Goodbye, Rebel Blue Hardcover (17 page)

“Just. Show. Up.”

I slip into biology as the tardy bell rings and hurry to my desk.

“That’s two weeks of perfect attendance, Ms. Blue.” Mr. Phillips makes a note in his attendance book. “Your newfound punctuality and focus continue to delight and amaze.”

“I agree,” Nate says, dimples like the Grand Canyon.

My knee knocks the lab stool, and I steady it before it crashes to the ground. I’m already off-balance because of Pen’s invitation to join the school’s track team, but that dimple sends me reeling.

“Hey.”

Before either of us can say anything, Mr. Phillips continues our unit on animal behaviors. Today he talks about ants who build bridges with their bodies. “Connections, students. These ants can build bridges over entire rivers with the right connections.”

Nate slides his notebook toward me, a single word written in the margin of the page.
Lunch?

It’s funny how one little word can mean so much. Nate wants to eat lunch with me at school. In front of everyone. What a change from that moment in his father’s truck.

So much has changed. Penelope asked me to join the track team, and I agreed. Even Mr.

Phillips’s tie doesn’t appear atrocious today. If I squint, I see a field of tulips dotting the silk around his neck.

I’m glad Nate wants to eat lunch with me, but I can’t.

Not today,
I write in the margin of my notebook.

Why?

Pies.

?

Long story.

Meet after school?

Can’t.

?

Track practice.

Nate drops his pen, and I laugh out loud at the stunned expression on his face. Mr. Phillips taps my desk with his pointer. “Pay attention, Rebecca.”

“I can’t do it.” Macey jams her hands into her hoodie pocket and turns away from the pies sitting on the FACS kitchen counter.

“You have to.” I grab two pies and motion toward the other two with my chin. “Lungren already set up the signs, and people are expecting us.”

“Since when do you care about other people’s expectations?” Macey’s tone is unusually harsh and loud.

“This isn’t about me, Macey. It’s about you and pies and kicking ass at the Great American Bake-Off.” I give her one of Gabby’s cheesy grins. “Now get the pies. Lungren reserved two tables in the front of the cafeteria. Should be the perfect place for taste tests.”

Macey leans her butt against the cupboard. I’m about to nudge her with my elbow when I hear The Voice, aimed not at me, but Macey.

What are you afraid of?

My pies wobble, and I steady them.
Quiet, Kennedy. You have no idea what’s going on.

Macey’s shoulders hunch, as if she’s trying to disappear into herself.

I set down the pies. “What’s wrong, Macey?”

She runs her toe along a glob of dried piecrust on the floor. “There are going to be a lot of people in there.”

“So?”

“They’ll be staring at me.”

“No, they’ll be staring at the pies.” I watch the sugared blueberries sparkle in the bright light streaming through the FACS classroom window. “Really, Macey, these look amazing.” She’s been making pies for three weeks, trying different crusts and fillings and toppings, and we’re going to bring the top four to the school cafeteria for a taste test to determine the best of the best. At least, that’s my brilliant idea.

“I’m not like you, Rebel. You like standing out. You shine when you’re in the spotlight.” Macey rotates her wrists, the hoodie fabric bunching about her hands. “I turn into a giant slug.”

We all need friends.

Okay, I’ll give you this one, Kennedy.

Macey may not be signing my yearbook with
x
s and
o
s, but sometime over the past few weeks, sometime between tandem riding and shopping for peaches, she’s become more than a detention comrade and friend-of-convenience, and for some reason I don’t know but accept, pies are important to her. “You don’t have to shine, Macey. You don’t even have to talk.”

She looks skeptically at me through wisps of ethereal blond hair.

“Like you said, I have no problem standing out. I’ll serve pie and ask the questions. You can sit in the corner and take notes. Now grab the pies, and let’s get to the cafeteria.”

Macey stares at her feet.

“Come on, Mace. If I can spend a month on the track team, you can spend an hour in the cafeteria.”

Her face the color of ash, Macey grabs the pies and follows me out of the FACS classroom.

I have not set foot in the Del Rey School cafeteria since December, when I’d been on one of Lungren’s detention assignments. Along with three other detention sods, I power-washed crud, formerly known as cafeteria food, from the walls.

Today the lunchroom is aglow with sharp fluorescent light and heavy with the smell of too many bodies and marinara sauce. I spot Pen and the Cupcakes at one of the center tables. Nate and some of his sporto pals sit nearby. As Macey and I make our trek along the front wall, he sees me and waves.

It’s another public declaration.

Hey, world! Nate of Great Hair has a thing for Rebel Blue
.

I wave back.

We find the table in the corner where Lungren has posted a large sign that reads
Pie Tasting
Today
. Macey and I place the pies at one end of the table. She takes out napkins, plastic serving spoons, and a clipboard. Before long, a dozen people line up at the other end of the table. Macey turns, as if she’s going to bolt, and I grab the back of her hoodie, holding her in place. She finally gives her hoodie sleeves a tug and hands me a spoon. “Everyone gets a bite-size piece. Be sure to include the filling and the crust.”

“No worries,” I say, stealing Nate’s favorite phrase.

For twenty minutes I serve pie and ask questions while Macey takes notes. The whole thing goes smoothly, like a well-oiled tandem bike, until a girl with crinkly black hair arrives. Macey’s face goes from sickly gray to deathly white.

“Oh, good, you made it, Clementine!” Lungren rushes back to the pie-tasting table. “I’m so excited you decided to report about Macey’s Great American Bake-Off aspirations. It’s such a compelling human-interest story.” Lungren points to the crinkly-haired girl. “This is Clementine Radmore, the student journalist I told you about. She’s the general manager of KDRS, the school radio station. You know about them, right?”

Even I know about the school radio station. Last year some half-brain got upset about one of the station’s talk shows and torched the building, but the police found him, and he’s doing community-service hours that would get him a few years’ worth of centurion status in the 100 Club. The station now streams on the Internet, and I tune in on Sundays for its indie music programs with DJ Taysom.

Macey clutches her clipboard to her chest.

The radio reporter pulls out a digital recorder and holds it to her chin. “How many kinds of pie have you baked to date?”

“Er … um … thirty,” Macey says in a barely-there voice.

“And you’ve narrowed down your Great American Bake-Off entries to how many kinds?”

Macey holds up four fingers.

The reporter’s nostrils flare like a dragon’s, but Macey says nothing. She looks as if she wants to duck under a lunch table.

“All the finalists are made with peaches,” I say. “Why don’t you tell Clementine about the peaches?”

“Peaches,” Macey repeats. She tilts her head toward the table. “I have peaches and cream with a shortbread crust and one with a graham-cracker crust and then another with a buttermilk crust. I also have three different toppings, including one with blueberries.” As she speaks, I point to the pies, like one of those models on a game show. Macey’s face has lost some of its deer-in-the-headlights look.

“Right now I’m using frozen peaches.”

“Why?”

“The fresh ones aren’t ripe.”

The radio reporter asks a few more questions, which Macey answers with complete sentences before the reporter closes off with, “This is Clementine Radmore reporting for KDRS 88.8, The Edge.”

After the reporter leaves, Macey hugs the clipboard to her chest and nods her head at the empty pie plates, and I can hear her think,
Well done, little pies, well done.
If I can talk to a dead girl, Macey can certainly talk to her pies. After we clean the pie table, I walk with Macey to the cafeteria door, and Nate waves me over.

“I can clean up,” Macey says. “There’s not much, and we have plenty of time until the bell rings.”

Which means I have plenty of time to sit with Nate, who sits in his little corner of the cafeteria universe with the people he calls friends. I dig my toes into my flip-flops. This is what I asked for yesterday in the sea cave when I told him I didn’t regret the kiss. I like being with Nate. My world feels right with Nate. And I don’t care who knows it.

I slide onto the seat next to him at a lunch table populated by heavenly bodies, the Del Rey School’s superstars. Across from me is the football player Pen dated all winter. He gives me a strange look, and I blow him a kiss. The Cupcake who went to homecoming last year with Nate stares at me with her mouth agape. I wave. Cousin Pen sits two tables down, and, despite the distance, I hear her groan.

“How were the pies?” Nate asks.

“Peaches with sugared blueberries is the early favorite.”

“How about some flan? My brother Mateo said he wanted you to try his raspberry sauce.” Nate opens a small bowl and hands me a spoon. I take a bite of the puddinglike dessert and let it slide along my tongue. Sweet.

Voices rumble around me. The people to my right talk of division rankings for the track team, and to my left a few others talk about elections for next year’s student body council. Nate, of course, is thinking about running for school president. His shoulder nudges mine. It’s as hard as marble but warm and has that nice, clean Nate smell. “What do you think, Reb?”

“I think being school president sounds like a boatload of work.”

“But it will look good on college apps.”

“And you’ll do a good job,” one of the Cupcakes says.

“But do you have time?” I ask. Nate could join a support group for High School Students Who Do Too Much.

“I’ll have time if I choose to make time,” Nate says.

“Exactly. It all comes down to choices. You have limits on your time, and you have to ask yourself if being class president—running meetings, organizing a trip to Disneyland, and listening to people argue about the senior gift—is really how you want to spend it.”

“There could be worse ways to spend time than beefing up on leadership skills and helping others.”

“Forget about
others
for a moment.” I point my spoon at the center of Nate’s chest. “If you knew you’d die in a year, would you really run for class president?”

Nate’s gaze grows thoughtful. “No, I guess I wouldn’t.”

“Because …” At this section of the lunch table, the chatter dies.

“Because I’d be doing other things, things that are more important and meaningful to me.”

I smile around another bite of flan. “Exactly.”

“But last time I checked,” says the girl who went to homecoming last year with Nate, “Nate’s heart was very much beating.”

The guy on his right pops him on the shoulder. “You’re not going all cancer on us, are you, Nate-O?”

Nate shakes his head, and his former homecoming date holds up both hands. “Do we really need to talk about death and cancer while we’re eating?” She looks at me and wrinkles her nose. “This really does seem inappropriate.”

I open my mouth and
choose
to cram in another bite of flan. It’s good. Probably made with fresh raspberries.

The guy next to Nate drags him into a conversation about this week’s baseball game, while the girl on my right points a celery stick at the messenger bag hanging across my chest. “That’s such an interesting … uh … fashion accessory. Where’d you get it? The bottom of the sea?”

Time for another choice. I can sling snark as usual, but these are Nate’s friends, and, contrary to what Cousin Pen thinks, I’m not a bulldozer. I don’t want to cause damage and leave destruction in my wake. “It was my mother’s. She bought it years ago at a thrift store and used it to hold her camera and lenses. It’s been all over the world.”

“A thrift store? Do you get your clothes there, too?” Nate’s former homecoming date pinches her lips into a little O. “Like those undershirts. Um, nice stuff.”

“Yeah, actually. They come from a thrift store off Calle Bonita.”

The first girl shudders. “I don’t think I’d be too comfortable with other people’s used underwear.”

I take another bite of flan, even though I want to take a bite out of Bitchy and Bitchier. All of a sudden I’m back in middle school. I remember eating lunch with a group of fellow unpopulars in the seventh grade—I’d already been ostracized by Cousin Pen and the in-crowd by that time—when one of my friends asked if the new shirt she was wearing made her look fat. It was one of those trendy, scrunchy shirts that hugged every inch of flesh. The shirt bit into her arms and didn’t cover the last roll of pudge of her stomach, even though she kept tugging the hem. Every girl at our table oohed and aahed, offering various versions of “No, it looks fantastic!” I was so confused, I stopped eating. Girls at other lunch tables were snickering and pointing at my friend, who looked not just overweight, but uncomfortable. When my friend asked, “Honestly, Rebel, does this make me look fat?” I simply said, “Yes.” I spent the rest of the year eating alone in the school courtyard because I didn’t understand the language of girls. Now I do, or at least bits and pieces. Nate’s friends at the lunch table want to irritate me, to set me off, to prove to Nate that I don’t belong.