“IF YOU LIKE HER, just talk to her,” Charlie says to me.
We’re standing outside of Econ, just before lunch, trying to see how many pennies we can slip into the slot of Mitchell Marrington’s locker since Mitchell Marrington bought Charlie cigarettes and decided that he wanted payment with interest and Charlie decided to oblige. “This isn’t the 1950s, you don’t have to ask her to a fucking sock hop. Plus she’s like the nicest person in a school that is otherwise made up of douchebags and assholes.”
I pull a fistful of coins out of the paper bag in my hand and plink four pennies into Mitch’s locker and say, “She’s dating Langston Dilford.”
“Shit, I thought they broke up.”
“Got back together.”
“But that guy’s a fuck,” he says, dropping more coins in one at a time. Mitchell Marrington is, at last count, around six hundred pennies richer. After demanding interest, he went to California for a week with his family because Mitchell Marrington is not the smartest extortionist in the world. “How can someone like Lana Mills date someone with a name like ‘Dilford?’ Even his last name is fucking stupid.”
I shrug and plug some more coins into Mitch’s locker. I never actually told Charlie that I liked Lana Mills, but he’d picked up on it—whatever there was to pick up on—and decided to make it his mission.
“Talk to her,” he says, his eyes landing somewhere past my shoulder.
“No,” I say, smiling, calling him an asshole without actually calling him an asshole.
“Talk to her,” he says again, smirking and moving his eyes to mine.
“No,” I say.
“Then pick a song.”
“No.”
“Yep.”
“Charlie.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“Okay,” he says, using the same “You’re an asshole” grin I’d just given him. He pulls his Sharpie out of his pocket and scribbles “Wheel in the Sky” on the bag, then shows it to me.
I know Charlie thinks the song is about God or the universe conspiring against us—after binge-watching Supernatural, he developed a Sam-and-Dean complex where Journey’s lyrics “the wheel in the sky keeps on turning” translated to, “Our teachers or our parents or God, et al, are being dicks and we need to show them what we can do.” If he’s picking this song for whatever stupid thing he’s about to do, it’s to show the powers that be that we have a say in the matter.
If the movies we watched growing up have taught us anything, it’s that life demands a soundtrack. Especially when shit is about to jump off.
He takes the half-full bag of pennies and gives me a handful as Langston Dilford walks by from behind me, holding an armful of lunch. When his back is to us, Charlie says, “Dilford!” and whips the bag of pennies at him.
The copper fist explodes against the small of Dilford’s back and he arches forward, dropping his three-high stack of pizza slices and large fountain soda. Pennies rain down around us as his lunch explodes against the floor, and when he turns, I’m the asshole holding a heaping pile of them.
And Dilford, fuck that he is, kicks my ass until Charlie heroically jumps in and pulls him off. That afternoon, as we head to my car, we walk by Langston and Lana—Lana, who is eviscerating Langston about his temper and his impulse control, and Langston, whose face is so red I swear I can feel heat radiating off of it as he stares into the ground, taking it—and Charlie winks at me.
They break up a few days later, and even though there’s this weird clenched-up ball in my stomach—knowing that I was involved in their breakup, even if I didn’t ask for it—there’s also a sweet little sense of righteousness.