Читать книгу Never Always Sometimes - Adi Alsaid - Страница 12

HOMEROOM & HAPPY HOUR

THERE WAS NO greater proof of an underlying human connection than the universal hatred of Monday mornings. Everyone wore it on their faces: students with hair sticking out in every direction, as if trying to get away. Teachers sat at their desks scowling at their lesson plans. The principal looked as if he was suffering a nervous breakdown. The halls were practically an obstacle course with people lying down with their legs sprawled out, backpacks tossed in front of their lockers as pillows.

Dave had slept in most of the day Saturday and then stayed up on Sunday night supposedly trying to do homework, but really just rebelling against the thought that they were still assigning homework to seniors in March. He’d gotten into college—couldn’t they just accept that he’d succeeded at this whole high school thing and leave him alone?

He’d slept less than four hours, and when Ms. Romero took attendance in homeroom, saying “here” physically hurt. Julia arrived a couple of minutes late, her earphones still in, a yellow tardy sheet from the office in hand. She hadn’t bothered to change out of her pajama pants, and her hastily combed hair made Dave think of what it would be like to wake up next to her. She gave the tardy slip to Ms. Romero wordlessly and then plopped down next to Dave, pulling one of the earphones out and handing it over, as per tradition.

Julia hated talking in the mornings, and so Dave knew to listen to the music until she was ready. Neko Case crooned beautifully for a while as Ms. Romero struggled to put the morning’s announcements up on the projector. This was how to combat the awfulness of Monday mornings. The PA went off, but no one cared to listen. A succession of yawns made its way across the room, knocking a couple of heads down to rest on their desks.

“I’ll be right back,” Ms. Romero said, at which point the silence in the room started coming apart. Bouts of isolated whispering grew into all-out conversations that filled the room.

Neko Case’s voice stopped abruptly, and Dave heard Julia’s sandals fall to the floor. He kept the muted earphone in, always happy to be tied together to her.

“How was Carmel?” Dave asked. She’d left early Saturday morning with her dads to go visit her grandparents, returning on Sunday when Dave was knee-deep in unjust homework assignments.

“Pretty. It’s always pretty.” She put her arms on her desk and lowered her head down, looking up at Dave with tired eyes. “I was thinking more about the party.”

Dave raised an eyebrow at her. At the diner after the party, Julia had told him about her misadventures while they were split: a couple of guys’ awful attempts to make out with her, their worse attempts at interesting conversation. She’d ended up playing video games in the basement with a group of juniors—stoner clichés that she hadn’t expected to run into at the party, but clichés nonetheless. They’d joked about Dave’s embarrassing flip-cup skills. Throughout the weekend, Dave’s thoughts had returned to Gretchen, how he’d kind of fallen in love with the mood of the party. He’d assumed Julia had talked it all out of her system, though.

“Really? What were you thinking? How much fun you had?”

He smirked, but Julia surprised him by answering, “God, yes. It was so awful, I couldn’t help but enjoy myself.”

She pulled out her earphone and then plucked Dave’s out, wrapping the cord around her phone. “There were so many clichés, I don’t think we even touched on all of them at the diner. Did you see the girl puking in the bushes? I thought it was you for a second and I was really proud of you, but then I realized that she was five feet tall and had red curly hair and way bigger boobs than you do.”

“You mean April Holmes? She was in a miniskirt.”

“You could have been in a miniskirt. I think you have the legs for it.” She sat up and put her phone away in her bag, which was this hand-stitched, colorful knapsack thing that her mom had sent her as a gift from Ecuador. “Anyway! I think we should do more.” She’d talked herself fully awake now. In the background, Ms. Romero had finally succeeded in getting the projector to work and was asking if anyone had any questions about the bulletin. She said it in a way that made it sound like she had no interest in answering any of those questions.

“More parties?”

“No. Well, yes. But I was thinking of more Nevers. Do you have the list?”

Dave rummaged through his backpack until he found the folded sheet of paper, a little bent at the corners from whatever it is that happens inside backpacks that ensures all papers get ruined. He pulled out a chocolate muffin as well and peeled off the Saran Wrap while Julia looked at the Nevers. His mom had loved those chocolate muffins, and now his dad kept them stocked in the house, making trips to Costco specifically to get them. Dave made eye contact with Nicky Marquez across the room, whom he had talked to at some point at the party. He hadn’t known a thing about Nicky before, but now he knew that his parents were migrant workers, and that he hadn’t learned English until he was nine.

Julia drew a red line across Never number three. “We can have so much fun with these.” She brought the paper closer to Dave, so he could read with her. It always drove him crazy how easily she minimized the distance between them, as if it didn’t mean anything. And then, almost out of nowhere, he thought about sitting next to Gretchen, how he was looking forward to seeing her in chemistry third period.

“We’re definitely dying our hair crazy colors.”

“We are?”

“This week,” she said, folding both hands on the desk and resting her chin on top of them, continuing to read the list, the matter not up for discussion. “Actually, we’re doing all of them.” She sat back up quickly, smiling. “It’s the perfect way to end the year,” she said. “It’s been so boring; this’ll be the perfect end-of-high-school celebration. Embrace the clichés so tightly they’ll suffocate. I think my mom would approve.”

Dave eyed the clock. Homeroom was almost over. His tired brain tried to process doing all the Nevers, and the first thing he could think of was the chance at running into Gretchen more often. He grabbed a chunk of his muffin and chewed on it.

Julia was eyeing the list, chewing on her lip. He did one of those mouth-shrug-raised-eyebrow things that meant, “Sure, why not?” Which he immediately regretted when Julia spoke again.

“Mom’ll probably want to be here to see her daughter go to the prom with the prom king. Side note: You’re definitely running for prom king.”

Muffin crumbs fell out of his mouth. “Is that so?”

“Yeah. That hasn’t happened yet, right?” She tapped the girl next to her on the arm. “When do we vote for prom king stuff?”

Margot—petite, nerdy, shy—had never looked so confused in her life. “Uhh, prom, I think?”

Julia turned back to Dave. “We’ll have to research with Brett. I’m already seeing big things for your campaign. Fund-raising galas.” Her leg started racing up and down under the table. She was radiant when she got excited about something. Her mouth scrunched over to one side of her face but somehow remained a smile. It was indescribably cute.

He watched her eyes go wide, a smile that was about ninety-five percent mischief spreading her thin lips. “Marroney. Number seven.” Her finger pointed at the line. Never hook up with a teacher.

“You can’t be serious.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Julia, the man collects food in his mustache. He wears pocket protectors, which I’m pretty certain have been out of production since the eighties, right around the time his kind-of-sometimes mullet-hairdo thing went out of style. He makes jokes about irrational numbers. He’s a total cliché of a math teacher. I’m almost certain that he’s not a real person; he’s Frankenstein’s monster but made up of math-teacher clichés. I heard a rumor that he’s got all the known numbers of pi tattooed on his ass.”

“That’s a stupid rumor. And I can’t wait until I undress him and dispel it once and for all.”

Dave was mostly sure the comment was a joke, but he still felt a pang of jealousy. The bell rang, and everyone gathered their belongings, rushing toward the door as if already free for the day. Jenny Owens said, “Shit,” and tried to scribble in a few last-second answers.

Julia stood up, folding the Nevers list neatly and grabbing her belongings. She stepped into her sandals and gave Ms. Romero a little wave as they walked out into the hallway. Dave followed behind, still trying to figure out if Julia was joking.

o o o

“I’ve never been a stalker before,” Dave said. They waited for the Chili’s hostess to find them a table near where Marroney and a handful of other teachers had gathered to enjoy a Friday afternoon happy hour.

“This isn’t stalking. This is organizing a coincidental run-in.”

“That’s a stalkerish way to put it.”

After obsessing for the rest of the week over how to best seduce Marroney (Dave shuddered every time she said it), Julia declared Friday to be a Never day. After school, they’d go to Julia’s house and dye their hair in a bright display of their individuality—individuality purchased from a box at the CVS. But before they could do that, Julia and Marroney had to have their meet-cute. “Prepare for a lot of flirtatious giggling and some charming repartee,” Julia had said when they were outside the school, waiting for Marroney to leave so they could follow him. “And that’ll just be coming from him.”

Now Dave watched Marroney struggle to find the straw in his margarita, his tongue flicking out blindly. He wondered if Julia would call her own bluff anytime soon. Marroney was wearing a mustard-colored short-sleeved button-up shirt with a coffee stain on his collar. His tie had little calculators on it. Five other teachers were at the table, including Ms. Romero and Dave’s AP Chem teacher, Mr. Kahn. Each of them had a giant fluorescent-colored frozen margarita in front of them.

Dave and Julia sat in a booth perpendicular to the teachers so they could both see as the teachers delved into a bottomless basket of chips and salsa. On his first attempt, a fat blob of red salsa fell from Marroney’s chips and landed squarely on his tie.

“You know, I didn’t get it at first,” Dave said, turning to look at Julia, who was smiling in Marroney’s direction, “but you’re right. This has the makings of a great seduction.”

“Your tone says you’re trying to be sarcastic, but I’m failing to understand the joke.”

“Julia, he’s hideous.”

“That’s an ugly thing to say.” Julia picked up her menu and propped it up so she could stare without being caught. “Okay, so here’s the plan.” She leaned across the table conspiratorially, refusing to speak until Dave leaned down, too. It was their classic pose for plotting mischief; they’d done it when figuring out which movie to go to, or when planning the surprise party for Julia’s dads. They’d huddled together like this when they wrote the Nevers on their bench in Morro Bay. Dave loved seeing the details on her fingers when she put them flat on the table in front of her, the way her orangey smell seemed stronger in just those instances. They always adopted a tone more serious than was called for, whispering to each other, craning their necks around, pretending to study the room skittishly, as if someone was after them. The rest of the world felt exterior to them, like their friendship was some idyllic cove only they had access to.

“We wait until he gets up to use the bathroom.”

“You are getting creepier by the minute,” Dave whispered.

“Listen,” she hissed. “When the romantic interest has been isolated—”

“You mean the victim.”

“David Gostkowski, you interrupt me again and I’ll dye your hair bright green.”

“Isn’t that happening anyway?”

“We wait until he gets up to use the bathroom,” Julia said, her eyes getting big, warning Dave to keep quiet. “At which point, we follow.” She stole a glance over the menu to look in Marroney’s direction again. He was halfway done with his margarita, sprinkles of salt on his mustache catching the light and shimmering. The table was already getting louder, breaking up into a couple of conversations. It was curious to see them behave so much like students in a classroom. “Your job,” Julia continued, “will be to go into the men’s room and make sure no one else is there. When you’ve cleared it, you give me the signal by starting a dance-off, and I go in.”

“What happens once you corner him in the bathroom?”

“Flirtation,” Julia said, drawing the word out long under her breath. It was easy to forget what she was talking about. No one could make him laugh like she could, even if it was hidden away like this, the laughter quiet but understood between them. How had he not learned to be happy with just this? How had he not managed to stifle the desire for more?

“This is by far one of your best plans.”

“I appreciate that,” she said, ignoring his sarcasm. “But you’re clearly forgetting the snow fort I designed freshman year.”

“We live in California, Jules.”

“Just because it never snowed doesn’t mean it wasn’t a fantastic fort. The planning itself was pitch-perfect; it was the execution that, at no fault of mine, fell short.” She smacked her palms down on the table and looked over at the teachers. “We’re getting away from the point. I need to do what many a teenage girl has done before and seduce the sexy older man.”

Dave stole a glance at the side of her face and then joined in spying on them. They’d decimated the chips and were raising their hands, looking around for their waitress to ask for refills. Mr. Kahn was polishing off his first margarita and grimacing from a brain freeze. “Shocking that none of them have had to use the bathroom yet,” Dave said.

“I know, right? Those are some sizeable drinks. Maybe Marroney is much younger than he appears. God, he must be so virile.”

“I’m going to puke all over you. Good luck with the seduction covered in my puke.”

“The stench of another man on me will only make him jealous.”

For the next twenty minutes, after they’d placed an order with their waitress, they watched the teachers. At first they attempted to be inconspicuous, but the teachers seemed to be in their own little world, and once their drinks were refilled, they didn’t care much for anything on the outside. Julia refined her strategy, and despite the dull ache in his chest at the thought of her seducing anyone at all, Dave helped. By the time Marroney stood up, Julia’s plan had been tweaked to perfection. Or at least that’s what she said when she stood up and pulled Dave by the arm, motioning for him to follow.

As per their revised plan, Dave sped up past Marroney and cut him off before he got to the bathroom. No one else was in there. He checked the two stalls for feet, just in case. Then he went to the faucets and pretended to wash his hands as Marroney came in. Dave tried to hide his face so that Marroney wouldn’t recognize him, then said, “Urinals aren’t working. Gotta use a stall.”

“Thank you,” Marroney said. He entered the first stall without so much as a glance at the functioning urinals. As soon as he shut the door, Dave walked out of the bathroom, where Julia was waiting. She was so excited, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, her hands balled up into little fists.

“Okay, phase one complete,” he said. He put his hand on the back of his neck, a nervous habit. “You realize this is insane, right?”

“You’re mispronouncing ‘genius.’”

She took a breath, like someone about to attempt swimming the length of a pool underwater. And with that she walked into the men’s bathroom.

Dave anxiously watched the door close behind her, casting a glance to make sure no one had noticed. The hostess was on her phone; a waitress was waiting at the window for a dish; the manager stood by the bar, looking at something on a clipboard. Chili’s was probably the best place for covert operations; no one cared enough to look around.

It was only about thirty seconds later that she came back out, a huge, goofy grin on her face, color in her cheeks. She put her hands on Dave and urged him back to the booth. “Retreat! Retreat!”

“What happened?”

“Dammit, man, fall back!” Julia cried, laughter on the edge of her voice. When they slipped back into the booth, back in their conspiratorial hunch, she erupted into cackles while Dave could only sit there and watch.

“I take it the meet-cute didn’t go as planned.”

“We should get the bill before the cops arrive.”

“Julia, what the hell happened in there?”

“I may have tickled him,” she said, still red and laughing, looking over her shoulder toward the bathroom. “Accidentally.”

Dave stopped looking for the waitress to signal for the check. He slouched closer to Julia. “How do you accidentally tickle someone?”

“I froze up, okay. He walked out of the stall and I was standing there trying to figure out how to break the ice. We stared at each other and then I just kind of...tickled him.” She reached for her glass of water and took a long swallow. “Which, by the way, was an awful plan. Cornering him in the bathroom and expecting flirtation to just happen naturally? That’s sloppy planning. I expect more from you.”

“It was your plan!”

“Don’t split hairs now; it’s too late to apologize. Just do better next time.” She looked over her shoulder again and gave a little gasp when she saw Marroney coming out of the bathroom. “I may have yelled something inappropriate, too.”

Dave held his breath as Marroney walked past the table, his eyes fixed on Julia’s. “I told him I wanted to lick his face,” Julia whispered quickly, right before Marroney’s mustard shirt passed by their lowered heads.