Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda(19)

Leah avoids my eyes. “I made you a mix,” she says, handing me a CD in a clear plastic case. “You can load it onto your iPod when you get home. Whatever.”

I turn the case over in my hands. Instead of a track list, Leah has composed what appears to be a haiku:

Wrinkled neck, gray hair

Sorry to say this, Simon

But you’re f*cking old.


“Leah. It’s so beautiful.”

“Yeah, okay.” She scoots backward on the ledge and leans back on her hands, looking at me. “All right. Are we cool?”

I nod. “You mean about . . .”

“About you guys ditching me on homecoming.”

“I’m really sorry, Leah.”

The edges of her mouth tug up. “You’re so freaking lucky it’s your birthday.”

And then she pulls a cone-shaped party hat out of her bag and straps it onto my head.

“Sorry if I overreacted,” she adds.


There’s a massive sheet cake at lunch, and when I get to the table, everyone is wearing party hats. That’s the tradition. No one gets cake without the hat. Garrett seems to be gunning for two pieces, actually. He’s got a pair of cones strapped onto his head like horns.

“Siiimon,” Abby says, except she actually sings it in this low, husky opera voice. “Hands out, eyes closed.” I feel something nearly weightless drop onto my palm. I open my eyes, and it’s a piece of paper folded into a bow tie and colored in with a gold crayon.

A couple of people from other tables look at us, and I feel myself grinning and blushing. “Should I wear it?”

“Uh, yeah,” she says. “You have to. Golden bow tie for your golden birthday.”

“My what?”

“Your golden birthday. Seventeen on the seventeenth,” Abby says. Then she tilts her chin up dramatically and extends her hand. “Nicholas, the tape.”

Nick has been holding three pieces of Scotch tape on the ends of his fingertips for who knows how long. Honest to God. He’s like her little pet monkey.

Abby tapes on my bow tie and pokes my cheeks, which is something she does weirdly often because apparently my cheeks are adorable. Whatever the heck that means.

“So, whenever you’re ready,” Leah says. She’s holding a plastic knife and a stack of plates, and she seems to be making a point of not looking at Nick or Abby.

“So ready.”

Leah slices it into perfect little squares, and seriously, it’s like waves of magical deliciousness have shot into the atmosphere. Guess which table of A.P. nerds have somehow become the most popular kids in school.

“No hat, no cake.” Morgan and Anna lay down the law from the other end of the table. A couple of kids tape pieces of loose-leaf paper into cone hats, and one dude manages to wedge a brown paper lunch bag on his head like a chef’s hat. People are shameless when it comes to cake. It’s a beautiful thing to see.

The cake itself is so perfect that I know Leah picked it out: half chocolate and half vanilla, because I can never commit to a favorite, and covered in that weirdly delicious Publix icing. And no red icing. Leah knows I think it tastes too red.

Leah’s really amazing at birthdays.

I bring the leftovers to rehearsal, and Ms. Albright lets us have a cake picnic on the stage. And by cake picnic, I mean drama kids hunched over the box like vultures shoveling cake by the fistful.

“Ohmigod, I think I just gained five pounds,” says Amy Everett.

“Aww,” says Taylor, “I guess I’m lucky I have a really fast metabolism.”

Seriously, that’s Taylor. I mean, even I know people can justifiably kill you for saying stuff like that.

And speaking of cake-related casualties: Martin Addison is sprawled out on the stage with his face in the empty cake box.

Ms. Albright steps over him. “All right, guys. Hop to it. Pencils out. I want you writing this stuff down in your scripts.”

I don’t mind the writing. The scene we’re blocking takes place in a tavern, and I’m basically just making notes reminding myself to act drunk. It’s kind of too bad these aren’t the notes we’ll be tested on for our finals. That would really improve some people’s grades.

We push through without a break today, but I’m not in every scene, so I actually have quite a bit of downtime. There are risers pushed to the side of the stage left over from a choir concert. I sit near the bottom and rest my elbows on top of my knees. Sometimes I forget how nice it is to just sit back and watch things.

Martin is standing downstage left, telling a story to Abby and using lots of twitchy gestures. She’s shaking her head and laughing. So maybe Martin hasn’t given up after all.

And suddenly Cal Price is standing in front of me, nudging my foot with the toe of his sneaker. “Hey,” he says. “Happy birthday.”

This is a happy birthday.

He sits beside me on the riser, a foot or so away. “Doing anything to celebrate?”

Oh.

Okay. I don’t want to lie. But I don’t exactly want him to know that my plans consist of hanging out with my family and reading birthday messages on Facebook. It’s a Monday, right? I’m not actually expected to do anything cool on a Monday.

“Yeah, I guess so,” I say finally. “I think we’re having ice cream cake. Oreo,” I add.