The New Guy (8 page)

At lunch I head straight to our table because I have no appetite. Justin is sitting with his jeans pushed up to his knee, showing off the bruise from the book attack this morning. I guess in case I wanted to feel worse about myself, now I can.

“I’m really sorry,” I say. Sadie’s been dating Justin since late into last school year, but even though we sit near each other and occasionally go to the same things with Sadie, I don’t really know him. We’re definitely not
friends
.

“It’s all good,” he says. “It’s badass, right?”

“I guess,” I say, though badassery isn’t one of my expert topics.

“It’s super badass.” Sadie sits down with two trays and slides one over to Justin. If he couldn’t stand in line because of his injury, I’ll feel, somehow, even more horrible, so I’ll just assume she’s being a really, really nice girlfriend today.

“I was struck down by the Latin language,” Justin says. “What’s Latin for
legs
?”

“
Crura
,” Em and I chorus.

Sadie gives me a very direct look. “Are you doing okay?”

I start to say I’m fine, and then I start to say that I’m not, but I have no idea what I actually am. So I just shrug.

“I don’t think it’s a big deal,” Thatcher says as he takes his lunch out of a perfectly folded brown paper bag. “They did that thing back in the eighties. It failed. Maybe this one will too. Or it won’t. It’s fine.”

“Don’t be so Zen,” I say, and I guess it comes out rudely because everyone stares wide-eyed at me. Even Thatcher the Zen Master. “I’m sorry.”

Great. Now I’ve injured one friend’s boyfriend’s leg and another’s boyfriend’s feelings. I am a danger to all boyfriends.

“Taco Day!” Alex appears with his lunch tray piled high with tacos and sides. I don’t like to stereotype by gender, but boys eat so much. “You guys didn’t even spoil the surprise.”

“Every other Friday,” Justin says with a nod, and then he and Alex do a fist bump. Over tacos? When
things
are going on?

Boys make no sense.

“Why are you here?” I ask.

“Yeah, Alex,” Sadie says. “Why are you here?”

“I, uhhh, I sit here?” He slides right into a chair and starts plowing into a taco. Maybe he doesn’t know this is serious business or maybe he’s a jerk. Right now it’s hard to tell.

I drive to Sadie’s after my short top-level-staff-only meeting for the
Crest
after school. It’s meant to be when we lock down final articles and layout, but if the meetings have run smoothly all week during fourth period, there’s rarely a lot left to accomplish after school on Fridays.

It should have felt like sending the paper off to the printer so quickly was a victory. But thanks to TALON, it just feels like one more sign what we’re doing doesn’t even matter.

Sadie and I already had plans, which were to consist roughly of ordering huge amounts of food, probably rewatching all the Chaos 4 All videos, and definitely talking about all the things that just a week ago I never expected to experience my senior year of high school.

But while we’re browsing online menus we’re definitely not talking about attractive eyebrows or parked-car kissing or how your brain just knows how to churn out love-type feelings
when you were pretty sure you wouldn’t have to worry about it for years.

“He can’t think things are actually fine, right?” I ask. “He was acting like he wanted me to think he thought that. But he couldn’t
actually
think that. Could he?”

“Boys can think a lot of things,” Sadie says. “But Alex seems very sincere. I seriously think he has no clue. So I’m leaning toward Thai, but I could do sushi.”

“You know I hate the idea of delivery sushi,” I say. “Thai is fine, as long as we can compromise on spice level.”

“Mild,” she says immediately.

“For the millionth time, mild is
not
a compromise! It starts out mild.”

“No,” Sadie says, gesturing to her iPad screen, “it starts out with NO SPICES AT ALL. And you know it’s not my fault! It’s genetics.”

I’ve never actually told Sadie that I hate talking about genetics, so I don’t hold it against her. I even let her select
mild
for the seasoning in half the dishes we order. My own genetics feel like such a wild card, though. I’m more of a project than a person, really. Darcy’s egg, Mom’s uterus, and some stranger’s… stuff. I can barely think about Mom’s uterus, so hopefully it’s all right to think of the rest as just
stuff
. Mom and Darcy swear that his profile was basically the man version of Mom (Italian and Irish ancestry, shorter than average, above-average intelligence, lover of dogs and the
New Yorker
—I still don’t believe that his profile actually was specific enough to
list the
New Yorker
, but I know it’s all part of the fairy tale they tell of my beginning, so I let it slide). I don’t want to meet the provider of the stuff, but I do wonder about him sometimes. It seems to me like normal well-adjusted guys have better things to do with their stuff.

“Can you tell Justin not to be friends with Alex?” I ask, though the second it’s out of my mouth I can hear how crazy that sounds.

“No,” she says. “What if Justin told me not to be friends with someone? You’d kick his ass. Or at least throw another book at his legs.”

“Are you guys going to be in here all night?” Sadie’s little brother, Jon, walks into the room carrying a tall stack of Blurays. He’s only fourteen, but he’s been obsessed with kung fu and other martial arts movies for years now.

“Yes,” Sadie says. “Watch those in your room.”

“My screen is too small!” he says.

“That sounds like a personal problem,” she says.

I’m so glad I’m an only child.

By the time our food shows up, we’ve struck an agreement with Jon that he can have the family room until ten. Sadie and I arrange the food on the kitchen table. When we were younger, we read an article online about how to properly order a Thai meal. So even though it’s just the two of us, we have tom kha soup, chicken satay, a seafood salad, two different curries, pad see ew, a mountain of sticky rice, and another mountain of mango and coconut milk with more sticky rice.

“Remember how much food we ordered when I broke up with Milo last year?” Sadie asks. “And we weren’t even trying to respect a cuisine’s traditions.”

“I’m not sure I can say I broke up with Alex. It’s not like we were in an official relationship,” I say.

“It counts,” she says.

“I thought he liked me,” I say.

“I think he did like you,” Sadie says. “I mean, DOES like you. He’s just being stupid about TALON, as if it wouldn’t mean anything to you.”

“It’s not just that,” I say. “It’s that he acted like we had a secret when it wasn’t a secret. He told me about being in Chaos 4 All like it was just between us. Obviously I knew people knew, but like gossip. Not from him. Now it’s the whole reference for his stupid video column? And if he actually thought TALON wasn’t a big deal, why did he hide it from me?”

“I’m sorry, Jules,” she says.

“And he says he’s done, you know, being famous and being in the spotlight. If that was true, why would he…” I hope Sadie thinks I’m crying from the green curry sauce and not my feelings. “What if he was just telling me what he thought I wanted to hear? What if I don’t even
know him
?”

“I’m sorry,” she says again, and she holds my hand, but she doesn’t tell me I’m wrong.

“This feels
awful
,” I say. “I was right to put off boys. They’re more stress than I need.”

“Boys aren’t some monolithic stress machine,” she says.
“Justin causes me very little stress. He sends me cute messages, he brings me snacks sometimes, and he’s really good at kissing and everything else. I’m seriously sorry this whole Alex thing went down the way it did, but you can’t blame boys.”

I know Sadie’s right, but I decide to mull it over instead of just agreeing with her.

The next morning, I stop off at Swork for coffee before driving to Stray Rescue. After saying hi to Tricia, I make my way down the row of kennels. But as I’m about to wave to Santiago, the person next to him turns around.

“What are you doing here?” My voice comes out all pinched and squeaky, and the dogs bark a chorus of excitement or maybe it’s annoyance.

Alex shrugs, and a grin spreads across his face like it’s time-released. “The same as you? Walking dogs?”

“But we’re—we’re not—you’re—TALON—”

“I
like
doing this, Jules,” he says, and I hate how my name sounds in his voice. It rings with an intimacy we’re never, ever going to have now. “And Santiago said how they’re never too overrun with volunteers, and I didn’t have plans today, so…”

“Fine,” I say. “Be a good person to dogs. I don’t care. Dogs have no real dreams to destroy.”

He kind of laughs and shakes his head. “Jules…”

“Here you go, Alex,” Santiago says, bringing a Doberman
mix over. “He’s big but gentle, so I know you’ll be able to handle him on your own.”

I quickly leash up the nearest dog and glance at her name (Hildy) before rushing outside. Unfortunately Alex is right with me.

“Look,” he says, “I wasn’t trying to… destroy your dreams. I’m not even sure how I am.”

“I literally don’t understand how you could think anything that happened is okay,” I say, trying to hold back Hildy, who’s pulling at her leash to sniff Alex’s Doberman.

“Could we just talk?” he asks. “Please?”

“I don’t know what we could talk about. You made me feel like the stupidest girl on the planet, and you’re part of something that’s going to ruin the only thing I looked forward to for my senior year.” I can hear how hyperbolic my statements are turning, but Alex should know how his actions affect others. Affect
me
.

“I thought you’d like it,” he says. “You like extracurriculars.”

“Not ones that are out to destroy me.”

“Fine,” he says. “I’ll leave you alone.”

“Good!”

“Great!”

We walk the same path, though, around the same blocks. When Alex’s dog stops to poop, so does Hildy. Alex and I have to use the same trash can to throw away the poop bags. Santiago keeps leashing dogs for Alex as quickly as I can leash
my own. We’re locked in this constant pattern, leashing and walking and throwing away poop. Just a few days ago it all would have seemed incredibly romantic.

Now it’s a battle.

The
Crest
comes out on Mondays. Once we’re through this week and the chosen freshman have officially joined staff, they’ll be the ones to spend their Monday lunches handing out papers, so the sophomores are handling for now. It’s fair because during fourth period we get to order giant pizzas from Big Mama’s & Papa’s, so no one’s going hungry, and the whole staff is camping out in Mr. Wheeler’s room. This is basically the only time all week when we don’t have to panic about next week’s issue. We’ll enjoy these fleeting moments.

(I actually enjoy the stressful moments too, but I’m trying to be relatable to the rest of the staff, who don’t seem to crave deadlines and panic the way I do.)

Thatcher is showing me his portfolio-in-progress for his art school applications when the sophomores start filing in with leftover papers. Normally, the copies get stacked on the corner of Mr. Wheeler’s desk. We’ve had it down to a science for years; print the right number of copies, and there’s no fear of having too many wasted afterward.

But I immediately notice that the stacks look too tall for
Mr. Wheeler’s desk. I abandon Thatcher as well as my garlic-and-basil pizza to direct them to the table where the papers had been dropped off this morning.

The leftover newspapers cover the table. In fact, if you didn’t look carefully, it would be easy to believe that we were exactly where we started this morning.

“Jules was right,” Carlos says, surveying the piles. “It seems like no one cares.”

“No one cares!” Kari Ellison, a sophomore, says. “People were like, ‘I don’t care!’”

The whole staff begins drifting to the back of the room to survey this tangible proof of Eagle Vista Academy’s disinterest.

“See?” I say. “A tradition is dying.”

“We’ll print fewer copies next week,” Mr. Wheeler says between chomps of pizza. There’s grease, somehow, on his forehead. Come on, Mr. Wheeler. If you can’t inspire us, can’t you at least eat pizza correctly? “It won’t look so depressing then, guys.”

“But it won’t change the fact that it
is
depressing,” I say. “Is TALON really that great?”

Everyone murmurs embarrassed-sounding affirmatives.

“Okay, fine,” I contend, “but does it have to
replace
us? Can’t we
do something
?”

“Yeah,” says Marisa Johnston, a junior I’m fairly certain already has her eye on the editor position for next year. “Can’t we fight back?”

“I guess I didn’t care about tradition,” Thatcher says. “Sorry, Jules. But I do care about not letting TALON win. This means—”

“Can I say it?” I interrupt. I have
always
wanted a moment like this, and it’s here! Maybe TALON has actually given me a gift. I get to be the underdog, and everyone knows that the underdog is the one to root for. I’ve been gearing up my whole life to be the underdog.

Thatcher grins at me. “Go for it. You’ve earned it.”

“This means war.”