Chapter 49
STOP AND SMELL THE SEA SPRAY
The night before my big semester exams, I decide to give my brain a break.
I’ve crammed it so full of facts and figures it’s like a suitcase you have to sit on to close. I need to inhale some salty air instead of my study buddy Stevie’s BO.
So I roll down to the boardwalk.
Guess who’s sitting on what used to be our bench?
(Well, okay, she would be the only one actually sitting on the bench when it was “our bench,” but I used to park my chair right next to it.)
Looks like Cool Girl is taking a break, too, staring up at the twinkling stars.
“Hey,” she says when she hears my wheels squeaking up beside her. (Note to self: WD-40 the axles soon.)
“Hi,” I say. “How’s it going?”
“Not bad. How about you?”
I shrug. “I dunno. My head is so full of history and math I think it might explode.”
“Like in a cartoon?”
“Yeah. BOOM! There goes the Mason-Dixon Line dividing the middle colonies from the Southern colonies. POW! I no longer know the difference between an isosceles trapezoid and a rhombus.”
“Rhombus is a funny-sounding word,” says Cool Girl.
“Definitely.” I slip into my smooth dude voice. “ ‘Wow, check out the rhombus on that girl.’ ” Then I shift back to me. “Though trapezoid is pretty comical, too. Sounds like a race of aliens invading the earth. ‘Run for your life! The Trapezoids just landed.…’ ”
Cool Girl chuckles in that extremely cool way she has of letting me know I tickled her funny bone.
“I miss you, Jamie,” she says.
“I miss you, too.”
Hey, I can’t help it. I still like her.
“Sorry about you and Ethan,” I say.
“I’m not. The dude was a total poser.”
“Really? I guess that’s why he always looked like he was posing for a J.Crew catalog.” I do my best slouch in the chair, cock a hand on my hip, and pout out my lips.
Cool Girl laughs again. “We can still be friends, right, Jamie?”
“Sure. We don’t need to kiss and stuff.”
“Of course not,” says Cool Girl. “Kissing and stuff just complicates everything.”
I’m nodding. “Definitely. Why ruin a friendship to, basically, moisten our lips? That’s why they invented ChapStick.”
“I agree. Just being friends is totally cool.”
And then Cool Girl reaches over to take my hand.
“Is this what friends do?” I ask.
“Sometimes,” says Cool Girl.
“And then do they kiss?”
“No. At least not tonight.”
Yes, life can sure be confusing. But hopefully it will never get any crazier than middle school, which, in my opinion, has got to be the craziest time in anybody’s life.
