The Start of Me and You (13 page)

“I’m disappointed, Janie,” he said. Raising his voice so it would carry amid the bustle of the hallway, he repeated, “Disappointed!”

People turned to look at me, but I laughed, despite myself.

“Hey,” Morgan said, now standing by my side. “What was that about?”

I rolled my eyes. “Nothing.”

She peered down the hallway at Max. “Why did he call you Janie?”

“Long story. Not important.” We turned toward the lunchroom, where our table was empty. Normally Kayleigh got there first, claiming it for us.

I sat down next to Morgan, who busied herself with unpacking her homemade, healthy lunch. She was
concentrating a little too hard on unwrapping her turkey and hummus pita. “Morgan? Everything okay?”

She sighed. “We got into a fight this morning. Kayleigh and me.”

I resisted saying “Kayleigh and I.” Now was not the time. I’d sensed some underlying friction between Morgan and Kayleigh for a few days now. “About what?”

“On the way to school, I was telling her about some feminist advocacy projects I’m spearheading for Empower this year, and when I looked over, she was texting Eric! While I was talking to her about stuff that is
really
important to me.” Morgan’s face flushed with the remembrance of it. “And it’s like—you know me—I’ve wanted to fall in love since the first time I saw
Mulan
. But not at the expense of being emotionally unavailable to my friends! Then Kayleigh accused me of being oversensitive, which made it worse, of course.”

I twisted the ends of my hair. They fought occasionally—we all did—but where Morgan wanted to talk it through, Kayleigh shut down.

“I’m sure she was just embarrassed that you called her out, and she bit back.”

“Maybe.” She took a big bite of her pita and chewed with particular determination. “But it’s like … ever since she got back from camp, she hasn’t been fully
here
with us. And I’m happy for her—I really am. But we’ve been her
primary people for most of her
life
… and when this random guy shows up, we’re secondary? That
sucks
.”

I chewed on my lower lip. It was always a treacherous middle ground, making one friend feel heard and understood without piling on against another friend. “You know what? I think this is still really new for her. And, since Eric goes to a different school, I bet Kayleigh just wants to make sure they’re still connecting. But that’ll wear off, you know? With time.”

“I guess I didn’t think about it like that.” Morgan sighed. “I know you’re right. It’s just hard.”

When Kayleigh showed up a few minutes late, Morgan’s head jerked up.

“Look, about this morning …,” Morgan started.

“Let’s not,” Kayleigh said, cutting her off. “We were both cranky. No big deal.”

I spent the rest of the period being overly chatty to compensate for the tension.

The first QuizBowl match was a “home game.” I don’t know why I imagined us sitting on the stage in the auditorium. We were just in a senior-hallway classroom, with long tables facing each other. Max chatted to me after we sat down, but I could barely hear him. My palms were sweaty, even though there was no audience except the other
team and their faculty adviser. Lauren strode in and took her place, nodding to Max and me.

The informality surprised me. Malcolm stood over with the other team, meeting a new member and laughing with the other team’s captain until the match started. The moderator was the other team’s coach, as decided by a coin toss, and I wished Ms. Pepper would have won. The room was strangely quiet. When I had imagined the match, I’d heard game show music. Max showed me how to use the buzzer, and I wiped my hands on my jeans under the table.

We began with no ceremony but the other team’s coach saying, “Okay, let’s begin.”

Max crushed a few toss-ups right off the bat—Copernicus, ergs, Kalinin, and Bardo Thodol, and a few other words that had absolutely no meaning to me. Malcolm chimed in with the president of the Sudan and a medal winner from the—I kid you not—1896 Olympic Games. Lauren named Hopper as the painter of
Summer Interior
, which I’d never heard of. When we got a computational math question about slopes, she barely scratched the equation onto her notepad before answering, correctly: negative three.

St. John’s went on a streak toward the end of the second round. They beat us to the punch a number of times, and Malcolm and Max each got one question wrong. Lauren only buzzed in when she was sure. St. John’s flubbed their last bonus question, which was literature related. Max glanced at
me and, seeing my wide-eyed ignorance, quickly answered, “the O. Henry Awards.” Twenty points to Gryffindor.

The longer I went without answering, the more claustrophobic I felt. I wanted to slink from my seat to the floor, and then slither out the door. I doubted anyone would notice my absence. A few times an answer popped into my mind right away, but I never felt sure enough to buzz in. My guesses were only right about half the time.

I contributed nothing to the lightning round. We got to pick from four possible categories, including one about the periodic table. The moderator could have asked my teammates those questions in their sleep, and they would have answered them between snores.

Before the last round, Max leaned over to me. “Answer the next one, no matter what it is. You’ve gotta get your first buzz over with.”

I looked at him with what I’m sure was total horror. “I
can’t
.”

Malcolm leaned in on my other side. “He’s right, Paige. Next time St. John’s answers one wrong, push it. We have nothing to lose.”

My opportunity came soon after.

The moderator began, “This female frontiersman, born Martha Canary—”

Buzz from St. John’s. “Annie Oakley!”

“Incorrect. Oakhurst?”

Max leaned back in his chair, and Lauren folded her hands together. Malcolm nudged me. I hadn’t even heard the whole question! I only knew one other woman from the Wild West, but they were giving me no choice.

My heart tried to escape through my rib cage. My mouth went so dry that I could barely speak the words. “Calamity Jane?”

“That is correct.” The moderator said this in his same monotone, but my mind heard: THAT IS CORRECT! Malcolm nudged me again, twice this time—excited. Max didn’t look at me but smiled knowingly.

We won, with no pomp but a weak round of applause from the other team and Ms. Pepper. I sat back in my chair, taking an exhale that felt like my first since before the match began.

“I wouldn’t have remembered Calamity Jane,” Lauren said. I didn’t know how to respond, but she didn’t wait for me. “Good work. You were more useful than I thought you’d be.”

“Thank … you?” I said, and she gave a nod.

“Max, Malcolm, pleasure as always,” Lauren said, and she saw herself out.

Malcolm got up to chat with the other team, and Max stayed next to me as I came down from the adrenaline rush. I glanced at my phone. “That was only forty-five minutes? It felt like two hours.”

“It gets less stressful,” Max said. “You were great.”

“Oh, be serious. I got
one
.”

Ms. Pepper broke away from the other team’s adviser and came to our table. “Paige, excellent first showing! Most first-timers don’t even buzz in.”

I threw a sidelong glance at Max. “I was peer pressured.”

He shrugged, unrepentant. “My grandpa always said you learn to swim when someone pushes you in the deep end.”

A shiver went through me, cold and bracing, but I tried to maintain an impassive facial expression. Max went on chatting with Ms. Pepper while last night’s nightmare replayed on loop.

“You okay?” I heard Max ask.

“Me?” I said, looking up. “Yeah! Fine. Just thinking.”

I had the nightmare again that night. When I awoke, I wiped my tears on my pajama sleeve and went to my desk. I put a line on my plan, through item number
2:
New group
. And, as I tried to fall back asleep, I told myself this: I may still be stumbling through these steps, but at least I’m stumbling forward.

Chapter Ten

“Remind me what we’re doing here again,” Tessa said, taking in the wide scope of the stadium before us.

I had suggested that we attend the homecoming football game. In truth, my motive was mostly Chase-based, but I’d convinced Tessa to come on the grounds of it being a quintessential high school experience. Besides, the October homecoming game was always the most attended game of the year, so it was sort of like a party. Or so I told them.

“I’m participating in a school event,” I said.

Tessa jerked her head toward me, her expression softening as she realized I was referencing my plan. “You’re right. Maybe it’ll be fun.”

“It
will
be fun!” Morgan said, linking arms with Tessa.
Morgan loved school spirit so much that she broke her cardinal redhead rule: no red clothes. Her red polo shirt was the one exception, and it came complete with a warrior insignia on the lapel. Tessa didn’t own a single item of Oakhurst Warriors apparel but still wore a simple red V-neck with jeans.

Kayleigh was coming separately, but at least she was coming to the game and sleeping over at Tessa’s afterward. It seemed like every other weekend she was busy with Eric, whom we still hadn’t met. At least tonight, it wasn’t Eric who was keeping her from us. Her brother was home from his first semester of college and had offered to drop her off after they had family dinner. We beat her there and immediately agreed that we should have showed up sooner. The stands were packed, lined edge to edge with fans in red and gold.

“There,” Morgan said, pointing to the right side of the stands, where the bleacher space left was barely enough to fit four people, and we hurried toward it.

“Paige!” a voice from somewhere in the stands called as we neared our seats. My eyes searched in between the rows, wondering who I knew at a sporting event. But then I saw Max, tall above the people in front of him, waving at me to come over. And standing right next to him: Ryan Chase. I headed over to them as the girls set up camp in the bleachers.

“Hey!” Max said. He was wearing an Oakhurst Warriors T-shirt that looked certifiably vintage, its press-on letters curling up at the edges.

Ryan Chase grinned over at me. “Hey, Paige.”

“Hey, Ryan.” I attempted to flash him a flirty, yet unassuming smile. I had no way of telling, of course, but I probably looked deranged. And then, the inevitable question.

“Is Tessa here?” Ryan asked.

“Yeah,” I said, gesturing toward my friends. Ryan and Max waved up at them, and they waved back.

“I didn’t have you pegged as the sports type,” Max told me.

“Right back at you.”

“That’s true,” Ryan said. “Hates sports, likes school.”

I looked Max up and down. “And yet it doesn’t seem that you’ve brought a book.”

“My mom wants me to be ‘actively social,’ remember?” he said, using air quotes.

“Hates sports but likes hanging out with me.” Ryan reached up to ruffle Max’s hair, as though Max were his younger brother. I continued grinning like an idiot, thrilled to be on the inside of Ryan’s conversational trivialities.

“You should have worn the
Firefly
T-shirt, too.” I gave Max a sly smile.

Ryan laughed. “Oh man, she’s seen that?”

Max scoffed at me. “Low blow, Janie.”

“That,” I said, “was for tattling to your mom.”

The clock was down to less than five minutes until the start of the game. People were still cramming into the stands, and I should have played it cool and gone back to my friends. But I felt like I’d been given a real opportunity.

“I’m going to get a hot dog,” Max announced. “Anyone else want one?”

“Definitely.” Ryan pulled a few bills from his wallet. “Paige?”

I
was
hungry, and it would mean that I could stay here for a few more minutes without it being weird. “Sure, why not?”

I reached into my pocket to find a five-dollar bill that I knew was there somewhere.

“Let me get it,” Ryan said, handing cash to Max. I opened my mouth to protest, but he cut me off. “Seriously, hot dogs are a buck or something. I would like to pay, as a thank you for razzing Max about his spaceship apparel.”

“Thank you, Ryan,” Max said sarcastically.

“Okay.” I beamed at Ryan. “Well, thank you.”

“Condiments?” Max yelled back the question as he made his way down the metal steps.

“Just mustard!” I called to him.

“Hey, that’s how I eat mine, too!” Ryan said, as if there was a one-in-a-million chance of this. Given the football snack-stand offerings, there were exactly four ways to eat hot dogs: ketchup, mustard, both or neither. But hey,
common ground was common ground, so I matched his enthusiasm anyway.

“Cool!” I said.

There was silence between us for a moment, and my mind went totally blank. I couldn’t think of anything except for the phrase:
Think of something to say. Think of something to say.

“Hot dogs are so good,” I said, after what felt like minutes.
What. Did. I. Just. Say?
I could almost hear a studio audience laughing uncomfortably.