by Amy Spalding
Once I’m out of the cafeteria, I don’t know where to go, and I’m still wavering between the bathroom and the library when someone steps up next to me.
“I like it when you freak out,” Sadie says. “I wish it happened more.”
“What is even going on?” I ask.
“Uh, something super exciting? I like him, Jules. Not like that, just—he’s cute and funny and tall and seems smart. All very good boy qualities.”
“No one’s ever liked me,” I say.
“I’m sure that’s not true,” Sadie says.
“You sound like my mom.”
“Which one? Wait, who cares! They’re both great.”
“I don’t know what to do,” I say. “It doesn’t feel real.”
“It never feels real when it’s good,” she says. “The first time I kissed Justin, we might as well have been in outer space.”
“Outer space is real,” I say.
“Jules! You’re missing the point.”
“We’re not supposed to be in the hallway.”
Sadie grabs my arm and yanks me into the bathroom. She checks under all the stall doors before hopping up to sit on the row of sinks. “He asked me for your number. He’s texting you. These are all real signs—no, not signs. Stuff is happening.”
“I don’t know what to do,” I say again.
“There’s no specific thing to do.”
“There’s always a specific thing to do.” I get out my phone again. Alex has sent another text:
I can walk dogs!
“Okay, well, the specific thing to do is just see what happens. That’s it.”
“That’s not very specific.” I glance in the mirror as if maybe I’ve forgotten to for a while and maybe I’ve gotten a lot hotter and this will all make sense. But I look the way I always look.
“Are there steps?” I ask. “You could write down steps for me.”
“Oh my god, Jules, you weirdo. Boys aren’t like your college application checklist. Boys are people, and we’re people and, come on, you have friends! You know how to act with people. You’re fine.”
My phone buzzes again.
You ok?
“He’s so nice,” I say. “Or at least he acts nice. I don’t get it.”
“Just enjoy it. Period. End of sentence. Last advice.”
“Oh, I doubt that.”
We both laugh, and I take a moment to text back to Alex that I am okay. I’m not sure it’s accurate, but it feels like the right response.
“I’m going to finish my lunch,” Sadie says, fluffing her hair in the mirror. “Come with?”
“I’m going to the library to work on a few things.” I follow her into the hallway and gesture in the opposite direction down the hallway. “But see you in English.”
“See you then.” She starts to head off, but nearly immediately turns around. “Wait. Can I seriously eat your salad?”
Mr. Wheeler finds me when I’m leaving the library after lunch, and he gives me the freshman submissions. I decide that even though I have time, I probably shouldn’t actually seek out Alex right now. What am I going to tell him… the truth? There’s no way any other girl that Alex went out with or whatever didn’t understand how to proceed with just the concept of dating or whatever so I should probably keep as much to myself as I can. That’s easy to do in economics because Ms. Schmidt starts talking the second the bell rings and doesn’t let up until the next one sounds. But Alex sits by me, and as soon as we’re dismissed he’s just right there.
“I’m in for the dogs,” he says. “But I have to admit something to you that could totally change how you see me.”
“Oh,” I say as I’m instantly sweaty and fighting a blush—that is, actually blushing. “Yeah? Uh-huh? Yes?”
I cut myself off before I keep going, but everything’s pounding as I wait for Alex to reveal his boy-band past or however he’s going to explain it to me. I wonder if I can fake an expression of surprise.
“I don’t know how to drive,” he says. “So you’ll have to take me.”
“Oh,” I say again, and I wish I could see my face because then I could use it for reference when I am faking surprise for real. “That’s not a big deal. I don’t mind.”
When we step out of Ms. Schmidt’s classroom, my face must be reflecting even more surprise, because there are bright blue flyers everywhere. TALON IS COMING, they say, with a little icon of an eagle.
“This is very strange.” I mean to just think it, and the way it comes out of my mouth sounds way more full of wonder than the average person would be at seeing some flyers. “It’s just that there are very strict rules with administration about what’s allowed to be hung in hallways. It’s supposed to only be from officially recognized school groups.”
Alex grins at me. “Then I guess someone from an officially recognized school group did them.”
I know he’s teasing me, but at least he’s teasing me. And I’m definitely blushing when I head off to calculus, so maybe I’ll have to start getting used to this as my new state of being.
I still think Sadie could provide me with a checklist, though, if she really wanted.
CHAPTER FIVE
Everyone in calculus and then in American lit is talking about the flyers, because at least in my classes this is the kind of event that rates extreme gossip levels. Either no one knows what TALON is or no one who knows is willing to say, because speculation is all that happens. (“A gang?” “A cult?” “A dance battle group?” These are all serious guesses by people whose grades are good enough to be in AP courses.)
But I barely participate in any speculation, because time is ticking down until I’ll be walking dogs with Alex Powell. On paper it would sound ridiculous, but I reread the texts at least seven times, and it’s really going to happen.
Alex and Sadie walk out of American lit with me, but Sadie somehow quickly disappears, and then it’s just Alex and me.
Already!
“I’ll meet you at your locker,” Alex says, and then he’s gone too. It’s much easier to figure out which books I need to take home without Alex’s company, but they’re barely in my bag before he’s back at my side.
“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” I tell him, even though now I can’t imagine walking dogs without Alex. Is it even possible? “In case you offered to be nice.”
“I never do anything to be nice,” he says in a voice that sounds extra deep. And then it’s like earlier, when all of a sudden he’s close. The moment becomes A Moment. His eyes are like metal and mine magnets, or maybe it’s the other way around, but it doesn’t matter because there’s no possibility I could pull away. When you think about it, you can spend your whole life around people and yet never hold someone’s gaze with your own.
Actually, it feels more like my gaze is being held.
“We should go,” I say, because I don’t know where to take this. Or I guess I have an idea, but I can’t imagine kissing him on school property. I can’t imagine kissing him at all. So I lead him outside to my car. He climbs into the passenger side and his tall frame just kind of melts into the seat. I feel my brain again head down the path of attempting to calculate how any of this is happening to me, but then I realize something.
I can tell my brain to shut up.
I drive down Eagle Rock Boulevard to York Boulevard, which is definitely one of the cooler parts of LA. There are vintage boutiques, coffee shops, hipster bars, a Manic Panic salon where Sadie sometimes gets her hair dyed, and a doughnut shop I let myself stop in only after I’ve walked many dogs around many blocks. I point it all out to Alex as we make our way to Highland Park Stray Rescue, and he looks at everything with attention, especially Donut Friend.
I find parking directly behind the rescue, and I show Alex in. Tricia, who usually works the front desk, grins at me and waves as we walk inside.
“Happy Wednesday, Jules! How was school?”
“It was pretty good. This is my… this is Alex. He wanted to h
elp out today. That’s okay, right?”
“Of course.” She leans over the desk to shake his hand. “You’re so tall!”
“Thanks?” Alex smiles at her. “And thanks for letting me help out.”
“Of course. Once you fill out this form, you can follow Jules to see where to pick up the dogs and where to walk them. Since it’s your first time, you should only take dogs with green collars. That means they don’t have any behavioral issues and won’t act up on leash. Sound good?”
“What color collars are you allowed to walk?” he asks me.
“Any of them,” I say. “But I’ve had a lot of experience now. I’ve been volunteering since we got Daisy two years ago.”
I wait for Alex to complete the volunteer form, and then lead him down a row of kennels. The dogs on both sides bark as we make our way down, and of course those barks set off a chorus of barks throughout the building. Santiago, the afternoon and evening coordinator, is settling a German shepherd mix back after a walk, but he waves as soon as he’s able.
“It’s Jules day! And Lola’s walk is up next.”
“Lola!” I lean down to smile at Lola, a bouncy border collie and black lab mix, who I’ve been walking for at least a month now. I hate that she hasn’t found a home yet—she’s seven, and a lot of people want puppies or at least younger dogs—but I’m always glad to see her again.
Santiago looks from the German shepherd to Alex. “Hey, thanks for coming. I’m Santiago.”
Alex reaches over to shake Santiago’s hand, and I feel my stomach flip-flop over how grown up he looks. This isn’t how boys shake hands; these are men.
“You look familiar,” Santiago says, and my glow over Alex’s handshaking ability is gone. I hold my breath and hope that the words Chaos, 4, and All won’t be uttered.
“I’ve got one of those faces,” Alex says with a grin.
“So, Jules, this your boyfriend?”
I move quickly to correct this statement. “Alex is—” WHACK.
I somehow just slammed my face into the front of Lola’s kennel. Slamming your face into a metal grid will make your eyes water like you’re crying—probably even if you aren’t suffering total humiliation about the assumed relationship status of the boy you’ve brought with you. But since I am, now I’m dealing with not just the humiliation but the tears as well.
“Are you okay?” Santiago and Alex both ask, and I’m pretty sure I’m fine, but my eyes won’t stop watering. Lola lets out a little yip of concern, and then other dogs start barking, and the barking echoes out in concentric circles from my epicenter of humiliation.
“I’m fine,” I finally say, and I’m not sure whether it’s seconds or minutes or hours later. “I’m ready to take out Lola. I’m fine.”
I reach in to connect a leash to Lola’s collar and realize that since the rule is dogs have to be taken outside immediately once they’re on a leash, I can’t clear up any boyfriend misconceptions or explain the usual walking route to Alex or make sure he’s matched with a fun but easy dog. I just hustle Lola out of the building and down Avenue 52.
Lola looks back at me while we’re walking, and I’m pretty sure she’s just panting, but it looks like a comforting smile. I smile back. Then she pees on a patch of grass, so it feels less like we’re having a bonding moment.
Eventually I hear Alex and Santiago, and I glance back to see they’re walking in tandem with green-collared dogs. When Alex and I were riding down York with the sun shining, I didn’t expect that his dog-bonding experience would be with Santiago. But I make my way around with Lola, and then it’s time for Hudson, and Noodle, and Keno. I keep walking dogs, and I keep trying to delete from my brain that Santiago referred to Alex as my boyfriend.
I manage the first thing. The second, not at all.
Our volunteer shift is over at five, and I say good night to the staff and wait for Alex to catch up. I watch as he thanks Santiago and Tricia, and I try to identify the feeling washing over me. I think I might be proud of Alex for being so good with everyone, and maybe I’m proud of myself for bringing him here.
“I’m pretty sure I was promised doughnuts,” he says, so I lead him down the block to Donut Friend. I get a traditional doughnut with lemon glaze, but Alex—after spending at least five minutes reading the menu—goes all out with a doughnut cut bagel-style and stuffed with peanut butter and jelly. We take seats along the counter lining the back wall, and I try to determine if there’s an especially delicate way to eat a doughnut.
“Hey, so, I’m gonna tell you something,” Alex says at the exact same moment I decide to bite into the doughnut. I still try to look like I’m ready to hear anything he wants to tell me, but all at once I realize there are so many things he might have to tell me that I’m actually not ready for. What if he has a girlfriend at his old school? What if he wants to clarify exactly how much he does not like me? What if I found exactly the least delicate way to eat a doughnut ever, and it’s so bad he has to tell me?
That last one probably isn’t true, but now I can’t put it out of my head. Doughnuts don’t seem romantic! Why did I pick doughnuts? Why does my whole week feel defined by pastries?
“A few years ago, I was really into singing and dancing, and one thing just led to another, and… honestly, I ended up in this boy band.” He shrugs with one eyebrow cocked, and I don’t know him well enough to figure out if he’s pretending to be casual or he’s just casual. “We had one really big hit—not to sound like an ass, but you definitely heard it at some point—but we ended up being kind of a one-hit wonder. So that was that.”
“Wow,” I say, and I widen my eyes so that I look legitimately shocked. “That’s… legitimately shocking.”
He laughs. “It barely feels like it actually happened to me. Like it was some weird movie I saw at one point.”
I nod and raise my eyebrows a little like I’m surprised by every new tidbit of information.
“And that’s it.”
“Okay,” I say, and then I decide I’m not saying enough, but I don’t know what else to say. I just stare at him, and that feels worse than not speaking. He has to know I don’t care about this revelation, but maybe the staring and muteness is giving the opposite impression.
“I’ll tell you something too, not that it’s a secret. And not that it’s a big deal. I mean, not that your boy-band thing is a big deal, just… never mind about that, sorry. I just thought I’d tell you that I have two moms.”
“Oh, cool,” he says, then makes a face. “Not ‘cool,’ no, not that it’s uncool, just, yeah, sure, that isn’t a big deal, no—shit, I feel like I’m saying everything wrong.”
“Me too,” I say, and we both laugh, and it’s like out of nowhere I can see how people end up falling in love with each other. Oh my god, not that I’m in love with Alex. Just that if within the span of days you can feel so honest with someone, you can see how bigger things might be possible too.
“Is it weird?” I ask. “If you don’t mind… because of the boy band?”
“Sometimes,” he says. “You can see… not the best side of people. They can be so fake just because of your fame or what they think they could get from you. Or they pretend to be one way publicly, but in reality they’re not a good person.”
“That sounds awful,” I say.
“Sometimes it is, yeah.” He smiles again. “I’m done with all that bullshit. You’re not like any of those people. It’s really cool you care about stuff.”
I look down at my nearly finished doughnut, but I’m sure Alex can still see my smile. And how red my face is.
“Can you give me directions to your house?” I ask Alex once we’re back in my car.
“What?” He laughs his deep and warm laugh. “I definitely cannot, but my mom wrote down my address. Hang on.” He digs through his backpack before pulling out a notebook, where I see that it’s carefully printed on the inside cover. “We just moved, remember. I’m not an idiot, about that at least.”
“I think
it’s cute your mom wrote it out for you,” I say, but maybe that sounds sarcastic, so I just let it go at that. I type the address into my GPS and wait for the computerized voice to guide me.
CHAPTER SIX
At school the next day I decide to stop eyeing Alex with suspicion when he pops up near me. And that’s good because he keeps doing that. My locker, the hallway, the salad line in the cafeteria (though he abandons it for chicken fingers).
I can feel the eyes of the school on us. In my head they’re asking Why her? Why Jules McAllister-Morgan? But no one says it aloud.
On Thursdays I have Associated Student Body after school, so even though Alex asks, politely, for a ride home while leaning against the locker next to mine, I have to turn him down.
“Let’s get this shitshow over with,” Em greets me as I walk up to the conference room in the administrative building. She’s our class treasurer, and I’m the recording secretary. That would bother me, except that Natalie’s neither the president nor the vice president but the public relations director. This is the one extracurricular that’s more of a popularity contest than an earned honor, so we picked roles we actually had a shot at. Em admitted she’s only padding her college applications, and considering that ASB hasn’t actually changed anything about the school in the past three years, maybe that’s what we’re all doing.
“So do you want to talk about it?” Em whispers. Hers, the opposite of Sadie’s, is a real whisper.
I gesture to my phone, recording the meeting so I can verify my minutes before submitting them to Ms. Reinhardt, our faculty advisor, and then go back to taking notes. Em writes furiously in her notebook, which is odd because she’s the treasurer, so she’s not responsible for capturing every moment like I am.
She shoves the notebook in my direction. so do you want to talk about it?? It’s next to a realistic sketch of an avocado.