“Good plan,” he says. “Oh. Look. Speak of the devil.”
I follow his eyes across the gymnasium.
Gage Galt is standing in a crowd of his baseball buddies. They’re all neatly dressed: expensive polos, good jeans, the right sneakers. His hair is clean and perfect. He looks clean and perfect.
“Mr. Baseball,” Daniel says lightly.
My hands are shaking.
Be someone else, I tell myself. Be anyone else, any other girl who would walk up and ask someone to dance.
It’s like Gage and I skipped to step fourteen, so I never learned steps one through thirteen, the beginnings of a relationship. What Maddie was talking about.
“Listen, from what little I’ve gleaned from you so far,” Daniel says, “you have a thing for Mr. Baseball, but as your friend, I have to tell you, that situation is beginning to look complicated, so you need to tell me your plan. I can advise you.”
Some girls have joined the group, floating around the crowd of boys like colorful, confident flowers.
“I was going to ask him to dance.” Just saying that out loud makes my face flush.
“Hmm. Let me think about the best way to accomplish that. It’s a little crowded over there at the moment, so you may want to hold back until there are less people, in case you get shot do—”
But his words don’t touch me, because whoever the girl I need to be is, she’s coming out, right now, just like Simon Stanley said. I fall back into myself, make the old me recede, and even though my heart is beating so loud I can barely hear myself think, I’m walking, this new girl in my old shoes, ignoring the painful twinges in her knee, carrying me across the gym to Gage and his group.
“Abort the mission,” Daniel whispers behind me. “Abort the mission!”
But I can’t. I’m halfway there and I can’t stop now.
I stand at the edge of Gage’s group, looking in.
No one notices me, but they notice this new, effortless girl, because she says, in this same voice she used in Drama Club to tell a girl on the horizon that she would fester, “Hey, Gage. You want to dance?”
The group parts, everyone looking at me. It gets quiet.
One girl covers a smile with her hand and ducks her head.
Gage turns around, looks at me. Blinks. Once, twice.
He hesitates for a second, but then he grins and holds up his hands. Says, “You know, I’m not much of a dancer. I might need to sit this one out. Thanks for the offer, though.”
His eyes tell a different story. What did I tell you.
The braver girl who’s overtaken me says, “Oh, come on. It’s a dance.”
Gage’s mouth opens. “Yeah, I’m just not—”
“Oh, you!”
Priscilla appears, dressed in a swingy teal dress, her hair blown out, eyes smoky and beautiful. “Oh, you!” she cries again. “Come on. Don’t be shy.”
Touches his arm, pulls him away from the group, even as he pretends to protest.
The braver girl watches them go.
Then she disappears, replaced by me.
A tall brunette says, “I’m sorry, honey.” Like a mom. A coo.
I turn around quickly, my body on fire with shame.
Behind me, one of the guys says, “Isn’t that Maddie Ward’s sister? Man, Maddie was hot. That apple fell far, far from the tree.”
Maddie is hot. Maddie is beautiful. Maddie makes people’s eyes light up when she walks into a room.
One of the girls says, “Oh my god, she’s crying.”
I let him do things to me. We did things together. I’m like a giant flame, hot and ashamed.
I have to get out of here. Desperately, I look around for Joey. He’s still there, with Amber, but Lucy Kerr is with them, and Joey’s face looks weird. Amber is hanging back from them, her face confused. Lucy is right up in Joey’s face, jabbing his chest with a finger.
He walks away from Lucy quickly, two hands banging open the exit door by the snack and punch table. I hear Daniel call my name. I follow Joey, my heart racing.
I just want to get out of here now, like Candy at the party.
So, so stupid, why was I so stupid. Invisible was better. Invisible is always better.
That way, things hurt less.
Outside, it’s cool and dark, grass stiff from the chill. Heavy clouds hang in the sky. I call Joey’s name. I don’t see him anywhere. Where could he go so fast?
I text him. Where are you? Nothing. Laughter and music vibrate from the building. I have to hide. Why couldn’t he just dance with me? Why am I good enough for one thing and not the other? Practice girl. That’s what Maddie said. I feel sick.
I keep walking, fast, until I almost run into the chain-link fence that surrounds the practice field.
It’s dark, no lights. The stars are hidden behind the clouds. A star is mighty good company.
The bleacher bench is cold and hard, but I don’t care. Tears splash down my face and I wipe them away as fast as they come. I want to vomit. I want to scream. I want to keep crying. I want to rip all of my skin off because all the places that Gage ever touched me, ever turned me electric, are burning now.
I cover my face with my hands, choking on my own sobs.
“Hey.”
I keep my hands on my face. Just what I need. A witness to my stupid weeping.
“That was brutal,” Daniel says. “I’m sorry.”
“Can you just go away?” I say. “I really don’t need anyone watching my breakdown, if you know what I mean.”
“I can’t,” he says. “It’s in the high school handbook. You never let someone cry alone on the bleachers.”
“That page must have been missing from my handbook,” I say, sniffling.
God, I’m so stupid.
Daniel pulls a handkerchief from his pocket and hands it to me.
“What are you, like, ninety? Who has handkerchiefs?”
“I do. It’s environmentally friendly. Don’t worry, there’s no nose debris. It’s fresh.”
I unfold it and cover my whole face. I just sit there, everything blacked out, and then Daniel starts talking.
“These are the best years of our lives,” he says finally. “It’s just going to get way worse from here, so this is nothing. Maybe tomorrow the zombies will come. Eat our faces. Or an apocalyptic rain will wash us all into green pulp. Or maybe we’re in an alternate universe, and in two seconds, when you look at me and our eyes meet, we’ll both be transported instantly and come awake in a different world, one where I’m a hard-hearted detective in a trench coat and you’re a brilliant but maligned scientist, and somehow, all this pain, as they say, will be useful to us.”
There’s a pause.
“It could happen,” he says. “Sometimes I wish it would happen.”
I pull the handkerchief down, wipe under my eyes, and sigh, looking at him. He’s staring at the sky, like he’s seeing something I can’t behind all the clouds.
“Car accidents, cancer, addiction, broken hearts? That will be useful to us?” I say.
“Maybe.”
I don’t know why I say it, but I do. “Why don’t you just let people see your scar?”
He gently takes the handkerchief from me and folds it up, sliding it into the pocket of his coat.
“Because they wouldn’t believe me. Because they’d think it was from something else. Like trying to hang myself, or cut my throat, because this place is just one big rumor factory, and really, no one wants to hear it was just run-of-the-mill cancer, a thousand cells working silently for a long time, in ways I don’t understand, while I was doing dumb stuff, like playing Minecraft. I don’t understand it. And it scares me. And every time I have to look at the scar, I’m afraid those cells might be working again, while I’m reading The Scarlet Letter for the umpteenth time or buying Max deVos chocolate from the wobbly vending machine. Or even now, talking to a crying girl at a crappy high school dance. I prefer to pretend it doesn’t exist. Because I have to keep existing. And I can’t keep existing if I’m constantly thinking that I’m dying inside and I don’t even know it.”