by Jen Klein
I look him straight in the eye. “Because you’re gross and kind of stupid.”
Theo throws his head back and roars with laughter. It’s what he always does. This is our long-standing tradition. He makes disgusting motions, I shoot him down, and then he laughs really loudly. It’s also a big reason I don’t worship Oliver like other girls do. At the end of the day, he’s still a guy who surrounds himself with oafs.
I mean, besticles.
Theo bestows me with a final pelvic shimmy just as Oliver rounds the car and punches him in the arm. “Knock it off, jackass.” He nods at me. “See you tomorrow, Rafferty.”
“Great.” I hang back to put some distance between us. I don’t want to kick off the school year with those assholes.
• • •
The school lobby smells the same way it did at the start of last year: like beauty products and new sneakers and hormones.
God, we’re predictable.
I squeeze through the crowd—occasionally making eye contact or trading smiles—and am almost to the curved stairway when I hear my name called from across the lobby. It’s Shaun, bounding toward me like a gazelle, waving his arm frantically back and forth.
I love that kid.
Shaun catches me in a bear hug that ends awkwardly, knocking his glasses askew against the side of my face. He pulls back to adjust them and I take in his First Day of School outfit: preppy, from his polo to his oxfords. “Shopping spree?” I ask.
“You know how I feel about the Banana.”
I groan at the double entendre, but before I can throw a witty comeback, Shaun pulls me to the side of the stairway and crowds me against the wall in the shadows. It’s what a straight guy would do if he wanted a fast make-out session before homeroom.
“No, seriously,” Shaun says in a super-earnest tone. “How are you and I adore you and all that, but first listen to this.” He pauses dramatically before telling me. “I met someone.”
“At business camp?”
“Don’t mock. Behold.” Shaun pulls out his phone and starts scrolling around. He tilts the screen at me and I stare at the photo of an extremely buff dude posing by a pool. He’s wearing rolled-up khaki shorts and nothing else. He looks like he could be—
“He’s not actually a Banana Republic model, is he?”
Shaun shakes his head, satisfied. “No, but I know. His name is Kirk. Isn’t he amazing?”
I whap him on the arm. “What’s amazing is that I’m just now hearing about him!”
Shaun gives me a look of mock offense. “Important news should not be shared in a text.”
I try to remember what Shaun told me about the Rutgers summer business program he went to. “Weren’t you only there for like a week?”
“Six days, but get this: afterward, I told my parents I was visiting my cousin Wajidali at Syracuse, and Kirk said he was visiting his sister in Queens.”
I feel my eyebrows shoot up and disappear under my thick bangs. “Where did you really go?”
“A gay youth hostel in Manhattan.” Shaun lowers his voice. “Technically speaking, in Chelsea. And technically speaking, not gay so much as gay-friendly, but…” He draws in a deep breath. “It was life-altering, June. I am in love.”
I reach for his phone to assess the photo again. There are no two ways about it: Shaun’s guy is so hot as to be almost painful. “I might even be in love.”
“I know, right?” We grin at each other and then Shaun asks what I knew he would ask. “Have you seen Itch yet?”
I shake my head.
“Did you ever tell him about…?” Shaun makes a conspiratorial face, which is code for the twenty minutes I spent behind the 7-Eleven with Ethan Erickson’s tongue in my mouth. I shake my head again and Shaun nods approvingly. “Good. That news was never important enough to be shared.”
“I hope you’re right.”
The early bell rings and Shaun links his arm through mine. “Time to get our senior on.”
I allow Shaun to guide me up the stairs and onto the second floor, where we part ways to find our lockers. Mine is halfway down the hall and—like the rest of the twelfth-grade lockers—shellacked in blue. We’ve been told it’s the exact same color as a robin’s egg, but I suspect the real thing features more cute little speckles and less chipping paint. I shove my backpack inside, slam the door, spin the dial, turn…
And there’s Itch.
He’s weaving through the crowd toward me, like in a scene at the end of a romantic movie. His flop of almost-curly hair is longer than it was the last time I saw him, and his skin is sun-roasted. He keeps his hazel eyes locked on mine as he comes closer, and for just a second, I have that fainty-heart feeling that I used to get when we first started dating last year. Then he’s right here, and before I can even consider, he’s got his arms around me and I’m tilting my head back. His mouth is soft and waxy and familiar. When we part, he smiles his lopsided, lazy smile down at me. “I missed you,” he says.
I choose to believe him.
• • •
Lily and Darbs are already unpacked and eating lunch when I arrive at the west end of the bleachers where we sit, halfway between the top and the bottom. Not in the center, because that would imply social dominance, and not on the first row, because that would imply citizenship of LoserVille. We sit off to the side, but far enough up to make it clear that we belong.
At least, we belong to each other.
Lily only says hello when I plop down beside her—we already saw each other in homeroom and AP English—but Darbs squeals and surges across the bleacher to hug me. “June! Holy crap, I’ve been looking for you all day!” We compare schedules for the trimester and discover we have Spanish III together right after lunch. This sends Darbs into a joyful delirium, during which she hugs me again. I am unable to resist touching her shoulder-length ponytail, which is currently a deep violet with bright pink underneath. I would never dye my own hair, but I love it on Darbs.
When we break apart, Darbs tells us about the new girl in her English class. Her name is Yana Pace, she wears a tiny golden confirmation cross, and she was no-question-about-it, absolutely vibing Darbs. Lily and I exchange glances over our sandwiches. This is how it always goes with Darbs. Big crushes, big heartbreaks. It’s tough being a bisexual Christian. The gays don’t want her, and neither does our school’s God Squad.
Lily and Darbs are amused by my new carpool arrangement. “What’s the inside of his car like?” Darbs asks. “Is it filled with cheerleaders and beer cans?”
“Totally,” I tell her. “The cheerleaders are stacked in the backseat and I have to rest my feet on a keg.”
Darbs nods like she believes me. “At least he’s reasonable to look at.”
“Very reasonable,” Lily agrees. “But what do you talk about?”
“I’m trying to avoid too much conversation,” I tell them.
“Good call,” says Darbs.
The cafeteria must have been slammed, because the three of us are almost done eating by the time Shaun bounds up the bleachers with his tray, Itch loping behind him. Lily makes a big fuss about how Shaun is deigning to sit with us on the first day of school. She raises her dark arms—almost impossibly toned from all her violin practice—to the sky. “We’ve been blessed with a presence! We’ve been graced by royalty…ow!”
Shaun tugs on one of her dreadlocks and tells her to quit it. “I can’t help being so cool. Everyone loves me,” he says.
“Since when are chameleons cool?” Itch asks. He and I share the same opinion about trying to fit into school hierarchies: it’s dumb and pointless.
“Chameleons change their colors,” Shaun says, adjusting the collar of his striped polo shirt. “I float from group to group because my colors are constant but abundant. I am a rainbow.”
“You are a cliché,” I say, teasing him. He elbows me but I know he knows I’m joking. Kshaunish “Shaun” Banerjee very well might be the least cliché person at our high school.
Itch
raises his hand and Lily points a finger to call on him. “Mr. Markovich.”
“Stupidest high school tradition: go.”
I don’t even have to think about it. “Prom.”
It earns me a pout from Darbs. “Prom is romantic,” she says.
“Prom is lame,” says Lily.
“I can’t wait until prom,” I inform them all. “But only because then it will be over. It’s the last stupid high school tradition before real life begins.”
“You should go ironically,” Darbs tells me.
“I won’t go at all,” I tell her. “There’s no way.” Belatedly, I realize I should have checked to see if my boyfriend felt the same way, but Itch is already nodding in agreement.
“Prom is stupid, but not the stupidest,” he says. “Try again.”
“Streak Week?” Shaun asks.
“No one’s done that in years,” Itch tells him.
“True, but it was the dumbest of dumb. I heard about this one guy who lost a pinky toe from frostbite.”
“Gross!” We all throw napkins at Shaun.
“Ooh, I got it!” Darbs bounces up and down. “The mascot laying an egg at center field during halftime!”
We crack up, because of course it’s one of the most ridiculous things at our school, but it’s still not what Itch is going for. “All definitely stupid, but not quite as stupid as the stupid senior prank.”
Every year, the seniors do something obvious and obnoxious, like hang the principal in effigy from the big maple tree or sandblast their graduation date into the sidewalk in front of the school. It’s usually illegal and it’s always destructive.
Itch tells us there’s a plan in motion for this year. “I don’t know the details, but apparently it involves a cow, the third floor, and laxatives.”
“Ew!” Darbs makes a face like she can already smell cow poop.
“I know,” says Itch. “It’s only September and already the losers are planning for that crap. Get a life.”
“I still think prom is worse,” I tell them.
“Who’s in charge of the prank?” Shaun asks.
“Who do you think?” Itch says.
“The athletes,” Lily and Shaun say together.
Prickles of annoyance scuttle over me. “Of course they are.” The same way Theo thinks it’s okay to jut his disgusting pelvis at me, his cohorts think it’s okay to take control of an inane piece of tradition that is—no matter how stupid—supposed to represent the entire community. They think they own the school. “Like they’re more senior than us or something,” I say out loud.
“Assholes,” Lily agrees.
Itch leans over and kisses me. Darbs makes a gagging sound. “Get a room.”
“We don’t need a room,” I tell her. “The world is our room.”
This time, everyone gags.
• • •
Itch drops me off at the foot of my driveway. I ask him to come in, but when he sees Mom’s Volkswagen, he says no. Itch is not a fan of polite, superficial conversation, which is what he feels is the best one can hope for with the parents of one’s girlfriend.
Or, in this case, the parent.
I smell the garlic even before I open the screen door. It gets stronger and more fragrant as I wend my way past piles of neatly stacked two-by-fours and planks of wood leaning against the bare walls. Although we’ve been in the farmhouse for a month, it looks like we just moved in. Mom has been renovating the place for almost a year, ever since my grandfather passed away and bequeathed it to us, but it’s still not done. This summer, she decided it didn’t make sense to pay for two homes anymore and—since the plumbing was finished—we should go ahead and move in. I’m sure it was a smart financial move, but it’s complicated my personal life. I used to jump on a city bus and make it to school in ten minutes, or else Mom would drop me off on her way to the University of Michigan, where she’s an associate professor of art. Now, however, Mom’s studio hours are earlier and our living situation is farther away, which means I’m stuck with Oliver Flagg every morning.
I find Mom at the stove, stirring a pot of tomato sauce. Her cheeks are pink from the heat and an embroidered headband holds back her straight brown hair. She looks up when I walk in. “June! Taste?”
She pulls her wooden spoon out and taps it against the edge of the pot before offering me some. It is, of course, divine. Everything my mom cooks is divine, with the exception of the things she made during the brief span of time when she was experimenting with scallions. She put them in everything, even cookies.
“The tomatoes are from Quinny,” she tells me. “Her garden is producing like crazy and since ours won’t be much of anything until next summer…How was your day?”
That’s how my mom talks. She trails off from one subject and leaps to the next one without missing a beat. I think her brain must be like that, a patchwork quilt of ideas and questions and thoughts. Mine is more linear. Point A to point B. Clear directions, clear focus. Mom says she doesn’t know how she and my father managed to produce such a brilliantly book-smart daughter, but she’s thankful for it.
I think it’s the only reason Mom is thankful for my father.
“It was fine. Mostly getting syllabi and hearing expectations. I think calculus is going to be hard.”
“You’ll be fine. You’re really good at math and…How are your friends?”
“Darbs has a crush. Lily got a special waiver for two study periods so she can practice violin. Shaun is in three of my classes.”
“So the same,” Mom says with a smile. “How about Itch?”
“Good, he drove me home.”
“That’s…Oh, how was Oliver this morning?” I pause for only a second, but Mom reads into it. “You don’t get along with him?”
“It’s fine, Mom. We get along fine.”
“I have an idea,” she says in this super-casual way, which I know means it didn’t just come to her. She’s been thinking about how to say this for a while. I watch her turn down the burner and give the pot a few more stirs. “I need Saturday afternoon for studio time, but I’m around in the morning. Maybe we could do some practice driving.”
My heart catches. Panic swells thick at the back of my throat. I do what I always do—take a deep breath and wait it out, sinking beneath the waves so the feeling can surge over and past me—and then swallow the panic back.
“I can’t.” I say it in a casual tone to match my mother’s. “I already have plans with Itch.”
It’s not true, but Mom doesn’t know that.
Or maybe she does.
“No cows!” I squawk at Oliver from my side of the behemoth as he trundles us down Main Street. We’ve already been arguing for a full ten minutes and I’m not making any headway at all. Also, I feel like I keep sliding down in my seat, because his car is so damn huge. I decide to change tactics, and I push myself upright, adopting a calmer voice. “I don’t want you guys to get hurt.”
Oliver lets out an exasperated puff of air. “It’s not a bull,” he tells me. “We’re talking about a dairy cow. They’re big and dumb and they make milk.”
“Just like you guys, except for the milk part.” He can’t blame me for hitting a softball when it comes in that low and slow.
“We’re not going to hurt it,” Oliver tells me.
“Oh, really? Medicating it with drugs intended for human consumption just to provide entertainment for a bunch of pumped-up boys isn’t hurting it?”
Oliver lifts his right hand from the steering wheel and slowly—veeeeery slowly—flexes his biceps. He throws me a sideways glance. “What I’ve taken from this is that you think I’m pumped up.”
It’s not that I’m trying to look at his muscle, but it’s right there, pushing against the sleeve of his T-shirt.
“Not funny.”
“It’s a little funny.”
I roll my eyes and then, since Oliver is looking at the road and didn’t see, I lean across the center seat so I’m in his peripheral vision, and I ro
ll them again. Dramatically.
Oliver laughs. “You’re funny. I didn’t know that.” I feel a small stab of satisfaction to have surprised Oliver the way he surprised me yesterday with his vocabulary. “Nothing’s set in stone. I’m sure we can come up with something that doesn’t involve prescription drugs or force-feeding.”
“I don’t get why you have to come up with anything at all.”
“This again.” He darts a quick glance at me before looking back at the road. “Your lack of school spirit is—”
“I know, I know. Sad.”
“So sad. Tell me this, Rafferty. What kind of prank would you deem appropriate?”
“None!” My arms fling into the air all on their own. “I don’t want to be involved in any senior prank! It’s an irrelevant way to leave a legacy! It’s not a legacy!”
“Because high school is not where legacies are made,” Oliver says in a snippy version of my voice. “Because nothing we do now matters.”
“Mock away, but we’re only waiting until real life begins.”
“But these are the memories you take with you into real life! Pep rallies and parties and prom—”
“Prom is the worst,” I tell him. “It’s the epitome of everything that is wrong with high school. An expensive dance with bad music that puts girls in the subservient position of hoping a boy will ask them to go.”
“How do you really feel?”
“I hate it!” I explode, and Oliver laughs.
“Yeah, I got that. Okay, so traditions are stupid. Fine, I’ll buy that your opinion has merit even though I disagree. But what about your boyfriend? He matters, right?”
“Itch? Yeah, but it’s not like I’m going to freaking marry him.”
“What if you are?” Oliver swings us past the front of the school and toward the parking lot.
“I’m not!”
“But what if?” Oliver’s getting a little worked up. “What if it’s meant to be and you can’t even look beyond your version of what matters! It’s sad!”