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DANIELLE
Holy wasn’t in class on Friday. When I asked the substitute why he was gone, she suggested that I mind my own business. I received an angry phone call from my father half an hour later when the substitute reported me absent for fourth hour. I politely explained that I was in the library doing homework. While it didn’t exempt me from missing three hours of the day, my dad at least forgave me.
Then I was forced to spend the weekend wondering if the boy I liked, liked me. It felt very high school, something I desperately wanted to distance myself from. I was so frustrated that I called Elliot and let him take me to a party on Saturday night. On a farm ten miles outside of Manhattan, my friends and I got drunk on grain liquor and orange juice—the foulest of concoctions but a cheap alternative to paying off someone’s older sibling to buy us booze.
Thank God my dad went fishing early Sunday morning. He wasn’t around to hear Elliot sneak out; he would have given me hell if he knew. But it’s not like Elliot and I had sex. After having a few pulls of alcohol, I just wanted to be held. Elliot wanted to do more than that, but I wasn’t giving it up to a seventeen-year-old football player who couldn’t read between the lines. When I got tired of letting him feel me up, I rolled over and fell asleep. He wasn’t doing it right anyhow. I don’t think kneading my breast and tugging my nipples is all that sexy. It felt more like he was trying to milk me than make me feel good.
The rest of Sunday passed in a hungover blur. Dad got home before lunch and said I looked a little green around the gills—“a little fish humor,” he called it. But he didn’t ask any questions; he just made me some soup and sent me to my room. I tried to finish some homework, but my head was pounding, and I wasn’t in the mood to read about physics. It left a bitter taste in my mouth on Monday morning when I had to sit through class, not entirely understanding what we were discussing.
But by lunchtime, I was back in the right headspace. Surrounded by my girls, Elliot, and his football buddies, I was ready to take on the world. Until I saw Holy.
* * *
Idon’t know why I eat in the school cafeteria. The food might be fresh, but the meat has a strange taste, almost like the lunch ladies boiled it in a bag or something. But Rosemary, Esther, Cameron, and I rarely leave campus, so boiled hamburger it is.
The weekend gossip is first up on the menu for the afternoon. Rosemary made out with a stranger at the party on Saturday night, and nobody knows who it is, not even Rosemary. She was too drunk to ask him his name, and no one knew how he got invited to the party.
“He’s probably my soulmate,” she slumps over on the cafeteria table and groans. “But I’ll never know because I was too wasted to ask.”
“Keep it down,” Elliot laughs, but we can all see him looking both ways to ensure that a teacher isn’t walking by. “I’m sure Noah knows who it was.” That’s another football player, but not one that I’m particularly familiar with.
Rosemary lifts her head to shoot Elliot a glare. “I already called Noah,” she growls. “He said his sister probably invited some friends from the private school. I made out with a rich kid, Elliot, a rich kid that knew what to do with his hands.”
Elliot pulls on a raunchy smile and nudges one of the guys beside him. “Oh, yeah? What did he do with his hands, Rosemary? He got magical fingers? He put’em somewhere special?”
I blush and turn away from the group, trying hard to distract myself from the mundane conversation. The girls and I have discussed this three times since Saturday night; I have no interest in rehashing it with Elliot, known for his dirty jokes and innuendos.
My gaze lands on, arguably, a worse situation than the one that I’m currently in. Holy is back today, and he’s standing in the lunch line with my dance instructor, Jennifer Rae. With the keen sense of a teenage girl that has flirted with Mr. Pelham before, I can tell that Jennifer isn’t touching his arm in a friendly sort of way. She runs her perfectly manicured fingers across his tattoos and then smiles at him in a way that lights up the room. I hate her.
Okay, that’s not true. I love Jennifer; she’s the best dance teacher that Manhattan High School has had in a decade. She’s twenty-five and can dance circles around half the classes she teaches, but she choreographs amazing routines for our dance team. She’s everything I want to be when I’m her age: poised, graceful, beautiful. And apparently, Holy’s type.
I’m proficient at detecting flirtatious behavior, and I swear the smile on Holy’s lips is reserved for special occasions. I’ve never seen him look at me like that. He looks at me like I’m an annoyance; he looks at Jennifer like she hung the moon.
“Excuse me,” I mumble as I force myself up. I’m so frazzled by the scene in front of me that I leave my tray on the table and barely manage to grab my bag before fleeing the room. In my rush to leave, I catch Holy’s eye and see his head tilt in confusion when he meets my gaze. My cheeks flush again, and I look away, desperate to escape. The walls feel like they’re closing in, and at any moment, I will be crushed between them.
I escape to the outside, and the August sun beats down mercilessly. It is no quieter out here than it was inside. A group of students listens to music in the quad. Various groups are hosting booths to encourage people to join their clubs. People walk past me at a leisurely pace, chatting with their friends about classes, homework, boys, and dating.
I force myself to walk straight. One foot in front of the other.Don’t break down. Don’t break down. Don’t. Break. Down.I tell myself. But I can feel tears prickling at the back of my eyelids. I’m embarrassed that I’ve been chasing a man that has eyes for another woman. And I’m humiliated because so many men find me attractive but not the one I want.
I make it to the ladies’ room before the tears fall. I can feel them welling up like a dam waiting to burst. No one is around, so I stand before the mirror and pull my lips into a smile. It hurts because every muscle in my face wants to crumple inward and cry, but they say the simple act of smiling is enough to change your mood. I don’t feel any better doing it, but the tears recede.
I practice my smile for a few more minutes until I no longer feel like bursting into tears. Instead, I feel stupid and hollow inside. I’ve made a fool of myself under the guise of liking a boy. I always swore that if I were ever in a relationship, I wouldn’t let myself get crazy like other girls. I was different. I felt different. But now I know that I’m not. I’m just like all the other high school girls.
“Not anymore,” I mumble to my reflection. She looks as depressed as I feel. “I’m done with Holy Pelham.” He’s too old for me anyway. He’s experienced where I’m not, and that makes us a bad match. These are all things that I tell myself as I walk to his class. Maybe I’ll talk to my dad tonight about giving up this teaching assistant gig after all. I know he was excited over the summer when I showed interest in being a teacher, but if I’m being honest, I was only doing it to get closer to Holy anyway. I don’t think I even want to be a teacher. To be honest, I don’t know what I want to do. But if I give up this TA position, I’ll have plenty of time to ponder it while I apply for colleges.
I channel the prior week’s energy and ignore Holy once more. I enter the classroom only seconds before the bell rings. I don’t speak to him; I only sit at my desk and wait for him to drop off the weekend’s homework he’s collected from his earlier classes. He asks me how my weekend went, and I give him nothing, not even the grace of a look. But I can see as I stare up at him from under my eyelashes that he scoffs and shakes his head while walking away. He’s frustrated.
Good riddance, I think to myself.I don’t need you.And class passes in its usual fashion. Forty-five-minute class periods stretch into seven-minute passing periods, and it starts all over again for the fifth and sixth hour. And just like on Thursday, Holy asks me to stay after. I consider picking up my things and leaving early, just to piss him off, but I know we need to talk. I need closure. I need Mr. Pelham to tell me that while he’s flattered by my interest, he doesn’t want to date an eighteen-year-old virgin that can’t drink and has a curfew.
Still, I feel the pressure mounting as the students leave. One after the other, slowly whittling the classroom down to just Mr. Pelham and me. Nervous energy bubbles in my chest, and I realize that I can’t turn my feelings off. I still like Holy, even if he likes someone else. I’ve liked him for years; you can’t change that over the span of a couple hours.
“What’s your problem now?” He asks the second the door closes behind the last student.
I haven’t even gotten to my feet yet, but I’m floored. “Excuse me?”
“Don’t get defensive.” Holy walks around his desk and sits on the edge closest to me. When he crosses his arms, I see his muscle definition under the polo he’s wearing. “You’ve been standoffish, just like the last time I saw you. What kind of hot and cold game are you playing?”
I’m not playing anything, nor do I have time to be played. I match his energy and body language. “You could have just told me that you weren’t interested.”
