Page 182 of Something Rad
I don’t smoke. Not regularly, anyways. I haven’t picked up a cigarette in at least a month. But I’m afraid if I don’t do something to distract myself right now, to calm myself down, I’ll lose my shit completely. And I figure it’s not a good look to get detention or a suspension on the first day back at school.
Billy digs into his back pocket, wordlessly pulling out and holding open his pack of cigarettes to me. “Thank you,” I say, plucking one out and putting it between my teeth. “Now, if you all will excuse me,” I mutter behind the cigarette, spinning on my heel to head outside to smoke before homeroom starts. But my feet stop in place, the cigarette falling from my lips and into my hand when I come directly face to face with Alice.
And I can just tell, between the absolutely heartbroken look on her face and the quick mental replay of the things I just said, that she definitely must have come in right at the tail end of our conversation. Right at the point that the things I said without context pretty much made me look like the biggest prick in the world.
Certainly not a prick that any girl would want her best friend to be dating.
Shit.
“Alice, I–”
“Good morning, Bay View Bears!” Principal Whileyman’s crackly voice comes over the speaker.
Goddammit.
“As a reminder,” he continues, “we are beginning our new semester with an assembly in the gymnasium during your homeroom period this morning. So, go ahead and start making your way there! We’ve got some exciting things to discuss about what’s to come the rest of the semester, and, if you remember those votes you all placed for senior class superlatives during the last week before the holidays, we will be announcing the winners shortly into the assembly! So, if you want to see who won the ‘Best, Biggest,andMost’in Bay View’s senior class for every category, don’t be late!”
The second the intercom harshly cuts off, I dart forward.
“Alice, listen–”
But she turns away, practicallyrunningfrom me.
I try to follow after her, calling her name, but the hallways quickly fill with loud bustling students all making their way towards the gym.
“Dammit!” I groan.
“Hey, you good, man?” Brad’s voice sounds from behind me as he clamps onto both of my shoulders with his hands.
“No.”
I shake my head, running a hand through my hair.
“I need to find my girlfriend.”
thirty-seven
SARA
I smile.
“Everything good to go?”
I don’t know why I’m smiling.
I’m staring off at a dingy faded gymnasium wall with chipped blue and yellow paint running across it that’s older than dirt and desperately in need of a retouch. I shouldn’t be smiling. But, for some reason, I can’t stop. I haven’t been able to stop for two weeks.
“Yes, sir. I think we’re ready.”
I haven’t seen Robbie yet. I want to see him. But also, I don’t. I’m nervous. I don't know why I’m nervous. But at all the same times I’ve caught myself smiling over the last two weeks, I’ve also found my stomach in knots. Everything in me is battling over this, the current state of my life. The absolutely bizarre situation that I’ve found myself in. The one where I might have just accidentally let myself fall for Robbie freaking Summers. The one where I opened myself up to him.
In more ways than one…
I feel my cheeks heat at the reminder. At thememory. It keeps playing through my head on a loop.
Robbie and I crossed a line. A line I know we can’t come back from. And even though I know that should terrify me…I’m not sure that it does. I think that, maybe, for once in my life, I’d like to tell my brain to shut up.
I have no concept of what a future would look like with Robbie. My life has existed solely on a timeline ofstarttoNYU scholarship application acceptance/rejection. From there, it’s really not been possible for me to plan further. Not when either answer would send me in dramatically different directions. I know that the last thing I need is to throw a wild card like Robbie into the crazy mix that is my life right now, but I think…if he’s really been honest about what he wants…if this isn’t all just a phase for us…for him…
