It’s only 9:30 in the morning and I can already hear Future Dad reading me the riot act over dinner. That is, if he were ever home for dinner.
Zo and I are in it deep, up to our chins, sitting outside Principal Chandler’s office awaiting what can only be described as Judgment Day. We’re choking on semi-stifled fits of laughter and I close my eyes to take long, deep breaths, my impish accomplice cracking into rippling giggles again and again. We’ve been unhinged for a half hour straight, the results of said hysteria landing us here after Mr. Payne unceremoniously slapped us both with the heavy hand of the law.
“Poor Mithter Payne,” I say, because I can’t help it and there’s something mentally wrong with me. “We really thhouldn’t give the guy thuch a hard time.”
“Thath perpothterouth,” Zoë says. “Of courthe we thould.”
And it’s all over for us, again. Here’s the thing, Mr. Payne is a bona fide lemon. And he’s got this lisp. And there we were, sitting in physics, brains oozing from our ears, when he draws the lines of a magnetic field and looks up, all feverish and giddy.
Tho, a male magnet tellth a female magnet that from her backthide, he thinkth theeth repulthive. But from the front … he findth her very attractive!
But then nobody’s laughing and the poor guy’s eyes are bugging from his head.
Don’t you underthand? he begs. He thought thee wath hot thtuff! A real thekthy li’l mama!
And it couldn’t be helped: Zoë and I lost our marbles. It wath the thtupiditht thing anybody’th ever thaid. So we go massive Ophelia with laughter for ten minutes straight, holding the class hostage with our hysteria. When Mr. Payne finally gave us the ax, we detoured our trip to the office by busting into the band room and pilfering these massive, two-foot-tall marching band uniform hats, blue and gold with plastic chin straps and ornate, glittering tassels. We got busted a second time, parading repeatedly past Maya’s calc class, by the crotchety old hall monitor Mr. Sproul, and now here we are, sitting in too-small plastic seats outside Principal Chandler’s office, trying to lace it up, enormous pillars of school pride perched on our gone-amok heads. I’m gonna miss this so much, it’s unhealthy.
“Zoë-Jack,” I sigh. “What the flip am I gonna do without you next year?”
She frowns. “Seriously. Who am I gonna hate everyone else with?” And I shake my head.
“Really. You’re like, you’re like my—”
“Can the after-school special, Jack,” she laughs, and I open my mouth but she slaps my jaw shut with her palm. She smiles. “I know.”
I sigh, sit back, scope her from the corner of my eye. I knock twice on the side of her towering hat. “I dare you to wear this thing in when she calls you.”
“Um.”
“And you have to walk in and pretend like it’s not there.”
She considers.
“She might call you in first.” And I realize I hadn’t thought of that.
“Fine,” I say, grinning, fidgeting in my seat. “I’m game.”
“Me too.”
We sit in silence, waiting, tick-tock, tick-tock, till the door creaks open and we lean forward in our seats. The anticipation is deadly. Chandler coughs. And then grunts Zoë’s name from inside. Zo looks at me, eyes wide.
“You can do this, Jack,” I say, “I believe in you.” But she’s shaking her head. Chandler grunts again, louder, and I yank Zoë up by the arm, walk her slowly to the door. “Move it,” I say, pushing her in. “But watch yourself,” I whisper. “Theeth a real thekthy li’l mama.”
And my bestest apple-Jack is all but pissing her skinnies as she crosses the threshold to her doom, blue-and-gold band hat perched crooked and proud upon her head.
For a premed prospect, it’s Chandler’s opinion my attitude’s gonna need a serious face-lift, major reconstructive surgery. I don’t remind her I’m an honors student, aced my AP exams, and recently received the largest Division 1 women’s track-and-field scholarship of any student-athlete, ever, in the history of the school. Not that athletics will automatically make me a viable future MD but it certainly doesn’t hurt.
I’m mulling over how to get out of the after-school detention she’s issued, when I turn the corner, band hat tucked under my arm, and am suddenly nose-to-nose with none other than Ms. Ancient History, Eve Brooks, in the flesh, walking up to the adjacent door of the guidance counselor’s office. She’s flush-faced, standing on my toes, and I stumble back, laughing, grabbing hold of her too-bony shoulders.
“Eve Brooks,” I yammer. “I understand stalking me, but this is ridiculous.” I feel my neck get hot, remembering her tiny frame huddled at my meet.
She smiles, nods at Chandler’s door. “Whaddya in for?” and I hold an invisible pistol to my head, pull the trigger.
“Murder?”
I laugh. “Just too beat for this street.”
“Beatstreet, eh? Pretty cool.”
“What about you? They finally expelling smart kids for making the rest of us look bad?” And she laughs, but then the door opens and she’s called inside and I don’t want her to go. “You came to my meet,” I say quick, and she smiles again, points to the strangeness that is the marching band hat under my arm. And then she’s gone, her tiny body moving like a shadow. Outta sight, but not outta mind.
I pick my heart up off the carpet and heel it back to class, taking my precious time. I can picture it now: Eve smiling and nodding as Guidance Counselor UselessMcNobody babbles and banters college bull and Eve sits, starving, wasting away while the Thickly Settled cogs in charge suck grant money off of her switch SAT stats and don’t give two flying cranks that one of their best students is an eating-disorder disappearing act.
“This place is a heap of steaming manure,” I say to a glass case full of cobwebbed copper trophies frozen forever in mid-throw. I pick up my pace and make a beeline for the cafeteria, figure it’s second breakfast somewhere in the world and I can always count on my gal pal Doris in the kitchen to sneak me a plate of soggy huevos rancheros. I’ll shoot the breeze with some freshies and munch a snack for the both of us. For me and Eve.
I like the sound of that. Me and Eve.