I had mixed feelings about the Mustang. I wished his dad had forbidden him to bring it. Then Angelica wouldn’t have shown up in it to night band practice last Monday after their lunch date, waving languidly out the window like a homecoming queen on parade. But I was glad he had this car, because he parked it just outside the stadium. The trunk gave me the perfect place to stash my drum so I didn’t have to lug it back and forth to the band room.
Now I tried to read his expression behind his shades. When he accused me of lying, my mind automatically shot to the fact that I liked him way more than I wanted to let on. Rather than melting under his stare into a pool of hysterical shame, however, I reached for my drum again and commented, “Yes, I have. Which lie do you mean, specifically?”
With an impatient huff, he reached into the trunk, too—it was shady in here, our heads were close together, and if it hadn’t been a hundred and sixty degrees, it would have been a great place to make out—and he dragged out my drum and held it up for me so I could get my shoulders under the harness. “You’ve given me the impression, on purpose, that you’re some free-spirited surfer girl who doesn’t care about school or your future or much of anything at all.”
Uh-oh. I had an idea where this was going, and I tried to spin the conversation in a different direction. “We don’t have a lot of surfers,” I pointed out. “The Gulf is too calm. You’d have to go to the Atlantic side of Florida for that.”
“You know what I mean,” he said. “You pretend to be an airheaded beach bum. If that were true, your friends should be stoners.”
“Well—” I started to point out that Sawyer, though not someone I’d call a stoner because those people had absolutely nothing else to do, had been known to partake. But I wouldn’t get Sawyer in trouble, even for the sake of a joke. And how well did I really know Will, anyway? Maybe old Angelica’s tattletale ways had rubbed off on him.
As Will dragged his own drum out of the trunk, he was saying, “But your best friends are the photographer for the yearbook and the head cheerleader. Something doesn’t compute.”
“Oh,” I said, relieved that was all he’d meant. I’d never thought about it, but Harper and Kaye and I did make an odd trio. “I’m friends with them because we were in gifted class together starting in elementary school.” When he stared blankly at me, I explained, “At your school, maybe they called it enrichment class? Sawyer calls it the loser class.” I held my fingers to my forehead in the shape of an L, Sawyer style.
I jumped as Will slammed his trunk. “That’s just more fuel on the fire. I heard you’re going to be a National Merit Scholar.”
“Ha! That’s what the guidance counselor says, based on my test scores. But I have to get a teacher to vouch for my dedication to academics.” I poked him in the ribs with my drumstick as we entered the stream of the band flowing from the school into the stadium. I said more quietly so we wouldn’t be overheard, “I took the PSAT last year. Fifteen minutes before I went in, I’d just had this huge fight with Jason Price. I’m sure you haven’t met him yet.”
“I heard about him.” Will pointed one drumstick at me. “Stoner.”
“Why, yes,” I said, proud of Will for identifying someone in our class by first and last name after all.
“You dated him,” Will said.
“Well, not dated,” I said. “Why are you all over me for having winner friends if you also know I had a loser hookup?”
Will was giving me the look that people gave me whenever I purposely misled them and they lost track of what I was telling them and why. I didn’t fool him for long, though. We carefully descended the stadium steps, glancing to the side of our drums so we could see our toes, the air growing hotter as we went. Finally we reached the grass, and he could concentrate on what I was saying rather than on whether he was about to tumble to his death. His brain caught up with my mouth, and he exclaimed in exasperation, “Because if the guidance counselor says you’re going to be a National Merit Scholar, you must have made an almost perfect score on the PSAT!”
“Shhh!” I hissed, looking around to see who’d heard. “You’ll ruin my reputation. See, I was stressed out about Jason, and when I’m stressed, I like to put things in order.”
“But only when you’re stressed.” He must have been thinking of his glimpse inside my dark house.
“Obvs. I find multiple-choice tests soothing.”
“That only makes sense if you know all the answers,” he grumbled.
“Of course I know all the answers. I mean, I know them if I’m actually trying to figure them out. So, to make a long story short, I made an almost perfect score because the test caught me on a bad day.”
“Are you talking about her PSAT score?” Kaye asked, jogging over. The cheerleaders had practice on the football field last period, at the same time as the band. We used the middle of the field, they stayed on the sidelines, and we tried not to plow through their pyramids. Normally I would have hugged her hello, but she was about to say something to make this convo with Will worse, I could tell.
Sure enough, she volunteered, “Tia’s an underachiever. She works very hard at it. One year she made a C in Spanish even though she’s bilingual.”
Will looked to me for verification.
I shrugged. “Just because I can speak it doesn’t mean I can spell it.” In Spanish I told Kaye to take her little cheerleader shoes and tumble on over to the sidelines and stay there.
In response, Kaye uttered the only Spanish curse I’d ever taught her, which really was not appropriate for this situation. But she ran across the field toward the other cheerleaders, tossing in a couple of handsprings and a layout as a so there. Good riddance. I turned back to Will and grinned like our pleasant small talk had been interrupted but now the children had left us alone again.
“You are incredibly dumb for a smart person,” he said.
I laughed. “I’ve never denied this.”
“You’re just confirming, over and over, that you’ve been lying to me.”
“I haven’t,” I insisted. I knew he was only teasing, but something about being called a liar, by Will, when I really hadn’t meant to mislead him that first night, ticked me off. “You’re the one who’s so closed minded that everything has to line up perfectly or it doesn’t make sense. Why can’t I be an underachiever? This is America. I can be anything I want. Besides, you’re the one who lied to me. When we first met at Brody’s party, I thought we were kindred spirits. You gave me the impression that you were a pirate, with your earring.”