At Face Value (3 page)

From this, you’d think Eddie Roxanninoff had a lock on the position of class president. And you’d think he was, without a doubt, the most popular and well-respected guy in the school. And he nearly is. But what makes him even more appealing (at least in my eyes) is that he’s not. If there was ever a class popularity ranking (like what they have for academics), Eddie Roxanninoff would be in the top five, but not number one or two. (You could even have a PGPA. Suffice to say, my popularity grade point average would suck big-time. Um, 1.8 anyone?)

Basically, Eddie’s just too nice to be the most popular. He’s too much the guy who stops Kyle Brickman from shoving Andy Grinks into his locker just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Eddie’s the guy who organizes trash pick-up day at the local parks and playgrounds, and makes it seem cool and fun with water balloon fights and live bands. And Eddie is the one who, when no one asked Emily Kimberly to dance at the all-school formal last winter, walked over to her and led her to the floor for the entire length of “Stairway to Heaven.” He’s that guy.

And the fact that he’s tall (six one and a half), in incredible shape (as in plays soccer, skis, and was recruited by Oxford University in England for rowing but is not sure he’s going), and one of the best-looking guys on the planet doesn’t hurt, either.

Except it does hurt. A little. Okay, a lot. In that way when you really, really want something so much your whole body knows it. Or when you desire something enough that imagining having it almost makes it worse—like a reminder that you don’t have it. In my case, thinking about having Eddie Roxanninoff—dating him, kissing him, having him fall in love with me—is so distant, so impossible, such a secret that gnaws at me, that watching him up there, all six foot one and a half inches of him, makes me smile and makes me want to cry, too.

In the safety of the dark auditorium, I look at the profiles of other people, the curve or flatness of their faces, their mouths open or closed while they watch Eddie give his speech. I stare at their noses—their plain, petite, crooked, rhinoplastied, average, bumpy noses—and know that, with the lights out, I can almost blend in.

“Y
OU’RE IN THE WRONG
spot,” Mrs. Talbot says. She nearly pinches my shoulder as she makes me move from one side of the lunch table to the other, so that I’m no longer across from Eddie Roxanninoff but next to him. The Weston High PTA, after reading about social status and student self-esteem, took it upon themselves to “restructure typical teenage social situations.” Basically, this means that at lunch and study hall, you can’t sit with your friends. Supposedly, this discourages cliques and hazing, but in reality all it does is stall it.

Mrs. Talbot, study-hall hound and retro-fied Home Ec teacher, is convinced that the girls at Weston High are too brainy for our own good. She will actually say things in class that suggest it’s more important for us to be able to calculate how to accurately measure for wallpaper (get the square footage of the room; for every door in the room subtract twenty-one square feet, for every window subtract fifteen square feet from the total square footage above) or make meatloaf (pound some ground meat into a pan and slosh ketchup on it) than it is to have an opinion or be able to debate.

And it’s not like I’d win the championship for gray matter, but as far as grades are concerned—well, it’s not a problem. But I’d be the first to tell you that it’s easier to be good at something you can control, like calculus or memorizing historical facts. It’s difficult to ace a major crush—nearly impossible (for me, anyway) to get an A in love.

So, I have Eddie on my left and Lizzie Driscoll to my right, some underclassman across from me, and various other students around me who span the social strata. The PTA’s plan for mingling does work—to a point. It breaks up cliques, but it’s not like everyone is suddenly enthralled and talking across the social barriers. Lizzie Driscoll would rather sit in silence, caressing her switched-off cell, than deign to talk to me. The only time she ever spoke to me was last year in drama class when she asked me if my nose had its own zip code. I then proceeded to inform her—and the rest of the class—that if my nose did have its own zip code, she wouldn’t be able to add all the numbers up; the math would be just too tricky for her. Score another few points for me. Not that anyone’s keeping count.

Eddie finishes his turkey sandwich and takes a swig from his water bottle. I polish my apple absent-mindedly on my shirt and try not to stare at Eddie’s hands. His hands are—or look—soft but strong.

“What’s on your mind, Cyrie? Figuring out how to cure world hunger?” Eddie asks. Then he notices my eyes glued to his hands (not literally—that would hurt). He flips his hands over for my inspection. “Still calloused.” I watch as he points. “I painted houses all summer. You knew that, right? Plus rowing …” I want to comment, to say that I painted my room this summer, that I know how tiring painting is. I want to ask him about his summer job, ask him if he thinks he’ll row at Oxford next year, thousands of miles away—but then I get distracted by the thought of him being so far away, and clam up.

“Sorry you didn’t win class president,” I say, and then wish I hadn’t—he’s probably had a ton of people say the same thing to him. “I’m sure you would’ve been great.”

“Thanks,” Eddie says and leans back in his seat. “It’s no big deal.” Then he looks at me for a few seconds without looking away. Usually when people look at me they get transfixed by my nose, and then they either refuse to look at me at all or can’t stop staring at it. But Eddie looks at my eyes. “You look preoccupied, Cyrie. And I doubt it’s about my lack of presidential status, crushing though it is.”

I nod at him and bite my lip. “I guess I am kind of preoccupied,” I say. Lately, it’s become harder and harder to deny my feelings for Eddie. It’s one thing to have a crush on someone you don’t know, or admire someone from a distance, but it’s entirely different when you spend a portion of every day with this person.

“Well, let me know if you want to talk about it—whatever the preoccupation thing is, I mean.” Eddie leans in just close enough to make me lose my breath, close enough that I can smell his Tom’s of Maine cinnamint toothpaste. Not that I know this from, say, brushing my teeth near him. I wish. Or maybe, I don’t wish—I mean, how romantic could it be to scrub and floss
a deux
? I only know these informational tidbits because the
Weston Word
does a weekly poll.

When our town got hit with a four-day-long blizzard last year and snow totals reached fifty-two inches (highlights included sledding from the low roof over the paper offices into the snow bank below), we had to dip into our lame questions. So I called around to random students and asked what their preferred brand of toothpaste was. Some students hung up on me, others took the question seriously, others—like Wendy Von Schmedler and her sidekick Jill—were just so bored that they actually took the time to debate the various merits of Crest versus Colgate and so on. Of course, since I was in charge of the ridiculous poll to begin with, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to call one more person. Sad but true, I know Eddie’s number by heart. Not because I’m a stalker (though on my more pathetic days I see why this could appeal), but because I have the excruciating advantage (or disadvantage, depending on how you see it) of working with Eddie—love of my life so far—in not just science lab, but at the paper, too.

So that’s how, when he leans in and not-quite-whispers something to me, I can recognize the cinnamon scent on his breath. In a crowded lunchroom filled with scents of salami, tuna-noodle casserole, and tomato soup, all I can smell is Eddie’s toothpaste.

“Hello? Tune in, Tokyo?” Eddie asks with his eyebrows raised. “You okay, Chief?”

“Yeah, I’m fine—good. Just tired, I guess.” When all else fails, you can always blame fatigue. Fatigue makes a damn good cover-up for
I’m secretly in love with you.

Eddie snaps a fake photo of me, miming a close-up. “Girl Wakes Up in Puddle of Own Drool …”

“Story to follow …” I add. It’s a game we play where one of us finds a totally un-newsworthy scene and we take turns making up the headline. We invented it during a colossally long science presentation on single celled organisms. The headline game has gotten us through many a boring paper meeting, but before I have the chance—

“Oh my God! I have to tell you something. Rox …” Lizzie Driscoll, senior class flirt, plops herself down on Eddie’s lap, promptly distracting him with her perky boobs and nearly flawless face, and thus ending our brief interaction. I stand up and start to clear my tray.

Eddie is in the middle of being whispered to, but looks up from the face-to-face and nods to me. “You taking off?”

“I have to go—that story on the new path to the gym is due.” Could I sound cooler? It’s like I am actually missing the gene for smooth. But I’m not. I’m only missing it around him. He’s wit kryptonite for me.

The final bell rings, signaling that yet another day of senior year has slid by. I’d like to head to Any Time Now, to have a misto made with organic coffee and steamed 2 percent milk, to read, snack, and people-watch—but I can’t. I head instead to my second home, otherwise known as the
Weston Word
headquarters on the far side of campus, across from the gym. The office is one long rectangle broken into sections: editorial, photo, layout, and The Heap.

At the back of the rectangular room, “The Heap” is the affectionate name given long ago to the oversized table, four filing cabinets, and floor-to-ceiling bookcase, all crammed tightly with old issues of the newspaper, empty coffee mugs, pictures from 1990-something, half-used reams of paper, and other odds and ends. It’s impossible to sit down without sitting on a stack of books, or shifting a bunch of papers to the floor. It’s these ever-changing towers—of newspapers and yearbooks and clusters of pencils—that make The Heap a sort of moveable work of art.

Or just a pig sty. It depends on how you see it. To me, it feels homey—familiar and messy and newspaperish—like I’m the editor of a national paper or something.

“So.” Mr. Reynolds, the faculty advisor for the
Word,
leans against one of the filing cabinets and calls us to order. Not like we’re ever that orderly. The drawers are so full they won’t close all the way, and he rests his arms on one, making his appearance even more casual than it usually is. “As you know, this year we have a new task. We’ve been nominated—and by ‘nominated,’ I mean I fought tooth and nail—to run the Annual Fall Auction for our school scholarship fund.”

Leyla comes in late, and sits near me on the cluttered workbench. She looks flushed and excited, but maybe it’s just the fall air. She takes a place next to Linus, my paper buddy. Linus has been at the
Word
as long as I have, but has never climbed the ranks. He’s not a senior staff writer, just a plain old staff writer. He’s a good writer and a capable student, well-rounded, a kind of under-the-radar sort of person. Cute, but not obvious, with straight dark hair, a slim build, and a smile he rarely reveals entirely. When he does reveal it, it totally brightens the room.

Linus and I get along well. As if he knows I’m thinking about him, he gives me a hello while Mr. Reynolds starts talking again, spelling out “Cyrie” in sign language. The
Y
reminds me of how people hold their hand to pretend to talk on the phone.

Linus’ dad is deaf, and when we were freshmen, Linus spent the better part of a summer teaching me a variety of signs and the whole alphabet. Every once in a while, we sign something basic like
I’m hungry
or
this is boring
during a class or a paper meeting, but mostly Linus likes to spell stuff out to me so I can check a story idea before he asks Mr. Reynolds if he can cover it. “Basically,” I said to Linus this past summer, when we went canoeing on the Connecticut River, “you use me to cover your ass. I’m like your silent sounding board.” Linus agreed, shrugged, and kept paddling.

Summer feels far away now, even though August was only a few weeks ago. Time seems to fast-forward after the end of July, and by mid-August it may as well be October.

“Leslie kindly printed up the stat sheets from the last few years of auctions,” Mr. Reynolds is saying. “It’s a tough crowd, and a tough time of year. People are feeling pressured to buy holiday gifts …”

Noticeably absent from our auction meeting is Eddie. Just as I’m about to wonder where he could be, he appears, all apologetic. Mr. Reynolds turns his attention to him. “Rox—nice of you to join us today.”

“Sorry, Mr. Reynolds. I got held up in the library …” Eddie slings his backpack onto the table and looks around for a place to sit. His green eyes crinkle on the sides when he laughs, which he does frequently, even to help avoid getting in trouble. The laugh spreads to others as fast as gossip, and pretty soon we’re all chuckling for no good reason except that Eddie’s just that kind of guy—good-natured and yet just a little aloof, which gives him the perfect blend of openness and mystery.

Mr. Reynolds sighs. “Look, I know you’re a senior—that many of you are seniors—and you’re busy with colleges and your new place in the high school hierarchy, but I expect one hundred percent from you this year.” He looks at me, even though I wasn’t late. “All of you.”

I open my mouth to defend myself, but catch some weird glance between Leyla and Eddie. It’s not the length of the look—just a quick nod—but it plants a thought in my head that I can’t shake off. No matter how close I am with Leyla and or what good buddies I am with Eddie, I’m still just that girl with the big nose—not one of them, that group of good-looking Weston students who walk the halls without feeling the need to defend themselves on a daily basis. It’s true that Eddie is friends with everyone (not so much enmeshed in the group as admired by it), and of course Leyla’s kind of on the outskirts now. But still, I’m the one without access to that Land of the Lookers.

“So, do we have a theme for the auction?” I ask. “Or is it purely a get-the-goods, raise-the-money type of deal?”