The Boy on the Bridge

by Sam Mariano

  In first grade, for Valerie’s very first slumber party, her social circle wasn’t exclusive yet, so every girl in our class was invited—every girl except Sara. Apparently, because Sara has epilepsy, Valerie’s mom thought she might “have a fit” and ruin the party for everyone else. Valerie thought nothing of telling literally everyone in school that’s why Sara wasn’t invited, and because some people are just absolutely horrible, kids started making fun of her for it.

  I only had to see Sara get teased and isolated once to get mad. I ripped up my invitation to Valerie’s party and went home and told my mom what had happened. She reached out to Sara’s mom, and on the night of Valerie’s first slumber party, me and Sara had our first sleepover at my house.

  I’m sure we had more fun than they did, anyway.

  Since Valerie’s popularity only grew and grew, and since Valerie is the type of girl who doubles down when she’s in the wrong instead of admitting she behaved badly and apologizing, Sara remained a social outcast. Me, I’m not really a social outcast, it’s just that being Sara’s friend sort of limits my ability to hang out with anyone else.

  That’s okay with me, though. I don’t want to be friends with anyone who would avoid Sara over something she can’t help.

  Sara gasps, pulling me from my thoughts. “They’re looking at us,” she says, her voice an excited whisper. “They’re looking at us.”

  I don’t know what she’s talking about, but a second later I see Hunter and Wally standing with their group of friends, and sure enough, a few of them are looking at us.

  Why are they looking at us? Is Hunter talking about me? Before I can get lost down that rabbit hole, I break his gaze and turn around. I start walking, but I don’t know where I’m going.

  “What are you doing?” Sara demands lowly, reluctantly following me. “Riley!”

  “I don’t know,” I admit, feeling frustrated by my own reaction. It’s just that Hunter and I have never interacted in front of other people, and I don’t know what that would look like. I’m not nervous to see him when it’s just the two of us, but around his friends… he might be a whole different person, and I don’t want to see it.

  I am approaching the doors back inside when Sara finally stops walking. “What the heck, Riley? Where are you going?”

  “I need to pee,” I lie.

  She seems annoyed with me. “I’m staying out here.”

  I tell the recess monitor I need to use the restroom so she lets me go back into the school. I walk toward the restrooms slowly, since I did say that’s why I was inside. If anyone catches me roaming the halls, I’d like to actually be doing what I said I was doing. Saying, “I spazzed when a boy I might kind of like looked at me during recess” probably wouldn’t work.

  God, why did I do that? Hunter has been nice to me. He even bought me a new backpack. There’s no reason to automatically assume he would be a jerk in front of his friends.

  Except that he’s always a jerk around his friends. That was my impression of him when I stumbled across him on the bridge that day, and it was my impression for a reason.

  Do I really want to hold on to an illusion of him? If he can’t be nice to me in front of his friends, then I have no business hanging out with him to begin with.

  Just as I’m embracing the idea that maybe it’s time to stop thinking about Hunter Maxwell, I feel someone sneak up behind me way too close, and then I hear his voice in my ear.

  “Hey, Catnip.”

  My heart drops right out of my chest, then explodes and unleashes a swarm of butterflies. Shivers race down my spine and for a few blessed seconds, everything feels floaty.

  Hey, Catnip.

  Oh, my God, he read the book. He read the book and he just quoted my very favorite book boyfriend. I could melt into a puddle around his sneakers right now, so it’s impossible to keep the grin off my face as I turn on my heel and look up at him.

  “You read Hunger Games.”

  Hunter smiles, and I feel the warmth spreading all over me like he’s my sun. “Sorta,” he says, shoving his hands into the pockets of his crisp new jeans. “I started it. I’m in chapter eight.”

  “What do you mean, in chapter eight? Like, you’re starting chapter eight tonight, or you just finished?” My mind races as I try to remember what happened in that chapter so we can talk about it.

  “I didn’t finish it yet. I started, but I got interrupted. I’ll finish it tonight.”

  I frown. “Are you saying… you stopped midway through a chapter? Like, in the middle of reading a scene, you just… stopped?”

  Hunter shrugs. “Eh, Peeta was talking, I was bored anyway.”

  I was baffled a second ago, but him knocking my fictional arch nemesis brings a smile right back to my face. “You might be my favorite person right now.”

  “Just right now?” he asks, shaking his head in mock disappointment. “I’ll have to try harder.”

  “You can start by telling me how much you love Gale,” I inform him.

  “Am I following you into the girls’ bathroom?” he inquires, cocking an eyebrow as we approach the opening.

  “Oh. No. I forgot I was walking this way. I don’t really need to go to the bathroom, I just needed an excuse to come inside.”

  “I noticed,” he remarks, smirking over at me. “Did I scare you off?”

  I didn’t think that comment all the way through. My cheeks flush, but I go with absolute denial. “Of course not.”

  “Seemed like I did,” he replies.

  “Weren’t we talking about the book?” I ask, trying to direct him back on track. “I need to know all your thoughts. Do you like Gale, or are you just knocking Peeta because you know I do?”

  “Yeah, I like Gale,” he says. “Peeta’s all right, though. He seems nice enough, just boring. I can’t imagine him keeping up with Katniss—maybe sitting on the sidelines holding her bag, but.... Gale’s the kind of guy you can see keeping up, challenging her, making her better. I haven’t seen that from Peeta yet. Doesn’t seem like he’s that kind of guy.”

  “Yes, exactly,” I agree fervently. “That’s the thing, I don’t hate Peeta as a character. He is nice, but Katniss isn’t in love with him, so she shouldn’t be with him. That’s not romantic. I mean, I know it’s not a romance, but… I just can’t handle it because she and Gale had a spark, and I just hate—well, I can’t say yet, it would be spoilerish. Hurry up and read the whole trilogy so we can talk about how bleak and terrible Mockingjay is.”

  “Maybe Katniss isn’t looking for a great love, just a really okay-looking purse holder,” he jokes.

  I roll my eyes. “All she’s looking for is a box of tissues by Mockingjay, to wipe up all her tears.”

  “Tears of boredom?” he questions. “If she gets with Peeta, I’m guessing tears of boredom.”

  I sigh heavily. “I can’t even talk about it. Not until you finish the series yourself. I don’t want to color your reading experience more than I already have. I don’t possess the self-control to talk about each individual book without making spoilery comments, though, so I’m gonna need you to read faster.”

  “I’ll get right on it,” he assures me. “Want me to hold your purse, too?”

  I grin over at him. “You are so not a Peeta. You’re a Gale if I ever met one.”

  “I’m a Hunter, actually.”

  “So is Gale,” I tell him with a big grin.

  Hunter rolls his eyes at me. “We’ve gotta get you out more. Your nerd bubble is out of control. Do you have a curfew?”

  His question about stops my heart. “A curfew?”

  Nodding, he teases, “You’ve heard of those, right? Parents typically give them so we don’t stay out all night with our friends. You do have friends, don’t you?”

  I slide him an unamused look. “Of course I have friends. Well, a friend, but quality over quantity, right?”

  Hunter blinks at me. “You seriously only have one friend?”

  I back up against the wall and
slide down it until my butt’s on the ground. Hunter sits down on the floor beside me. “It’s sorta complicated. Sara’s cool and fun, but people are afraid to be friends with her. It’s stupid,” I say, looking over at him. “It’s so dumb. But one of the mean girls put a target on her years ago and now… I don’t know. Same kids, same habits. People still avoid her, and Valerie’s still mean to her for no reason—”

  “Wait, Valerie Johnson?” I nod my head. “I’m friends with her. What’d she do?”

  “She ostracized my friend Sara. She has these slumber parties…”

  He nods when I trail off. “Yeah, I know the slumber parties,” he says with a smirk.

  Ugh. I roll my eyes. “Of course you do.”

  “She barely invites anyone to those, though. If Sara doesn’t make the cut, I’m sure it’s not personal. Mostly only our friends go to her parties.”

  “I know that’s what it’s like now. This was in first grade.”

  Hunter’s eyes widen. “First grade? When we were little kids?”

  I nod my head. “The social stigma somehow lingered. Like I said, it’s stupid.”

  “That’s incredibly stupid,” he agrees. “So, let’s fix it. I was gonna invite you to come hang out with us this weekend. Why don’t you bring your friend, too?”

  “Hang out?” I question.

  He nods.

  “With your friends?”

  “A few of us are gonna go to the mall—shop a little, get some food, just hang out, you know?”

  Right. I know, because these are… normal things that normal teenagers do. “Yeah. Right. Totally. I do that all the time.”

  He stares over at me. “You don’t even go to the mall, do you? God, Bishop, what do you do?”

  “I go to the mall if I have to,” I say defensively. “But Sara and I aren’t really—we don’t go to the mall all the time, that’s all.”

  “Jeez,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re not just 80 levels below me on the food chain, you’re extinct.”

  “Hey!” I object.

  “It’s okay,” he assures me, reaching over and patting my thigh reassuringly. “I’m gonna put you back on the map.”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “I don’t need you to put me anywhere. I’m just fine where I’m at.”

  “You’re really not,” he disagrees, now assessing the outfit I’m wearing. “We need to get you a couple new outfits, too. You dress like an alien who just arrived and found a box of clothes nobody wanted on the side of the road.”

  “All right, now, you listen to me—”

  He holds up a hand to silence me. “Don’t worry about it. My mom gives me her credit card when I go to the mall, I’ll have someone with more style sense help you out and I’ll buy you some stuff.”

  “I don’t need you to buy me things,” I inform him, wide-eyed. “I’m not your project, I’m just fine the way I am.” I look down at the Old Navy top that is admittedly an ugly, vegetable-like shade of green. And okay, yes, the graphic is a bit faded and it has seen better days, but it’s not like there are holes in the fabric. It’s still perfectly fine clothing. “I know I’m not the most stylish girl in the world, but why does that matter?”

  “Doesn’t matter to me,” Hunter says. “But it matters to my friends. They’re into that stuff. If you want them to accept you, you’ve gotta look the part.”

  “I don’t need your friends to accept me,” I tell him, frowning.

  “It would make my life easier if they did,” he tells me. “Just let me do this for you, okay?”

  “I didn’t even agree to go with you. And why would your friends accepting me make your life easier?” I ask, still scowling at him.

  He doesn’t say anything for a minute. He waits for me to give up, looking down the hall, scratching at the knee of his jeans. When he looks back at me and I lift my eyebrows expectantly, he finally says, “Because I like you, okay? I enjoy hanging out with you, but my friends… they think you’re a little weird. And I know you’re a little weird, but I think it’s cute. I think it’s part of your charm, but they don’t know you yet. I’ve had the chance to look past the surface layer and think you’re pretty cool underneath, but they haven’t. I know it’s shallow, but stupid shit like wearing the wrong thing…” He shakes his head, looking mildly irritated. “It’s enough to make them dismiss you. If you can just fit in with them long enough for them to get to know you, I’m sure they’ll like you, too.”

  Swallowing, I look down at the dingy linoleum floor. “I don’t think I should have to change in order for people to like me.”

  “You don’t,” he says. “You don’t have to change, just wear a new outfit. Is that such a big deal?”

  “I guess not,” I murmur, but I can’t imagine having a good time with people who demand I dress a certain way just to be seen with them.

  “If you don’t like it, then okay, but it can’t hurt to at least try, right?” he says, trying to put a more positive spin on things. “You never know, you might like the new clothes.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I didn’t want to read this book, and I did it for you, right? And I’m enjoying it.”

  I guess that’s true. Looking over at him and meeting his gaze, I say, “I guess I’ll give it a shot, just like you’re giving reading a shot, but if I hate it…”

  “Then I’ll just hang out with you, anyway. I’ll tell anyone who side eyes you for your bad fashion sense that you’re an alien who only recently arrived on our planet,” he promises.

  I crack a smile, looking away from him and down at my lap. I’m still not so sure about going to the mall with his friends, but I can’t help replaying that other part of what he said in my head, memorizing every note like it’s my favorite song.

  He said he likes me. Maybe he doesn’t mean he like likes me, but… maybe he does.

  ___

  Deciding to go hang out with Hunter and his friends is one thing. Convincing my mom to let me go is a whole other thing. I don’t know why she’s so weird about him, but as soon as that backpack showed up she freaked out about him and he’s been a touchy subject ever since. She has tried to bring him up and ask me about him a couple times, but it was so tense and awkward, I didn’t want to talk.

  I’m not going to lie to my mom, but from the time Hunter invites me to the moment Mom grabs two dinner plates and hands one to me, I am brainstorming ways to soften it. I think I’ve finally got a solid angle, so as we sit down at the dinner table, I take my shot.

  “So, you know how Sara is crazy about Wally Kazinsky?”

  Mom smiles as she pushes some canned corn and mashed potatoes together with her fork. “Yeah.”

  I feel like I’m being sneaky, so my heart beats a little faster. “Today at recess she was convinced he was looking at us—I mean, at her, not us. He doesn’t care about me, obviously. I mean, not that he cares about her, either—at least, I don’t think he does.”

  Oh crap. As I lose control of my mouth, Mom begins to frown in mild confusion.

  I attempt to get myself back under control. It all sounded so perfect in my head, I just have to get back on track. “So, Wally’s friends with Hunter.”

  As soon as I say Hunter’s name, Mom tenses, but she attempts a smile and gives me an encouraging nod like just hearing his name doesn’t set her on edge. It clearly does, though, and that makes me even more nervous.

  “I told him how Sara would love the chance to actually hang out with Wally. I mean, I didn’t tell Hunter she has a crush on him. Not that he would tell Wally, either way. I just… Hunter invited me—us—he invited us to come to the mall with him and some of his friends this weekend. Wally will be there, and Hunter said I could bring Sara, and then she’ll finally get a chance to hang out with him. I wasn’t sure at first, but can you imagine how excited Sara will be?”

  Mom avoids my gaze, carefully setting her fork down. “He asked you to go to the mall with him this weekend, and after you said no, he added the incentive that
if you come, he’ll hook your best friend up with the boy she has a crush on?”

  I hesitate. I almost say yes, but the way she words it, it sounds like a trick. “No. I mean, kinda, but that sounds…”

  “Manipulative?” she suggests.

  “It wasn’t like that. He just said I could bring Sara to be nice. I think I explained it badly.” I frown to myself, going back over my conversation with Hunter. It didn’t go exactly like that. He invited me out to buy me a new look that will impress his friends—which I definitely can’t tell her—and when I wasn’t so sure, he reminded me that he read the book for me…

  Nope, that won’t help. Can’t tell her that. He didn’t even make it to bribing me with Sara until after that when he could tell I still wasn’t excited about the idea. By the time he finished adding to the package, I was pretty excited, but it all happened so casually. It was a friendly exchange, not a cold transaction like Mom is making it sound.

  “He’s not a bad guy,” I finally tell her, getting right to the point.

  “Honey, I’m not saying he is. I just… sometimes you have to be careful about trusting boys. They don’t always have the motives you think they have. And this boy, he started showing interest in you all of a sudden, pretty out of the blue, right? And he’s coming on a little strong.”

  “He’s not coming on strong,” I argue. “He hasn’t even talked to me in days, I thought he didn’t like me anymore or something, but—but he does, and he wants me to hang out with his friends this weekend at the mall, and I want to go.”

  “I’m not sure it’s a good idea,” she says carefully. “If you and Sara want to go to the mall this weekend, I can take you. I’m off Saturday.”

  “I don’t want to go with you,” I blurt.

  As soon as the words are out, my stomach drops and I want to suck them back in. My mom looks like I just slapped her, and suddenly my appetite is gone.

  “I’m sorry,” I say quickly, shaking my head. “I didn’t mean it like that. You know I love going shopping with you. I mean… I don’t love shopping, but you know I always want to spend time with you. I didn’t mean it the way it came out.”