Jenna has short, spiky black hair with big chunks of blue that you can only see from a certain angle under the fluorescent lights. She’s always wearing something black. Today it’s a ruffled skirt with red leggings, and her eyelids are caked with red glitter. She reminds me of a deranged Tinkerbell. Seeing him leaning against the orange lockers in his white button-down shirt and light blue linen shorts, it’s hard not to notice the contrast between the two. As I pass, he pulls a Melon Ballers’ poster off the bulletin board behind Jenna, shoving it into his backpack.Will I see him at a show?With a quick nod, he walks away, still looking as sad as before. Maybe someone stole his donuts too.
CAMERON
It’s painful. Like someone-taking-a-key-to-the-side-of-my-beautiful-new-car painful. Every class is another new start, afresh introduction, a new sea of staring eyes. By the time I reach English after lunch, my nerves are shot and, hand to the holy mother, I say an actual prayer that my classmates will be mute. Or that my teacher will take pity on me and saddle us with a five-hundred-word in-class essay or something. Anything to distract them from the most interesting thing about the first day of school, which seems to be me.It’s definitely me.
I have three hours left and all I really want to do is go back to the apartment.Myapartment. Two months ago—the week after I turned eighteen—I spent an entire weekend visiting houses and condos in Riverton. When I finally walked into an apartment down the street from the beach and felt like I wanted to sit on the ratty old chair and just stay there, I knew I had found a winner. The rooms are all furnished seventies-garage-sale style. It feels comfortable.
Every room is painted a different shade of blue. The living room looks like the midday ocean—alarmingly bright and strangely calming at the same time. It feels like being surrounded by walls of water; like living in a fish tank. The strips that run above and below the white kitchen cabinets are a dark, almost black blue, and the two bedrooms are a pale powdery shade that belongs in a little boy’s room. I told myself I’d paint those, but I still haven’t. Something about the blue-ness of it all just seemed right when I saw it. It didn’t feel anything like my home, or the house where I had lived with my aunt and uncle. The apartment feels completely… other. It reminds me of the ocean—of that part of home, without bringing with it all of the more real parts that I had to get away from.
The landlord had looked me over like maybe I was going to turn the place into a meth lab or a grow house, but I guess three open apartments in the building and a wad of cash must have made his mind up.
“Keep out of your neighbors’ hair, son,” he said. And thenhe was gone, cash in hand, pushing the shiny keys into my palm. They practically screamed at me.
We’re your ticket out, Cameron!
Let us lead you to the pity-free promised land of Anonymity!
Now here I am, in fourth-hour English, living the dream. After the obligatory introduction (where I’m once again paraded in front of a classroom of students that I’ve already met) Ms. Willard, a tall, skeletal woman, begins to pace around the room. Her long black hair is so shiny it looks wet, and she’s holding a beat-up cardboard box, pulling out little black notepads and laying one on each desk. They’re small, like something you’d imagine a child detective carrying around, jotting down notes on the most recent grocery store caper.
“These,” she says, in a raspy smoker’s voice, “are your journals.”
The class lets out a cumulative moan of disgust, to which Ms. Willard replies with a giant smile. “I’ve been an educator for twenty years.” She rolls her eyes as she continues pacing. “You can’t faze me with your sullen teenage ways.” She wags her finger in the air. “For the next week you’ll work on a character study. Pick someone you can observe on a regular basis. A friend or family member, someone who works at a local store. A coach or family friend. You get the idea…” She’s pacing across the room in a figure eight formation, lightly tapping her palms together. “You’ll record everything you can. Their mannerisms and habits, their beliefs, their physical characteristics. Aspirations and internal conflicts… No detail is too small, no fact too trivial. Obviously this will be easiest with someone you have frequent access to. Someone you know or would like to get to know.”
Then, she winks at us. And I’m pretty sure at least one person gasps. If there isn’t a law against teachers winking at students, there definitely should be. It’s creepy. Like guy-in-a-trench-coat-handing-out-candy-on-the-playground creepy.
“Gentlemen, perhaps this is a good time to learn more about one of the young ladies you’re interested in.”
Is she actuallyencouragingstalking?A few girls are looking around themselves nervously. I’m still laughing over the wink.What kind of schoolisthis?
At the chalkboard, Ms. Willard writes the definition in a scrawled script:
A WRITTEN DESCRIPTION OF A PERSON’S QUALITIES.
This is my kind of thing. After close to a year of being watched like a mental patient, I’m ready to be the observer. For once, my life won’t be an open book, thumbed through by every teacher and student, earmarked to one climactic page where my whole life changed. They won’t know that my parents are dead, or that I’m a year behind. They’ll only know what I tell them. They won’t have the chance to see me as a less-perfect version of the old me. I flip open the pad. While Ms. Willard continues to rattle off the books and assignments we can look forward to, I scribble everything I know about Ginny.
Physical Description: Skinny with “tree trunk” legs. Colorful hair?
Habits & Mannerisms: Sarcastic. Spunky. Confident.
Skills: Scaring her grandmother. Being upbeat even in a nursing home. Music.
Conflicts:?
VIRGINIA
I’m sitting in the corner of Logan’s room after school, like I do every day. We don’t have much homework the first day of school,but I brought all my books anyway. I need an available distraction if things get awkward. Logan comes down the stairs to his bedroom with an armful of snacks, setting the bowls and cans in front of me. My psychology textbook is open on my lap and I flip through the pages, watching words fly by—Pavlov, Rorschach, cognition, Freud—I’m not actually reading them. Logan drops to the floor. He’s wedged right up next to me—born without any sense of personal space—and his long arms wrap around his knees. I’m not sure if I should leave my leg where it’s at, or move it. We never used to have this weirdness, but now I question everything I do around him.
Logan bumps me with his shoulder. “Wanna make out?”
“Not funny.” I throw a pretzel at him. He’s laughing, but I’m still not sure if he’s joking.
Three weeks ago we would have already been making out. Two weeks ago I told him we couldn’t do it anymore. Things were getting weird. In the back of my mind I had always wondered about Logan and me. If he ever thought about me that way (I still don’t know), if we could be more (I don’t think so), if I wanted that (I had thought I might). No matter which way I rolled it all around in my brain, I think I always knew that Logan and I could never work long-term. We’d kill each other. But this spring when I broke up with Toby Mendon—boyfriend of ten months, first (of many things), and King of the Assholes—I vowed I was done with high school boyfriends. I’d wait for college guys. Guys who didn’t think making out in the backseat of their mom’s minivan was sexy, or that I was supposed to be a seventeen-year-old virginandan aspiring porn star.
A few months ago, when Logan jokingly asked, “Wanna make out?” for the nine hundredth time, I figured why not? For a while it was great. It was casual and fun and comfortable. Until it wasn’t. There were no lines, no rules to follow. Sometimes he’d grab my hand in public, or try to kiss me when peoplewere around. And other times he ignored me, and that bothered me too. Even though being Logan’s girlfriend was not what I wanted. I think about things too much to do the whole friends-with-benefits thing. I knew it had to end. To preserve my sanity and our friendship.
Push me, pull me, take me or leave me… the way I am, can’t be like them…the words buzz in my head, and I begin to hum a soft melody as I grab my notebook. Music takes over my mind the same way a fever takes over a body: in a hot, unexpected rush. One minute it’s quiet and the next there are words and notes and magic swirling around in me.
Logan looks at me like maybe I just changed my mind about the make-out session. “Song?”
