The Takedown(34)

“So immature.” I rolled my eyes. “You guys are worse than my brother.”

“Lo siento, you’re the one who said it,” Mac laughed, then pounded fists with Rupey. “And all I have to say is, thank you for noticing.”





“Meet me at the park on Saturday. We’ll get tacos.”

It was the first week of senior year, lunch. One second I was considering a browning avocado roll, wondering where they sourced the nori from; next Mac was there, spinning his Doc between his fingers, smelling freshly showered, and setting my weekend agenda. I glanced over my shoulder to check that he wasn’t speaking to the girl in line behind me.

“What,” I said in monotone, “am I the last Park Prep girl you haven’t been with?”

He laughed. “There might be a couple freshmen I missed. Come on. Sunshine. Tacos. Saturday. Noon. I know you’re free. I checked your G-Calendar. I’ll meet you on the library steps. Perfect gentleman, I swear.”

My lips turned down but my shoulders lifted up; my head tilted forward. Without my consent, my body had agreed. I immediately regretted its decision.

“Ugh,” Audra’s avatar said, then made a tsk sound later that night. (Thank you, Teen Sounds extension pack.) “Why are you stressing? It’s one daytime date.” Then Sharma txted:

sharm & Mac equals good guy. Aside from kissing addiction.

“Ooh, it can be like a test.” Fawn flapped her hand at me over FaceAlert. “See if he gropes you. If he doesn’t, he’s changed. If he does, you have to promise to tell us everything that comes after. I heard he does this thing with his thumb that will melt you.”

On Saturday, when I got to the library, Mac was already there, holding a daisy. When I tucked it behind my ear, he grinned. And not like a wolfish grin, just a pleased one. Over the next four hours we teased each other, talked nonstop, and eventually held hands. We walked through the park, cut over into Sunset Park for tacos, and circled all the way back to the library. I never expected that this amalgamation of bad-boy stereotypes might also be funny, genuine, and kind. It was a great date. But, I mean, Mac had had a lot of practice.

Once we were back on the library steps, Mac untangled the wilted daisy from my hair and tucked it into his jacket pocket.

“And now I’m going to kiss you.”

He did. And, well, whoa. If I had been with anyone else, it would have been the perfect, expected end to the best non-school-related afternoon of my entire life. But as we kept kissing, all I could think about was Fawn’s test. We hadn’t crossed into Groping, but we weren’t exactly in High Five country either. I pushed him away.

“I’m not interested in being one of your mannequins.”

That’s what I liked to call the girls Mac screwed around with. It made it easier to think of them as interchangeably pretty and empty-headed. Mac took my hand, ran his thumb along my lifeline. Was this what Fawn had meant? Because it didn’t make me feel slushy so much as flammable.

“You know, I’ve liked you since I saw you wearing that green dress at orientation.”

The best I could describe what Mac was wearing the first time I saw him was “boy gear”—pants, shirt. And that was only a guess. Trying to shake off its misgivings, my heart did a fluttery jig.

Telling it to chill, I softly replied, “You’ve had a funny way of showing it.”

He flashed his lopsided smile, shrugged.

“Yeah, I kinda, like, went through a slutty phase.”

“Three years is a kind of long ‘phase,’ no?”

“Which must be why I’m so totally over it.”

He pressed my hand gently between both of his, staring at our entwined fingers. Then he leaned in for another kiss. And maybe it was because I’d seen him do this countless times before, but my hand slipped out of his. I backed away and said for the first time the same seven words I’d been telling him ever since.

“I think we should be just friends.”

Mac looked at his now-empty palm, laughed dryly. “Hermosa, you and I will never be just friends.”

I expected him to go away after that. Instead we ended up talking on our Docs every night and meeting up every morning. He’d run to see me between classes, so he could walk me to mine even though it guaranteed he’d be late to his. Every Saturday, no matter how busy we both were for the rest of the day, we’d grab food and chill in the park for a bit. He came to my debates. Before I knew it, I’d become the president of the Mackenzie Rodriguez fan club while remaining its only unaffiliated member. I’d thought I’d proved him wrong about us not being able to be friends. Right until he called me a slut outside Park Prep.

Now we were sitting across from each other on his bed. Mac had worried his curls into a puffy ’fro.

“You know that isn’t me in the video, right? I tried to tell you. Someone is messing with me.”

He nodded. “I probably knew when I saw it, but Channing Gregory showed it to me with this mierda-eating grin, and I just got so pissed. At you and him and me.”

“You called me a slut.”

“Kyla.” His expression crumpled. “What can I say? If I could take it back I would. I mean, lo siento mucho, but, like, I think that was the only reaction I was capable of in my state of massive disintegration. I felt like someone used an expansion ray on my heart and then, like, set it to pulverize.”