Friends

The lacrosse team, the tennis team (which, of course has considerable overlap due to the seasonal schedules). Best friends with Justin Cho since second grade.

Additional Notes: Miney puts him on the Do Not Trust List.

I do not look at him. Instead I keep my head down, concentrate on keeping up with the stops and starts in front of me.

“Yo, man, after practice. Pizza Palace,” Gabriel says. Based on the sneakers and the context, I’m ninety-nine percent sure he is talking to Justin. I will not put Justin’s notebook entry here, because I am tired of reading and rereading my notes about Justin and wondering why he hates me so much. An unsolvable equation. Our Notable Encounters list is five pages long. He is the president of the Do Not Trust Club.

The Pizza Palace is the second-best Italian restaurant in Mapleview, according to Yelp. Most people prefer Rocco’s. If Gabriel were inviting me, which he is not, I would suggest we go to Pizza Pizza Pizza, which has two slices for the price of one from two to five p.m., and I believe the slight decrease in quality is more than made up for by the value. That said, I do get why they’d choose the Pizza Palace anyway, which is in no way a palace—just a small storefront on Main Street—because no matter how cheap the food is at Pizza Pizza Pizza, it feels funny to say the redundant name out loud.

That’s what I’m doing, imagining that Gabriel said, “Yo, man, after practice, Pizza Pizza Pizza,” and thinking how that would have been ridiculous, when I bump into a group of girls congregating around a locker. Jessica, Willow (who is notably the only Willow enrolled in our 397-student class and in our 1,579-student school), and Abby. Miney has labeled them in my notebook, in block letters and underlined with a Sharpie: THE POPULAR BITCHES.

When she first used this designation, Miney had to give me a long lecture about how this wasn’t an oxymoron, how someone could be both popular, which I presumed meant that lots of people liked you, and at the same time also be a bitch, which I presumed would have the opposite outcome. Apparently popularity in the context of high school has a negative correlation with people actually liking you but a high correlation with people wanting to be your friend. After careful consideration, this makes sense, though in my case, I am both an outlier and a great example of the fact that correlation does not imply causation. I am nice to everyone but without any upside: People neither like me nor want to be my friend.

“Watch it,” Jessica says, and rolls her eyes. Like I bumped into her on purpose. Haven’t my classmates figured out that the feeling has become mutual? They want nothing to do with me? Fine. I want nothing to do with them either. Miney promises college will be better, though I highly doubt it. “And what’s with all the talking to yourself?”

Have I been talking to myself? It’s entirely possible and somewhat ironic that my entire thought process about Pizza Pizza Pizza and what a ridiculous name it is to say out loud actually occurred…out loud. Occasionally, I forget about the barrier between the inside of my head and the rest of the world.

“Sorry,” I mutter to the floor, and pick up the book she dropped and hand it to her. She doesn’t say thank you.

“Freak,” Abby says, and laughs, like that’s funny or original. I force myself to meet her eyes, to look straight at her, because Miney claims eye contact humanizes me. Again, I have no idea why I need to be humanized in the first place, why everyone assumes I am some exception to the universally acknowledged rule that we are all human beings with feelings. Still, I do it anyway. Such is the power of Miney. “What are you staring at?”

For a second I consider asking Abby, straight out, just saying it out loud, “What have I ever done to you?” I bumped into Jessica. Not her. We have had no Notable Encounters, positive or negative. But then the bell rings, and it’s loud and uncomfortable, and everyone is rushing off to class, and I have physics. Which means I now have to spend the next forty-five minutes sitting next to Gabriel and trying to block out the fact that he smells like Axe Anarchy for Him body spray, and taps his pencil against his desk to an erratic beat, and clears his throat approximately every thirty-five seconds. No doubt, despite the acoustics and board perspective, I’d have been much better off sitting alone in the back.

Kit slips into class ten minutes into Mr. Schmidt’s lecture on Newton’s third law, which I’ve written down in Latin to keep it interesting.

“Lost track of time,” Kit says, and takes her seat, which is two behind me and one to the right. Not the greatest excuse, considering the school uses a loud bell to remind us to get to class. Mr. Schmidt nods and doesn’t yell at her or give her a first warning like he normally would. Once, when we had to make a shiva call to our next-door neighbor’s, Miney told me that different rules apply to those who’ve just lost someone. I wonder how long that lasts, not the dead part, of course, but the special treatment part. Would Mr. Schmidt make allowances for me if my dad died?

Probably not. My dad is a medical researcher at Abbot Laboratories. I doubt he’s on many people’s Nice List, mostly because he’s not the type of person to make it onto any lists other than science ones. If my mother died, on the other hand, people would notice. She and Miney are similar that way: Everyone loves them. My mom is always stopping to talk to other women in the checkout line at the supermarket or at the drugstore. She knows the names of all the kids in my class and their parents, and sometimes she’ll even add information to my notebook. She’s the one who told me that Justin and Jessica were dating—she saw them making out at the mall—and then later that they broke up. This was gleaned, somehow, while getting her nails done, because she shares a chatty manicurist with Jessica’s mom.

Miney is the anti-me. She won numerous Senior Superlatives last year: Most Popular, Most Attractive, Most Likely to Succeed. I do not anticipate winning any. Though I guess Miney and I have one thing in common: Miney is also an example that correlation does not imply causation. She is popular but not a bitch. Unfortunately she has also led me to question the entire field of genetics, since we share fifty percent of our DNA.

My parents have been married for twenty-two years and they are still in love. This is statistically remarkable.

My mom says: “Opposites attract.”

My dad says: “I just got seriously lucky.”

Miney says: “Mom is a closet weirdo, and dad is a closet normal, and that’s why they work.”

I haven’t put much thought into their marriage, but I like that my parents are still together. I wouldn’t want to have to pack a bag every other weekend and sleep in some strange apartment and have to brush my teeth in a different sink. My mom claims my dad and I are a lot alike, which gives me cause for optimism. If he could get someone like my mother to love him—someone who is universally acknowledged to be all kinds of awesome—and not just love him but love him enough to spend the rest of her life with him, then maybe there is hope for me too.

Halfway through class, when Mr. Schmidt starts writing equations on the smart board, Kit stands up and walks out. No explanation. No asking for a bathroom pass. No excuses. She just leaves.

After the door closes behind her, the whispering starts.

Annie: She, like, needs to talk to us. She’s totally shutting us out.

Violet: Her dad DIED, Annie. As in dead, dead forever. Cut her some slack.

Gabriel: I’m hungry.

Annie: I have a PowerBar.

This is how it goes. Conversation swirls around me, and the words all feel disconnected, like playing pinball blindfolded. What does Kit’s dad dying have to do with Gabriel being hungry?

“Ladies and gentlemen, moving on,” Mr. Schmidt says, and then claps three times—clap, clap, clap—for no discernible reason. Before I realize what I’m doing, my hand is in the air. “Yes, Mr. Drucker?”

“Can I be excused?” I ask.

“Excused? This is a classroom, not the dinner table. Let’s get back to work.”

“I meant can I go to the nurse? I have a migraine,” I say, though this is a lie. Miney would be proud. She says I need to practice not telling the truth. That lying gets easier the more you do it. I consider making a moaning noise, as if I am in pain, but decide that would be overkill.

“Fine. Go,” Mr. Schmidt says, and so I stand up and walk out the door, just like Kit did a few moments before. It’s not like I’m going to miss anything here. I read the textbook last summer. The few questions it raised for me were answered with a couple of Google searches and expounded upon by a free online Stanford class.

Once I’m in the quiet hallway, my brain catches up with my body and I understand what I’m doing here. Although Mr. Schmidt’s class is boring and a complete waste of my time, I usually obey instructions. I sit through my classes. Mostly keep my mouth shut. Unless I want to bypass high school and get a GED, I don’t have much choice in the matter.

What I realize is: I want to find Kit. I need to know where she’s going.

I jog down the hall and decide to head out the front door, ignoring Señora Rubenstein, the Spanish teacher, calling out to me in her heavy New Jersey accent: “Adónde vas, Señor Drucker?”

I scan the parking lot to my right, which is about six hundred feet northeast of the school’s entrance. No Kit. But her red Corolla, which is parked like always in the second row, six cars back, space number forty-three of the upperclassmen’s lot, is still here.

I walk around the school to the football field, which has high bleachers and a decent view of Mapleview. Maybe she’s sitting up there to get some fresh air. I don’t like sporting events—too noisy and crowded—but I’ve always liked bleachers, things ordered vertically from high to low.

“Did Mr. Schmidt send you?” Kit asks. She’s not in the bleachers, which is where I was looking, but in the concession hut. This is where kids from student government sell hot dogs and lemonade and candy at football games at inflated prices. The lights are off, and she’s sitting on the dirty floor with her knees pulled into her chest. If she hadn’t spoken, I don’t know if I would have noticed her.

“No. I lied to him and said I had a migraine,” I say, and force myself to make eye contact. It’s easier than usual, since it’s dark in there. Kit’s cheeks are red from the cold. Her eyes are green. They’ve always been green, obviously, but today they are greener somehow. My new definition of green. Green used to equal Kermit the Frog. And sometimes spring. But no more. Now Kit’s eyes equal green. An inextricable link. Like how when I think about the number three, I always, for no reason that I’ve been able to understand, also see the letter R.

“I wasn’t trying to start a ditching trend,” Kit says, and I smile, because if it’s not exactly a joke, it is sort of related to one.

“In case you hadn’t noticed, I don’t usually follow trends,” I say, and point to my pants, which are loose-fitting and khaki-colored and, according to Miney, a “crime against fashion.” She’s been begging to take me shopping for years, claims that I could look so much better if I put in just a tiny bit of effort. But I don’t like shopping. Actually it’s not the shopping I mind so much. I don’t like the new clothes afterward. The feeling of an unfamiliar material against my skin.

Kit looks up at me, and then over my shoulder to the school.

“So are you following me? This isn’t the nurse’s office,” she says. I can’t make out her tone. Can’t tell if she’s annoyed. Her voice sounds scratchy and her face doesn’t match any of the expression cards Miney once printed out for me.

“I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” I hold up my hands, a signal to say no harm, like they do on cop shows.

“Everyone was talking about me when I left, right? I didn’t mean to make a whole thing about it. I just couldn’t sit there, suddenly,” she says.

“Clearly,” I say. “I mean, that you couldn’t sit there. Not the making a whole thing about it.” Now that I’m here, talking to Kit, twice in one day, when we haven’t really spoken pretty much ever, except our few Notable Encounters, I realize how off schedule I find myself. None of this was part of today’s plan.

Me following her outside.

Me electing myself the one to check on her.

Me suddenly redefining green.