The New Guy (and Other Senior Year Distractions)

by Amy Spalding

  The video seamlessly cuts to Kevin, who was also conspicuously absent from the Crest meeting this week. I flip to a blank page in my notebook and jot down the names of all of last year’s staff members who are missing from this year’s crew. Jesse Walters shows up after Kevin, and then Joramae Reyes. I check them off my list as they appear. They’re all wearing professional attire that looks good on camera—even Jesse, whose normal uniform is a ragged band T-shirt and beyond-faded jeans.

  The camera finally cuts back to Natalie, and I exhale a teensy bit of relief that not every single person on my list has appeared.

  “Last on our program, a new segment from a new student.”

  It’s another perfectly edited cut, and then another face is on the screen.

  Alex.

  “What?” I say, again, aloud, and louder. This time, Sadie turns to me with her eyes wide. Her expression matches my emotions.

  “Shhhh!” Meg says, again.

  “Hi, I’m Alex Powell, and this is”—a logo appears on-screen as he says it—“Alex 4 All.”

  I realize he’s wearing the same shirt as he was the day we met. His first day in school, the second day of the school year. I wonder if TALON meets when the Crest does, because that would have been the same day as well. I think of Alex’s sugar-coated lips as he confided all about his past to me. And I realize that by then he’d already filmed this. He’d told Natalie and company way before he’d told me. At least a full twenty-four hours. Alex knew all about this airing today when I was curled up in my bed sending him messages last night.

  As Alex throws it back to Natalie, Sadie whispers, Sadie-style, “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I say just a little too loudly. It’s for everyone else’s benefit, but it must have sounded believable because Sadie turns away from me, and then I’m just stuck with my own thoughts in my own brain as Natalie says that she’ll see us in a week. The credits roll, and every person I hadn’t yet checked off the list is there in some behind-the-scenes capacity.

  Those people all chose to work with Natalie at the helm, not me.

  “Now that that’s over, let’s try to get some work accomplished today, shall we?” Ms. Cannon’s tone is just annoyed enough for me to briefly feel love toward her. But then she takes roll and moves onto women in ancient Egypt and she sounds just as annoyed, so the love in my heart is gone as quickly as it arrived.

  The sound of everyone’s pens flying across papers jolts me out of whatever state I didn’t know I was in. I know everyone else hasn’t had their entire world splintered into… world shards, but I wish I could yell at them for just going on with their lives. With Egypt.

  I raise my hand, even though it seems like Ms. Cannon is in the middle of something at least fairly important. I’m dealing with something that’s unfairly important.

  “Miss McAllister-Morgan, if this isn’t an emergency, I suggest you hold all your questions until I’m through this section.”

  “This is an emergency,” I say, even though anytime a girl throws around the word emergency, people will assume it’s something to do with your period. “May I please be excused?”

  Ms. Cannon sighs loudly but dismisses me. I grab all my things and run out the door, down the hall, and up the stairs to Mr. Wheeler’s room. He’s in the midst of what looks like freshman English—everyone’s super young and staring at him like all his words are important.

  “Hi, Jules,” he says. “This is a surprise. Is everything all right?”

  “No. Obviously everything isn’t all right,” I say, and his eyes go huge and round behind his glasses. “TALON?”

  “Oh, that.” He chuckles. “Pretty cool, huh?”

  “NO,” I say, again.

  “Jules.” He sighs and gestures to the hallway. We walk out of the classroom, and he shuts the door behind him. I want to say he probably shouldn’t trust a whole class of freshmen in an enclosed room, but that is far from my priority right now.

  “They scooped us!” I say. “Every single thing we’d cover in the paper next week, they’ve already done it.”

  “Not everything,” he says. “We can go much more in depth in an issue of the Crest than they can in ten minutes once a week.”

  “No one will read us now,” I say. “They’re destroying a hundred-and-four-year-old tradition.”

  “Do you have a class right now?” he asks.

  “Of course I have a class right now. This is much more important.”

  “Jules, get back to your class. We can talk later.”

  “Mr. Wheeler—”

  “I’ll see you in fourth period, Jules,” he says, and walks back into the classroom, shutting the door behind him. I stare at the closed door with my mouth open for probably much longer than is even borderline acceptable, and turn around to head back to women’s history. But if I couldn’t sit still in there before talking to Mr. Wheeler, how can I manage now? I thought of all people, someone with old-man sweaters and an antique wristwatch would care about legacy and tradition. I was never exactly thrilled that it felt like Mr. Wheeler and I might have a lot of things in common, but it’s actually worse to realize that, except our semi-shared backyard, we don’t.

  I’ve never skipped a class before. But I walk to the library and find out that no one even challenges me as I slip in and take a seat at one of the private-study desks. Could I have been a truant this whole time? I guess real truants don’t hang out at the school library. Probably also they don’t refer to themselves as truants.

  Maybe I was just so excited about all the good stuff with Alex that I missed this. I get out my phone and scroll through all my texts. For someone I’ve only known for less than two weeks, there are a lot to go back through. But Alex didn’t mention TALON, Natalie, or extracurriculars at all.

  I wonder if I’m naïve to think once someone’s tongue has been inside your mouth, they owe you at least that much information? Yes, all right, fine, that much I know is naïve. On TV, people sleep with each other just to get secrets or betray someone else or, even, just because they want to. Kissing is nothing.

  Sadie’s at my locker when I arrive after first period. “Are you okay? For real?”

  “For real, no.”

  She gives me a hug and kisses my cheek. In the flash of that moment she’s just like her mom, but since I don’t want to turn a sweet moment into what Sadie might interpret as a mean one, I keep that to myself.

  “He lied to me, Sadie.”

  “Okay, he didn’t tell you about their stupid show, big deal.” But even as she says it, I can tell from her eyes that she knows as well as I do that it is a big deal. “Aaaand here he comes right now.”

  “Noooo.” I jam my women’s history books into my locker and attempt to extract my Latin textbook. “Why can’t I do this faster?”

  “Hey,” Alex says. “What did you think?”

  “She’s in a hurry,” Sadie says in a chilly voice. “Come on, Jules.”

  I yank the book as hard as I can, and whatever it was caught on gives way and the book shoots across the hallway.

  “Ow!” someone yells, and I see that it was Justin making his way over to Sadie.

  “I’m so sorry,” I tell him as he brings my book back to me.

  “I didn’t know Latin was so dangerous,” Alex says.

  Sadie shoots him a warning look before tending to Justin’s injury. I tuck the book under my arm and take off down the hallway.

  “Jules, wait up.” Alex strides up next to me. “What’s going on?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Uh, I seriously have no idea.”

  I reach the doorway of Latin and decide to walk right in. I’m not expecting Alex to follow me. Everyone already seated stares at him like a celebrity. Okay, technically, I guess he kind of is a celebrity.

  “Can you just talk to me?” he asks. “I’m really confused.”

  “I’m in class,” I say. “And I don’t want to talk to you.”

  He sighs but doesn’t move
for a few moments. “Fine.”

  And then he’s gone.

  In fourth period, I assume that even with Mr. Wheeler’s complete lack of understanding of the gravity of the TALON situation, the rest of the staff will be in my corner.

  And it’s true that everyone is talking about TALON.

  “Natalie looked really pretty,” one sophomore says.

  “I think it’s so cool Alex Powell can make fun of himself!” says a junior.

  “The graphics looked crazy professional,” Thatcher says, and then, when I glare at him, “What?”

  “I know that TALON looked very impressive, but we need what we’re doing to still matter,” I say. If I were in a TV show, the music would swell and I’d rise to my feet and deliver a moving monologue about tradition and journalism and our founding staff back in 1912. People would feel so much they’d cry.

  I know better than to try it, though.

  “Hey, guys, what we’re doing still matters,” Mr. Wheeler says. “Maybe print media is dying out, maybe it isn’t. Let’s just keep doing a good job. The Crest is funded through at least this year, so if we’re going out, we’ll go out with a bang.”

  “‘If’?” I realize I’m yelling, again, so I take a deep breath. “Don’t you care that something that’s mattered for so long could just disappear? We’re an endangered species. Think of how much people do to protect the South China tiger.”

  “I have literally never heard of the South China tiger,” Mr. Wheeler says. “But I know you and your family are big animal lovers, Jules. Let’s get moving on the next issue. Has everyone turned in their pieces?”

  The room springs into action, which is a moment that, no matter how many hundreds of times I experience it, feels beautiful and perfect. The motion and buzz give me energy, and I’m sure I can figure out a way to have this for the rest of my life. The Crest is really only my beginning and I know it.

  But that doesn’t mean I want the Crest to go away once I’ve graduated and literally moved on. And I can’t believe that it feels like no one else would even notice.

  At lunch I head straight to our table because I have no appetite. Justin is sitting with his jeans pushed up to his knee, showing off the bruise from the book attack this morning. I guess in case I wanted to feel worse about myself, now I can.

  “I’m really sorry,” I say. Sadie’s been dating Justin since late into last school year, but even though we sit near each other and occasionally go to the same things with Sadie, I don’t really know him. We’re definitely not friends.

  “It’s all good,” he says. “It’s badass, right?”

  “I guess,” I say, though badassery isn’t one of my expert topics.

  “It’s super badass.” Sadie sits down with two trays and slides one over to Justin. If he couldn’t stand in line because of his injury, I’ll feel, somehow, even more horrible, so I’ll just assume she’s being a really, really nice girlfriend today.

  “I was struck down by the Latin language,” Justin says. “What’s Latin for legs?”

  “Crura,” Em and I chorus.

  Sadie gives me a very direct look. “Are you doing okay?”

  I start to say I’m fine, and then I start to say that I’m not, but I have no idea what I actually am. So I just shrug.

  “I don’t think it’s a big deal,” Thatcher says as he takes his lunch out of a perfectly folded brown paper bag. “They did that thing back in the eighties. It failed. Maybe this one will too. Or it won’t. It’s fine.”

  “Don’t be so Zen,” I say, and I guess it comes out rudely because everyone stares wide-eyed at me. Even Thatcher the Zen Master. “I’m sorry.”

  Great. Now I’ve injured one friend’s boyfriend’s leg and another’s boyfriend’s feelings. I am a danger to all boyfriends.

  “Taco Day!” Alex appears with his lunch tray piled high with tacos and sides. I don’t like to stereotype by gender, but boys eat so much. “You guys didn’t even spoil the surprise.”

  “Every other Friday,” Justin says with a nod, and then he and Alex do a fist bump. Over tacos? When things are going on?

  Boys make no sense.

  “Why are you here?” I ask.

  “Yeah, Alex,” Sadie says. “Why are you here?”

  “I, uhhh, I sit here?” He slides right into a chair and starts plowing into a taco. Maybe he doesn’t know this is serious business or maybe he’s a jerk. Right now it’s hard to tell.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I drive to Sadie’s after my short top-level-staff-only meeting for the Crest after school. It’s meant to be when we lock down final articles and layout, but if the meetings have run smoothly all week during fourth period, there’s rarely a lot left to accomplish after school on Fridays.

  It should have felt like sending the paper off to the printer so quickly was a victory. But thanks to TALON, it just feels like one more sign what we’re doing doesn’t even matter.

  Sadie and I already had plans, which were to consist roughly of ordering huge amounts of food, probably rewatching all the Chaos 4 All videos, and definitely talking about all the things that just a week ago I never expected to experience my senior year of high school.

  But while we’re browsing online menus we’re definitely not talking about attractive eyebrows or parked-car kissing or how your brain just knows how to churn out love-type feelings when you were pretty sure you wouldn’t have to worry about it for years.

  “He can’t think things are actually fine, right?” I ask. “He was acting like he wanted me to think he thought that. But he couldn’t actually think that. Could he?”

  “Boys can think a lot of things,” Sadie says. “But Alex seems very sincere. I seriously think he has no clue. So I’m leaning toward Thai, but I could do sushi.”

  “You know I hate the idea of delivery sushi,” I say. “Thai is fine, as long as we can compromise on spice level.”

  “Mild,” she says immediately.

  “For the millionth time, mild is not a compromise! It starts out mild.”

  “No,” Sadie says, gesturing to her iPad screen, “it starts out with NO SPICES AT ALL. And you know it’s not my fault! It’s genetics.”

  I’ve never actually told Sadie that I hate talking about genetics, so I don’t hold it against her. I even let her select mild for the seasoning in half the dishes we order. My own genetics feel like such a wild card, though. I’m more of a project than a person, really. Darcy’s egg, Mom’s uterus, and some stranger’s… stuff. I can barely think about Mom’s uterus, so hopefully it’s all right to think of the rest as just stuff. Mom and Darcy swear that his profile was basically the man version of Mom (Italian and Irish ancestry, shorter than average, above-average intelligence, lover of dogs and the New Yorker—I still don’t believe that his profile actually was specific enough to list the New Yorker, but I know it’s all part of the fairy tale they tell of my beginning, so I let it slide). I don’t want to meet the provider of the stuff, but I do wonder about him sometimes. It seems to me like normal well-adjusted guys have better things to do with their stuff.

  “Can you tell Justin not to be friends with Alex?” I ask, though the second it’s out of my mouth I can hear how crazy that sounds.

  “No,” she says. “What if Justin told me not to be friends with someone? You’d kick his ass. Or at least throw another book at his legs.”

  “Are you guys going to be in here all night?” Sadie’s little brother, Jon, walks into the room carrying a tall stack of Blurays. He’s only fourteen, but he’s been obsessed with kung fu and other martial arts movies for years now.

  “Yes,” Sadie says. “Watch those in your room.”

  “My screen is too small!” he says.

  “That sounds like a personal problem,” she says.

  I’m so glad I’m an only child.

  By the time our food shows up, we’ve struck an agreement with Jon that he can have the family room until ten. Sadie and I arrange the food on the kitchen table. When we were younger
, we read an article online about how to properly order a Thai meal. So even though it’s just the two of us, we have tom kha soup, chicken satay, a seafood salad, two different curries, pad see ew, a mountain of sticky rice, and another mountain of mango and coconut milk with more sticky rice.

  “Remember how much food we ordered when I broke up with Milo last year?” Sadie asks. “And we weren’t even trying to respect a cuisine’s traditions.”

  “I’m not sure I can say I broke up with Alex. It’s not like we were in an official relationship,” I say.

  “It counts,” she says.

  “I thought he liked me,” I say.

  “I think he did like you,” Sadie says. “I mean, DOES like you. He’s just being stupid about TALON, as if it wouldn’t mean anything to you.”

  “It’s not just that,” I say. “It’s that he acted like we had a secret when it wasn’t a secret. He told me about being in Chaos 4 All like it was just between us. Obviously I knew people knew, but like gossip. Not from him. Now it’s the whole reference for his stupid video column? And if he actually thought TALON wasn’t a big deal, why did he hide it from me?”

  “I’m sorry, Jules,” she says.

  “And he says he’s done, you know, being famous and being in the spotlight. If that was true, why would he…” I hope Sadie thinks I’m crying from the green curry sauce and not my feelings. “What if he was just telling me what he thought I wanted to hear? What if I don’t even know him?”

  “I’m sorry,” she says again, and she holds my hand, but she doesn’t tell me I’m wrong.

  “This feels awful,” I say. “I was right to put off boys. They’re more stress than I need.”

  “Boys aren’t some monolithic stress machine,” she says. “Justin causes me very little stress. He sends me cute messages, he brings me snacks sometimes, and he’s really good at kissing and everything else. I’m seriously sorry this whole Alex thing went down the way it did, but you can’t blame boys.”