When I step out onto my wooden porch, the behemoth is already parked in my driveway, with Oliver standing beside it. He sees me and immediately opens the passenger door with great ceremony. “Your chariot awaits,” he calls. “Your sweet, sweet musical chariot.”
I plod toward him, trying not to smile at the ridiculousness of it all. “Stop it,” I say as he takes a deep bow, gesturing toward my seat.
I swing my backpack into the car and am about to scramble aboard like I always do, when I feel Oliver’s hand on my elbow. It’s warm and it makes my skin even warmer where it’s touching me. I know we must have touched before—besides that kiss in kindergarten—because surely we have collided in the halls or brushed past each other in the cafeteria.
Yet this feels like the first time.
We’re waiting at the Plymouth stop sign when Oliver turns to me with a giant smile.
“This is the moment, isn’t it?” I ask him.
“Oh yes,” he says. “This is the moment.”
And then music—if you can call it that—blasts from his speakers. I am not exaggerating when I say that it is the worst, most egregiously sappy, power-chorded, ridiculously overly romantic rock ballad that has ever had the painful misfortune to grace the earth. That would be bad enough, but as I immediately discover, Oliver knows the lyrics.
All of them.
And he sings along.
With feeling.
When the song finally comes to the bridge—which is a marginal improvement due to the lack of drippy words—I yell at Oliver over the electric guitar chords. “Any part of me that has managed to achieve sophistication, any little shred of my being that has understood something greater and somehow risen above the huddled masses…”
“Yeah?” Oliver yells back at me.
“Right this minute, that shining piece of me is being slowly throttled by this unrelenting stream of sentimentality!”
Oliver holds up a finger. “Wait for it!”
“For what?”
The guitar solo builds to a melodramatic crescendo. “For this!” he shouts…and then he’s back into the chorus, waving one arm around and making wide-eyed faces at me anytime we’re stopped.
The song—annoyingly named “When It Matters”—plays a total of six and a half times before we arrive at school.
Oliver doesn’t miss a word.
I know I have to wait for the first bell to ring before I can nail Oliver with a proof, but even though we walk onto campus together, I lose track of him before homeroom…or maybe he loses track of me. I look for him afterward, and then again before second period, but he’s as elusive as Itch when my mom is around.
However, it’s impossible to hide forever when we share a physics class.
Oliver again charges in right as the bell is ringing. I make a swipe for his arm as he blows past my desk, but he doesn’t even glance at me.
Oh. Hell. No.
I turn around in my seat and wait while he plops down and pulls out his materials. When he looks up and finds me watching him, he cringes. I smile and hold up a folded piece of paper. He can’t avoid me forever.
Minutes later, Mrs. Nelson is explaining the principles of thermodynamics and my note is stealthily wending its way back across the classroom—being passed from person to person—toward Oliver Flagg.
It’s simple. Easy. I assume that all four of our parents had high school relationships with other people—even if they were merely crushes or flirtations—and all four eventually moved on from them. Yes, I guess you can say it’s an example more than a proof, but for the purposes of our little game, it should work.
Anything to cut down on the number of times I have to hear that dreadful “When It Matters” song.
I anticipate Oliver’s arguing the validity, since my parents ended up divorcing, but I plan to come back with the fact that they stayed together long enough to procreate, and that’s one of the most life-altering, meaningful things that two people can do together.
It’s close to the end of class and Mrs. Nelson is jotting a stream of symbols across the whiteboard when a familiar folded paper wings onto my table.
Huh.
I guess there’s no refuting that. The second part, that is.
Since Oliver is being fair about it and not calling in Shaun for something that obviously needs no judgment, I pick up my pencil and write a response (in my creepily perfect penmanship).
When the bell rings, I turn around to see if Oliver fully appreciates my last comments, but he’s already heading for the door. Ainsley, however, is staring straight at me. For no reason that carries even a semblance of sense, I have a sudden flash of guilt, like I’m doing something wrong.
But I’m not.
Lily is meeting with her private music instructor, and Darbs is stalking Yana-the-new-girl, and Shaun is in the yearbook room, so Itch and I are enjoying a rare solo lunch. And by “lunch,” I mean “make-out session.”
Itch sits with his feet on the next bleacher down, and I am half reclined across his lap so all he has to do is tilt a little to reach my face. It’s too warm and humid to be messing around on the metal bleachers, but we’re doing it anyway. Itch’s legs are sticky hot under my back, and I can feel my black-Converse-clad feet baking in the sun, but the whole thing is familiar and public and easy. Kind of like our relationship. I have a flash of remorse as I remember the boy I kissed over the summer, but I hastily pack it away. Itch didn’t ask, so I didn’t tell. It’s not like I’m lying.
I hear clacks and feel vibrations beneath me. Itch removes his mouth from mine and a sigh of disgust puffs out of him. “Is this going to become a regular thing?”
I push off him and sit up. The clacks are the sound of high heels ascending the bleachers, and the person wearing them is Ainsley Powell. She’s clearly headed toward us, because there’s no one else anywhere near, plus her brilliantly green eyes are locked right on us.
“I’m out,” says Itch. He starts to stand, but I lock on to his wrist and pull him down.
“Don’t be rude,” I hiss.
Itch settles back as Ainsley arrives on our row. “Hey, guys,” she says in a voice that is somehow made for both shouting cheers over packed stadiums and whispering poetry into the ears of worshipful boys.
I tense up. Is she here to start something with me? I’m pretty sure she could take me physically—she’s taller and probably stronger from cheerleading—but she is wearing those heels. Maybe I can catch her off balance. “What’s up, Ainsley?” I ask like it’s no big deal.
She gestures to the row in front of us. “May I?”
“Of course,” I say graciously.
“It’s a free country,” Itch says, and I elbow him.
Ainsley lowers herself to a graceful sitting position like she’s a peacock feather drifting to the ground. “Are you going to the first game?”
“The football game?” It comes out of my mouth in a tone of incredulity. Is she trying to figure out where to deploy her band of evil pom-pommed henchwomen to kick my ass? Or is she warning me away, staking her claim to anything sports-related…anything that involves Oliver?
Itch speaks for me. “We don’t do tournaments of brutality.”
Ainsley turns her dark-lashed gaze on him. “High school is a tournament of brutality.”
Itch looks surprised at her comeback. “I’ll give you that.”
Ainsley taps me on the knee. “You should go.”
“Why?”
“It’s the first game of the season. We’re trying to have a big crowd to show support for the team.”
I somehow think there’s a little more to this invitation than school spirit, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out her angle. “Maybe,” I tell her.
“There’s a bonfire after,” Ainsley says. “You guys can catch a ride with us.”
“Us?” Itch repeats.
“Oliver and me.”
“Like a double date?” I ask, and watch Ainsley’s smile grow even wider.
“Exactly like that.”
I guess Itch and I had to have our first fight sometime. I just didn’t think it would happen in the middle of a Rite Aid.
I’m standing with my hands on my hips, watching him browse a rack of corn chips. “It wouldn’t kill you,” I tell him. “It wouldn’t actually make your heart stop beating and your blood stop pumping.”
“It might. You don’t know.”
“One game. One party.”
Itch laughs and the sound comes out brittle, like it would break if it hit the ground. “That’s how it starts,” he tells me. “A game, a party, a bunch of booze. Then suddenly you’re part of their crap and doing their bidding.”
“No one’s talking about doing anyone’s bidding! It’s football, not slavery.”
“Keep telling yourself that.” Itch swipes a bright orange bag off the shelf. “There’s a reason we’re not joiners, June. It’s not because we’re geeks and it’s not because we buy into some sort of outdated hierarchy of popularity.”
“I never said—”
“It’s because we’re better than it.” Itch walks over and slings an arm around my shoulders, which are tensed up higher than they should be. “You’re better.”
He kisses me and I let him.
I always let him.