Confessions of an Almost-Girlfriend (15 page)

It’s not every day that we hear our mom use the word
hell.
She
sounds like she’s convinced herself she’s right, and that she believes there’s no way we could have made a difference.
But during the silence that follows, I’m pretty sure all three of
us are imagining the alternate universe where Peter and I made
our parents see the light, where we sat them down in the living
room one night before going to bed and said,
We’d rather never
go to college than have Dad go to Iraq just to pay tuition.
It’s the universe in which Dad is still alive, and right now,
we’re all there together.

The Panofka book that belonged to Jamie’s mom has way more
dates and notes in it than I first thought.
I’ve been using my keyboard app to figure out the melodies of
each exercise, and every time I turn the page, I can picture her
a little more clearly. At first, the handwritten notes just remind
her to do certain things as she practices, but halfway through
the book they get more and more personal. On one page, she
writes,
Sometimes singing makes me so tired I could weep.
On another page, it says,
Everything is so loud. It’s almost impossible to
hear.
A note toward the end says,
He’s crying again. Again. Again.
It never ends. Nothing ever ends.

I wonder if Jamie read these, and if he did, how they made
him feel.
I flip back to the beginning of the book and start singing the
first exercise, which is the one I know the best at this point. I
sing it an octave below where it’s written, and it’s hard for me—I
can feel that I don’t have the training or the vocal discipline to
do it right. But it feels good, anyway, like I’m working out, exercising my muscles.
The knock on my door startles me. I close the book and put
it in my desk drawer for some reason. I open the door, and Peter
is standing there. “What were you just singing?”
“A vocal exercise,” I answer, feeling weirdly embarrassed, like
he caught me doing something I’m not supposed to be doing.
“It sounded sort of classical.”
“I guess it is.”
When he doesn’t say anything else, I step back and sit on my
bed. He hovers in my doorway, looking around. He hasn’t set foot
in my room in months. When his eyes land on my battered, torn
school copy of
Julius Caesar,
which I haven’t read yet for Camber’s class, he asks, “You know the definition of a tragic flaw?”
I look at him and say with as much pointed irony as I can possibly manage, “A trait that causes a person’s downfall.”
Peter laughs a little. He’s still pretty skinny with bags under
his eyes and he hasn’t shaved in a while, but he doesn’t look as
bad as he did over the summer.
“Did Camber give you that assignment where you have to
identify your own tragic flaw?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s yours?”
I’ve actually been giving this a lot of thought today. As soon as
we got home from therapy, I took down the photo on the website
because my mother’s explanation of what it means to her made
me feel terrible for putting it up in the first place. I didn’t know
how she felt about that photo, but if I’d thought about it for half
a second, I probably would have figured it out.
I think my tragic flaw might be insensitivity.
The web design program is still open on my laptop on my
desk, and I can see the blank space where the new photo will
go. The borders sort of pulse a little, reminding me that there’s
nothing there yet, and that I have a decision to make. Again.
“I haven’t chosen my tragic flaw yet,” I lie. “What was yours?”
“I can’t remember,” he says, probably also lying. “Can I come
in?”
I’m surprised he wants to. “Okay,” I say, sliding back so I’m
leaning against my headboard.
It’s weird to have Peter in here. He sits at my desk chair, looking at my laptop screen. Without asking, he starts scrolling down
the page, checking out the site. I let it go because I’ve never seen
Peter look at the site before. I don’t know if he ever has. At first,
when I told him I was going to build it, he wanted nothing to
do with it. I was pretty surprised when he agreed to let me use
his credit card to pay for it.
“Do you want to help me pick a new photo?”
When he doesn’t answer, I get off my bed and reach over his
shoulder to click on my photos folder. When a screen full of Dad
pictures comes up, Peter sort of moves my hand out of the way
and clicks back on the website page.
Dad disappears.
I’d be annoyed if I hadn’t realized that Peter can’t look at
photos of our father.
He scrolls down to the bottom of the homepage and sees all
the links to the people who died alongside Dad. The first one is
for Vicky’s son. Peter clicks on it and Travis’s website pops up.
“This is that woman’s son? The woman Mom doesn’t like you
to be friends with?”
“Yeah, Vicky.”
I reach past Peter again and go back to my photos folder. He
looks away from the screen when Dad reappears. I find my Vicky
folder and open the Christmas Eve picture of her.
“She’s from Texas,” I say, as if that explains the antlers on her
head.
Peter makes the picture bigger like he wants to see her face
more closely. As he’s looking at her, he says, “What was Mom
talking about when she said you didn’t come out of your room
for three days after the anniversary?”
There’s a hint of concern in Peter’s voice. Something inside
me gives way just a little.
“It was nothing. I was just reading people’s posts and trying
to write back to everyone. It took a lot of time.”
“What were the posts like?”
I close the photo of Vicky and go back to the website. Peter
starts reading the posts that are still up there from June.
When I think back to the anniversary, it feels like a blur, but
not a bad blur. It took a lot of time to figure out what to write
back to people—I wanted to say the right things—so I was up
super late and then at it again after an hour or two of sleep.
It was like an avalanche, those three days. I’d answer a few
people, and then sleep for a while, and there’d be fifteen new
messages from other people when I woke up. I’d never thought
of Dad as having lots of friends before, and then suddenly, there
were fifty of them, telling me stuff I never knew.
“What’s the post she’s talking about, that she says upset you?”
I scroll around and find the one from the guy who said it made
him happy when Dad said he was going to stay in Iraq another
six months. I point to the screen and Peter reads it in silence.
“He was going to stay?”
“She says he made the decision right before he died, so he
didn’t have time to tell us.”
Peter doesn’t address that one way or the other. He just scrolls
some more, reading more posts.
“You haven’t ever looked at the site? I mean, you paid for it,” I
say. “Which made you as guilty as me, in Mom’s mind.”
“I didn’t know she was going to freak out about the credit
card,” he says. “Did you?”
I shake my head. “I sort of thought she’d like the website.”
“Why is she so worked up about those few days?”
I lean over and rest my elbows on the desk next to him. “She
couldn’t get me to do anything. Like, I wouldn’t leave the computer to shower or go outside.”
“Did you eat?” he asks.
“A little.”
“She hates it when we don’t eat.”
I reach over and tug on the side of his waistband. There’s about
two inches of space between the fabric of his jeans and his skin.
“Yeah, I know, I know,” he says.
I take my laptop off the desk and bring it with me as I crawl
back onto my bed.
“So what are you going to tell Mom tomorrow?” I ask.
Peter leans back in my chair and spins himself in circles. “I
have no idea.”
“What does Amanda think?”
He drops his feet to the floor and stops spinning. “Amanda?
We broke up when she left school.”
“You did?”
Peter scratches at the stubble on his face, looking a little embarrassed. “Her asshole father came to campus, dragged her out
of her room and forced her into his car without even letting her
pack. And then I got a text. Somehow I went from being the love
of her life to ‘totally toxic’ in under an hour.”
I can hear Amanda talking in her fake sweet voice, telling
Peter I’m “cute” and asking him what it’s like to have a little sister while she looks up at him with her big, bloodshot eyes. “She
called
you
toxic? What a loser.”
The left side of Peter’s mouth lifts in a tiny smile as he stares
down at the floor.
“Did you text her back?”
“Her cell phone was disconnected, probably two seconds after
she sent that text.”
“Do you miss her?”
“Sometimes.”
I want to slam Amanda some more, but I don’t. If I’ve learned
one thing from Caron since Peter’s been back it’s that no one is
to blame for Peter’s addictions but Peter. Period.
I don’t know if Peter agrees with that, though.
“You’re going to rehab, right?”
“You think that’s what I should do?” he says. He doesn’t sound
pissed when he asks—he sounds like he really wants to know.
“It’s better than getting kicked out of the house.”
Peter raises his eyebrows like he’s not entirely sure, and he
starts spinning around in the chair again.
I look down at my laptop and bring up the screen with Dad’s
photos. I turn the computer around and click play on the slideshow so that Peter can see it. I don’t need to see it—I’ve got it
memorized.
He doesn’t want to watch—I can tell. But he can’t look away.
I know which photo he’s seeing by the expression on his face—
which changes every few seconds—because I’m pretty sure it’s
the same series of expressions that cross my face when I’m watching the slideshow.
When it’s over, he gets up out of the chair and sits on the edge
of my bed. Then he points to the photo that’s still up on the
screen, the last photo of the slideshow. It’s the first photo Dad
sent back to us when he got to Iraq. He’s smiling at the camera,
with all his laminated IDs hanging around his neck. “That one.”
It wouldn’t have occurred to me to use this one, because it’s
barely Dad to me. But it is who he was—an engineer in Iraq. I
drag it into the box and it appears on the homepage. It’s a good
choice. A much better choice than the photo of the day he left.
Peter looks at the screen and nods.
“You have to go to rehab, Peter. He’d want you to.”
“I’ll go,” he says quietly, still looking at the laptop screen. Then
he says, “You sound good, Rose.”
I’m confused by the change of subject. “What do you mean?”
“Your singing. You sound good. You can’t tell?”
“Um…I don’t really…”
“Well, you do,” he says. “You should keep doing it.” Peter
stands up. As he walks out the door, he smiles at me. And I
recognize my brother for what feels like the first time in a year.

PRINCIPAL CHEN’S OFFICE WOULD BE A SAUNA EVEN
without all the extra people packed into it. The school’s vintage
radiators—which look like they were made during the industrial
revolution—clank and hiss like harbingers of the torture to come.
The principal’s anticipatory Valentine’s Day construction-paper
hearts literally droop off the walls, weighed down by condensation. Everyone is sweating, but no one as much as Matt Hallis.

I reach for my phone to text Tracy and tell her how fun it is
to see Matt so scared before I remember that texting her doesn’t
really complement my plan to ignore her as punishment for lying
to me. She finally admitted last week that Peter had sent her a text
asking her to meet him at the house on Christmas Eve to help
him break the news about getting kicked out of school. I then told
Peter to go get his own friends. He told me I was being stupid.

So no texting Tracy about Matt. Which is fine. I can’t fully delight in his suffering right now anyway—I’m too freaked myself.
Conrad and his mother sit on one side of the principal’s desk.
I wonder if this is the first time Mrs. Deladdo has left her house
since the summer. My mother and I sit directly in front of the
desk, Matt and his dad are on the other side, and Ms. Maso and
Mr. Donnelly are behind me. I turn around and see that Ms. Maso
has a bunch of fliers in her hand that say
Join Union High’s GSA!
Based on the grim faces in this room, I’m fairly certain that
this meeting is about more than Ms. Maso starting a Gay-Straight
Alliance at Union High.
Matt’s dad can’t sit still—he keeps jumping out of his chair
and pulling out his BlackBerry, the top of his head grazing the
red plastic hearts hanging from the principal’s ceiling. He bats
them away without even looking to see what they are.
I wonder if he’s as big a homophobe as his son is, or if Matt
picked that up all on his own.
Mr. Hallis finally settles down when the door opens and
Union’s own Officer Webster comes in. Officer Webster and I
go way back to last year, when he saved me from being stoned
to death by my classmates as his partner confiscated all the alcohol at the homecoming party, thanks to me.
Officer Webster says a general hello to everyone, and then—
lucky me—gives me a special shout-out. “Rose, right? Good to
see you again,” he says, leaning against the door like he’s blocking someone from escaping.
My mother turns to me with an expression that says,
You’ll be
explaining that to me later.
I can’t exactly blame my mother for hearing warning bells
when a police officer addresses her daughter by name. My mother
is still adjusting to the fact that her son—who should be in the
middle of his sophomore year in college—gets up every morning at seven-thirty and signs himself into an outpatient rehab
program at the local hospital.
“Thank you all for coming,” Principal Chen says. “We have a
situation here that could potentially involve criminal charges for
both Matt Hallis and Conrad Deladdo. But I believe that we can
avoid that, if we all work together tonight.” The principal seems
to direct this at Mr. Hallis.
“I’m mainly concerned with what you propose as punishment
in place of the law,” Mr. Hallis says, looking at Conrad.
Mrs. Deladdo looks from Mr. Hallis to her son and back.
“Excuse me, but I don’t understand. Punishment for what?” she
asks, her tone offering an apology for not being up to speed on
current events.
“You don’t know?” Mr. Hallis says, incredulous, his shiny,
black leather shoes creaking as he shifts his weight forward in
his chair. Mrs. Deladdo leans back slightly.
Principal Chen offers Conrad’s mom a reassuring smile. “Due
to the fact that teenagers don’t always tell their parents everything, I’ll start from the beginning.”
Mrs. Deladdo nods and pulls her dark blue jacket around her
more tightly, as if she’s cold despite the triple-digit temperatures
in the principal’s office. Conrad slouches down in his chair,
glaring at me as if totally convinced that I’m the reason we’re
all sitting here, not the fact that he practically signed his name
on Matt’s car and our principal is smart enough to do the math.
“At a swim-team party at Mike Darren’s house in August, before school started, Matt and other members of the team hazed
Conrad as part of his ‘initiation.’ The hazing involved homophobic slurs and violence. When Conrad was thrown in the pool
and didn’t immediately surface, Rose became concerned. Matt
then shoved her into the pool, too. Jamie Forta helped Conrad
and Rose out.”
My mother looks at me for confirmation, but I keep my eyes
fixed on Principal Chen’s candy dish, which is full of little pink
hearts. From where I’m sitting, it looks like one of them actually
has the words
Bite Me
on it. Is that possible?
“Several weeks into the school year, I got word that Conrad
had quit the swim team. I was unable to ascertain why,” she says
to Mrs. Deladdo, who is now so pale I’m afraid she’s going to
slide out of her chair and onto the floor. “We held an assembly,
organized by Ms. Maso and Mr. Donnelly, to educate students
about tolerance.”
“Shouldn’t high school students already know what tolerance
is?” Mr. Hallis asks, looking at his watch to convey his opinion
that this meeting should be moving more quickly, oblivious to
the irony of his asking this particular question.
I’m tempted to offer him the
Bite Me
candy heart.
“Everyone can use a reminder from time to time,” the principal replies evenly before continuing. “In December, Officer
Webster—whom I kept in the loop regarding all of this—
informed me that Mr. Hallis had called 911 to say that someone
had spray-painted Matt’s car with the word
faggot,
and variations
of that particular slur, and that his son was fairly certain Conrad
had done it. Mr. Hallis, Officer Webster and I met the next day,
during which I explained to Mr. Hallis what had transpired between the two boys before school started in August.” The principal looks pointedly at Conrad and adds, “Mr. Hallis kindly
agreed to withdraw his complaint, provided a satisfactory agreement could be reached once the holidays were over and we were
able to arrange this meeting.”
By the way Mr. Hallis is glaring at Chen, I’m guessing she did
a lot more than just tell him what had
transpired
between Conrad
and Matt in order to get him to
kindly
withdraw his complaint.
She probably told Mr. Hallis that if he didn’t let her handle this
exactly as she saw fit, Matt would find himself on the wrong end
of the law, thanks to all the witnesses who had come forward
after the party.
All the witnesses
being me, of course.
My mother and Mrs. Deladdo seem to be astounded by all this
information. Mr. Hallis is just annoyed by the process of getting
everyone up to speed.
“In other words, Mrs. Deladdo,” he huffs, “I won’t press charges
if your son pays me back for the paint job.”
“You have evidence against this boy that I don’t know about,
Mr. Hallis?” Officer Webster asks.
“Principal Chen, please,” Mr. Hallis says, ignoring Officer
Webster. “I’ve been more than patient. Let’s just get to the bottom of this so we can all move on.”
“Conrad?” Principal Chen says.
For a second, I think that Conrad is going to deny what he
did, despite the presence of a police officer in the room. He might
have, too, if it weren’t for his mother.
“Corrado,” she says, barely audible over the hissing radiator
next to her, “was it you?”
It turns out Conrad’s Achilles’ heel is his mother. Go figure.
Conrad nods.
“Okay, good,” the principal says, pleased to be getting somewhere. “Conrad, would you explain to everybody here why you
felt compelled to do what you did?”
“I’m not really up for rehashing it,” he says.
“It would actually be in your best interest to do so,” she replies firmly.
Conrad shifts in his seat. “The guys on the swim team decided
I was gay. When I didn’t tell them otherwise, they gave me shit—”
“Corrado!”
“—sorry, Ma—they harassed me at the swim-team party. Then
practice became a nightmare. Matt threatened me just about
every day, so I gave him what he wanted and I quit. Then I spraypainted his car,” Conrad says. “And it was sort of the most fun
I’ve ever had.”
No one touches that with a ten-foot pole. Not even Mr. Hallis, who is closely observing his creaky shoes.
“I’m not gay,” Matt says to Conrad.
“It’s called irony. Look it up,” Conrad replies.
Principal Chen turns to me. “Rose, will you tell us what happened at the party?”
No. No, no, no. I’ve already had enough trouble with
both
Matt and Conrad, and frankly, I would love it if our lives were
a little less intertwined. Telling a roomful of adults what happened between them at the party is going to have precisely the
opposite effect.
“Conrad pretty much covered it,” I say.
My mother reaches out and touches my arm. “I’d like to hear
your version,” she says. I look at her, thinking about how she
defended me against Peter in therapy even after all the crap I’d
said to her.
I can give her this one.
“At the party, Matt and the other swim thugs—”
“The swim
what?
” Mr. Hallis says.
I feel my face get red. “Oh. Uh, the swim thugs. That’s what
the Union High swim team is called.”
Mr. Hallis looks at his son in disbelief. Matt, already embarrassed to the point of muteness, merely shrugs. I continue on,
keeping my voice as neutral as humanly possible.
“They called Conrad homophobic names, chucked cups of
beer at his head, sprayed him in the mouth with a hose, choked
him and threw him in the pool. Twice.”
Mrs. Deladdo lets out a little sob. Conrad rolls his eyes but he
takes her hand, anyway.
“Matt, is Rose’s account true?” Principal Chen asks. I halfexpect him to say that he wants to lawyer-up but he nods. “I
happen to believe that both Matt and Conrad have the potential to be positive influences here at Union High, in their own
ways. Rather than expelling or suspending them—although that
would be well within the school’s rights here—I’d like to ask
them to make retribution for what they’ve done. So here’s what
I propose, if Mr. Hallis and Mrs. Deladdo agree. Conrad has a
year to pay back the Hallis family for the damage done to the
car with funds he earns by assisting the police department with
graffiti removal. Mr. Hallis has already agreed that this can be
done on a payment plan.”
“And Matt’s punishment?” Mrs. Deladdo asks as forcefully as
she can.
“Matt is banned from sports for the rest of the year.”
Matt leaps out of his chair, red-faced. “Wait! That’s not—”
Mr. Hallis yanks him back down. “You did this to yourself,” he
says coldly. Matt drops his head into his hands and starts groaning like an injured animal, tears dropping through his fingers
to the orange carpet below. Principal Chen patiently waits until
the noise subsides to continue.
“Officer Webster and I feel it’s important for the boys to do
something together, and to that end, Mr. Donnelly, our drama
teacher, has come up with a brilliant idea. Mr. Donnelly, would
you share it with everyone, please?” Principal Chen asks.
Mr. Donnelly stands up. “This spring, the new Union High
Gay-Straight Alliance and the drama department are doing a production of
The Laramie Project
in honor of the Matthew Shepard
Act, and as part of the school’s year-long tolerance project.” He
pauses for effect, and then seems to remember that this isn’t the
best venue for dramatic pauses. He hurries on. “Matt and Conrad will both have roles in the play.”
Matt’s head jerks up out of his hands.
“Who’s Matthew Shepard?” I hear Mrs. Deladdo whisper to
Conrad.
“Later, Ma,” Conrad answers, his eyes locked on Matt.
“I’m not doing a play,” Matt says.
“Would you prefer to be expelled?” Principal Chen asks
brightly.
“No, he would not,” Mr. Hallis answers for him.
“Fantastic. So, is this settled? Does anyone have any questions?” When no one answers, Principal Chen smiles and claps
her hands once. “Then we’ve found our solution.”

“Yo yo yo, Union High, whassup? Happy Valentine’s Day! This
is your very own Angelo Martinez—aka, DJ Motormouth—back
in da house! You ready? This is your Dance for Tolerance, yo, and
it is time to BRING IT! Oh, and a special shout-out to gorgeous
girl Stephanie over there!”

A cheer goes up as Stephanie giggles and flips her perfect red
hair, waving at Angelo. Angelo clutches at his chest like he’s having some sort of heart attack, and then hits Play on Usher and
Pitbull, “DJ Got Us Fallin’ In Love.”

I literally can’t believe my ears. This is a guy who used to be
a walking advertisement for Metallica and Nirvana—except for
that day he showed up in that Neko Case T-shirt. But I guess he
knows his audience because pretty much everyone in the gym
cheers as they follow Stephanie onto the dance floor and start
throwing themselves around. If Stephanie is this popular as a
sophomore, I can’t even imagine what things are going to be like
by the time we graduate. Stephanie has half the guys at Union
High begging to go out with her. The other half are waiting for
Holly to wake up and dump Robert.

I look up at the five-foot-tall, black, plastic letters that spell
out
Tolerance
hanging from the ceiling above our heads, next to
a banner that says Sponsored by the Union High Student Council and The Sharp List.

I don’t really know what makes this a “tolerance” dance, but
no dates are allowed—you are supposed to come by yourself
or with friends. Only single tickets were sold, no discounts for
couples. And when the student council hired Angelo to DJ, they
made him promise that he would play only one slow song the
whole night.

The point was to make Valentine’s Day fun for everybody,
not just couples. It was a nice try, but high school couples can
stay away from each other for only so long. I already count three
couples smushed against each other and swaying slowly, even
though there’s a fast song playing and insane dancing going on
around them.

Also, shouldn’t a dance that’s about tolerance welcome couples
of all kinds, not pretend that couples don’t exist?
Weird political statements aside, the gym looks good. The
student council converted it into a club as best they could by
renting a lighting rig and a giant disco ball that spins around,
sending pools of silver light flying across the walls and the floor.
There are little red lamps on red cabaret tables surrounding the
dance floor with red plastic chairs. But despite all the red, there
are no hearts anywhere.
I wasn’t planning on coming, but Stephanie’s on the student council now and she begged me, saying it could be a great
night for me and her and Tracy to hang out. Stephanie has been
working overtime to make things better between Tracy and me.
Though Tracy and I have been working together on The Sharp
List, neither one of us has apologized for Christmas Eve. I know
she thinks I owe her an apology for the way I talked to her, but
I think she owes me an apology for…being the person Peter
turned to. Instead of me.
I didn’t say it was rational.
Stephanie and Tracy picked me up just as Peter was getting
home from his job at the video store that’s going out of business
any second now. He looked like crap, but Tracy insisted that his
sweater was fabulous and that she needed his picture for The
Sharp List.
Total lie. She wants his picture for herself so she can look at
it anytime.
It still bugs me that she’s never once taken my picture for the
list, even when she’s dressed me herself. I swear, if Peter ends up
on The Sharp List before I do, I’m never talking to Tracy again.
It’s weird—Tracy has always had a crush on Peter. But something’s different now. Now, it seems like she actually believes he
could like her back.
I guess that’s called confidence.
I should be happy for her that she has the confidence to think
that a guy who’s in college could like her. But it’s a little hard
when the college guy is my brother.
The flash from Tracy’s new, super-fancy digital camera goes
crazy as she takes photo after photo, practically blinding me and
everyone else in the gym. Stephanie is busy checking in with the
freshmen volunteers at the ticket table to make sure everything
is going okay, so I decide to say hi to Angelo.
Angelo is wearing sunglasses, headphones and a headset microphone, kind of thrashing around in place as he stares at a
glowing laptop that is so scratched up and dented and covered
with band stickers, it looks like it should be resting comfortably somewhere, preparing to die. I’ve never seen him happier.
“Sweater!” he cries out, his nickname for me reverberating
throughout the entire gym because he forgot that his mic was
still on. People look over with puzzled expressions, and he gives
everyone a thumbs-up, like he meant to do that. He switches
off the mic, slides his headphones backward so they’re resting
around his neck and gives me a high five. “I got so much shit to
play for you tonight,” he says. “You look good, Sweater!”
Stephanie lent me her red wrap dress from last year. Her
mother won’t let her out of the house in it anymore—now that
she’s so tall, the dress is way too mini. Of course on me, it covers my knees.
Angelo slips his headphones back on and starts talking before
he realizes he forgot to turn on his mic. He grins, and starts over.
“Union High, it’s all about the love, yo. Live and let live, right?
And believe. Just listen to Katy—she knows what’s up.”
He starts playing “Firework.” I start laughing.
“Katy Perry? For real?”
I have no problem with pop music—in fact, pop music probably takes up more than half the space on my phone—but it
shocks me to see Angelo playing it.
“Huh?” he says, lifting up one side of his headphones so he
can hear me.
“Since when do you like Katy Perry?”
“Listen, Sweater, good music is good music. Genre ain’t nothin’
but a thang.” He grins, looking at me over his sunglasses. “Plus,
you gotta play the hits if you’re gonna DJ. But don’t worry—I got
good
stuff comin’ up. It’s gonna rock your world.”
He goes back to studying his screen intently while he pounds
his fist on the table in time to the music. I’m still amazed at his
transformation. The only sign of the Angelo Martinez I used to
know is the grease under his fingernails from working in his
dad’s garage.
I turn around to watch the mania. Stephanie is in the middle of everything with a circle of guys around her, watching her
dance. Kristin and a few of the other cheerleaders walk through
the crowd in their uniforms with armloads of carnations, making deliveries for the flower sale they’re having to raise money
for the squad. Kristin stops in front of Stephanie and basically
hands over the entire bunch. Stephanie grins and holds the flowers in her arms like a giant bouquet as she tries to keep dancing.
The people who can’t—or won’t—dance hang out on the
fringes in their usual groups, making fun of everyone. Mr. Camber and Ms. Maso sit under a banner that reads
Tolerance for All,
chaperoning from behind a table loaded with pamphlets that no
one is going to touch in front of their friends—“Union High’s
Gay-Straight Alliance,” “The Dangers of Unprotected Sex,” “Bullying Sucks,” “Mixing Energy Drinks with Alcohol KILLS.”
A cheer goes up as Kristin makes a big show of walking over
to Camber with a bunch of flowers for the annual ritual. Angelo
stops the music, playing a sound effect that sounds like a car
screeching to a halt.
“Mr. Camber, it’s Valentine’s Day,” Angelo says in a sing-songy
voice, dragging each syllable out for maximum effect.
Everybody in the gym goes “Oooooh!” as Kristin tries to hand
Camber the flowers and then ends up leaving them on the pamphlet table when he politely refuses to even touch them. Kristin
starts to walk away, and then stops dramatically as she looks at
the card on the last flower she’s holding. She turns back around
and hands it to Ms. Maso, and the crowd goes wild.
“Aw, Ms. Maso, you gonna read that card out loud for us?”
Angelo says into the mic. She shakes her head and yells across
the gym, “You’d best start playing music, Angelo Martinez. I can
still change your grade and recall your diploma.”
Angelo grins at her. “Okay, Union, check this, we’re goin’
back in time. This is for Rose Zarelli,” he says. “Sweater, meet
The Runaways. Cherie Currie
is
Cherry Bomb!”
I have no idea what he’s talking about. I freeze as all heads
turn my way—usually, when I’m singled out, it’s not for a good
reason, so my first instinct is to run or hide. But then Stephanie
lets out a loud “Rosieeeee!” and Angelo starts the song.
At first, no one dances. The song sounds old and too simple—
like someone recorded it in a garage or something. The singer’s
voice is low at first, and I can’t even really tell if it’s a girl or a
guy. But then, she starts yelling, and by the time she gets to the
first chorus, the dance floor is full of writhing, thrashing bodies.
Everybody shrieks when the singer moans over the guitar solo
in the middle of the song. I look at Mr. Camber and Ms. Maso,
expecting Angelo to get in trouble, but Ms. Maso is reading the
cards on Mr. Camber’s flowers out loud to him and he’s actually
laughing. Neither of them seems to care that the gym has exploded over a song called “Cherry Bomb.”
Suddenly, Stephanie breaks free of the mosh pit that’s formed
around her and runs over to me. With a scream, she throws her
entire bouquet of red carnations up in the air and they rain down
on my head in a cascade of red petals and love notes she didn’t
even open, like some kind of coronation.
Stephanie grabs my arms and starts making me jump up and
down with her while she throws her hair around. Angelo is staring at her like he’s never seen anything so beautiful in all his
life. I can’t stop laughing. He points at me like I’m supposed to
be learning something from all this.
Stephanie is singing along at the top of her lungs. She’s got a
great voice, but it doesn’t sound right with this music. I realize
that her voice is…pretty. Too pretty for this. I start singing, too,
just to hear the difference between our voices. There’s nothing
pretty about my voice compared to Stephanie’s—it’s got something scratchy and harsh in it, and it’s pissed off and rough.
Just like Cherry Bomb’s.
When the song comes to an end, I spin around and scream,
“Cherry Bomb!” at Angelo. He grins at me. “See what I mean?”
he says into the mic as if he’s having a private conversation with
me, not DJing a high school dance. “And The Runaways are, like,
only the beginning! There’s Kim Gordon and Siouxie Sioux—”
“Dude, play stuff we know!” somebody calls out in the sudden quiet of the music-less gym.
“Yeah, like, from this century!” somebody else says.
Without missing a beat, Angelo hits Play on “Raise Your Glass”
by P!nk, and the satisfied masses go back to jumping around.
P!nk is cool, but I can barely even hear her—The Runaways are
still vibrating in my head.
I’m not an opera singer. I’m not a musical theater singer.
I’m a lead singer.
I wasn’t wrong after all.
Stephanie runs back into the fray, on to the next song. Somehow, even though she’s been jumping up and down in heels for
the past few minutes, she’s not even sweating. I, on the other
hand, am totally drenched. I decide I don’t care, and I’m just
about to go ask Angelo to play “Cherry Bomb” again when I see
Jamie standing next to Angelo’s table.
I’m so jacked up that my first impulse is to run at him fullforce, grab his face and kiss him like the world is ending.
But the practical side of me wins out. I can’t let him see me
like this, not after what happened last time we were together.
What if I gross him out and he doesn’t want to touch me again?
I bolt to the bathroom, adrenaline blasting through my veins
as “Cherry Bomb” plays on the iPod in my head. I push open the
door and see Ms. Maso in a gold sparkly sweater dress, checking the stalls to make sure nobody’s doing anything they’re not
supposed to be doing.
“Hi!” I yell, making her jump. I tear off a piece of industrialgrade paper towel that is for sure going to leave scratches on my
face and stand in front of the mirror trying to mop myself up. I
see someone who looks deliriously happy. It takes me a second
to recognize myself.
“Rose!” Ms. Maso replies, looking at me with a mixture of delight and concern. She’s never seen me like this—I’m sure she’s
wondering if I’m on something.
“Cherry Bomb!” I sing at her, unable to keep from spinning
around in a circle.
Luckily for me, Ms. Maso laughs.
“That’s what I should be singing!” I say to my reflection. “Forget ‘la-la-la’! Forget ‘Oohs’ and ‘Ohs’! Forget musicals!”
Ms. Maso just shakes her head as I start spinning again, my
arms waving above my head.
“Hey, Ms. Maso, when are you going to go out with Mr. Camber?” I clap my hand over my mouth when my brain catches up
with my ears. Adrenaline is wreaking havoc with my impulse
control.
“I did not peg you for a rumor-mill kind of girl,” she says,
scolding me with a smile in her eyes. “Don’t go jumping around
in here by yourself for too long.”
“I like your dress!” I yell as the door closes behind her.
I mop up as much sweat as I can, giving up when I realize that
it’s appearing on my face as fast I can make it disappear, probably because I’m still dancing.
So what? What do I care?
Destiny just found me in the gym at Union High.
I run back to the dance and see Jamie still standing next to
Angelo’s table watching everybody, his hands in the pockets of
his green army jacket.
With “Cherry Bomb” still echoing in my head, I grab his hand,
pulling him onto the dance floor. He’s so surprised he doesn’t
even put up a fight. I can feel a drop of sweat sliding down my
face—probably bringing what’s left of my makeup with it—but
I truly don’t care. I just start dancing. He watches me for a few
seconds with a smile as I sort of spaz around, and then he starts
dancing, too.
And the thing is, Jamie can dance.
He doesn’t do any of that weird lip-biting or fist-thrusting that
most of the other guys are doing—he just dances. And it’s…sexy.
I almost stop moving just so I can watch without any distractions.
All around me, people are working so hard to be hot—the
cheerleaders are doing weird sandwiches with the jocks, where
the girl is in the middle, grinding her miniskirt against a guy in
front of her and a guy behind her. And the couples who are determined to make this Valentine’s Day about romance are still
pretending there’s a slow song playing, pressed up against each
other like they’re glued together.
But the sexiest thing in the room is happening right in front
of me, and it’s not big or flashy or obvious. It’s just…Jamie.
I think about being with him in my kitchen on Christmas Eve
and what happened between us that night—how he apologized
because he would have done things differently if he’d known I’d
never done that before. But as I watch the way he moves, I get
that strange aching feeling that I get whenever he touches me—
even though he’s not touching me now—and I realize that what
happened in the kitchen was probably all I could handle. If it had
been any more than that—if it had been a Thing instead of just
something that happened—I probably would have freaked out.
You want more—you want everything—and then you’re afraid
of it. It’s all so weird.
Jamie reaches out for my hand and holds it for a few seconds
as I get the message to slow down. When I get the hang of what
he’s doing, he pulls me just the tiniest bit closer. He waits until
I slow a little more, and he pulls me closer again. I practically
want to jump out of my skin as the distance between us closes
and I feel him looking, watching what we’re doing, seeing how
we move together. It’s like he can see through my red dress, like
he can see my body.
Like he gets it in a way that I don’t.
Just when he’s going to pull me against him, I see Conrad.
He’s leaning against the wall near one of the exits. For a second, I
think he’s staring at me, but it’s not me he’s looking at, it’s Jamie.
He pushes off the wall and heads toward us.
I can see him coming—Jamie can’t. But I’m just as surprised
as Jamie when Conrad grabs his shoulder and pulls him backward. Jamie stumbles, catches himself and spins around, ready
for a fight, confusion in his eyes when he sees who it is.
“What are you doing?” Jamie loosely grabs the front of Conrad’s coat and gets in his face a little.