What Happens Next (14 page)

“Agh!” he says, pulling back and wiping the saliva with his sleeve.

Ronan settles back down beside me and looks up the street, completely bored and done with the both of us.

“Good boy,” I say.

“No, really, what kind of dog is it? So I know never to adopt one.” Corey wipes at his face some more.

“An Irish wolfhound.”

“Damn, you really are hardcore Irish, aren’t you?”

“That’s right. Even got the dog to prove it.”

He grins and then asks, “So what are you and your
horse
doing? Jogging at, like”—he looks over at his interior clock—“four thirty in the morning?”

“Couldn’t sleep,” I say.

“Well, I’d tell you it wasn’t really safe for a girl to be night-jogging but I think you’ll be okay with your wolfhound next to you. And I don’t sleep well, either. I work at the bakery on Fifth. DiRusso’s.”

“A baker, huh?” I say.
So that’s why he always smells like doughnuts.

“You tell anyone and I’ll kick your ass,” he says. “And your little dog’s, too.” He points a finger at Ronan, who looks backward and snorts defiantly before yawning. The word “bakery” has stuck in my head now. My stomach responds with a growl.

“So you make doughnuts and stuff?” I ask.

“Yeah. Doughnuts, strudels, cakes, pies. I make a wicked almond macaroon tart; I’ll bring some for AV tomorrow. A parting celebration, if you will. You can taste my
wares
.” He adds a slight flourish to that last word.

I ready Ronan’s leash. “Sounds good. And don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone. Your secret’s safe with me, doughboy. We’re all guilty of something, right?”

“Ain’t it true,” he says as he puts his truck in reverse. “Be careful. Wear white next time. That dark coat’s gonna get ya steamrolled.”

He gives me a quick wave and his taillights disappear down the road. I watch as he turns down a side street and out of sight.

Corey Livingston is a baker. That’s why he smells like cinnamon and doughnuts.

Ronan and I turn toward home. I’m looking forward to AV time in a way I haven’t before and am sad that it’s our last day tomorrow. I’ve barely spoken two sentences to Corey all grading period, if you can believe that. After that day when we watched Mr. Davis make a fool of himself as Peter Pan, Corey brought in a DVD box set of
Deadwood
, an HBO Western that got canceled a few years back. I groaned internally when he first presented the idea of watching it because, as a rule, I don’t do Westerns, but after one episode I was hooked. We only got through the first season, but he said I could borrow the rest. It was nice of him to do that—to bring that TV in and the recliners and the DVDs. Half of me wonders if he went through all that hassle so he wouldn’t have to sit there feeling awkward about the gingerbitch.com fiasco, thinking up small talk day after day. The other half wonders if he did it so
I
wouldn’t have to feel awkward and sit there thinking up small talk day after day.

All I know is, I’ve learned more about Corey Livingston in the last five minutes than I have in eight whole weeks. I think he’s okay. As a friend, I mean. Any guy who knows how to make an almond macaroon tart can’t be all bad.

As I head to the AV room, my heartbeat is doing the quickstep. He returned the TV yesterday, and the other, smaller TVs are all loaned out or busted. We’ll have no buffer in the room, no reason to sit, stare, and not talk to each other. I decide that I’ll eat one pastry or doughnut or whatever he brings and then make like I’m going to retrieve borrowed videos. Or maybe I’ll clean it up in there—organize shelves or dust or something. Busy, busy, no time for chitchat, last day, need to look like we’re working in case an authority figure drops in.

I open the door and there he is. Pastries are sitting on the table, a professional display on a tray, with two napkins on either side. He has already cut me a piece of something that looks like a nut roll.

“Hey, Corey.”

“Hey, Sid.”

“Looks good. You make all this yourself?”

I’m trying so hard to be casual that I think I may be coming off phony. Aloof. Cold, even. My brain seizes up then starts pumping out random insanity. Relax. Think casual. Comfortable. Prewashed. Old blue jeans. Relaxed-fit Murphy, that’s me.

“Yep, bright and early,” he says. “The nut kolache is the best, but…”

I watch his lips moving and he doesn’t seem to notice that I’m about to reach up, unzip myself from the skull down, jump out of my skin, and yell,
Surprise! There’s a crazy person in here!

“… I kind of screwed up the crust on the tart, though, I was in a hurry. Usually, I don’t eat this stuff, but I skipped lunch, so…” his voice trails off.

I sit down and pick up my nut roll. The silence thickens. The awk-werd is palpable. It’s as if, by talking outside school for five minutes, by revealing tiny details about our outer lives, him being a truck-driving baker and me being a wolfhound-owning night jogger, both of us being insomniacs, we have crossed a threshold, walked through a portal that has made us real people to each other. We are no longer Former Cheerleader Turned Gingerbitch Slut and Drug Dealer Turned AV Shop Rat. Now, we are Sid and Corey, official human beings, guests at a farewell pastry party, breaking bread, and In This Together Now. We are two people who actually have some things in common and could possibly even be (gak!) friends.

If I stuff my face, I can’t talk. So that’s what I do—I stuff my face. Not literally, I mean, but I do eat a cannoli, an almond tart, and a cheese danish without much stopping. It’s surprisingly tasty. For real. My nerves will not, however, allow me to relish his wares the way they so richly deserve to be relished, and all I can muster is a smiling nod of approval and a pathetic thumbs-up.

When there is nothing left to eat, when we have demolished the whole damn tray, I slap the table and say, “Well, I’m gonna go collect videos from all the classes that haven’t returned them. Thanks for the pastries. They were really good. Nice almond filling,” and then I break my neck getting out the door.

I plug in my iPod, select Fiona Apple’s
Extraordinary Machine
, and get down to business. I move from classroom to classroom, collecting videos and accompanying booklets on flower reproduction, the migratory patterns of Canadian geese, AIDS in Africa, the inner workings of the circulatory system—you name it. I burn through every song on the album, and when I have an entire stack of videos and pamphlets that reach to my chin, I head back down to the AV room with at least fifteen minutes to spare. I turn the corner at the end of the hall just as the music starts up from the beginning. I’m trying to toddle everything without spilling and have only a little farther to go. Maybe I can organize them extra slowly and burn another ten minutes. Then make an excuse to run to the bathroom and burn, oh, say, another—

I get a shove in my back and the entire load explodes down the hall like a deck of cards.

I whip around, jerking out my earbuds, to find Starsha and Amber standing in front of me, laughing their asses off. Starsha spotted me at my last stop, when I was collecting a long-overdue video on the invention of the microchip. The teacher was standing right there, so all we could do was cast malignant stares at each other, but it seems they have followed me all the way down here. I’m not sure how she managed to pluck Amber from her class so quickly, but she’s like royalty around here, so I’m not surprised. No teachers or hall monitors question Her Highness when she decides to go traveling during the day.

I look down the hall at the mess.

“I’d have thought you’d be more coordinated,” Starsha says. “All those times I went diving off that pyramid, and you never once dropped me.”

She’s right. I used to imagine taking a big step backward at just the right moment so I could watch her splat like a wet frog right in front of me, but I never had the nerve or true desire to actually go through with it. I may be vicious, but I’m not evil. Nope, I caught that bitch’s bony ass every single time. And all it bought me was gingerbitch.com and a clusterfuck of videos to clean up. Well, cheerleading is history and times have changed. And I’m feeling a little nostalgic for the Sid/Starsha kindergarten days. Starsha’s eyes widen as I lunge at her. Her face twists up as I go straight for her hair.

Hair-pulling.

Cliché? Probably.

Amateurish? Totally.

I never said I was a kung fu
Kill Bill
cage fighter. But I’m not afraid of a good, old-fashioned cat fight. Especially with Starsha, whom, while it’s been quite a while—over a decade, really—I’ve scuffled with plenty.

It takes me a second to gain my footing, but with two handfuls tightly in my grip, Starsha goes down to her knees, just like old times. The sights and sounds are so familiar—her yelping, my snarling—it’s like we’re back in the play kitchen fighting over who gets to crack the plastic Easter egg into the pink frying pan. Amber jumps on my back and starts yelping, too. During the yanking and slinging and yelling, one of Starsha’s hoop earrings gets ripped out, and she lets out a screech that echoes down the hall. Still, the whole thing is over in about five seconds when someone comes rushing up to pull us apart. It’s Corey; he peels Amber off my back like she’s a flea and yells at me to let go of Starsha’s hair.

“Not. Before. I claw her eyeballs out!”

He puts two big hands over my wrists and squeezes my fists open. Starsha jumps up and runs over to huddle with Amber, who is hunkered against the wall. He holds me back from jumping at them.

“Let go!” I seethe at him.

Starsha, realizing the fight is now over, begins to examine her injuries. She starts pulling the loose hairs from her head, and they drift in little tufts to her designer riding boots.

“Get the hell out of here before a teacher or somebody comes,” he says to them. “You want to be suspended?”

He turns to me and says through gritted teeth, “Calm the fuck
down
.”

I struggle to loosen myself from his grasp; I need to get some more of that hair. This shit is long overdue. When someone else comes hustling around the corner, Corey releases me, and we all four stand at attention like,
What? Wha’d-we-do? What?

“What’s going on here? I heard screaming!” Coach Letty says, looking to Starsha and Amber for an explanation, obviously not caring what might come out of either mine or Corey’s mouths. Starsha throws me a look of death, and I can see her mind working. I can see her queen-bee cheerleading legacy flashing before her eyes.
What to do. What to do. There weren’t enough witnesses to claim an all-out attack, there’s no blood or visible bruising…

Corey pipes up. “The two of us banged into the two of them coming around the corner and all the DVDs went flying. Sid slipped and fell. It just surprised us, is all. I was helping her up. Right, Sid?” And he stares me into agreement. I nod my head to the coach.

Coach turns to Starsha, who is looking at me with her eyes squeezed into vengeful slits. She says nothing for a few moments, just stands and weighs her options, like whether or not she should risk her chances at future prom queen by getting into a catfight with Ginger Bitch Murphy.

“Yeah, that’s right,” she says, putting a hand on her hip and looking around at nothing in particular. “We were all just walking so fast and talking so much that we hit each other head-on.” Then she bends over dramatically and picks up the DVD nearest her from the floor. She smiles fakely and holds it up. It’s a documentary on cannibalism.

“Oh look,” she says, “this is exactly what we were sent down here to get. What a co-inky-dink. Well, gotta run.”

She looks at me, cocks her head, and says, sickeningly sweet, “
TTFN, Siddy,
” before turning and walking back down the hall, swaying her hips slowly from side to side. She looks back at Corey and smiles as Amber skitters two steps behind her like a good little handmaiden. Coach turns to face Corey and me.

I clench my fists as Starsha turns around to mock me behind Letty’s back. Walking backward down the hall now, she mouths,
Fuck you, Ginger Bitch
, before rounding the corner and stepping out of sight.

The gym teacher eyes Corey and me suspiciously before throwing up her hands.

“Well, clean this mess up and get back to class,” she says, and walks into the sad little faculty-only exercise room. My brain is on fire as we pick up the spilled DVDs. When both of our hands are full and they are all picked up, my feet stomp down the hall. I am fuming.

I could have taken them both easily, if only I’d had more time. It would be worth another suspension just to black one thickly mascaraed eye or bust one overly glossed lip. When I get into the AV room, I sling my DVDs onto the floor and kick a chair over before planting my rear end on the table, arms crossed. Corey closes the door with his foot and starts filing his portion of the DVDs on the shelves.

I am still furious. I have been minding my own damn business all grading period—why can’t she just leave me alone?!

After a minute or so, Corey finally speaks.

“Jeez, the ski trip, AV duty… fighting? What’s next, Killer? Bomb threats? Arson?” He chortles as if this is funny.