Page 8 of You Had Me at Hello World
“You rank Ariel over Mulan?” I shake my head. “Ariel loses her voicefor a man. Mulan saves all of China!”
“Yeah, but consider.” And then Lola launches into a rendition of “Part of Your World” in her rich alto voice. When people begin to turn and stare, I kick her in the shin.
“Oww!” She clutches her leg in mock pain. “But I get you. Did I ever tell you why I broke up with Sarah?”
“Because she kept posting Bible verses about homosexuality on her Instagram story?”
“No, that was Church Sarah. This is Hot Sarah.”
“Oh. Then no.” I try to recall Hot Sarah’s face, but I’m pretty sure my brain’s just defaulting to Sadie Sink.
“She wanted me to speak Spanish while hooking up. I don’t know if she had a Latina fetish or she was too lazy for Duolingo or what. I tried to go along with it, because she was so absurdly hot. Case in point: she was a natural redhead. And she was obsessed with yoga, so her butt looked—”
“Lo,” I say.
“Okay, sorry. The last straw was when she asked me to recite Pablo Neruda poems in bed. Girlie, I’m not even doing the required reading for English class, you think I’m gonna read something with line breaksfor fun? So I had to end things.”
“Tragic.” Personally, I might’ve tried to stick it out with someone hot enough to earn the nicknameHot Sarah. But Lola has more self-respect than I do.
We watch Drew’s fingers graze Olive’s bare shoulder. She giggles and flips her blond ponytail. I imagine a nature documentary voiceover:Here, we observe two American teenagers in their natural habitat, engaging in a primitive mating ritual.
Lola scoffs. “That dude is. Pa-the-tic.” She punctuates each syllable with a tap of her fork against her plastic lunch tray. “He’s probably doing this to make you jealous.”
“Probably,” I say, more to placate her than out of any real anger.
Drew shifts, and I catch a glimpse of his face. He’s got this dazed, dopey look.
I force my eyes away. Maybe I should be heartbroken. Like, I was fully ready to lose my virginity to this guy yesterday, and now he’s trying to slide on my stepsister. That’s messed up, right? So shouldn’t this hurt more? Maybe something is wrong with me. Maybe I’m a heartless bitch.
But then I remember my mom, and how my dad broke her heart cleanly in two, and how my stepdad now chips away at whatever remains. Bit by bit, day by day. Maybe it’s better to be a heartless bitch.
Chapter Four
After school, I drop by my guidance counselor’s office. Mrs. Lombardi waves me in. She’s rocking this fuchsia blazer with a chunky gold necklace. For an old person, her drip is always on point.
“Charise!” She gestures at the chair across her desk. “How can I help you?”
Here we go.
I sit down. “I want to quit the webmaster job.”
Her eyebrows rocket up so fast I think they might escape her forehead entirely.
“But you’ve been doing great! Mr. Horowitz has spoken about how helpful you were in getting rid of that virus he downloaded.”
Mr. Horowitz, our librarian, gets scammed by these pop-up ads that claim there are “sexy singles in your area.” An obvious lie, since we live in Chinook Shore.
“I think, um, my family…” I trail off, because it isn’t like Michael straight-up told me to quit. But working feels pointlessnow. All those hours, all that cash, justpoof, gone. And now that Michael knows about the job, I’d have to fork over whatever I earn. But I don’t want to get into this with my guidance counselor. “I’m just busy.”
She nods. “Everything okay at home?”
“Splendid,” I lie. I don’t even know where that comes from. It’s probably the first time in my life I’ve said that word out loud.
A pause. I can’t tell if she believes me.
“Charise, it’s April of your junior year. You got a perfect score on your PSAT, a first in our school’s history, and you have straight A’s,” she says. “Have you given any thought to college?”
College isn’t the obvious path forward for Chinook Shore kids. Lots of people end up in farm or factory jobs, since our county has a major agricultural presence. Others go into timber. Some of the overachievers head off to a four-year university like Oregon State, and a few years ago the valedictorian—his name was Zach or Zane—went to a fancy school on a full ride.
