Starstruck (5 page)

I
’M SITTING AT THE LIVING ROOM
coffee table, drinking Diet Coke, half watching
Oprah
and half trying to determine what sine is and what relevance it has in my life. I hate math; Wish is a math geek. If he were here, he’d laugh at me and say, in a very Buddha-like way, “Duh, Gwen. The answer is twelve,” without even having to think.

As I’m about to burst into tears, Evie saunters in. Again she looks like she’s going to break into song.

I push my pencil against my notebook so hard that the tip almost breaks. “Your ever-so-dreamy new boyfriend is a turd,” I say, not looking up.

She practically floats into the overstuffed chair across from me. “He is not my boyfriend,” she says, not very convincingly at all.

“I’ll give it a week before he is.”

She clicks her tongue. “Dough, I’m not an idiot. I remember what happened last week. I know what he’s like.”

“Then why were you …”

“I’ve always wanted a ride in a BMW. But that’s all he’s good for. Seriously.” And she gives me this wholesome grin, the heart-melting kind. “I’ve got your back, girl.”

Since Evie has never done anything really trashy to me before, I guess I have to believe her. However, she’s new to guys, and as I’ve learned, girls can do some pretty warped things for guys. I’ve known normal, sweet girls who’ve fought like mad lions over men. Stranger things have happened. “So you’re seriously telling me you’re never ever going to see him again?”

She raises her eyebrows. “Well, that’s impossible. He’s in study hall with me, and—”

“He’s driving you to school tomorrow, isn’t he?”

“Well, yeah,” she says, biting her lower lip. “I’d rather be caught dead than in that little bus.” She thinks for a moment and then says, “Oh. No offense.”

I roll my eyes. “Well, just take it from someone who’s older. Don’t get too close. Guys can bite. And by the time they do, you’re the one wearing the dog collar.”

She wrinkles her pert nose. “What does that mean? It’s pretty nice of him to agree to come all the way over from his winter home on the mainland to pick me and Becca up.”

“He should apply for sainthood,” I agree.

She cranes her neck to look at the clock, then sits up straight. “Well, I’ve got to jet. I need to get a shower in.”

I scowl at her. “Are you going out with him tonight?”

“Arf, arf,” she says, pretending to beg like a puppy. “No dog collars here. It isn’t just with him. It’s a group thing.”

“You’re going to a party on the first night of school?”

“It’s not a party,” she says. “At least, I don’t think it is. He said something about going to the Airport. Like, a bunch of people are going to hang out there. I think it’s the name of a new restaurant or something. It can’t be the real airport, like where planes and stuff come in, right?”

I shrug and suddenly want to stab myself in the eye with my pencil. My own sister is going to be welcoming Wish back to Jersey tonight, and I won’t be there. Who knows, maybe they’ll have a parade and strippers and fireworks, too. I wonder if, with all the fanfare, he’ll even care that I’m not there.

T
HAT NIGHT
, I can’t sleep. I have these two competing visions in my mind: one of Wish trying to find me among his horde of admirers, then bursting into tears when he realizes I’m not there, and shouting to the heavens, “Why, God, why?” And the other of him being tackled by a crowd of hot, naked cheerleaders as soon as he comes up the ramp.

A little after eleven, I hear voices on the street below, and then a car door slams and footsteps quickly but lightly ascend the rickety staircase outside. Evie. When the door swings open, I almost tackle her in the kitchen, in the dark. She lets out a little scream and then I realize I must look like a complete psychopath, jumping on my sister like that. So I cover up by whispering, “Oh, sorry. I forgot you were out. I thought you were a burglar.”

She takes a deep breath, recovering. “Who the hell would want to steal from this place?”

“Sorry,” I say. “So, how were things?”

“Fine.” She yawns and makes a move like she’s going to head to her bedroom, and I jump in front of her, nearly tripping over our kitchen table.

“Where are you going?”

“To pee, and then bed,” she says.

It’s late, and I’m tired, too, but the only thing I’m fully aware of is that if I have to go to bed without getting the lowdown on what happened tonight from her, I will not live through the night. I grab her by the wrist, open the fridge, and say, “You want something to eat?”

She yawns again. “God, no.”

I slam the refrigerator door and stand there, blocking her from the bathroom. “Um, so, really, did you have a good time?”

She shrugs. “Look, you have nothing to worry about with Rick. I don’t even think he’s my type.”

“I don’t care about that,” I say, which is true, for the moment. Right now, all I want to know is whether Wish got naked with some pom-pom-wielding harlots. “Like, so did that new restaurant have good food?”

She laughs. “Oh, get this! It wasn’t a restaurant. We actually went to the Philly airport. To see Wish. So why weren’t you there?”

At least it occurred to her that I should have been part of the welcoming party for my boyfriend. “Well,” I say, “I thought it would be overwhelming, so many people there …”

“You got that right. It was a madhouse. I think the whole school was there.”

Except me. Great; my boyfriend, the celebrity.

“Oh. How does he look?”

She nods. “Good. Really good.”

I’m not sure why I asked that. Evie isn’t the best at description. Everything looks good or fine or okay to her. Fishing for information with her is about as fun and easy as clothes shopping for me. “Did he … say anything to you?”

“I didn’t really talk to him. He was kind of busy.”

Busy. Since getting Evie to elaborate is impossible, all kinds of meanings for “busy” fill my mind. Busy trying to find his luggage at baggage claim. Busy signing autographs. Busy having sex with a cheerleader behind the Auntie Anne’s pretzel stand. I realize I’ve gnawed the inside of my lower lip to a bloody pulp, so I start working on the upper.

“He had to get home early, too,” she continues. “He was kind of in a rush. Only stayed a few minutes.”

“Oh?” I ask, my mood brightening.

“Can I pee now?” she asks, waving me aside.

“Freely,” I sigh.

I walk to the living room and peer out the blinds. I don’t know what I’m looking for. Maybe I’m hoping he’ll pull a Romeo and appear beneath me. He used to do that before, when we were kids, just show up and throw pebbles at my window, at all hours of the day, because the rickety staircase to our door sways pretty badly and always freaked him out. When all I see is a circle of the empty sidewalk below, illuminated by one buzzing streetlamp, and my queer, confused expression reflected in the glass, I finally trudge off to bed.

T
HE NEXT DAY
, when the alarm goes off, I feel like there’s a fifty-pound weight on my chest. It’s not easy to pull myself up. Finally, I do, then turn on the light and rifle through my drawers until I find my only pair of semi-cool jeans and a frilly white blouse my mother bought me to wear “only for special occasions.” I figure meeting my boyfriend for the first time counts as a special occasion. I spent all night mentally going through my closet and drawers, and this is what I decided on. I’m hoping against hope that if I wear it unbuttoned at the neck, with jeans and flip-flops, it will look very peasanty and flattering. Either that or I will look like a tool in a frilly church-lady blouse.

When I’ve dressed and sufficiently tamed my hair (this time it’s more of a trapezoid), I stuff an Eggo into my mouth and find Evie peering out the living room blinds. “Hey,” she says. “I forgot to tell you. I asked Rick, and he said it would be cool if you came with us.”

Just what I needed. Charity from my little sister. I give her a small snarl. “I’d rather walk.”

She gives me a “suit yourself” shrug. “He’s trying to be nice.”

“Ev, I think the terminology he used was ‘lard.’ You were there.”

“He didn’t mean to,” she says.

“I’m sure it was just a slip of the tongue. He probably meant to say ‘sex goddess’ instead.”

She exhales. “I think he’s trying to change. He’s being nice.”

“Because he wants to get into my sister’s pants.”

She gives me a confused look and begins to launch into a protest but then turns to the window. “Your ride is here.”

Holding my chin up as high as I can, I grab my bag and walk out the door. I might as well be riding to school in a giant inflatable hot dog. Still, as I climb aboard, I’m just happy the bus driver doesn’t close the doors on me. Though I’m the only passenger on the bus, I’m glad. Nobody can see my nervous breakdown. Except, of course, the bus driver. She keeps staring over the gold rims of her
Top Gun
sunglasses, into the rearview mirror, at me. Probably thinking, Is it any wonder she’s the only person on the island who doesn’t have an alternative method of transportation? She can barely breathe, much less carry on a social life.

The end of the trip comes too quickly for my liking. Out the grimy window, I see the normal tight circles of students everywhere on the green, waiting to be let in. I scan the crowd quickly, hoping to find Wish’s head, to see him before he sees me. I don’t. I see Terra there, talking to a bunch of jocks, and throngs of other people I’m not friends with. But no Wish.

Maybe he isn’t here. Maybe he decided to take the day off, to recover from the jet lag. That’s possible, right?

Then I realize I’m hyperventilating. The obnoxious bus driver clears her throat loudly, as if to say, “Get off now.” For a second I want to command her to close the doors and drive, drive anywhere, but she’s not my limo service. Shark pit, here I come.

I step down the stairwell, but suddenly the doors almost fly closed, right on my face. The bus driver laughs sadistically. “Just kidding, hon!” she cries as I turn and glare at her. I wish she would save her warped sense of humor for a day when I’m not about to vomit all over myself.

My flip-flops touch down on the sidewalk and I look at them like they’re alien feet. They’re ever so cute, but they can’t belong to my body. My body would have had the sense to stay home today. To stay home forever.

My heart is drumming out a Sousa march. I plaster a fake-confident smile on my face and carefully navigate around a few people, whose backs are to me. A girl in one tight circle runs her fingers through her long hair, and they catch on a knot at the very end so that when she pulls her hand loose, she does it with such force that she accidentally scrapes my cheek with her vulture claws. Ouch, ouch, ouch! It’s like someone sliced my cheek with a razor blade. She turns, smiling, as if to say, “Sorry,” but then decides not to when she realizes it’s just me. I rub the skin over my mouth, then inspect my fingers. Blood. The hoochie with the fingernails of death has drawn blood. Drawn blood and not even apologized.

And it isn’t just a little scratch. I feel something wet sliding down my chin, a few drops collecting there before diving off onto the concrete. As I’m searching through my bag for a tissue, I tilt my head, so the blood starts to slide down my neck, onto my frilly white blouse. Were those fingernails or miniature chain saws?

I clamp the tissue over my cheek, but not soon enough. A few people notice. They break out of the circles, not to offer me a Band-Aid, but to gawk. Even the girl with the mongo fingernails turns to look, batting her eyelashes innocently, as if she has no idea what happened. “Um,” someone says, tugging on my sleeve. I turn to see a cute freshman, wide-eyed, innocent, giving me a wholesome, friendly Noxzema-faced grin.

Finally, someone to offer a nice word. “Yes?”

She points to my middle. “Your fly is open.”

I look down. It isn’t just my fly that’s open. That would be an easy fix. Below my frilly blouse, my jeans are sitting there, wide open, on my hips. You can see my orange underwear. A flashback of Wish seeing my peace undies in the restroom of the Cellarton Country Club floods my mind. The tissue in my hand flutters to the floor and I hoist the jeans up toward my waist, then try to button them. But I can’t. The button must have popped off somewhere. And without that button, the zipper can’t hold the fort. Without that button, the pants are doomed to go the way of the Alamo.

Little freshman goes back to her group, but they’re still all laughing and whispering. By then, I have a bit of an audience. A few more drops of blood hit the pavement. I clasp together my pants with one hand, then lean over to grab the tissue I dropped. Because my books are so heavy, I nearly topple forward as I do, and force myself right into the middle of one of the closed circles, one of the only closed circles that heretofore had been unaware of my existence.

“Gwen?”

It’s almost like a beam of sunlight falls upon me before I even raise my head, because I begin to feel warm and feverish at once. I close my eyes. Oh, no. No. No. No.

I take a breath. Another. And straighten. And turn toward him.

“Um. Hi.”

T
HE MORNING AIR
of early September is cool, but my face is all asizzle. My body starts to ache, starting with a pounding in my head. I hear some voices, a little laughter in my ears, but I can’t tell if the titters are directed at me. My vision is blurred, and I can’t lift my eyes from a lopsided smiley face that my blood has made on the cement between my feet. Even my own bodily fluids seem to find the humor in this situation.

“Damn, Gwen, are you okay?” His voice is a lot smoother in person, when it’s not distorted by the crackle of the phone. I still can’t bring myself to look at him, but I feel his hand on the sleeve of my blouse. He gently tugs me toward an empty bench and sits me down. “What happened?”

I’m still holding on to my pants for dear life. When I sit, I let them go and, saying a prayer of thanks for my having worn a loose, flowy shirt with lots of extra material, billow my blouse out in front of me so that my undies don’t show. Then I stare at my lap, trying to muster up the courage to peek at him. Meanwhile, I feel my temperature rising, the back of my neck burning as if it’s against an open flame. I don’t think I can live if I see disappointment in his face. Finally, I do it. I look up.

Just for a second.

And it’s him, but not him. Not the Wish I knew way back when. The eyes are the same shape, the nose, too, but everything else is foreign. I’ve seen this Wish in pictures, but pictures never convey a whole person. He has more definition to his jawline, light stubble on his chin, and a perfectly even California tan. His skin is exquisite—it almost looks airbrushed—which is weird considering that when he left four years ago, he was already starting to get acne. Now he looks like he doesn’t even have pores. Maybe if I squint just right, I can see past the golden aura surrounding him. Maybe, somewhere, I can find the geeky boy from elementary school. Please?

“I got … mauled,” I say, pointing to my face. I’m about to point to my stomach and my problem there, but I stop myself. Do I really want him looking at my stomach? “And, um, having a wardrobe malfunction.”

“Do you need stitches?” he asks. “Here. Let me see.”

A couple of guys from his group, who were gawking at the whole sordid incident, turn away. One slaps him on the back and says, “See you, man.” Wish gives a nod, gently places his hand on the bloody tissue clamped onto my face, then puts a finger on my chin. I flinch; his touch feels like a red-hot poker. “Ouch.”

He quickly removes his hand and gives me a sheepish look. “Oh. Sorry.”

People begin to filter through the doors, and I still can’t look at him. I look up, at one of the downspouts coming off the roof of the school. It is badly in need of repair and obviously very exciting. Then I look at his shirt. It’s a long-sleeved black oxford, buttoned all the way up to the neck. Since it’s still eighty degrees out, that’s kind of weird, but who am I to talk about weirdness? He’s sitting beside me, so close, looking at the scratch on my face, but I can’t look any higher than the collar of his shirt. Why can’t I look at him?

“It’s stopped bleeding,” he says, crumpling the tissue in his hand. “As for the wardrobe malfunction …”

“I have shorts in my gym locker,” I say, eyes fastened on the dingy gray brickwork outside the building. “I can get them after homeroom.”

“You have a shirt, too?” he asks, his finger moving toward me. At first I think he’s going to touch me with his red-hot-poker fingers, which will likely make me pee my pants, but instead he just points at my arm, where a couple of quarter-sized bloodstains are already starting to turn brown on my white blouse.

“Oh. Yeah.”

“Okay, then. Cool. Everything else okay? What’s up with your eye?”

I think one of them might be twitching from the stress. Great, I look totally insane; I might as well wear my backpack on my head and start bock-bock-bocking like a chicken and complete the picture. I blink. “Nothing.”

“It’s good to see you,” he says brightly. “Finally.”

“Oh, I know,” I say, even though I’m really not doing much “seeing” of him. “I …”

He moves closer to me, maybe coming in for a hug. It nearly makes me jump off the bench. This is all incredibly weird. I slide off the seat, clutching my hands over my midsection to keep my pants up. “I’d better get to homeroom,” I say, but my mouth feels thick and numb, so it comes out like “hummer rum.” Kill me now.

“Wait, when can we compare schedules? Do we have any classes together?” He springs up next to me, and I realize how tall he’s gotten. He could probably rest his chin on the top of my head. This is a good thing; I can look at his chest instead of into his face, since that’s what’s at eye level. But how did his chest get to be so big? Beyond the shirt that used to hang lifelessly over his bony limbs are … muscles?

Okay, yeah. I was expecting him to be hot. I knew he’d be out of my league. But I don’t think anything could have prepared me for this. Even if I were still my skinny old self, I’d be self-conscious. Wish isn’t just hot. He’s beautiful.

And even stranger, he hasn’t yet run away screaming from me. He wants to compare schedules with me. As in see me again.

Which, for some reason, makes me want to run away screaming from him.

“Um. After homeroom?” I enunciate the word slowly, like I’m learning to pronounce it for the first time.

He nods. “Yeah. I’ll meet you outside the girls’ locker room.”

I expect him to finish that off with a “Not!” but he doesn’t. He just stands there, and as I’m beginning to believe that this is an imposter, not my best friend, he begins to fidget. I’d know the Wish Fidget anywhere; it’s goofy and awkward and always used to make me laugh, but somehow, on this version of Wish, it’s ultra-adorable. I try to look up to his eyes, but only make it as far as the brown sugar stubble on his chin before I chicken out. Wish has stubble. Wish has become a full-grown god, while I’ve become a logo for snack cakes.

We stand there for a moment longer, both kind of fidgeting now, and then I realize something. What was the first thing he wanted to do when he saw me? The thing he’s been waiting for all these years?

Oh, hell.

I start to hyperventilate. My breath is sweet with maple syrup, from the Eggo I had earlier today. Guess it could be worse. But since yesterday, I’ve gnawed my lips to sandpaper.

“Um, yeah,” I mutter. It must be the most awkward parting line in history. Then I just turn and waddle away, dragging my pants and packed bag of books with me.