The New Guy (and Other Senior Year Distractions)

by Amy Spalding

  When I was little, I didn’t think there was anything strange about having two moms. And, anyway, I never really thought I had two moms. I had Mom, and I had Darcy, and they were as individual as any mom and dad were from each other. Back then we had Rochester, a beagle-shepherd mix, and we lived in our cozy house in Eagle Rock, and until I went off to kindergarten it had never really occurred to me that my family wasn’t like most. Yeah, Sadie had a mom and a dad, but back then odds were to me that she was the weird one.

  “Supposedly, yes. We’ll see.” Mom stops dumping meats into the mixing bowl and steps closer to touch my face. I hope she hasn’t touched the raw meats yet. “Jules, it still means something that you were chosen to be editor.”

  I open my mouth to explain that my current look of weirdness and confusion isn’t about the Crest but Sadie’s insane text. In fact, it might even be to overcompensate for how just the idea of Alex makes me start to smile. Of course—despite what Sadie’s messaging—it means nothing! And so the very last thing I want to do right now is explain to Mom why a former boy-band member definitively is not into me. So I just shrug and let her believe I’m upset about the thing I was—to be fair—upset about only sixty seconds ago.

  “I know, Mom.” I try with all my faking ability to look like I mean it too. I’m not sure if she believes me, but I manage to weasel out of this sentimental moment and pick up the recipe card.

  The meatballs recipe is written out in the perfect script of my great-grandmother, who died before I was born. For the most part my family eats like normal LA people. We get our kale at the weekly farmers’ market, have Meatless Mondays because it’s healthy and also helps the environment, and go out for sushi at least twice a month (usually more). But Mom’s the only one in her family who wanted the recipe box when her grandmother died, and once a week we cook something from it with only a few twenty-first-century changes.

  My phone dings with a new text, and once I see that it’s Sadie again, I don’t even read the message before turning the phone facedown on the counter.

  “It’s a big day for you,” Mom says. “Go call your friends, and I can finish this.”

  “It’s not a big day, and I don’t want to call my friends. Can’t I just make meatballs in peace?”

  “Of course.”

  Mom and I split up the rest of the ingredients. She measures out and adds ricotta, milk, and Parmesan, while I do the same with bread crumbs, basil, parsley, and salt. We split the eggs because it’s our dumb tradition to see who can break them fastest. Mom wins tonight. One of my favorite things about cooking is—egg-breaking contests or not—how calming it can be. Dinner will be full of conversation, but this part isn’t.

  Though tonight the silence isn’t doing it for me. Not with Sadie’s text flashing constantly in my head.

  “It’s just that this new guy started today, and I was his liaison, and so he was talking to me a lot because of that, and Sadie thinks it means something.”

  I don’t mean to say it, but I’m not that surprised I do. I’ve never been skilled at keeping much from my parents, but normally there isn’t much to keep.

  “Maybe it does mean something,” Mom says.

  “Sadie’s crazy, and you know that.”

  Mom laughs because she’s too nice to actually agree about Sadie’s sanity levels.

  “A boy could like you,” Mom says, and I feel my face getting hot, which means my face is getting red. Stop it, face! Work with me, not against me. “Would that be awful?”

  “No, Mom, the point is it wouldn’t be possible.” I feel like I’m getting too worked up, so I focus on mixing everything. You have to do it with your hands to get the best results, which is a little gross, but Mom did it last time, so it’s my turn.

  “You’re pretty great,” Mom says.

  “Great to your mom is not like being great to a guy,” I say. “And, anyway, I don’t have time for guys. You know that.”

  “I know that? I know nothing of the sort!”

  “I’m getting into Brown,” I say. “I have to.”

  “You want to,” Mom says. “You know you can’t control your own destiny.”

  Mom says things like this all the time, but I think she believes way too much in things like destiny. I’m pretty sure you can make anything happen if you work hard enough, and I’m positive Darcy agrees with me. Darcy aced law school, passed the bar exam on her first attempt, and takes work home with her not because she has to, but because she wants to. It isn’t that I don’t think that both of my parents work hard, but Mom might sometimes hint that it would be good to take a break and go outside or to hang out at Sadie’s, but I know that Darcy always understands that I don’t have time for breaks.

  “Boys are actually pretty easy to fit in a schedule,” Mom continues. “When I was in high school—”

  “Mom. I don’t want to hear about fitting in boys. I shouldn’t have brought this up at all. I really just want to make meatballs, okay?”

  Mom mimes zipping her lips before getting the pan ready on the stove. Now that everything’s mixed, we roll the meatballs and put them into the oven. Then I fill a pot with tomato sauce we canned last summer with tomatoes from our garden. As I’m pulling vegetables out of the refrigerator to make a salad, the front door opens and Darcy walks in carrying a bakery box from the Alcove.

  “Congratulations,” she says before presenting the box to me. I can feel it coming, but I still look inside. More cupcakes! Four cupcakes! Darcy barely even believes in processed sugar, but here they are, staring at me.

  “We’re so proud of you,” Mom says, taking a break from meatball business and walking over from the counter to stand next to Darcy. Then they just stare at me in the glowing way they do sometimes, and I’m not sure what to do, so I just take the box from Darcy and stand there.

  “It was a technicality,” I say to Darcy. “Did Mom explain that?”

  Darcy frowns. “What do you mean?”

  I repeat the information for her, and I wait for her face to reflect what’s in my heart. But before long she’s back to glowing again.

  “It’s not a technicality,” she says. “Be proud of yourself.”

  Be proud of yourself sounds nice, but not necessarily when Darcy commands it.

  Darcy takes over for me on salad duty, and I decide to check my phone. Sadie has messaged me twice more: I’m serious about Alex you know!! with a kissy-face emoji I’ve never seen before, and WHY ARE YOU IGNORING ME??? I’m coming over! I’m worried!

  “Oh no,” I say aloud. “I’m afraid Sadie might be coming over.”

  “That’s great,” Mom says.

  “She can have the fourth cupcake,” Darcy says. “I was going to give it to Joe otherwise.”

  I don’t want Sadie interrupting my evening, but it’s a much better prospect than walking a lone cupcake over to Mr. Wheeler’s and pretending like we don’t hear his gloomy indie rock mourning over the speakers.

  The doorbell rings while we’re taking the broccoli off the stove, and the meatballs are nearly ready. I’m currently managing the broccoli, so Mom lets Sadie in.

  “Oh my god, it smells amazing in here,” Sadie says as she walks into the kitchen. “Do you know what my family is having for dinner tonight? Turkey sandwiches. Sandwiches! A sandwich can’t be dinner!”

  “Your mother makes very good sandwiches,” Darcy tells her. “You’ll find no sympathy here.”

  Sadie opens the utensil drawer and starts pulling out forks, spoons, and knives to set the table. “Soooo… how did it go? Can we talk about it?”

  I open my mouth to speak, but I’m still figuring out the first word when of course I don’t have to.

  “She got it,” Mom says. “Not that any of us should be surprised.”

  “Not at all!” Sadie flings the silverware onto the table and throws her arms around me. “Yay! You did it! I told you you’d get it over Natalie.”

  “I didn’t, okay? Can we just all acknowledge that?” I explain for the bill
ionth time. Why doesn’t anyone understand the full scope of the situation like I do?

  After dinner, Sadie and I walk up to my room. Peanut and Daisy follow and take their favorite spots on my bed before we can sit down. I accept where I fall on the chain of command compared to dogs in this house.

  “I seriously don’t want to talk any more about it,” I say. “It’s all been sullied.”

  “Seriously, Jules, I didn’t come up here to talk about the paper. Wait, did you just say sullied?” She laughs and leans over to use Daisy as a pillow. “Alex Powell. Alex. Freaking. Powell.”

  “No,” I say, and it sounds wimpy, so I keep going. “No no no no nooooo.”

  That may have somehow sounded wimpier.

  “Jules. I know some things about boys. Not everything, but enough, and that is how boys act, trust me.”

  I manage to fit into the space between Daisy and Peanut. “What are you even saying? What is how boys act?”

  “Jules, you’re ranked first in our class. You’ll be our valedictorian and make a lovely and wise speech we’ll all remember throughout our whole lives. So don’t play dumb all of a sudden.”

  “I’m not playing!” I run my hand over Peanut’s soft tan fur. “I don’t want to talk about this either. I know he acted nice. I also know it doesn’t mean anything. And acting like it does feels… like I’m cheating, or something. Boys like Alex Powell don’t…”

  “To be fair we don’t have that much reference material on boys like Alex Powell,” Sadie says. “If I drop it, can I at least reserve the right to say I told you so later?”

  “If it makes you stop talking? Yes.”

  “I’ll take that as a victory.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Natalie and I walk into cellular and molecular biology at the same time the next day, and while ignoring each other is pretty much how we normally work, I’m not sure I can today.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Congratulations, Julia,” she says, even though who calls me that? “I hear Mr. Wheeler made you editor.”

  I still have the impulse to explain the whole technicality thing to her. But she’s the very last person who requires that explanation. “Yeah.”

  She walks past me and takes her seat. I try not to frown at how unilluminated I am over this situation, but considering how bad I am at controlling my face, I’m sure I frown.

  After fourth period, I stop off at my locker to put away my newspaper stuff on my way to the cafeteria. I do consider keeping my red notebook with me to take some notes. Our table isn’t exactly quiet, but I’ve found it’s pretty easy to let the couples self-maintain and therefore get work done.

  “Hey, Jules.” Alex walks right up to me. “Big liaison business today?”

  “No liaison business at all today,” I say. “We only have meetings the first Monday of each month. Are you finding your way around all right? If you have any questions, any liaison or I could—”

  “I’m actually doing fine,” he says. Last night Sadie and I pulled up all the official Chaos 4 All music videos we could find on VidLook (there were only four, and three of those we’d never seen before). I feel a sense of guilt that we watched all of them (some of them up to six times), but they are just there out in the world for anyone to view.

  Also, right now, we’re just here out in the world—out in the hallways of Eagle Vista Academy, at least—for anyone to view. I don’t think it’s my imagination that everyone who walks past stares first at Alex, and then at me to figure out why he’d be talking to Jules McAllister-Morgan.

  Alex reaches mere centimeters past me and taps the photo of Daisy and Peanut taped up in my locker. “Who are those?”

  “Dogs,” I say. “My dogs, I mean, not just, like, random dogs. Ha-ha, why would I have pictures of random dogs?”

  “I don’t know, they seem cool, why not? We’ve moved a lot, so my parents’ official rule is no pets.” He’s so close to me right now, and it’s hard not to stare at his face. I’m tall like Darcy—we’re both five foot nine—but Alex is taller. His eyes are such a warm shade of brown, like if you could make a brown-colored gold. Which doesn’t make sense, I know, but that’s all I can think of as I look into them and—oh my god, I am standing near a boy and just flat-out looking into his eyes as if this is a thing I now do.

  “Juuuuuules!” Sadie dashes up and makes a sudden stop, and I can’t deny that at this very moment her suspicions or opinions about Alex Powell and his feelings toward me seem at least partially accurate. But I’m not upset she’s here because this is the closest I’ve ever stood to a boy doing absolutely nothing, and I don’t know what would even happen next if we spend more time alone in this hallway.

  “Hey, Sadie,” Alex says.

  “Hi, Alex. Are you guys coming to lunch?”

  I leave my red notebook in my locker and slam it shut. “Where else would we be going?”

  “Anyone could be going anywhere,” she says, walking ahead of us en route to the cafeteria. “Life’s open like that.”

  “Don’t worry,” I say to Alex. “She says things like that all the time.”

  “I definitely wasn’t worried.”

  I still don’t know what to do. I just keep walking. Luckily once we’re in the cafeteria, he wants nachos again, and I’m getting my usual salad, so I have a chance to make a break from him. Sadie joins me, even though I’m pretty sure she’s not getting a salad.

  “Jules.”

  “I don’t know, okay? I don’t. That’s all I can say.”

  “That’s very little.”

  I don’t ask how Sadie figured things out with Justin, because Justin isn’t her first boyfriend, and also Sadie would never need help figuring things out with people. Sadie is people. I know I’m a person, but somehow it’s not the same.

  “Ugh, look how close I almost got to getting a salad!” Sadie ruffles my hair before dashing over to butt into line with Alex.

  I try to focus on getting the perfect blend of greens and protein, but it’s hard to keep my mind on salad when Alex exists. When I run it over in my head, it seems ridiculous—it felt like a moment, but also we were literally looking at a photo of my dogs. How many romantic moments are built around looking at pictures of dogs?

  And, fine, maybe it was a moment. It doesn’t change the other stuff, like that Alex Powell has been famous, kind of. And even if that weren’t true, I still don’t have time for any of this. I should have definitely brought my red notebook, but one moment with a dog photo and suddenly I’ve turned completely irresponsible.

  “Hey. Hey.”

  I look over to my right to see a girl glaring at me, and a whole line of people behind her.

  “Um, are you gonna look at garbanzo beans all day or are you gonna keep walking?”

  “Sorry,” I say. “They’re full of protein and fiber.”

  There are now a lot of glaring faces in the salad line, so I forgo any bean decisions and proceed immediately to the safety of the dressing bar.

  Everyone else is at the table by the time I get there, so I slide into the remaining seat between Sadie and Alex. Sadie’s in the midst of polling everyone about what they think the worst soda is. Since I’ve already answered this one many times (Mountain Dew), I ignore the conversation and dig my phone out of my bag to see if Mom or Darcy has messaged about anything. I drive straight from school to where I volunteer on Wednesday nights, so sometimes texting is the only way we can coordinate dinner.

  I do have a new message, and from only one minute ago. But it’s not from either one of my parents. It’s from a 734 number I don’t know.

  What are you doing tonight?

  I tell myself not to look over at Alex. But I look over at Alex. He pauses from nacho-eating and grins at me. I don’t know what to do with all the grinning.

  I stare back at the phone and type my answer with shaky hands.

  I volunteer at Stray Rescue on Wednesdays.

  Alex doesn’t have his sound off on his phone—breaking a pretty
major school rule! Should I have gone over cell phone procedures in the liaison introduction yesterday? Whatever, the point is that Alex’s phone audibly receives a text, and everyone looks over, or at least it feels like everyone. It’s actually just Sadie and Em.

  But Alex just picks up his phone and starts typing back. Sadie smiles right at me, so I look away. My heart pounds in my neck, which is a weird place for my heart to suddenly be. And I realize I am not in the mood for my salad. And it’s not the salad’s fault; everyone’s food looks awful.

  My phone buzzes again. I try not to look down immediately, but Sadie’s still watching me, so the speed of my looking down won’t really make me more or less suspicious.

  I could come with you, if they need more volunteers.

  Another message comes in while I’m holding the phone.

  Wait, is it dogs? Dogs are cool. If it’s wildlife I don’t know.

  “Of course it’s dogs,” I say, and then I remember we aren’t having this conversation aloud. We’re having it on our phones.

  “What’s dogs?” Sadie asks. “Who are you guys texting?”

  “No one and nothing,” I say. “I mean, nothing and no one.”

  I look back to my phone, even though I can feel everyone staring at me.

  Why would it be wildlife? No one calls wildlife strays! I just walk dogs for a few hours. It’s really easy, if you actually want to come.

  Did I just ask a boy out? No, I just asked Alex Powell out. I don’t even have any normal-boy experience, and here I am, jumping straight into Former Teen Idol territory. What am I doing?

  “I’m not hungry.” I jump up and shove my phone into my purse. I start to take my salad with me to throw away, but I immediately think about how many people around the world and even in this very city are hungry. “Someone can have this salad if they want it. You guys know I don’t believe in throwing away food.”