Wanda and I headed toward our lunch spot after class, chatting about our art projects and the weather. I spotted Zack sitting on a stone table at the edge of the quad, surrounded by his usual friends. His hair wasn’t done, I realized—his deep chestnut hair, normally bed-head mussed, lay rounded and out-of-the-shower frizzy across his skull. He wore a brown t-shirt and a pair of washed out jeans. He wasn’t participating in whatever group conversation was making Benny rave.
His eyes were locked on the table in front of him—he fiddled with a bag of Cheetos without opening them.
I touched Wanda’s elbow and nodded toward Zack. She gave me a knowing look and veered off toward our usual group. I sucked in a deep breath. Why was I so nervous about seeing him again after our amazing-turned-catastrophic-turned-manhunt date?
As soon as I was in earshot, Zack’s entire table dropped into unrelenting silence. Another deep breath. Calm down, Lucy.
Zack looked up at me last. When he did, I gestured toward the ring of grass just outside the quad. He gave me his Zack poker face and stepped over the low stone wall.
I slid over the tiny wall after him, making sure to put my back to his friends—I didn’t need the worry of having to read his friends’ expressions, too. Zack looked down at me with those intense blue eyes.
“Zack,” I said. “I don’t know what to say.”
Zack stuck his hands into his pockets, “You didn’t answer my calls.”
My heart leaped into my throat. He was angry. The set of his shoulders, his tensed arms. He stood evenly between both feet, motionless. A statue.
I recoiled. Of everything, I hadn’t expected anger.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “I didn’t really talk to anyone.”
“Mmmhmm,” Zack said.
“What?”
“You didn’t talk to Morgan? Wanda?”
“No,” I said.
“Why?”
“I just… I didn’t.” I shrugged. “I didn’t know what to say. I texted you.”
Zack blew out a stream of air. “You sent everyone that text.”
I bounced a tight fist in my other hand. I followed every movement, every tremor, and turn of Zack’s body. He kept turning away from me, I noticed, offering me only one side of him.
“What is it?”
“I…we looked everywhere for you.”
“I know,” I said. My cheeks burned. “I’m sorry. I mean, thank you. I don’t know. This is new for me.”
“Me too,” Zack said. He crossed his arms over his chest, “I just… Why didn’t you call me?”
“I didn’t call any—”
“Forget it,” Zack said, trying to offer a wan smile. It was fake, grotesque even.
“Stop it,” I said. “I’m sorry, okay. This is new for me. Being on Unsolved Mysteries isn’t my idea of a great weekend.”
Zack offered a genuine smile this time, even if it just barely escaped his lips.
“Can we start over?”
My heart sank when he said it. What did that mean? All over? My eyes burned, and I growled silently in the dark reaches of my mind—I couldn’t cry. Stop it. Just stop it, you stupid girl. My fists balled into little white fists, but my voice stumbled over the hitch in my breath. Please stop. Just don’t cry.
“O-okay,” I said, and nodded. When I dipped my head down on the nod, I made sure my curly mane of black hair curtained around my face. Hiding it as best as I could, hunkering back into it like a hood, “Just. Okay. All right.”
I knew I shouldn’t have let Zack back into my thoughts. Shouldn’t have hoped that the smartest, cutest, most perfect guy would want someone like me. I was the weird girl who disappears during a date and shows up on a milk carton. I was Lucy Day, Damsel-in-Distress. Victim. Loser.
My shoulders bowed, and I nodded at a question unasked. I turned to go.
“W-wait!” He said, and grabbed my shoulder. I snapped back toward him.
“Zack…”
“I meant another date. Start over another date.”
My ears went deaf. The hollow rush of blood wooshed through my head. My lips felt numb. It sounded like I said “What?” but I couldn’t be sure behind the mile of cotton jammed so suddenly into my head.
“Another date?” he asked. “One preferably without a rescue team.”
Somehow, my lips remembered how to smile. I’d gone drunk at the wheel, but someone on board still had a hand on the rudder.
“U-unless that’s what you’re into,” Zack said. “Because I have a cousin who’s a lifeguard. We can go to the beach, pick fights with sharks, slap around the whales. It might be fun.”
I laughed, and the grin he flashed made my brain melt. I found myself dangerously close to a swoon again—I couldn’t believe it. Two swoons within the same week. One more and I had to pack it in and become a full-time romance novel cliché.
“Well?”
“Yes!” I said. “I mean. Well, uh. Sure. That’s cool.”
I went to stick my hands nonchalantly in my pockets before I realized I was wearing a skirt. I went for the cardigan, but it was too high up, and I ended up look like an old man trying to pull up his incredibly high pants. Zack laughed.
“Did I mention how good you look today?”
I beamed. I couldn’t help it.
“Nope,” I said. “I don’t remember anything like that.”
“I’ll tell you in Spanish, then,” Zack said.
“Cool,” I said, and backed away slowly. “Start working on a date idea.”
He frowned, “What about the shark thing?”
“Shark date is the third date,” I said. “I’m waiting.”
Zack nodded and his mouth turned into his crooked grin. I turned and fled back to my group with as little speed as I could manage. I didn’t quite get the lazy stroll I was gunning for, but I accomplished something slightly under power-walk.
When I get back to the group, the girls were filled with dynamite. All of them bounced on their seats, pained faces screaming for details. I told them what happened, and they erupted in an atom bomb of girlish glee. Frankly, I found the whole thing disgusting. Or, I would have, if I hadn’t been jumping up and down like an idiot along with them.
After pocketing the cash my mom loaned me for lunch, only marginally aware that not eating for three days was a strange thing, I headed to Spanish. I was packed with tightened springs—I was made of light. I thought of Zack, who liked me. No maybes, no faint hopes. No dreaded freshman Weirdness. He liked me. He didn’t want to be with Morgan, he didn’t want to go on a date with a cheerleader, or even Becca Darling, the brainy-but-sexy phenomenon in all of Zack’s honors classes.
Me. My heart felt like a hot coal in my chest.
Not everywhere else though, I noted as I made my way to Spanish. I hadn’t noticed it until then, but I was freezing. My legs felt like they had been dunked in ice. I blamed it on the skirt—I’d worn it as a universal go-to-hell to my own fear, but it was thin and the air was turning chilly. This wasn’t even California cold, the wussy cold that gripped me often. I felt like I’d eaten a bucket of ice cream and been dumped into a meat locker with the Abominable Snowman.
I pulled my cardigan around me, which did next to nothing against the chill.
The incredible fluffy lightness caused by thoughts of Zack made Spanish zip by. He sat behind me, as usual, but today we didn’t sit and pretend like the other didn’t exist. We’d taken Spanish One together freshman year, and had spent most of those days flirting, passing notes, and engaged in the standard Weirdness sports. This year had been awful. Awful until today, anyway.
We spoke quietly to each other during lulls in the class. Mr. Halloway—Seńor Halloway, as he insisted we call him—even yelled at me at one point to quiet down. Both of us disappeared back into our verb conjugation worksheet, and I didn’t look up until a tiny square of ripped-off notebook paper floated onto my desk. I turned it over to see the small neat blue handwriting I knew to be Zack’s.