Forever for a Year(18)

“Cool,” she said, “I’ll bring some stuff to Marguerite’s house.”

“Do you still like Henry McCarthy?” I asked her. Peggy looked at me like I was from Mars for asking Shannon this, but I didn’t understand why this was a bad question, and aren’t we supposed to be friends with her now? And I still didn’t know why Henry was asking me to come watch his football game.

“Uh, no,” Shannon Shunton said, and then, “he’s a freshman.” Except she might as well have said, He’s a squirrel, and her voice suggested she might even have dated a squirrel before she’d date a freshman.

Then Wanda said, “We hung around some seniors this summer and it’s just hard to relate to freshman boys anymore.” Then they both smiled, but cool smiles that didn’t feel like real smiles at all, and then they both left.

“You shouldn’t ask Shannon questions like that,” Peggy said after we had started walking again.

“How come?”

“I don’t know. It just feels like we shouldn’t,” Peggy said.

I didn’t know what else to say about Shannon Shunton, so I said, “Trevor hasn’t talked to me at all today.”

“My sister said she was going to talk to him at lunch about you.”

Whaaaaaaaaaaaat!

Huh?

No.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Wait a minute.

“What?” I said after my brain stopped being a huge giant fireball.

Peggy said, in a calm voice that annoyed me, “Katherine talked to him. At least she said she was going to.”

“What was she going to say?” Oh my GOSH! My heart was beating really fast. So fast.

“Just ask him why he liked you. I don’t know.”

“BUT WHY WOULD SHE DO THAT?”

“Shh! Don’t yell, Carrie!”

“My name’s Carolina!” I sort of yelled. Because I was so mad. So mad I couldn’t breathe! I couldn’t see! I couldn’t exist one more second without EXPLODING!

“I’m sorry. But shh. Katherine is trying to help. She knows more about boys than we do.”

“I can’t go to health class.”

“Why not?” Peggy asked, even though she’s my best friend and she should know why and obviously I WAS HAVING A HEART ATTACK.

“Because Trevor’s in my health class!”

“Will you stop freaking out?”

“I just can’t handle this. It’s too much. I can’t—” I stopped walking and sat down. In the middle of the hallway. Oh my gosh, why did I do that? Peggy pulled me up to my feet and pulled me over to the side so I wouldn’t get trampled.

And then she said, “Guess what? You’re amazing. And if he’s smart, Trevor will like you. And if he doesn’t like you, then he’s stupid and you won’t like him.”

This felt like it should make me feel better, but I didn’t feel better. Then because I thought I should, I think I did, a little. Peggy hugged me, and I hugged her back.

Then Peggy said, “I have to go to history now,” and she walked off. I wanted to tell her I loved her, maybe not out loud, but maybe just by telling her she was amazing, but by the time I turned to say it, Peggy was already with Shannon Shunton and Wanda Chan and then all three of them disappeared among the crowd.

Gosh.

Anyway, I repeated what Peggy said in my head, decided I probably wasn’t going to have a heart attack, and went to health class. I was the last one to arrive, and there was only one seat left … next to Trevor Santos. As I walked from the door to the desk, my face turned so red, I mean, it must have, and my skin itched, but I was also excited, with the good butterflies in my stomach, so I sat down but didn’t look at him.

Again, I had the weirdest sensation during the whole class, being close to him like that, which was that we knew each other. I started to believe we knew each other from a past life, except I think past lives are silly. It’s just that there’s always been, like, this separation between me and other people. I didn’t ever think there was, not really, until right now, when I thought that this separation that I never realized was there wasn’t there with Trevor … it was like I had always lived in my own bubble and no one else had ever been in my bubble until him.

EXCEPT I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT HIM! And I’m crazy and I’m so tired and I don’t know who I am anymore. But I couldn’t convince myself to be sane so I thought I just had to speak to him. The last twenty minutes of class I only thought about what I could say, and I had fifty different ideas but I didn’t pick one until the bell rang.

I said, “Did Katherine say something to you?”

And he said, “Yeah,” except it was more like he said, You and your friends are horrible, disgusting people, never talk to me again, all in that one little “yeah” and then he walked out of the classroom.

I kind of did die of a heart attack then, but not from it going too fast. Instead it just stopped and dropped into my stomach, where it shattered and turned into nothingness.

I didn’t really die, obviously, but you understand. So even though we get in big trouble for using our phones in school, I took mine out and signed in to Facebook, which I never do at school because school is important, but I couldn’t stop myself. I wanted to accept his friend request because I was sure that would make up for whatever Katherine said and whatever bad things he was thinking I was.