The Sweetest Thing (7 page)

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.

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 cleared 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?

“Remember to wear your rubber gloves and lab goggles while working with the specimens,” Mr. Phelps reminded the class as he handed out shakers of frog food. “Try to take as many notes on the frogs' behavior as possible. You will be graded on the volume and accuracy of your data.”

I took my lab goggles out of my schoolbag and grimaced. “Ugh. I hate these things.”

“Yeah, they do kind of fog up.” Adam reached into his schoolbag as well.

“That, and they look stupid. On me, anyway—like I'm a big bug.”

Adam put his on right away and looked over at me. With his square jaw and curly hair, the goggles didn't look too bad. “Let me see.”

I sighed and stretched my goggles over my head. The elastic band made the back of my hair stick up. Adam laughed.

“No, they're cute!”

“Cute like Bogie, maybe.” The goggles felt a little too tight, so I took them off to adjust the strap.

Just then Adam reached across the table. Before I had a chance to react, he lightly touched my forehead. “Oh no—you already have goggle lines.”

I took a small step backward and pulled on my gloves. “Bogie looks kind of hungry. Maybe we should feed him.” My forehead tingled a little where he'd touched me.

Adam unscrewed the tadpole jar and tapped a few flakes of frog food out onto the surface of the water. Bogie ate them up super fast, flicking with his tongue just like a regular-size frog. It was incredibly cute and funny, and I couldn't help but laugh along with Adam.

“It says here he'll start developing lungs in two weeks,” Adam read from one of the photographs Mr. Phelps had passed out. “They sure grow up fast, don't they?”

“Pretty soon we'll be helping him with college applications,” I agreed.

Adam started filling in one of the charts. “Nah, he's going to take after me and do the dumb-jock thing. He'll get a scholarship to some football factory if he's lucky.”

“Don't be ridiculous. You're a smart guy,” I said,
surprising myself by actually meaning it. Between reading ahead in English and liking old movies, Adam seemed to have a lot of interests.

“I don't know.” He sighed. “Most people see the jersey and assume all I'm good at is throwing a ball around and tackling people.”

I frowned. Hadn't I said that about Adam when Meredith told me she liked him? It had been pretty judgmental of me, and I'd clearly been wrong. “I think you guys must work harder than most people realize, since you have to go to practice and get all your work done on time.”

“It is kind of a lot. And to be honest, I'm a little nervous for our first game this Saturday.” Adam glanced over at me. “Any chance you'll be there?”

“Oh, I don't know …” I faltered, imaging Meredith and Judith's wounded expressions if they knew Adam had asked whether I going to be at the game, even though he was probably just being friendly. Invoking the No Adam Rule, I said, “Football's not really my thing.” Not wanting to look at him, I tapped Bogie's jar and watched as he swam right up to the glass to stare out at me with his googly eyes.

But Adam went on, undaunted. “Well, Brooklyn Tech's supposed to be one of the better teams in the conference this year, so it should be a good matchup.
You should definitely check it out. You might surprise yourself by liking it.” Adam held my eyes for a second as he handed the worksheet back to me. “And it'd mean a lot to see you there.”

The bell rang and all around us kids started slamming their books shut and putting their papers into their folders. I quickly grabbed my schoolbag and started throwing things inside. Adam hoisted his backpack onto his shoulders and looked at me expectantly.

I rubbed my forehead, struggling with how to answer. Noncommittal seemed the best route. “We're supposed to wear school colors, right?”

He grinned. “Red and blue. I'll keep an eye out for you.”

I heaved a huge sigh as I finished gathering my things and stuck Bogie on a back shelf with the other tadpoles. This bio unit seemed like it could be fun, but I gave myself an F in abiding by the No Adam Rule.

After school, I found Bennett by my locker, looking adorable as usual. He was leaning against the wall, wearing a plaid Dickies shirt and a brown corduroy jacket. His dirty blond hair fell into his eyes as he thumbed through an old comic, and his mouth was set into a funny little frown of concentration that made him look smart and a little bit silly at the same time. But as soon as he saw me out of the corner of his eye, he looked up and gave me the sweetest, nicest smile—like there was no one in the world he'd rather see. I found myself beaming right back. Okay, so yes, Adam was totally hot, but Bennett, with his chipped tooth and eager blue eyes, was totally
adorable
.