Shuffle, Repeat(42)

“I’m not fine. I miss you.” Itch’s expression doesn’t change, but his shoulders tense and the rest of him goes still. “I miss you as a friend,” I clarify.

A puff of air escapes his mouth and he presses his lips together hard. “The thing is, I already have friends.”

“Really? Because I thought we had the same friends, and apparently they don’t see you, either. All I’m saying is come have lunch with us again. We are all evolved people. We aren’t cretins who can’t handle a shift in our interpersonal dynamics.” I nudge his arm. “Besides, I think maybe they miss you, too.”

Itch looks down at me for a long moment. “Were you lying? The part where you said there’s no one else. Was that a lie?”

“No,” I say immediately. “Not a lie. I am one hundred percent single and I don’t see that changing anytime in the foreseeable future.”

“All right.” Itch starts walking down the hall away from me.

I watch him go for a second before calling after him. “Wait! Itch, hold on.” He doesn’t stop, so yet again, I find myself chasing him down. This time, I fall into stride alongside, although I use the word “stride” loosely, as I’m taking two steps for every one of his. “Where are you going?”

“To the cafeteria. Our friends are probably already there.”

I stop in mid-step and then have to run to catch up with him again. “You’re right. They probably are.”

We walk there together.





“Okay, check this.” Oliver merges onto the highway. “Rock salt.”

“Rock salt,” I repeat.

“We’ll use it to write our class year in huge numbers on the football field.” He holds up a hand toward my face. “Hear me out before you start squawking.” Since I am, in fact, poised to squawk, the only thing I can do is clamp my mouth shut. “No one will be able to tell at first. The field will look exactly the same as it always has, but then the salt will slowly kill the grass and the numbers will gradually appear. Like magic.”

“Magic.”

“Magic!” Oliver does a sparkle thing with his hands, as if he’s revealing a card trick. “Best of all, no animals!”

I smile because he’s so goofy, but of course I still don’t approve. However, I pretend to consider it. “It does seem like a reasonable prank, because you’re not really harming anything.”

“Exactly! Just the grass!”

“And grass will grow back sometime, right? It’s not like it needs to be on the field permanently or anything.”

Oliver grins, triumphant. “Finally, something the relentless June Rafferty will approve!”

“Yeah.” I nod, still pretending. “I mean, it’s just a football field. Only the stage upon which plays a myriad of high school dramas that will fade into obscurity the minute we all disappear…much like the grass under your salt.”

Oliver deflates. “You don’t actually approve, do you?”

“Nope.”

“And you’re taking a new song.”

“Yep.”

“You’re the worst,” he tells me.

“You’re going to be hearing a lot more of the Clash.”

“Fine,” Oliver says. “Back to the drawing board.”

? ? ?

I’m almost done with my sandwich when I ask it. “Where’s Itch?” It’s a reasonable question, since he’s been sitting with us for the past few weeks.

Darbs’s soda pauses halfway between the table and her mouth. “I don’t know.” Her gaze slides to Lily.

“What?” I ask. “Lily, I saw that. What was that? What?”

“Calm down,” Darbs says. “You weren’t here yesterday. You were off with the pom-poms again. Itch can do the same thing. He can have lunch elsewhere.”

I look around the cafeteria. No Itch at any table that I can see. “Where else would he be?”

Lily’s the one who tells me. “He’s eating in the art room.”

“The art room? Itch doesn’t do art. Is he being weird about me again? I thought we were over that. We’ve been fine. Haven’t we seemed fine?…What?”

“I don’t think it has anything to do with you,” Darbs says in an overly gentle tone.

“Of course it does. Why else would he be in the art room?”

“Because that’s where Zoe eats,” Lily tells me.

“Zoe Smith? What does Zoe Smith have to do with…oh.” The synapses suddenly connect. “Itch likes Zoe.”

“Zoe likes him back,” Darbs says helpfully, and Lily elbows her. “What?”

“It’s cool,” I tell them. “Really, it’s totally fine.”

And it is. Or at least it should be. Just like I told Oliver, none of this really matters anyway. In the grand scheme of life, Itch is just some guy I dated for a little while in high school. A bump in the road.

Still, it’s inordinately annoying when your bump is with another bump so soon after the road got paved.

Or something like that.

? ? ?

“What are you doing for Valentine’s Day?” Oliver asks me.