The New Guy (and Other Senior Year Distractions) Part 14

"After that?" he asks.

"I don't know," I say. "Can I text you? Can you drive yet?"

"You can text me," he says, "but, no. I can't drive yet. You'll have to come get me."

His voice sounds warm and husky on come get me, and I can't help myself. I'm not sure how I'll ever actually stop kissing him and leave this room.

"Alex?" Someone pounds on the door. "Are you getting thrown by the Sharpies? Someone should have warned you!"

"I'm good!" he calls, then drops his voice. "Text me later, when you're done doing what you're doing."

I hide in the corner until Alex is out of the room, and then wait a few moments before leaving the supply room. I try to rush back toward Mr. Wheeler's cla.s.sroom without looking like I'm rushing, even though there's no one around.

Until there is.

"h.e.l.lo, Julia." If I hadn't been focusing on the perfect non-rushing speed, maybe I would have noticed Natalie appearing seemingly out of nowhere. "I'm sure you're very proud of yourself."

"For-" I cut myself off, even though it was on the tip of my tongue to say, For kissing Alex? "Wait, for what?"

"For your little broadcast interference," she says. "Targeting one of our staffers."

"I had nothing to do with that," I say as I remember what Mr. Wheeler was lecturing us about today. I think about Alex's face on Friday and worry that he's still wounded, but then it morphs into his close-up face from only minutes ago. I feel myself smiling with no chance of holding it back. Alex couldn't mind too much if what just happened just happened.

"You look very guilty," Natalie says, which is true, just not of what she's thinking. "We aren't idiots."

"How did you know that I was in the hallway?" I ask, because even though I don't think Alex would use me, the timing is suspicious.

"I was on my way to the restroom," she says. "I'm hardly stalking you, Julia. There's no one on TALON who would find that worth the effort. While your 'team'"-she uses air quotes-"spends their time and energy trying to keep us from being seen, it isn't as if the student body and beyond can't watch the entire extended broadcast on VidLook."

"Really?" I ask, trying to adopt an innocent tone. "Because someone thought it was 'worth the effort'"-I use air quotes too-"to vandalize our keyboards, and that seems like it would take more time, energy, and planning than following me in the hallway."

"It's a pretty cheap tactic to attack the personal life of one of our staffers," she continues as if I haven't spoken. "Of course a boy band is easy to laugh at, but Alex achieved a great deal at a young age. That's hardly comedy."

"I didn't say that it was. Or that it's probably an even cheaper tactic to destroy school property, considering that now school funds have to be diverted to replacing keyboards instead of something your brand-new team probably needs."

Marisa walks up to us. "Mr. Wheeler sent me out to find you, Jules. Is everything okay?"

"Everything's fine," I say. "Natalie just wanted to lecture me about what comedy is and isn't."

"That doesn't seem like it would be in Natalie's wheelhouse," Marisa says.

"There's plenty in my wheelhouse," Natalie says. "It's very extensive."

"We don't really have time to hear about your big wheelhouse," I say. "We have important work to do."

Marisa and I walk back to Mr. Wheeler's cla.s.sroom, which is when it hits me how long I've been gone. "Sorry, it took a while."

"What took a while?" Mr. Wheeler asks. "Where's the paper?"

"Why are you all red?" Carlos asks.

"Natalie intercepted her," Marisa says. "But are they out of paper? There's another stash in the admin office. Since I'm an aide, I can get some."

"Sure," I say, letting Marisa run to another building because I was too distracted to do my job.

"I forgot to say why I'm red," I blurt out, as I try to come up with something reasonable. "I was just looking for paper so long. And getting stressed out. And that room gets warm."

Somehow the meeting ends, and then I'm in my car with freshmen, driving to Carlos's. My phone is lit up with texts when I walk into the second meeting, and I'm afraid they'll all be from Sadie or Mom or Darcy. Maybe Mr. Wheeler figured out that there was paper in the main supply room and I'll get a lecture via text message about wasting student resources. I'm not sure that Mr. Wheeler has my phone number, but it seems possible.

I deleted Alex's number from my phone in what felt like a satisfying moment of closure, but I recognize these digits displayed repeatedly across my screen. These numbers might as well spell out A-L-E-X in their own special language.

That was fun.

I missed you.

Somehow still managed to accidentally take a bunch of Sharpies and screwed up our board. You're distracting.

"Jules?"

I look up from my phone to see that everyone but Carlos and Thatcher is already seated, with snacks, and I'm standing facing the wrong direction in an odd corner of the room. How did I even get here?

"How did you guys do it?" a freshman asks.

"Can we hack into the TVs every week?" a soph.o.m.ore asks.

"Natalie was p.i.s.sed," says Ana Rios.

"There's no proof any of us did anything," Carlos says with the ease of someone who hacks into school closed-circuit TV networks all the time.

"Let's get to work," Thatcher says.

"Yes," I say, even though considering the events of this afternoon, I can barely remember what work is.

"Do we wait for their next move?" a freshman asks.

"No," Thatcher says. "Remember, guys, this is war."

"Real war," Carlos adds.

"At first we just had to worry about getting up our readership," Thatcher says. "But between the lunch poll and the guest column, we've done that. So now we need to take those guys down harder."

I let Thatcher talk while I think about the phone in my hand and the messages it holds for me. But, actually- "It isn't just about shutting them down," I point out. "People still aren't reading the paper as much as they were last year. There's still a good chance the Crest could lose funding for next year. The closest thing Eagle Vista Academy could have to journalism is watching Kevin point to the historic Trader Joe's sign."

Most of the room seems to murmur what I'm taking as agreement.

"Fine, fine," Thatcher says, but he smiles. "Let's get back to it, then. Jules?"

As I talk I press my thumb to my phone's power b.u.t.ton. The room feels, figuratively, like mine again. "Natalie confronted me about the broadcast hack last week, but then she tried to act as if it didn't even matter. She says people could watch the uninterrupted program on VidLook, as if that's actually happening."

We laugh about that for a bit, while Carlos pulls up TALON's VidLook channel so we can laugh at their pathetic numbers. But the numbers aren't pathetic. The numbers aren't going to break any records, but maybe in one of those really specific categories such as Southern California Private High Schools they actually could. There are comments too, and not just the type you're used to finding on VidLook, where people suddenly have unrelated things to say about body parts and fluids. There are real comments, and the usernames appear to be from real students.

The numbers and the comments take something out of us, and I find myself packing up my things and then shepherding the freshmen home. I drive myself home without checking in on Alex, considering that I seem to function more rationally when he isn't in the picture. Mom and I make homemade pasta, and Darcy's home on time, and I get through the whole meal with my phone still switched off. Without my phone, Alex might as well not even exist.

Everything would honestly be better if Alex didn't exist.

Actually, it's fine that he exists. But my life would be so much easier if he'd never come to our school. And of course that would mean I never would kiss him, that my lips would never feel chapped just from kissing him for a few minutes in a supply room, that we wouldn't have sessions of kissing that feel torn from the screens of romantic comedies, but that would probably be for the best.

I think so, at least.

Mom and Darcy ask if I'm okay, and I don't even know how to respond. I retreat into my room to do my homework, but I end up sitting down with my computer instead. I Google "secret relationship" but it's not as relevant to my life as I want it to be. So I Google "taking down your new media compet.i.tion" and every article is about a newspaper that goes out of business or turns into a blog, so I give up on Google and get back to homework instead.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

When I open my locker the next morning, a sc.r.a.p of paper falls out and onto my feet. If TALON is up to its flyering again, that can't be good for any of us.

It's not a TALON flyer, though. It's a note.

I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine yesterday. What's up?

I take out my phone and hit the power b.u.t.ton. But before it's fully back on, Sadie's at my side.

"I'm glad you're still alive," she says. "I couldn't handle it if you weren't, Jules."

"Are you all right?" I ask.

"You didn't respond to any of my texts last night," she says. "So then I called you, but it went straight to your voice mail. So then I emailed you, like a Luddite!"

"My phone died," I say. "And I didn't notice until just now. Is everything okay?"

"Oh my G.o.d, Mom said the most horrible thing to me last night," Sadie says as we walk to women's history. "'Since Sadie'll be in New York next year for school, I should strongly consider doing a play again. It was always just so far away, but...' She's following me across the whole freaking country."

"She's not following you," I say. "She'll just be there. Working. She won't move into your dorm room with you."

"We'll have to have dinner all the time with my grandma," she says.

"That sounds nice," I say, because I hardly get to see the one of mine who's still alive.

"Jules, my grandma is so annoying!" Sadie shakes her head. "And the press will be so excited that the great Paige Sheraton is back on Broadway that she'll have even more attention than usual."

"I'm... sorry?"

"I'm trying so freaking hard to have my own things," Sadie says. "And it feels like Mom gets to all of them before I can."

"I feel like NYU and Broadway will be very separate things," I say.

"You never share my pain." Sadie sits down at her desk. "I hope you at least felt bad when you saw all my missed texts and voice mails."

I still haven't actually looked at my phone since it powered on and I tossed it into my purse. And I'm not sure when I'll get a chance to without an audience, but I take a chance at my locker after first period lets out. I need to grab my books and go, but instead I sort through Sadie's texts just so they don't display as new anymore and check for more texts from Alex.

There's just one more, but I hate seeing it in black and white on my phone: Are you ignoring me? Everything cool?

I start typing out that it scares me how quickly I can forget about everything else when he's in the picture, and how kissing him made me so immediately forget about betrayal, and also that there is no way we could publicly be together again after everything that's happening between TALON and the Crest. But the text is getting long-and frighteningly intense-so I delete all that and type two words instead.

Everything's cool.

When we sit down at the lunch table, there's-well, hopefully-no indication of yesterday's supply room incident. I try to remain chilly in demeanor in his direction, and he's definitely not trying to include me in any of the weird boy conversations. But, under the table, he rests his foot against mine, so my two-word text must have done its job.

Later at Stray Rescue, we act like barely speaking dog-walking professionals when we arrive, separately, at the shelter. I worry our routine will lose some of its viciousness, so I step up my determination that I'll walk more dogs than ever before. Alex, of course, notices, and soon we're neck and neck.

But then our shifts end, and we head outside, where my car awaits.

"No doughnuts?" Alex asks with a grin as I pull him toward my car.

"Doughnuts later," I say.

We have our old routine ready. Alex pushes back the pa.s.senger-side seat and pulls me over to his side. We somehow fit together perfectly; everything feels entwined and our faces are in perfect kissing range. It's hard to imagine I lived without this for weeks.

"Did you have a lot of groupies?" I ask Alex when things have slowed down but we're still curled together on his side of the car. "Before?"

"I... guess?" He laughs. "A lot of them were, like, twelve. But, sure, there were some."

"Some non-twelve-year-olds," I say.

"Yeah. And girlfriends," he says. "Those too."

"You're the first boy I've really liked," I confess. "Except for this annoying boy at gifted camp, but he barely counts."

"Whoa." Alex grins, the grin that melts all my reasonable sense. "I have to hear everything about gifted camp."

"It wasn't a big deal," I say. "It was at a college in Northern California. We lived in the dorms for two weeks and took cla.s.ses during the day and had normal camp activities in the evenings."

"Like s'mores?" Alex asks.

"Well, it was on a campus. So less outdoorsy, more... three-legged races and everything. I was taller than most of the girls, so no one ever wanted to pair up with me for that."

"I'd pair up with you," Alex says.

"Boys and girls weren't allowed to pair up, Alex," I say. "Anyway, that was the last time I thought a boy was..." Out loud it feels like such a big confession. Alex has had fans and groupies and girlfriends and s.e.x. I've had one kiss at gifted camp.

"I missed how much you blush," Alex says.