That week at school, I noticed Jesse in the hallway almost every day. Now that I knew who he was, he was everywhere.
“That’s the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon,” Olive said when I mentioned it at lunch. “My brother just told me about this. You don’t notice something and then you learn the name for it and suddenly it’s everywhere.” Olive thought for a moment. “Whoa. I’m pretty sure I have the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon about the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.”
“Are you seeing Jesse everywhere, too?” I asked, entirely missing the point. Earlier that day, I’d walked right by him coming out of Spanish class. He was talking to Carolyn Bean by her locker. Carolyn Bean was the captain of the girls’ soccer team. She wore her blond hair back in a bun, with a sporty headband every day. I’d never seen her without lip gloss. If that was the kind of girl Jesse liked, I stood no chance.
“I’m not seeing him any more than normal,” Olive said. “But I always see him around all the time. He’s in my algebra 1 class.”
“Are you friends with him?” I asked.
“Not really,” Olive said. “But he’s a nice guy. You should just say hi to him.”
“That’s insane. I can’t just say hi to him.”
“Sure you can.”
I shook my head and looked away. “You sound ridiculous.”
“You sound ridiculous. He’s a boy in our class. He’s not Keanu Reeves.”
I thought to myself, If I could just talk to Jesse Lerner, I wouldn’t care about Keanu Reeves.
“I can’t introduce myself, that’s crazy,” I said, and then I gathered my tray and headed toward the trash can. Olive followed.
“Fine,” she said. “But he’s a perfectly nice person.”
“Don’t say that!” I said. “That just makes it worse.”
“You want me to say he’s mean?”
“I don’t know!” I said. “I don’t know what I want you to say.”
“You’re being sort of annoying,” Olive said, surprised.
“I know, okay?” I said. “Ugh, just . . . come on. I’ll buy you a pack of cookies.”
Back then, a seventy-five-cent bag of cookies was enough to make up for being irritating. So as we walked over to the counter, I dug my hand into my pocket and counted out what silver coins I had.
“I have one fifty exactly,” I said just as I followed Olive to the back of the line. “So enough for both of us.” I looked up to see Olive’s eyes go wide.
“What?”
She directed me forward with the glance of her eyes.
Jesse Lerner was standing right in front of us. He was wearing dark jeans and a Smashing Pumpkins T-shirt with a pair of black Converse One Stars.
And he was holding Carolyn Bean’s hand.
Olive looked at me, trying to gauge my reaction. But instead, I stared forward, doing a perfect impression of someone unfazed.
And then I watched as Carolyn Bean let go of Jesse’s hand, reached into her pocket, took out a tube of lip balm, and applied it to her lips.
As if it wasn’t bad enough she was holding his hand, she had the audacity to let go of it.
I hated her then. I hated her dumb, soccer-playing, headband-wearing, Dr-Pepper-flavored-lip-balm-applying guts.
If he ever wanted to hold my hand, I’d never, ever, ever let go.
“Let’s get out of here,” I said to Olive.
“Yeah,” she said. “We can get something from the vending machine instead.”
I walked off, depressed and lovesick, heading for the vending machine by the band room.
I bought two Snickers bars and handed one of them to Olive. I chomped into mine, as if it were the only thing that could fill the void in my heart.
“I’m over him,” I said. “Totally dumb crush. But it’s done. I’m over it. Seriously.”
“Okay,” Olive said, half laughing at me.
“No, really,” I said. “Definitely over.”
“Sure,” Olive said, scrunching her eyebrows and pursing her lips.
And then I heard a voice coming from behind me.
“Emma?”
I turned to see Sam coming out of the band room.
“Oh, hey,” I said.
“I didn’t know that you had this lunch period.”
I nodded. “Yep.”
His hair was a bit disheveled and he was wearing a green shirt that said “Bom Dia!”
“So, I guess we’ve got our first shift together,” he said. “Tomorrow at the store, I mean.”
“Oh,” I said. “Yeah.” On Tuesday, Marie had borrowed my Fiona Apple CD without asking, prompting me to call her a “complete asshole” within hearing distance of my parents. My punishment was a Friday shift at the store. In my family, instead of getting grounded or having privileges revoked, you redeemed