“So I heard you hit it off with Sandeep.” Neta and I are in art, and she’s pulling on her pink bubble gum with her fingers, which is something I really, really find disgusting, but I try not to bug her about. She does this thing where she pulls on it and wraps it around her fingers and then chews it again, then basically repeats the whole process, which is frankly just unsanitary.
“How are your watercolors going, girls?” Mr. Wellingsby, the art teacher, stops by our desk, wiggling his long-fingered hands at us inquisitively. He is a total bohem—he’s very thin, with flowy, colorful clothes, and he’s always talking about seeing love and pain and energy in art and going on about how we can channel our feelings.
“I’m conceptualizing.” Neta grins up at him and pops her gum.
I don’t respond. I’ve actually got a pretty good watercolor going. It’s a waterfall. Which means about as much to me as a goldfish. Or a red Converse sneaker.
Or nothing.
“Let your mind flow,” he advises, opening his arms as if guiding Neta’s creative energies personally. “Riley! I see so much inner turmoil in this picture! Gorgeous!”
I nod seriously. I know exactly how to deal with Mr. Wellingsby. “I’m glad you picked up on that. I really wanted it to show what I’m going through.”
He strokes his goatee with his arachnid hands. “I get it. I do. Do you want to talk to the class about it when you’re finished?”
I shake my head, keeping my face calm. “I want my art to speak for me. Please.”
He touches his head and then extends his finger in an arc. “Yes, Riley. Yes.”
And then he sort of wanders off to the next table, managing to look really high and sort of lost. Which he probably is.
He’s strangely a great teacher, if you can get past his muddled exterior.
“So Sandeep,” Neta reminds me. “Is he the cause of your inner turmoil?”
I snicker. “Oh yes. I’m definitely pining away for him. I think of him day and night. I write long letters for him and send them by the Postal Service. I got his name tattooed on my left breast.”
I think of the cut on my chest where my fake tattoo is, and feel the corner of my mouth pulls up. If she only knew.
“Then why did Kolbie say you blew him off?” Neta is still messing with her stupid gum. I want to grab it from her and throw it across the room, only I don’t actually want to touch it.
“Because I guess I did.”
“And why would that be? If you were having a good time, why’d you ditch him?”
For a moment, I resent her. I resent my gorgeous, gum-snapping friend. I want to tell her to leave me alone. But if the tables were turned, would I ask the same question?
Yes.
I bend over my watercolor. “Please don’t be mad at me, Neta.”
She sighs heavily, the air whooshing out of her lungs, and finally, she stops playing with her gum and drops her hands. “I’m not mad. I just—I don’t get it. If you liked him, what the hell?”
“I was scared, okay? And I’m not ready. If I get into something, I give up a lot of other things. And maybe in college I’ll be ready to actually be with someone for real, and yeah, Sandeep is almost perfect, but right now, I’m just not.”
Neta just sort of looks at me. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, Ri.”
I paint green into my waterfall so I don’t have to meet her eyes, which I know without looking are too kind right now. “I know.”
“Hey,” she says. “Look.” She points across the room.
I follow her finger. “Um, what?” I see Anthony Waterford, half asleep on his arm, in the corner.
I glance at Kamea, who I sort of don’t like, just on principle. It’s not because she’s a bad person or anything. Because she’s not. And not because she’s particularly irritating.
Of course, it’s not like she’s great, either. She dresses almost exactly the same, every single day, in these stupid button-up cardigans. Her closet probably looks like a cartoon character’s closet, with just the exact same outfit, over and over and over and over. She couldn’t get more boring if she made an actual effort.
And of course she’s this cute, perky little girl-next-door type of blonde who is basically built to look good in any type of clothes. You know, the ones who fit into everything when you go shopping together and then look amazing in it?
Kamea has that body.
But she wears the same stupid cardigans.
And on top of that, she has one of those voices. Those high-pitched baby voices that belong on a girl, like, ten years younger that of course guys find attractive but is actually sort of disgusting.
And Neta and Kolbie both like her.
And she has been in second place for valedictorian for as long as I can remember.
“Look at the necklace,” Neta prods.
My eyes drop to the gold chain around her neck, and my throat tightens.
Oh my God.
Holy shit.
A little wooden chess piece hangs from the chain.
A little wooden king that doesn’t look one-of-a-kind at all.
“You and Kamea must shop at the same store.” Neta giggles. “Awkward.”
I don’t answer her. My fist closes around my own necklace and I’m pulling on the chain until it digs into the back of my neck. And somewhere, deep in the recesses of my mind, I’m imagining pulling the necklace tight around Kamea’s neck until her eyes bug out. And she doesn’t even struggle. She just stares at me, like she does in class when she doesn’t know an answer, like maybe, just maybe, I’ll help her.
Because it looks like maybe, just maybe, Kamea’s also getting a little French tutoring on the side.
“Don’t freak out, Ri. It definitely looks better on you.”
I whip my head back to Neta. “I’m not worried.”
But I know that Alex has a free period not next period—but the period after.
And when he does, I march directly into his classroom and close the door, my arms behind my back.
“Hello, lovely.” He touches the space above his heart where he cut himself. Mine barely stings anymore. I have two Band-Aids over my cut and I’ve religiously applied Neosporin. A blood bond is one thing, but I don’t want a scar.
Inside, my temper rages, but I force myself to look at Alex. To study him. I thought he was smarter than this. I thought he would know better than to try to play two of us.
Especially when I’m one of them.
His eyebrows lower slightly. He’s figuring it out. He rises from his desk. “What’s wrong, Riley?” he asks, coming toward me. “Is everything okay?”
He doesn’t touch me like he did last time we were alone in his classroom. That is a wise decision. I am not sure I could handle his skin. I would melt or I would attack. I am not sure which.
I put myself at risk for him, and he doesn’t even care.
“Kamea Myers,” I say, my voice a whisper.
“Pardon me?”
“Kamea Myers.” I repeat myself. I look at him.
There is no response. Absolutely nothing. His face doesn’t color. He doesn’t look at his shoes. His eyes are trained on mine. “I don’t understand, Riley. Would you mind catching me up here?” Finally, his eyes take on a small note of panic. “She doesn’t . . . know about us, does she?”
Very slowly, I unhook the little necklace from around my neck. I hold it out to him, the chess piece swinging back and forth, hypnotic.
“This is what I’m talking about, Alex. This.”
“Your necklace?”
His face is still a canvas of questions and innocence. He’s good.
“She has the exact same necklace, Alex.” I crush his name between my teeth, grinding out the two syllables. “Now, do you want to tell me how that’s possible? Has she been getting extra French tips on the side, maybe? Some private lessons?”
He shakes his head, finally breaking eye contact. “No. Absolutely not. And that’s impossible. The man . . . he told me those necklaces were one of a kind. She couldn’t have one. It doesn’t make sense.” He lets out his breath, then looks at me again. “I swear on my life—on your life—that I didn’t give her a necklace, Riley. I never would. That’s not her. That’s you and me. That’s us, okay?”
He doesn’t blink.
“Huh,” I say.
“Trust me, Riley. I’ve never felt about anyone like I feel about you. Please, please, just trust me on this, okay?”
I don’t.
Trust him.
And he’s pleading.
His eyes stray now, from me to the window behind me, to make sure what we’re doing looks PC. But he’s desperate for me to believe him. Desperate. He looks disheveled, somehow, not the in-control teacher who I stopped by to see.
“Okay.” The word I give him is tight and brittle and already splintering around the edges. “Fine.”
His face relaxes.
I turn toward the door to leave him. I suddenly just want to go back to class.
“I’m leaving Jacqueline tonight.”
It bursts out of him. I pause with my hand on the door, and I turn back to him. “Make sure you do. I’m not a mistress.”
And then, without waiting for him to say another word, I walk back to class.
I don’t even look back to see if he’s watching me.
I know he is. Just like always.
It doesn’t cross my mind that I might have underestimated him.