I should ask him.
I should ask him.
I should ask him.
“Oh, right,” I say. “That’s it. Thanks.”
Oh! I am a coward!
Spineless, boneless, vermin girl.
“Sure. See you in gym.” I try to smile at him but it’s too late. He’s gone.
l ater that afternoon, Sanchez the gym teacher makes us play dodgeball, which leaves bruises all over my legs. I’m not that fast, and I get hit a lot. Titus hits me twice.
“Do you think it means something?” I ask Katya after gym, sitting on the locker room bench in a towel.
Katya is naked in the shower like that’s a normal way to have a conversation. She’s washing her hair like she’s just everyday naked in front of people.
Well, we are everyday naked in front of people. Gym is five days a week, shower required. But anyway, Katya is having a naked conversation like it doesn’t even bother her, which it obviously doesn’t—even though she’s not built like a model, just regular.
The locker room is so cramped and tiny that I can feel the warm spray of her shower water on my knee as I’m sitting on the bench.
“It would have meant something if we were sixth graders,” says Katya, scrunching her eyes as she rinses out the shampoo.
“Like what would it mean?”
“You want to hear me say it?” She’s laughing.
“Yes.”
“It would have meant that he liked you back.”
“I didn’t say I liked him,” I mutter.
“Oh please,” Katya says, ignoring my point, “that’s very sixth grade. You know, how boys were always teasing the girls they liked, pulling their hair. But we’re way too old for that crap now. So I don’t think it means anything if he hits you with the dodgeball. Sorry.”
Katya is always such a realist. She’s soaping her underarms like she’s alone. I could never do that.
I make a quick dive out of my towel and into my bra and a T-shirt from the second Spider-Man movie, covered with pastel dust. “I didn’t say I liked him,” I say again.
“Oh, don’t give me that.”
“What? I’m analyzing the cruel and particularly complicated sociodynamics of sophomore dodgeball.”
“No, you’re not.” Katya is drying off now. In the next row over, annoying Taffy is stretching and showing off her dancer’s body while listening to our conversation. I hate this tiny-ass locker room.
“What, it’s that obvious?” I ask.
“It’s all over your face, all the time,” Katya says, grinning. “Titus, Titus, Titus.”
I’m blushing. I can feel it. And my Chinese half makes it so that once my cheeks go pink, they stay that way for hours.
Katya never turns pink. Broad, Russian American face and a lumpy nose and long pale brown hair—you wouldn’t think she’d be pretty if you made a list of her features, but somehow she is. She’s mysterious. You can’t read what she’s thinking.
“Well, he’s better than the others,” I say, conscious of Taffy in the next row, trying to sound less obsessed.
“Whatever.”
“He is. Let’s be objective. He’s cuter than Brat Parker. Nicer than Adrian Ip. More interesting than Malachy.”
“What’s wrong with Malachy?” Katya sounds annoyed.
“He never says anything. Like having his ears pierced makes him so slick he doesn’t have to talk.”
“You don’t have to be so mean about everyone, Gretchen.”
“I’m not being mean. I’m doing an objective comparison of the Art Rats.”
Which isn’t true. I am being mean.
I feel mean. I don’t know why. This school is making me evil, maybe.
“It’s not objective. It’s subjective.” Katya hooks her bra behind her back. “It’s just what you think, not the truth.”
“Don’t bite me, Katya. I’m only talking.”
“Well, you’re talking about people you barely know.”
“I know them. They’ve been in practically every class with me all year. I know Shane.”
“We all know you know Shane. Enough with Shane.” Katya gets into a dress she made herself on her mother’s sewing machine.
“Wanna get a slice?” I try changing the subject.
“Can’t. I’ve got to pick the monsters up at day care.”
I wish she didn’t have three little sisters. Wish she didn’t live an hour-fifteen away from school on the F train, all the way in Brighton Beach.
“You’re always busy these days,” I say, and it comes out pitiful and whiny.
“That’s life, Gretchen,” snaps Katya. “I’ve got responsibilities. I’ll call you later.”
She’s out the door. My only friend, really.
I can’t count Shane, even though we said we’d be friends after last October.
We’re not, obviously.
Not friends.
Just people who groped each other for a few weeks at the start of this year, when he was new and sat in front of me in math. One day, he wrote me a note about this nose picker sitting in the front,
and we wrote notes back and forth about boogers,
which led to notes back and forth about other stuff,
and he ate lunch with me and Katya,
and put funny sketches in my locker,
and we were friends. I thought.
But one day Shane walked out of school with me when classes were over,
and got on the subway with me,
and went home with me, without me even asking him.
He kissed me as soon as we got in the door. We made out on the couch, when my parents weren’t home,
and watched TV on the couch together when they were.
After that, we made out in the hallways of Ma-Ha,
by the boat pond in Central Park,
on the corner by the subway stop, and in the back of a movie theater.
People saw us. And he was my boyfriend. For a little.
Now, he’s just someone whose mouth I stuck my tongue in,
someone whose spit got all over me and I didn’t mind at the time.
Now, he’s an alien being,
just like all the rest of those Art Rat boys—
or even more than the rest.
It goes to show that if you only have two friends in a whole godforsaken poseur high school, you shouldn’t start up kissing one of them, because three weeks later he’ll say he doesn’t feel that way,
whatever way that was,
didn’t feel like drooling on me anymore, I guess is what it meant—
and he’ll say, “Hey, it was fun and all, but let’s cool it now, yeah?”
and “You know we’ll always be friends, right? Excellent. Let’s hang out sometime, Gretchen, that would be great,”
only not with kissing,
and not with it meaning anything,
and then, when it comes down to it, never actually hanging out,
and never being friends again, unless people ask and then we both say:
“Yeah, we had a thing going for a few weeks there, but then we both decided we would just be friends.”
Only he’s the one who decided.
And we’re not friends, not anymore.
Now he’s got the Art Rats and goes out with Jazmin, and little Gretchen Yee isn’t worth his time, like she was when he was new in school and lonely.