Tell Me Three Things (7 page)

How does he make something like “cool beans,” perhaps the dorkiest expression ever uttered, sound acceptable? Do I write more to keep the conversation going? I’m better writing than I am talking in person. Maybe this is my shot to show who I actually am, not the weird loser I morph into around people who make me nervous. Will I still have this bulbous bruise on Friday?

This is ridiculous. This is so not a big deal.

We are working on a project together.

He doesn’t like you. You certainly do not like him.

Get over yourself, Jessie.

Grow up.

Next day at lunch I sit with Dri and her friend Agnes, who is probably her Scarlett. I’m still too new here to see where this table fits into the high school hierarchy. It seems none of my old rules apply. Back in Chicago, the athletes, who gathered Saturday nights in the bowling alley parking lot to sit in open hatchbacks and drink cheap beer by the case and toss their empty cans at the Dumpster were the popular kids, and the theater dorks, who had ill-placed piercings and one silly streak of cotton-candy-colored hair, were, well, the dorks. Theo and Agnes wouldn’t have even rated. Here, it’s the opposite; theater is an actual graded class
and
an after-school activity, and both are considered cool.

Back home, I was neither athlete nor theater dork. Instead, I was in that middle clique that every school needs to function efficiently: the worker bees. We took the honors classes, ran the newspaper and the yearbook and the student government. Not popular, not even close, but at least indispensible. (Back at my old school, it was important to distinguish the worker bees from the straight-up nerds: the nerds were even less cool than the theater dorks, but they were too busy learning how to write code and nurturing dot-com fantasies to care.)

The truth is it doesn’t matter to me where Dri and Agnes fit in, because this sure as hell beats sitting on my bench alone outside. Anything is a step up.

“I just think that if you’re going to post that kind of nasty shit on Instagram, own it,” Agnes says. I have no idea what she and Dri are debating, only that they each seem invested in their side of the argument. Agnes is a tiny girl with a dyed red bob, plastic-framed glasses similar to Dri’s, and a nose that looks like someone pinched it too hard and it stuck. She’s not beautiful, not necessarily even pretty, but cute. What happens when you take something full-sized and remake it in miniature.

Okay, I’ll just admit something here. Something I’ve never told anyone, not even Scar. Whenever I meet someone new, I silently ask that inevitable catty girl question: is she prettier than me? The truth is, the answer is often yes, which I think makes my even asking the question in the first place a little less offensive. I know I am not ugly—my features all fall within the normal range (nothing grossly oversized, nothing too small), but I definitely look different from the girls here.

I imagine, or I
hope,
that one day I will be discovered—that I will actually be
seen
—not as a sidekick, or as a study buddy, or as background furniture, but as someone to
like,
maybe even to
love.
Still, I’ve come to accept that high school is not my forum. Bookish is not even on the list of the top ten things high school boys look for in a girl. I’m pretty sure boobs, on the other hand, rank pretty high.

If you must know: a B cup on a good day.

Agnes is probably an A but makes up for it by being adorable. That is, until she starts talking.

“Like, what do you think, Jessie? Am I right?” I wasn’t listening. I was looking at all the other kids in the cafeteria, at all these strangers, thinking how intimate it felt to be sitting there together shoveling our food into our mouths. Wondering whether this place would ever start to feel familiar. And true, I was also watching Ethan, Ethan Marks through the window, sitting alone near the Koffee Kart, another book in hand, though I can’t see the title. “If you’re going to say something online, be prepared to say it to my face.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I say, a good waffle. They’ve saved me on more than one of these lost-in-thought occasions. I’m pretty sure I don’t agree with Agnes, if only because she seems to be the type of girl to make all sorts of silly pronouncements. (“Mr. Greene is such a bitch. He said I plagiarized, just because I borrowed a couple of sentences from someone else’s blog post. It’s called
pastiche,
dude.” Or “Only wannabes wear Doc Martens.” Or “Jessie, you’d look so pretty with a little makeup.”)

“Agnes, sometimes people are shy. She didn’t say anything bad. She just said you hurt her feelings, which you did. Some people find it easier to write than to say it to your face,” Dri says. She looks to me to back her up, and I wonder if my existence is a problem for her friendship with Agnes. Scar and I always sat alone at lunch. We weren’t really interested in talking to anyone else. To be honest, I’m not sure how I’d feel if she had invited some new girl to sit with us. Dri not only invited me, but did so excitedly.

“Obviously, I don’t know the full story, but I’m definitely like that. I’m so much more comfortable writing than saying things out loud. I wish I could live my whole life on paper.” I consider telling them about Somebody/Nobody. I wish I could explain how “talking” to him is so easy the words flow in a way they never do when I have to talk out loud. I also wouldn’t mind some help figuring out who he is. Then again, maybe I don’t want to know. SN may be right: the not knowing is what keeps us connected. It would be so much harder writing to someone I knew I’d see the next day. And I wonder if it works the other way too. Even though he knows who I am, maybe not having to face me makes the conversation flow for him as well.

Of course, Agnes is wrong—words are no less courageous for having been written rather than spoken—and I’m all set to say that to her, out loud and with conviction, when I hear my name being yelled from across the cafeteria.

“Jessie!” At first, I assume the voice is calling someone else—on account of my having no friends at this school—but the voice is so insistent, and even vaguely familiar, that I look up. Shaggy hair and a smile.

“Hey, Jessie,” Liam says, now next to our table, having jogged over with Earl again thrown over his shoulder. He pushes his bangs out of his eyes and then points to his forehead. “How’s the wound?”

“Almost gone. But if you bring that guitar any closer, I’m going to have to get a restraining order,” I say, which even to my own ears almost sounds like flirting. I blush. I don’t know how to flirt. I always feel like an impostor. And I don’t even want to flirt with Liam. He’s kind of my boss.

“Ha. Listen, we’re still on for training this afternoon, right? Expect to be there till closing.”

“Sure. Thanks again for the job. I really appreciate it.”

“No problem. Least I could do after maiming you.” He smiles, then does this strange little arm-punch thing, which actually kind of hurts, and then hurries off, Earl flopping behind him.

“Shut the front door.” Dri grabs my hand in a vise grip. “How do you know Liam Sandler?” she asks. Her eyebrows practically touch her hairline. “No effin’ way. Liam. Sandler.”

“Relax. He’s not Ryan Gosling.” Agnes rolls her eyes at Dri. “I’ll never understand what you like about him.”

Dri ignores her. Waits for me to answer.

“I got a job at his mom’s bookstore, basically because he hit me in the head with his guitar case. Embarrassing but true.”

“And?” Dri says.