smiling slyly and running his tongue along his lip in this totally sexy way.
I roll my eyes. “Give me my pen back,” I order, holding out my hand.
He pulls the pen away and holds it to his chest. “Why? What’s wrong?”
“Just give it back,” I say again, smiling but resolute. There’s no way I will mess around with him now, because I have a boyfriend and I don’t do that anymore. I don’t blame him for trying, though, because nobody knows about me and Michael.
He passes me the pen and I put it down to the paper as if I’m going to write something. “Now, shut up. I need to concentrate,” I say.
He gets up quickly, pushing the chair hard, making a high-pitched shrieking noise. I’m surprised he’s so angry. It was no big deal, but whatever. I don’t care. I keep my eyes on the page and he walks away.
For some reason I attract the most messed-up guys. I’m like a magnet for psychos—the ones with anger problems or jealousy or a few who seem incapable of caring deeply about anyone, including their families.
I wish every guy came with a description card disclosing his inner emotional baggage. Like those papers you get in a chocolate box telling you what’s inside so you don’t waste your efforts on something you know you won’t like.
That’s why, when I first met Michael, he seemed so totally normal that he was almost boring. It’s like I bit into him, expecting something to come oozing out, but all there was was a little dribble of depression and an ex-girlfriend.
During the first few weeks, I didn’t know how to handle it. Without the usual constant fighting I have with a guy, the flatlined calm made me feel like he wasn’t really into me. I kept trying to pick a fight about the smallest things, but he didn’t bite. At least when you fight, you get a sign that a guy cares about you. But then Michael explained it to me one day. He told me it’s like I have to learn a different language of love. “It’s called words and expression,” he said.
The thing about Michael is that he’s twenty-eight. We were just friends for almost a year, but we got together about three months ago, just after I turned sixteen. People think a sixteenyear-old girl can’t really love. A man, that is. And definitely not a twenty-eight-year-old man. Sure, a sixteen-year-old can love a pet or an actor or a favourite pair of jeans. She can love a parent, a sibling, even a hamster. All of these kinds of love are clearly legitimate. But any feeling toward a man is considered a childish crush. It’s something cute or trivial, somehow not as legitimate as adult love. And a sixteen-year-old loving a man? This is inconceivable. But I’m living proof: it can happen.
Five
Because it’s Jess’s birthday, she, Mya, Shayla, and I decide to chill out behind the equipment hut by the school’s back parking lot during third period. We’re so high that none of us notice our vice-principal, Ms. Brentworth, turn the corner until it’s too late.
What can we do? Blunts in our mouths. Smoke in the air. We’re busted.
The four of us trudge down the hallway behind Ms. Brentworth, who walks like a pig on tippy-hooves, her fat calves and bulging feet stuffed into her tiny black shoes. When we pass a garbage bin, I’m quick to toss in my stash of weed, even though it kills me to lose it all. Someone immediately taunts, “Yo, Mel, what’s up?” and I know it’ll be gone when I come back.
We are taken into the office and Jessica and Mya are allowed to go home after a little blah blah blah, but since Shayla and I were the ones holding the joints, we have to wait three hours for our parents to show up. This will be my fifth high school suspension. Four were for skipping and one for “persistent opposition to authority,” when I refused to leave the classroom last year because I wasn’t going to blindly obey a teacher who was a male chauvinist pig.
My mom doesn’t even look at me when she arrives. She just goes straight to the counter and asks for Ms. Brentworth. Then she sits on one of the chairs closest to the door and starts rummaging through her purse. When Shayla’s mom arrives, she goes right up to Shayla and speaks through gritted teeth. “This is it, Shayla. This