“I know. When it comes to guys, I prefer to learn from the best.”

That makes her blush. “I don’t know.”

“I must sound like such a weirdo, but I am ready to turn over a new leaf.” I stand up and gather my things. She doesn’t stop me. “Huxley, I know things are different between us now, but from one telephone pole to another, I could really use your help.”

Another awkward moment of silence commences. This time, Huxley breaks it. “Okay,” she says. Huxley smiles at me, a genuine smile. I can see all her shiny teeth.

“Thank you so much,” I say, sounding like a peasant addressing a queen. But it’s necessary to let her believe she’s totally in control. “Where should we start?”

Huxley checks the clock on the wall. “Not now. I have to meet Steve.”

“Hot date?”

She gives me an odd look. I guess we’re not at the jokey friend stage yet. “Steve works at Mario’s Pizza on Monday nights, so I hang out there and keep him company. It’s usually dead there.”

“How sweet.”

“I love spending time with him, even if he is just folding pizza boxes. You’ll know the feeling soon.”

“You go there every Monday night?” I ask.

“Yes. It’s a good place to do homework.” She sticks her pad and mauve pen in her bag. She carries around fewer books than Val. “Rebecca, do you have heels at home?”

“Yeah.”

“Start wearing them.”

I barely wave back when she says goodbye. I’m too distracted by the break-up scheme that just popped into my head.

13

My dad will never throw away a coupon. One drawer in our kitchen is stuffed with discounts for every product and restaurant you can imagine: food, groceries, clothes, big-screen TVs, dog food even though we don’t have a dog. I spend a good half hour rummaging through envelopes brimming with unredeemable offers until I find it. The background is a Sicilian-slice graphic: Half off any large pizza at Mario’s. Valid Mondays only.

“Becca, what are you doing down there?” my mom calls from the staircase. “You’re going to be late.”

I shove the coupon in my wallet and grab my gym bag. My heels click loudly against the floor as I race out the door.

In the middle of eighth period, I receive a characteristically in-depth note from Val.

O. M. FREAKING. G.

I don’t have to wait for her when class lets out. She jumps in front of me and cups my shoulders.

“Becca.” Val breathes heavily. She zones in on my eyes, trying to communicate telepathically. I’m lost.

“Val.”

“Becca.” Kids file around us in all direction. “Becca.”

“Use your words.”

“Ezra. Told. Me. That...” Val stomps her feet, about to burst. “He can see himself falling in love with me. Falling in love! With me! Ezra! The cutest nonjock, nonsenior guy in the school.”

My stomach knots itself like the rope I could never climb in gym class. She has yet to apologize for treating me like carry-on luggage at the movies, and I see now that she never will. Just because Val is in a relationship doesn’t give her permission to be a crappy friend.

“Um, hello?” Val says. “Thoughts, comments, concerns?”

“What does that even mean?”

“Obviously it’s too soon for us to be in love. But he can see himself falling in love with me.”

“Why is he giving you the advance notice? If he’s going to fall in love with you, then he should just let it happen. Is he saying that he could fall in love with you as like a test? ‘You’re on track to be fallen in love with by me. Keep up the good work’?” I throw in a thumbs-up.

“I think you’re overthinking this. He’s telling me that our relationship—P.S. I’m in a relationship. With a boy! How cool is that?—our relationship has the potential to go the distance. I think that’s exactly what he means. Right?”

I check my watch. It’s getting dangerously close to two-thirty. I pull Val down the hall as we continue our analysis.

“I don’t know,” I say. “But that’s a really weird thing to tell someone. And really soon, too. Did he just blurt it out?”

“It’s not something you just blurt out,” Val says. She tells me about their Saturday excursion to Fort Lee, where movies in the 1910s used to shoot. “Hollywood before Hollywood,” he told her. Before filmmakers wised up and migrated to sunny Los Angeles. Ezra gave her a personal tour of one of the soundstages. Val found it boring after the first hour, but she loved how into it he was. Ezra probably lit up like a department-store Christmas display describing everything.

Val looks me over. “You don’t seem happy.”

“For you? This is great,” I say with all the excitement of a eulogy.

“Real convincing. You’re my best friend. I thought you would seem more excited for me.”

“I am. I just... Things are different now.”

“They aren’t. I just have an addition in my life.”

“I know.” And I know it’s not true. I check the time on my phone: 2:27 p.m.

“I gotta run,” I say. “Maybe we can hang out later?”

“Can’t. Ezra and I are studying tonight. Where are you rushing off to?”

“Practice.” My walk quickly morphs into a jog.

“For what?” Val asks, but I’m already gone.

My clicking heels reach a piercing pitch and echo down the hallway.

* * *

I enter the gym at 2:35 p.m. Forty sets of eyes stare at me, but nobody says a word. They are embarrassed for me. I keep my head down and scurry to the bleachers. Since when do clubs start on time here?

“You’re late,” Huxley says.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know you started right at two-thirty.”

I take a seat in the front bleacher.

“Stand up,” she says. “You can sit when practice is over.”

“Are you serious?”

She glares at me with the fire of a thousand tanning booths. I’ll take that as a yes.

I do as she says. All the girls have a perfect view of me. Now even the guys on the scenery crew stop what they’re doing to gawk.

Huxley turns to the other dancers. “We only have the gym for two hours a day, and there are eight routines to master in six weeks’ time. So when I send an email saying practice begins promptly at two-thirty, I mean it.” She cocks an eyebrow at me.

Message received.

She turns on her smile, all traces of nastiness gone. I sit down.

“Rebecca, I didn’t say you could sit yet.”

It’s only the thought of her relationship crumbling, of her sitting at a lunch table alone and forsaken, that propels me back to my feet.

“Our next order of business is to choose what sports each squad will be representing. Every captain came up with one sport. And this year, to make the process more democratic, I will be choosing sports at random from a hat,” Huxley says, unaware that that isn’t democracy.

She chooses first, exaggerated excitement on her face. “My squad, our sport is...curling? What’s curling? Who put this in here?”

Meredith Arturro, captain of one of the lesser squads, steps forward. “It’s like shuffleboard on ice.”

“Shuffleboard isn’t in the Olympics.”

“But curling is. It’s big in Canada.”

While they go to someone’s laptop to verify curling’s existence, my squad mates talk among themselves. Ninety percent of their sentences begin with “My boyfriend.”

“My boyfriend has the most adorable golden retriever.”

“My boyfriend is taking his driving test next week, and he’s been practicing like a maniac.”

“My boyfriend and I went to a sushi restaurant, even though my boyfriend hates Japanese food. And I told my boyfriend that sushi is amazing, but my boyfriend was like ‘I’m gonna puke if I have to put one of those things in my mouth.’ So my boyfriend just got chicken. At a sushi place! Ugh, my boyfriend.”

They wait for me to join in the conversation. I stand there with my mouth gaping open. “I didn’t know they serve chicken at sushi restaurants.”

The girls humor me with smiles, then continue their deep conversation.

Across the court, the scenery crew nails together the first of the sets. Each dance routine gets its own sets that wheel across the court to emphasize what the theme is. I guess the school had to find a way to open SDA up to guys. I spot a familiar face painting Olympic rings on a canvas.

“Hey.”

“You’re in SDA?” Ezra asks. Sweat forms around his temples. Flecks of paint dot his face and arms.

“I am. I live to dance.”

“Me, too, but I find the costumes too binding,” Ezra says, matching my penchant for sarcasm. “So I paint.”

“You paint.” I look at his masterpiece thus far. The rings are squares layered with jagged brushstrokes. Painting is not his medium. “Looks good.”

“Yeah right.” He dips the brush in more paint and steadies his hand on the canvas. That doesn’t do the trick. “I’m directing the interstitial videos for the show, but since that’s technically part of the scenery crew, I have to help out. At least I was able to sucker some of my theater compatriots into helping out, too.”

“Yeah, you need someone to paint over all your strokes,” his friend Jeff O’Sullivan says.

“I’m more Kubrick than Kandinsky, I guess.”

“You’re doing the videos? That’s so cool,” I say. The SDA captains, and their boyfriends, act in video skits to introduce the show and then each routine. They are usually the only ones who find them funny, but I have faith that Ezra can create something nongroanworthy. “Hopefully they’ll be better than Starship Alien II.”

“Starship Alien II had some redeeming qualities, surprisingly.” Ezra’s face brightens, as it does whenever movies come up.