knight followed suit, reaching for his tray, which had remained untouched.
“Oh shit, you didn’t get to eat,” I said, impulsively grabbing his arm as if he were Lance or August or Colton. “Sorry.”
Knight’s eyes darted to where my tiny hand was perched on his forearm, the same forearm I saw bulge and erupt into dozens of thick veins as it slowly smashed Skater Boy’s head into the gravel a few weeks ago. The image caused me to snatch my hand back as if I’d touched an open flame.
Knight turned to face me, assaulting me with the full force of his attention.
“You don’t eat—I don’t eat.”
And with that he disappeared into the crowd.
Jesus Christ, I needed a cigarette. I grabbed my shit and sprinted down the hallway toward the student parking lot, dying for some nicotine to calm my nerves. I didn’t get very far, though. As soon as I neared the boy’s restroom somebody grabbed me from behind and shoved me in.
I screamed, but with the noise level in the hallway it didn’t matter. The person behind me pushed me all the way into the handicap stall at the far end of the restroom and shut the door behind us. I spun around—which wasn’t easy to do with my massive backpack on—to find Lance smirking at me with his index finger raised to his mouth.
“Shhhh,” he whispered.
I smacked his arm and mouthed, “What the fuck?” smiling so big it hurt. Lance gasped and clutched his bicep where I’d hit him, acting like I’d injured him.
Oh my God. It’s really happening! I cut my hair and now I’m in a bathroom stall with Lance! Dreams really do come true!
Lance reached into the pocket of his jeans, only instead of producing a diamond ring, or a condom, he pulled out a little vintage looking Lemonheads tin.
Oh, so that’s where he keeps his diamond rings and condoms.
Lance opened the tin and pulled out a little pale yellow piece of candy, then popped it into his mouth. I just stared at him, confused as fuck about why he’d dragged me into a bathroom stall just to watch him eat dessert, but whatever. We were alone—if you didn’t count the dozens of teenage boys pissing and flushing and laughing and cursing on the other side of those particle board walls. Lance could have been reading to me from the phone book for all I cared.
I heard a muffled crunch, then Lanced smiled at me again—this time with half of the Lemonhead captured between his front teeth. He leaned forward, and I prayed for something magical to happen. I opened my mouth the tiniest bit, wanting to believe that he was about to kiss me but not wanting to look stupid in case he wasn’t. Lance closed his gorgeous hazel eyes at the last minute, one hundred thousand inky black eyelashes fanning out against his cheek, and tilted his head to the side. Then it happened.
Lance.
Put his lips.
On my lips.
I didn’t move, terrified that anything I did would be wrong. I felt Lance’s tongue enter my mouth, warm and soft, but along with it came a bitter Aspirin taste and a jagged crystal-like object. While I was busy trying to figure out what the fuck was in my mouth, Lance slowly withdrew. It was the sound of crunching that broke my spell. I looked up to see Lance chewing his half of what I now knew was definitely not a Lemonhead. His smile was sideways, showing only one of his adorable dimples, but his eyes were dark. Wicked.
I followed his lead and crushed the sour, chemical tasting rock with my teeth. Lance leaned back against the stall and stared at me while I chewed, looking me up and down in his jacket, then grabbed the pockets of his hoodie and pulled me toward him.
I braced myself with my forearms and landed against his chest, his thigh coming to rest between my legs. A wave of pleasure surged through my body as a tinny, metallic aftertaste hit the back of my throat. My eyes rolled and my heart raced even faster than when Lance’s tongue had been in my mouth. I fisted his T-shirt, using him as a lifeline as I rode the crest of this unknown sensation.
I felt Lance’s breath on my ear as he whispered, “I don’t know what’s hotter—you in my hoodie, or you with that fucking haircut.”
God, I wanted to fuck him. I’d never gone farther with Colton than kissing—never wanted to—but with Lance I wanted it all. I pressed up onto my tiptoes with the intention of kissing his neck, just as the goddamn bell rang.
Noooo!
Lance and I grabbed our bags and sprinted out of there. In the chaos no one noticed which restroom I’d come out of. Lance gave me a quick squeeze and took off down the hall. Luckily, my fourth period class was right around the corner. I made it to my desk milliseconds before the final chime.
I didn’t know if it was from the kiss (Was that even a kiss?), or the not-candy thing I ate, or the excitement of almost being late, but as Mr. Fisher droned on about some shit a bunch of rich white guys did hundreds of years ago, I slowly began to realize that I was definitely on something.
My knee bounced under my desk at the speed of light, I couldn’t stop sucking on my tongue and cheeks trying to get another taste of that Aspirin flavor, and I had to practically clamp my hands over my mouth to stifle the squeals and giggles trying to claw their way out of my throat.
Now, I was no stranger to drugs. I’d smoked my fair share of pot and tried other stuff here and there, but I always ended up feeling like shit. Pot took all my intelligence and flushed it down the fucking crapper. I hated that drug. It made me feel like I was in slow motion, when all I wanted to do was go fast. Cocaine and LSD—which you could buy in the girl’s restroom about as easily as a tampon from the vending machine—made me go fast, even faster than my usual hyper self, but the coke wore off in like fifteen minutes and the acid always seemed to take more like fifteen hours.
So, drugs weren’t really something I ever took to feel good. To feel different? Sure. I was unhealthily curious about everything. To feel like I fit in? Absolutely. But that Lemonhead thing…that shit made me feel amazing. All I wanted to do was dance and laugh and draw and talk and draw while I talked and hump something (Lance)—but I couldn’t because I was stuck in Mr. Fisher’s advanced placement world history class. So instead I flipped the hood on Lance’s jacket over my head, pulled my legs up inside of it, and buried my face in the fabric stretched over my knees.
It smelled like him. It was as if Lance and I were one. I’d had his tongue in my mouth and now his skin was on my skin.
My blood felt carbonated. I was effervescence personified. And I just had to hide it for T-minus forty-nine more minutes.
When the dismissal bell rang, I sprang from my turtle shell and bounded out the door. I was on my way to find Lance and give his jacket back (and try to touch him some more) when Angel Alvarez, a new girl I’d seen talking to Juliet a couple of times, called my name from the end of the hall.
Angel had the body of a grown ass woman but hid her curves under the wardrobe of an L.A. gangster. She was all baggy jeans and basketball jerseys…with an attitude to match.
Practically jogging in place, I stopped in front of her and asked, “What’s up?”
Angel snickered and said, “Rough day?”
I quirked my head to one side, wondering why she would ask me that, when she pointed at the hood covering my head.
Oh, that.
I flipped my hood down and said, way too cheerily, “Actually, I’m having an awesome day!”
Actually, it’s taking all my self-control to keep from tap dancing right now.
Angel sucked her teeth, making a clicking sound, and said, “Damn, B! Your hair looks dope!”
I had almost forgotten about it. Just one more reason to be ridiculously exuberant—my new pixie cut! “Thanks!” I chirped. “So does yours!”
Angel’s long, dark hair had been bleached blonde at some point in the distant past, gauging by her four-inch-long black roots, and she had it pulled up into a messy bun. It looked li
ke somebody had plopped a pale-yellow pouf on her otherwise dark head of hair. I’m sure most people would have thought it looked trashy, but I thought the two-tone effect was pretty rad.
“Pssh. Whatever. My hair looks like ass.” Angel rolled her eyes and touched her bun, but I could see a little smile there. She’d appreciated the compliment.
“Yo, I wanted to tell you that I been seeing that Nazi motherfucker hanging around your locker lately.”
Yeah, no shit.
“Listen, I know it ain’t none of my business, but if that dude’s messing wit’ you, you just let me know. My brother and his boys’d love to fuck up a white power piece of shit like that. No charge.”
No charge? Jesus. Remind me to stay on Angel’s good side.
“Thanks for the warning, hun, but I’ve already pretty much stopped going to my locker because of him.” I turned around and smiled at her over my shoulder, showing off the black ball and chain strapped to my back.
Facing her again I said, far too cheerily, “So far he’s just been…intense.” If you call the hand-shaped bruise on my right arm intense. “But if he ever needs a good ass whoopin’ I’ll let you know.”
We both laughed and walked together towards the parking lot. Well, Angel walked, but that afternoon, in that hoodie, with the lingering tingle of those lips on my mouth, and whatever those lips delivered oozing through my veins, I floated.
When I saw Juliet leaning up against Tony’s car in the parking lot I broke into a full-on sprint. I couldn’t wait to show her my hair and show her Lance’s jacket and tell her about what happened in the bathroom and show her the bruise on my arm and tell her about Knight acting all crazy at lunch and tell her that I was on something and I didn’t know what it was but I fucking loved it! She saw me coming and gave me a confused look with her too cool black-rimmed eyes…just before I tackled her ass.
Wrapping her up in a hug I swung her back and forth, chanting, “Ohmigod, ohymigod, ohmigod, omigod!”
Juliet pushed me off of her and held me at arm’s length, immediately noticing that I was wearing Lance’s jacket. Suddenly too cool for school Jules was jumping up and down right along with me. “He let you wear his jacket?!?! Holy shit, B!”
“I know!” I screamed. “I cut my hair and he loves it and he loves me and he kissed me in the bathroom, or at least I think he kissed me, it was hard to tell because he stuck this yellow candy thing in my mouth and now I’m super fucked up!”
I couldn’t stop jumping up and down, or smiling. At least, I thought I was smiling. I couldn’t really tell because I couldn’t really feel my face.
Juliet wasn’t jumping anymore. She looked around to see who heard my big fucking mouth and opened the passenger door, shoving me and my monstrous bag into Tony’s tiny back seat. “Jesus, BB. Tell the fucking world, why don’t ‘cha.”
“Sorry,” I said in my loudest whisper. “Hi Tony.”
Tony nodded at me in the rearview mirror as Juliet shut her door. The window rattled in the doorframe. Turning around backwards in the cracked leather passenger seat, Juliet said, “You don’t have to whisper in here, dumbass.”
We both laughed as Tony pulled out of the parking lot, the old ‘Vette backfiring in protest.
Juliet said, “So, let me get this straight. Lance loves your hair cut, he may or may not have kissed you in a bathroom, and he slipped you something but you don’t know what it is?”
“And he loves me. You forgot that part. And I’m wearing his jacket.”
“Which you were probably supposed to give back.” Juliet was teasing me, but I could tell she was genuinely happy for me. Or maybe she was just happy for herself. She’d been listening to me whine and pine over Lance Motherfucking Hightower since she got stuck sitting next to me in honors algebra in eighth grade.
“I would have!” I cried. “But I got stopped by Angel—that new girl in your English class—and by the time I got outside I figured he was already gone.”
“Yeah, right,” Juliet teased. “You and I both know you’re never giving that hoodie back. You’re probably gonna be buried in that thing.”
“Shut up, whore!” I said and swatted at her face, missing on purpose. We both starting giggling and slapping at each other like a couple of immature school girls, which we were.
“Yo, B.” Tony interrupted our fake bitch fight, glancing at me in the rearview mirror with his beady little eyes. “I didn’t know you liked to party, girl. Anytime you want more of that yellow just let me know. I’ll hook you up.”
I looked at Juliet who simply raised her painted-on eyebrows and gave me a guilty little shrug.
So, Tony is the friendly neighborhood drug dealer. Awesome. You picked a real winner, Jules.
I rolled my eyes at her and snuggled down into my stud and patch-covered cocoon of love. Even though it was ninety degrees outside—and about a hundred and ninety in the backseat of Tony’s car—I didn’t care. I was a human disco ball, and disco balls don’t sweat. They twirl.
I slept in Lance’s jacket that night. Of course. I could smell him in my dreams. I could smell him on my sheets the next morning, and on the shirt I had worn the day before. The idea of that smell disappearing from my room was so depressing that I stashed the shirt I’d been wearing that day in a Ziploc bag, hoping the absence of fresh air would make Lance’s scent last longer.
My mom liked the jacket. She said it was very “Avant Garde.” When she dropped me off at school I half expected a swarm of paparazzi to come shove cameras and microphones in my face and ask, “What does it feel like to wear Lance Hightower’s jacket? Tell us, does it really give you super powers?”
There was no red carpet, but I did get a few super satisfying looks from some cheerleaders when I walked in. I don’t know if they were looks of judgment or jealousy, but they felt fantastic all the same.
Lance was in his usual spot, leaning up against the wall at the far end of the main hall, a gaggle of punk wannabes hanging on his every word. When I walked up he kept talking, but pulled me to him and tucked me up under his arm like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Oh my God. We’re a couple. I thought. Look at us! I’m wearing his jacket and he has his arm around me and yesterday he may or may not have kissed me and NOW WE’RE BOYFRIEND AND GIRLFRIEND.
I didn’t hear a word he or anyone else said until the bell rang, interrupting my ecstatic inner monologue. I looked up at Lance, probably with hearts in my eyes, and said, “Sorry I took your hoodie home yesterday. I couldn’t find you after school.”
Not that I looked.
“It’s cool,” Lance said with a one-dimpled smile, staring at me expectantly.
What is he waiting for? Why isn’t he going to class? Oh my God. Is he going to kiss me again?
When I didn’t read his mind, Lance gestured toward my body. “Can I have it back?”
“Oh my God! Yes! Sorry! Jesus!” Mortified, I shrugged off the boulder on my back and fumbled with the zipper on Lance’s hoodie.
“Jesus? You can just call me Lance. Or Your Imperial Highness.”
I shoved the wad of cotton and metal into his stomach a little too hard and said, “Thanks, Your Imperial Highness,” with an eye roll.
Lance gave me a quick hug and headed off to class. Just like that. He left me with no kiss, no jacket, and definitely no boyfriend.
Bereft.
I didn’t see Lance again until lunch. I was freezing in my Misfits T-shirt and cut-off shorts, and even made a show of rubbing the goosebumps on my arms and legs, but Lance was too busy arguing with Colton about whether or not Björk’s new album was any good to notice. (Colton thought it was amazing. Lance, of course, insisted that it was corporate sell-out trash. I tended to agree with Colton—that entire Homogenic album was goddamn brilliant. Of course, I didn’t say that out loud.)
Juliet’s head suddenly popped up from somewhere under the table, where she had no doubt been sitting cross-legged on the filthy cafeteria floor talking to her drug dealing
boyfriend on her contraband cell phone.
“BB, Tony says he can’t give you a ride this afternoon.” She spoke loud enough to interrupt Lance and Colton’s conversation, and there was a mischievous gleam in her eye. “Hey Lance, do you think BB could ride the bus home with you?”
God, I loved that girl.
“Nope.” Lance looked at me and smirked. “I have detention for being late to fourth period yesterday.” His fingers found mine under the table and laced through them. “I got held up in the bathroom by a hoodie thief.”
Now he’s flirting with me again? What the fuck, Lance?
Juliet and I traded glances just as August cleared his throat. “You can ride home with me, BB.”
I accepted immediately, before Colton had a chance to offer. I really didn’t want to ride home with Colton alone. Not only would he probably try to fool around with me, just like old times, but I was so scrambled and sexually frustrated over Lance that I probably would have let him do it. Again. And then I’d fuck up whatever chance I had with his best friend. Again.
In fourth period, I forged a note from my mom saying that I had permission to ride bus number eleven home with August Embry that afternoon.
We rode the bus with our knees pulled up, pressed into the foamy seatback in front of us just like little kids. There was probably a thumb war at some point. That’s what I loved about August. He wasn’t like other boys. With him I could just be myself—a fifteen-year-old girl who liked to curse and be silly and draw pictures and smoke cigarettes and watch daytime talk shows.
I loved August—he was the first friend I made when my family moved to Georgia from Oklahoma in the middle of my first-grade year—but there was a sadness about him that I couldn’t help but get all over me whenever we were together. There are some people whose feelings are so intense that I can feel them, like they’re my own. August was one of those people. And whenever I stepped inside his house, I felt shame.
I’d been to August’s place tons of times over the years. It definitely wasn’t as fun as Colton’s house, with his absentee mom and fridge full of Pabst Blue Ribbon, but August had a PlayStation in his room, so there was that. He also had a mean old mama who I’d never seen step foot outside of their singlewide trailer, possibly because—and I say this without a shred of sarcasm—she might not have been able to fit through the door.