Not Anything (20 page)

the first wednesday back, mr. murphy asks me to stop by
his classroom after school to talk about possibly tutoring another one of his students, a sophomore named Rebecca Johnson.

At first I’m not really sure about the whole thing. I mean, I tutored Danny and look what a total disaster that turned out to be. (Although, maybe it wasn’t so much of a disaster because Mr. Murphy tells me that Danny is doing really well, and I refuse to give thousand-watt Tamara any credit for that. That was my doing, even if Danny doesn’t want to remember that it was.) But Mr. Murphy gives me a hundred reasons why I should tutor again, so it’s no surprise that I find myself outside his door later that afternoon.

What is a surprise is when I go to enter Mr. Murphy’s classroom, I look through the Plexiglas window and see Danny sitting in the front row, tapping his feet against his chair, writing something.

The thing is I can’t believe my eyes—because they’re blinking so rapidly that my vision is blurring; or my heart—because it’s officially having a heart attack; or my ears—because they’re ringing the alarm; or any other part of my body—because I’ve gone limp, even though the only thought in my cowardly head is,
RUN! RUN! RUN!

And that’s exactly what I intend to do, except when I turn, using stealth only a ninja could execute, I run smack-dab into Mr. Murphy’s chest, hitting his fuzzy green cashmere sweater with the full force of my face.

“Oh.” It’s a hard hit, and it pushes Mr. Murphy back two steps before he can recover. “Susie.” Without missing a beat, he looks down at his watch. “Perfect timing. How did your literature meeting go?”

I find it hard to talk, so I stutter and it goes something like this: “Er, um, go-go-good.”

“Wonderful.” He claps his hands together and smiles down at me. Why is he always so cheery? Is it that he’s crazy (in a good way) or just really, really happy?

But does this really matter? I have to go. I have to get out of here. I have to—

And that’s when I hear the door creep open behind me, and I know that Danny is standing right behind me.

“Oh,” Danny says, and then his voice changes so that there’s no sound of surprise left in it. “Mr. Murphy?” And I see his arm, his chocolate-skinned arm, hand a paper past me. And I see that it’s clearly marked
The Picture of Dorian Gray
—
Makeup Essay.
He says, “I’m finished.”

Mr. Murphy takes the essay and smiles at the both of us. “Wonderful,” he says, and then he waits. I think he’s expecting me to turn toward Danny. Maybe he thinks the two of us should greet each other, like long-lost buddies or something, but it doesn’t happen. Danny doesn’t even so much as acknowledge my existence. Instead, he asks from behind me, “May I go?”

“Certainly,” Mr. Murphy replies, without batting an eyelash. And this is where I start to get suspicious. I start to wonder how coincidental this coincidental meeting can be, because Mr. Murphy never lets anyone get away with this level of rudeness. “But first—” He grabs me by the shoulders and spins me around so that I am facing Danny (who is staring at the floor). “Why don’t you two go back inside my classroom and catch up, for old times’ sake? This will give me time to grade your essay, Danny. I’ll only be a few minutes.”

Then he confirms my suspicions by shoving the both of us back into the classroom with his massive man-hands (which until this very minute, I never knew he had) and shutting the door quickly behind us.

It’s so obvious to me what Mr. Murphy’s up to, and I’m pretty sure it’s obvious to Danny, too, because as soon as the door shuts behind us he says, “Ugh!” really, really loudly.

The whole thing is awkward and terrible and so much more. I don’t even know what to say or where to begin. I just know that I’m standing in a room with Danny Diaz, and I feel like someone keeps spinning me round and round and round.

And the spinning doesn’t stop until something happens that makes it all not seem SO awful. I realize that for the first time in a long time, I’m completely stressed out BUT I don’t feel a twitch or a panic attack coming on. I just have a really big headache.

“Danny—” I know it’s totally silly for me to think that I’ll say his name, and he’ll look up at me, but I do. Instead, he moves farther away from me, so that he’s leaning against Mr. Murphy’s desk, staring at his fingernails.

I decide to try again.

“Danny?”

But it’s worse this time, because this time he says, “I don’t want to talk to you.” And he still doesn’t look up. He doesn’t move.

“Danny?” I say again, because how much worse can it get? But it does get worse. It gets a lot worse, because this time, he practically shouts, “God, Susie, can’t you just leave it alone? I can’t—” And then he looks up at me, and I see all the hurt I’ve caused him, every last bit of it, right there in his penny-colored eyes.

He holds my stare until I look away. I don’t know what to do, so I move back in the room, until I’m practically in the back row. I brace myself with the help of a desk, and I try not to cry (which I really, really want to do). And all I can think about is how it all got started right here in this room. I think about the day that I met Danny, first in the yearbook line and then here, in Mr. Murphy’s classroom. Then I think about everything that’s happened to me since—standing up to girls like Tamara and Jessica; making friends with Marc again; growing closer to Leslie and Marisol; and, most important, getting my dad back—and I realize that if it weren’t for Danny coming into my life and making me feel something when I had gotten so used to feeling nothing, none of that good stuff would have happened.

“Danny?” I say, and this time I know it can get worse. I’m expecting him to yell and scream. I’m expecting him to stomp right out of Mr. Murphy’s room. I’m expecting something big, but I don’t care because I have something important to say, something that he has to hear.

It’s hard, but I force myself to move closer to him. When we’re only a few feet away from each other, I start talking fast. I’m afraid he’s going to stop me. I want to get it all out before Mr. Murphy gets back. “Danny, I’m—” I try to will my voice from shaking, but it won’t stop. I start again, “Danny, I’m, I’m, I’m so…so…sorry. I’m so sorry—” And it’s here that I start crying. I start crying hard, only I don’t care because the tears are honest, the tears are me not hiding, and I think it’s time that Danny finally got a chance to see all of me, the real me.

The words are coming out, but they’re jumbled and barely coherent. Still I keep pushing forward. “I—the thing is—I haven’t been able to feel anything for a really, really long time. And then you came along, and you made me open up, and feel so much more than I ever thought I could. And I wanted to be the way that you thought I could be, but I just wasn’t ready yet. I, I didn’t know how to let go of all the stuff that had been bothering me for so long, and so I screwed it up. Okay? I screwed it up. And I’m so, so sorry.”

It’s hard but I force myself to look at him. I force myself to step closer, until we are touching. I say to him, “Danny?” And I reach out to take his hand.

I want him to look at me, but he won’t. He’s got his chin glued to his chest, but I know that he’s heard everything I’ve said because his hand is shaking just as bad as mine, and he’s breathing hard, and I can’t tell that it’s taking everything he’s got not to walk out of this room.

“Danny?” I say again, and I reach out to grab his chin, and tilt his head up so that I can see his eyes. They’re sad, but open. It’s killing me, but I know I’ll regret it for the rest of my life if I don’t say it: “Do you think we could…?”

And then I stop because it’ll break me if I say it all. It’s too much to have everything I want out there, exposed. But I know that he knows what I mean. How could he not, with me standing here, me holding his hand, cupping his chin, and crying so hard that my tears are falling onto his arm? How could he not know what I mean?

He knows. I know he knows because slowly he tucks his chin back into his chest, and he slides to the left so that the only parts of us that are still touching are our hands. Slowly he looks up at me, and his penny-colored eyes appear empty. He says, “I can’t—”

“But—” I’m fighting, can’t he see how hard I’m fighting for us?

“No, don’t. I can’t. You don’t get it. I don’t trust you anymore, Susie. I wish I did. You don’t know how bad I wish—” He stops. He tucks his chin back into his chest, and his shoulders cave in. I think maybe it’s a sign that he might cave in to me, but he doesn’t. A second later, his shoulders are squared and he’s looking me dead in the eye. His eyes are hard. And then he’s gone, leaving me alone and broken in the vacant room.

“do you have that thing that does that thing?” marisol gestures
to me frantically. She’s blow-drying her hair with one hand and scrunching it with the other.

“This?” I toss her my eyelash curler. After ten years of being someone’s best friend, you understand what she means when she refers to “that thing that does that thing.”

“Thanks,” she mutters and abandons her blow drying for a temporary bout of eyelash curling.

Over the course of the summer, Leslie took us aside and said that she had been neglecting us—thus began our weekends of makeover madness. The first thing she did was sign us up for a joint subscription to
CosmoGIRL!, Teen Vogue,
and
Seventeen
.

“Not for the articles,” she said, “but because you girls have to learn how to put makeup on.” Then she lectured us on the origins of beauty—how it comes from within; how you should never conform; but, in the overall scheme of things, nothing beats having a great hair/makeup/clothing day.

Then, she took us on a grand shopping spree. And I swear, she was trying to conform us, even if she didn’t know that she was.

And maybe we were conformed. And maybe we weren’t. Even with all the right clothes in my closet, even with the right makeup on my face and my hair freshly straightened—I don’t feel any better about taking another yearbook picture. I still feel raw. Maybe I’ll always feel that way.

“How do I look?” Marisol turns around and gives me her mother’s smile. It’s crazy, but sometime over the last year, Marisol morphed into one hot butterfly.

Unfortunately, my appearance hasn’t changed that much. Even with my utterly straight hair, I’m still a funny-looking girl with a hawk nose, fleshy lips, and long limbs. But for some reason, none of that really bothers me anymore. Well, not that much anyway. It’s like instead of growing into the butterfly, I grew into my own skin.

“Girls?” My father peeks into the room and smiles. “Wow.” His eyes shift from Marisol to me, and his smile grows wider. “You two look really beautiful.”

“You think?” Marisol sneaks a look in my full-length mirror and grins. She looks…happy. I guess that’s what love and a pair of two-hundred-dollar Lucky jeans do to a girl. For the last eleven months she’s been a walking glow stick. I have to say that her relationship with Ryan is pretty wonderful. He’s kind, considerate, blah, blah, blah—basically, all the things that I wish I had found in a boyfriend. I’m not jealous, though. Well, not that much.

“Are you two ready?” my dad asks.

“Yeah, Dad, I think so. Is Marc here yet?”

Marisol gives me a look. She’s not too happy that I’m celebrating the privileges of having my new/old car (Dad finally retired the old Dodge to me) by offering to give Marc a ride to school. But you know what? I don’t care. Sometimes you have to go with your gut. My gut tells me that my friendship with Marc is a good thing.

Once Marc and I got our true feelings for each other sorted out, I knew that I wanted him to be my friend, and that he needed my friendship. BADLY.

Besides, after my father told Marc’s mother about Marc’s extracurricular marijuana usage, Marc has become a lot more fun to hang out with. He still smokes pot—don’t get me wrong—but not as much, not nearly as much.

“Yep, he’s been waiting for the last ten minutes.” My father consults his watch. “You do know, you’re going to be late.”

“Really?” This year I have music first period, and I hate to be late. I grab my book bag off my bed, toss my guitar in its case, and pull Marisol from the mirror. “Let’s go, golden girl.”

as it turns out, we are exactly ten minutes late, but my
music teacher lets me slide on account of the fact that he likes me so much. He says, and I quote, that my songs “have real potential.”

Real potential. Hearing things like that makes me want to explode with pride. I think he knows that because ever since our conversation, he’s been extra-nice to me and I’ve worked extra-hard to make him proud.

School this year isn’t so crappy. My schedule’s pretty cool:

1st period—Music, followed by homeroom.

2nd period—Creative writing with Mr. Murphy (still love him).

3rd period—English.

4th period—Lunch. Thank God, Marisol and I still share that time slot.

5th period—Anatomy.

6th period—Calculus, which isn’t so bad, but it could be better.

I guess the worst part of my schedule is that I have thousand-watt Tamara in my anatomy class, and every day I have to sit and stare at her notebook that says
I LOVE DANNY
in like a dozen places. They’ve been a couple since February, and I have to say that just the thought of it makes me nauseated, but I’m trying to be okay with it, really I am. I mean, I lost Danny fair and square, right? It’s not really Tamara’s fault. She’s an opportunist for sure, but our breaking up wasn’t really her doing. I did that all by myself.

Still, I wonder. Sometimes late at night, I think, maybe just maybe? I guess a girl can dream. A girl can always dream.

during homeroom we file down to the library to have our
yearbook picture taken. I escape my line and wait for Marisol next to the bathroom.

“What took you so long?” I ask when she arrives ten minutes later. “My class is probably done with their pictures by now.”

“Sorry, but Mandy decided to hyperventilate right before Mr. Jason dismissed us. So of course, everyone was all concerned, and I couldn’t be the only person running out of the classroom.”

“Okay. So are you ready?” I take a deep breath and try not to think about last year.

“Yeah, you?” Even Marisol seems a little nervous.

“Yep.”

“Okay, let’s do it.”

We walk toward the library, heads held up high. We are determined to have a decent set of pictures in this year’s yearbook. It seems like that’s what we’ve worked toward the entire summer—my being able to smile confidently into the camera. And I think I have a good shot at it, until I walk into the library and see HIM.

“Oh my God. I don’t think I can do this.” I want to run out of the library and hide.

“What? Who is it?” Marisol surveys the library. “Oh my God.” She’s as stunned as I am. “I don’t think this has ever happened before.”

But it is happening, I think. As surely as I am standing here, it is. There he is looking at me with his mouth crumpling into a grimace, Fred, the I’ll-take-it-until-you-smile-happily photographer.

“You know what?” Marisol grabs me by the shoulders and gives me a shake. “It’s going to be okay. You’re going to get into that line and you are going to get in front of that ugly green screen that God knows why they have picked as a background, and you are going to smile. You’re going to smile just like we practiced all summer. That’s what I think.”

Marisol smiles at me encouragingly, and I can’t help but feel like I felt the first day of kindergarten when my mom had to promise me that she’d come visit me during lunch, just so I’d have the courage not to cry when she left me.

“You think?” I whisper.

“Yes, I do.” Marisol nods at me and exhales deeply. “I do.”

I step into the line. I try to tune out Fred and the poor protesting freshman whom he’s badgering into giving a glowing smile. I think of Molly Ringwald in
Sixteen Candles
. I tell myself that this experience is not going to be worse than being at a dance where no one decent asks you to dance. I’m just getting my picture taken, that’s all. No big deal. And then before I know it, I’m there.

I’m at the precipice of the line. Fred is anxiously staring at me, and I remember how last year he made me twitch, and how Billy Wilson made fun of me for not being able to smile, and how Danny stood there and watched the whole thing and said when no one was looking, “Just smile, Susie.” And suddenly I feel calm. I feel extremely calm.

“Okay, mean photographer guy.” I take a step forward and center myself in front of the ugly green screen. “I’m ready.”

“Excuse me?” The photographer stares at me like I’m crazy.

“I’m ready. We’re doing it my way this year. We shoot it once; we shoot it quick. We shoot it now.” I smile very widely and count to ten. As if on cue, the camera clicks and flashes. And then I’m shuffled along in the line. I look back to Fred. He’s staring after me in utter amazement.

Back in the line, Marisol is suppressing a giggle, but when our eyes meet, she winks at me and mouths, “That was amazing.”

“I know,” I mouth back. “Can you believe—”

“Excuse me, young lady,” a voice snaps from behind me, “but either sign up for a photo package or return to your class.” I turn around to find Mrs. Fingle, the assistant principal, glaring at me.

“Oh, sorry,” I mumble. Contradicting Fred is one thing, but taking on Mrs. Fingle is another.

I grab my backpack and search around for my order sheet. My father wrote me a check this morning. I wave at Marisol before turning back to the ordering table, and then I see HIM. The other HIM.

Sitting right in front of me is Danny Diaz.

“Hi,” he says.

“Hi.” Somehow, on some level, I knew that it was inevitable that we would run into each other. I actually fantasized about it numerous times, but there is nothing absolutely nothing to prepare me for the way I feel right now.

My palms are suddenly sweaty. My face is flushed, and my heart feels like I’ve digested ten Red Bulls in a row.

“Your form,” he says, extending his hand out to me.

“Oh, yeah.” I limply hand him the form. Our hands touch briefly. We both pull away so quickly that the form falls onto the table.

“Danny?”

It takes a few seconds, but then he says, “Yeah?”

He picks the form up and pretends to look it over. “I have to look busy or Ms. Fingle will have a cow.”

“Okay.” I take a deep breath and try to think of what I want to say when I realize that the only thing left to say is the one other thing that I’ve been practicing all summer, which is this: “Thank you. Thank you…for everything.”

“Oh.” Danny stops fiddling with the form and looks at me.

It seems as if we’re standing there for minutes when Mrs. Fingle’s voice booms behind me.

“Is there a problem in this line?”

I look over my shoulder. Ten students are shifting anxiously, waiting for their turn.

“No, there’s not a problem,” Danny says. He hands me the receipt. “There are no problems at all. Here’s your receipt.” He smiles at me, and I remember how I loved his smile.

“Thanks.” I smile back.

“Oh, and Susie,” he says, as I turn to walk away, “save me a picture, okay?”