“Hypothetically.”
“What does that mean?”
“Okay, pretend your friend likes a guy, but he likes another girl instead. What advice would you give her?”
“I’d tell her to be mean to him.”
“Be mean?”
“Sometimes when you’re a jerk, guys notice you more. Or wait, it’s even better if you’re nice, then mean, then nice again. That confuses them.”
I can’t believe I’m taking advice from a twelve-year-old. But I think about O. telling me to walk away from April. It was kind of the same advice. Maybe Jessica is on to something.
“So what’s O. Douglas like?” Jessica says.
“I’ll introduce you some time.”
“No way!” Jessica says. She gets so excited, she kicks her feet and makes the bed shake.
O. seems to have that effect on people.
Especially girls.
35. thighs dancing in fluorescent light.
I get to AP History before everyone else. I look around the class. It’s hard to know where to sit these days. My old desk next to Eytan is out of the question. The left side in the back is the April zone. The front is Nancy Yee brainiac territory.
I decide to pick the most neutral area. Center of the class, one-third of the way back. Switzerland.
When April comes in, I hold my breath and put a nasty look on my face. I figure I did nice the other night, so it’s time for mean. Just like Jessica suggested.
April glances at her regular desk in the back left, but she doesn’t sit there. She walks up to me instead.
“Hi, Andy.”
“What do you want?” I say. I try to say it like Jessica would, like I’m annoyed by everything in the world, especially if it has a pulse.
April totally misses the point. She touches the chair next to me. “Anyone here?” she says.
“It’s free,” I say, like I could care less.
I’m thinking she’s going to sit down quickly and ask me a question, but she sits and settles, putting her books underneath, wiping off the desk, arranging various thinks like she’s decorating a house. For a second I imagine we’re married, and she’s puttering around our living room moving furniture and watering plants.
Eytan walks in and heads straight for his old desk. He doesn’t even look at me or April.
“You and O. seem like friends,” April says.
My breakfast does a backflip in my stomach.
“Friends?”
“You’re always hanging out together and talking, laughing about things.”
“We’re helping each other out,” I say.
“I don’t think he likes me,” April says.
“Why do you say that?”
“The party was the first time he’s ever talked to me. He usually ignores me. It’s like he’s got a problem with me, but he won’t say it. Or maybe someone else has a problem with me.”
She waits for me to say something. I think she’s talking about Lisa Jacobs, but I can’t be sure.
“Does O. hate me?”
“I don’t think so.” I try to swallow, but my mouth is completely dry. “Why do you care?” I say.
“He’s the captain,” she says.
“So?”
“It’s important.”
“What’s important?”
“It’s a reputation thing,” she says. “If he likes you, your stock goes up.”
The door opens and Nancy Yee walks into class. She’s wearing a short dress over jeans, and she’s got a jacket over the dress, and something like a sweater over the jacket. It looks like she’s wearing three different people’s clothes at the same time. Jessica would have a coronary.
Nancy doesn’t sit at her usual desk. She crosses past April and me and walks to the back of the room. To Eytan.
“What’s up, little lady?” I hear him say.
Nancy smiles wide and flips her bangs. Is it my imagination, or has her acne cleared up a little?
“Anyone here?” she says.
“There happens to be an opening,” Eytan says, and he brushes off the chair like a maître d’.
Nancy giggles and sits in my old chair.
“Andy!” April sighs, frustrated because I’m not paying attention.
“You said you didn’t care about stuff like that,” I say.
“Like what?”
“Reputation. Remember that day in the hall? You said you didn’t care whether I was a jock or not. That isn’t what you’re about. That’s what you told me.”
“I don’t care, but it’s still important. Not to me, but to the other girls.” She looks at me for a long second. “Don’t play dumb,” she says. “You know your stock has gone way up.”
“Has it?”
“Sure. People talk about you now. People who didn’t know you existed before.”
“You mean because I’m on the team.”
“Um… yeah,” she says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
I’m not really playing dumb. I am dumb. What do I know about all this? There are popular kids and unpopular kids, losers and winners, geeks and players. That much I know. But the variations on the theme, whose stock is up and whose is down, the nuances of it all—I’ve got no idea.
People are coming into the room now, and April is leaning all the way over with her forearm crossed over mine. I can feel our thighs touching under the desk like they’re dancing.
April presses the top of my arm. She leans over until her lips are an inch from my ear.
“Will you talk to him for me?” she says.
Be mean. That’s what I keep reminding myself.
“Talk to him yourself,” I say.
“How can I do that?”
“I’m tutoring him after school. We’re meeting at Papa Gino’s.”
Oops. I was trying to be mean, and I think I just invited April for pizza.
“Oh, I could kiss you!” she says.
I hold my breath, waiting to feel April’s lips against my skin—
But it doesn’t happen.
Instead she sits back in her chair, opens a notebook, and pops the cap off a Hello Kitty pen.
I hear Eytan laughing behind me. I turn quickly, but he’s not laughing at me. He’s looking at something Nancy Yee drew in her sketchbook.
I turn back to April. Her smell is all around me, the fruity April scent that I remember from the first time I met her back at the wedding. It’s delicious and painful at the same time, like the smell of a fresh-baked pie you know you can’t have.
36. april sucks my straw.
“Dude, you’re going through that pizza like a buzz saw,” O. says.
I’m halfway through a large extra cheese with hamburger, and O. hasn’t even started on his second slice yet. I pick off a big chunk of burger and pop it in my mouth.
“I’m hungry,” I say.
“It’s cool with me. Keep your weight up. It’s a good thing.”
“What do you care if I have a heart attack, right? As long as I make the blocks for you.”
O. puts his slice down.
“What’s up with you today?” he says.
I close my copy of Huckleberry Finn and put my Diet Coke on it like it’s a coaster.
“You screwed up,” I say.
“What are you talking about?”
“At the party the other night. April doesn’t have a thing for me. You were wrong.”
“But she came right up to you. I saw her. She was all over you.”
“She was all over me because she’s interested in you,” I say.
O. looks at me, wide-eyed.
“But I have a girlfriend,” he says.
“Like that matters.”
O. is so dense sometimes. He doesn’t get that he’s a star. For all I know, that’s part of being a star. You can pretend you’re not one because everyone already knows.
Suddenly April walks by the front window.
“Crap. I messed up and told her we’d be here. I didn’t think she’d actually show up.”