The Sweetest Thing Page 5

  We all met up at Judith’s locker, then rode the escalator down together, laughing and joking about our classes that day. Apparently, Meredith’s art history teacher had cued up the wrong slides on the PowerPoint projector, so they’d spent half their class looking at pictures of her Hawaiian vacation instead of the Italian Renaissance paintings they were supposed to be studying.

  We were pushing through the double doors on the first floor, laughing at Meredith’s descriptions of Mrs. Billing’s grass skirt, when someone jostled past us. I wasn’t really paying attention, but Meredith and Judith both stopped in their tracks, mouths agape. It was Adam. He stopped and grinned at us in that friendly way of his.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t see you guys there.”

  “It’s all right,” Judith managed weakly, looking like she was about to have a heart attack.

  “Well, I’ve got to head to practice.” He raised the water bottle he had in his left hand, as if making a toast. “I’ll catch you later.”

  “Yeah,” Meredith whispered. “See you in class tomorrow.”

  He took off, but my two friends didn’t move. They just stood there, staring, until he went up the escalator and disappeared. Finally I couldn’t take the silence anymore.

  “Wow, you’d think he went to heaven. What about us? Are we still going to the Soda Shop?” I asked. No response. “Hello? Guys? Earth to Judith and Meredith!” I snapped my fingers.

  “Did you see that?” Judith breathed. “Did you see what just happened?”

  “Yes!” Meredith’s voice was full of wonder, and her eyes sparkled. “I can’t believe it.”

  I glanced in the direction of the escalator, then back toward the two of them. “What do you mean?”

  “Adam likes me,” they both said at the same time.

  And just like that, the Adam spell was cast again. They blinked, then spun to look at each other angrily.

  “What are you talking about?” Judith demanded. “He looked right at me!”

  “He told me he’d catch me later!” Meredith furrowed her brow. “Didn’t you hear him? He said, ‘I’ll catch you later.’ And I said, ‘Yes, in English class.’ And then he smiled—partly because he loves reading poetry, but mostly because he can’t wait to see me again.”

  “You’re completely delusional!” Judith exploded. “He said, ‘Catch you later,’ to all of us! You’re just reading into everything because your imagination is out of control!”

  “Well, then maybe he was looking at all of us too! And you just think he was looking at you because you always have to win at everything!”

  “What is wrong with you two?” I yelled over them. All around us, clusters of happy Stuy students shouted friendly good-byes to one other, while here my friends were just plain shouting at each other. What would I do if Meredith and Judith and I weren’t friends anymore? The school would be such a big, lonely place without them.

  I grabbed their hands and pulled them outside. They followed me as I turned and started walking in the direction of the Soda Shop. “Have you two lost your minds? This is ridiculous. You’ve been best friends for years … and you’ve barely known Adam for a month.”

  Taxis and buses rattled along Chambers Street, and a stretch Hummer pulled up to the curb next to us, its mirrored windows reflecting the image of three very crabby looking girls.

  “There’s a lot more to it than that,” said Meredith, switching her sage green woven purse to her left shoulder. “Between me and Adam, I mean. I really think he likes me. He talks to me in English practically all the time, and we have so much in common. The other day he asked me for a pencil, and you know artistic people prefer pencils to ballpoints, right? He might have even been using it to write poems for me during class.”

  I cringed a little at this confession, but Judith did something way meaner. She laughed out loud.

  “You’re crazy. Did it ever occur to you that he probably just needed a pencil?” Judith demanded, flipping her blond hair over her shoulder.

  “Oh yeah?” Meredith stopped short in front of Yoga Connection, whose exercise rooms, according to Feb, are as hot as Death Valley. Through the window a whole class full of women were sweating and bending themselves into pretzel-like shapes. While I couldn’t totally see the appeal, I wished I were in there sweating like crazy instead of listening to my friends fight about Adam.

  “Well, if I’m so crazy,” Meredith challenged, “then why do you think he likes you so much? Did he propose to you or something? Send you flowers?”

  “No.” Judith smiled proudly. “But he did tell me the weather’s been great for football lately.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Meredith asked.

  “That he wants me to come to his game on Saturday, obviously.” She stared at us meaningfully. Meredith looked at me, and I shrugged. “Because he has a secret crush on me,” Judith explained. She brushed her hands together like the case was closed.

  Meredith and I didn’t say anything for a long time. Somewhere in the distance, a siren howled. Two pigeons cooed on a windowsill high above our heads. Finally, I spoke. If there was ever going to be a perfect moment to bring up SBB’s idea, it was now.

  “Listen, I’ve got a suggestion, okay? Since both of you like Adam, but neither of you really knows him that well yet—”

  “Hey!” both my friends exclaimed in unison. I held up one finger.

  “I said yet. Anyway, how about you just agree to an official No Adam Rule, where neither of you go after him? That way you’ll know neither of you will be flirting with him, so you can stop fighting about it. Maybe you’ll even meet some other cute guys who you like just as much.” I smiled hopefully.

  Meredith and Judith stared at me like I’d just suggested they play ukuleles while wearing swimsuits made of clamshells and seaweed at Stuy’s next pep rally.

  “Um, thanks for the advice, Flan,” Judith said, a little snarkily, “but I think we can work this out ourselves. No offense, but it’s not really any of your business.”

  That kind of made me mad, but I tried not to show it. “How can you say it’s not my business? I care about you guys. If you’re acting like you’re about to kill each other, it’s obviously going to bother me.” I stared down at the sidewalk. Someone had drawn a heart in the concrete when it was still wet. I traced its curve with my toe. “If you really want to duke it out over this guy, be my guest. I just think it’s a shame, you know?”

  Meredith looked down, like she felt bad about it, and Judith didn’t look too happy either. I knew I was making them feel guilty, but what else could I say? It was true.

  “I guess that’s fair,” Meredith said in a little voice. “Since we can’t both have him, then neither of us should get to.”

  Judith eyed her suspiciously for a moment, then seemed to relax. She stuck out her pinky finger. “No Adam Rule?”

  “No Adam Rule,” Meredith agreed, looping her little finger around Judith’s and shaking it.

  “Yay!” I threw my arms around both of them. “Now can we go to the Soda Shop? I’m dying for a strawberry malt.”

  I took out my cell phone as we started walking again and flipped it open. Eleven missed calls. I scrolled to my missed-calls list, my heart beating quickly. Two calls was one thing but eleven? And all from … Feb? I pressed the SEND button and waited while it rang. We were just at the Soda Shop but I stopped before going in.

  “Hang on a sec,” I said. The Soda Shop really is one of the cutest little places in New York and I was kind of excited to be going in. It looks just like something out of one of those old Norman Rockwell paintings: it has gum-ball jars, a marble counter, and even an old-fashioned soda fountain. Going there is like stepping back to a time where all the girls wore pony-tails and saddle shoes. …

  “Hey, what’s going on?” I asked Feb as a dog walker with a herd of Dalmatians and Chows passed us. “Is everything okay?”

  “Flan, where are you?”

  “I’m going to the Soda Shop wit
h Meredith and Judith. Why?”

  “You’re hanging out with friends again? And on a school afternoon? You know, I think it was pretty nice of me to let you go out last night with Bennett, even though you failed your English quiz. But I think you should come home right now and study. I don’t want your grades to drop. Besides, it’s getting late.”

  I looked at my watch. It was only 4:03.

  “Excuse me—you ‘let’ me go out? You’ve got to be kidding me, Feb. Besides, I’m going to work on stuff there.”

  “I really don’t think that’s a good idea.” Feb paused, and I could hear pots clattering, water running in the sink, and Noodles yapping his head off on the other end of the line. “I want you home where it’s quiet. Maybe I can even help you with your English if you’re having trouble.”

  “But Feb,” I protested, exasperatedly, “English is barely your first language—”

  “No back talk! I mean it, Flan. I’m getting dinner ready now, and I expect you home in thirty minutes.” She hung up.

  Meredith and Judith looked at me curiously as I snapped my phone shut angrily and shoved it back into my teal Luella Bartley purse. It was one thing for Feb to make dinner and ask me about my day—that was actually kind of nice—but what right did she have to boss me around and tell me that I couldn’t hang out with my friends after school? She could buy all the aprons she wanted, but that didn’t actually make her my mother.

  On the other hand, though, all the fighting between Meredith and Judith hadn’t exactly put me in the mood for an extended afternoon with them—even if the NAR was in effect.

  “Listen, guys, I’m really sorry, but apparently Feb needs me at home,” I said, rolling my eyes. “But thanks again for agreeing to the No Adam Rule. You’re sure everything’s okay with you guys now?”

  “Of course.” Judith adjusted the strap of her navy blue French Connection tank and flipped her hair over her shoulder.

  “Yeah, and thanks for all your advice, Flan. I think it will really help,” Meredith added. “We’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

  I stepped back and looked at them. They looked at me with innocent smiles on their faces as they linked arms.

  “Want to take the subway uptown?” Meredith asked Judith.

  “Sounds like a plan,” Judith replied with a nod.

  “All right … ’bye, then,” I told them as I turned to leave.

  But when I looked back, they had already dropped each other’s arms.

  CHAPTER 9

  THE CUTEST THING IN BIO CLASS … AND NO, I DON’T MEAN ADAM

  I woke up the next morning with a huge knot in my stomach. I wondered at first if it was just the aftereffects of the somewhat unappetizing version of cheese soufflé Feb had served for dinner the night before. But as I put on my charcoal gray Miu Miu blazer with the colorful polka-dotted lining, I realized it wasn’t the cheese that was making me feel like I had a miniature Noodles rolling around in my stomach. It was my quarterback-loving friends.

  I was so worried and distracted that on my walk to school I tripped over the leash of a shih tzu on the corner of Spring and Varick Streets, and then almost walked out in front of an M20 bus speeding downtown. Once I got to school, another thing added to my stress about Judith and Meredith: the source of discord himself, Adam. Suddenly it seemed like he was popping up everywhere: near the third-floor drinking fountain, in the cafeteria, by the fifth-floor escalator. It wasn’t like I thought he was following me—that would have been pretty conceited—but then I began to get a little worried that he might think I was following him. Which I wasn’t, obviously. But just in case, I started trying to avoid him, which of course didn’t work, because I didn’t know which way he’d be walking, and after English, I took an ill-fated detour around the gym only to practically knock him over by the second-floor bathrooms and drop all my books like a royal klutz.

  “Oh, wow, I’m so sorry!” I could feel my face turning red as he rubbed his arm where I’d bumped into him.

  “Don’t worry about it.” He picked up my geometry textbook and handed it to me. He was wearing a plain gray fitted T-shirt, and I noticed that his hair was a little mussed, like he’d forgotten to comb it or something. “You know, we need a new defensive lineman for the team. You interested?”

  “Thanks, but no,” I said, grabbing the book from him. “I’ll see you in bio, I guess.”

  I quickly scurried off around the corner, feeling both embarrassed and irrationally annoyed. It was like he knew about the No Adam Rule and was secretly trying to thwart it at every turn. As glad as I was not to be at Mallard Day anymore, I realized my life had been a little less complicated when there were no boys around.

  I did manage to shake a little bit of Adam-water out of my ears during math class, though. I concentrated on isosceles triangles instead of love triangles, and on Bennett and the bouquet of lemon yellow lilies he’d given me instead of the flowery way Meredith and Judith talked about Adam. But bio was right after math, and I knew that there would be no escaping Adam and his comfy-sweater-sea-green eyes there.

  Apparently there would be no escaping my Adam-obsessed friends, either, because waiting right outside my biology class was a freshly lip-glossed Judith.

  “Flan! There you are!” she exclaimed, rushing over to hug me like it had been years, rather than hours, since we’d last seen each other. When she let go, she craned her neck to look past me into the classroom.

  I shifted my schoolbag on my arm. “Judith, isn’t your history class on the fourth floor? Won’t you be late?”

  “Uh, yeah,” she said absently, her eyes darting around, doubtlessly searching for a certain football player. Her eyes shifted to a spot two inches above my left shoulder as she reached into her green leather briefcase and pulled out a chewed-up Bic pen. “I forgot to give this back to you after I borrowed it three weeks ago. I thought you might need it for your lab.”

  “Thanks … I guess.” I gingerly took the mangled pen from her. “Well, I have to head inside. You should probably get going too.”

  Judith nodded, looking as though she wished she could followed me into bio. She stood there as I walked through the door, and then she leaned so far over the threshold to wave good-bye that for a moment I thought she might actually fall into the classroom.

  When she finally left, I tossed the pen into the garbage and shook my head. Adam and his friends were sitting in the back, so I slid into a desk in the front row, as far away from them as possible, and didn’t look up from my notebook until after class had started. Our teacher, Mr. Phelps, announced we were doing a new project—it was time to grow baby frogs from tadpoles and observe them at all stages of life. It was going to take more than a month, and our final logbooks would be worth a third of our grade. And because my life wasn’t complicated enough already, Mr. Phelps thought it would be super fun to assign us new lab partners and pair me with—yep, you guessed it—Adam.

  Lucky me.

  I worked on keeping my face expressionless as Adam and I walked to our new lab table in the back of the room. I noticed that he’d combed his hair since I last saw him, and at that moment I decided to also place myself under the No Adam Rule, but in a No Being Friends with Adam way. I would do everything in my power to keep our conversation professional—frogs, bio, that was it. Judith’s using the gross pen as an excuse to see Adam reinforced just how much she and Meredith needed to stick to the No Adam Rule. And I couldn’t exactly ask them to keep away from Adam only to become friends with him myself, right?

  “Hey—I never asked how your English quiz went,” Adam said as he sat down on one of the circular metal stools at our station.

  “It went okay, I think.” I didn’t want to be totally rude, so I gave him a tight smile. “Thanks again for taking me through that ending.”

  “No problem.” He put his elbow a couple inches away from mine on the black Formica tabletop. “I love a good story.”

  I dropped my arm into my lap. What was the matter with him? I clear
ed my throat and made myself sound as no-nonsense and scientific as possible.

  “So, frogs. Rana catesbeiana,” I said briskly.

  “Rana cat-a-what?” Adam’s lips curved into a smile as he gave me a confused look from across the counter.

  “Rana catesbeiana.” I tapped a page in our textbook. “That’s the scientific name for the American bullfrog.”

  Adam nodded slowly, staring at me like I was crazy. Which was probably a good thing in terms of the NAR, especially if it scared him off a little.

  I was thankful when Mr. Phelps came over and placed a jar filled with dirty water on our table. Inside, a little tadpole was squirming around, flipping its tails and bumping its head against the glass.

  “Look at that.” Adam leaned forward to examine the tadpole as Mr. Phelps moved onto the table behind us. “Our boy. What should we name him? Kermit?”

  “Too obvious.” I picked up the jar and squinted at the little guy. He was slimy but cute, with big buggy eyes and the stumpy beginnings of back legs. “Why don’t we call him Bogie?”

  “As in Humphrey Bogart? That’s great. I love old movies.”

  “You do?” I stared at Adam in surprise. I love old movies almost as much as I love ice cream.

  “Of course. I loved Bogie in The Petrified Forest. You ever see that one?”

  I set Bogie the tadpole’s jar back on the counter. “That’s so weird, I seriously just rented that this past weekend!” What is it about guys liking old movies that makes them seem really sophisticated?

  Adam smiled and locked eyes with me, and that was when I started to get a little nervous. Who was this guy?