Hazel
“you’re glowing,” christine accuses. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so happy.”
“I’m not!” I protest with a laugh. “It’s the heat. I’m telling you, nothing happened.”
She eyes me suspiciously. Apparently, when she and Eric had gotten out of Kye’s car yesterday, it had all been part of a plan Kye and Eric had hatched to get us each alone. Christine had given Eric a blowjob in the bushes behind the 7-11, and she’s convinced that at least something happened between me and Kye before the principal showed up.
“I’m serious,” she insists. “You, like, look different. You’re smiling.”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you. We were in the car for two seconds before Ms. Caldwell showed up, and then we were this close to getting suspended. I thought my dad was going to kill me.”
“Ah,” she says knowingly, quirking her mouth and nodding her head slowly. “Wait a minute. I know what it is. You’re in love.”
“What?” I almost drop my laptop in surprise, and swear under my breath as I lift a knee to catch it and then hug it closer to my chest. We’re walking down the hall to our final Biology lab and the floor in this wing of the school is hard tile. My computer would smash if it fell.
“Mm-hm,” hums Christine, opening the classroom door and letting me walk through. “That’s what it is. You’ve got all the symptoms. Dizzy, distracted…dopey smile. Yup. Someone’s living in your head rent-free.”
“Well it’s not Kye,” I mutter as we take our seats. On the other side of the room Kye and Eric are already seated at their lab table, watching us walk in. Christine waves to Eric, who nods back.
“Wait, what?” She slides in next to me and whispers. “It’s not Kye? There’s someone else who’s caught your eye? Oh my God, who? Spill it.”
For a second, for just a second, I have the fleeting urge to tell Christine about Xavier. I want so badly to say his name, to talk about the way he makes me feel… But I know I can’t. Besides, I’m not even that close to Christine. Technically she’s my best friend, but only because I have no other close friends to speak of. Melanie moved me so much in grade school, I didn’t really seem to make any of the long-term connections so many of my peers have. And Christine, for her part, has a history of turning on her friends and driving them away. I’ve managed to avoid her ire for the past four years just by keeping a little bit of distance between us.
But I can’t resist the urge to drop just the smallest breadcrumb for my only friend, so with only the tiniest whisper of doubt in my mind, I lean forward with a conspiratorial smile.
“I can’t really say anything about it,” I whisper, “but yeah, there is…someone.”
“Oh!” she gasps, fluttering her hands in front of her neck. “No way. You have a secret boyfriend?”
I inhale sharply, unsure what to say, my momentary happiness at revealing something swept away. A boyfriend?
That can’t be what Xavier is, nothing about that sounds right.
And yet…isn’t he? Isn’t that what boyfriends and girlfriends do? Fool around? Fall in love?
“I…I don’t know about that,” I stammer. “He’s a little bit older.”
I realize I’ve made a mistake the minute I speak.
Christine frowns. “What do you mean older? How much older?”
“It’s no big deal,” I say quickly, turning to the front of the classroom as the teacher thankfully calls the class to order. “Just a few years.”