by Amy Spalding
What does the avocado symbolize? I write below, even though I normally try harder to resist Em’s attempts to distract me during meetings.
oh god jules. i’m bored and doodling. sometimes an avocado is just an avocado. Then she snatches the notebook back from me and scribbles for a few moments. Now the avocado has dark wavy hair like Alex’s as well as his eyebrows. A giggle bursts out of me like a hiccup, and then Em snorts. Since there are only twenty people plus Ms. Reinhardt here, everyone hears us.
“Is there something you want to share with the whole class, Miss Han or Miss McAllister-Morgan?” Michael Alves asks in a perfect impression of Teacher Voice. As senior class president, he’s in the midst of his student address, so it seems fair that he’s making fun of us. Though, for a person cool enough to win the populist vote ASB presidency requires, it’s in a pretty dorky fashion.
“Sorry,” I say.
“Carry on,” Em adds, which unfortunately causes another laugh to squeak out of me. I’ve been on ASB every year since sixth grade, but I never had to make an effort to behave until Em joined during junior year. Before then I didn’t even realize I was corruptible.
Alex texts while I’m reading through the freshman submissions for the Crest when I’m at home later. If it were anyone else, I’d probably make it through the whole stack and at least start on my final list for Mr. Wheeler before reading it.
But it’s an understatement to say Alex isn’t anyone else.
Want to hang out Saturday?
Of course I want to hang out Saturday. But hanging out Saturday would be a date, maybe? It’s definitely not on my list of activities I’d planned on participating in my senior year. But it’s Alex.
And to be technical about it, he didn’t say go out, he said hang out. And that sounds less nerve-wracking, somehow.
I neatly stack the papers on my bed and type back to Alex.
I walk dogs in the morning. After that I’m free.
I go back to reading even though I feel I’m not being as fair to the freshmen as I could be. I’m of course evaluating their style, grammar, choice of topic, original voice. But I’m also wondering how Alex will respond. I’m wondering what hanging out will entail. I’m wondering if it’s too soon to kiss him. I’m wondering if he’ll be the one to make that happen, because I’m not sure I’ll have the nerve. Somewhere in the back of my mind—in all honesty it’s probably closer to the front of my mind—I’m not sure I have the right to make that call.
He’s Alex Powell. And I’m just me.
I start texting all of this to Sadie, but it’s turning into less of a message and more of an essay, so I delete it and get out my laptop to email her. Even this looks longer than could be typically constrained by email, but I hit send and then text her to make sure she’ll check it.
My phone buzzes less than a full sixty seconds later.
“You couldn’t possibly have read all of that,” I answer.
“Of course I didn’t! I hit the stupid point, and I had to call you immediately,” Sadie says, and I actually feel myself gasp because I’m not sure Sadie has ever called me stupid.
“He’s him and you’re you?” she asks. “Oh my god, Jules. Jules! Yes, he used to be famous, but you’re amazing.”
“Of course you think that!” I say. “You have to.”
“I don’t have to! Who’s making me?”
“Society,” I said. “Best friend rules.”
“Oh, shut up.” Sadie laughs. “Alex likes that you’re overachieving.”
“How do you know? Maybe he’s just humoring me. Maybe he’s just doing something where he conquers girls one by one at a new school.” I hadn’t even thought of these possibilities until they were out of my mouth, but now I’m terrified they’re true.
“I know because I’m not blind. Some people make what they’re feeling really obvious, and that, my friend, is Alex Powell. Also I guess we can talk about the obvious stuff, like that you’re cute and your hair is pretty and you pull off that whole preppy thing really well.”
“I still think that you have to think that,” I say.
“Oh yes, the international best friend bylaws, sure. Since when have you seen me obey any rules I think are stupid? Since never, Jules.”
Sadie had me there.
Friday night is the third year of our first-week-of-school tradition, which involves meeting up at Casa Bianca. It’s a small traditional Italian restaurant with the best pizza maybe on not just the Eastside but all of LA. By dinnertime there can be a line to get a table, but since we’re out of school at three we decide to be there when the door opens at four.
“We can’t do this next year,” I say as we’re seated at a booth in the front dining room. “We’ll be living in different cities.”
“Sadie and I won’t,” Em says. “Remember? We’ll be in the same city, just different schools. We can get pizza on our first Friday.”
“Cheap and greasy delicious New York pizza!” Sadie closes her eyes as if just the thought is too beautiful for her.
I’ve lived in the same house my whole life, and Sadie has lived in the same house her whole life, and those houses are only a ten-minute drive apart. I’m not sure what life will be like with her in Manhattan and me in Rhode Island. I’m excited about college and I’m excited about my future, but only recently did I start thinking about how all of that means my present has to end. Next year it won’t be the three of us, and I guess that means it won’t really be the three of us ever again after this school year.
“Why do you look depressed, Jules?” Em asks.
“Ugh, I have to work on my face not showing everything,” I say instead of answering. But, I do.
“You have no future in poker,” Em says. “But I would be surprised to hear you were even considering a future in poker.”
“So what’s up with Alex?” Sadie asks. “That’s not why you look depressed, is it?”
“It’s not why I look depressed,” I say. “I know Alex acts like he likes me.”
Today had been another day of that. Alex at my locker, Alex asking questions, Alex grinning at me when the mood didn’t call for anything more than neutral. Alex, Alex, Alex. My whole year was supposed to be about the Crest, the Reception Committee, college applications.
I don’t know what it’s supposed to be about now.
“But?” Em raises an eyebrow.
“Oh, I mean, no, no but. I just mean that I’m aware of it. We’re hanging out tomorrow.”
“‘Hanging out!’” they chorus—even Sadie who’s aware this was a possibility.
“He’s coming with me to Stray Rescue,” I say. “And I’m not sure what after that. Maybe that’s all.”
“Don’t you walk dogs at like six in the morning?” Em asks.
“Eight,” I say. “That’s when they need the most help.”
“He must like you a lot to get up that early just to walk dogs,” Sadie says.
“Eight isn’t that early. And maybe he’s a morning person,” I say. “Maybe he wants to do something good for the world.”
“No one wants to do something good for the world before ten on a Saturday,” Em says. “Except you.”
Darcy and Mom are hanging out in the living room watching TV when I get home. I take it as a sign to talk. Okay, actually, it’s more that I have no idea how to keep any information from my parents, but I like the idea of fate.
“Soooooo,” I say, and the word comes out for much longer than I mean it to. “There’s this new boy in school.”
Mom perks up. “The boy that Sadie thinks likes you?”
Now Darcy’s perked up too. “Sadie thinks a boy likes Jules?”
“Look how red you are,” Mom says.
“Don’t tease her,” Darcy says, but they’re both giggling.
“I didn’t say this the other day, but… he was in Chaos 4 All. If you remember that video.”
“If we remember?” Darcy hums, and I realize it’s “Want 2 B Ur Boy.”
“Don’t do that,” I say. “He’s just like a normal guy now. He doesn’t like to make a big deal about it.”
“So Sadie’s right?” Mom asks in her gentlest voice.
“Yes,” I say, staring down at my feet, and at least this time she doesn’t comment on my face’s redness. She doesn’t say anything at all, and neither does Darcy. I take a deep breath and look up. They’re beaming at each other.
“Your first boyfriend,” Mom says. “I remember my first boyfriend.”
“Me too,” Darcy says, because they actually went to high school together, even though it took them a lot longer to fall in love with each other. “Matt Hale. I remember he wore that AC/DC shirt all the time.”
“I thought that was really sexy,” Mom says, which is disturbing. Not that she went out with guys in high school and college—that much I already knew. But no one should ever have to hear what their parents think is sexy, about anyone, ever. “Meanwhile you were dating half of the girls at St. Elizabeth’s.”
“Half is a strong word,” Darcy says. “And so is dating.”
“Can we change the subject to something less disturbing?” I ask. “Please?”
“Remember that in the music video they had different traffic signs they danced with?” Darcy asks. “I still think about that sometimes when I see yield signs.”
I cover my face with my hands. Unfortunately even when I can’t see them, my parents still exist. “Oh my god.”
“We’ll behave when we meet him,” Darcy says.
“We promise!” Mom says. “When do we get to meet him?”
“I don’t know. And he’s not my boyfriend,” I say. “But we’re hanging out tomorrow. We’re walking dogs together.”
“After that, bring him by,” Mom says. “If you want.”
“No pressure!” Darcy says. “I won’t sing.”
“Are you friends with Matt Hale on Facebook?” Darcy asks Mom, and they start laughing about how he named all his kids after spices (with Basil being the oldest and Saffron the youngest), and I’m free to escape to my room with the dogs.
I know Peanut and Daisy don’t really understand English, but I can’t imagine they’re up for this Matt Hale conversation either.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I pick up Alex the next morning at seven forty-five. Darcy got up and brewed coffee for us, so I filled two travel mugs and brought along two bananas from the bowl on the counter.
At least I hope that was the intent of the coffee, and Mom and Darcy aren’t wondering what happened to it.
“Hey.” He gets into the car and grins at me. “Thanks for picking me up.”
“Thanks for going with me.”
We sip our coffees in silence for a bit as I navigate over to Highland Park. Alex stares out the window, as if he’s logging every tree, every shop, every street sign. This is Alex’s new home, and he must want to know it.
After waving to Tricia once we’re inside Stray Rescue, we head right back to find Santiago in the first row of kennels. He leashes up a bulldog for Alex, while I take a husky mix named Luna.
“You did a great job last week,” Santiago tells Alex. “So you won’t be stuck with me this time. I’ll let your girlfriend supervise you.”
Oh my god, Santiago.
“Great” is all Alex says, though.
And luckily I don’t slam my face into any cages.
Outside I’m desperately rolling through my brain in the attempt to come up with anything to distract from the girlfriend talk.
“How’s the editor gig going?” Alex asks.
“It’s good, I guess. I submitted a list of the freshmen I think should be accepted to Mr. Wheeler, so that was really fun, getting to read all their ideas. I reread my old submission, since I save all my old papers, and you can tell I’ve definitely improved a lot in three years. It’s fun thinking where these freshman might be three years from now, ability-wise.”
Oh my god, Jules. Why do I say so much more than I’m aware a person needs to say?
“Cool,” Alex says anyway as we pause while our dogs pee. “Is it a big deal to you because you want to run a newspaper someday? Uh, like a real newspaper? Not to insult this one, but, y’know. Not a high school one.”
“Not a newspaper,” I say. “Maybe a political campaign? Or an organization? I like working with a bunch of people to get one goal achieved. And right now, the Crest is kind of the best option I have. And it has this whole history; it’s over a hundred years old. I like feeling part of that whole thing.”
“I wish I knew what I wanted to do,” he says. “I used to. Who knows now.”
I’m trying to think of the right thing to say to that when the bulldog turns around and bounds right at Alex. He laughs and leans over to pet it.
“Before,” he says, and pauses. “Before… no one I know would have done something like this if there wasn’t a camera crew nearby to capture it. And you do it twice a week, all the time.”
“A camera crew wouldn’t be very interested in me,” I say.
“You know what I mean,” he says. Suddenly, all his attention is off the bulldog and on me. “You’re not like anyone from that world.”
While walking a dachshund and a black lab, I ask what it was like signing autographs, and he says people mainly wanted selfies, but either way, it was weird.
While walking a pit bull and a yellow lab, he tells me that his last school had a statue of their town’s founder out front, and kids have rubbed the crotch of it so much as a joke that now the crotch is a different color than the rest of it.
And while walking a miniature pinscher and a shepherd mix, I tell him how last year we made a joke issue of the Crest with a photo we found of Mr. Wheeler in college performing improv, and it almost accidentally got sent to the printer the week he went on vacation and the substitute advisor wasn’t paying attention.
Of course after our time is up with Stray Rescue we walk to Donut Friend. Alex dives right into his Bacon 182 (yes, it’s a doughnut with bacon on it—though it’s technically vegan bacon made from coconut) while I let my standard traditional with lemon glaze sit there while I figure out how to ask him to continue this day.
“Um,” I start, and then wish I could start over immediately. Um is such a dorky nervous sound to make with your mouth. “After this do you want to come over? You can meet my dogs. Also my moms. You don’t have to if you don’t want to. Or if you’re busy. It’s not a big deal.”
“I want to meet your dogs and your moms,” he says. “And I’m not busy.”
“Okay,” I say.
“How do you think people figured out bacon’s good on doughnuts?” Alex asks.
“They’re both breakfast foods,” I say. “Maybe some bacon fell on a doughnut.”
He laughs. “Ah, so Jules has an answer for everything.”
“That’s an obvious answer! How do you think bacon got on doughnuts?”
“‘Maybe some bacon fell on a doughnut’?” Alex laughs even harder. “Fell from where?”
“Just another part of the plate. Don’t make fun of me.”
Alex mimes bacon falling sideways onto my doughnut, and I wave his hands away.
“Leave my doughnut out of this,” I say.
He does his eyebrow thing. I try not to be visibly affected.
“I’m just trying to prove your scientific hypothesis.”
“Alex, I never said it fell sideways.”
As we walk back to my car and I drive to my house, I keep thinking of ways I could kiss him. It’s not that I in any way feel qualified to make the first move, but my lips are actually tingling. Even my lips know that maybe it’s time.
Unfortunately I don’t know how to break it to my lips that even when we’re at a long stoplight on York, I can’t lean over and kiss Alex. A force field might as well be around me.
Peanut and Daisy leap all around Alex when we walk inside, and he takes a lot of time to pet each of them, which is impressive. Peanut’s so much more demanding, but Alex moves
back and forth between them evenly.
“Hi,” I hear, and when I look up, Mom and Darcy are both standing right there.
“Hi,” I say. “This is Alex. Alex Powell. Alex, these are my moms. Mom and Darcy.”
He rises to his feet in a split second and shakes their hands. “It’s really nice to meet you both.”
They give me a simultaneous look, like, Good job selecting a boy who is polite to adults. Even though it’s probably not possible, I feel as if Daisy and Peanut are giving me that look too.
“How did you decide which one of you got to be called Mom?” Alex looks back and forth between them. “If that’s okay to ask.”
“Of course it’s okay.” Darcy waves off the other possibility with her whole arm.
“We tried to think of all the mother options,” Mom says. “Mom, Mother, Maman—as if we were French? I don’t know. Right before Jules was born, I think we’d finally settled on Mom and Mama, except that neither one of us wanted to be Mama.”
“We kept thinking, Who’ll want to say mama when they’re an adult?” Darcy says. “We could barely say it to each other, and we were solidly in the throes of new parenthood. So I decided if everyone else in my life who mattered just called me Darcy, why not my daughter? It felt fine.”
“And then I got to be Mom!” Mom says. “Which was a huge relief by then.”
“That’s nice,” Alex says, which from someone else might be a dismissal, but I can tell from the warmth of his voice and how he’s smiling that he really thinks it is nice, as nice as I know that it is.
“Can we take the dogs into the backyard?” I ask. I don’t need permission to go with my own dogs to my own backyard, but I do think they’ll take the hint.
“Of course,” Darcy says. “We bought a new Frisbee, if you’d like to try it out.”
“Yeah,” Alex says with a surge of enthusiasm. So we get the new Frisbee and an old tennis ball, and we head to the backyard. Mom and Darcy have stayed inside, and I try not to just stare at Alex. This must be it, though, the moment things really happen. I might be inexperienced, but I feel how my nerves seem to rise up through my skin in Alex’s direction.