The One That I Want Read online

  Addison was never right about anything. But I had to admit, at least silently to myself, that she’d hit on the truth this time. Robert knew I didn’t want to be a majorette, but he also knew the tryout was important to me, if only for warped reasons. We’d been friends for two years. We’d sat together on every band trip when Addison was with her boyfriend of the week and Robert’s younger girlfriend wasn’t around. I had achieved something, and he owed me more than an insult.

  Thinking about this, I realized that I had achieved something. Addison was looking over my shoulder, interested in my social life, rather than the other way around. That had never happened before. Never, in the six years we had been best friends. Now that I was a majorette (I was a majorette! So weird!), I might actually get a social life. Every majorette at my school had one—a real one that included boyfriends, not just unrequited crushes.

  But I would need to fight for mine. For the first time ever, I was enjoying some mediocre level of social acceptance. Unless I took immediate action, I would lose my newly favorable position at my school when my fat roll was exposed to the world. Every week this fall, I would be forced to wear a skintight sequined leotard on a football field in front of the entire student body and thousands more people packing the stadium. I was determined not to be the comic relief.

  I would have to lose more weight.

  August

  I saw him first, before Addison did. He was tall, slender, and Asian, and he kicked the football with the same purpose and economy of motion I tried for when I twirled batons. Every muscle in his body and every thought in his head focused on punting that ball perfectly across the football stadium. After his leg followed through with the powerful kick, he landed on the grass and watched the ball as it sailed through the goalposts, yet another score.

  Then he turned around again and his dark eyes met mine again. The first time this had happened, I had assumed I was imagining things. Boys did not look at me. They saw through me. He must have been looking at some statuesque majorette behind me. When he huddled with his coach, I actually turned to see what he had been looking at on our end of the field. A hundred girls twirled thumb-flips in unison. I was on the end of the front row, and nobody stood directly behind me. He must have been looking at Addison beside me, then. But if he were, the tilt of his head would have been different, I thought. He really did seem to be looking at me.

  Over and over.

  This was the third and final day of majorette camp for Addison and me. The camp was taught by college majorettes and feature twirlers and was held on the campus of Georgia Tech. I’d had some idea that we might pass hot college guys walking back and forth between the gym and the caf. I would never have talked to them. I was not Addison. But I wanted to look like I could have talked to them. Keeping up my personal style was a challenge now that I’d lost almost fifty pounds in nine months. Even my Courtney Love T-shirt had gotten so big that it flowed around me like a muumuu. I could only wear it by safety-pinning a pleat into the back of it, which was getting uncomfortable.

  I hadn’t had a lot of time to go shopping, because I’d spent pretty much my whole summer teaching little girls at the dance studio, then rehearsing with the marching band. And honestly, new clothes hadn’t been a big concern of mine until now. I never noticed my old clothes didn’t fit anymore until I put them on and they fell off. I had no choice but to replace my shorts, because I couldn’t be dropping my pants in public. But I didn’t want to buy a lot of new tops yet. I had plenty of money from my allowance and working at the dance studio. I was just afraid that if I bought clothes, I would stay that size. I was not finished losing weight.

  So the first day at camp, I wore one of my few shirts that fit. The second day, I wore the other. By day three I’d figured out that camp was held entirely in a gym set apart from campus foot traffic. All the cute college nerds had gone home for the summer anyway. Besides, I was out of clean laundry. I wore my MARCHING WILDCATS T-shirt, which fit because we’d turned in our sizes only a few weeks before.

  Of course on this day, the instructors decided to move us to the huge football stadium for the afternoon so we could get a taste of what twirling would be like if we tried out for a college majorette line. And while high school majorette camp was going on at one end of the stadium, high school football camp was going on at the other.

  But with this guy staring across the football field at me (I hoped), I was glad for once that I was not dressed with my usual edge. My MARCHING WILDCATS T-shirt could have passed for band geekdom or, wonder of wonders, school spirit. And in certain circles, the purple streaks in my hair, which I was wearing in two low ponytails down my back to combat the August heat, could have been misconstrued as fashionable.

  Was he really looking at me? Nothing would come of it, of course. He wasn’t from my high school. He could be from one of countless other high schools in Atlanta or from a tiny town hours away. I would never see him again after the camp session ended in a few minutes. In the meantime, it was nice to dream.

  A group of twenty hulking quarterbacks passed footballs to one another. They threw balls down the field in a hailstorm of pigskin. They ran complicated formations that the coach halted every few seconds, before they could fully execute them, which must have been frustrating.

  My guy was in a different group. Each player had a tall, slender kicker’s body. The coach of this group talked more. He explained with his hands, and from the looks of it, whatever he was telling them involved astrophysics. Each time his lecture ended, the boys would line up to kick the ball through the goalposts. Whether I was doing thumb-flips or one-turns, I made sure I watched my guy, from his step up to the tee to the follow-through of his kick.

  His legs were long and muscular. His shirt stuck to his chest with sweat. His longish hair bounced as he ran up to the ball and punted it. The coach would talk to him after each turn, pointing down the field. But from my lay-chick’s point of view, this boy did not need camp. He put the ball through the uprights every time.

  And then he turned around to see if I was watching. I couldn’t tell at that distance whether he was hot. But his stare showed that he unabashedly appreciated the movements of girls—or, just possibly, this girl. That was hot.

  The football camp ended with one last pep talk. The kickers gathered around their coach, and the quarterbacks gathered around theirs. Occasionally the coaches’ voices rang so loudly against the stadium seats that I could hear them over my own instructor counting thumb-flips. Soon the kickers shouted “Break!” and moseyed off the field.

  But not my guy. He stood on the sideline and watched the quarterbacks like he was waiting for one of them. Finally the quarterbacks shouted “Break!” and a towering blond guy headed for my guy. I knew the blond was huge because my guy had seemed tall before, half a head above his coach, but the blond was another half a head above him, and almost twice as wide. They stood together by the exit that the other players had taken out of the stadium. My guy said something to the blond. They both turned and looked at me.

  My heart sped up, even faster than it had each time my guy had caught my eye.

  While they talked, they nonchalantly crossed their arms and pulled up the sides of their shirts to reveal hard six-pack abs like nothing I had ever seen in real life, possibly because I still, out of habit, avoided the community pool.

  As if in slow motion, they exposed their muscular chests.

  Triceps flexing, they pulled the shirts over their heads.

  They stood there, chatting, wiping their faces and chests with the cloth. Admittedly, I had never played sports, and I did not hang out where the athletic boys hung out, so maybe I was misreading the entire situation. But it sure looked to me like the high school football player’s striptease. I enjoyed it way more than I meant to. I started to feel like a stereotypical guy gawking at girls and accidentally running his car into a pond.

  They both pulled clean T-shirts from the mesh bags at their feet and shrugged them on. But they hung arou
nd. And I could have sworn that every few seconds, my guy still glanced over at me.

  “Check out those hotties,” Addison said to me out of the corner of her mouth. I stole a look at her between thumb-flips. She nodded toward the guys. “When this slave driver finally lets us out of camp, run with me over to those boys, so we can stake our claim before the rest of these desperate females.”

  Hanging out with Addison was always dramatic. I considered myself to be an intelligent, reasonable person who had seen more than my share of teen girl hysteria, because of her.

  “Normally, if I saw strangers staring at me, I would run right over and introduce myself,” I said. “But I’m not convinced they’re staring at me. They could be watching any of these girls.”

  “They’re not staring at you,” Addison said. “They’re staring at me.” Her thumb-flips grew larger like she was trying to get the boys’ attention. I moved away from her so I wouldn’t get hit. On my other side, some football equipment on the sidelines was in my airspace—a sled with man-shaped pads that linebackers pushed down the field. I edged back toward Addison.

  “If these boys want to stare at me,” she went on, “I’m there.” On there she spun an extra-hard thumb-flip—so hard that it flew straight at me and dinged me on the nose. The blond guy pointed and laughed. My guy took a step forward, almost as if the baton strike were life-threatening and he was going to run to my aid.

  The tip of the baton was made of rubber, so it didn’t hurt too much at first. But in the next split second, the shock hit me. I dropped my baton, covered my nose with both hands, and aarghed at the pain.

  I used to have the cutest little nose. Then, one day when I was eleven, I was driving a go-cart around my mom’s yard with Addison in the passenger seat. Addison decided it was her turn to drive, jerked the steering wheel out of my hands, and ran us into a tree. The steering wheel broke my nose. When the swelling went down, I had a bump. My mom offered to get me plastic surgery this summer to fix it—“You will look so much better, and feel better about yourself, you’ll see”—but no way was I going under a knife just for looks.

  At least, that’s what I’d thought until I pictured what I must look like with a new red bump from Addison’s baton on top of my already prominent schnoz. There went any chance I’d had of capitalizing on my guy’s interest in me.

  I tried to resign myself to this and concentrate on making the pain go away. Ever since Addison had broken my nose, when I got hit there, it was like getting hit on my funny bone, a deep inescapable pain so bad it almost tickled. Pesky anger at her remained. But she didn’t always mess things up for me and boys, did she? No, because I had never had any “things” with boys before. She only had a habit of embarrassing me in front of guys who mattered to me, whether I mattered to them or not.

  “All right, ladies!” the instructor called. The other girls stopped twirling and gathered around her to hear her last few tidbits of wisdom while I stood behind them, clutching my nose, wishing the pain would suddenly clear so I could smile over at the boys like it was no harm, no foul. The pain would not relent.

  There was a rush around me as we were released from camp. “Here,” Addison said, pulling one of my hands free from my nose and thrusting something into it, which felt like my baton bag with all three batons inside. Then I was being dragged across the grass by my elbow, which of course was attached to my arm, attached to my hand, pressed desperately to my throbbing nose. She was dragging me over to those boys anyway.

  “Really?” I asked. My voice came out extra nasally.

  “Really,” Addison said. “And if you can’t say anything non-snarky, please say nothing at all.” We reached the sideline, and she let go of my elbow. “I saw you staring,” she told the boys. “You boys like what you see?”

  “She is completely serious,” I explained to them with my hand still to my nose.

  Both boys laughed. My guy asked me, “Are you okay?”

  He was tall and paler than most of the football players we’d seen who’d been frying in the sun all summer. His deep black hair had resisted any reddish sun streaks and fell into his eyes. A perfect combination of sinewy body and delicate features, he looked like the lead singer for a Japanese pop band. Everybody at my school thought these bands were cool and had posters of them in their lockers, though nobody actually listened to their music because hello, their lyrics were in Japanese. In short, I had wondered from a distance whether this boy was hot, and he was.

  I had given up on attracting him, though. Now it was only a matter of waiting until Addison was through throwing herself at these boys so we could go home. I would have preferred to make my way home on the MARTA subway by myself, clutching what was left of my face and my dignity. But Addison’s mom would be horrified, and I would get in trouble with my mom if I left Addison to fend for herself in downtown Atlanta, even though Addison was six months older than me and had never missed a chance to remind me of this and boss me around when we were younger.

  “I’ll be okay in a minute,” I mumbled. Still squinting against the pain, I released my nose, felt around for the metal bench that I’d noticed earlier, and sat down. I waved at them dismissively. “Y’all don’t mind me. Flirt away.”

  Addison grilled the guys. “Who were you really watching?”

  My guy laughed as the blond one exclaimed, “You!” He was cute too, but big enough to look dangerous. He stood with his muscular arms crossed like he was uncomfortable, protecting his tender feelings.

  “Out of all those girls?” Addison asked, tilting her head so that her long blond hair curved down around her boob on one side, and—oh my God, was she pointing both toes in like a two-year-old? Yes, she was. “You’re just saying you were watching me because I’m the one who came over here.” The first intelligent words she’d uttered.

  “Nooooo,” said my guy. “We were watching you and your friend here. We were fascinated by that flippy thing you do with your baton.”

  “This?” Addison asked.

  I deduced from the whirring noise that she was demonstrating her skills for them again. For safety, I slid farther away from her on the bench, then gingerly touched my nose. It would stay on. I dabbed my fingertips under my eyes to make sure my mascara hadn’t run when I teared up. I wasn’t wearing foundation because I would just sweat it off in the summer heat, but I was wearing heavy eye makeup, as always, to go with the purple streaks in my hair. If you were going to have purple hair, it didn’t seem right to dress down.

  “We’re taking the MARTA home,” Addison chirped, “but we’re stopping by the Varsity for dinner first.”

  This was not strictly true. Addison had said we should stop there for dinner. I had told her no. The Varsity served killer burgers and dogs and fries. It was exactly the kind of place I tried to stay away from now that I was losing weight.

  “Y’all want to come with us?” she asked.

  “Addison,” I said sternly. “They could be serial killers.”

  “That’s a separate camp,” said my guy.

  “We could be the serial killers,” Addison protested. “Are you boys scared we’ll attack you if you walk to the Varsity with us? Chicken? Bock-bock-bock!” She led the way out of the stadium, with the guy formerly known as my guy beside her.

  Shaking my head to clear it of the pain, I used my baton as a walking stick and hoisted myself up from the bench. With nothing else to do but trail along like lost puppies, the quarterback and I fell in behind Addison and my kicker. Awk. Ward!

  So it was clear from the beginning that Addison and my guy, her chosen one, were bonding. The odd man out and I, who had no interest in each other, were waiting around for them until they finished.

  I should have been thrilled that we were hanging with these boys who didn’t know I’d been fifty pounds heavier last November. Their names were Clean and Slate. But if I’d thought my only problem was being overweight, that idea faded as I tried to come up with something to say to this blond demigod. All the stars were a
ligned and I still couldn’t make small talk. Meanwhile, Addison walked ahead of us, chatting away with my guy.

  In these situations I found it best to call up a surge of adrenaline and pretend to be extroverted. I’m not saying it was best. My extroverted imitation tended to get out of hand sometimes. I’m just saying I found it best. I switched my baton bag to my left hand and stuck out my right hand. “I’m Gemma Van Cleve, by the way.”

  “I’m Carter Nelson.” The blond took my hand and moved it up and down gently, like he was afraid of breaking it. Which was good, because his huge, meaty paw could have wrapped around my hand twice if he were exceedingly limber and human anatomy worked that way.

  “And that’s Max Hirayama.” He nodded toward my guy and Addison as we emerged onto the tree-lined sidewalk.

  Addison looked around like she was disoriented until Max pointed to the left. “This way,” he said.

  “Wow, how do you know your way around so well?” Addison asked in the you-are-so-big-and-strong voice she used when flirting with boys or getting pulled over for speeding by policemen.

  “My dad is a professor here,” Max said.

  “Your dad is a professor at Georgia Tech?” Addison shrieked. “You must be so smart! You must think we’re so stupid!”

  I wanted to suggest that she stop tossing that we around so loosely. But the two of them had headed up the sidewalk, leaving Carter and me behind.

  Then I remembered that I was pretending to be a person who actually wanted to talk to other people. “And that’s Addison Johnson,” I told Carter. “Where are y’all from?”

  He named a high school just southeast of ours. They were one of our biggest rivals in academics, band, and sports, but especially football. “Oh, we play you our first game!” I burst out. “We’re going to kick your ass.”

  I was kidding, of course. Both teams were great, and the outcome of the game was always a toss-up. Carter should have understood and responded with a grin and a snappy comeback.