The Sweetest Thing Read online

  After getting my food—a cucumber-and-hummus sandwich with a bottle of green tea—I shouldered past a bunch of girls wearing cheerleading outfits and found a table over by the window. I should have been reading my English assignment as I munched on my sandwich and sipped my tea, but instead I looked out over the water. I couldn’t help but worry about what Meredith and Judith had said about Adam yesterday. Even though they said they would never let a boy come between them again, how would they be able to forget about Adam when the whole school seemed to have football fever? Adam was probably one of those guys who relished having girls fall all over him so he could brag about it to his teammates. It would never even occur to him that there were real friendships at stake. I mean, I really had seen him in class, and he just wasn’t a cool guy at all.

  Just then, Adam McGregor and his football buddies burst into the cafeteria, wearing white button-down shirts and matching red-and-blue striped ties. Now even if I had wanted to finish my homework rather than ruminate about Adam and his cocky ways, I wouldn’t have been able to. Because the minute the football players ran in, about half the lunchroom jumped up and cheered. The boys grinned like crazy as they went through the food line, piling their trays full of carbs and electric blue Gatorade.

  I shook my head in disbelief. This was New York, cultural center of the world, home of the Met and the Guggenheim. Getting riled up about the Yankees is one thing, but this was high school football. Who did these guys think they were?

  Sure, some of them weren’t terrible looking. I mean, it wasn’t like they were mathletes, so they were all in pretty good shape, if a little bulked up for my taste. And yeah, Adam had the sort of clean-cut, all-American look you might see in a J. Crew catalog. But it didn’t seem right that the school rearranged classes to worship football players at a pep rally when people like Bennett, who worked on the school paper, barely got to use the Xerox machine.

  It was just my luck that, of all the tables still open, Adam and his friends decided to take over the one next to mine. As they clattered trays down one after the other and punched one another in the shoulder, I sighed and decided that I, for one, wasn’t going to pay them any attention. I pulled my English textbook out of my bag and opened it to the section we were going to have a quiz on next period, a short story from forever ago by this guy named O. Henry, like the candy bar. Maybe he was some eccentric chocolate tycoon like Willy Wonka who wrote in his spare time.

  I sighed again and, forcing myself to ignore the hoots and backslaps coming from the next table, started to read. The story was called “The Gift of the Magi,” and it turned out to be about a young married couple living in the city who were too poor to buy each other Christmas presents. I tried to get into it, but when I reached the bottom of the first page, I realized I wasn’t really paying attention to the words in front of me.

  Adam and his teammates kept laughing and shouting to one another, and I was getting more and more annoyed. How rude was it to come into a public place like this and treat it like your own private VIP room? Maybe they all had concussions or whatever, but some of us had to study.

  I guess I had been shooting Adam quite a few annoyed glances, because after a couple of minutes, I noticed he was looking my way. I quickly stared down at my book and tried to hide my irritated expression, but it was too late. When I slowly raised my eyes again, he was already standing up and coming over toward me.

  Adam is about six foot three, with an athletic build. I’d always thought big guys like him were plodding and clumsy. But the way he skirted through the maze of scratched-up wooden chairs as he walked toward me made him seem almost like an acrobat or gymnast. Still, I wasn’t overly impressed. He was that generic type of good looking, with no personality in his face, nothing cool and quirky and unique like Bennett, or even my old boyfriend Jonathan. And I totally disagreed with Judith—he didn’t look a thing like Josh Hartnett, unless you counted the broad shoulders. Which I didn’t. When he reached my table, he smiled and pulled out a chair across from me, then sat down on the very edge, like he was only going to stay for a second.

  “Sorry about the noise,” he said, in that low, clear voice Meredith had thought was so perfect for reading poetry. He nodded at my English textbook. “It must be annoying if you’re trying to study. We’re just excited to kick off the season. I hope you can forgive us.”

  “Well, it’s just—” But as I looked at his good-natured grin, I could feel my irritation begin to melt away. I wanted to say, Yes, you’re being ridiculously loud, but somehow what came out of my mouth was, “Oh, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

  “What’s that you’re reading?” As he reached across the table to grab my book, I noticed he was wearing a vintage, blue-faced Breitling watch, kind of like the one my brother’s crazy friend Mickey Pardo always wears. It was surprising, because I’d pegged him as a run-of-the-mill Hilfiger or Fossil kind of guy.

  “Just a short story for English class next period.” I hoped he would get the hint from my short answer that I wanted my book back.

  “I’m in Welninski’s section,” he said, completely oblivious to my desire for him to leave. His nose crinkled as he glanced at the first page of the O. Henry story. “We started off with the poetry unit, but I read ahead a little.” He tapped the page with one finger. “I liked this story.”

  “You did?” A football player reading ahead?

  “Sure. O. Henry’s stuff is pretty entertaining. He’s no Hemingway, but his endings are great. They’re always a little twisted. You finish this one yet?”

  “We’re having a quiz on it today, and I didn’t really get a chance to study,” I admitted. “I was working on the bio worksheets all night.” Someone on the food line dropped a ceramic bowl with a clatter. Several people stood up and clapped as the red-faced girl bent to gather the broken shards.

  “Don’t remind me.” Adam rolled his eyes, and I noticed that Meredith had been wrong. There in the sunlight, I could see that his eyes weren’t silver moons, like she’d said. They were green, and if I were being poetic and flowery like her, I might’ve even said they were chartreuse, the same color as my warmest, fuzziest cardigan sweater.

  “That class is impossible.” Adam ran his finger along a wide groove in the wooden table and looked at me earnestly. “I don’t know how I’m going to survive the semester. I can barely stay on top of all the reading, let alone understand it. Mitochondria, chlorophyll—it’s like learning another language.”

  “It’s confusing at first, but if you have someone explain it well, it’s actually kind of easy,” I remarked, thinking of Bennett and his helpful flash cards.

  Adam’s chair squeaked as he leaned back and balanced the chair on its two back legs. “Easy? Well, maybe you could help me, then.”

  “Oh—” Startled, I frantically scrolled through a mental list of people other than Meredith or Judith who could walk Adam through the intricacies of the Krebs cycle. I drew a blank, but then to my surprise, I heard myself say, “Um, I’m not an expert or anything, but I could try.”

  “Great!” He slid the English book back across the table to me and stood up. “There’s only five minutes left before lunch ends—I should let you get back to your story. I’m warning you, though, it’s kind of a heartbreaker.”

  Five minutes? I couldn’t believe I had been talking to Adam for so long. “I have a quiz on this next period and I’m never going to finish in time. Can you just quickly tell me what happens?”

  He squinted at me. “I don’t want to ruin the ending for you.”

  “No, really, it’s okay. I’d rather pass than have the ending be a surprise.”

  He leaned forward on the table like he was telling me a secret. “You know how the guy has the watch he loves? And the woman has the beautiful long hair?”

  I nodded. I’d read that far at least.

  “Well, he sells his watch to buy her these fancy combs. Meanwhile, she decides to get him this expensive watch chain, but to pay the jewelry store g
uy she has to sell her hair.”

  “That’s terrible!” I exclaimed.

  “Nah, it’s romantic—they both gave up something they loved to make each other happy. And who knows? Maybe her hair was even cuter after the cut. Like yours.” He winked as he turned to walk back to his table. “It’s a good look for you, Flan.”

  I couldn’t believe he’d noticed. Apparently Adam had been paying more attention to me—and my hair—than to the mitochondria. I realized I was grinning from ear to ear. But before I had a chance to recover, someone reached around from behind me and covered my eyes with their hands.

  CHAPTER 3

  MY GUY

  “Omigod!” I gasped, twisting around in my seat. “Bennett! I thought you had a meeting for the paper.”

  My heart was racing. Had he overheard my conversation with Adam? All that talk about romance and my hair being cute could definitely be misinterpreted. But Bennett just plopped down in the chair next to me and took a bite out of his red-and-green McIntosh apple.

  “I wanted to see you, so I took off early.” He grinned, showing the chipped front tooth he’d gotten when his rowboat once capsized in the Central Park lake.

  I love Bennett’s smile. It makes him look more genuine somehow, maybe because, without it, he’d just be too perfectly adorable. His dirty blond hair is long and kind of tousled looking, like he’s in a band or going surfing, and he has a light dusting of freckles just across the bridge of his nose. That afternoon, he was wearing a Weezer T-shirt over a gray long-sleeved waffle shirt. His worn Diesel jeans were fraying at the cuffs.

  “Was that the new quarterback?” Bennett asked, jerking his head in the direction of Adam’s table. So he had noticed me talking to Adam.

  “Yeah, he’s in my bio class.” I tried to keep my voice even and innocent sounding. I mean, I hadn’t done anything wrong, but somehow I didn’t want Bennett to know that I might be tutoring a tall, athletic guy who liked my new haircut. Bennett nodded distractedly and unwrapped the most unappetizing-looking liverwurst-and-mustard sandwich I’d ever seen.

  “Hey, listen,” Bennett said between bites. “I’m writing the film review next week. Want to come see a Russian movie about malevolent clones?”

  “Clones?” Bennett was only a sophomore, but he was already one of the best reporters for the Stuyvesant Spectator. He took his journalistic duties seriously, particularly his film reviews. In the month we’d been dating, I’d sat in tons of darkened movies theaters with him, watching everything from romantic comedies about forty-year-olds meeting each other on MySpace to an action movie about man-eating catfish. Bennett referred to that one as Freshwater Jaws. Sometimes Meredith and Judith came along as well, and we would all go out for coffee or ice cream afterward and make fun of the cheesy sets and do our own renditions of the more poorly acted scenes. Meredith does a great mangled jellyfish. It was fun to sit in the theater with Bennett’s arm around my shoulders, but a lot of the movies we saw weren’t exactly my style. I prefer old classics from the ’40s, like Casablanca and His Girl Friday, with their snappy dialogue and soft-focus kisses.

  Bennett noted my hesitation and reached out to touch my knee. “How about this: we do evil clones next week, and the week after we’ll go to the special midnight showing of All About Eve at the Angelika?”

  “Seriously?” All About Eve is one of my favorite movies ever. It’s hilarious, and, based on the stories my best friend, actress Sara-Beth Benny, tells me, all the conniving and fighting between the actresses is pretty true to life. And it was perfect—clones for Bennett, and Bette Davis for me. Plus, I love the Angelika. It’s the only theater I’ve been to where you can buy fresh chocolate chip cookies with pecans instead of peanut M&M’s. I’d eaten bags and bags of M&M’s in the last month and was excited for the cookies. I thought of the couple from the O. Henry story, how they each gave up something to make the other happy, and bumped Bennett’s shoulder affectionately.

  Just then the lunch bell rang, and we scrambled to finish our sandwiches. When I stood up and stuffed my English book into my brown suede schoolbag, he put his hand on my shoulder and squinted a little.

  “Hey, you look kind of different.” He looked me up and down carefully. All around us chairs scraped against the scuffed wood floor as students got up to toss their lunches in garbage cans and shuffle out of the cafeteria. “Are you wearing a new shirt or something?”

  Was it possible that not one but two boys had noticed my new hairdo? Either I looked really hot, or they were way more observant than Meredith gave them credit for. “Guess again,” I said with a teasing smile.

  “New makeup? It’s not a piercing, that’s obvious. …” Bennett put both hands on the back of his chair and studied me.

  I played with the ends of my newly shorn hair and narrowed my eyes. It bothered me a little that he couldn’t see what was right in front of him, especially when Adam, who barely knew me, had noticed right away. “Well, listen, if you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you.”

  Bennett shrugged. “Okay—I have to run, but I know I’ll figure it out by the end of the day!”

  He kissed me on the cheek, then wove his way through the crowded cafeteria to the exit. I started to follow him, but for some reason I stopped and glanced back at the table where Adam was sitting. He was still there, and, as all his friends picked up their trays and backpacks, his eyes met mine. Maybe Meredith and Judith had some sort of contagious Adam-obsession disease, because, for just a second, I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

  CHAPTER 4

  RAH RAH!

  “This is so intense!” Judith exclaimed, grabbing my hand to lead me up the bleachers at the pep rally later that afternoon. Judith, Meredith, and I had met outside the old gym at the beginning of seventh period so we could sit together at the mandatory, schoolwide event. Stuy actually has two gyms, which is pretty amazing for a school in downtown Manhattan. My old private school didn’t even have one. Instead, we played four-square and volleyball in the little courtyard outside, and when we had all-school assemblies, we usually just rented out the ballroom at the Sherry-Netherland Hotel down the street.

  The old gym is really pretty—it has big skylights that flood the room with sunshine, and the image of Pegleg Pete, our school mascot, is laid out in tiles on the floor. And like the cafeteria, it was brightly decorated for the start of football season. Big banners still shining with wet paint hung from the cinder-block walls, and the dance squad was roving around, throwing out fistfuls of confetti shaped like tiny red and blue footballs.

  Almost in spite of myself, I felt a tremor of excitement run through me. It was my first ever pep rally, and the whole gym seemed to buzz with energy. It’s funny—Stuy has a reputation for being a really academic school, but people here definitely had school spirit. A bunch of girls had tied their hair back with red and blue ribbons, and a lot of students had changed into Stuyvesant sweatshirts, T-shirts, jackets—you name it. My brown Mia flats and lemon yellow tank with little chiffon ruffles had looked cute when I left the house that morning, but now, in this sea of red and blue, I felt a little bit out of place.

  Meredith, Judith, and I finally found seats at the top of the bleachers. The school band was playing the fight song at top volume, and it was so loud the metal bench vibrated beneath us. I could barely hear what my friends were saying, but the way their eyes were scanning the crowd gave me the sinking suspicion that they were desperately trying to find Adam. I spotted a bewildered-looking Bennett as he walked into the gym and waved him up to our seats. He bounded up the bleachers behind three guys who had painted their faces school colors.

  Bennett threw his messenger bag at my feet and shook his head in disgust. “Wow. That’s just too much,” he said, pointing at the red-and-blue guys. One of them let out a whoop and bobbed his head violently in time to the music. “It’s just a rally—not even an actual game!”

  “I guess they went a little overboard,” I said, although I was kind of wishing I’d worn my red cashm
ere sweater over my jeans.

  “Hey—is it okay if we sit with you guys?” Jules and Eric, one of Bennett’s friends whom Judith had had a crush on pre-Adam, were standing at the end of our aisle, looking sort of awkward. They weren’t wearing school colors either, but Jules looked cute in his khakis and vintage bowling shirt that had a little martini glass on the pocket.

  “Hey, Meredith.” He smiled at her, his eyes crinkling sweetly behind his black-framed glasses.

  “Oh, hi, Jules.” Meredith barely even glanced at him as she and Judith scooted down to make room for them. I could tell by the way he looked at her that he was a little disappointed by her lukewarm greeting. Like Judith’s, her eyes were trained on the big double doors in the back of the gym that led to the football locker room.

  “Pep rallies are beyond pointless,” Eric groaned, reaching across my lap to bump fists with Bennett. According to Judith, Eric is the hottest guy in the sophomore class, but he can definitely rub me the wrong way. He’s always bragging about the super-stylish people he knows and the awesome clubs he’s been to—even though he’s actually barely been anywhere—and at some point he decided he’s going to be the next big male model. He’s always acting really vain and spritzing himself with antiseptic-smelling cologne. But since he was friends with Bennett, I decided to try my best to be nice to him. If Bennett could handle Meredith and Judith acting nuts—giggling like crazy and then suddenly shooting suspicious glances at each other, like they were doing right now—I could easily put up with a little bit of Eric’s pretension.