B.C. Johnson - Deadgirl

“Forget it,” Zack said, trying to offer a wan smile. It was fake, grotesque even.

“Stop it,” I said. “I’m sorry, okay. This is new for me. Being on Unsolved Mysteries isn’t my idea of a great weekend.”

Zack offered a genuine smile this time, even if it just barely escaped his lips.

“Can we start over?”

My heart sank when he said it. What did that mean? All over? My eyes burned, and I growled silently in the dark reaches of my mind—I couldn’t cry. Stop it. Just stop it, you stupid girl . My fists balled into little white fists, but my voice stumbled over the hitch in my breath. Please stop. Just don’t cry.

“O-okay,” I said, and nodded. When I dipped my head down on the nod, I made sure my curly mane of black hair curtained around my face. Hiding it as best as I could, hunkering back into it like a hood, “Just. Okay. All right.”

I knew I shouldn’t have let Zack back into my thoughts. Shouldn’t have hoped that the smartest, cutest, most perfect guy would want someone like me. I was the weird girl who disappears during a date and shows up on a milk carton. I was Lucy Day, Damsel-in-Distress. Victim. Loser.

My shoulders bowed, and I nodded at a question unasked. I turned to go.

“W-wait!” He said, and grabbed my shoulder. I snapped back toward him.

“Zack…”

“I meant another date. Start over another date.”

My ears went deaf. The hollow rush of blood wooshed through my head. My lips felt numb. It sounded like I said “What?” but I couldn’t be sure behind the mile of cotton jammed so suddenly into my head.

“Another date?” he asked. “One preferably without a rescue team.”

Somehow, my lips remembered how to smile. I’d gone drunk at the wheel, but someone on board still had a hand on the rudder.

“U-unless that’s what you’re into,” Zack said. “Because I have a cousin who’s a lifeguard. We can go to the beach, pick fights with sharks, slap around the whales. It might be fun.”

I laughed, and the grin he flashed made my brain melt. I found myself dangerously close to a swoon again—I couldn’t believe it. Two swoons within the same week. One more and I had to pack it in and become a full-time romance novel cliché.

“Well?”

“Yes!” I said. “I mean. Well, uh. Sure. That’s cool.”

I went to stick my hands nonchalantly in my pockets before I realized I was wearing a skirt. I went for the cardigan, but it was too high up, and I ended up look like an old man trying to pull up his incredibly high pants. Zack laughed.

“Did I mention how good you look today?”

I beamed. I couldn’t help it.

“Nope,” I said. “I don’t remember anything like that.”

“I’ll tell you in Spanish, then,” Zack said.

“Cool,” I said, and backed away slowly. “Start working on a date idea.”

He frowned, “What about the shark thing?”

“Shark date is the third date,” I said. “I’m waiting.”

Zack nodded and his mouth turned into his crooked grin. I turned and fled back to my group with as little speed as I could manage. I didn’t quite get the lazy stroll I was gunning for, but I accomplished something slightly under power-walk.

When I get back to the group, the girls were filled with dynamite. All of them bounced on their seats, pained faces screaming for details. I told them what happened, and they erupted in an atom bomb of girlish glee. Frankly, I found the whole thing disgusting. Or, I would have, if I hadn’t been jumping up and down like an idiot along with them.

After pocketing the cash my mom loaned me for lunch, only marginally aware that not eating for three days was a strange thing, I headed to Spanish. I was packed with tightened springs—I was made of light. I thought of Zack, who liked me. No maybes, no faint hopes. No dreaded freshman Weirdness . He liked me. He didn’t want to be with Morgan, he didn’t want to go on a date with a cheerleader, or even Becca Darling, the brainy-but-sexy phenomenon in all of Zack’s honors classes.

Me . My heart felt like a hot coal in my chest.

Not everywhere else though, I noted as I made my way to Spanish. I hadn’t noticed it until then, but I was freezing. My legs felt like they had been dunked in ice. I blamed it on the skirt—I’d worn it as a universal go-to-hell to my own fear, but it was thin and the air was turning chilly. This wasn’t even California cold, the wussy cold that gripped me often. I felt like I’d eaten a bucket of ice cream and been dumped into a meat locker with the Abominable Snowman.

I pulled my cardigan around me, which did next to nothing against the chill.

The incredible fluffy lightness caused by thoughts of Zack made Spanish zip by. He sat behind me, as usual, but today we didn’t sit and pretend like the other didn’t exist. We’d taken Spanish One together freshman year, and had spent most of those days flirting, passing notes, and engaged in the standard Weirdness sports. This year had been awful. Awful until today, anyway.

We spoke quietly to each other during lulls in the class. Mr. Halloway— Seńor Halloway, as he insisted we call him—even yelled at me at one point to quiet down. Both of us disappeared back into our verb conjugation worksheet, and I didn’t look up until a tiny square of ripped-off notebook paper floated onto my desk. I turned it over to see the small neat blue handwriting I knew to be Zack’s.

You look really great today.

Where is your cauldron and broom?

I spun around, trying to decide between playful annoyance and joy. He locked me with a wily half-smirk and bent back to his worksheet. I flipped the paper over and scrawled a message on it. I watched him read it with a faux-shocked expression. He wrote beneath my message and slipped it back to me.

I was late this morning and didn’t have time to do my hair.

Well, either that or I’m victim to some kind of witch’s curse.

Weird, huh?

I smirked at him, but when I turned back to write my own note back I gave a quick up-and-down of my outfit. It was a little proto-Goth I supposed, but the glaring pink top had to count for something, right? Stupid boys. I scrawled something equally inflammatory back to him on the already-crowded slip of paper. He handed it back to me, and my breath caught.

Benny is having a party at his place Friday.

You should come with me.

A party? I loved parties. And going with Zack would make it one of the better ones in recent memory. I wasn’t sure about the specifics, and I certainly couldn’t guarantee that as soon as my parents got over the we were so worried period and entered the how could you zone they wouldn’t ground me until next Christmas. It didn’t matter. I’d figure out the groveling later. I wrote an all-caps YES on the paper and settled into my worksheet with renewed, non-academically-inspired glee.

The glee disappeared with Geometry class. I sat, trying to endure the combination of soul-sucking boredom and bone-shattering cold. I flirted with the guy who sat next to me until he let me borrow the huge life vest-like parka he was wearing. It helped a little, and I even managed to ignore the fact that I looked like a bright red marshmallow in the comically sized jacket. Well, that, and the knowledge that I had just set the women’s rights movement back a good three months with a few well-timed fake laughs and arm-touches. I was ashamed, but I was warmer, so I clung to that.

When school ended the guy whose jacket I conned from him followed me half-way to my car before giving up. He started asking about my Winter Formal plans when I shoved the jacket into his hands, thanked him as sweetly as I could, and bolted to Mom’s car. I felt awful. Girls are evil . I admit it readily.