Lucky Caller(6)

The mystique and hype surrounding Alexis had mellowed out by now—there were so many more people at Meridian North High School to dilute it—but I still had that feeling every now and then of being twelve and completely awed by her. Hoping she would like me despite the fact that she must have, or we wouldn’t still be friends.

“One more semester,” she said by way of a greeting, holding one hand up for a high five and adding in an ominous voice: “The beginning of the end.”

“Hooray.” I slapped her palm and then set about getting into my locker.

“How was your break?” We had texted a little, but she was gone for the bulk of it on a family ski trip to Colorado. All the Larssons got together at Grandpa Larsson’s cabin in Breckenridge—it was an annual tradition. I caught the pictures and videos Alexis posted throughout, seated on a ski lift or posing in front of a massive fireplace or holding up a snowball with a devilish grin. Alexis didn’t know I knew this, but one time she handed me her phone to look something up, and there was already a page open on the browser titled “Become Instagram Famous in Eight Easy Steps!” I couldn’t say what step she was on currently, but she had a couple thousand followers, so she must have been doing something right.

I shrugged. “Pretty good.” I didn’t feel like going into it. “How was skiing?”

“I snowboarded, mainly,” she replied. “But it was everything.”

One of Alexis’s favorite phrases—things were often everything or nothing. She left very little room for the in between.

“What do you have this afternoon?” she said.

“Radio broadcasting.”

“Ah.” She grinned. “Ready for your big debut?”

I made a face. “No?”

“You’ll do great. Shit, I’m gonna be late. Text me after,” she said, and then quickly strode away.



* * *



I didn’t care what Jamie said—the fact that my dad worked in radio didn’t give me much of an advantage in radio broadcasting class. It didn’t mean I automatically knew everything there was to know any more than Josh Epson’s mom being our sophomore English teacher meant he inherently understood symbolism in The Scarlet Letter better than the rest of us.

Although since my mom worked in science, we always did have pretty great science fair projects growing up. So maybe we did have a bit of a leg up on that one.

The radio broadcasting course had a lot of components—learning about the history of radio, learning how to work with editing software, producing promos and stuff, and most importantly, creating and producing a weekly radio show for the student station.

“And keep in mind, a lot of these skills will be transferrable to podcasting,” the teacher, Mr. Tucker, told us that first afternoon of class. He was a youngish guy with a beard and thick locks that he pulled back with a headband. “If you happen to be, uh, somewhat more interested in that medium.” He went through the syllabus with us and gave a brief intro presentation. In the last part of class, we would need to divide up into groups of four for our radio shows.

“I’m good with however you guys want to do it, but you’re going to spend a lot of time with your group over the course of the semester, so choose … mindfully, that’s how I’ll put it. Maybe your friend is here, but maybe working closely with them is going to drive you up the wall or get in the way of your productivity. Definitely keep that in mind.”

The thing about Meridian North was that it was so massive, you could definitely get put in a class without any of your friends whatsoever. I knew some of the people here for sure. There was this girl Sammy—we had French together sophomore year—and her boyfriend who played on the soccer (baseball?) team. A kid named Fletcher who I knew from when I disastrously tried debate club in ninth grade (Prompt: “Does technology make us more alone?” Me: “Uhhh … I mean, yeah? But if you think about it … no?”). But there was no one I was an instant lock with, unlike the group of girls turning to each other at the front of the room or Sammy immediately grabbing her boyfriend’s arm.

The girl sitting in front of me turned around. She had deep brown skin, tight curls cut short, and extra long legs stretched out into the aisle. I realized that I knew her—she was in the team sports class I took junior year. Her name was Sasha, and she played on the volleyball team. She had picked me for one of our class matches once even though my volleyball skills were about on par with my debate skills.

So maybe we weren’t exactly friends, but we were friendly at least. “Want to be in a group?” she asked.

I shrugged like I wasn’t supremely grateful to her for initiating, like I wasn’t just sitting there hoping someone would. “Sure.”

“We need two more.”

We scanned the room, but groups of four were rapidly materializing.

“Uh, maybe…” Sasha began, but then a guy sidled up to us from the back. He was wearing a T-shirt with giant neon letters that said “GREATEST OF ALL TIME” on it, but in weird typography, stacked up into a column in chunks like GREA/TEST/OF/ALL/TIME.

“Grea test of all time?” Sasha read as the guy opened his mouth to address us.

He looked caught off guard. “No, it says—”

“What kind of test is that?” I asked, because I couldn’t help it. “Like a diagnostic kind of thing?”