When he was out of earshot, Josh and Elise caught up with me. “What was that all about?” Elise asked. “Soy sauce stains? Your nose doesn’t seem broken or anything? What did you two do?”
“He . . . sort of . . . accidentally hit me in the nose at the dance.”
“With a soy sauce bottle?”
“Um, no. That was at dinner. He knocked the soy sauce into my lap. I had to go home and change.”
Elise quirked an eyebrow up. “And you told me your date was fine?”
“Fine in a general manner of speaking.”
“Meaning what? There were no casualties?”
I shifted my backpack uncomfortably. “Well, it could have been worse.” Actually, it was worse, but I didn’t feel the need to tell her about my indoctrination into the insect world.
I noticed Josh out of the corner of my eye. He was laughing. He tried to hold it in, but didn’t do a very good job so he was disguising it as a coughing attack.
At another time I would have joined in with him, but now I thought he was just adding fuel to Elise’s opinions. I sent him a cold look. “And I don’t suppose you’ve ever had an accident while on a date?”
“Not one that could be considered assault and battery.” Josh’s coughing attack got worse. People turned and looked at us.
Elise shook her head. “That’s the most pathetic thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Okay. So it wasn’t the best night of my life. But at least I remember all the details.”
“Yeah,” she said, “but why would you want to?”
She had a point. I couldn’t think of a rebuttal.
It didn’t take long for stories of Elise’s exploits at the party to spread around school. Apparently she hadn’t just been drinking. She and Cole Rider, a junior on the football team, had been kissing on the couch in front of everybody.
She didn’t seem to care very much that Cole didn’t pay attention to her after the party. All sorts of other people took notice of her now. She was an instant “in” with Kaylee and her gang. They followed her around the hallways like an entourage. Over the next few weeks she ate at their table as often as she ate at mine.
My table always seemed too quiet when she wasn’t there. It was odd how quickly I’d come to depend on Elise for energy. She had a way of making any situation feel like it could veer off into something fun. It made me wonder if there was actually something to her carpe-diem attitude to life.
I saw myself as smart and competent—someone on the right track to making the right choices. But maybe I was like one of those boring characters in coming-of-age movies. Repressed. Stuffy. Someone who hadn’t learned how to live yet.
I didn’t start going to parties, and I didn’t shamelessly flirt with the upperclassman. But I did find myself Elise-izing things, making snarky comments, looking for things to laugh at.
Elise didn’t talk about guys when Josh was around, but sometimes I went over to her house to study, and then guys were her favorite subject.
“What do you think of David Hunsaker?” she asked. “He flirts with me all the time.”
“I don’t really know much about him. He’s a junior.”
“But you think he’s cute, don’t you?”
“Sure.”
“He wants to do something with me this weekend, but so does Avery Thompson. I can’t decide what I should do.”
I tried not to sound too envious of her dilemma. “I thought you were still grounded.”
“I’ve found ways around my parents’ unreasonable restrictions. I pretend to go to bed and sneak out my bedroom window. That’s the beauty of having a ground-floor bedroom: I get to have a good time, and my parents get to have a good night’s sleep.”
It was ironic that she didn’t ever get caught doing this, since the one time I’d snuck out, Elise’s mother had called and squealed on me.
I never had much to say about guys to Elise. I was still manless. Bob talked to me in chess club, but he didn’t ask me out again. Maybe he didn’t want to repeat the ordeal any more than I did.
Chad saw various girls, none of whom I liked as they all had the serious shortcoming of not being me. Josh was still seeing Courtney. I didn’t like her either. Somehow over the last few weeks, Josh had improved on my guy scale to ten—perhaps even a ten and a half.
One morning I was in the library looking through the biography section for a social studies report, and Samantha strolled up to me. She casually pulled a book from a shelf near me. “Where’s Elise this morning?”
I flipped through the table of contents in a biography about Joan of Arc. “I don’t know.”
Samantha replaced one book and took off another. “Oh. That’s right. You’re only friends with Elise when Josh is around.”
My head jerked up. “I am not.”
She sent me a knowing look. “Oh come on. You practically hang off of him.”
“I do not.” I felt myself turning red. I couldn’t believe she was saying this stuff to me.
Her voice was light and airy. “Cassidy, if you hung on to him any tighter, they’d have to pry you off every evening with the Jaws of Life.”
“That’s not true,” I insisted. “We’re just friends.”
“And I’m sure you’re disappointed about that.” She turned her back to me and walked off.
I was so steamed I couldn’t think of anything else for the next two periods. I was busy thinking of what I should have said, starting with, “Why do you care?” and ending with places she could put her pompoms.
I hoped that sometime Josh would come up and talk to me in the hallway while Samantha was around, but he never did.
* * *
I took my driver’s test again and passed. Mr. Jensen marked me off with the same sour expression he’d worn when I’d ridden with him the first time. His one personal comment during the whole thing was, “Try to keep off the sidewalk.”
I did.
Despite my success, I never asked my parents if I could take the car to school. I liked the time I spent with Elise and Josh.
One day Elise wasn’t in English class. She didn’t show up at my locker after school either. I figured she’d probably left school early, and I walked out to the parking lot.
Josh was waiting in his car. When I walked up, he glanced behind me. “Where’s Elise?”
“I don’t know. She wasn’t in English.”
He let out a grunt. “She’s skipping classes again.”
“It might not be that. She might have gone home sick.” I didn’t get in the car. Usually I sat in the backseat, but it seemed odd to sit there if Elise wasn’t coming. It would make Josh seem like he was my chauffer or something. I looked back across the parking lot, searching for her.
Josh shook his head. “Elise is supposed to tell me if I’m not taking her home. That way I don’t wait around for her, and I consent to let her ride with me the next day.” He put his keys in the ignition. “Well, let’s go.”
As I walked around to the car, I heard Elise calling. I turned and saw her and Chad walking towards us. They were holding hands.
“I won’t need a ride home,” Elise said. “Chad and I are getting something to eat.” Then she gave us her wicked grin.
They walked past Josh’s car down the parking lot. I didn’t let my gaze follow them. I got in the front seat of Josh’s car and stared at the dashboard. As long as I didn’t have to look at anything else, I could make it home without doing something to embarrass myself, like crying.
I hoped Josh wouldn’t say anything to me, that he would just turn on the radio and ignore me. I kept looking at the dashboard, but all I saw was Chad and Elise—and Elise’s wicked grin.
Josh started up the car and navigated through the parking lot. He turned on the radio and flipped through the stations.
“You have a lousy selection of music in Pullman. You know that, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
There was a small pause. “So, how was sophomore life today?”