The New Guy (and Other Senior Year Distractions)

by Amy Spalding

  I know Sadie’s right, but I decide to mull it over instead of just agreeing with her.

  The next morning, I stop off at Swork for coffee before driving to Stray Rescue. After saying hi to Tricia, I make my way down the row of kennels. But as I’m about to wave to Santiago, the person next to him turns around.

  “What are you doing here?” My voice comes out all pinched and squeaky, and the dogs bark a chorus of excitement or maybe it’s annoyance.

  Alex shrugs, and a grin spreads across his face like it’s time-released. “The same as you? Walking dogs?”

  “But we’re—we’re not—you’re—TALON—”

  “I like doing this, Jules,” he says, and I hate how my name sounds in his voice. It rings with an intimacy we’re never, ever going to have now. “And Santiago said how they’re never too overrun with volunteers, and I didn’t have plans today, so…”

  “Fine,” I say. “Be a good person to dogs. I don’t care. Dogs have no real dreams to destroy.”

  He kind of laughs and shakes his head. “Jules…”

  “Here you go, Alex,” Santiago says, bringing a Doberman mix over. “He’s big but gentle, so I know you’ll be able to handle him on your own.”

  I quickly leash up the nearest dog and glance at her name (Hildy) before rushing outside. Unfortunately Alex is right with me.

  “Look,” he says, “I wasn’t trying to… destroy your dreams. I’m not even sure how I am.”

  “I literally don’t understand how you could think anything that happened is okay,” I say, trying to hold back Hildy, who’s pulling at her leash to sniff Alex’s Doberman.

  “Could we just talk?” he asks. “Please?”

  “I don’t know what we could talk about. You made me feel like the stupidest girl on the planet, and you’re part of something that’s going to ruin the only thing I looked forward to for my senior year.” I can hear how hyperbolic my statements are turning, but Alex should know how his actions affect others. Affect me.

  “I thought you’d like it,” he says. “You like extracurriculars.”

  “Not ones that are out to destroy me.”

  “Fine,” he says. “I’ll leave you alone.”

  “Good!”

  “Great!”

  We walk the same path, though, around the same blocks. When Alex’s dog stops to poop, so does Hildy. Alex and I have to use the same trash can to throw away the poop bags. Santiago keeps leashing dogs for Alex as quickly as I can leash my own. We’re locked in this constant pattern, leashing and walking and throwing away poop. Just a few days ago it all would have seemed incredibly romantic.

  Now it’s a battle.

  The Crest comes out on Mondays. Once we’re through this week and the chosen freshman have officially joined staff, they’ll be the ones to spend their Monday lunches handing out papers, so the sophomores are handling for now. It’s fair because during fourth period we get to order giant pizzas from Big Mama’s & Papa’s, so no one’s going hungry, and the whole staff is camping out in Mr. Wheeler’s room. This is basically the only time all week when we don’t have to panic about next week’s issue. We’ll enjoy these fleeting moments.

  (I actually enjoy the stressful moments too, but I’m trying to be relatable to the rest of the staff, who don’t seem to crave deadlines and panic the way I do.)

  Thatcher is showing me his portfolio-in-progress for his art school applications when the sophomores start filing in with leftover papers. Normally, the copies get stacked on the corner of Mr. Wheeler’s desk. We’ve had it down to a science for years; print the right number of copies, and there’s no fear of having too many wasted afterward.

  But I immediately notice that the stacks look too tall for Mr. Wheeler’s desk. I abandon Thatcher as well as my garlic-and-basil pizza to direct them to the table where the papers had been dropped off this morning.

  The leftover newspapers cover the table. In fact, if you didn’t look carefully, it would be easy to believe that we were exactly where we started this morning.

  “Jules was right,” Carlos says, surveying the piles. “It seems like no one cares.”

  “No one cares!” Kari Ellison, a sophomore, says. “People were like, ‘I don’t care!’”

  The whole staff begins drifting to the back of the room to survey this tangible proof of Eagle Vista Academy’s disinterest.

  “See?” I say. “A tradition is dying.”

  “We’ll print fewer copies next week,” Mr. Wheeler says between chomps of pizza. There’s grease, somehow, on his forehead. Come on, Mr. Wheeler. If you can’t inspire us, can’t you at least eat pizza correctly? “It won’t look so depressing then, guys.”

  “But it won’t change the fact that it is depressing,” I say. “Is TALON really that great?”

  Everyone murmurs embarrassed-sounding affirmatives.

  “Okay, fine,” I contend, “but does it have to replace us? Can’t we do something?”

  “Yeah,” says Marisa Johnston, a junior I’m fairly certain already has her eye on the editor position for next year. “Can’t we fight back?”

  “I guess I didn’t care about tradition,” Thatcher says. “Sorry, Jules. But I do care about not letting TALON win. This means—”

  “Can I say it?” I interrupt. I have always wanted a moment like this, and it’s here! Maybe TALON has actually given me a gift. I get to be the underdog, and everyone knows that the underdog is the one to root for. I’ve been gearing up my whole life to be the underdog.

  Thatcher grins at me. “Go for it. You’ve earned it.”

  “This means war.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  We’d rather get Kevin or Joramae back, but we go for Amanda Lynde first. On-camera talent probably couldn’t give up the allure of the audience. Not yet, at least. Amanda is just listed as Crew. It doesn’t sound alluring to any of us.

  “How’s TALON?” I ask, walking up to her while she’s at her locker.

  “Oh, it’s okay,” she says, glancing back at me. “Congrats on getting editor; that’s cool.”

  Carlos appears on her right side. “It’ll look really good to colleges that you’re doing stuff on VidLook,” he says, somehow infusing each subsequent word with more and more sarcasm.

  “Well, it’s a whole show,” Amanda says. “It’s not just VidLook. Plus we’ll be building up a large following. I’ll explain it on my applications.”

  Thatcher walks up on her left side. He doesn’t do it with quite the ninja panache Carlos managed, but it’s still effective. “We still need an extracurriculars editor,” he says. “That sounds better than crew, you have to admit.”

  “We can give you more to do on the paper,” I say. “With a better title.”

  “Natalie’ll be mad,” she says.

  I can’t help it. “Who cares about Natalie!”

  Thatcher and Carlos glare at me.

  “What Jules means,” Thatcher says, “is that this is about you, not Natalie, and not us. Since you’ll have a better title and more to do, you can look better to Stanford.”

  Amanda closes her eyes for just a moment at the mention of Stanford.

  “Who knows what’ll happen if you stay with TALON,” Carlos says.

  “Are you guys gonna beat me up?” Amanda asks in a soft voice.

  “No!” the three of us shout simultaneously.

  “We want what’s best for you,” I say. I sound like Darcy, if Darcy wasn’t a sincere person.

  “I’ll think about it,” she says.

  We start to disperse.

  “Wait!” Amanda says. “My little sister says she was rejected.”

  “We don’t ‘reject’ people,” I say. “It’s just that we can’t choose every single freshman who submits.”

  “It would be a nice bonding experience for us,” she says.

  “Before you go away to Stanford,” Thatcher says.

  “Yes, exactly.”

  I go through the freshman submissions in my head, though I can’t specif
ically remember another Lynde. It’s dangerous just agreeing to this, because while it’s true that we didn’t technically reject everyone, there were some pretty bad pieces in there. What if the other Lynde sister wrote the “investigative” “report” on the most popular parking spaces, or the op-ed about buying a real live eagle to keep on school grounds? And I’m not even sure if we can let in a freshman after the fact. She’d still have to change her schedule around, and that would require Mr. Wheeler’s sign-off. We’re probably already pushing it with Amanda.

  “She’s in,” Carlos says. “We’ll take care of everything.”

  I hold out my hand because it feels like we’re all supposed to shake, but no one else does, so I pretend I was just about to push my hair behind my ears in an unnecessarily complicated fashion.

  As a new student at Eagle Vista Academy, I’m looking forward to sharing in school spirit. And what could bring the student body together as well as something big, bold, and exciting?

  Tessa Lynde didn’t just submit an essay about a real live eagle; she did so in a dull way. And therefore, that night it takes me longer to write up a pitch on why we must add Tessa to our team than it does to do any of my individual homework assignments. When I spot Mr. Wheeler outside, I take the dogs into the backyard and pretend to casually notice him. Obviously, I could have talked to him today at our weekly after-school meeting, but I don’t want this to seem calculated.

  “Hi, Mr. Wheeler,” I say in the tone I normally reserve for liaison duty. “Are you having a good night?”

  “Hi, Jules, and I guess it’s all right.” He eyes Peanut, who’s circling Daisy in rapid circles. “That guy’s wound up, huh.”

  “Always. So I thought, if you had a moment, we could discuss a couple of Crest-related items.”

  “Jules…” Mr. Wheeler shrugs. “I’m not sure if we should mix school business and personal time.”

  Mr. Wheeler has sat at my kitchen table on multiple occasions discussing his love life. With my parents.

  He’s not getting out of this so easily.

  “As you know, TALON took a huge bite out of our readership yesterday,” I say as if he’d agreed to this talk. “We’re looking for inventive ways to make up for that loss.”

  “Jules, I was in the room when you declared war,” he says.

  “We talked to Amanda Lynde, and she’d love to come back,” I say. “Since we haven’t officially filled the extracurriculars editor position yet—”

  “I thought we discussed Jordan—”

  “And because Amanda’s absence is so profoundly felt”—I place a hand over my heart—“we think it’s a great idea.”

  “Sure,” Mr. Wheeler says with far less investment than I’d like from him. “Have her see me before first period tomorrow morning and I’ll get her the paperwork to switch into our class period.”

  “Wonderful. And talking to Amanda jogged my memory, since one of the freshmen I very nearly recommended for the staff has the same last name. And for the sake of sisterly solidarity, I thought—especially with our numbers down this year—we could reconsider Tessa Lynde as well.”

  “What piece did Tessa submit?” he asks.

  “The incredibly inventive piece about increasing school spirit,” I say, because I am not speaking the words real, live, or eagle.

  Mr. Wheeler sighs, and his shoulders seem to lurch downward in the faded Death Cab for Cutie T-shirt he’s wearing. He turns to head back inside his little guest cottage. “Fine, Jules. Have her see me tomorrow morning too.”

  “Yes,” I say to myself. “Victory will be mine.”

  “Jules,” Mr. Wheeler says. “I can hear you.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Sadie’s at my locker the next morning. It’s normal, but I feel like I’ve barely seen her this week so far. The Crest has monopolized my free time, which I’d expected this year anyway, though of course not in this way.

  “I hate to tell you this,” she says seriously, and I nearly drop my books instead of transferring them successfully from my backpack to my locker. Sadie sounds overdramatic all the time, sure, but serious?

  “What’s going on?”

  “Oh my god, your face.” She laughs and offers me a piece of the scone she’s eating. I suppose people don’t eat scones during emergencies. “I was just going to say that I think the boys are all, like, officially best friends or bros or whatever now.”

  “Bros?” I ask.

  “I know you wish he’d disappear from the school or at least our lunch table, but…” Sadie shoves more of the scone at me. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m fine,” I say after another bite of scone. “I’ll destroy him.”

  “Uh, whoa,” Em says, walking up to us. “Everything okay over here?”

  I’m about to say yes, but Alex walks by. When someone breaks your heart, something about that person physically should be required to change. He shouldn’t get to keep his wavy brown hair or his soulful brown eyes and most definitely not his eyebrows that have their very own seduction powers. He shouldn’t look like a boy I thought I could fall in love with.

  “Jules,” Sadie says, “eyes on the prize.”

  “What?”

  “His destruction,” she says. “Right?”

  I couldn’t ask for a better friend than Sadie, and I know it.

  “Right,” I say. “But…”

  “Let’s get to class,” Sadie says.

  Em doesn’t look suspicious that Sadie suddenly cares about promptness, but I eye her as she pulls me down the hallway.

  “But what?” she asks, because Sadie can pick up conversations from days ago like no time has passed.

  “But I hate seeing him, and I hate feeling like this, and I wish he wasn’t bros or whatever with half the lunch table. That’s all.”

  “That’s more than enough,” she says. “You’re allowed to still feel crappy about this, you know. When Isaac dumped me, I felt crappy for forever. Wait, is that not helpful?”

  “You’re always helpful,” I say. I know I’m lucky to have Sadie in my life. When the two of us talk, it feels like I require half the words I normally do. Maybe it’s just because we grew up together that I never have to worry about her understanding me, but whatever the reason, I’m glad that this is how it is.

  Also, of course, Sadie understands boys. And I figured that would come in handy someday in the future, but now that the future is here, it’s even more of a relief than I would have guessed.

  “We can do something after school,” she says as we walk into women’s history. “If you want to hang out and talk.” If Sadie minds that she’s usually the one pushing plans on me and rarely the other way around, it never shows. She’s the one who’s figured out how to combine achieving goals and also having fun, and we both know it.

  “I have Stray Rescue,” I say. “And, not that I would have skipped it before, but I really can’t now, with Alex volunteering on my schedule.”

  “And Stray Rescue is your turf!”

  “Exactly,” I say. “I can’t be about talk; I have to be about action.”

  “Okay, so what about after Stray Rescue?” Sadie asks. “Come over! Mom’s cooking… well, Mom’s cooking something. You know how she gets when she’s between jobs. You have no idea how many scones are at our house right now.”

  I’d rather go home and make more lists about how to destroy TALON, but it feels right to say yes to Sadie. Also I should probably complete the tasks on one of the lists before I compose any more of them, and I can’t move too quickly or I’ll make Mr. Wheeler suspicious. More suspicious? I have never thought of him as particularly savvy, but this is all uncharted territory.

  When I get to Stray Rescue that afternoon, I’m prepared to see Alex. I just have to be. There’s no other option but quitting—and I would never quit. And, also, I’m getting used to it. Besides our classes together, which until recently felt like a wish granted by fate, we share a way-too-crowded lunch table. I don’t know why Alex has stuck around, con
sidering that we’re over. Oh my god, is it some kind of “bros before hos” thing? Real live boys don’t actually say things like that… right?

  “Hi, Jules,” Tricia greets me as I walk inside Stray Rescue. “Your boyfriend brought quite a crowd today, huh?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I say, and I wish I could reach into the air and pull back my words, or at the least my snappy tone. “Sorry, it’s just that… he’s not.”

  Tricia’s expression softens. “I’m sorry, Jules.”

  I’m more embarrassed that Tricia can see my heartbreak than curious about her mention of Alex’s crowd of people. But once I make my way back, there they are. There’s a sophomore I’ve seen around but don’t know, Arvin Mercado is manning a video camera, and Natalie’s standing nearby making notes on a clipboard.

  “Hello, Julia,” Natalie says without any emotion. This normally wouldn’t send up any red flags, but this whole scene is a red flag.

  “Hello, TALON,” I say.

  “Hey, Jules.” Santiago pops up behind all the people and equipment. “Pretty cool that we’re going to be on your school’s TV show.”

  “Let me just get a dog and go,” I say.

  “FYI,” Natalie says, pronouncing each letter in a perfectly clipped newscaster manner, “I’m not stupid, Julia. I know Amanda’s sudden defection to the Crest was your doing.”

  “Defection?” I roll my eyes. “Amanda has been a member of the Crest for three years. She’s a member of the Crest still. She’s not the one I’d call a defector.”

  The sophomore I don’t know tentatively points the camera toward me. “Should we get her on film?”

  “Definitely not,” Natalie says. “Julia isn’t a part of this story.”

  I stare at Alex, who’s standing silently next to Santiago, almost as if someone hit a pause button on him. He must be used to waiting for a record button to be pressed before activating human behavior.

  “I wouldn’t know about this place if not for Jules,” Alex says, back in motion. “She should get to be on camera.”