Take Me There (13 page)

So I pick up the chalk again and stare at the board, and I wish we were in the country somewhere sitting on a back porch drinking lemonade and watching clouds wisp across the sky instead of being here in complete and total agony. Just the two of us, where we could finally be together for real.

Mr. Farrell comes over to see how it’s going, which is of course nowhere. I’m all nervous and sweaty with him standing so close. I get the same way when he leans over my desk to look at something on my paper and I feel his breath on my cheek.

Jackson is all impatient and wants to explain his problem even though everybody knows you can’t explain yours until everyone else at the board is done. Mr. Farrell tells him to chill.

So I’m standing here like a big fat dork while everyone watches me being humiliated and there’s no way I can even come close to finishing this problem and I want to cry. And I guess Mr. Farrell finally gets a clue, because suddenly he says he’ll help me with the problem.

He’ll help me with the problem?
He never helps
anyone
with their problems.

I swear, he’s so obvious.

So I’m floating to my locker and playing my favorite fantasy through my head again for the millionth time. In this one, Mr. Farrell and I live together and everyone knows it and all the girls are jealous because everyone says how he looks so much like Jude Law except younger. So we walk into school together in the morning and I don’t have to use my locker because I get to keep all my stuff in his room behind his desk next to his bag and jacket, and we’re walking down the hall holding hands and I’m laughing at something he told me and everyone’s looking at us and—

I stop thinking. I stop walking. There’s no way what I’m seeing is real.

Down the hall, right in front of Steve’s locker for the whole world to see, Steve and Gloria are kissing.

Right in front of his locker.

Next to Rhiannon’s locker.

Where she’s going to be any second.

I jump the stairs two at a time and bolt to her eighth-period class. I look in but she already left and I hope she’s not there yet please
god
. I run down the hall to the stairs Ree always takes but she’s not there either. And there’s only one other way she could have gone, and she has to be there she has to be there please let her be there, because she so cannot see this. So I run like a maniac the other way and cut down the side stairs and fly around a corner and I smack right into Rhiannon.

She’s like, “What’s wrong?”

And I didn’t really have time to think about what to say during all the running, so I blurt out the first lie I can think of, which is that I have a surprise for her. And Ree smiles because she loves surprises. So of course she wants to know what the surprise is and I really wish I knew. Then there’s this whole complicated thing about books and lockers and finally I get her out of there.

So I zip down the hall and try to give off a convincing vibe as I run-walk to our lockers. But now I have to actually go to our lockers which means I have to go to her locker which means there’s no way I can avoid Steve. Kissing Gloria.

I slow down and approach the lockers and they’re still there, majorly sucking face. In fact they’re so into it, there’s a possibility that they won’t even notice me. So I sneak up to Ree’s locker and turn the dial on her lock.

Please don’t look over at me please don’t look don’t look
.

So of course Steve looks and I have to look back and now Steve knows that I know. But the whole rest of the school will know by first period tomorrow, so I guess he doesn’t consider this to be a problem. Especially because all he does is look away like I’m not even here. Like it doesn’t even matter to him that I’m going to tell Rhiannon.

There’s no way I can tell Rhiannon.

I mean, yeah, okay. I know I have to tell her. Even though there’s a chance she’ll hate me for being the one to tell her. But she’s my best friend and I have to take that chance and hope that if she does end up being mad at me, she’ll eventually get over it. Plus if I was her and she saw what I saw, I’d definitely want to know. I’d probably be mad at her for
not
telling me. So I risk her being mad either way.

But I’m too nervous and dreading it so I go, “So what’s up with the roses?”

And Ree lifts them out of her bag and sniffs them and she’s like, “They’re from Steve.”

And I swear I almost spit lemonade all over the table.

I’m all, “Wait. They’re from
Steve
?”

“Yeah.”

“He gave them to you?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you say?”

“No, he left them in my locker. I didn’t get a chance to talk to him yet.”

Okay, this is like . . . I can’t with this. Why would he give her flowers and then be all hooking up with another girl? Who
does
that?

When our food comes, I try to force myself to tell her. Especially since Ree’s talking about getting Steve back. But here’s the thing. She actually looks happy for the first time since forever and she’s laughing at some of my jokes, and there’s no way I can tell her but I have to tell her.

I’m like, “Hey, Ree?”

And poor Ree who has no idea what’s coming, who never did anything to hurt anybody, goes, “Yeah?”

“Um.” I pick up a fry and then put it back down, because if I eat anything now I’m going to hurl. “I have to tell you something.”

And Ree’s just like, “What?”

I’m mentally fast-forwarding to visions of what this conversation will look like five minutes from now, with Ree’s face all smeared from crying and her nose running in front of the whole diner and people sneaking looks over at her and wondering what’s wrong. It’s just not right. It’s not the kind of thing you do in public.

But Ree’s waiting for me to tell her, so I go, “It’s just . . . I really think you should know that . . .”

She sniffs her roses again.

“. . . they have cupcake cake.”

I try not to have a complete and total meltdown on the subway ride home. Because not only do I have to deal with when and how to tell Rhiannon, but the Mr. Farrell situation is seriously out of control. I wanted so badly to go up to him after class, but when class ended he was surrounded by a crowd of girls and I can’t stand that so I left.

The subway stops at Times Square, and I have to restrain myself from bursting through the doors and running to the downtown train and going back to school and finding him in his room because I know he’s staying late today and saying, “You have chalk on your sock,” and finally rubbing it off for him. But of course I can’t do any of that.

So I get out at my stop and this impulse to walk really far takes over my entire body. There’s all this energy clanging through me, and I know it’ll be impossible to concentrate on anything else if I go home. Whenever I get all worked up about him, walking is the only thing that saves me. So I walk and walk until I hit water. If the Hudson River wasn’t right here, I swear I’d keep walking straight into New Jersey.

I take this film elective, and every Monday afternoon there’s a seminar that goes with it at NYU. But instead of having the last class today, we’re having a party tonight. Which is sweet, since our professor got us pizza from my fave place and we can just chill and talk with people we didn’t really get to know during the semester. And there are some really interesting people in here.

Like this one guy? Is so super quiet I’m dying to know what his story is. Like, is he just shy? Is it an antisocial thing and he’s always been like this? Or does he just think we’re all pretentious posers so he doesn’t have time for us? For some reason, I really want to know.

So when everybody’s eating their pizza and sitting in pairs or threes except for him, I go over and put my plate down on the desk next to him and say, “Is this seat taken?”

He gives me this exasperated look like,
Clearly it’s not, hence the empty area hovering above the chair.

He goes, “No.”

I’m like, “Mind if I sit?” He doesn’t know this yet, but I’m sitting here no matter what he says. I’m not fooled by the prickly-exterior thing. I know all about that stuff from personal experience.

He goes, “No.”

So I sit. I can see this is going to be a challenge, but I knew that before I came over here so it’s all good.

I decide to start with, “I’m Nicole.”

He’s like, “I know. We introduced ourselves the first day.”

“Yeah, um, I remember that? But see, lots of people forget names and then they’re too afraid to ask. And then like all of a sudden it’s the last class and people still don’t know everyone’s name and they’re still too afraid to ask. And by that time it’s way embarrassing, because then you’re admitting you didn’t know their name this whole time, you know?”

Quiet Guy just chews his crust.

“Yeah, so . . . hi, and I’m Nicole, and I’m not embarrassed to admit that I don’t remember your name.”

“Max.”

“Hey, Max.”

And then he chews more crust.

I’m all, “I can’t believe this class is over already. It’s
so
weird. It went really fast, right?”

But Max just grunts noncommittally. I have no idea why I feel the need to talk to him. I just have this really intuitive feeling that something’s there. So I keep trying. I ramble about what my favorite parts of the class were and stuff about the screenplay I’m writing, and then my favorite directors come up. So then I ramble about movies I love, and that actually gets Max talking. It turns out we have the same taste in film. So I tell him how I passed Todd Solondz on the street a few months ago.

Max goes, “You saw Todd Solondz?” All fixated.

And I’m like, “Yeah. He walked right by me.” All nonchalant.

Max says, “Dude. He’s one of my favorite directors.”

So I’m like, “I know! And I touched his sweater.”

Max goes, “What?”

“Yeah. He was wearing this ratty old sweater with a hole in the shoulder? And so I asked him if I could touch his hole.”