Kissing Ted Callahan (and Other Guys)(6)

My phone buzzes on the floor as I’m practicing rolls. I pick it up and see that it’s Lucy. I haven’t figured out how to talk to her normally since the Incident. Lucy and I had been on the same page in life since we met. Now I’m trudging along at the same speed, while Lucy is for all intents and purposes an adult.

Before I can even put my phone back it rings again, but this time it isn’t someone whose sexual experience intimidates me. It’s just Garrick.

“Hi, Riley,” he says. “Did you want to review our chemistry notes?”

Poor Garrick is stuck with me for a lab partner. The only experiments I like are the ones where something lights up or changes colors or produces an odor. I thought that was all there was to chemistry, but instead it’s usually about measuring liquid into beakers and weighing it before and after you do something that seems inconsequential.

Garrick likes it all. He’s going to be a geneticist someday, after he takes a billion more years of school.

“I guess.” I work on my double bass technique on my practice pedal, a safe drumming activity to maintain while on the phone. “I think we’re okay, though. The test isn’t for another week and a half.”

“True.” He says it like I’m a contestant on a game show, and he’s the host congratulating me for getting a question correct. “But I think we should definitely study this weekend.”

“I have band practice on Saturday afternoon,” I say, “but other than that I’m free.” When all I have is band practice, I usually try to fluff up my weekend, make it sound more exciting than it is. Garrick doesn’t draw that out of me, though.

“Great, maybe you can come over. My mom will bake cookies.” He stops for a moment. “That’s lame. I don’t know why I said that.”

“I like cookies,” I say instead of agreeing. Future geneticists are not required to be cool. “So we can review then?”

“Sure. Saturday night?”

When you’re in middle school dreaming about being a teenager, you do not expect that instead of going to dances and kissing boys in parked cars, you’ll spend your Saturday nights reviewing chem notes.

“Saturday night. Cookies and chemistry.”





CHAPTER SEVEN



Top Girls--by Reid


Jane Myatt

Jane is firstly really pretty. She has good taste in music (evident by the Le Butcherettes sticker on her car), she dresses cool, and I’ve been told she has a cat with only three legs she rescued from a shelter, which means she’s a good person. Once last year I made a joke about Macbeth, and she said, “That was really funny, Reeve!” It’s more important that she thinks that I’m funny than that she gets my name right.

Jennie Leung

Jennie is also really pretty, maybe prettier than Jane. Last year she ran a bake sale that benefited the environment, and she didn’t act like it was weird I kept coming back to buy more cookies from her.

Erika Ennis

Erika is hot, but in a cool, understated way. Which is less intimidating. She’s in the Edendale Spirit Club, which for a lot of people would be pathetic, but it’s cool she probably doesn’t care what people think. Since she’s really smart, I’m hoping she’ll be our class valedictorian so our yearbook will document our class as really attractive.





CHAPTER EIGHT


The next morning, I spy Ted alone by his locker. He’s methodically organizing his books on a blue plastic shelf that he must have installed himself. I’ve never used the term smitten before, but I am positive I am smitten. If I were a cartoon character, my eyes would be shaped like hearts.

“Hi,” I say, and when he doesn’t look up, I add, “Ted.”

“Hi, Riley.” He looks right at me. I did not know eye contact could feel intimate.

“Hi,” I say again.

“What’s up?” He’s rummaging through his locker, so I have to watch the back of his head. His hair isn’t long, exactly, just a little overgrown. It’s like a garden whose owners went out of town for a week. I would like to reach out and touch it, but I don’t.

“I, um, the blog?” I bite my lip because no one who isn’t a freshman or a transfer student calls it that within the walls of Edendale High School. It was by code name only. “The Fenching Club. FENCING, I MEAN!”

What the hell was FENCHING! It sounded like Frenching. Also I was shouting, and Ted’s shoulders shot up like he was under attack. Oh my god.

“Do you want to join?” he asks, as if I hadn’t called it by its real name or said Fenching.

“I do.” Then it’s weird in my head because saying I do to a cute guy conjures up visions of wedding dresses and floral arrangements. I think of Ted in a tux—hair still ungardened—and he’s so cute I smile to myself. Brain Number Two regains control.

“Email me.” He emerges from his locker with a stack of textbooks and binders. “Ted at Edendale Fencing Club dot com. I’ll send you everything you need.” He’s off down the hallway.

I’ve wanted to be a part of the blog since I was a freshman. It’s the most countercultural thing our school has to offer, but I’ve never known how to get involved. Edendale’s a private school, but unlike private schools on TV, we don’t have to wear goofy uniforms and no one seems freakishly overachieving. It’s obviously been perfectly acceptable for me to be doing only one extracurricular, since the free time I have is supposed to go toward the band. But this is a mission, and I am on it.