MEG
“BLUE STRIPED SHIRT OR THAT FUNKY BLACK ONE?” I ASK THE PHONE ON my bed.
“Black.” Kat’s voice is distorted, like either her mouth or my phone is full of bees. You’d think in this modern age they’d have figured out how to make speakerphone work better. I mean, shouldn’t we have holograms or something by now? “Did you get my email? With the final draft of the questionnaire?” she asks.
“Probably.” I used to be able to get Kat to stop talking about the project for days at a time. Now, with our next check-in coming up on Monday, I’m lucky if she lasts ten minutes. “What about the purple one? With Mickey Mouse?” I lay it out on the bed beside the black shirt. This afternoon is my fourth real date with Grayson. Fifth if you count the time I skipped math class and we went down to the corner store to get slushies. Which really should count. They were good slushies.
“Did you agonize about your clothes this much every morning this week?”
“No. Yes. Wait, what was the question?” I’m holding the blue striped shirt against my chest in front of the mirror and maybe not entirely listening.
Kat laughs through her mouthful of bees. “You’ve seen Grayson like every day this week. And last week. And . . . the week before, right? It’s been three weeks? Isn’t this date just like every other?”
“If you think a date’s no big deal, why don’t you go on one?” The blue striped shirt makes me look like a sailor. Can’t decide if that’s a good thing or bad.
“Shut up,” Kat says. “Just the thought makes me want to puke. About our project, though, seriously. I know we can talk about it tonight after your date when I come over, but I need to know if there’s anything I should be working on before then. The questionnaire’s ready to go. And we have all the control factors determined, and the steps mapped out. Do you think that’s enough to show Mr. Carter on Monday? I’m worried we should have started testing. Do you think we should’ve already started testing . . . people?”
She says “people” like it’s a bad word—not the way Grayson or I would say a bad word, but the way she would say a bad word. In other words, like a gun’s being held to her head.
“No idea. Okay, I’m thinking the black one.” I drop the blue shirt back on the bed and grab the black.
“The black shirt? That’s what I said.”
“Oh, good. So consensus.” I yank the shirt over my head. The V-neck isn’t deep, but it does give me the tiniest bit of cleavage. Definitely the right shirt. I touch up my makeup while Kat lets out the odd squawk. She must be playing LotS.
The doorbell rings.
“That’s him. Got to go. TTYL.” I blow Kat a kiss, hang up, stuff my phone in my pocket, and dart out of the room and down the stairs. Instead of barreling around the corner into the entryway, I force myself to stop at the bottom stair to pat down my frizz, and it’s a good thing that I do. The voice that drifts around the corner from the front porch is not Grayson’s. It’s Stephen-the-Leaver’s.
“. . . drop it off in case she refuses to come for Christmas again. Can you just stick it under the tree?”
Mom sighs, audibly. “Steve . . . we don’t have the tree up yet. It’s barely even December. And she doesn’t want—”
“Let her make up her own mind about what she wants, for once. Stop brainwashing—” He cuts off, which means Mom’s probably giving him her signature death stare. He blows out a puff of air, like a bull preparing to charge. “Look, just—just stick it under the tree. That’s all I ask.”
There’s a long, stony silence. I press my back against the wall and hold my breath so they can’t hear me. The front door creaks and a gust of winter wind finds its way around the corner and creeps up the bottom of my skinny jeans.
Finally, Mom speaks. “Fine, just—it had better not be another tablet or something like last year.”
“I don’t know why you keep bringing that—I was trying to get her something she’d like.”
“You can’t bribe her to like you. Just be responsible and pay child support for all three of them, instead of only the two.”
“The judge said—look, can we not get into this again? You’ve got plenty of money. You don’t need mine. I’m going to go.” There’s a crunching of boots on snow, then a pause. “Can you put aside your own anger for once and ask Meg to talk to me? She never returns my calls.”
So stop calling, jerk.
“I’m not going to make her call you if she doesn’t want to.”
“Fine, but if we could just—” Stephen-the-Leaver says.
“Good-bye, Steve,” Mom says. Then the door clicks shut.
Mom will walk right past me in just a moment. I hurdle the stairs and dart back into my room. I won’t let him get to me. I won’t let him get to me. I won’t let him get to me. I whirl about and stride out of my room as if I’m leaving it for the first time. The show is unnecessary. Mom doesn’t appear around the corner until I’m almost back down the stairs.
“Oh, Meg,” she says, as if coming out of a daze. She slips a blue gift bag behind her back. “Would you duck downstairs and check on Kenz and Nolan? I haven’t—”
“Sorry, I’m meeting Grayson at the bus stop.” I push past her into the hallway and start pulling on my boots.
“I thought he was meeting you here.”
“Change of plans. I gotta go or we’ll miss the bus.” I glance out the window as I toss my scarf around my neck. Stephen-the-Leaver’s silver car is gone. “Bye!” I give Mom a half wave, then disappear out the door before she can protest. I can’t wait around for Grayson. I have to move, to get out of here. As I rush down the street toward the bus stop, I text him the change of plans.
We end up meeting at the mall, where we tuck ourselves away in a back corner of the bustling food court with a heaping dish of poutine on the not-quite-clean table between us.
“Let’s watch Legs,” I say, as I pick up a fry dripping with gravy and cheese curds. Fabulously soggy.
“Watch what?” He snares a fry with his fork.
“LumberLegs. I told you about him. He plays LotS, remember?” If he doesn’t like Legs, that’s a deal breaker. Except it can’t be a deal breaker because I don’t want him to leave just like everyone else.
I pull out my sparkly green smartphone, plug in my headphones, hand him an earbud, and crank the volume up loud enough to hear over the din of hungry shoppers. His shoulder presses against mine, lightly, like two books side by side on a shelf. His leg, too. I grab a few more fries and stuff them in my mouth before pressing play. I’ve picked the video where Legs fights the horde of filthworms. Grayson had better like it.
I still feel unsettled from stupid Stephen-the-Leaver, so it’s harder to laugh, but when Legs’s sword disappears and he shrieks, a giggle bursts out of me, and I glance at Grayson—and discover he’s looking at me instead of the screen. I scowl at him and jerk my chin toward the screen, and both our gazes drop to see Legs beating the filthworms back with a boot. I giggle again. And force myself not to look at Grayson’s face. I’m sure he’s grinning. No one could watch this and not at least grin.
When the tiny video finishes, I turn to him. “So? What’d you think?” It takes all my concentration to keep from bouncing up and down like a four-year-old.
He studies me for a moment before answering. His nose is less than a foot from my nose, his lips less than a foot from my lips.
“I liked watching you watch it,” Grayson says at last.
“That’s not a real answer,” I say, though my cheeks flush hot.
“No, I mean it. I mean, he’s funny, sure, but your laugh—I could be watching kittens being murdered and if I heard you giggle, I wouldn’t be able to help it—I’d have to laugh too.”
“Oh, shut up. Who talks like that?”
Grayson’s cheekbones color with red. He has nice cheekbones. “Sorry,” he says, “did that make me sound like a psychopath? I don’t enjoy watching kittens get murdered, I promise.”
“No, I thought it was really sweet.” I find his hand and thread my fingers through his.
He leans in and kisses me, just once, gently. His mouth is warm and soft.
I draw back and study his face. His shaggy brown hair falls across his forehead and disappears into his eyebrows. His lips are chapped. I wouldn’t have guessed that from the way they felt.
“You’re never going to leave me, right?” I ask him.
He lets out a little half laugh, half cough, like he’s not sure whether I’m joking. I’m not sure whether I’m joking.
“Well,” he says, “we’ve been dating for, what, almost a month? I am one hundred percent certain that we can double that.”
“Only double?” I put my hands on his knees, turn him toward me, then press my mouth against his, guide his lips with my own, breathe my air into his lungs, and his into mine.
“Okay,” he says between breaths. “Triple it at least.”
I slide my tongue into his mouth. It tastes like gravy. Like potatoes and cheese and gravy and warmth.
“Or forever,” he says at last, when I pull away.
That was effective.
KAT
“HOLY——” MEG FINISHES THE SWEAR UNDER HER BREATH AS SHE TUMBLES INTO a large pit of lava, then lets out a whole stream of them as the screen pronounces her death. Again. She was all dreamy when I first arrived this evening, and I let her replay her entire afternoon’s date for me even though I was—still am—desperate to talk about our project. But then as soon as I started talking about all the things we need to get done by Christmas, she muttered, “Bah, Christmas,” then hopped to her feet and suggested a LotS break. Now she’s been playing the same speed run over and over for the last twenty minutes, getting more and more frustrated with each death.
I sit on the bed, supposedly watching over her shoulder, but mostly just playing with a button on my sweater and thinking about our science project. And how we’re going to fail. We’re definitely going to fail.
One science failure . . . two high school failure . . . three life failure . . .
Meg moves her cursor toward the retry button, and before she can hit it, I snap, “Will you stop playing for a minute and talk about our project?”
She releases the mouse and swivels her chair to face me. I expect anger, but her face is flat and empty.
“You okay?” I ask.
She marches over to the bed and flops down beside me, staring up at the ceiling. “Fine. Just stupid Stephen-the-Leaver getting into my brain.” With her arms limp at her sides, she’s unusually still, and it weirds me out.
I’m not sure what to say. Not sure why she’s suddenly thinking about him instead of about her date. “He must have been a crap dad,” I try.
“No. That’s the worst part. He was actually a good guy.” She huffs as if affronted by his appalling level of goodness. “He’d take me on trips sometimes. This one time he took me down to Calgary for the weekend. Just the two of us. We spent the entire Saturday at the zoo. The polar bears had this plastic barrel that they liked to toss around and float on, like chubby sunbathers. They were hilarious. He let me drag him back to their enclosure like four or five times that day.”
“I’m sorry.” I’m still not sure what to say.
She sits up. “It’s fine.” She scrunches her nose, then grins, like making a silly face has fixed all the world’s problems. “Not worth any brainpower. Now, what were you freaking out about?”
“I’m not—” I break off. I am. I am freaking out. It’s already December and we haven’t tested a single person. “We’re supposed to show Mr. Carter our update tomorrow. And we’ve got nothing.”
One failure . . . two . . . two . . .
“We’re fine. We’ve got that questionnaire, and—” She stops, looks at me, then hops off the bed and points at the blankets. “Do your cocoon.”
Two . . . two . . .
I obediently lie down on the edge of the bed, grab Meg’s blanket, then roll, wrapping it tightly around me. When I reach the other side of the bed, Meg grabs the remainder of the blanket and pulls it over me, tucking it in.
“Feel better?” she asks.
I feel ridiculous, is what I feel. And safe.
Two caterpillar . . . three warmth . . . four security . . .
Meg sits on the now-blanketless bed beside me. “Look, we’ll be fine. We just need to show Mr. Carter we have a plan, right? We’ve got to test how many people? Twenty?”
“Thirty.” Seven testing . . . eight planning . . .
“Right,” she continues. “Okay, so here’s the plan: over the Christmas break, I’ll do ten and you do ten. Look, I’ll even do fifteen and you can do five, if you want, since people aren’t your thing. And then we’re already, what, three-quarters—”
“Two-thirds—”
“—right, that’s what I said. Two-thirds of the way through. Then we’ve still got a month or two to finish the rest.” She leans an elbow on my cocoon.
“And do all the data analysis,” I add.
“That’s easy.”
“And make the presentation board.”
“Dude, I’m sure you could do that in like, what? One night?”
She’s right. The presentation board is the easy part. Last year I did the whole thing on a Saturday. “You really think you can do fifteen people over Christmas break?”
She giggles. “Well, I don’t think Grayson would be very happy about that.”
I roll my eyes.
She grins, then forces on a serious face. “Yes, I definitely can. I mean, Grayson’s posse is like seven people right there. Easy-peasy.”
“Okay,” I say. My breath comes normally. “Okay.”
MEG
KAT MUST STILL BE FREAKING OUT ON MONDAY MORNING, BECAUSE WHEN Mr. Carter comes around to do our project check-in, she lets me do all the talking. And I nail it. I talk about the timelines we’ve written up and the questionnaire we’ve made and the control factors we’ve identified, and I knock that thing so far out of the park it bounces off a UFO passing by Mars on an expedition to conquer the earth, scaring the aliens away.
“Sounds great,” Mr. Carter says. “Just be careful not to fall behind on those deadlines.”
Sounds great. Because it is. Everything is. Kat looks relieved, I’ve decided not to care about Stephen-the-Leaver anymore—not that I cared in the first place—and I’ve finally got this school thing figured out.
And I’ve got Grayson. After school I ride the bus with him all the way to his archery club, like the perfect girlfriend I am, then stand with him in the swirling snow as he kisses me gently, passionately good-bye, like the perfect boyfriend he is.
I run all the way home, imagining the snow’s gone and I’m soaring on my skateboard instead.
It’s Monday, which means Mom won’t be home with the halflings for an hour or two, and I’ve got the house to myself. I can amp up the music, or watch LumberLegs videos while dancing around like a maniac.
I do a little pirouette, hopping about as I whip into the kitchen. I’m so amped up, I don’t even notice her until I pull the pitcher of no-name red punch—the drink of champions—out of the fridge and whirl around to grab a glass.
“Mom! What are you doing home?”
Mom sits at the kitchen table, arms crossed, eyebrows furrowed. “Your math teacher called today. Again.”
“Holy gumdrops. She’s basically stalking me at this point. I think we should probably call the cops.”
Mom doesn’t laugh. “She said you still haven’t been doing your homework. And that you’ve got a big test coming up next week.”
Ugh, I hate math. It’s basically the worst. “I know, I know. I’m sorry. But I’m doing awesome in science, so it balances out.”
Mom stands up, almost toppling her chair. “Meg, this is serious. You’re in high school now. You’ve got to start figuring out how to—”
“I will. Scout’s honor.” I make a peace sign and hold it over my heart. That’s a thing, right?
“Yes, you will,” Mom says. “Because there will be no more going out, no more television, no more video games until you start consistently getting your homework done.”
I drop my peace sign. “I’m grounded?”
She sighs and holds her hand against her forehead like she’s checking for a fever. She’s still wearing her work clothes. “Don’t think of it as grounding,” she says. “Think of it as eliminating distractions so you can get important things done.”
Right, as if it was as easy as eliminating distractions. Stephen-the-Leaver should have given her a tutorial before he left. He was the one who got me diagnosed in the first place. Before that, Mom’s go-to response was to lecture me on respecting my elders, then send me to my room. Stephen-the-Leaver, on the other hand, would just remind me not to talk over people, and he was always researching ways to help me focus and get homework done. The medication helps, but it’s never enough.
“That’s not how ADHD works, Mom,” I want to say. But I don’t know how it does work. Stephen-the-Leaver should have given me a tutorial before he left.
I can’t exactly call and ask him now. So instead, I swear at Mom, then storm off to my room. The last time I did that, Stephen-the-Leaver stormed right after me and made me apologize—to Mom, to him, to myself. But Mom is too tired or too jaded or too sure I’m a lost cause, and she doesn’t bother to follow me.