The One That I Want (10 page)

Kichirou Maximilian Hirayama.
That was Max all right, with an expression of utter joy on his face, like the photographer had told him history’s funniest joke. I smiled just looking at him.

I flipped several more pages.
Carter Nelson.
He frowned. I’d seen similar expressions of the faces of starting football players in high school game programs, but usually not in their yearbook pictures. Their girlfriends would complain. Nobody wanted to look at that.

Another photo caught my eye as I thumbed through last year’s sophomores. Max was seated at what appeared to be a lunchroom table, surrounded by other students, with an open box in front of him. It must have been his birthday. Ribbon and paper were scattered across the table. He had that same look on his face, that deep-down happiness. All the other kids in the picture were laughing too. Maybe one of these beautiful girls had been his girlfriend back then, and she felt so warm inside because she’d bought him the perfect gift.

Wow, I was imagining
way
too much. I would need to be careful when I saw Max next Friday so I didn’t let it slip that I’d seen this picture and wondered about his life outside the Varsity and the MARTA system. I would seem like a stalker.

For that reason, I didn’t thumb through the yearbook anymore, even to search for his picture in club photos to find out what his hobbies were. Any knowledge like that would give away my crush. I had made a mistake like that when Robert left his schedule on the lunchroom table where I could see it at the beginning of school last year. I had memorized it, and later I had made a point of walking very slowly by his classes. My crush was so painfully obvious that he had cornered me on a band trip and stressed to me that he wanted to be
just friends
, as if he was afraid the other trumpets would find out I liked him and make fun of him for it. Mortifying!

It was better that I didn’t know too much about Max. The less I knew, the less I needed to forget. I closed the book and considered running the hem of my T-shirt along it to wipe off my fingerprints. I reshelved it without any crime scene cover-up and went outside to meet my mom.

A few minutes before Max was supposed to pick me up on Friday, I sat on the front porch to wait for him. My house was imposing. Grandiose. Embarrassing. I thought hanging out on the steps in my rock band T-shirt and shorts might lessen the impact of the thick polished marble columns and the fourteen-foot-tall windows.

Also, I did not want Max to ring the doorbell. My dad had a gag bell installed that sounded like a gong in a palace. It was a joke. I didn’t think it was funny. I’d complained about it to my mom, but she didn’t know how to change the sound, and she’d never bothered to hire someone to fix it.

When Max pulled into the brick driveway in the longest old clunker I had ever seen, I crossed the lawn to meet him. But I stopped short and did a double take when he unfolded his tall frame from the car. He’d grown a goatee. I thought he’d been cuter clean shaven. Fresh-faced and younger-looking.

But as I considered him, I decided maybe “cute” was not my favorite look for him anyway. “Cute” had gotten my attention in the first place, but mature and handsomely devilish-looking would definitely
keep
my attention. Of course, it didn’t matter whether he had my attention or not. He was dating Addison, so he would never know.

As I stood there in the hot evening sunshine,
brushing away the gnats I’d stirred up in the grass, I felt the most profound sadness. Max’s goatee had surprised me because I hadn’t seen him in a week. I had missed six days of his classmates teasing him about the awkward, in-between, you-really-need-to-shave phase as his goatee grew in. It was just facial hair this time, but our lives had so little to do with each other, really. He could lose a leg and it would be a week before I found out.

Squinting against the sunlight, he backed against the car door to close it. “Hi. Do I look foreign in this?”

“Um,” I said, trying to puzzle out what he was talking about. The goatee didn’t make him look foreign. Just older. “What?”

“Sometimes people take one look at me and start speaking. Very. Slowwwwwwwly. Like I can’t understand English.”

I examined his gray plaid shorts, which might have looked nerdy on another boy but were part of Max’s effortless ultracool look, along with his tight red T-shirt and his long hair. Finally I said, “You don’t
stand
foreign.”

“Really? How do I stand?” He assumed a weight-lifter pose, flexing his biceps for me.

I laughed it off and tried not to ogle him. “You stand like an American high school football kicker.”

He relaxed and put his fists on his hips. “But do I
look
foreign? It must be the hair.”

Okay, his hair
was
a little too stylish to blend in around here, but that wasn’t what caught my attention now that I considered him in this new way. “Your T-shirt is written in Japanese.”

He pulled his T-shirt away from his chest with two fingers and examined it. “I hadn’t thought about that. We visit my grandparents in Japan every year. I buy a lot of T-shirts because they’re so different from what you can get in America.”

“So you
do
want people to notice you,” I pointed out.

He opened his mouth. Closed it again.

“I understand,” I assured him. “You want people to notice you, but on your own terms.”

He frowned at me.

To change the subject in case he was as sensitive about that as he seemed, I asked, “What does your T-shirt say, anyway?”

“Dunno. I always have to ask my mom. She tells me they all say, ‘Bullshit.’”

“Bullshit!” I sputtered laughter.

“Her English is good but not nuanced,” he explained. “Sometimes she changes it up with another word she’s learned, like ‘whackadoodle.’ She’ll do this.” He pointed at two characters in a line on his shirt and pronounced two syllables with each. “‘To-mo, da-chi.’” He underlined them with his finger. “‘Whackadoodle.’”

Carefully I wiped away the tears under my eyes so as not to smear my makeup. “She sounds funny.”

“She is funny. Just . . .” He rolled his eyes. “Foreign.”

“What does your dad say?”

Max shrugged. “He thinks my struggles are amusing and futile.” I was pretty sure that was a direct quote from his dad. Max’s dark eyes got a faraway look, and he was quiet, which was rare for him.

“Well,” I forced myself to say. “Welcome to my humble house.”

He grinned as he walked toward me. “What house?” He pretended to do a double take and see the mansion for the first time, like I’d done for his goatee. “Oh! I didn’t even notice it until you mentioned it.”

If Addison were here, she would shove him playfully. I was afraid I might shove him off balance and kill him. And he wasn’t my date. He was hers. So I just smiled, which probably made him think I didn’t appreciate his sense of humor. I couldn’t win. Finally I managed, “I’m sorry, but my mom says she has to talk to you before she will let Addison and me in your car.”

“I figured she would.”

“You already impressed her when you opened the car door for me at the MARTA station, so the interrogation shouldn’t be too bad.”

“Good to know.” He gestured to the house,
ladies first
, and followed me inside.

My mom met us in the foyer, shook Max’s hand, and led him into the library. Surrounded by dark paneled wood and thousands of books shelved floor to ceiling with a rolling ladder to get them down, and facing my mom, Max probably considered this the most awkward moment of his life.

But he sat in one of the leather chairs like it was a metal folding chair at school and talked animatedly to my mom like she was Addison or Carter or me. Either he was the only person I’d ever met who was comfortable with anyone in any situation, or it didn’t occur to him to be embarrassed because the stakes for impressing my mom weren’t very high. After all, he wasn’t dating
me
.

He was only my ride to my first date ever.

“Nice wheels,” I said a few minutes later, slipping into Max’s car.

He closed my door, jogged around the hood, and sat on the driver’s side. As he turned the key in the ignition, he said, “Very funny.”

“I’m serious! What do you call a car like this?”

“I call it a 1983 Oldsmobile, on a good day. On a bad day I have a different name for it entirely.”

“Did you buy it yourself?”

“Do you
think
I would pay my own money for this? My dad was going to buy me a new car. Then we got into an argument about Japanese versus classic American automotive technology, and he bought me this instead.”

“Oooh. So you should never get in an argument with your father.”

“I should never get in an argument with him about cars when he’s planning to buy me a car. But this arrangement will only last until I break down on I-85.” He winked at me. “Maybe then he’ll buy me an Aston Martin.”

“Oh, snap.”

He raised his eyebrows at me, checking my expression. “I was kidding.”

“I laughed.”

He smiled. I could tell he felt bad about the joke and was trying to rein himself in, because his next question was sweet. “How’s your nose?”

I touched it gingerly. “Still there.” I’d hardly thought about it when Max and Carter weren’t staring at me anymore.

“Good. First week of school treat you okay?”

“Band practice was great. We just work on our majorette routine for the whole hour every day. I can’t believe I get a credit for that.”

I didn’t tell Max about the drama. Mrs. Baxter had dumbed down the routine because Addison and one of the seniors couldn’t keep up with all the tricks she’d planned. Then Addison had gotten so embarrassed that she’d asked me to work with her after school. I’d told her I couldn’t because I had to teach a class of fourth graders at the baton studio. She’d gotten mad.

“That sounds fun,” Max said diplomatically.

“Yeah. And I switched my schedule around at the last minute. Our school has a great dance program that I never took advantage of before. I guess making majorette finally gave me the confidence to enroll in dance.” I left out that I’d always wanted to take my school’s dance classes, but there was no way. Every one of them required at least two public performances. In a leotard. I’d taken music classes instead.

I also left out that I hadn’t informed Addison of my decision beforehand. When she’d found out I wasn’t in music comp with her like I usually was, she’d gotten mad.

“That’s good,” Max said.

“I hope. And I’m getting a lot of attention for dating Carter.”

Max stopped at an intersection and turned to face me. “What kind of attention?”

I shrugged. “You know.”

He continued to watch me, which was frustrating. Max had seemed like a person I didn’t have to explain things to. He usually knew what I meant, or acted like he did. That’s why he was fun to talk with. Now that he was pressing me to be specific, talking with him wasn’t fun. I racked my brain for an answer that wouldn’t be embarrassing.

There wasn’t one.

I said slowly, “Attention in general. I never got any before.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“It’s just because I’m a majorette now, and I’m going out with the rival football team’s quarterback. It’s something for people to gossip about.”

In fact, I had heard a rumor that Robert had gotten jealous of Carter and was planning to ask me out. It hadn’t happened yet, but I had caught Robert staring at me a few times in band when I’d performed spin-turns he wasn’t expecting. Funny how I would have been so excited about that four months ago. I would have checked my cell phone twenty times a day, hoping he would text me. But after he’d been so unsupportive during majorette tryouts and spent a whole summer pretending I didn’t exist, I’d gotten to the point that I didn’t miss Robert at all.

And now that I’d met Max, it was difficult to remember why Robert had ever seemed like the perfect guy for me.

Just my luck.

“Are they gossiping about Addison going out with the rival football team’s kicker?” Max asked.

“Not so much,” I said truthfully. Addison had gotten mad about this, too. In fact, as we’d walked around school together, people had stopped to ask me about Carter a
lot
more than they’d talked to Addison about Max. She might be having second thoughts about which boy she’d chosen.

That was okay. Tonight she’d have a great time with Max. Carter could continue to test how long he could go without saying anything. Or anything
nice
. And Addison would realize that she’d chosen the better man after all.

Max was still frowning at me.

“Bless your heart.” I patted his bare knee playfully and tried to ignore the fact that his muscular leg was as hard as a rock. “
I
appreciate you, Max.
I
think you’re gossip-worthy. Now drive.”

Obediently he faced forward and accelerated through the four-way stop, but a worried crease remained between his brows. He was disturbed that Addison hadn’t gotten as much social mileage out of dating him as I’d gotten out of dating Carter. He
should
be disturbed. It served him right for asking her out instead of me, because I certainly wouldn’t have let something like that bother
me
if
I
were his date.

But I didn’t want to argue with Max all the way to the shopping center where we were meeting Addison and Carter. I should make polite conversation and ask
Max
how
his
first week of school was.

Before I could get the words out, he asked, “What made you decide to lose weight?”

Heat rushed to my face, as it always did when someone mentioned my weight. It took me a few seconds to remember that there wasn’t anything to feel self-conscious about now.

A second wave of blush hit my face as I realized why he was asking. He had met my mother. While I had lost weight, she had kept gaining. By now the contrast between us was getting pretty noticeable.

The silence had stretched so long that most people would backtrack and retract the question, thinking they had offended me. Not Max. He shot me a quick, expectant glance. I reminded myself that he was not Robert. Robert asked questions to embarrass me and put me in my place. Max asked questions because he liked me and was interested.