Chasing Crazy - Kelly Siskind Page 0,104
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“Seriously?”
“God, yes!”
She runs her tongue over her braces. “Did you smile back?”
I snort. “As if. It’s Drew frickin’ Masters. I probably just had something stuck to my head. Why else would he look at me?” Like I need more stress today.
Instead of taking another bite, she moves the refried beans around her plate. The plate I’d like to shove my face in. “Is he still looking?” she asks.
Chewing on my lip, I inch to the side again. Instead of dreamy eyes and spiky hair, my line of sight falls on the reason I’m starving. The reason my life may implode today.
Mrs. Bramowitz.
I smell her when she’s three feet away, her ever-present perfume a pungent mix of mothball, litter box, and fruitcake. Basically, old lady. I spend the better part of most English classes sneezing. As she approaches, I pull up my kneesocks and shift on my seat, dreading whatever bad news she’s likely to share. I doubt anything will top last week’s excited hand gestures when she exclaimed, “You’ve been chosen to address the school with your Thanksgiving poem!”
That news mixed with the thick aroma of her perfume almost knocked me out cold.
I’m not sure when my glossophobia—fear of public speaking—kicked in. It could have been in grade two when Suzie Boyd tripped me as I walked up for my planets presentation. Or maybe it was a few years later when Ethan Eckles launched a spitball at my face while I enlightened our class on climate change. The wet paper slid down my cheek like a snail. Whatever the catalyst, the reason for my impending torture stops at the foot of our table.
I sneeze.
Mrs. Bramowitz places her hand on my shoulder. “Are you excited for the assembly, Pininfarina?”
Petrified, appalled, and numb are more like it, but I offer a shaky “Sure,” all while fighting another violent reaction to her perfume.
“Wonderful. I just wanted to let you know there’s a slight change to the format. Instead of opening the assembly, you’ll be closing it.” She hunches lower, and the glasses chained around her neck almost smack my face. “You’ll do great, dear. Don’t be nervous.”
She can’t be serious.
With one more squeeze of my shoulder, she walks away, her thick scent following in a wide wake. Wrinkling my nose, I crane my neck as she passes Drew’s table, hoping to catch another glimpse. But he’s gone. Along with his smile.
Suddenly, the barely touched burrito on Becca’s plate seems like the perfect thing to fill the void left by Drew’s departing smile. The need to eat it, or something, overpowers my nerves, this afternoon’s performance taking a back seat to the swelling of my fifteen-year-old heart.
Drew frickin’ Masters noticed me.
I nod to Becca’s plate. “Are you gonna finish that?”
With a sigh, she eyes her midsection and the rolls hanging over her skirt. “No. You can have it. I shouldn’t have gotten it anyway. Diet and all.” She shoves the burrito my way, and I hoover the thing.
Perfect Thursday Burritos.
* * *
Stupid Thursday Burritos. We’re nearly through the one-hour assembly, my impending speech just minutes away, and unnatural things are happening in my belly. Maybe it was the day and a half of fasting, or the awareness that my already low social stock may soon crash. All I know is there’s something horrific wrenching and coiling in my abdomen that has me folding forward, desperate for the fetal position.
Becca joins me in a forward slump. “You okay?”
I shake my head. “No. Not okay.”
All ability to swallow vanishes as cold sweat pricks my neck. My jaw tingles. Gas expands and builds in my core, an unpleasant silent belch following its escape. Forget the fasting. It was definitely the burrito.
The stupid Thursday Burrito.
To distract myself, I catalogue the domino effect of awful that led me here: Mrs. Bramowitz choosing my poem, me starving myself, Drew frickin’ Masters’s swoony smile. Me, predictably, eating my feelings—in the form of a rich bean mixture—on an empty stomach. And now I’m going to die in the middle of our Thanksgiving assembly.
“You should go to the office,” Becca whispers.
I focus on our matching black loafers, on the hole in her sock she refuses to fix. Her theory: a uniform-wearing girl needs to express her individuality. A sharp internal twist blinds me, and I bite my lip to keep from crying out. Holy crap. If I throw up in front of all these people, in front of Drew three rows ahead of me, I will never leave my house or my room