Love and Other Theories (2 page)

T
here’s one major reason I’m ready to be done with high school, and it’s all culminating now, the first day back from winter break, in Senior Drama. Because where else, right?

“Aubrey Housing!” Mrs. Seymour yells, her mouth full of potato chips. From her seat in the center of the auditorium, she points to the stage—as if I really didn’t know where I was supposed to be going—and the grease on her hands glimmers in the spotlight.

I take my time walking down the aisle, not only because standing alone on the stage is the last place I want to be, but because
I can
. I can take my time if I want to
because I’m someone people will wait for at this school.

I walk up the small staircase on the right, leading up to the stage, and make my way into the spotlight. Yes, for this first-day-of-the-semester exercise, Mrs. Seymour has set up the actual spotlight. It was her TA, Melvin’s, idea. Clearly annoyed that Senior Drama wouldn’t provide him with much real theater experience, as everyone in the class is about to graduate and more interested in the lack of homework than the betterment of their acting skills, he’s trying to squeeze in as much as possible. Melvin is going to be the rock in my shoe this semester, I can already tell.

“Tell us your name and three things about yourself,” Mrs. Seymour says loudly, the same thing she’s said to the last eleven students to have a turn. “And remember to speak from your diaphragm.”

I nod at her, but I don’t smile. “I’m Aubrey Housing.” The only things people need to know about me, they’re already completely aware of. I’m Shelby Chesterfield’s best friend. Trip Chapman’s final conquest before he graduated last year. The only student from Lincoln High in seven years to be accepted to Barron University.

I reveal the same asinine information everyone’s been divulging. “My favorite color is purple, I work at the French Roll, and—” I stop only because it gets noisy. There’s a rush of whispering and squeaking—the sounds of butts moving against chairs. It’s weird being up here,
how aware you are of everything the audience does.

It doesn’t take long for me to notice what the big deal is. It’s a boy. A boy none of us has ever seen before. No one can be cool. They all stare—their typical reaction when someone new, good-looking, and unapologetically male makes an appearance.

“And my favorite vacation spot is Lake Geneva,” I say—projecting from my diaphragm—to bring everyone’s attention back to me and away from the new boy walking obliviously down the aisle toward the stage. He’s even holding his schedule out in front of him like he’s studying it. Like there might be another auditorium and he’s in the wrong place. But then he looks up at me.

I’m not the first person to notice the new boy, but I’m arguably the first person he notices. Like,
really
notices. And it might just be because of the spotlight.

“And what did you do this winter break?” Mrs. Seymour calls to me.

“I went skiing and—” I keep the new boy in my peripheral vision. He takes a seat up close. Not like most of the other students, who are perched carefully in the back. The glow from the spotlight makes him exceptionally visible to me. Too visible, maybe. “And I visited Barron’s campus.”

The new boy smiles. That’s when I know I’m in trouble. His smile is amazing. It fits perfectly on his face. Which, from what I can tell, is also amazing.

“Robert Jules!” Mrs. Seymour shouts, again with her mouth full. Next, she smiles. Robert Jules has a solid reputation of being a class clown. She’s probably thinking,
Finally, some entertainment.

Robert walks to the stage slowly—because he can—and there’s this awful lull of time when the room is quiet as I head back to my seat.

It’s weird. The new boy has chosen the seat exactly three seats away from the one my stuff is resting on. I’m the only one sitting that close to the stage—just five rows away—and had I known better, I wouldn’t have sat there. But I didn’t know, until Robert Jules laughed at me and asked if I needed glasses, that Senior Drama wasn’t like all the other classes—real classes—and it was actually not going to help my grade to sit toward the front.

“I’m Robert Jules,” he says. “I love beautiful women, parties, and beautiful women.” Thanks to the spotlight we can all see Robert wink. I shake my head because he just did
that
. But he’s Robert Jules, so he can do whatever he wants. “And over winter break I partied with beautiful women. Right Aubrey, baby?”

Whatever he wants.

I cover my eyes with my left hand and continue shaking my head. It’s expected of me to do this. I saw Robert Jules twice over winter break, which is twice more than I’ve ever seen him over any of the twelve winter breaks that have passed since I met him in kindergarten. We
took Jell-O shots—that was a first. And he tried to get me to make out with my friend Melissa. That was obviously a bust.

The first thing I do when I uncover my eyes is glance at the new boy. I don’t mean to, but I’m glad I did. Just as I’d suspected, the new boy is staring at me.

Robert is tall, dark, and muscular, and the consensus at Lincoln High is that he’s attractive. Everyone knows he’s a jokester. That he calls everyone “baby.” They also know there never has been and never will be anything romantic or sexual between Robert and me. But the new boy doesn’t know any of this. He might think I’m Robert’s only
baby
when really Robert’s been hooking up with my friend Danica for the last few months. This might have really hurt any chance I have with the new boy.

Or it’s just guaranteed that I’ve got his undivided attention.

Robert saunters down the aisle right as the new boy is walking up it. The new boy turns into the row where Mrs. Seymour is sitting and leans toward her. She waves her hand toward the stage, and, not taking his time at all, the new boy positions himself directly in the center of the spotlight. Everyone gets unnervingly quiet.

He struggles to look at us, which is overly dramatic because I didn’t really think the spotlight was so bad. “I’m Nathan Diggs,” he says loudly, but he’s definitely not projecting properly from his diaphragm. “I just
transferred from San Diego, I’m eighteen, and my favorite food is chicken parmigiana.”

Nathan Diggs.

Nathan Diggs is attractive in a way I’m not familiar with, and it’s not just because he’s practically the only boy at Lincoln High I haven’t known since I was five. Sure, he’s different. He’s not wearing the usual Guys-o’-Lincoln High outfit of jeans, sneakers, T-shirt, hoodie. He’s not even opting for the I’m-Country-and-Rugged faded flannel and lamb’s wool that some of the seniors sported last year. The Chapman Look, Shelby calls it—named for the style of Zane and Trip Chapman. The new boy is in a leather jacket. I thought leather on a guy might look tacky. I was so wrong. I thought a leather jacket over a sweatshirt would look boxy and uncomfortable, but apparently I was wrong about that, too.

“I spent my winter break moving,” he concludes. I wait for the depression to come out, to hear the self-loathing in his voice at having had to move the second semester of his senior year. What kind of parents would do that? But he seems perfectly pleasant. That’s another thing about him. Even though his eyes are really dark—darker than his deep brown hair—he still manages to look congenial.

He shrugs—he’s probably gathered that he shouldn’t wait for applause—and descends off the stage. I watch out of the corner of my eye as Nathan Diggs returns to
his chair. Three seats away from me.

In all honesty, I’m uncomfortable. I stay perfectly still, though, because it’s against everything I believe in to show how physically altered I feel just because of a boy.

“Hey,” he whispers to me, leaning over the seat next to him.

Normally, I’d pretend I don’t hear him right away, make him work a little harder for my attention. But my gut reaction is to look at him, so that’s exactly what’s happened. He’s staring at me expectantly, so I lean in toward him.

“Has she handed out the syllabus yet?” he whispers.

“Oh. No. There’s no syllabus.” He looks confused, which I find refreshing because usually everyone pretends they already know everything. “We’re graded on participation only,” I explain. I want to point out to him that this isn’t a real class. There’s no assigned reading, no reason to sit in the front, and the teacher eats potato chips while she’s teaching.

One of his eyebrows hitches up, like he’s still a little surprised. “We’ll really get a chance to show off our theater skills, then.”

It takes me a minute to realize that he’s joking. I laugh and am appalled at how breathy it is.

“Tough first day, eh?” he says.

Another joke. This time I’m ready for it and laugh appropriately.

“So who transfers the second semester of their senior year?” I ask him. It’s a legit question.

“I do.” Legit answer. He shifts forward like he’s seriously debating getting up and moving to a seat closer to me. I tilt away from him, encouraging this.

Before Nathan can try to speak to me again and I can pretend not to hear him, forcing him to move closer, Mrs. Seymour begins addressing the class, telling us something about improvisation. Melvin is handing us sheets of paper. Nathan reaches across the seats to pass me the handout and I hesitate, waiting for him to use this as an excuse to move closer still. But he shakes it at me like he’s afraid I don’t understand that he’s passing it to me. I snatch it out of his hand.

Mrs. Seymour tells us to spend the final fifteen minutes of class studying the sheet so we’ll be prepared for tomorrow. She brushes the potato chips off her skirt and exits stage right with Melvin.

There are three bullet points on the sheet. Because describing a game in which everyone stands in a circle taking turns acting out various scenes requires only three bullet points to describe, and definitely not fifteen minutes to study.

“This is so lame,” I say, just loud enough for Nathan to hear me. It is lame. Acting. Pretending to be someone else in a make-believe scenario. As if high school isn’t fake enough. Especially Lincoln.

“We could . . .” Nathan pauses thoughtfully. He shakes his head, smiling.

“What?” I ask, and I’m genuinely curious, though I try to play it off like I’m more annoyed that he hasn’t finished his sentence. “Tell me.”

“I was going to say we could leave.” He’s still smiling; still shaking his head. He’s joking.

Because leaving is absurd.

Rephrase: Usually, for me, ditching class is crazy. I didn’t get into Barron by cutting class.

I steal another glance at him, at this face I’ve never seen until today. It occurs to me that Nathan doesn’t know who I am at this school, or that I’ve never skipped class before, ever.

“It’s going to be lunchtime soon anyway,” I say, as if he wasn’t diligently studying the schedule just minutes ago. The casualness in my voice scares me, but I soldier on. Nathan’s head is slightly cocked, his smile shrinking. “Do you want to just leave?”

He gives me this look then.
The
look. The one that says,
I’m all yours
. It’s weird when a boy seems vulnerable like this. It was especially weird when I got this look last year from Trip Chapman, who wasn’t really ever vulnerable. I was always at Trip’s mercy; everyone was. So when he gave me this look—eyes wider than usual, waiting for their cue; lips pressed together, too unsure to smile—I knew I had all the power. It felt good.

“You think we’ll get away with that?” he asks. “You don’t think we’ll get in—caught? You don’t think we’ll get caught?” He repeats himself, but it’s too late. He was about to say,
You don’t think we’ll get in trouble?

I like that he knows he’s not supposed to show he’s afraid of trouble.

I look back at the stage one last time. There’s no sign of Mrs. Seymour or Melvin. I take a deep breath and repeat in my head the mantra Shelby told me last week on Monday night before handing me a homemade margarita. It was exactly twenty seconds before our favorite show,
Mercy Rose
, was about to start, so she spoke quickly. “Now that you’ve been accepted into Barron, you need to join the rest of us and get a real life. It’s your senior year, Brey, time for you to party it up.” I normally never joined in on Monday nights when my friends decided to drink during our weekly viewings of
Mercy Rose
, but I’d polished off two margaritas by the time the show was over.

Shelby was right. She always is.

I can’t look at Nathan when I say, “I think if you don’t follow me, you’ll be sorry.” I shove past him, not even waiting for him to move his legs, and walk briskly up the aisle toward the exit. I know people are staring. They must be. But I just keep walking. As I burst through the back doors of the auditorium, I don’t even turn around to see if Nathan’s following me. I already know he is.