D. Graham - Put It Out There

“Um, okay,” he said as he glanced at his friend.

I smiled because his cartoon voice was ridiculously cute. “I’ll be sitting over there if you need anything.” I pointed to the table where I always met Sophie. Then it occurred to me I’d been gone for a year and actually had no idea what Sophie and the guys did for lunch anymore.

“Okay,” Nikolai said again, almost as if he was embarrassed I was hovering. He sat down with his friend at a table full of grade eights. Obviously, he didn’t need my help. I was the one who needed help. No one was at our old table yet, and Steve had already walked in with his friends. If he cornered me before I had a chance to talk to Sophie, I wouldn’t know how to act. Well, that wasn’t true. It wasn’t rocket science—say yes or no. The problem was, I didn’t know which to say.

I almost went back to sit with Nikolai and his grade-eight friends just so I wouldn’t be alone. I glanced around the students’ lounge, hoping to spot Sophie or Doug. Instead, I saw the new guy walk in surrounded by a bunch of grade-twelve girls, who had obviously offered to show him around and have lunch with him. My nose squished up and my lip curled unintentionally because they were the snottiest girls in our school. He sat down at a table squeezed between Corrine Andrews on his right and Paige Peterson on his left. When he glanced up, our eyes accidentally met, so I quickly stared at the floor. I covered my mouth with my hand in case I still had the snarled-lip thing going on. The next time I checked, he was smiling—I couldn’t tell why. Corrine might have said something funny, not that she was known for her wit.

Steve sat at a corner table with a bunch of guys. He scanned the room and stopped at me. My heart raced like a baby gazelle separated from the herd.

“Hey, Derian,” Lisa Alvarez said as she put a tray with an apple and water on the table next to me. Her smile and tone weren’t exactly genuine when she said, “Welcome back.”

“Thanks.” When did she start sitting at the table with Sophie and the guys? Had she been my substitute? If they were trying to replace me, I would have preferred if they had chosen someone with a sliver of integrity.

She sat down and said, “I saw your brother drop you off this morning. Is he dating anyone?”

“Trevor’s not my brother. He’s my neighbour.”

Surprised, she said, “Really? He acts like he’s your brother. Is he single?”

Her eyes were gorgeous, big, with long lashes. And her lips were famous. She’d been every guy’s fantasy girl since her figure developed in grade seven. But Trevor didn’t date insecure girls, girly girls, or girls younger than him. None that I knew of. Even if Lisa Alvarez miraculously gained self-respect, she didn’t have a chance with him. “You’re not Trevor’s type.”

She flipped her long, shiny, brown hair over her shoulders and laughed. “I’m everyone’s type.”

I couldn’t argue with that, if all they were looking for was someone to get lucky with. Thankfully, Sophie, Doug, and the guys from their band had showed up. Sophie leaned in to speak closely to Lisa’s face in an intimidating way, “Trevor likes classy girls, Lisa. You haven’t got a snowball’s chance in hell.”

“Why don’t we let him be the judge of that?” She bit into her apple and looked pretty cocky.

Sophie pointed and said, “Sit over at that table. Don’t make me tell you again.”

Unfazed, Lisa stood with an arrogant grin and wandered over to sit with a different group of grade elevens. If Sophie did that to me, I’d be bawling, so either Lisa was made of Teflon, or she was a master at burying the humiliation. I grabbed Sophie’s arm and dragged her out of the lounge before she had a chance to cause more trouble.

“Wow, you’re eager.” Sophie laughed. “Okay, his name is Mason Cartwright. He’s in grade twelve and just moved to Squamish from Ottawa. His dad owns some sort of import company, and they’re filthy, stinking, disgusting, crazy rich. Apparently his dad commutes to work in a damn helicopter.”

“What? That’s not what I want to talk about. Wait, how did you find all that out so fast?”

“I called Julie at the hair salon. She gets the low-down on everyone. What did you want to talk about?”

“I think Steve asked me out on a date for this Saturday night.”

“You think?”

“He didn’t actually ask. We did this thing in English class where you set an intention and put it out there so the universe will make it come true. His intention was that I would go out with him Saturday night.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothing, yet. Tookey started talking and then I ran out of the classroom before he had a chance to ask for real.”

“Well, your answer should be no, simply on the grounds that he used Kooky Tookey’s kooky exercise to ask you out.” She made a pouty puppy-dog face. “Besides, you have to come to our gig on Saturday night. It’s our first real paid show and we need Dirty Deri there.”

Oh God, no. Dirty Deri was a one-time thing when I was going through a bad time right after my dad died. I was willing to go to their gig, but Dirty Deri was staying home, locked in a closet. “If I say yes to Steve, I’ll insist on going to watch you guys play. I just don’t know if I should say yes.”

“What is your Spidey-sense intuition telling you?”

“Nothing about boys. But some random girl is going to suffer a head injury, apparently.”

“Warn me if she’s Japanese. I have no problem rocking a helmet as an accessory.”

“She had blonde hair, so unless you have plans to bleach yours out, it wasn’t you.”

She leaned her back against the wall and crossed her arms as she considered my dilemma. “Do you like Steve?”

“I don’t know. He kind of talks a lot, but he’s really nice and smart. Apparently he plays on the tennis team.”

“And he got cute over the summer,” she pointed out.

“Yes, yes he did.” I contemplated. “But I want to focus on school. And I promised to help out at the Inn. I don’t really have time to date.”

“Deri, you need to at least kiss a boy before you go to college.”

“So, I should say yes?”

“Actually, I think you should wait and see if anything happens with Mason Cartwright.”

“Hardly.” An involuntary snort caught in my throat from the ridiculousness of that. I needed to crawl before I could qualify for the Olympics. “He’s sitting with Corrine and Paige already.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. Tell Steve you’ll go out with him as friends so you can still leave your options open.” She patted me on the shoulder and leaned in to add, “And since he’s walking over here right now, I’ll leave you to that.”

My palms immediately got sweaty. Sophie left, and I slowly turned around to face Steve. I couldn’t exactly read his expression as he walked along the path with his hands in his pockets, but I assumed it was some variation of insulted. “Hey,” he said quietly once we were face to face.

“Hi. Sorry I had to run off after class.”

“No problem.” He looked into my eyes. “I was wondering —”

I cut him off, “Did you mean you want to go out Saturday night as friends?” I smiled enthusiastically, as if I loved the idea. “Or, did you mean you want to go out on Saturday night for a date?” I wrinkled my nose and angled my eyebrows together to imply I wasn’t quite ready for that idea, which was true, so wasn’t hard to produce.

He hesitated for a second before he said, “Friends. Maybe we could go to the party Sophie’s band is playing at.”

“Oh, okay, sure.”

“Great.” He smiled and handed me a key chain. “I know this is kind of lame, but I went to Arizona over the summer. There is this famous architect place there —”