Authors: Laurie Elizabeth Flynn
I want to curl up under my desk and disappear. This can’t possibly be happening. As if Trevor and Chase and Zach in the same room wasn’t bad enough, now Mrs. Hill seems to be in on the joke. I suddenly have to fight an unpleasant mental image of Mrs. Hill wielding that meter stick like a whip. Mrs. Hill, the dominatrix in an ill-fitting pantsuit.
“Although, I don’t call it sexual education. I call it safer sex. We’re not telling you not to do it. Just how to do it safer.” She laughs, an unnaturally high-pitched sound. Her hands are shaking slightly as she opens her desk drawer. She comes up with a goddamned bunch of bananas.
“This is not going to end well,” I mutter under my breath. By the look Angela gives me, I can tell she has no idea what Mrs. Hill is going to do with those bananas. Lucky Angela.
“Has everyone seen one of these?” she says, wagging a condom packet in the air. I recognize it as a Ribbed Ultra Thin. I wonder if it came from Mrs. Hill’s own collection, yet another mental image I don’t want to have.
The guys in the class snicker. Chase laughs the loudest of all. I pretend not to notice. Trevor, at least, has the good grace to shut up and stare at the blackboard, although I can see the backs of his ears turning red. I don’t even dare to peek at Zach, but I can feel his eyes on me, boring holes into me. It’s unsettling. Why does he have to look at me like that?
We all watch Mrs. Hill hastily rip open the condom and try to sheathe the banana. Some people laugh. Others, like Angela, cover their eyes with their hands. Somebody films it on a cell phone, unbeknownst to Mrs. Hill and her no technology rule. Although Mrs. Hill has a wedding ring on, I get the feeling she has never put a condom on a guy in her life. Her brow furrows under her frizzy hair.
You just ripped it with your fingernail, you idiot
, I want to tell her.
That condom’s going to break. Mrs. Hill, you just got pregnant
.
“I’m leaving this stuff up to Charlie,” Angela says through her hands. “When we’re married, of course.”
Yeah, right
, I want to tell her.
Because men always know what they’re doing.
“Voilà,” Mrs. Hill says. The condom sags loosely around the banana she waves in the air.
I hope he pulled out
, I want to say.
“Mercedes, do you want to give it a turn?” Mrs. Hill says, thrusting a naked banana in my direction with a nervous laugh. “I did say you’d be my first victim.”
I stare at Angela, whose eyes are wide with terror. Chase laughs into his hand and tries to disguise it as a cough. The back of Trevor’s neck turns an unfortunate shade of crimson. I’m just glad my face isn’t turning the same color, and I’m about to stand up on shaking legs—either to give the class a better demonstration or to configure an escape route from this school—when somebody saves me the trouble.
“That’s really a terrible example,” says the female voice accompanying the knock at the door. “It’s supposed to block the sperm, not give it a swimming pool.”
Everyone turns at once. The girl in the doorway gives the guys in the front row whiplash. I see their reactions before I actually see her. I’m expecting rough, tough, maybe army-green cargo pants and a bad haircut. I’m not expecting beautiful.
“You call this sex ed,” she says. “I call it a really lame Friday night.”
One laugh breaks the silence. Mine.
“Who is that?” Angela hisses in my ear.
The girl pushes her honey-colored hair behind her shoulders, an amused expression on her face. She could probably commit murder and hide behind that face.
I make the mistake of looking at Zach now, of all times. He’s not looking at me anymore. He’s staring at the new girl, and I don’t like the expression on his face. It’s how he used to look at me, before we ever slept together. It’s the face he makes when he’s concentrating, when the wheels in his head are turning, when he’s thinking about something he wants.
I didn’t know he could look at another girl like that.
I watch the new girl sit down in the vacant desk beside Zach. His eyes travel from her face, make a detour down to her legs, and come to rest on her boobs, which are propped up inside a tiny tank top.
Gross, Zach. Way to be so completely obvious.
“I have absolutely no idea,” I say to Angela, and it must be what the thirty other students in the class are thinking, too.
Her name is Faye. I don’t know her last name, or where she came from, or why she transferred to our school right when second semester is starting, when freedom from high school is a mere six months away. I only know that her name is Faye and that she’s terrible at chemistry. I know the second part because as of Wednesday morning, she has displaced Zach as my new chemistry partner. Mr. Sellers’s choice, not mine or Zach’s.
“I guess we’ll have to figure out a new label,” Zach says as he gathers his stuff with a heaving sigh. “Like maybe ‘Wednesday friend.’”
Faye watches him shuffle off with a raised eyebrow. “He’s cute,” she says. “I sat beside him in home economics yesterday. He even offered to share his notes.”
I barely resist rolling my eyes. I’m sure that’s all he offered to share.
“I wouldn’t trust Zach’s notes,” I hear myself say. “They’re probably more like doodles in the margins.”
Faye stifles a laugh and I realize how mean that sounded, how sharp my voice was. I don’t know why I even said that. Just because Zach sucks at chemistry doesn’t mean he sucks at all his other classes, too. Plus, we’re supposed to be friends. But before I can open my mouth to fix it, Faye cuts in.
“Well, he’s probably pissed that I’m stealing his lab partner. I hope I didn’t ruin chemistry for him.”
I shake my head but silently vow to make it up to him today at lunch. “Zach’s resilient. He’ll be fine.”
“So, what’s your deal? You’re like, a chemistry superstar? I got lucky, then.” She looks at me from under eyelashes that must be fake. No tube of Maybelline Great Lash would give that much volume. I should know—I have tried out enough mascaras to bankrupt any drugstore on my eternal quest for the perfect bedroom eyes.
I shrug. “I just get it. I like how everything can be boiled down to a formula. Makes it almost impossible to fail.”
She laughs, a harsh, grating sound, like some kind of animal should be making it instead of a teenage girl. “I guess I never understood the formula, then.”
Today, we’re making a volcano out of hydrochloric acid and sodium bicarbonate. The end result is supposed to be an explosion. It’s a juvenile experiment, one that was done ad nauseam last year, but Mr. Sellers is intent on reincarnating it again this year. Either that, or he’s going senile, which may be likely, considering he must be pushing eighty.
“I like watching things explode,” Faye says as she pours solution into a beaker—the wrong kind of solution, too much of the indicator solution and not enough sodium bicarbonate.
“Just watch your mixing,” I tell her. “You need to wait to add the diluted hydrochloric acid to the purple solution. Otherwise it won’t explode. It’ll just kind of be—”
“Flaccid?” Her laughter rises over the general din of the room. Zach, two rows in front of us, turns his head back and makes a pouty face. Zach’s own volcano, I notice, is mixed with the correct proportions. I feel a swell of pride. When he catches my eye, he winks. I wink back.
Then I realize I don’t know who he’s winking at—because Faye is looking at him, too.
“I was going to say stagnant,” I say loudly. “But flaccid is better.” I dump the contents of Faye’s beaker down the sink.
“So doing all this boring prep work is like foreplay,” Faye says, flipping her hair over her shoulder. “Sorry. I’m afraid I have a bit of a one-track mind.”
I open my mouth to say something, but Faye interrupts. I don’t know what I would have said anyway. I didn’t think my new chemistry partner would be so much like my old one, full of sexual innuendos and with total disregard for the lesson plan.
“So, what do you guys do for fun around here?” Faye asks.
“Depends on what you’re into.”
“Well, what’re you doing this weekend? I could do it with you.” She bites her bottom lip.
I shrug, feeling a flush creep up my neck and wishing she would stop looking at me like that.
Is she flirting with me, or Zach?
I recognize in her all of Kim’s go-to moves. The lip biting, the hair flipping, the eyelash batting. Except Faye does them much better, with curiosity instead of desperation. If she is flirting, she’s doing a better job of it than I ever could. She’s all soft lines and finesse, where I’m sharp edges and instructions. She’s subtle, where I’m just blunt.
And I don’t like it.
“I’m studying with my friend,” I say quickly. “She needs tutoring.” I gesture toward Angela, who is shying away from her lab partner’s hand-wringing proclamations.
“I need some tutoring, too,” she says. “What time should I come over?”
I adjust my safety goggles and pretend to be studying the formula in my notebook. This is why I like chemistry: everything is straightforward; everything comes from directions. The end result only becomes an end result because of steps one to five and won’t happen if any of the steps are missed or done out of order. Most people follow some sort of formula, too, or make some degree of sense. You can’t be a football captain without putting in the work—going to practice, eating right, getting enough sleep, lifting weights. You can’t be a math whiz without studying the material and putting in the time. I stereotype the guys I sleep with for a reason, because people’s personalities develop from a routine, too.
Faye seems not to follow a formula. And it’s extremely unnerving.
“Come over at noon,” I say. “Bring your books. And be ready to work. I don’t mess around.” My voice sounds harsh, but Faye doesn’t seem to notice. I almost want to shake her to drill my point across. I don’t need another friend. Angela was my only one, until Zach insisted on becoming one, too. The more friends you have, the higher your chance of taking a knife in your back.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Faye smile. Her teeth are perfect, either from genetics or years of braces. I self-consciously run my tongue over my teeth. I have always hated the two beside my front ones, which I think look like little fangs. Even Zach commented on them during sex. His exact words were, “You should role-play as a vampire. That would be hot.”
I wonder what Zach thinks of Faye’s smile. Yet another thing about her that one-ups me.
Our science project erupts in front of us before bubbling over.
“I think ours just came,” Faye says.
I’m almost grateful to Angela for dragging me to Charlie’s soccer game after school the next day, more for the distraction than anything else. But considering Angela is generally against all organized school activities (with the exception of prayer group, which she conceived of in the first place anyway), I’m a bit surprised that she has decided to become Charlie’s cheerleader from the stands after two years of not going to a single game.
“It’ll be fun,” she says, but her tone of voice implies she’s getting a root canal, not watching her boyfriend kick a ball around.
We take a seat in the first row of bleachers. I want to sit at the very back, just like I do during classes, but Angela won’t let me. “Charlie wants to make sure he can see me,” she says, tugging at her frayed shirtsleeves and squinting into the sun. “Except I can barely see what one he is. Why are they all wearing the same outfit?”
I smile and put my arm around her shoulder. “Because they’re on the same team, Ange. They’re uniforms, not outfits. And if you can’t see what one Charlie is, you probably need your glasses.”
Since I haven’t ever seen a school soccer game, either, I don’t know what soccer players are supposed to look like. But if I had to go by the preconceived notion I have in my head, they would all look exactly like Charlie. Tall and sinewy with lean muscles, with a faint hint of a tan from playing outside. The cheerleaders are stretching on the sidelines but keep whispering in a clump and pointing at him. Angela claims she doesn’t notice the way girls look at her boyfriend, but I don’t see how she’s that blind. She really should start wearing her glasses.
Even if Angela can’t see a thing, Charlie sees us. He keeps casting glances in our direction, along with winks meant just for Angela. When he scores a goal, he looks up to make sure she sees it, his face a mask of concentration and pride. I feel a pang of envy in spite of myself. Charlie and Angela have the kind of connection that you can almost physically feel. The kind of connection I have only felt with one person, who never felt it with me.
“This seat taken?”
I use my hand as a visor and look to where the voice came from, but Faye has already plopped down beside me and dropped her messenger bag almost directly on my foot.
“You’re Angela, right? I’m Faye,” she says with a wave to Angela. “Mercedes’s new lab partner.”
Angela smiles shyly. “I know,” she says. “You’re lucky. Mercy is the best lab partner ever.”
Faye drops her gaze on my face. In the bright light, her eyes are a watery blue.
“Mercy,” she says. I look down at my feet. I have never heard my name said like
that
before, almost like a little sigh instead of a name.
She points to the field. “I always thought soccer was an underrated high school sport. The players always have nice legs. And they have all their teeth!” She taps her fingers against her denim-clad thighs.
None of us says anything as we watch the action on the field. Faye starts moving her hands and arms subtly when the cheerleaders do their lame sideline dance. She’s mimicking their motions exactly.
“Looks like you missed tryouts,” I say.
But Faye just smiles brightly. “I was a cheerleader at my old high school,” she says. “We all think we have an original routine, but really it’s all a perpetuation of the same cliché.”
I want to ask her why she left her old high school. But the question seems so blunt and would probably seem like an accusation leaving my mouth. There are only two reasons why somebody would do that. One involves a parent getting a job in a new city, and the other involves trouble. The kind of trouble you can’t hide from.