Four short days after I returned from Berlin, I was standing in the parking lot at Evergreen High School again. This time, though, I was a senior.
I pulled my backpack out of the RAV4 and walked across the parking lot toward the junior/senior wing. Other people from my class were standing around. They waved or said hi. So now we’re seniors, seemed to be the feeling. It was like none of us could believe it.
Inside the building, my first thought was Antoinette. Where would her locker be? Would we have any classes together? How would she react to me when we met again? I knew her well enough to not be too hopeful. I still couldn’t imagine us as a couple. To be a couple at Evergreen required an acceptance of the rules and rituals of high school relationships. I couldn’t see her doing any of that.
But something must have changed between us. We’d slept in each other’s arms. I’d kissed her eyes and her face and her thick eyebrows. Then again, she’d gone out with Bennett for months and she seemed to have no lingering feelings for him. So who knew? The situation was confusing and hard to think about. I decided the only reasonable strategy was to do nothing, expect nothing, be as casual as she would no doubt be. If anything further was going to happen between us, let her start it.
• • •
It was nice being back at school, anyway. It was fun being a senior. You could feel the difference right away. Walking down the hall, I felt more important, more in control. There was an authority to being a senior. Nobody knew more about high school than you did. You were the expert. And at the same time there was a lightness to it. Stuff didn’t matter so much. As one guy said, “What can they do to us now?”
Of course, different people had different approaches to it. Logan and Claude saw their senior year as a well-deserved vacation. They had put up with high school bullshit for three long years. The school owed them, in their mind. This year they would put their feet up and relax.
For other people, senior year was their last chance to get their grades up, or improve their test scores for college. If you were on a sports team, this was your final shot at a league championship. Or if you were really into some particular academic subject, you could do an independent study and focus on something you actually cared about for once.
Still others seemed eager to cash in on the privileges of being at the top of the pecking order. These were mostly the socially frustrated types, the people who had been bullied or harassed as underclassman. Now it was their turn to do the bullying and harassing, and they couldn’t wait.
The more earnest types—like Emma Van Buskirk, editor in chief of the Evergreen Owl—were energized by the responsibility of being a senior. Emma was already hard at work changing the design of the Owl. Not that anyone cared about things like the magazine, or the yearbook, or the winter theater production of Grease. But for some people that was the point of being a senior: taking charge, treating teachers as equals, bossing people around.
• • •
Another thing about senior year, it leveled the playing field socially. Claude and Petra, who had been the most closely watched couple at our school, were suddenly not so closely watched. Nobody cared if they had a fight. Nobody was interested if their love would stand the test of time. Obviously, it wouldn’t. Obviously, in eight short months every one of us would walk away from this place and our high school careers would disappear into the past, dust in the wind.
And anyway, most people had their own dramas now. They had their own boyfriends or girlfriends. Love, sex, romance: It wasn’t just for the popular kids anymore. Everyone was doing it.
• • •
I managed to keep Antoinette out of my mind. But after two full days of her not making any attempt to hang out or text me or otherwise acknowledge me, I started to feel frustrated.
On Wednesday she actually ate lunch in the cafeteria, which was a rare thing indeed. She was sitting by herself and I hurried to join her, but two other girls got there first. Then Kai came, and within a minute or two the whole table was crowded with girls. I eventually had to slink off without getting any sense of what was going on. I suspected nothing was.
So I didn’t text her. Or call her. Or look for her in the hall. If this was what she wanted, this was what she would get.
The hard part was Kai. She had become one of my main friends over the summer, if not my best friend. But now that Antoinette was back, Kai’s loyalties were with her. I kept starting to text Kai. What’s up? Why are you guys ignoring me? What the hell is going on with you two? But I never sent them. I had to be cool. I had to be. I could not make a fool of myself with Kai and Antoinette.