1
“What’s so urgent?” my best friend Jillian Frankel called out as she made her way through the throngs of juniors clogging the halls of Shaker Heights High School.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Not with so many spying ears around. I just waved at her to hurry up and get to Kayla’s locker. I had news, and if I didn’t spill it soon, I was going to burst.
“Well,” Kayla Nunez, my other BFF, said when Jill finally made it over, “are you going to tell us?”
I looked around to make sure no one else was listening. “It’s finally happening. I’m 99.9 percent sure you know who is single now!”
I didn’t need to explain who I was talking about. They had both heard me go on and on about Wes Rosenthal enough to know I clearly meant him. Those giant brown eyes, that little dimple in his right cheek that’s so deep you just want to poke it, the chiseled jawline that ought to belong to a Disney prince, those muscles that only come from playing lacrosse a million hours a week, that magical laugh you wish iTunes sold so you could play it over and over, the way he makes you feel as if you’re the only person in the world who matters when you talk to him.…
“No way!” Kayla said, bringing me back from my Wes-dream. “Are you sure? Jace didn’t say anything.”
Jace Brennan was Kayla’s boyfriend. He was also on the lacrosse team with Wes and one of his closest friends.
“Did Wes say something at the bus stop to make you think this?” Jill asked.
She was always so practical. I shook my head. “He wasn’t there today.”
“Ahhh,” she said, leaning back on Kayla’s locker. “That’s why we got the SOS to meet here.”
I gave a sheepish smile. “Her locker is more central.” But they both knew the truth. I preferred the view. Kayla had been blessed with a locker directly across from Wes’s. Like a true best friend, she offered to switch with me, but I didn’t want to seem too obvious, so I kept mine, which was basically in the arctic of the junior locker hallway. “Okay, fine, I wanted to see Wes. If I don’t get my bus time, I have to wait until last period to really get a chance to be around him.”
“Maybe he’s not coming in today,” Kayla said.
“It’s the first day back from winter vacation. He wouldn’t miss it.”
She shrugged. “Didn’t you say he was away? He might not be back yet.”
“He’s back home.”
Jill raised an eyebrow at me. “And how do you know that?”
“Okay, I know I promised I would stop stalking him online, but I couldn’t help it. He’s so cute, and I found out some really important stuff this time. And it’s not really stalking, because we’re friends. He follows me back.”
Jill gave me one of her you-know-better-than-that looks. And she was right. I looked at Wes’s GroupIt page way too much. It wasn’t helping me get over my crush, and he was taken. At least he was—until now.
“What did you find?” she asked. “How do you know he’s single?”
“Well,” I said, trying to contain my excitement so I wouldn’t cause a scene, “sometime between when I went to bed last night and when I woke up this morning, he took down all his pictures with her.”
Her was Wes’s girlfriend, Leora. They met at the summer camp they both worked at. She lived a few towns over. I never met her, but I kind of felt like I had because of all my snooping. We all did because I talked about her so much.
Kayla grabbed my arm. “He definitely wouldn’t have done that if they were still together.”
I squeezed my purse to my chest. “I know! Good-bye, Leora Zeltser. Hello, Emily Stein. This is my chance. I mean, I’m totally his type. I even look a little like Leora.”
Both Kayla’s and Jill’s faces scrunched up. Okay, Leora was short, had dark eyes, a sleek pixie cut, gigantic boobs, an oval face, and delicate features, while I was average height, with a round face, massive blue eyes, and fairly frizzy hair that went just past my shoulders.
“Well, maybe if you squint just right,” Jill offered.
“And you both have brown hair,” Kayla added.
“But it doesn’t matter,” Jill said. “It’s better that you’re not alike. If he wanted her, he’d still be with her. He’s moving on.”
“Unless she dumped him,” I said. I hadn’t really considered that before. It seemed kind of crazy to think someone would dump the hottest, sweetest, nicest guy in the whole state of Ohio, possibly even the country, but stranger things had happened. “What if all he can talk about is how much he wants her back?”
“Now’s your chance to find out,” Kayla said, her eyes focused about twenty feet away.
It was Wes, and he was making his way toward us, or rather, his locker.
Relax, I instructed myself. I tended to get flustered around him. About half the time I was a perfectly normal human being who could maintain a coherent, even relatively amusing, conversation, but the other half I was like a malfunctioning robot who lacked any social grace and spouted random information and non sequiturs at a pace that would make the Road Runner jealous. The worst part was, I never knew which it was going to be. At least today, I had Jill and Kayla for backup.
I watched him come closer. It wasn’t fair, even his walk was sexy. How was I supposed to stay cool and calm around someone like him?
Kayla nudged me.
“Hey, Wes,” I squeaked.
He turned and gave me a smile. Did I mention he had the best smile? It took over his whole face and totally lit up his eyes. And that dimple … there was a good chance I was going to pass out. But I had to keep talking. I knew that. “How was your vacation?” I asked.
“It was great.”
Great. Great? Great is not how you describe a breakup. Maybe he and Leora really were still together, and he just took down the pictures to protect her privacy from prying eyes like mine.
“How was yours?” he asked.
“It was good.” I didn’t want to talk about me. I wanted to know what was happening with him. I needed answers.
“Missed you at the bus stop today.” Wait. Did I really say that? Would he think I was into him? That wasn’t good. Unless he was into me, too. But he probably wasn’t. “I mean, everyone was wondering where you were,” I said, covering just to be safe.
His smile got bigger, if that was even possible, and he held up a set of keys. “That’s because I drove in.”
“You got a car?” I practically screamed.
I hoped he took it as excitement, but the fact was, I was freaking out. If he drove to school, that meant I lost valuable morning time with him. He was pretty much the only reason I didn’t hit snooze on my alarm clock and managed to get myself to the bus stop on time.
“Yep,” he said. “My grandmother decided it was time to stop driving, and she gave me her car. My family and I just drove it back from Florida.”
I didn’t know what to say. My head was spinning. “Cool” was all I could sputter out.
Jill elbowed me to keep going. Only, words weren’t coming. I racked my brain. It was still empty. I didn’t want the conversation to just end, so I said the first thing that popped into my mind. “Leora.”
The are-you-serious, shocked look on Jill’s face told me I had said the wrong thing. Why was I blurting out the name of Wes’s maybe-hopefully-ex-girlfriend? I needed to fix this. “It’ll make things easier for you to see her now,” I stammered. “Leora, that is. You know, having a car and all.” Just fabulous, I was having one of my word meltdowns. At least this one wasn’t too bad, and he’d mentioned his girlfriend to me in the past, so it wasn’t that awkward for me to bring her up. I hoped not anyway.
“We actually broke up.”
Yes! Do not shriek with joy. Do not shriek with joy. Be sensitive. Be likable. “I’m sorry.”
“Thanks,” Wes answered, and put his history book in his backpack.
That was it?!! No explanation? No story? I wanted details.
“What happened?” Kayla asked.
Go, Kayla! Coming through for me again. And herself. She knew not knowing who dumped whom meant hours’ worth of conversation with me speculating.
“It just wasn’t working out,” he said. “And she’s a senior and got accepted early decision to Stanford. It just kind of made sense.”
I nodded in agreement. Not just because I wanted him, but because they clearly didn’t belong together. Love didn’t need to make sense. It was supposed to be a passionate, blinding, can’t-live-without-you, all-encompassing type of thing, at least that’s what I hoped. It wasn’t as if I had actually experienced it myself. Not truly. I mean, did it count as love if I never told Wes how I felt, and he didn’t feel it back?
All I knew was that if he were my boyfriend and he wound up moving to California, it wouldn’t change how I felt about him. I’d try to make it work. Things worth having aren’t always meant to come easy. That’s how I justified my mild obsession with him anyway.
An awkward silence fell over us. “Now that you have a car, I bet people are already hitting you up for rides,” Jill said, breaking the tension.
“My parents and I are still in negotiations over the rules.” He leaned his head back against the locker. “They think the car should just be for me to drive myself to and from school, lacrosse practice, and things like that, and that I shouldn’t have anyone along for the ride to distract me.”
They were probably also worried that people would take advantage. Wes was awesome, but he wasn’t very good at saying no, which is how he wound up tutoring three people in geometry, cochairing the school recycling program, and getting roped into just about every event and activity his friends were a part of. It was a lot for one person, but somehow he managed to pull it off. It was impressive actually.
Even though it was probably for Wes’s own good, I still wished his parents had waited to take a stand. It crushed any hope I had of his offering to take me to school. “That sucks,” I said.
“Yeah, it does. But I’m working on them, and I have a feeling I’ll win.” He tossed his bag over his shoulder and winked at me. “Then you won’t have to worry about waiting for the bus in the morning, either.” Then he nodded at all of us and walked away.
I felt superglued to the ground. When I was confident he was out of earshot, I turned to Jill and Kayla and gave a silent scream. “Did that just happen?”
“Yes,” Jill said, and all three of us started jumping as inconspicuously as possible.
Wes winked at me! And basically said he wanted to drive me to school. Although he could have just been acting neighborly, but if he wasn’t … there was a chance. A chance that Wes Rosenthal actually liked me!
Copyright © 2017 by Shani Petroff
