Asha has been looking at her phone every thirty seconds since she sat down. Now she says to the table, “This was fun, y’all. Congrats, everybody. I’ve got to go.”
“Go where?” I can’t help asking. I had been hoping we’d get to talk before the night was over, which can’t happen if she leavesnow. At least I’ve broken the seal with my intrusive question.
“A house,” she says, perfectly neutral. “I’m just trying something out,” she adds, as if that clarifies anything.
“Something or someone?” I ask.
“Nothing wrong with a little practice date.”
“But it’s like eleven. Isn’t that a little late to start something?” I say. Why am I being her mother right now?
“Exactly. If it’s going to be a practice date, I want it to be short. Only an hour until curfew. Okay?” she says, making it clear she doesn’t care whether it is or not.
“Okay,” I say helplessly. I may have surrendered any say I ever had in her life.
I go home with Amanda and end up sleeping over. After midnight, when I’m lying on the foldout chair in Amanda’s room in the dark, I can’t stop thinking about how Asha talked to me at the Friendly’s, like I was someone whose name she couldn’t remember. Asha and I have never really been on the outs before. Which is pretty amazing, considering I’ve been friends with her for years and years.
The day we met at orientation before middle school started, I noticed her the minute I walked up to the sign-in table. Intense concentration was coming off her in waves. I remember thinking,How hard is it to write your name on a sheet?but then I leaned over to see what she was doing. She had a name tag sticker in front of her and a fine-line Sharpie in her hand.Ashawas already inked across the middle in perfect block letters, but what was taking all her focus was the drawing she was workingon around her name, which was a handful of tiny but incredibly realistic sharks.
“That’s amazing,” I gasped without thinking.
She looked up with an open face and pushed her hair back over her shoulder. “I’m wholly obsessed with sharks right now. And lions. Wolves. Pretty much all the apex predators.”
“I thought you were going to say you were obsessed with art,” I said. “You could put that in a frame and hang it on the wall.” I didn’t know then that Asha was good at everything she tried, but that would become clear in a matter of weeks.
“Thanks,” she said, drawing a final dorsal fin. Then she peeled the sticker off the backing and placed in on her right thigh instead of over her heart, which at the time I thought was a real rebel move.
“I like octopuses,” I said. I immediately felt dumb about it—it made me sound like a first grader—but Asha just nodded like that was a good choice.
“Which grade school are you from?” she asked.
“Fillmore. You?”
“Revere. So glad to be out. It smelled like diapers there. Clean diapers, but still.”
“Haha. Wow, that’s really specific.” I’d never really thought about what my elementary school smelled like. I guess mostly chalk and that weird odor books get when the paper is old. “What does this school smell like?”
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath through her nose. “Dry-erase markers and sawdust.”
I was enjoying this game. “What doyousmell like?”
This time she didn’t have to inhale. She struck a pose. “Like magic. And you?”
I pulled the front of my shirt up to my nose. “Mmmm, better than magic. I smell like”—I took another whiff—“Cheeto Puffs.”
She threw back her head and cackled loudly enough to startle several parents nearby. “You’re funny,” she said.
I drank in the sound and then blushed when I realized how much I was smiling. Looking down, I grabbed a name tag and scrawled my name, but before I could put it on, my mom came up and tried to get me to put on a sweatshirt because the air-conditioning was blasting. I fought her off. When I turned around, Asha had drawn a delicate octopus wrapping its tentacles around my name, gathering up theHon one side and theEon the other like it was giving the letters a hug.
“Ooh, it’s so cute. I love it,” I said. I suddenly wanted to put the sticker on my right thigh, too, but I didn’t want to be a copycat. I settled for slapping it on my right sleeve above the elbow.
“We should probably sit,” she said. I nodded, and we moved toward where the chairs were set up. Some friends from Fillmore waved at me and I headed toward them. I thought she was behind me, but when I turned around, she wasn’t there. After the presentation, I saw her on the other side, sitting with friends of her own. They weren’t in chairs but were sitting cross-legged on the floor along the wall, which again, seemed cooler than anything I would do. I felt a rush of disappointment that wehadn’t talked more, and completely irrational jealousy of the strangers she was with.
But after the orientation, Asha found me again as I was walking to the parking lot with my parents. She introduced herself to them without a hint of shyness, and asked my mom to put Asha’s mom’s number into her phone. Then Asha squeezed my hand. “Call me when you get your schedule so we can see if we have any classes together.”
“Okay, I will,” I said, and I did, and that was that. I’ve always felt lucky to have her, although I’ve also always wondered what she saw in me that first day. I still feel the urge to try to deserve her. And I’ve spent the last few weeks utterly failing. I hope it’s not too late to fix it.
Amanda is driving me home the next morning when I remember something I’ve been trying very hard to forget. It’s my birthday today. My sixteenth birthday. The first day I could officially get a driver’s license if I wasn’t cursed with shitty genes. What a stupid day.
