Sometimes, you can tic so much it makes you sore. Turns out tic-ing that much while you’re holding another person is enough to make you feel like you spent seventy-two consecutive hours in the weight room with Coach. It probably doesn’t help that I only get about two hours of sleep before I have to get back to school. Dean drags himself out of bed to drive me because he knows he owes me.
5:50 AM—I wait outside Vice Principal Kahn’s office.
5:54 AM—He arrives, and the waiting moves to the inside of his office. Bonus: There’s now a thick silence. Which lasts until . . .
6:00 AM (on the nose)—Hope squeaks in. I can’t tell which of us is more surprised by her newfound punctuality. Kahn shuffles a stack of self-esteem mad libs for a full five seconds before he starts throwing inspiration and discipline at us.
“I’ve spoken with Principal Gonzalez and others in the administration, and we’ve come up with a plan. I really want you to take this time to think about your priorities, get in touch with a better you. I’m always here if you need to talk.” No joke, he balls his hand into a fist and taps it against his heart when he says this. “You’ll be cleaning up the prank this morning. And every morning for the next three weeks.”
What I should be thinking is, Three weeks isn’t so bad. I’ll make Dean trade me three weeks’ worth of yard work. Instead, I’m thinking dangerously optimistic things about how three weeks is plenty of time to talk to Hope about all the stuff we’ve been avoiding.
“Three weeks?” Hope says. “Do you really think it’ll take that long?” She wrinkles her nose.
“We’ll find other tasks for you when you finish. And I’ll be checking in on you, so don’t think about skipping out.” He directs that part at her. “You’re a suspension away from getting expelled, and your mom hooked me up with her cell and told me to call her for any reason at all.”
Hope groans. I half-stand because it feels like the conversation is over. Kahn’s eyes pin me back to my chair, and I curse myself for making sudden movements.
“And, Spencer, you’ll be missing your first wrestling meet of the season.”
I’m on my feet before the words pass his desk. “What? You can’t do that.” Is he effing serious? The first meet is still three weeks away. The only reason he’d make me skip it is if he had carefully calculated which punishment could hurt me the most, which, being an evil supervillain, is probably second nature to him. I’ve been busting my ass to make 138, and now the first match is going to go to some other dude gift-wrapped. “You’re not making her skip anything.”
I shoot a mental apology to Hope for bringing her into this, but I’m not sure she receives it.
“She doesn’t do anything to skip.” He shrugs like it couldn’t be simpler, the bastard.
He’s taking away everything, and he can’t even be bothered to acknowledge that it’s a big deal. “So I’m being punished for being involved? That’s bullshit.”
Kahn sucks in air through his teeth, a cockroach hiss, and I know I’ve crossed the line. Hell, I can’t even see the line anymore.
“Look, I get that missing the meet will suck for you, but unless you can provide me with some names, this is how it’s gonna be, dude.”
I shake my head. “I’m not telling you anything.” Dude. (The hell with yard work. Dean owes me a kidney.)
Nice Kahn has left the building. “For your attitude, I’ll be extending the morning detention. Let’s go for an even month.”
Hope’s posture goes from cool-delinquent-slouch to debutante-strapped-to-a-yardstick. “For Spencer?” she clarifies.
Big mistake.
“For both of you. Actually, it should probably be five weeks for you since you’re not missing an activity.”
“FIVE weeks? Are you serious?”
“I’m happy to shorten your sentence if you tell me who else is involved.”
“Five is good.”
Hope’s mouth twists like she’s trying to eat her cheeks from the inside. Neither of us is dumb enough to say anything else. Kahn has us start with the water cups on the cafeteria tables because they’ll interfere with lunch. It really was one of Dean’s more genius prank ideas. Cover the cafeteria tables with hundreds of tiny paper shot cups. Filled with water. Nobody can eat lunch until they dump the cups out, one by one. Plus, they left spaces between the cups to spell out SENIORS. Our vice principal demonstrates how we are to walk them to a sink near the tray wash, pour out the water, and throw the empty cups in the trash. Because we clearly couldn’t have figured that out on our own. Then he’s gone, and it’s just me, Hope, and a forest’s worth of paper cups.
For a moment, I stop entertaining ways I’d like to torture our vice principal. The dangerously optimistic things begin to creep back into my brain.
“Where do you want to—” I turn, but she’s already stalked off in the direction of the closest table. “Start.”
I can see steam curling out of her nose, and I know it’s useless. We’re still not talking. Nothing has changed, except that now, in addition to shutting me out, she’s possibly severely pissed at me. She could also be pissed at herself. Or Kahn. (Would definitely give her some rage solidarity on that one!) But as someone who spent three years being her best friend, I am pretty well versed in the fine art of interpreting her stomping. Well, half-stomping. Stomping with her right leg plus limping with her left means she is actually walking kind of like an ogre (a very cute ogre).
This isn’t how it was supposed to happen. This was going to be the start of all the things that came after. I had this whole Hope and Spencer BFF Reboot hypothesis going. There were signs. That little wave she gave me when I was walking into school. And that thing she said about peach tea. Those things meant something. Didn’t they?
Hope picks up two cups of water with the most indignant, most obnoxious, most infuriated and infuriating sigh. Well, I guess I did get her two extra weeks of early-morning hell. No. You know what? Screw that. I wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for her. I storm over to the nearest table and grab two cups, then stomp them over to the sink and dump them. If I hadn’t tried to warn her, if Ethan and Mikey and all those other losers had listened the first eighty-seven times, I wouldn’t be getting up at the crack of fucking dawn. I wouldn’t be cleaning up a prank I didn’t even do. And I wouldn’t be missing the most important thing in my life.
I think about what it’s going to be like to watch that first meet and not wrestle, and I sling my cups into the trash can like I’m trying to break the damn thing. I picture Vice Principal Kahn and his stupid lectures and I sling the next batch harder. Mikey’s face. Hope’s freeze-outs. All of them are cups battering the walls of the trash can.
I barrel over to a table for more cups, wondering who I’ll dedicate this next batch to, when I hear the unmistakable sound of cups thwacking against plastic. And then I realize, Hope is slinging hers, too. Now that I’ve noticed, I can’t not notice. I’m still thundering around the cafeteria, still throwing cups with the gusto of a closer in the final moments of a baseball game, but now I’m watching, too.
Hope power walks back and forth, faster with each trip, never making eye contact. Her shoes slap louder against the gray and white tiles.
Snatch up cups with as much venom as possible.
Slapslapslap across the floor.
Hurl water into sink and cups into trash.
Maybe we’re dueling, armed with nothing but paper cups. Or maybe we are partners in our anger, composing a song of stomps and slams and water trickling down the sink. After a few minutes, she adds a loud, huffy sigh to our concerto. I answer back by launching my cups as hard as I can. Her steps falter, and I feel the tingling of her eyes on the back of my neck, but when I turn, she’s getting more cups. So I do the same. Grabbing more cups, and more, and more. We’ve only got a couple tables left now.
And then it happens. We both reach the trash can at exactly the same time. There’s a second’s hesitation. Do we toss the cups in gently now that we’ve caught each other? Our eyes flick from the now-almost-full trash can to each other. And we go for it. Slam down our cups like three-year-olds on a sugar bender, the last droplets of water splattering the wall in front of us. Hope raises her eyebrows, and one side of my mouth curls up in a sideways smirk.
I wonder if I should say something. Before I have time to worry about it, Hope stomps away. But I can tell by the way her shoulders are bouncing that she’s smiling. I stomp off in the other direction. Only now I’m smiling, too.