osmosis.
As I stare at the walls, I realize that my picture is actually starting to yellow a little around the edges.
On the other side of the pizzeria, Bobby Wilcox, yearbook editor and honor roll president, stands up, swaying on his feet. His face turns about as green as the peppers on Hank’s pies as he raises his cup like he’s about to toast the entire class. But before he can get out a single word, his eyes go all doorknob and he turns to the side, gagging and puking up about six slices of pepperoni.
The cheerleading squad screams in disgust. Three of them actually climb up onto their chairs, as if Bobby’s vomit has feet and can scurry across the floor and climb their bare legs.
What I notice—what makes me grimace—is the cup. Bobby’s dropped his cup, and it’s rolled across the floor. The brown bubbly puddle, polka-dotted with crushed ice, makes my skin squirm far more than the sight of his half-digested dinner does. I stare at it, keeping watch, thinking that maybe Hank should get some yellow crime scene tape, mark off the area. After all, anyone who was at my last game should know that spilled soda is just as dangerous as knives or bullets or a car with no brakes.
Staring at the puddle, my head pulses with the memory of the ref’s frantic whistle. I hear, once again, the shocked gasp that rose from the crowd. And I remember my own terrified shriek, which overwhelmed the scream of the whistle and the collective groan of the fans; my screech was so violent it practically diced up my throat like a Ginsu knife.
“That puke better not smell like booze, Wilcox,” Hank yells, just like he does every year, smashing a different last name onto the end of the sentence. He stomps out from the kitchen, his face flushed and dripping with sweat.
The football team moans and points; a chorus of I didn’t bring a bottle, not me, no way, climbs into the air; chairs scrape; the bell on the entrance starts jingling. The Wild Turkey is carried out tucked under a football player’s enormous biceps. My own table is emptying, too, as Gabe nudges me, sticks his nose against my ear. “Come on,” he murmurs, his breath warming my neck. “Let’s go.”
We step outside, stop in a clump just beyond the enormous slice of pepperoni painted on the plate glass window. The front door of Hill Toppers’ does an excellent imitation of a playground swing, flying open and shut again in rhythmic bursts. We—the former Lady Eagles—linger on the sidewalk, awkwardly toeing pebbles with our sandals, as they—the former Fair Grove High seniors—start piling into the cars lining the curb, ready for the hilltopping and stomach-pumping and baby-making portions of the night to officially begin.
We stare at each other, knowing there’s no way to change a scoreboard after the final buzzer. So we finally start exchanging hugs, plastering on smiles and pretending to be overjoyed that high school is over. Pretending we all don’t wish we could hit some magical rewind button and start again.
Especially me. Only I’d need to go back a little farther than the team; I’d start with those driveway practice sessions, those daily runs, the pounding, the stress, the overuse. Because Gabe and I are still going to college together, as we’d planned since the start of our senior year—now, though, it’s nowhere exotic. Just Missouri State University in Springfield, a mere fifteen miles from my front door, just like Gabe’s older brother and three-fourths of the college-bound Fair Grove High seniors, Gabe to become a journalist, as he’d always planned, and me to … what?
A scream peals through the night, like the squeal of a balloon with a leak. A few jokesters are already crammed into the cab of a pickup. Sean Greyson, pitcher for our baseball team and photographer for the Fair Grove Bulletin, who’d tallied every last vote for “Best Smile” and “Class Clown,” who’d shouted, “Gabe, stop drooling over her long enough to just look at the camera” when we’d posed for the “Class Couple” photo last month, has actually pulled his entire torso out of the passenger side window and is waving at me.
“Here! Chelsea! Catch!” he shouts, launching something right at me. Instinctively, I lean forward, open my hands like I’m receiving a pass.
The truck careens down the street, the screams of joyous freedom growing faint as I turn the object over in my hands. A box