“You forgot this,” I said, and tossed it to her.
“Thanks, doll,” she said.
15
THE WEEKEND OF THE SENIOR CAMPING trip, we had a gymnastics meet at Gailer College, the sprawling university forty-five minutes from our town. I didn’t have a floor routine or bars routine yet, so all I had to do was jump over the vault a couple of times and do a few simple moves on the beam. Noe had forgotten the camera, so we couldn’t take pictures like we’d planned. I got restless waiting around the noisy gym for the rest of the day, and tried to go for a walk outside, but the campus was basically a giant parking lot, and when I walked toward a stand of trees I ran into the freeway. I sat on a strip of grass and browsed through the beat-up copy of How to Survive in the Woods I always kept in my backpack, until a maintenance person rode up with a weed whacker and the noise forced me back inside.
After the meet, Noe and a bunch of girls from the team wanted to go to the mall to shop for dresses and shoes for the homecoming dance. The mall was right across the freeway from the college, so it wasn’t very hard.
“Let’s give Annabeth boobs,” Noe said, and everyone crowded into Victoria’s Secret to hunt for horrifying push-up bras. It was fun to be the center of attention; exhausting, too. When we left the lingerie store, I was drained. As our group drifted to the next shop, I glanced forlornly at the puffy white clouds and sunshine showing through the mall’s skylights. It would have been a great day for the forest.
“You look pooped,” Mom said when Noe dropped me off at home. “How’d you do?”
“The things I put myself through for Noe,” I groaned, and flopped onto the couch.
I meant it to be funny, but Mom didn’t laugh.
“She’s sure lucky,” she said, and waggled my socked foot back and forth before disappearing upstairs.
16
HOMECOMING WAS A WEEK LATE THIS year, so it landed in early October. Normally, the homecoming dance is in the gym, but one of the Senior Leaders’ parents owned a hotel across the parkway from the Botanical Gardens, and they were letting the school have both homecoming and prom in the ballroom for free. It was a good thing, too, because on the day of the dance a pipe burst in the gym ceiling and swamped the floor with an inch of water, and some of the bouncy mats got ruined and the vault was soaked through.
In sophomore year, Noe and I got ready for the dance at my house and took a million silly photos before Mom drove us to the school. We stayed at the dance for only half an hour, then walked to the Jamba Juice in our dresses and high heels, the fall air cool around our bare shoulders. We spent the rest of the evening drinking raspberry smoothies and gossiping about last year’s seniors, who were mostly going to Gailer College and mostly drunk out of their minds. That was the night we made our plans for Paris and the dandelion tattoos.
“If I’m still here in three years, crashing my old high school’s homecoming dance, please shoot me,” Noe had said.
“This time three years from now, we’ll have already gone to Paris,” I’d answered.
“Do you think you’ll still be a virgin?” Noe had said.
“I hope not. What about you?”
“I think so.”
“Even after Paris?” I teased.
Noe had nodded. “I want it to be with my forever man.”
“I would go for a hot French guy.”
“Really?” Noe said.
“The way I imagine it, I’d be sitting on the edge of some beautiful fountain in Paris, and this hot guy would sit next to me, and we’d feel a crackling soul connection, and we’d go drink wine at one of those outdoor cafés and talk for hours, and then we’d kiss in an alley and we’d be so overcome by passion we’d just do it.”
“Your dream is to lose your virginity in an alley with a stranger,” Noe said.
“It’s romantic,” I’d said, somewhat miffed at Noe’s overlooking the crackling soul connection part.
“I think you’re going to fall madly in love with someone and marry him,” Noe said.
I’d rolled my eyes. Noe always wanted me to have the things that made her happy; it was annoying sometimes, but mostly it was charming.
“Maybe it’s a Freudian thing,” Noe said. “You’ve never met your dad, so you fantasize about a stranger. My parents got married right after high school, so I fantasize about finding my true love.”
We’d psychoanalyzed each other all evening, spinning out each other’s every feature in the way that only best friends can. When the Jamba Juice closed, we teetered to Noe’s house on high heels and fell asleep in front of a movie, both of us bundled up on the couch under one blanket.
I wished that this year could be the same, but Noe had ambitions.
“It’s our senior year,” she said. “We should go all out.”
Before the dance, we went to this fancy Italian restaurant in a big group, Noe and Steven and me and some girls from gymnastics. It was frankly kind of exhausting. The restaurant was noisy and crowded, and people kept putting their hands to their ears and saying “WHAT?” every time I tried to say something. Steven and I joked around for a while, drawing portraits of people on our napkins, but then Noe noticed what we were doing.
“It’s not a Chuck E. Cheese’s,” she said. “You don’t draw on the napkins.” She swiped the pen we were sharing and stuck it in her purse. I felt bad for bringing down the tone of her romantic evening, and I could tell Steven did, too. A few minutes later, they got up to make the rounds of other tables. He slipped his arm around her back and didn’t even try to tickle her, a boy on conspicuous good behavior.
I got squished in beside Kaylee and Rhiannon, and they kept asking me questions like “Why are you so quiet? Why don’t you ever talk?” and “Is it true your mom had you when she was in high school? What happened to your dad?”
I didn’t know what to say to them. Even Noe didn’t know the whole truth. It all made me so uncomfortable, I couldn’t finish my linguine. I pretended to send text messages on my phone until Noe slid onto the leather seat beside me and said, “How are things going at this end of the table? Everyone having fun?”
Things got better at the dance. The ballroom was decorated with streamers and flowers in the E. O. James colors, and the Senior Leaders were handing out Gerbera daisies at the door. Everyone danced in a big group and I didn’t have to talk, but in the second hour, they started playing slow songs. Noe and Steven put their arms around each other and got all serious and whispery. It felt weird to lurk around them while they were dancing like that, so I took my purse from the place where I had stashed it and headed outside. I told myself I was going out for fresh air, but the truth was, I was still feeling kind of bad from the restaurant, and I wanted to be alone.
There were too many people going in and out of the big fancy doors at the front of the hotel, laughing and taking photos of themselves next to the potted plants, so I walked around to the parking lot side. I sat on a low concrete stoop next to a buzzing heater vent and took out How to Survive in the Woods from my purse.
I’d been sitting there for only a few minutes, feeling the pleasant dampness of the concrete through my dress, when Oliver Mazetti came around the corner, holding a plastic sports bottle in one hand. The back of my neck warmed. Oliver was a senior last year. That summer, he’d worked as a groundskeeper at the Botanical Gardens. We’d said hey a couple of times when I was working at the ice-cream shop, but I hadn’t thought about him at all since school started.
“Hey,” said Oliver. “Ice-cream girl.”
He’d been walking to his car, I guess, but he changed course and walked over to where I was sitting. Oliver didn’t even go to E. O. James anymore, but it was kind of a tradition for last year’s seniors to crash homecoming. I’d seen a few others inside the dance.