I Wish You All the Best(26)

There’s this thud in my chest. Make a friend, Ben. Make a friend. “I’ll go.”

He opens an eye. “What?”

“I’ll go,” I say again. “For today at least.”

“Are you serious?” He nearly leaps up from his spot.

“Pinky promise,” I say.

He grins, and he can’t stop giggling as he takes my finger.

“You really want me to go to the cafeteria that bad?”

“It’s the sort of experience you only get in high school, my friend.” He winks. “Besides, Meleika and Sophie have wanted to meet you for a while now.”

“Meleika and Sophie?”

“My friends.”

“Oh.” I’m not sure why I imagined it would be just the two of us, but maybe with more people there the chances of it getting awkward will be diminished? At least a little.

We sit in silence for a bit before. Nathan starts humming a song I don’t recognize, but that dies out quickly. At one point I’m sure he’s fallen asleep, because his breathing changes and there’s a slight hitch. When the parking lot begins to fill with cars, I nudge him awake, but he doesn’t seem groggy or tired or anything.

“Almost that time?” he asks.

“Almost,” I say, closing my sketchbook and sliding it into my backpack.

“Did you finish the rose?”

I stand up and brush the gravel off my jeans. “Not yet.”

Nathan grabs his own bag, checking something on his phone. “Can I see it when you’re done?”

“Yeah,” I say without hesitating.

“Hey, do you have any paper?” Then he pauses. “Any that you don’t use for drawing? I’d hate to steal the artist’s resources.”

I grab my bag and dig through the front pocket, looking for the pack of sticky notes I keep there just in case. In case of what? I don’t really know.

“And a writing utensil?”

“So needy,” I tease, reaching for a pen.

He writes something down and folds the sticky note around the pen, handing it back to me before taking off across the parking lot and shouting back, “See you in Chem.”

I unfold the note and stare at the ten-digit number he’s written inside, along with the message scrawled messily underneath.

Text me ;)



“Can I help?” Nathan leans over the counter in Chemistry to watch me wash the beakers. Today we’ve been messing around with some chemical reactions. According to Thomas, our next big quiz is going to be a lab.

Toward the middle of the period I pretty much took over. Nathan had nearly poured too much of a solution into one of the beakers, which would not have been good considering I don’t think either of us would look very attractive without our eyebrows.

I don’t even mind, really. I like chemistry. Even with the numbers and the formulas, it’s more interesting than math. Except my gloves are way too big for my hands, so I have to keep pulling them up, and then water gets in the tips of the fingers and the whole thing makes them feel totally pointless, but Thomas said it’s unsafe to wash without them, so I guess I’ll have to suffer.

“I think I’ve got it,” I say.

“You sure?”

“Yeah, thanks though.”

“You still up for lunch?”

I glance out the window of the classroom. Even if I wasn’t, there’s really nowhere to go. Apparently, Mrs. Liu is out sick today, and I really don’t want to spend any more time than I need to around her substitute. And whatever sunlight was hanging around this morning is now hiding behind thick layers of black clouds and rain. So the quad’s out too.

“Don’t really have a choice, do I?” I tease, rinsing out the last beaker.

“Not unless you plan on making a paper boat out of your sketches, which is not something I recommend you doing, as it would be a huge waste of talent. So yes, you have no choice.”

“I could go to the art room.”

“There you go, poking holes in my plan. Besides, I hear Mrs. Liu is out today or something.”

“So you orchestrated this thunderstorm and made Mrs. Liu sick, just so I’d have to have lunch with you?”

“Nooo.” He drags out the O sound. “But if you happen to see an evil-looking weather machine in someone’s backyard, I most definitely do not live there.”

“No worries, I won’t call the FBI or anything. And I already told you yes.”

“Just making sure you weren’t having second thoughts.”

“Funny, I think all I have these days are second thoughts.”

Nathan gives me a sort of look, but then he just laughs me off.

“Hope you two are getting real excited about cleaning your station,” Thomas says from his desk.

“Sorry, Mr. W!” Nathan grabs a wet rag and starts wiping down our desk, smiling like a goof the entire time.

The moment I step through the cafeteria doors with Nathan I want to turn around and run. Maybe a paper boat isn’t such a terrible idea. I can probably make something fairly safe with a few layers. But leaving is impossible, thanks to the crowd of my fellow classmates pushing us farther and farther in.

“Sorry, it’s a bit of a jungle in here. Don’t fight the crowd, that’s how you get trampled.” Nathan takes me by the shoulder and leads me to this set of tables that’s in an elevated part of the cafeteria. We steer right toward the one at the far end, settled in the corner where two girls are sitting together.