The Queen of Bright and Shiny Things(8)

I can’t place his tone, but I’m feeling squirrelly. “Huh?”

“You invited him to join our stuff?” He says the last two words like some people say “our song,” as if it’s private and privileged, just for the two of us. But he’s never been exclusionary.

“He was there when I showed up,” I say, puzzled. “So I told him about the meeting. Was I not supposed to?”

Ryan snaps, “He’s a grunge kid. Like he cares about the environment. Right now he’s probably writing song lyrics about how nobody understands him.”

Wow. He seems to have it in for Shane, which is so not like him. I frown while Tara and Kenny glance between us, wide-eyed. They’re not sure what’s going on, and neither am I.

“Maybe we could talk about this later?”

“Come on,” he says, gathering up the remnants of his lunch.

I’m not sure I want to, but following Ryan has become second nature at this point. So I trail him into the hallway. I fold my arms, waiting for an explanation.

“I just…” Here, Ryan pauses, at a loss for words as he never is. “He doesn’t seem like our type, that’s all.”

“How can you tell, just by looking?” I ask incredulously. “You’ve hardly talked to him.”


I can’t believe I’m hearing this from him. He should know, better than anyone, how it feels to be picked on and excluded, based on factors beyond one’s control. Until the summer after freshman year, he was five foot four and routinely got shoved inside lockers. So Ryan knows damn well how Shane must feel; apparently he just doesn’t care.

“Well, I’m not letting you decide who I can be friends with,” I tell him.

“You don’t know—” he starts.

“Does he kill kittens? Sell drugs?”

“One of the secretaries talked to my mom, okay? She said he’s got a thick file. I’m not supposed to know about it, but … that’s never good, right?”

I almost get mad at Ryan then, but that—no. For a few seconds, I’m woozy and scared; this can’t happen. So I take four deep breaths, mustering a smile and a polite tone. “Did Dylan’s mom talk to yours?”

Ms. Smith might be Mrs. McKenna’s source; she works in the school office, which should make Dylan an outcast. Instead, he manages to be popular, probably because he’s hot and plays multiple sports. He’s also the * leading the crew that picks on Shane, who’s supposedly a bad guy. I could laugh at the irony.

“It doesn’t matter. Do what you want.” Ryan falls silent then.

This feels weirdly like an argument, but I have no idea what it’s—and then it dawns on me. “Are you jealous?”

Possibly not in a romantic sense, but Ryan’s used to being the only star in my firmament. Maybe he’s worried the Sage and Ryan Show can’t withstand Special Guest Shane. Who is totally uninterested in the role, believe me. Besides being the new kid, he’s got other problems, most of whom wear lettermen jackets.

“Do I need to be?”

Huh. That’s not a no.

“You’ll always be my best friend, no matter how many others I make.” Is that what he wants to hear?

Maybe I’m paying more attention than I usually do, but his face falls a fraction, and then he pulls on a goofy smile. “Obviously. Who could ever replace me?”

“Nobody.”

Ryan slings an arm around my shoulders on the way to chemistry. It occurs to me that people are used to seeing this because it doesn’t earn us a second glance. In chem, we’re lab partners, and if I’m honest, Ryan does most of the work. I’m not good with hard sciences or math; this frustrates me because I feel like I’m letting women down all over the world by feeding existing stereotypes. I wish I rocked at physics and could do differential equations, but I don’t have that type of intelligence. In fact, it’s likely I’ll never even get to physics or calculus.

Mr. Oscar teaches all the advanced science classes. You’d think that’s a first name, not last, but in his case, you’d be wrong. He’s thirty-something, and he thinks he’s cool, which means he’s always telling people, “Call me Tom,” but he doesn’t notice that everyone still calls him Mr. Oscar and only laughs at his jokes to be polite. I laze through a lab experiment while Ryan does all the measuring, mixing, and pouring. I pull my weight with excellent note-taking, however, and then I log our result. Chemistry is boring, but since it’s after lunch it means there’s only three periods to go.

The rest of the day, every time I see Shane, he’s getting a different kind of crap from the jock squad. At this point, if he was anybody else, I’d have already put a pink Post-it on his locker, but it feels like it would be too personal now. I mean, I could totally write, Your eyes take my breath away, in purple glitter pen, and I’d mean every word, but that would be so weird now that I’ve hung out with him. He’d probably take it wrong, not realizing this is what I do, and other people would see it, Ryan would hear about it, and it would become a thing—

No. I’m definitely not writing about his eyes. That’s a quiet truth, just for me, hugged to my chest like the hitching breath I can’t control when I glimpse him. He’s like a hunk of chocolate cake slathered in frosting that I’m not supposed to have, but can’t help wanting.