Laurel heard her mother’s soft steps creak down the hall and poked her head out the bathroom door. “Mom?”
“Kitchen,” her mom called with a yawn.
Laurel followed her voice. “I have a bump on my back. Could you look at it?” she asked, turning around.
Her mom pushed on it softly a few times. “Just a zit,” she concluded.
“That’s what I figured,” Laurel said, letting the top of her dress snap back up.
“You don’t really get zits.” She hesitated. “Have you started…you know?”
Laurel shook her head quickly. “Just a fluke.” Her voice was flat and her smile was sharp. “All part of puberty, like you always say.” She turned and fled before her mother could ask any more questions.
Back in her room she sat on her bed, fingering the small bump. It made her feel strangely normal to get her first zit; like a rite of passage. She hadn’t experienced puberty quite like the textbooks described it. She never got zits and, although her chest and hips had developed the way they were supposed to — a little early, actually — at fifteen and a half she still hadn’t started her period.
Her mom always shrugged it off, saying that because they had no idea what her biological mother’s medical history was, they couldn’t be certain it wasn’t a perfectly normal family trait. But she could tell that her mom was starting to get worried.
Laurel dressed in her usual tank top and jeans and started to pull her hair into a ponytail. Then she thought of the irritated blemishes she occasionally saw dotting other girls’ backs in the locker room and left her hair down. Just in case the bump developed into something ugly later on.
Especially at David’s house. That would suck.
Laurel grabbed an apple as she walked out the door and called good-bye to her mom. She was almost to David’s house when she looked up and saw Chelsea jogging the other way. Laurel waved and called to her.
“Hey!” Chelsea said, smiling as her curls blew lightly around her face.
“Hi,” Laurel said with a smile. “I didn’t know you were a runner.”
“Cross-country. Usually I practice with the team, but on Saturdays we’re on our own. What are you doing?”
“I’m headed to David’s,” Laurel said. “We’re going to study.”
Chelsea laughed. “Well, welcome to the David Lawson fan club. I’m already president, but you can be treasurer.”
“It’s not like that,” Laurel said, not completely sure she was telling the truth. “We’re just going to study. I have a bio test on Monday that I’m totally going to blow without some serious intervention.”
“He’s just around the corner. I’ll walk you there.”
They rounded the corner and heard the mower. David didn’t see them as they walked up and they both stood there, watching.
He was pushing a lawn mower through the thick grass, wearing only a pair of jeans and old tennis shoes. His chest and arms were long and wiry but corded with lean muscle — his skin was tanned from the sun and glistened with a light sheen of sweat as he moved almost gracefully in the gentle morning sunlight.
Laurel couldn’t help but stare.
She’d seen guys running around without shirts countless times, but somehow this was different. She watched his arms flex as he reached a particularly thick patch of grass and had to force the mower to keep going. Her chest felt a little tight.
“I think I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Chelsea said, not bothering to hide the appreciation in her eyes.
As if feeling them watching, David suddenly looked up and met Laurel’s eyes. She dropped her chin and studied her feet.
Chelsea didn’t even blink.
By the time Laurel looked up again, David was pulling on a shirt. “Hey, guys. You’re up early.”
“Is it early still?” Laurel asked. It was almost nine o’clock, after all. “Oh,” she said, embarrassed, “I forgot to call.”
David shrugged with a grin. “That’s okay.” He gestured at the lawn mower. “I’m up.”
“Well, I gotta run,” Chelsea said, her breathlessness back rather suddenly. “Literally.” She turned so only Laurel could see her face and mouthed, “Wow!” before waving at them both and sprinting down the street.
David chuckled and shook his head as he watched her go. Then he turned to Laurel and pointed toward his house. “Shall we? Biology waits for no man.”
After the tests were handed in on Monday, David turned to Laurel. “So, how bad was it, really?”
Laurel grinned. “Fine, it wasn’t that bad. But only because of your help.” They’d studied for about three hours on Saturday and had talked for another hour on Sunday night. Granted, the phone conversation had nothing to do with biology, but perhaps she had learned something by osmosis. Osmosis over the phone. Right.
He hesitated for just a second before saying, “We could make it a regular thing. Studying together, I mean.”
“Yeah,” Laurel said, liking the idea of more quiet “study” sessions with him. “And next time you could come to my house,” she added.
“Great.”
It was raining by the time class let out that day, so the group gathered under a small pavilion instead. Almost no one ate there because there were no picnic tables or cement underneath, but Laurel liked the bumpy patch of grass that never seemed to dry all the way — even with the roof overhead.
When it rained, most of the group stayed inside, but today David and Chelsea joined her as well as a guy named Ryan. David and Ryan threw bits of bread at each other and Chelsea commentated — critiquing their aim, throwing form, and inability to keep from hitting spectators.
“Okay, that one was on purpose,” Chelsea said, picking up a piece of crust that had hit her square in the chest and flicking it back over to the guys.
“Nah, it was an accident,” Ryan said. “You’re the one who told me I couldn’t hit anything I aimed for.”
“Then maybe you should aim for me so I can be assured of not being assaulted,” she shot back. She sighed and turned to Laurel. “I was not meant to live in northern California,” she said, pushing her hair out of her face. “During the summer my hair does fine, but introduce a little rain and bam! It turns into this.” Chelsea had long brown hair with a tinge of auburn that fell in ringlets down her back. Soft, silky ringlets on sunny days, and jumping, coarse ringlets that bounced out of control around her face when the air was cold and humid — which was about half the time. She had light gray eyes that reminded Laurel of the ocean when the sun was just rising, and the waves had an endless quality to them in the murky half-darkness.
“I think it’s pretty,” Laurel said.
“That’s because it’s not yours. I have to use special shampoos and conditioners just to be able to brush through it every day.” She looked over at Laurel and touched her straight, smooth hair for a second. “Yours feels nice; what do you use?”
“Oh, just whatever.”
“Hmm.” Chelsea touched her hair one more time. “Do you use a leave-in conditioner? That usually works the best with mine.”
Laurel took a breath and let it out noisily. “Actually…I don’t put anything on it. Any kind of conditioner makes my hair really slick and oily-feeling. And if I use shampoo, it makes my hair really, really dry — even the moisturizing kind.”
“So you just don’t wash it?” The idea was apparently beyond foreign to Chelsea.
“I rinse it really well. I mean, it’s clean and everything.”