The Best Laid Plans(13)
“Yeah. That’s the part that would make her the maddest.” He laughs, snuggling into my shoulder like a cat. “C’mon, Collins, you wouldn’t date me?”
“Oh, are you done with Cecilia?” I ask, pursing my lips. “And Susie Palmer? And Sophie Piznarski? And—”
“All right,” he says. “Point made.”
“It’s a moot point really.” I give us another push with my foot so the hammock keeps swinging. “We all know you’re gonna make little blond babies with Cecilia. Little Sally and Bobby.”
“You named them?”
“You named them, Andrew. In the future. I’m just reporting back. Sally loves manicures, lip gloss, and binge drinking, by the way. Just like her mother.”
“You’re so weird.”
“She’s an adorable kid.”
He laughs and soon I’m laughing too, our shoulders shaking so hard the hammock shakes too. I take a deep, gulping breath, trying to regain control, and suddenly I snort. Andrew hears and loses it.
“No, really,” he says between choked laughter. “You’re the adorable one. The sounds that come from your body are just so cute.”
“You know what’s cute?” I snort again before I can stop myself. “Hearing you say the word condom in front of our parents. I think that’ll be seared into my brain forever.”
“Really?” he asks. “I could have called it a ‘rubber’ and that would have been worse.”
“A little raincoat,” I say.
“Hey—a big raincoat,” he says back, and we both burst out laughing again. It strikes me somewhere in the back of my mind that this is the first time it’s ever occurred to me that Andrew has a penis—that it’s there, not even a foot away from me—only hidden by a few pieces of fabric. It’s a weird, uncomfortable thought, one that sticks out at an awkward angle. I shove it quickly away, and then I’m laughing again and it’s gone like it never even happened at all.
FIVE
WE’RE SITTING IN Greek mythology Monday morning when Danielle gets the note.
It’s an easy class, one of the ones basically designed for spring seniors, where you’re always breaking into little discussion groups and everyone just talks about the weekend. Danielle and Ava usually sit next to Chase and some of the other basketball guys so they get maximum flirt time, but today they’re with me. Danielle has been weirdly nice since the party—she brought me an iced coffee and a Ziploc bag of homemade cheddar scones before class and then sat down next to me like it was totally normal.
Making food for people is kinda Danielle’s thing, and she’s surprisingly great at it. She’ll probably have her own TV show someday. One time sophomore year we were all watching Kitchen Nightmares at Hannah’s house and Gordon Ramsay made some poor guy burst into tears, and Danielle said, I think I’d be good at that.
Cooking? Hannah asked.
Well, yeah, Danielle said. And making people cry.
I’m sure some part of her is using the scones as an excuse to ignore Chase, but maybe some other part of her feels bad.
Now, when she taps my desk, it makes me jump.
“Did you see who sent this?” She has a little scrap of white paper clenched in her hands. I take the paper from her and unfold it. It has five words scrawled across it, written in blue ink:
DANIELLE OLIVER IS A SLUT
I crumple the paper and let go like it’s burned me. “I wasn’t looking. Sorry.”
I glance around the room for a guilty face, for someone who might be paying us a little too much attention. Chase is slumped in his desk on the opposite side of the room. I note the pencil he’s chewing on and then look back at the blue ink on the paper. There’s a chance he used a different writing implement and then slipped it back in his bag, but I really doubt Chase could be that sneaky.
“Where did you get it?” I whisper.
Ava leans past Danielle to whisper back. “We just found it. It’s like it came out of nowhere.”
We all turn toward Chase, and he must feel the heat of our stares, because he looks up and locks eyes with Danielle. He stops chewing on his pencil and cocks his head, the expression on his face unreadable.
“I don’t see how anyone thinks they can get away with this,” Danielle says at lunch, popping a grape tomato from her salad into her mouth. “It’s like treason.”
We’re in the senior section, by the windows where the tables get the most sunlight. Prescott is small enough that everyone has lunch at the same time, but it means we’re always fighting over the best tables, like we’re vying for spots in a lifeboat. People used to care a lot about who they sat with, but now that we’re seniors, we’ve all gotten over ourselves, and stuff that used to matter doesn’t anymore.
Right now though, it’s just Danielle, Ava, Hannah, and me because Danielle is keeping the note a secret. Before this weekend, I don’t think she would have even let me see it. I know it’s probably because I was there with her at the party. I’m fully in this now.
She lays the note down on the table, smoothing out the edges with a black-polished fingernail.
“Whoever did it probably doesn’t think they’ll get caught,” Ava says, flipping her hair—bright green now for Saint Patrick’s Day—behind one shoulder.