Waverly Camdenmar is so hot that when I see her in the halls, I want to put my hand against my chest and make sure I’m still breathing.
Not that I’d ever say that out loud. I’m not an idiot.
Waverly is just this place I go when everything starts to be too much. Sometimes people in offices keep a poster of a vacation spot over their desks. Waverly is like that, like an inspirational quote or one of those music box ballerinas. Something private. Quiet.
I lie in bed and think her name, even though thinking it gives me a guilty feeling.
It wasn’t always like this. Before last year, she was just another girl—hot like other hot girls, but completely untouchable. The feeling was whatever. I could deal with it.
Now it’s bad. Every day I have to decide whether or not I can stand to go to Spanish. I tell myself over and over how I’m not going to look at her or think about her or notice her or anything.
And every day, there’s Waverly, third row from the front and one seat over, with her pens lined up and her mouth open. Hand in the air, reaching for the answer.
It starts at my heart and spreads fast and hot up my neck, until my face goes red and my ears feel like they’re about to catch fire.
I’m thinking about this, even though it’s past midnight and I should be thinking about homework, but everyone else is still up, which means everyone else is still shouting, and I left my history book in my locker.
Out in the hall, my dad is telling my mom all about how pointless and needy she is, and she’s not telling him he’s wrong. If she did, I think it would break something. It would be the thing that dissolves whatever disgusting glue is holding them together. It would be exactly what they need.
I have to get out of the house. Not for a cigarette or a couple of hours, or to spend the night at my brother’s, but for good. The Trunchbull had this whole fantasy about college applications, but my family’s in chaos, my grades are a disaster, and college is just one more thing that doesn’t happen for the Holt boys.
The scene with Trunch was hazy in that dizzy-high way, where all the main parts are hard to remember, but then random things will stand out with freaky Hollywood clarity. Let’s be honest. I was really stoned.
And as long as we’re being honest, that’s pretty much an ongoing thing.
I know the motivational speeches and the public service announcements. The front office has all kinds of posters and pamphlets about making good decisions, and when counselors or teachers or whatever tell me I’m wasting my potential, I know it’s the truth. I can watch it slip by, but that’s an ocean away from having any idea what to do about it.
I know I could destroy English or history—especially English. I could do respectably in pretty much everything else. I just don’t.
When I close my eyes, there’s Waverly again, sitting behind the reception desk, looking at me like I’m defective and she’s the one with the final answer, worth ten thousand points. Like she’s just waiting for the goddamn tiara.
She was working this crossword like it was the most important thing, and only put it away when she condescended to check my hall pass. It was one of those hard ones that you get out of a book or the New York Times. There was a long word across, with a Z and a C and two A’s. Her eyes were bored and her bottom lip looked pink and kind of untouched.
Then I went into the office and Trunch told me all the things I already know, like how I’m not living up to my potential and I need to start applying myself. Like it’s just that simple, and now that I officially know I can do the work, it’s only a matter of getting the work done, when everyone knows that’s the hardest part.
“Marshall,” she said, right as I was getting up to leave, in that voice that sounds all sad and quiet, I’m not blaming you. “I was talking to some of your teachers. I hear that neither of your parents came to parent-teacher night last month.”
I just nodded, trying hard not to look tragic.
“Is there a problem with involvement at home? It might help to talk to them.”
But the reason they didn’t show up is because I didn’t tell them. They have their own shit and I’m old enough to do my own homework. There are plenty of problems, but none of them have to do with involvement.
“It’s no big deal,” I said, and I wasn’t talking about parent-teacher night, but everything—the missing assignments and the participation points, the tardies, the absences. All the bullshit.
I came out of the office feeling like my surface had been chipped away. See-through, like if Waverly just raised her head, she could have looked inside me and she wouldn’t have seen lungs or bones or blood, she would have just seen how messed up everything is.
I didn’t have to worry, though. It wasn’t like she cared.
She still had the crossword out, but hadn’t filled in any new boxes. Number forty-five still sat there, with its Z and C and two A’s. I read the question upside down while she stamped the pass, and suddenly, I knew the answer. I knew it and she didn’t, and that was the one thing I had that made me worth anything.
If I hadn’t been completely chickenshit, I probably would have said something, but just then, she looked at me. Her eyes were sharp—piercing—and I had to look away so she didn’t see the answer sitting right there for her to pick apart and stare at.
I picture it now, alone in my room. Imagining the way the back of her neck always looks smooth and I want to touch it.
I think of possibilities and they are fucking terrifying. I could have made her see me. I could have impressed her. There’s just the little issue of how my voice stops working when I look at her.
I say it now, just to myself, just whisper it. The answer to the question, the feeling of having something she doesn’t. Something that she wants.
I close my eyes, and when I open them again the room feels less empty. For a second, I think I can actually see her, standing in my doorway, soft and pale in the light from the street. Then I squint and she’s gone and I’m stoned and lonely, and it’s late—so late.
I roll over, feeling tired and stupid.
I want to punch myself, because I know girls like her—the kind who act like I’m some disease, like I might get them dirty if I stand too close. I want to tell her she’s not that smart, that being perfect isn’t the only game in town.
That I’ll be something else, something good. I’ll clean myself up if she wants. I’ll be anything.
She is never looking in my direction.