at the school’s front doors as we always did.
I stumbled my way through the day, doing my best to keep a low profile and ignore…well everybody. I never would’ve guessed that to include Stephen Fitchco, but it did. He seemed determined to find me by myself, but all day I managed to avoid him. When the sixth period bell rang, I was out of my seat and out the door faster than you could say spit.
Leah and I met up at our usual spot just outside the school grounds. I noticed instantly that she looked better. Her secrets obviously hadn’t burdened her too badly.
It only took a few short minutes for her to strike up conversation. Something about an extracurricular project she’d been working on with our physics instructor, capturing wind and something about velocity, blah, blah, blah. She lost me after that. Once again, I retreated into the sanctuary of my mind, which I so often did when Leah and I were together.
Leah was an incredibly intelligent overachiever, which unfortunately made her a social pariah. It’s one of the things that made our friendship work. She valued someone her own age who would listen to her incessant scholastic chatter and I needed someone who could keep themselves occupied while I stayed inside my own head. Ours was a completely symbiotic relationship, but over time, I’d really come to like Leah. Occasionally she’d shock me with some witty comment or funny observation that gave me a rare insight into the treasure that she really is.
A name I recognized brought me back to the moment. “Do what?”
Leah was never surprised when I asked her to repeat something. I think she had a rough idea of how often I zoned out. “What part didn’t you get?” I knew she was asking just to be difficult.
“Did you mean Stephen Fitchco?” I knew I’d heard her say Stephen.
“Yes.” She wasn’t going to make this easy.
“And?”
“That’s why Ryan wanted to know.”
“Wanted to know what?”
“Carson! Weren’t you listening at all?”
“Apparently not. I’ve got a lot on my mind. Just tell me again.”
And in true Leah style, with only a sigh to convey her frustration, she repeated her entire story. “Ryan Phillips came to my locker between fourth and fifth period and asked me what was going on between you and Stephen Fitchco. I told him I didn’t know then he told me what had happened in the cafeteria. When I asked him why he wanted to know, he said Bobby Warren was interested in you and wanted him to find out if you and Stephen had a thing.”
As I suspected, everyone in school knew about what I’d done. My feet, which already felt heavy because I was so tired, suddenly felt leaden, dread weighing them down. “And what did you tell him?”
“I told him I didn’t think so.” Leah stopped and looked at me questioningly. “You don’t, do you?”
“No!”
“So then what was all that about in the cafeteria?”
I told Leah about my near miss with Stephen’s car and how he’d approached me under the guise of seeing if I was alright then dropped me some cheesy pick up lines. Her eyes were as big as saucers by the time I concluded my story. To Leah, it was as juicy as any Gossip Girl episode, poor thing. Sadly, it had been a pretty significant occurrence in my own life as well. It was a depressing testament to how lacking our social lives really were.
“Alright, now remind me again why this is all such a big deal?” As if it weren’t obvious.
“Because Ryan ended up asking me out, silly.”
Oh. I guess it wasn’t that obvious.
All her bubbling excitement had little to do with me and my life; Leah was making headway of her own.
Leah had been nurturing a serious crush on Ryan Phillips since I’d known her, but Ryan had never given her the time of day. Though Ryan wasn’t a jock, he was widely accepted among them, mainly because Bobby Warren was his cousin. And Bobby was a jock, a copper-haired hottie who played wide receiver, dominated the wrestling mat and dated the co-captain of the cheerleading squad. Yeah, it’s one of those kinds of schools.
“What?” I couldn’t hide my surprise or my delight. “Shut up!”
Leah was smiling widely, nearly aglow with the new development. “I’m serious.”
“What did you say?”
“Duh. I said ‘yes’.”
“So give me details. When? Where?”
“He invited me to a lake party this weekend.”
A lake party? My dream kind of lake party? The ones she’d