by Jen Klein
Or both.
“For Nico Vega,” I tell him.
“Who?”
“ ‘Bang Bang.’ It’s a new song for our playlist.”
“A song.” Oliver crosses his arms. “You want a song. You think you get a win because of Saturday night.”
“Of course. High school life means that even though you can mess around with the girl you drive to school”—I pause, because it’s so hard to say, and yet it’s so true that it must be said—“it doesn’t have to mean anything. It doesn’t have to mean anything at all.”
And that should be it. That should put an end to all of it. All this investment, all these damn feelings—this should be enough to put them on a shelf and shove them away.
But Oliver is an athlete. He’s used to pushing through the defense, to tackling in the final five, to several other football metaphors I don’t understand. Even in the last minute of the game, Oliver doesn’t give up.
And this is definitely the last minute of the game.
“That is bullshit.” He stabs his finger at me, and the circles around his irises go coal black. “You’re a coward. All this crap about how nothing this year matters, it’s an excuse.”
The fire inside me flames brighter, threatening to burn me alive. I picture my ashes dancing up and away in a giant black cloud of pain.
“You don’t care about anything.” Oliver raises his voice and I tense to meet his anger. “Not about traditions, not about memories, not even about the people who like you the most. That’s your problem. It’s not that you think high school doesn’t matter. It’s that you think nothing matters!”
“Which is way better than thinking that every tiny, stupid moment has to matter!” The vitriol explodes from me and I can’t do anything to stop it. “God, you can’t blow your nose without adding the tissue to your mental yearbook. Every move you make is the Most Important Thing!” Somewhere in the back of my fire-scorched brain, I clock the librarian—Miss Emily—standing up from her desk and moving toward us. But I don’t care. Oliver thinks I don’t care about anything anyway. “It doesn’t count, Oliver!”
“What the hell does that mean?” He glares at me, his muscles tightening, the tendons in his neck rising.
“Nothing can ever live up to your expectations, because what you think this year is supposed to be, it’s too much! None of it is real.” It’s an eruption now. All flame and smoke and heat. I’m furious and I’m letting all that fury blaze through me, right out at Oliver. “You’re going to get your diploma and throw your hat in the air, and it’ll all just be done. I don’t want to be a part of that!”
“You don’t want to be a part of anything!” Oliver yells back.
Miss Emily is now fluttering nearby. She is young and sweet and I think she has a toddler at home. Judging by the terrified look on her face, she has never dealt with two teenagers in an all-out verbal war.
“You have no idea,” I tell Oliver. “You literally know nothing about me.”
“I know that you’re a coward. I know you’re so terrified of every pothole that you don’t ever take the ride. Actually”—he stops, mouth open, palms facing upward—“you don’t even learn to drive the car!” Oliver laughs, a harsh, bitter sound that rings out among the books. I part my lips to speak, to tell him what an ass he’s being, or maybe to find a reset button so everything can go back to how it was, but Oliver is on a roll. An enraged roll. “When? When, June?”
“When what?” I spit out. “When will you shut up and go away?”
“In your superior estimation, when does it start to matter? College? Do you start giving a shit in college? Do you have any idea how many people don’t use their college degree as adults? Tell you what, I’ll look that up. I’ll get an extra effing Aerosmith song because some percentage of the global population doesn’t use their degree!”
Miss Emily makes a clucking noise and we both ignore her.
“You need to calm down,” I tell Oliver, but he’s not even close to listening.
“Look at my parents, June! They didn’t start dating in high school. They got together in college. And now here they are, two kids later, and they’re splitting up, making your opinion crap. You don’t have a philosophy. You have a permission slip! It’s your lame way of getting yourself off the hook for anything you do. It’s license to be an asshole.” He pauses, and it’s like he’s suddenly been doused with a giant, sobering wave. All his fire and heat cools down at once. “But, June, you’re not an asshole, are you? Say it. Please say it.” His eyes are killing me. “Say that you’re not an asshole.”
But I can’t say that. I can’t say it because I have to do something that is so much harder, so much more painful. I can’t say it because my ashes are already blowing away, down the street and out into the world. Instead, I say something else. I say the thing that finally puts an end to it all.
“The night of the prank, when you had to drive your mom home, do you know what our moms were drinking?” The next words fly out of my mouth like arrows. “Several bottles of your dad’s best wine.”
There’s no waiting. The realization breaks hard and ugly across Oliver’s face. “You knew,” he breathes. “You knew about my parents.”
“I knew way before that.” The nail slides into the coffin of us like it’s going home. “Remember the morning you came to get me and you were eating something out of a napkin because your mother slept in and didn’t make you breakfast, even though she always makes you breakfast, and you thought she was upstairs with a headache?”
“No,” says Oliver, not because he can’t remember it, but because he can and he doesn’t want it to be true.
“She was at my house. That’s the night she found out your dad was cheating on her. That’s how long it’s been. That’s how long I’ve known. So I guess you’re right, Oliver. You win, like you always win. I’m an asshole.”
I watch as the debris of his rage washes out to sea, and the waves of what is left crash over him, one by mind-numbing one.
Disbelief. Realization. Acceptance.
Betrayal.
“I’m sorry.” It’s Miss Emily. She’s stepped closer, and now she’s cracking her slender knuckles and speaking in a voice just over a whisper. “You seem to be in the middle of something, but I have to ask you to take it outside.”
“I’m going,” Oliver tells her. “Sorry we disturbed the library.” He turns back to me, and for just a second, I wonder if maybe someone did find that reset button, and maybe this can become a bad dream, a nightmare that never happened. But then Oliver’s face twists with a new emotion, one I’ve never seen before when he’s looked at me.
Disgust.
“You used the word ‘literally’ wrong,” he spits out, and then he whirls and stalks away.
This time, I know it’s for good.
It’s for the best.
Another rural intersection. Another student trudging up the bus steps, glancing around for an empty seat, dropping onto the hard vinyl, and staring out the window as the bus lumbers back onto the street in a cloud of exhaust. Same as it’s been for the past forty-five minutes and will be for the next forty-five.
Same as it was yesterday.
Same as it will be tomorrow.
• • •
Just like I have for the past two weeks, I wait to go into the physics room until the very last second of break. If the bell is about to ring, there’s no time for conversation with Ainsley.
Or with Oliver. Ever since the text I sent him from the bus on my first long morning ride, there’s been nothing more to say.
When I walk in, Ainsley is at our lab table, poking around on her phone. I am agonizingly aware of the muscled blur in my peripheral vision. These days, Oliver also arrives at the last possible second. It’s like we’ve come to an unspoken agreement about how to conduct ourselves around each other: we just don’t.
Today I change direction. I head to Kaylie’s empty seat, and when I plop down into it, Tyler gives me a startled look from the adjacen
t chair. “Change of scenery,” I tell him.
The bell rings and Kaylie saunters in. She sees me in her spot and stops abruptly at the top of the aisle. Her mouth and eyes get all round, like she can’t believe I would be so daring.
I gaze at her. No, it’s more of a glare. A challenge.
What are you going to do about it?
It turns out the answer is nothing, because we both hear Ainsley’s high, sweet voice from my old table—“Over here!”—and Kaylie whirls. She sits down by Ainsley and order is restored to the world. Two hot cheerleaders at a table together. Oliver the hot jock in the back.
Me next to a guy named Tyler, neither of us with anything to say.
• • •
I leave fifteen minutes before the end of class. I tell Mrs. Nelson I have to go to the bathroom, but then I take my backpack with me. Either she doesn’t notice or it’s the end of the year and she just doesn’t care anymore.
The hall is empty, so, because I can, I fling my backpack down it. It flies through the air and lands with a satisfying whomp several yards away. It’s only a tiny act of rebellion, but it feels great. I reach it and this time I haul off and slide it across the floor, like I’m back at Wolverine Lanes and it’s my bowling ball.
My backpack skids all the way to the corner, and when I get to it, there’s Theo Nizzola, squirting mustard through the vents of someone’s locker. Because that’s what he does instead of throwing backpacks down a hallway.
“Hafferty, you skipping?”
“No, Theo. I’m not skipping.” Normally I would walk away and find another bathroom in another hallway, but today I don’t feel like it. Today I lean against the wall and watch him. He finishes what he’s doing and sets the empty mustard bottle on the floor before straightening and looking at me.
“What do you want?”
“Why are you such a dick?” I ask.
“Shut up.” He starts to walk away.
I run to catch up and then to pass him. I jump in front, turning to block him. “Hey, Theo. Do you honestly, truly think I was giving Oliver sexual favors for rides to school? Me, a straight-A student with a bright future. And him, a hot popular dude with his pick of girls. Do you actually think that’s what was going down?”
“Go back to class,” Theo says. “You don’t belong out here.”
But I’m not done.
“No, really. Are you that much of a moron, or does constantly talking about sex make you feel like you have a bigger penis?” He doesn’t answer, so I take a step toward him. My voice gets louder. “Seriously, why are you like this? What do you get from it?”
“You never liked me.” Theo glares at me. “Why?”
That’s a stupid question.
“Why would I like you? You’re disgusting. Your only contribution to society is to say horrible things.”
“I didn’t always.”
“Yes you did.”
“Not when I first moved here.” He crosses his arms over his thick chest. “Not in ninth grade.”
“That’s bullshit.” I don’t have a memory of Theo that doesn’t involve him being a jerk….
Except that I do.
Suddenly, I do.
It was ninth grade.
Ninth grade was when Theo became a horrible person.
It was the beginning of the year. Geography class. Mrs. Carter asked Theo to read aloud from a chapter. Something about resource consumption in the United States. He started haltingly. Pausing before long words. Pronouncing things incorrectly. And Mrs. Carter stopped him, correcting him every single time. Making him repeat the words.
At first it was only awkward, because Theo read so slowly and messed up so many times. But eventually, someone snickered. Then someone else did. And then every time Theo pronounced something wrong, people laughed again. And still Mrs. Carter didn’t put an end to it. She just kept Theo reading and reading, with him pronouncing words wrong and her correcting him while people laughed.
Until Theo started saying things wrong on purpose.
He mispronounced words to sound gross or sexual. “Resource” became “re-whores.” “Sustainable” became “sus-taint-able.” “Country”…well, it didn’t change that much.
The class laughed more, but now they were laughing with him instead of at him. Mrs. Carter finally got fed up and sent him to the office. As he was packing up his things, she asked me to finish Theo’s chapter. Out loud. So I did. With perfect diction. Because that’s how I roll.
Now I stare at Theo, looming before me in the hallway. “You act like this to me because I’m good in school?”
“You think you’re better than me.”
I gaze up at him, unable to refute it. I do think I’m better than him. But it’s because he’s such a jerk. There’s no win here. It’s an endless circle of awful, and if it’s ever going to be better, someone has to be the first one to make a move. If I’m going to think of myself as the better person, I’m going to have to act like the better person.
Somehow, moving against all the history between Theo and me, I manage to make my mouth form into a tentative smile. Somehow, I say the words. “I’m sorry.”
Theo scowls down at me. “I told you to go to class.” He turns to the mustard bottle and gives it a kick. It flies down the hall, spattering tiny yellow drops as it goes. Theo grabs his backpack and, without another word, walks away.
At least I tried.
• • •
Oliver drives past my house in the behemoth. I know this because I’m out on the porch swing, ostensibly flipping through one of my mom’s decorator magazines, but in reality hoping to see him. Wondering if Theo told him about our exchange.
Guess I’ll never know, because Oliver doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t even turn his head in my direction.
He just drives by.
Lily is showing me photos of her midnight-haired punk boy when Darbs bangs up the bleachers at high speed, skipping every other step. “You guys!” she yells when she’s still a good dozen away. “Hey, you guys!” By the time she reaches us and plops onto a bench, she’s out of breath and has to take a minute before she can talk.
“What’s your guess?” Lily asks me.
Since Darbs looks happy, I go with “Yana?”
“Good one,” says Lily.
Darbs nods and her turquoise hair flops all around her shoulders. “Guess what I found out?”
“She’s a bisexual Christ-hugger like you after all?” Lily says.
“No!” Darbs beams. “She’s a lesbian Christ-hugger!”
I blink at her. “Seriously? After this entire school year of pining? You could have been with her all along?”
Lily whaps her. “Are you guys a thing now?”
Darbs scrunches up her face and shakes her head. “Ew, no!”
Lily and I exchange glances. “Uh…” says Lily.
“I’m dating Ethan,” Darbs says. “But get this, you guys. We prayed together!”
It takes me a second, but then I put it together. Darbs found someone who is more like her than like everyone else at school, someone who embodies two things that other people have a hard time believing can exist within the same person.
“It’s like I’ve found a unicorn,” says Darbs, and she and Lily laugh.
I laugh along, but it’s hollow.
Like me.
• • •
Itch is in the stairwell again. Apparently the most recent girl to waltz through the revolving door of his love life is Akemi Endo. She and Itch are in a corner, leaning against the wall, gazing into each other’s eyes. By all appearances, the school could explode around them and they wouldn’t notice, which is strange. Something is different about this girl—about the way Itch is with this girl.
It’s the gazing.
Itch’s tongue isn’t in her mouth. His hands aren’t roving over her body. They aren’t even holding hands. They’re just looking at each other.
There’s a twist in my gut, a painful squeeze that holds and then
goes away, leaving me even emptier than before.
• • •
I turn the corner into the main lobby as, across the crowded room, Oliver comes down the stairs. I pull back to wait him out, but as I do, sadness washes over me. Sorrow that isn’t for me, but for him.
Oliver’s hair is combed neatly and he’s wearing a suit, but that’s not why I’m sad. It’s because of his tie. His maroon tie. It’s a “power color.”
Oliver is going for an interview at the bank. He’s letting his soul be crushed by the immense weight of his future.
A future in which I am nowhere to be found.
• • •
“What?” I look at Shaun, surprised, as he turns the wheel to guide us out of the school parking lot. “When did he do it?”
“A couple weeks ago.”
“But it was such a big deal,” I say. “It meant everything. Why didn’t you tell me?”
Shaun shrugs. “It was anticlimactic.”
We pull onto the main road and head toward my house. “Spill,” I command Shaun. “What happened?”
“Kirk sat down at the dinner table for chicken casserole. He said he had something to tell them, and everything got really quiet. His dad put down the serving spoon and his mom clasped her hands together, and they waited. He said that was awful, the waiting part.” Shaun smiles. “Kirk said it all came out of his mouth in a babbling stream, about how someday he wants a house in the suburbs and some kids and a dog, but that he’s not going to want a wife. He’ll want a husband.”
Even though I’ve never met Kirk, I can picture it. The tablecloth, the silverware, the hush of his parents. “What did they say?”
“Kirk thought there’d be some sort of Lutheran hellfire raining down, but it was nothing like that. His parents looked at each other and smiled, and then his mom said, ‘Thanks for telling us, honey.’ His dad said he’d better bring up his grade in math if he wants to afford a house in the suburbs. And that was it.”
My shoulders relax. “They already knew.”
“Yeah.”
“Kinda like if you asked him to prom,” I say. “Not a big deal at all.”
Shaun shakes his head. “It’s been too long. We missed our chance.”