Chapter Twenty-One
and everyone got the memo but me.
“What the hell are you wearing?” Anna snaps when she spots me in the cafeteria, where all of the seniors gathered after final period to collect our yearbooks.
“What are you wearing?”
Anna comes storming toward me in a neon pink and purple unicorn onesie, complete with a glitter horn. “It’s pajama day,” she says as if it’s common knowledge—which, I’m now realizing, it is.
Here I’d thought everyone had just given up on dressing presentably. Senioritis is very real and spreading faster than the freshman year mumps outbreak. With nothing but prom, finals, and one unnecessarily long graduation ceremony standing between us and freedom, the entire senior class has officially checked out. Godspeed to any teachers who are attempting to actually teach. A valiant, and quite frankly foolish, endeavor.
“This is what I wear to sleep,” I reply, trying to at least save some face. No one can blame me for being in a fog today—everyone is a zombie on Mondays—but especially not Anna. Not when we spent all of yesterday in the auditorium putting the finishing touches on our Italian countryside backdrop. Nothing like spending your Sunday inhaling paint fumes.
The process was even more exhausting, thanks to the six hours I drove to bring Isabella from DC. Fortunately, she insisted on taking Amtrak home, heading back on an off-peak train that didn’t cost her three figures. Plus, it gave her the chance to actually spend some time with Joaquin and their abuela. The lights at their place were off all weekend—the three of them probably adventuring while they can.
Needless to say, it’s been a whirlwind of a weekend, and with four hours to go until curtain for Shrew, my body is officially in survival mode.
Anna doesn’t buy my excuse, narrowing her eyes at me as she crosses her arms. “You wear jeans to sleep?”
I look down at my ensemble of my Sarah Lawrence shirt and paint-splattered jeans. “Sure, why not.”
Anna sighs. “Try to keep up.” She shoves her phone into my hand, opened to a bright red infographic—a schedule of every Senior Spirit Week event, starting with today. Pajama Day. Maybe I’ll dig around in the attic for something tomorrow, which, according to the schedule, is Silly Hat Day.
The fluffy rainbow-colored tail poking out of Anna’s onesie drags on the ground as we head over to the row of tables piled high with thick, maroon leather yearbooks. The crowd parts for her now that she’s half of the It couple officially known as Tessanna—a piece of gossip so unexpected it broke records. Within a whopping three and a half minutes, the entire student body knew about Anna’s promposal.
Once we’ve forked over our paid receipts, Anna grabs two yearbooks off the closest stack and hands one to me. Mami grumbled so much about the $80 cost that I considered passing on getting one, but she insisted. In addition to my standard portrait, there’ll be at least one posed shot of me with the tech crew on the drama club page that she wants to show my abuela.
“Your boy got a full-page spread,” Anna says as she flips through her copy. I peek over her shoulder to find exactly what she promised, an entire page dedicated to Joaquin Romero, this year’s Senior MVP.
His official baseball team photo sits front and center, with various pro shots of him midgame, and a few candids of him with the rest of the team, surrounding it like a frame. Beneath the collage, a quote is written in script so elegant it’s almost illegible.
“Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.” —Babe Ruth
“Oh my God.”
It’s horrendously cheesy, and I’m sure he absolutely cannot stand it, but I love it.
Joaquin and I are still trapped in limbo. But if we were talking, I’d text him about it right now, taking as many pictures of it as I can to make sure he doesn’t vandalize it. I’d present him with a massive sheet cake with a copy of the spread on it for his nineteenth birthday, forcing him to eat his own face.
But that’s another life.
“They make it sound like he died,” Anna says, still scrutinizing the spread.
She has a point. All you need are some angel wings, and this would have big “May God rest his soul” vibes.
“That’s what I said,” a voice behind us says.
We both whip around to find Joaquin grimacing at the same page in his own yearbook.
“What’s that?” Anna shouts suddenly, waving at something in the distance. “Yeah, I’ll be right there!” She turns to us with a sly grin. “Sorry, gotta run. Meet me in the auditorium?”
She doesn’t bother waiting for me to answer before taking off. A smart move, because if she’d stuck around any longer, I would’ve jabbed her with her unicorn horn. I was tempted to step on her tail and force her to stay here as a buffer, because we both know damn well no one was calling her. But when Anna has an agenda, she sticks to it.
I turn back to Joaquin, not sure what to do now that it’s just us for the first time since the game on Saturday. Behind him, a clique of girls whisper among themselves while not-so-subtly ogling him. They’re holding their yearbooks and gel pens at the ready, most likely waiting for me to leave so they can pounce for his signature.
“I think you’ve got some fans waiting for your autograph.” It’s meant as a playful tease, but the tension in my voice makes it sound like a barb. I wince, hoping he can see through my nerves.
“They can wait.” He gives them a wave, then comes back to me with an achingly familiar smile. “I wanted to see if you’d be the first person to sign my yearbook?”
He offers his yearbook to me, Sharpie at the ready, and if my heart wasn’t locked inside my chest by veins and arteries, I’d be throwing it up onto the floor.
It shouldn’t mean anything. It doesn’t mean anything. He probably wants me to write “It’s been real” along with my signature and leave it at that, but it ignites a fire in me I thought I’d permanently put out. He wants me to sign his yearbook, and mundane as that might be, it’s the most exciting thing he’s asked me this year.
The lines on Joaquin’s forehead crease deeper and deeper the longer I go without answering. “Or not, if you don’t want to.”
I snap back to reality, and when our eyes meet, I can’t help the laugh that bubbles up inside of me. “Only if you’re the first to sign mine.”
He softens, the tension melting from his shoulders, his own easy smile returning. “Deal.”
We exchange yearbooks and pens, me passing him one of the dozens of gold Sharpies I keep in my backpack—a good tech crew leader always has Sharpies on hand. Cracking the book open to the signature page, it dawns on me that I have no idea what to say. “Hey man sorry I messed up your shot at your dream girl” isn’t the kind of thing I want immortalized in our senior yearbook, but it’s not like I have much else worth saying to him right now. Except that I miss him, and our car rides, and slushies, and the way he always listens to the cheesiest songs possible.
And that I love him. And I’m sorry I didn’t realize that sooner.
Probably a lot for a yearbook message.
The sound of Joaquin snapping my yearbook shut jolts me back to the task at hand. How the hell did he finish so fast?! I swallow hard, realizing this means he probably wrote something super short. Most likely just his name. Maybe a “good luck next year” if he was feeling generous.
“Sorry,” I mumble, sweat starting to form on my brow as I turn back to the empty page. “Writer’s block.”
Joaquin doesn’t reply, leaning up against the nearby lunch table instead.
Thousands of ideas come to me, one on top of the other until my brain starts to operate like a greeting card factory. Writing a yearbook message shouldn’t be this nerve-racking, but it’s never felt so loaded before. I’ve only got one shot to come up with something, and I don’t even have the luxury of an eraser. Something that says “I’m sorry, I miss you, please tell me we can be okay” without being longer than War and Peace. Or, maybe, something that doesn’t say any of those things. Because how am I supposed to know what he wants me to say?
Goddammit, this is too much brain power for a Monday.
I inhale sharply, grounding myself and shaking off my doubts and panic and go with my gut. It’s been pretty traitorous this year, but I have a good feeling about this one.
Quin,
You’re my favorite person too.
Ive
Short, simple, and says everything I wanted to say but didn’t have the courage to. Before I can overthink it, I hand the yearbook back to him before he can notice my sweaty, shaking palms. Mercifully, he doesn’t immediately read the message, sparing me the mortification of having to watch his reaction in real time. Instead, he tucks it into his backpack, and I do the same with my own.
“Ready for opening night?” he asks once he’s zipped his bag up.
The start of a new conversation startles me. Everything about this interaction has caught me off guard, but especially the fact that it seems so…normal. Like there isn’t an ocean of unaddressed feelings between us. “ ‘Ready’ might be an overstatement.”
“You say that every year,” he teases. “You’re gonna kill it, though. You always do.”
The compliment makes me feel weightless, but my feet remain firmly planted on the ground. “Thanks,” I reply, holding up my crossed fingers. “Fingers crossed.”
“Good luck.” Dread washes over him. “Wait, shit, that’s the one thing you’re not supposed to say, right?”
“You’re fi—”
“Did I just curse the whole show? Should I throw salt over my shoulder? Knock on wood?”
Before I can reply, he takes it upon himself to knock on the faux wood lunch table.
“I think we’ll be fine,” I say between laughs as he rips open one of the abandoned salt packets on the table and tosses it haphazardly over his left shoulder, salting a disgruntled cheerleader walking past him. “It’ll take a lot more than a curse to mess with us.”
My reassurance soothes him. “That’s the Ive I know.” As he beams at me, it feels like everything might be okay. Like we can be who we used to be. And, for once, it doesn’t feel like wishful thinking. “I’ll see you?”
He starts to back away slowly, and I wish I could hold on to this moment, to him, for a little longer. But his words feel like a promise. The kind I’d hoped for but never would’ve dared to ask for. A chance to start again. “I’ll see you,” I reply.
He turns on his heel and disappears into the throng of seniors swapping signatures and snapping selfies with their yearbooks held proudly. Calm washes over me, a type of peace I haven’t felt in months. There’s still so much up in the air—about him, about us, about who we’ll be when we’re hundreds of miles apart in a few months. But even if everything falls apart, if he decides staying friends isn’t what he wants, I’m glad I was honest.
Because he deserves to know that my happiest memories all end with him too.