Even though I’m clearly visible on my new front porch, my unwanted ride heralds his arrival with a sharp honk, loud enough to cut through the Damned, playing in my earbuds.
Oliver Flagg is the kind of guy who likes to make an entrance.
I wait until his gas-guzzling behemoth is completely stopped before I kill my music and trudge toward it. Whatever Oliver is listening to—I can hear drums and guitars—abruptly cuts off as I approach. Even though I’m a perfectly reasonably sized person at five and a half feet tall, I practically have to take a running leap to get into his vehicle, because it’s so monstrously huge, but eventually I am strapped in with my backpack on my lap. Ready to get this ride—and senior year—over with.
“You’re ten minutes early,” I tell Oliver. Just because our moms are BFFs doesn’t mean we have to be.
“You were ready,” he says mildly. “Waiting outside and all dressed up for the first day of school.”
Since I’m in one of my standard outfits—jeans, Chucks, a black tank layered over a white one—I know he’s being facetious. I also know he probably doesn’t comprehend the word “facetious.”
“I was listening to music. I was embracing the solitude.”
“Now you can embrace hanging out.” He flashes his patented hot-popular-jock grin in my direction before reversing onto Callaway Lane. “Besides, you’re supposed to show up early for the first day of school. These are the glory days, Rafferty.”
“Glory days.” The words come out of my mouth in a flat line. As far as I am concerned, high school is something to get through and get over. I don’t need to roll around in the overblown tradition of it all.
But this is Oliver Flagg. He wallows in window dressing. He festers in frivolity. If there’s the remotest chance that something will involve a sign-up sheet or a spirit banner or a dude dressed up as a bird (our school mascot is a robin), Oliver is in.
Simply put…he loves that shit.
And I hate it.
I really hate it.
We pull onto Plymouth and rumble west in stiff silence as pastures and maple trees and farmhouses slide past us on both sides. Crazy that this much rural country exists only twenty minutes outside the city.
I finger-comb my hair, which is not quite brown and not quite blond, not quite straight and not quite curly. Not quite anything…just like me.
I apply lip gloss. I squirm in my seat and accidentally send the dozen empty plastic water bottles at my feet rattling against each other. Finally, I’m not able to take it anymore and I blurt out what we’re both thinking. “Look, I get it. It’s not like our moms consulted us when they came up with this little plan.” Oliver glances at me but doesn’t say anything, so I keep going. “It’s cool. You’ve got better things to do.” His eyebrows squinch together in the middle. “Drive me a couple more times so they won’t get all pissy, and then we’ll come up with an excuse. We’ll tell them you have practice and I’ll take the bus.”
This time, Oliver’s eyebrows jolt upward. “Practice?”
“Throwing or kicking or dribbling or whatever you do. Seriously, it’s fine.”
Oliver’s lips twitch into a half smile. “My, uh, dribbling practice is after school. It’s no big deal to drive you in the mornings.”
“It’s no big deal to take the bus.”
“Except that the ride is an hour and a half long. The bus goes all the way out before coming back to school.”
He’s right, but I hate being his charity case. “I know you have amassed a certain amount of nice-guy cred, but you don’t really have to pick me up. It’s egregious. It’s excessive.” Belatedly, I remember that Oliver might not follow my advanced vocabulary, and I dial it back so he’ll understand. “It’s too much.”
“I don’t mind.”
I shift again in my seat to observe his profile. There are girls in our class who would trade places with me in a hot heartbeat. Those girls place a lot of weight on tan skin and tight muscles and chocolate-brown eyes (I’ve heard Zoe Smith refer to them as “bedroom eyes”), but none of that does anything for me. I’m a brains girl, all the way. “Of course you mind. Who would want to be responsible for getting someone else to school every single day?”
Oliver lets out a tiny puff of laughter. “You and your mom moved five minutes from my house and I literally pass right by you”—I feel a stab of gratitude for his correct usage of the word “literally”—“so chill, Rafferty. It’s no big deal to swing by and pick you up.”
It’s a nice thing to say, which I do appreciate despite evidence to the contrary, but it doesn’t stop me from being…me. “It’s a little weird, don’t you think?”
“Not until you said that.” Again with the laughter as we cruise through a green light and merge onto the highway heading toward Ann Arbor. “Tell you what, let’s just do what people do.”
I have (literally) no idea what he’s talking about, so I wait.
“Okay, I’ll go first,” says Oliver. “Who do you have for homeroom?”
Ohhhh, now I get it. Conversation. Fine. I can make an attempt. “Vinton. Who’s yours?”
“Webb. I had her sophomore year. She’s pretty cool.”
I run through other topics in my head, finally coming back to the only thing Oliver and I have in common: school. “What electives are you taking?”
“Photography and family sciences.”
I’m amused in spite of myself. “By ‘family sciences,’ do you mean ‘home ec’?”
Oliver shrugs. “It’s a cooking class, but if you want to use an outdated term, sure.”
“I’m just surprised.” Meatheads like Oliver usually take electives like grunting. Or lifting heavy objects. Or freshmen-intimidation techniques.
“And I am equally surprised by your misogyny,” he says.
“Whereas I am now surprised that you know the word ‘misogyny.’ ”
Oliver winks one of those brown bedroom eyes at me. “Isn’t life a series of grand eye-opening revelations?”
Huh. A jock with a vocabulary.
A jockabulary, if you will.
“To be honest, I’m only taking the class because of this dumb thing with Theo,” Oliver tells me. “We had a bet. I lost. Now I’m taking family sciences.”
“What kind of bet?”
“Just a stupid guy thing.”
I settle back in the leather seat. In all fairness, even though I’ve technically known Oliver from birth, it’s not like I really know him. We haven’t spent any time together since kindergarten, when we got married under the monkey bars in a ceremony officiated by Shaun Banerjee. Our relationship was consummated with a sticky kiss and then annulled a couple hours later when we got into an argument during art class. It culminated in our sitting in the principal’s office, dripping in blue paint, waiting for our moms to bring us clean clothes.
Who knew that since then, Oliver had graduated from one-syllable words?
“How’s Itch?” Oliver asks.
I’m a little thrown by the question. It didn’t occur to me that Oliver would even know about Itch. Also, I don’t know how to answer him.
“Fine,” I finally say, because it might be true.
Probably.
Hopefully.
Itch—otherwise known as Adam Markovich—is my boyfriend…maybe. Before heading to Florida for the summer, he said it would be crazy for us to sit around and wait for each other, and that we should be free to date other people. I agreed with him—because what else could I do?—and assumed it was the beginning of the end. Then Itch called or texted nearly every single day, so I guessed he probably wasn’t dating anyone else. Of course, I didn’t exactly broadcast it when I kissed Ethan Erickson on the Fourth of July, so it’s possible Itch cheated, too.
Since none of this is a matter of public record, I’m not sure why Oliver is asking. I angle my body toward him. “How do you even know who I date?”
“It’s not like I live under a rock.”
“Just under a helmet.”
“You and Itch hold hands at school.”
Double huh. I’m shocked that anyone outside my limited social circle has any idea what I do with my hands.
“It doesn’t seem like something you’d notice.”
Oliver shakes his head. “You know who my girlfriend is, right?”
Well, duh.
“Ainsley Powell.” The smug face he pulls makes me want to defend myself. “But everyone knows that.”
“Dude, it’s our senior year. By now, everyone knows who everyone is.”
I shift in my seat again, trying to get comfortable. The car is so huge I can barely see out the windows. “Right, senior year.”
We take the exit and cruise onto Main Street, which has scattered gas stations and mattress warehouses and peeling billboards about mortgage rates at this end of it. I feel rather than see Oliver’s glance. “Aren’t you even a little bit excited?” he asks me.
“No.”
“This is our last year. This is it.”
Ugh.
“Not to burst your bubble, but this is nothing,” I say. “It’s not real life.”
“It’s better than real life,” Oliver informs me. “High school sets the stage for real life.”
This time, I’m the one who laughs. “Please. Nothing we do right now matters.”
Oliver’s mouth drops open. “Are you kidding me?”
“I’m totally not. Think about it.” I turn to face him more fully. “In the real world, in the grand scheme of life, this year is going to count for exactly nothing. These are the friendships that don’t last and the choices that don’t count. All those things we all freak out about now, like who’s going to be class president and are we going to win the game this weekend—there’s going to be a time when we can’t even remember caring about them. In exactly three hundred and sixty-five days from right now, wearing your letter jacket or class ring will make you look like the lamest of losers.”
Oliver blinks. “Man, you are bleak.”
“I’m not bleak. I’m realistic.” I mean it, too. I don’t hate my life and I’m not unhappy. It’s just that I understand the way the world works. I don’t need to pretend.
We go in silence for a few more minutes, until, as we pass the sign welcoming us to downtown Ann Arbor, I decide I should smooth things over. After all, even though I might not be voluntarily hanging out with Oliver Flagg, it looks like we’re going to have these early mornings together five times a week for the foreseeable future. “I’m not trying to be a dick,” I tell him. “You can have fun in high school. I just don’t think we should pretend it means more than it does.”
Oliver doesn’t say anything. He keeps driving as brick houses appear and then hunch closer and closer together. A half mile past the sign, it starts to actually look like a downtown, with restaurants and banks and four-story buildings and shops with awnings. That lasts only a handful of blocks and then we’re crossing Madison and driving through the university area, where houses are bigger, lawns are greener, and cars are shinier. Oliver remains quiet as we pass the stadium and a golf course. It’s not until we drive through Robin High’s main gate and enter the senior parking lot that Oliver speaks again: “For the record, I don’t think you’re a dick.”
“Thanks.” I don’t really care what the King of Everything thinks of me, but Mom raised me to know it’s polite to say something in return.
Oliver maneuvers his gigantic beast into a spot between two older sedans before killing the engine and turning to face me. “But I do feel sorry for you.”
“Feeling sorry for me is pretentious,” I inform him.
“Calling me pretentious is pretentious!” Oliver says it with a grin, but I think he means it. “Look, June…”
Ah, my first name. He must really want me to pay attention.
“In the world of schools, ours is pretty cool. But instead of appreciating it, all you want is to get out. All this stuff you’re pretending is stupid—it matters. Everything we do matters.”
I stare at him. The judgy thing is annoying, but who knew Oliver was capable of such intellectual discourse? Of getting passionate about something not involving a ball or a score? I don’t have to agree with his thesis regarding the importance of adolescence, but maybe these mornings can be more interesting than I originally presumed.
I’m about to say as much when a heavy thump on the rooftop makes me jump in my seat. Theo Nizzola—self-heralded Chick Magnet of Robin High (except he doesn’t say “chick”)—lurches into view by the driver-side window. “Besticle!” He pounds on the car again. “C’mon, get out here!”
“ ‘Besticle’?” I say the word in a tone that makes no secret of my contempt.
The glance Oliver throws at me might be apologetic. “It’s a Theo thing. It’s like bestie and—”
“I get it. Thanks for the ride.” I open my door and clamber down, hoping for a quick getaway, but of course Theo immediately lumbers around to block my path.
“Hafferty, what’s up?”
Yes, he knows my last name. No, he never says it correctly.
“Not much, Theo.”
He looms closer and holds out his thick arms. The smell of spicy deodorant wafts out from under them. “Why aren’t you giving me a good-morning hug?” He rotates his pelvis in a way that somebody somewhere must think is sexy.
I look him straight in the eye. “Because you’re gross and kind of stupid.”
Theo throws his head back and roars with laughter. It’s what he always does. This is our long-standing tradition. He makes disgusting motions, I shoot him down, and then he laughs really loudly. It’s also a big reason I don’t worship Oliver like other girls do. At the end of the day, he’s still a guy who surrounds himself with oafs.
I mean, besticles.
Theo bestows me with a final pelvic shimmy just as Oliver rounds the car and punches him in the arm. “Knock it off, jackass.” He nods at me. “See you tomorrow, Rafferty.”
“Great.” I hang back to put some distance between us. I don’t want to kick off the school year with those assholes.
The school lobby smells the same way it did at the start of last year: like beauty products and new sneakers and hormones.
God, we’re predictable.
I squeeze through the crowd—occasionally making eye contact or trading smiles—and am almost to the curved stairway when I hear my name called from across the lobby. It’s Shaun, bounding toward me like a gazelle, waving his arm frantically back and forth.
I love that kid.
Shaun catches me in a bear hug that ends awkwardly, knocking his glasses askew against the side of my face. He pulls back to adjust them and I take in his First Day of School outfit: preppy, from his polo to his oxfords. “Shopping spree?” I ask.
“You know how I feel about the Banana.”
I groan at the double entendre, but before I can throw a witty comeback, Shaun pulls me to the side of the stairway and crowds me against the wall in the shadows. It’s what a straight guy would do if he wanted a fast make-out session before homeroom.
“No, seriously,” Shaun says in a super-earnest tone. “How are you and I adore you and all that, but first listen to this.” He pauses dramatically before telling me. “I met someone.”
“At business camp?”
“Don’t mock. Behold.” Shaun pulls out his phone and starts scrolling around. He tilts the screen at me and I stare at the photo of an extremely buff dude posing by a pool. He’s wearing rolled-up khaki shorts and nothing else. He looks like he could be—
“He’s not actually a Banana Republic model, is he?”
Shaun shakes his head, satisfied. “No, but I know. His name is Kirk. Isn’t he amazing?”
I whap him on the arm. “What’s amazing is that I’m just now hearing about him!”
Shaun gives me a look of mock offense. “Important news should not be shared in a text.”
I try to remember what Shaun told me about the Rutgers summer business program he went to. “Weren’t you only there for like a week?”
“Six days, but get this: afterward, I told my parents I was visiting my cousin Wajidali at Syracuse, and Kirk said he was visiting his sister in Queens.”
I feel my eyebrows shoot up and disappear under my thick bangs. “Where did you really go?”
“A gay youth hostel in Manhattan.” Shaun lowers his voice. “Technically speaking, in Chelsea. And technically speaking, not gay so much as gay-friendly, but…” He draws in a deep breath. “It was life-altering, June. I am in love.”
I reach for his phone to assess the photo again. There are no two ways about it: Shaun’s guy is so hot as to be almost painful. “I might even be in love.”
“I know, right?” We grin at each other and then Shaun asks what I knew he would ask. “Have you seen Itch yet?”
I shake my head.
“Did you ever tell him about…?” Shaun makes a conspiratorial face, which is code for the twenty minutes I spent behind the 7-Eleven with Ethan Erickson’s tongue in my mouth. I shake my head again and Shaun nods approvingly. “Good. That news was never important enough to be shared.”
“I hope you’re right.”
The early bell rings and Shaun links his arm through mine. “Time to get our senior on.”
I allow Shaun to guide me up the stairs and onto the second floor, where we part ways to find our lockers. Mine is halfway down the hall and—like the rest of the twelfth-grade lockers—shellacked in blue. We’ve been told it’s the exact same color as a robin’s egg, but I suspect the real thing features more cute little speckles and less chipping paint. I shove my backpack inside, slam the door, spin the dial, turn…
And there’s Itch.
He’s weaving through the crowd toward me, like in a scene at the end of a romantic movie. His flop of almost-curly hair is longer than it was the last time I saw him, and his skin is sun-roasted. He keeps his hazel eyes locked on mine as he comes closer, and for just a second, I have that fainty-heart feeling that I used to get when we first started dating last year. Then he’s right here, and before I can even consider, he’s got his arms around me and I’m tilting my head back. His mouth is soft and waxy and familiar. When we part, he smiles his lopsided, lazy smile down at me. “I missed you,” he says.
I choose to believe him.
Lily and Darbs are already unpacked and eating lunch when I arrive at the west end of the bleachers where we sit, halfway between the top and the bottom. Not in the center, because that would imply social dominance, and not on the first row, because that would imply citizenship of LoserVille. We sit off to the side, but far enough up to make it clear that we belong.
At least, we belong to each other.
Lily only says hello when I plop down beside her—we already saw each other in homeroom and AP English—but Darbs squeals and surges across the bleacher to hug me. “June! Holy crap, I’ve been looking for you all day!” We compare schedules for the trimester and discover we have Spanish III together right after lunch. This sends Darbs into a joyful delirium, during which she hugs me again. I am unable to resist touching her shoulder-length ponytail, which is currently a deep violet with bright pink underneath. I would never dye my own hair, but I love it on Darbs.
When we break apart, Darbs tells us about the new girl in her English class. Her name is Yana Pace, she wears a tiny golden confirmation cross, and she was no-question-about-it, absolutely vibing Darbs. Lily and I exchange glances over our sandwiches. This is how it always goes with Darbs. Big crushes, big heartbreaks. It’s tough being a bisexual Christian. The gays don’t want her, and neither does our school’s God Squad.
Lily and Darbs are amused by my new carpool arrangement. “What’s the inside of his car like?” Darbs asks. “Is it filled with cheerleaders and beer cans?”
“Totally,” I tell her. “The cheerleaders are stacked in the backseat and I have to rest my feet on a keg.”
Darbs nods like she believes me. “At least he’s reasonable to look at.”
“Very reasonable,” Lily agrees. “But what do you talk about?”
“I’m trying to avoid too much conversation,” I tell them.
“Good call,” says Darbs.
The cafeteria must have been slammed, because the three of us are almost done eating by the time Shaun bounds up the bleachers with his tray, Itch loping behind him. Lily makes a big fuss about how Shaun is deigning to sit with us on the first day of school. She raises her dark arms—almost impossibly toned from all her violin practice—to the sky. “We’ve been blessed with a presence! We’ve been graced by royalty…ow!”
Shaun tugs on one of her dreadlocks and tells her to quit it. “I can’t help being so cool. Everyone loves me,” he says.
“Since when are chameleons cool?” Itch asks. He and I share the same opinion about trying to fit into school hierarchies: it’s dumb and pointless.
“Chameleons change their colors,” Shaun says, adjusting the collar of his striped polo shirt. “I float from group to group because my colors are constant but abundant. I am a rainbow.”
“You are a cliché,” I say, teasing him. He elbows me but I know he knows I’m joking. Kshaunish “Shaun” Banerjee very well might be the least cliché person at our high school.
Itch raises his hand and Lily points a finger to call on him. “Mr. Markovich.”
“Stupidest high school tradition: go.”
I don’t even have to think about it. “Prom.”
It earns me a pout from Darbs. “Prom is romantic,” she says.
“Prom is lame,” says Lily.
“I can’t wait until prom,” I inform them all. “But only because then it will be over. It’s the last stupid high school tradition before real life begins.”
“You should go ironically,” Darbs tells me.
“I won’t go at all,” I tell her. “There’s no way.” Belatedly, I realize I should have checked to see if my boyfriend felt the same way, but Itch is already nodding in agreement.
“Prom is stupid, but not the stupidest,” he says. “Try again.”
“Streak Week?” Shaun asks.
“No one’s done that in years,” Itch tells him.
“True, but it was the dumbest of dumb. I heard about this one guy who lost a pinky toe from frostbite.”
“Gross!” We all throw napkins at Shaun.
“Ooh, I got it!” Darbs bounces up and down. “The mascot laying an egg at center field during halftime!”
We crack up, because of course it’s one of the most ridiculous things at our school, but it’s still not what Itch is going for. “All definitely stupid, but not quite as stupid as the stupid senior prank.”
Every year, the seniors do something obvious and obnoxious, like hang the principal in effigy from the big maple tree or sandblast their graduation date into the sidewalk in front of the school. It’s usually illegal and it’s always destructive.
Itch tells us there’s a plan in motion for this year. “I don’t know the details, but apparently it involves a cow, the third floor, and laxatives.”
“Ew!” Darbs makes a face like she can already smell cow poop.
“I know,” says Itch. “It’s only September and already the losers are planning for that crap. Get a life.”
“I still think prom is worse,” I tell them.
“Who’s in charge of the prank?” Shaun asks.
“Who do you think?” Itch says.
“The athletes,” Lily and Shaun say together.
Prickles of annoyance scuttle over me. “Of course they are.” The same way Theo thinks it’s okay to jut his disgusting pelvis at me, his cohorts think it’s okay to take control of an inane piece of tradition that is—no matter how stupid—supposed to represent the entire community. They think they own the school. “Like they’re more senior than us or something,” I say out loud.
“Assholes,” Lily agrees.
Itch leans over and kisses me. Darbs makes a gagging sound. “Get a room.”
“We don’t need a room,” I tell her. “The world is our room.”
This time, everyone gags.
Itch drops me off at the foot of my driveway. I ask him to come in, but when he sees Mom’s Volkswagen, he says no. Itch is not a fan of polite, superficial conversation, which is what he feels is the best one can hope for with the parents of one’s girlfriend.
Or, in this case, the parent.
I smell the garlic even before I open the screen door. It gets stronger and more fragrant as I wend my way past piles of neatly stacked two-by-fours and planks of wood leaning against the bare walls. Although we’ve been in the farmhouse for a month, it looks like we just moved in. Mom has been renovating the place for almost a year, ever since my grandfather passed away and bequeathed it to us, but it’s still not done. This summer, she decided it didn’t make sense to pay for two homes anymore and—since the plumbing was finished—we should go ahead and move in. I’m sure it was a smart financial move, but it’s complicated my personal life. I used to jump on a city bus and make it to school in ten minutes, or else Mom would drop me off on her way to the University of Michigan, where she’s an associate professor of art. Now, however, Mom’s studio hours are earlier and our living situation is farther away, which means I’m stuck with Oliver Flagg every morning.
I find Mom at the stove, stirring a pot of tomato sauce. Her cheeks are pink from the heat and an embroidered headband holds back her straight brown hair. She looks up when I walk in. “June! Taste?”
She pulls her wooden spoon out and taps it against the edge of the pot before offering me some. It is, of course, divine. Everything my mom cooks is divine, with the exception of the things she made during the brief span of time when she was experimenting with scallions. She put them in everything, even cookies.
“The tomatoes are from Quinny,” she tells me. “Her garden is producing like crazy and since ours won’t be much of anything until next summer…How was your day?”
That’s how my mom talks. She trails off from one subject and leaps to the next one without missing a beat. I think her brain must be like that, a patchwork quilt of ideas and questions and thoughts. Mine is more linear. Point A to point B. Clear directions, clear focus. Mom says she doesn’t know how she and my father managed to produce such a brilliantly book-smart daughter, but she’s thankful for it.
I think it’s the only reason Mom is thankful for my father.
“It was fine. Mostly getting syllabi and hearing expectations. I think calculus is going to be hard.”
“You’ll be fine. You’re really good at math and…How are your friends?”
“Darbs has a crush. Lily got a special waiver for two study periods so she can practice violin. Shaun is in three of my classes.”
“So the same,” Mom says with a smile. “How about Itch?”
“Good, he drove me home.”
“That’s…Oh, how was Oliver this morning?” I pause for only a second, but Mom reads into it. “You don’t get along with him?”
“It’s fine, Mom. We get along fine.”
“I have an idea,” she says in this super-casual way, which I know means it didn’t just come to her. She’s been thinking about how to say this for a while. I watch her turn down the burner and give the pot a few more stirs. “I need Saturday afternoon for studio time, but I’m around in the morning. Maybe we could do some practice driving.”
My heart catches. Panic swells thick at the back of my throat. I do what I always do—take a deep breath and wait it out, sinking beneath the waves so the feeling can surge over and past me—and then swallow the panic back.
“I can’t.” I say it in a casual tone to match my mother’s. “I already have plans with Itch.”
It’s not true, but Mom doesn’t know that.
Or maybe she does.