story in front of beautiful Deena, who has finally looked up from her history book, her half-moon eyebrows raised in surprise. Ed keeps eating and talking, telling us how Travis finally pushed so hard on the officer’s abdomen that the piece of hot dog had gone flying across the room, hitting another delinquent right in the eye.
“The guy was like ‘Ow! My eye!’” Ed holds his hand over his eye.
Deena laughs at this, one little snort, in and out.
Travis’s eyes move quickly around her face. “What a great laugh you’ve got.”
She stops quickly, biting her lip, and looks back down. “Well, Evelyn makes me laugh all the time. She’s so funny.”
It’s pathetic, this attempt. His eyes are still focused on her face, sparkling now, love struck. She’s doing her best to help me, trying to be a good friend, but there’s no point now. It’s like gravity, pulling him toward her, the laws of nature. There’s no one to be mad at, even. It’s just the way it is.
“Evelyn is funny,” Travis agrees.
I turn and look out the window, but I can still see all four of us in its glossy, dark reflection. I listen to Deena and Travis talk about how funny I am. This is all I can do. They talk about nothing, about the difference between Nebraska and Kansas, the difference between eighth grade and ninth. They are looking only at each other. Love at first sight. I imagine a cartoon lightning bolt between them, tapping into both of their brains, making their eyes light up, creating a force field no one else can enter. Everyone else in the restaurant, even me and Ed, could blow up and die, and they wouldn’t even notice.
Ed scrapes the cheese off the wrappers of the Big Macs, licks his fingers, and then sucks on the straw of his empty Coke until the cup implodes. After this, he leans back in the booth, eyes closed. “Oh man, I feel so much better,” he says, picking up his car keys. “That was awesome. Okay, let’s go.”
Travis looks at the car keys in Ed’s hand, then back at Deena. “Why don’t you guys come?” He turns to me, looking at me for the first time since Deena came back from the bathroom. “We’re just going to drive around for a while. Come on, Evelyn.” He pinches my cheek lightly. “Have some fun.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” I say.
He pinches my elbow lightly, lowering his voice. “You okay?” He gives me a pleading look, and I can see he’s asking me to help him out here, to be a friend. Clearly, he did not know about the love affair between us. And at this point, this is the only thing I have left. The goal now, I decide, is to maintain dignity.
I smile. “I’m fine. I just need to study. We have a test tomorrow.”
“Well then, come on.” He reaches around my back and closes my history book. “You need to have a little fun. You’ve sat there reading all night. I’m sure you’re ready for your test or whatever.”
“Evelyn is so smart,” Deena says, nodding quickly. “I’m serious. If she didn’t help me with my homework, I don’t know what I’d do.”
“She is smart,” Travis agrees. They look at each other again and smile. I look out the window, at the snow coming down. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to go drive around in Ed’s van. I want to go lie down on the highway and let a truck run over me.
“Evelyn, come with me to call my grandmother,” Deena says. She is trying to wink, but she isn’t very good at it, and it just looks painful, like there’s something in her eye. “Let’s see if we can go.”
I follow her outside. We stand by the pay phone, shivering in the cold. It is January, but she is wearing a miniskirt with pink legwarmers pulled up only to her knees because of the movie Flashdance, which neither of us has actually seen. I tried making a pair for myself, cutting the top off a pair of tights—perfectly good tights, my mother complained. But they still didn’t look like legwarmers; they sagged down around my ankles, and when I was in math class the next day, old Mr. Delph, so blind that he couldn’t tell when Candy Vistoli’s big sister showed up to take her tests for her, asked me in front of everyone if I had sprained both my