“That,” Mr. Johnson said, coming up behind us, “is something you would do well to worry more about, Ms. Seibold.”
I jumped and my hand knocked into the circuit board, causing it to skid across the table. Boden had to catch it before it tipped off altogether.
Mr. Johnson held his hand out for it. “Attempting to get rid of the evidence?”
“No,” I said. “You just startled me. We did it right.”
Mr. Johnson went about checking our circuits. He was a middle-aged man with a drooping mustache and the sort of grumpy demeanor that made you think he’d never been youngor happy and so resented anyone who was either. “You wouldn’t have been startled if you’d been paying attention instead of trying to set Boden up with your friend.”
Wait, what? “I wasn’t trying to set Boden up.” I glanced at him to see if he’d come to the same conclusion. His neck flushed red, and he stared at the table.
Mr. Johnson grunted. “Save your protests of innocence for drama class.” He picked up my lab book and checked off the assignment, then picked up Boden’s book.
The bell rang and students immediately headed to the door in their usual stampede form. Mr. Johnson called out, “Don’t forget to read the next section for your homework.”
How did I fix this with Boden? I couldn’t blurt out that I hadn’t been trying to set him up with Selena because I maybe liked him.
Boden didn’t give me a chance to say anything. Still blushing, he grabbed his stuff, made a beeline for the door, and was gone.
At times, I’ve joked that my love life is cursed. It was beginning to feel less like a joke and more like a valid hypothesis.
c c c
Throughout the rest of school, I thought about telling Selena what had happened with Boden. Then I thought about her yelling at me for trying to set her up with one of his friends after she’d told me not to. I decided she didn’t have to know about my latest disaster.
I would look for Boden at the game tonight. If he was there, I’d excuse myself from my father for a few minutes and explain to Boden, in a chill, tactful way, that our physics teacher was insane and assure him again that I hadn’t been setting him upwith Selena. I’d simply been looking for a math tutor and had been about to tell him why my best friend—despite being an awesome, smart person—wasn’t a good fit for the job.
If he wasn’t at the game, I’d tell him the same thing as soon as I saw him in class on Monday. Hopefully, we could laugh about it and then never speak of Mr. Johnson’s ill-informed accusations again.
At drama rehearsal, Harper, Kinsley, and I ran lines in the back corner of the auditorium. In the play, they were the shopgirls in Mrs. Molloy’s store, the other two big female parts.
Even though the school never gave enough money to the drama department to buy all of the costumes and set pieces we needed for our plays, you wouldn’t guess the administration’s stinginess from the size of the theater. It was huge, with rows of comfy cloth chairs that Mrs. Russel was always yelling at us to keep clean. We weren’t supposed to eat in the theater, but if you ran lines sitting on the floor in one of the back corners, she either didn’t see your stash of chips or didn’t care about you getting the floor dirty.
Harper was a fan of every designer-flavored chip there was. Tomato and olive. Black bean. Sweet potato and avocado. Kinsley brought Triscuits and string cheese. I was a popcorn girl. Usually I brought the kind without much butter or salt. Today I was eating kettle corn. It was one of those days where nothing but sugar would do, a substance that might be in shorter supply in the future. During my dad’s last shopping trip, he’d only bought healthy food.
Thank you, new fitness instructor girlfriend.
I knew the pantry’s recent abundance of quinoa, oats, and organic protein powder was all for show. He hadn’t gotten rid of his old junk food, just moved it to the desk drawers in his study.
After I helped Harper and Kinsley go through their scene, the conversation shifted to Cooper. Neither of them was sufficiently horrified that my father was dating his mother.
“If they get married,” Harper said, “you need to invite us over to your house all of the time so we can hang out with him.” She fluttered a hand decked in silver rings. “Pool party!” Harper had a flair for the dramatic and liked to wear vintage clothes. You never knew which decade she was visiting. Today she wore black-and-white checkered capris and a tight-fitting top that made her look like she’d wandered out of a fifties beach movie.
I put my script in my lap with a thud. “You want to hang out with my former nemesis? Harper, you helped me hide his books on the library shelves.”
She tilted her head, her brown curls bouncing slightly. “Yeah, but now you’ve put an end to your nemesis-ship, so it’s okay.”
I’d told them that Cooper and I had agreed to get along. I hadn’t said anything to them about fake dating.
Kinsley nodded in agreement with Harper. Her long brown hair was pulled back in a French braid, and she wore red cowboy boots with her jeans. Despite the fact that her parents owned a string of UPS stores, she was a cowgirl waiting to happen. “It was time to end the pranks,” Kinsley said, ever the peacemaker. “If you hadn’t, on opening night, your Dolly costume might have ended up superglued to the set. Nobody wants that.”
“Besides,” Harper added, “Cooper has hot friends. You ought to throw a get-together at your house—your friends and the football team. We’ll help you plan it.”
Nope, I couldn’t even imagine a world in which my home was invaded by the football team.
Kinsley elbowed Harper. “Put away your appetizer list. The girl is grounded.”
Harper deflated. “Can’t you do something to unground yourself?”
