Page 113 of My Debacle with De Lorenzo

“Sure.” He nods his head toward the open door behind him. “Gotta go. I’ll see you later.”

The day goes by like any other. Lana swoons over our teacher. Charlotte ignores me in the hallway. Audrey calls me a fat whore. The usual. Same old. Same old. Dylan joins us for lunch outside the cafeteria. Charlotte doesn’t hang out with us anymore. I know she still probably wishes for the day that Dylan dumps me, but she does that wishing from afar and I’m grateful for that.

Lana, being the good friend that she is, also decided to abstain from alcohol to make it easier for me to quit. She still drinks on the weekends or when she goes to parties, but she stopped bringing it to school. The improvement in our grades was almost immediate. It’s amazing how much more the brain can take in when it’s not inebriated. I’m by no means an A student, but sometimes I impress myself by getting a B.

Our last class is biology, and Lana and I are still complaining about the assignment we have to complete as we walk down the corridor to the main exit of the building. Our teacher told us it would help us prep for finals, but I’m looking at these questions, and I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that we’re nowhere near ready.

“What exactly is heterozygous?” she asks, squinting her eyes at the paper in her hand as if she’s reading another language.

“I have no idea,” I reply. “I’m still trying to figure out what the last question is referring to. Explain how a nitrogen atom in the upper atmosphere becomes useful to an archeologist trying to determine the age of a bone. I mean, did we do this in class?”

“Something’s out of whack. I don’t even think that’s biology?”

I give her a dejected look as we walk through the front doors. “What’s the point of this? We’re never going to use it because neither of us want to be archeologists.”

“Speak for yourself. I love a good old bone.”

“You’re so?” I’m cut off when something lands on my head with a light thud. “What was that?”

Lana looks around with me. “It’s a rose,” she answers, looking at the one at her feet.

It’s red like the rose Dylan gave me this morning, so I touch my hair to feel for it. That one is still firmly in my bun, so where did this come from? I bend down to pick it up and another one hits my shoulder. Confused as hell, I walk down the first two steps, then look up to see who could have thrown it. I see no one on the roof, no one at the windows on the upper floors. One comes sailing through the air, and it looks like it’s raining roses when another one falls on my head. “What the hell is going on?”

Lana and I are both twisting around, trying to figure out where they’re coming from. The full roses have stopped and now it’s just rose petals falling from the sky. Students are congregating around the front main entrance to watch. The air is buzzing with growing curiosity and murmurs, and then I hear the first few chords of a guitar. It stops, then the same chords play again. The lyrics begin to play, and I realize I know this song:What Makes You Beautiful.

I also know who’s behind all this because this level of soppiness can only be the work of one guy. My eyes search the crowd until I find him. He’s casually leaning against a flagpole, hands stuffed in his pockets. He smiles when our eyes meet, and I feel like every organ inside me just turns to mush. He makes his way through the crowd, stopping when he gets to the bottom of the stairs.

“So, it turns out,” he shouts to be heard over the noise and the song, “One Direction makes some good music, too.”

It gets more theatrical when the school music band comes down the hall behind me. Trumpets, clarinets, drums – all rocking it to the same tune playing through the speakers. They stop on the stairs beside Lana and I to play the first chorus. Some guys I don’t know start singing along, crooning about how I light up his world like nobody else and how he wants me so desperately. Dylan even mouths that bit with them. The band moves down to the bottom when the next verse starts.

Lana is screaming, but I’m still too stunned to make a sound. I spot Cat, Scott, and Peter off to the side and the two guys are caught between cheering him on and laughing their asses off, but Dylan isn’t the least bit concerned.

My smile is stretched so wide my cheeks are beginning to hurt. “What is all this?” I ask, glancing between him and the commotion around us.

“Well, for the girl who has no direction, now you at least haveOne.” He uses both thumbs to point to himself. “And it leads to this guy right here.”

“You’re such a dork!” It comes out with a screechy giggle because I am on the verge of bursting with excitement.

“Right? This shit is my calling.” He gives me a heart-stopping smile. “I also thought...maybe it’s time I give you a different association with these stairs.”

It’s instantaneous. Something inside my chest collapses, and tears materialize out of nowhere. I run down the steps between us on unsteady feet and I throw myself at him. Arms, legs, my entire being wrapping tightly around him.

I smother him with kisses. “All of it is so unbelievably corny,” I say, even though tears are streaming down my cheeks.

I hate crying in public, but today I can’t contain them. I bury my face in the crook of his neck and he just holds me while I cry.

The song comes to an end, but the band plays one more chorus as I unwind myself from his body. Keeping my arms locked around his neck, I let my feet find the floor.

“Thank you,” I whisper, exhaling a shaky breath. “How did you pull this off, anyway?”

“Oh, I had a little help with that. You remember my lab partner, Trevor? We were supposed to go to his Halloween party? Well, that’s him and some of the other guys from the chess club up there.” He whistles, then calls out to Trevor and four guys come into view at the window on the third floor. We wave at them, and they wave back.

“The chess club? That party would’ve been so lame.”

“I know, but he’s great.” He half-turns and points to the girl who was playing the clarinet earlier. “And that’s Everly. She’s like...head band geek or something.”

“You certainly roll with theincrowd.”

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