The bathroom was cold, like it is whether it’s June or January, and the doors to the stalls were freshly painted with a bright new coat of red paint the exact shade of a fire engine. When I locked the door behind me, I noticed the paint still felt a little tacky, like it hadn’t totally dried. I’d probably get it all over my clothing, because my day wasn’t already the worst ever. No one else was in the bathroom—a minor miracle, since it was usually super crowded with lip gloss–toting eighth graders, but everyone must have been too busy hugging friends and catching up.
Everyone but me.
Class would be starting soon. Time to pull it together. I sniffled and blew my nose on a big wad of toilet paper, and then washed my hands and used a wet paper towel to dab my eyes. I’ve never been able to hide it when I get upset—my eyes seem to stay red for the rest of the day—but I hoped everyone would be too preoccupied to really stare at me. It’s not like Brianna would notice. She barely turned her head in my direction before.
I opened the restroom door and peeked my head out. There wasn’t anyone standing outside by the water fountain right between the boys’ and girls’ bathrooms, so that meant no one could have overheard my snuffling and nose-blowing.
Whew!
Except I forgot to check the other direction, and as I snuck out of the bathroom, I walked right into someone’s shoulder.
“Whoa!” the someone said, taking a big step backward.
I looked up and saw shoulder. Then I looked up some more. The someone was Ethan Chan, at least six inches taller than he was in June, the last time I’d seen him.
“Ethan, I’m sorry.” I blushed. Red cheeks. Red eyes. Possibly red somewhere on my shirt—or worse, my butt—from the paint in the bathroom. I was sure I looked like a disaster.
“No problem,” Ethan said.
We stood there awkwardly for a minute, then he asked, “Uh, so, who did you get for homeroom?”
“Mrs. Cook. You?”
“Me too. Cool. Um.” He kind of shrugged. Then he lifted his chin in the general direction of the stairs. Then he looked at me. I figured he wanted to get going.
“I’ll see you up there,” I said to him and then started walking. He did too. Right next to me.
I took a quick peek at Ethan out of the corner of my eye. Cargo shorts. Striped black and white polo shirt with a surfer guy on the front. Black flip-flops. Mostly I noticed that not only did Ethan seem taller, but he seemed muscley-er too. His dark hair was longer than last year—you could see how wavy it was now that it hit an inch or so below his ears. It looked messy in a good way.
I felt warm and kind of weird. Maybe I was getting sick? Where was Jackson and his medical textbook when I actually needed him?
When I was in kindergarten, Ethan Chan was my best friend. He would come over to my house at least once a month for a sleepover and my mom would make special magic noodles for us. Actually they were just plain old nothing magical about them beef and macaroni and tomato sauce, but Mom said they were magic and that you couldn’t eat them without giggling. She was right about that part. Ethan and I wouldn’t be able to finish our meal without laughing ourselves silly. Then Ethan would put on his Thomas the Tank Engine pajamas and I’d put on my puppy dog–themed nightgown and we’d go to bed. By first grade though, the boys and girls didn’t hang out so much and that was it for Ethan and the Thomas pj’s. I don’t think he’d want anyone to know he used to wear those. They even had feet.
Ethan was quiet all through the lobby and up the two flights of stairs to Mrs. Cook’s classroom. I kept trying to figure out something to say, but I was silent too. As soon as we got to the door to our classroom, he darted in with a quick “see ya” and a lift of the chin in my direction. I smiled goofily back at him.
Then I caught sight of Brianna sitting next to Shelley, and my smile was gone. I had conveniently forgotten until just then that Shelley was going to be in our homeroom this year. At our school, your homeroom teacher is also your first period teacher, so you wind up taking social studies with them or English, or whatever. Our school isn’t very big. It’s not tiny tiny, but it’s not like we have thousands and thousands of students. Everyone knows everyone, pretty much.
After Brianna learned Shelley had supposedly broken Sebastian’s heart and that she’d be in Mrs. Cook’s class with us, Bri talked about her endlessly, even more than she had before. Like, to the point it was kind of boring. Brianna was totally hoping Shelley would want to hang out with us this year. I said that maybe she might be too stuck-up or too shy or just too busy with all the other people who wanted to be with her, but that made Brianna mad and she told me not to jinx it.
I went and sat down in a chair next to Brianna. I couldn’t really think of where else to go—it was so a part of our routine to be glued together that on the fly I couldn’t begin to fathom another option. Brianna and Shelley kept up their conversation, and then Mrs. Cook walked briskly into the room. She looked around and everyone stopped talking immediately. We weren’t idiots; she was famously strict, the strictest seventh grade teacher—maybe the strictest teacher in the whole entire school.
No one wanted to be the first to get Mrs. Cook’s dreaded laser beam look of death students imitated when she wasn’t around. Kids said she could hold the stare for a full minute without blinking even once.
Mrs. Cook wrote her name on her projector and it appeared up on the white board, and then she started talking about our year ahead. I tried to listen—I even got out my new notebook and fancy roll-y pen that I “borrowed” from my dad’s desk, but I couldn’t help but be distracted by Brianna and Shelley. They weren’t doing anything—they were sitting quietly like the rest of us, but I was so focused on them it was like a noisy car alarm was going off next to me.
I slunk lower into my seat. Was anyone staring at me? Did anyone notice that everything about me was completely, totally, awfully different?