Shuffle, Repeat(46)

Ainsley doesn’t say anything. She studies me, like she’s trying to figure something out. If she succeeds, I hope she’ll let me in on it. “Why didn’t Oliver know you broke up with him? You’re with him every single morning.”

Ah, the million-dollar question.

“Oliver and I don’t get personal.”

It’s not exactly the truth, but it’s not completely a lie, either. How are you supposed to tell someone you’ve pledged a friendship of honesty with her boyfriend? It’s on the up-and-up…but somehow, it doesn’t sound like it.

How did this get so complicated?

Ainsley keeps staring at me, and I can’t tell what she’s thinking. There’s a long pause, during which I can’t help wondering if she has any inclination toward violence. After all, her boyfriend did just throw a punch. Maybe they were brought together by their shared love of physical savagery?

Ainsley makes a move toward me and I flinch backward, but she’s fast. In a second, her arms are around me. “You poor thing,” she whispers into my ear. “It’s so embarrassing.”

Embarrassing? I think other words are more appropriate, but I’m not about to quibble over semantics. I just go with it. “So embarrassing.”

“I mean, Zoe Smith.” Ainsley says it with a shudder. “You know she only passed chem last year because she let Mr. Welch look at her tits.”

I try to imagine Zoe doing such a thing. She’s artsy and quirky, but an exhibitionist? I don’t know.

“Don’t worry,” says Ainsley. “You’re way prettier than her.”

Where I fall on the beauty scale in relation to Zoe is actually the least of my worries, but given the weirdness of this whole situation, I’m willing to let Ainsley think that’s where my concerns lie. “Really? You think so?”

“Totally,” Ainsley assures me.

“Awesome,” I say, even though this conversation is anything but awesome.

? ? ?

I manage to catch Oliver alone as he’s going into the cafeteria for lunch. “Heads up. Ainsley was a little surprised to find out about the whole Itch debacle. You might want to tell her that you have a thing about cheaters or something….What?”

Oliver is grinning at me. “It’s all good, Rafferty. Ainsley is into knights in shining armor or something. She thinks it was chivalrous.” He sees my look. “Don’t worry. I’m not about to make it a thing, where I go around hitting people. I’m just saying that in this one scenario, this one time…it ended up just fine.”

“Except for the part where Itch got a fat lip for no reason.”

At least Oliver has the good sense to look uncomfortable. “Right, except for that,” he says.

God, I can’t wait to get out of here.





I meet Shaun at his locker after homeroom. He gives me a dead rose and I give him a burnt heart-shaped cookie, and then we hold hands on the way to AP English. No one even looks at us funny. “Are you sure you can’t just be straight?” I ask him. “It would make everything easier.”

“It would.” Shaun’s tone is more earnest than usual, making me wonder what’s going on with him.

“How’s Kirk?”

“Fine, I guess.” Shaun heaves a long, deep sigh. “But I wish he was here and we didn’t have to be long-distance. We could go to a movie or do our homework together or make out on the bleachers or whatever people do when they live in the same place.”

“Making out on the bleachers isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. You’re either too hot or too cold, and someone is always at an uncomfortable angle.”

“It’s got to be better than this.” Shaun pulls me to a halt. He reaches for my other hand, and as kids flow around us in the hallway, he closes his eyes. “Nope.” He shakes his head. “Not good.”

“What are you doing?”

“Close your eyes.”

I oblige, because it’s Shaun. “Now what?”

“Pick someone. Someone like Itch, from your past. Or someone else. Whoever, just as long as it’s someone you know. Try to picture him.”

I imagine Shaun. “You look cute today. Nice shirt.”

Shaun squeezes my hands. “Come on, someone who makes your heart go whammo.”

Oliver rises behind my lids. He’s grinning so I can see the top row of his teeth. His eyes are crinkling straight at me and he’s happy—so happy it makes the corners of my mouth tug upward in response.

“Got someone?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” says Shaun. “Can you see the person? Like really see him?”

My imagined Oliver’s grin widens. He leans toward me and suddenly I can do more than picture the way he looks. I can smell the clean, soapy scent of him; I can hear his laugh the way it sounds when it rings out in the behemoth. “Yes,” I whisper. Shaun doesn’t answer, so I open my eyes.

He’s looking at me with sadness written all over his face. He gives me a smile that is rueful and agonized and heartbreaking all at once. “When I close my eyes, I can’t see Kirk anymore,” Shaun says. “I used to be able to picture him so clearly. There was this hallway downstairs in the main building where we met at Rutgers. The first time we kissed, it was in a corner down there, under one of those crappy fluorescent lights that make everyone look terrible. Everyone except Kirk. Even under that flickering, greenish light, he still looked like a Greek god. That’s what I could always picture, what he looked like under those lights.”