Shuffle, Repeat (10 page)

Itch finds me between Spanish III and calculus class. I lean up to kiss him, but he pulls away. “Where were you at lunch?” he asks. “Wait, let me guess. North Hall.”

“It's warm there.”

“The cafeteria is warm. And it's not riddled with cheerleaders.”

Annoying.

“They're not cockroaches, Itch. They're people. When did you get so judgy?” He scowls at me and I hold up a finger before he can say anything else. “Besides, I texted you. I told you Ainsley wanted to hang.” It wasn't 100 percent true, but it also wasn't a lie, since she
did
tell me I was always invited.

“Again,” says Itch.

“You're invited, Itch! You're always invited.”

“Lucky me.”

Annoying
and
rude.

“How do you think it feels to have to make excuses for you every single time?” I ask him. “Just once, couldn't you make an effort to break out of your social circle and talk to someone new?”

“I
like
my social circle.
You're
in my social circle and get this: I actually like you.”

“Really?” My voice scales up and a small pack of underclassmen turns to see what's going on. “You don't act that way.”

“
I
don't act that way?” Itch shakes his head. “Priceless.”

My heart speeds up and blood rushes to my cheeks. We've had little spats before—like the one in Rite Aid—but this time, it feels different. This time,
I
feel different.

Like I want to fight.

“You know what I have to say to my friends, Itch? ‘Sorry. My boyfriend's not a joiner.' It's such an obvious lie. They all know it's code for ‘he just doesn't like you.' ”

“They're snotty,” says Itch. “They're pretentious.”

“Calling them pretentious is pretentious!” I snap, and remember that it was Oliver who first said that to me. “They're
fun,
Itch. They laugh and they have a good time.”

“Yeah, I know all about their ‘good times.' ”

“What is that supposed to mean?” I'm furious now, revved up for a full-out battle. Itch folds his arms across his chest and glares. A split second before the bell rings, I realize the hall has cleared.

We're late for class.

“Shit,” says Itch. He turns and stalks away. I watch him go all the way to the end of the hall and turn the corner.

He never looks back.

Lily has a three-hour violin practice, and Darbs had to take her youngest brother to Chuck E. Cheese's, and Shaun isn't answering my texts, so I have no one to call for a good Itch Bitch. Instead, I'm lying across my bed, listening to the Dead Kennedys and throwing paper clips into my metal wastebasket. I only make every third toss or so.

Suddenly, I pause. The tiny metal clicks aren't the only staccato sounds in the room. I wait and hear it again: a soft scatter shot against the window. I hop up and look outside to see that Itch is standing there, far below. As I watch, he tosses another handful of pebbles. I wave so he'll stop, and I point to the front of the house.

When I open the door, he's already standing on the welcome mat. “Let me in,” he says. “It's freezing out here.”

I step back so he can enter, and as I close the door, Mom calls from the kitchen. “Is someone here, June?”

“It's Itch,” I call back. “He won't stay long.”

“Hi, Itch!” calls my mom.

“Hi,” he calls to her.

Now that all the calling back and forth is over, I put my hands on my hips and look up at him. “Pebbles against the window? Really?”

“It's a grand romantic gesture. I thought you would like it.”

I'm pissed off and I don't want to give an inch. “You could have knocked at the door.”

“That is neither grand nor romantic,” he informs me, reaching for my hand. I pull away, so he sighs and takes a step backward, running his fingers through his hair. “June, I'm sorry.”

I know it would be gracious to accept his apology, but I feel hard and angry and nowhere near forgiveness. “I don't know if sorry is enough. I don't know if anything is enough.”

“I used to be a joiner,” he says. “At my old school.”

That's new information. “What kind of joiner?”

“The kind who did all the same things as Oliver and Ainsley and everyone else.”

I blink. “Did you play sports?”

“No, but I hung out with the kids who did. The ones who were popular and partied a lot.”

“Did you…party?” He knows I don't use that word as a verb.

“I had to. Back there, that was how you stayed on top. We didn't have any Shauns bouncing from group to group. We didn't even have any Olivers, who have an all-access pass by virtue of being at the top of the food chain. At my old school, you were either on the top or you were on the bottom. No middle ground.”

I stare at him, trying to picture Itch joining things, playing along. “But you hate that.”

“It used to be normal.” He stops, biting his lip.

I've never seen him do that before and—although I don't know why—the hottest part of my anger melts away. “What happened?” I ask, because something had to have happened.

“It was my friend Xavier.” Itch takes a deep breath. “We called him X. Really funny guy. Smart, too. Played guitar. All the girls loved him.”

“He sounds like your worst nightmare.” I say it to lighten the mood, but I only earn the smallest lip twitch from Itch.

“It was a party after a football game. One of those parties like all the other parties, except this time X snagged something from his aunt's medicine cabinet. I don't even know what it was, but June—” He looks into my eyes. “Any other night, I probably would have taken some, too, because that's the way it worked. If X was offering, you took it. But I had to get up early the next morning to drive my parents to the airport. I didn't want to pass out and forget to show up or something, so I said no.”

“What happened?” I ask in a small voice.

“The same thing that always happened,” Itch says. “Everyone drank and got stupid and had a good time. Except in the middle of it all, X had a seizure and fell through a glass-topped coffee table.”

A gasp comes out of me before I can stop it.

“Everyone screamed. There was a lot of blood and he kept seizing, but we were all drunk. And scared, I think. Scared of our parents and the cops and getting busted. I tried to help stop the bleeding, but I wasn't exactly sober, either, and someone finally called 911. It was—” He stops for a second, and I reach for his hands. I hold them between my own. “It was the worst night of my life.”

I wait, my heart aching for this part of Itch he's never shared with me.

“X didn't die. He's back at school, but…” Itch swallows. “He doesn't play guitar anymore. He says it gives him a headache, but I think he doesn't remember how. I think it's gone.” Itch removes his hands from between mine and cracks his knuckles. “I'm sure your friends are different. Ainsley seems nice. So does Oliver. It's just me. I don't want to hang with the kids at the top of the ladder because last time I did, I liked it.” He sighs. “I liked it too much.”

I had no idea that there was something more to Itch's scorn. Something more like
fear.
“I'm sorry,” I tell him.

“I'm sorry, too.” He lets me slide my arms around him, under his jacket so I can feel his rib cage. I squeeze, and after a few seconds, he reciprocates. “I'll try, okay? I'll try.”

“All right.” I listen to his heart beating beneath my ear. “I'll try, too.”

Getting to North Hall sucks, because we have to walk down an outer corridor where the icy wind whips around us, but after we struggle to get the heavy double doors open, we're greeted with a gush of warm radiator heat. I choose an empty section of wall to settle my back against, and slide down it until I'm sitting on the floor with my tray on my lap. Ainsley beams at me from nearby. “Lucky us, two days in a row!”

Oliver nudges me with his foot. “Hi, you guys.”

“Hey,” I say to him.

“Hey,” says Itch, sliding down the wall beside me.

We eat our lunches.

There's a gift-wrapped cylinder on my seat when I open the passenger door. I start to hand it to Oliver, but he shakes his head. “Open it.”

I'm startled…and also inexplicably embarrassed. The week before winter break is the traditional time for kids at our school to exchange gifts, but it didn't occur to me that Oliver would give me something. And it's certainly not like I have anything for him.

“Really?” I ask. “Because I didn't—”

Oliver grins at me. “Just open it.”

I run a finger down the taped seam between the two edges of green-and-red paper and get a flash image of Oliver hunched over the gift, trying to line up the wrapping. It opens to reveal…

“A water bottle?”

“Metal,” he says helpfully. “And it's not actually for you.” I cock my head at him and he explains. “Lest you think otherwise, I am aware of your vast distaste for the plastic bottles all over my car.”

As always, I'm amused—and, oddly, flattered—by the way Oliver talks when he's with me. I know he doesn't use those words with Theo. And maybe not Ainsley, either.

“The bottle is for me,” he continues. “But the peace of mind is for you.”

“It's a symbol.”

He bats his eyelashes at me. “A symbol of my desire both to A: contribute to environmental salvation, and B: lessen the number of times that you give me the stink-eye in the mornings.”

Naturally, I give him the stink-eye.

But then I smile.

It's way too cold and snowy for the bleachers, so Itch and I are at a corner table in the cafeteria. We've slung our jackets over two chairs for Darbs and Lily and piled backpacks on a third just in case Shaun joins us today.

Itch picks at his lasagna. “Gross.”

I hold up my cloth sack. “If you packed your own lunch, you wouldn't be subjected to the vile whims of the cafeteria demons.”

“If I packed my own lunch, I'd lose approximately fifteen minutes of sleep.” He starts chopping at the lasagna with his spork. “Since I'm leaving on Saturday, do you want to hang on—”

“Wait, what?” I freeze in the act of unwrapping my sandwich. “Where are you going?”

“Florida. Remember, my grandparents? Christmas and Serbian New Year?” he says with exaggerated patience, like he's explaining to a toddler. “I told you this.”

“No, you didn't.”

“No he didn't what?” asks Lily, plopping into the chair beside mine.

“Tell me he's going to be gone for winter break.”

“I told her,” Itch says, and goes back to the sporking.

Lily makes a face at his lasagna. “PMGO.”

“What does that even
mean
?” I ask her.

“Puke my guts out,” she says. “Darbs wants it to take off.”

“Where is she?”

“In prayer.”

“Oh, right.” I always forget the God Squad kids have lunchtime prayer circle on Tuesdays.

“So are you a rainbow now or what?” Lily asks me. When I give her a blank stare, she elaborates. “It's like you have dual citizenship these days.”

I still don't understand until Itch nudges me. “Because sometimes we eat lunch elsewhere, June.”

Oh.

I have an urge to defend myself to Lily, even though what she said wasn't at all an attack. “Is that weird?” I ask her.

“For sure,” she says. “I mean, it's
fine.
But it's weird.” She shakes her head. “And now you go to football games.”

“
Some
football games,” I say, correcting her.

“Yeah, my girlfriend has school spirit now,” Itch says. I know he's trying to be funny, but it irritates me.

“There are worse things,” I inform him.

“Nope,” says Lily. “That's the worst.” Itch clinks his soda can against hers. I roll my eyes at both of them.

Itch turns to me. “Do you want to hang tonight? I can come to your house.”

“I think Cash is going to be over, too.”

I see Itch search his memory. “Cash the contractor guy?”

“Yeah.” Another flash of irritation. Itch has met Cash half a dozen times, at least.

“What, is he dating your mom or something?”

“I think so.”

“Ooh, juicy!” says Lily. “Is he hot?”

“Gross!” I swat at her. “He's with my
mom.
”

“I'm just wondering,” Lily says. “It would be nice to have adult eye candy in the house.” I swat her again.

Itch—of course—doesn't say anything about Cash. “Cool. I'll come over after dinner. Maybe we can go for a drive.”

Lily and I make eye contact. “Ah, euphemisms,” she says.

I don't know what's wrong with me, but I am finding every excuse in the world
not
to be alone with my boyfriend. Mom and Cash have taken over the family room to watch a documentary about organic farming, so Itch and I are sipping hot apple cider in the kitchen. “How about the basement?” he suggests.

“It just got painted. There are fumes. Besides, the drop cloths are still all over. Nowhere to sit.”

“We could drive to the park.”

“I don't think Mom will let me go out late—”

“It's eight-thirty, June.”

“—when it's this cold. She's worried about ice on the roads. In fact, do you think you should head home before it freezes even more?”

Itch shakes his head. “I'm fine. I just thought we would
do
something before I left.”

“We're doing something right now. We're talking.” Neither of us mentions that it's not exactly our strong suit as a couple.

We sip our ciders.

Later, after Mom and Cash finish the documentary, they go downstairs to look at the basement walls. “They don't mind the fumes,” Itch says, getting up to stand behind the stool I'm sitting on. He places his hands on my shoulders and moves his thumbs in circles against the base of my neck. I know—I
know
—it's supposed to feel good. It has felt good a hundred times before, but tonight…it doesn't. Tonight, I hate it.

I suddenly spring up, nearly knocking my empty mug off the counter. “Let's go out on the porch.”

“It's really cold.”

“I know, but at least we'll be alone.”

The word “alone” motivates him, because five minutes later, we're zipped and bundled and Itch has me pressed up against one of the wooden supports. My eyes are closed and my head is tilted back so his mouth can reach mine. I know his hands are roaming up and down my sides, but I can barely sense them. Everything is clumsy and muffled, wrapped as we are in all this winter wear.

And there's no more ignoring the truth: I hate this. I hate everything about it. I don't hate
Itch,
but I hate the way I'm feeling. Or rather, the way I'm
not
feeling what I'm
supposed
to be feeling.

In fact—and somewhat ironically—kissing Itch is making me feel itchy. Itchy in my
soul.
Like I'm a little kid waiting for my mother to try on clothing at the mall and I just can't stand
being
there anymore. Like breaking out of Itch's arms and running screaming into the darkness, and then maybe hiding behind a tree or something, like that would be a totally reasonable thing to do.

This is not good.

It seems endless—the kissing—but I don't know a way to stop it without telling him the truth, without embarking on an interminable discussion that is going to be way more painful than his tongue in my mouth.

So I endure.

I go through the motions until finally—
finally
—Itch is driving away and I'm waving from the porch with a massive sense of relief washing over me. I know I need to savor it, live in this reprieve, because it's going to go away and only awful, tremendous, crushing guilt will remain.

But right now, right
this
second, I couldn't be happier that my boyfriend is gone.