What We Saw (5 page)

“SHE WAS SO
wasted.”

I can hear Christy long before I see her walk around the corner with Lindsey. It's one of the things that makes her an excellent goalie: Her voice carries clear across the field. Also, she's built like a tank: solid muscle.

The four of us got lucky this year; we were assigned spots just across from the senior stairwell where the lockers of the graduating class begin. Dooney and Deacon Mills shuffle down the steps above us. Some people claim the basketball players at our school have an arrogant strut, but Ben says they're all walking that slowly because they're in pain. Coach Sanders kills them with squats in the weight room.

Today, their lope is slowed further because they've got their noses about an inch from the screen of Dooney's phone. I hope they don't break their necks text-walking on the stairs. We need them both for the state tournament.

Christy's laugh thunders over the noise in the hall as she gets closer. “Like,
blackout
drunk.”

“Is she here today?” Lindsey wants to know.

I wait behind my locker door, pretending to dig through books. Are they talking about me?

“Of course not,” Christy says. She tucks a corkscrew of her blond bob behind her ear, spins the combo on her locker, and pops it open as Rachel sails around the corner. “Wait, what? Who's not here today?”

I grab my geology book and turn around. “I'm here, I'm here. And, yes, I may have been the slightest bit inebriated Saturday night.”

“Not you.” Christy rolls her eyes. “We all knew you'd be here today. You wouldn't miss school if the building was on fire.”

“So who were you talking about?” I'm confused. Also, possibly, still a little hungover.

“Stacey,” says Rachel. “No way she's showing up today.”

“Maybe she's just running late.” Lindsey slips a sparkly barrette into her straight black hair to hold it out of her face, then checks her lip gloss in her locker mirror. She's the only varsity defender I know who bothers with lip color or hair accessories.

“‘Running late'?” Christy scoffs. “Did you see that picture? I don't think she was drunk, I think she was dead.”

At the mention of a picture of Stacey, my eyes go wide. Rachel sees the stricken look on my face and holds up both hands. “I deleted it, I promise. This is a different pic.”

“Wait, there are more?” Christy asks. “I need to see them. Now
.
”

“Ugh. I don't.” Lindsey sighs and closes her locker.

Rachel shakes her head. “There was one of Stacey with our precious Kate here. I took it early in the evening. Upstairs. In the kitchen.”

“It has been officially redacted.” I grab my purse and look pointedly at Rachel. “I better not be in any others.”

“I swear. You're not.”

“Don't worry.” Christy drapes her arm around my shoulders. “You left before the party got moved to the basement.”

“The basement?”

Rachel turns the phone toward me. “I can't believe you haven't seen this yet.”

Greg Watts's Instagram feed. A shot of Deacon with a girl slung over one of his shoulders. I remember my dad hauling me around like this when I was a kid, playing in the backyard.
Oh, look! I found a sack of potatoes. Mmmm! These'll be good eatin' . . .
I'd giggle and squeal as he tromped around, his arm wrapped firmly behind my knees, the blood rushing to my face.

The girl in this picture is Stacey, and she is clearly not giggling. She's only wearing a bra and her tiny black skirt, and she doesn't even look conscious. Her mouth lolls open, eyes closed, arms hang limp. She's bent at the waist, tossed over Deacon's
shoulder, his chin resting on her butt, his arm clamped across her upper thighs.

Dooney is in the picture, too, squatting down behind Deacon, holding Stacey's hair out of her face, making a goofy look meant to mimic hers: tongue stuck out, eyes rolled back in his head. And over it all, Deacon's bright grin, a smile on the verge of a laugh: inviting, warm, funny—just like him, usually—but somehow that smile doesn't seem to match this picture.

“Where's her top?” I ask.

“Still in the corner of Dooney's rec room, I'm guessing,” says Rachel.

“Along with her dignity,” agrees Lindsey.

Rachel grabs my shoulder and turns me to face her. “Speaking of tops, is that new?”

“Oh yeah. It was a birthday present.”

Grandma Clark sent it to me last month along with a card that had a unicorn on it. It's just a cotton blouse from the Gap—probably the clearance rack at the outlet near her condo. She doesn't always get it right, but this one fits perfectly, and the deep emerald green brings out the slightest hint of red in my hair.

“You saved it since your birthday?” Lindsey is incredulous. “But it's so cute.”

“Totally,” agrees Rachel. “Really shows off your rack. But not in a slutty sort of way.”

Dooney and Deacon have their faces buried in separate phones now, thumbs tapping like mad. Above us, Ben catches
my eye as he starts down the stairs. He flips his chin up once in my direction and winks. I smile back.

Lindsey catches the whole thing. “Oh, I get it,” she says. “You just needed someone to wear it for.”

Rachel looks over her shoulder and sees Ben at his locker. “Right? Hey, Kate,
Ben
talking to anybody lately?”

“Stop it, you guys.”

Christy catches on and her eyes narrow. “Heard about your little walk in the park yesterday. Or was it a nap?”

“We are just friends.”

The warning bell rings: two minutes before first period starts. Actually, I should say the “tone sounds.” Over winter break, Principal Hargrove replaced the aging standard metal bells and clappers at Coral Sands High with a new system that plays a bizarre electronic beep to signal the beginning and end of each class period. Rachel says it's a perfect concert B-flat. She can tune her flute to it at the beginning of band. Regardless, it's been three months and it still makes me jump every time.

“I will never get used to that,” I groan.

“Me neither,” says Lindsey.

“Why can't it be a nice prerecorded voice?” Rachel demonstrates, sounding like one of those golf commentators on TV: “Ladies and gentlemen, first period will begin in two minutes. Please proceed to your homeroom
.
”

The four of us are laughing as we walk into geology. Ben slides into the desk behind mine as the tone beeps the beginning of class.

“Hey,” he whispers. “You look great.”

I try not to blush, but fail. Thankfully, Ben can't see the grin spreading across my face. Rachel can, though. She tries to catch my eye, but I refuse to look at her because she'll start laughing at me, and then my cheeks will never cool down. I will die the color of a flamingo.

Mr. Johnston starts taking attendance, and I smile the whole time he's calling names, until he gets to “Stallard, Stacey.” There's complete silence for a split second before Randy Coontz does a loud fake cough:
“Whore.”

The word floats across the classroom, batted aloft by a laugh here or there. I glance at Christy, who chortles once before Rachel glares at her, and she bites her lip.

“That's a detention for you, Randy.” Mr. Johnston tosses a pad of pink slips onto his desk, and scribbles across the top copy. “Anybody else want to join him?”

“What? I just coughed!” Randy squeaks, trying to sound cool. His freckles are popping out on his neck. His ears, which normally stick out like jug handles seem even bigger—blazing red.

Mr. Johnston holds up a hand. “I'm not an idiot, Mr. Coontz. I was doing the cough put-down before you were born.”

“But if I miss practice tonight, Coach won't let me suit up next weekend.”

“Haven't ever seen you leave the bench. Don't think Coach Sanders will care.”

Ben huffs a silent laugh behind me, and I steal a glance over
my shoulder. He is hiding a grin, staring straight down at his desk. My smile returns. Ben is so much smarter than the average doofus on the basketball team.

Mr. Johnston flips on a projector and opens his laptop to a series of slides showing different strata of sedimentary rock found in Iowa. He is talking about how these layers are usually only visible in vertical surfaces around our state, like boulders, or road cuts where dynamite was used to blast through hillsides so a highway could be built without curves.

I start to take notes, but I can't focus on these pictures. The only image I can see is the one of Deacon with Stacey tossed over his shoulder. It's burned into my brain. I glance over at the empty desk near the window where Stacey usually sits. We don't have assigned seats in geology, but it's funny how we all settle into a routine, static and predictable. I sit in the same desk almost every day in this class. Since September, Ben has sat behind me. Lindsey on my left, Rachel to my right, and Christy in front of her.

Stacey sits over by the window and usually spends the class period staring into the trees at the back edge of the parking lot. The light from the window makes her a silhouette, a shadow of the girl I used to know. Sometimes Mr. Johnston calls on us at random to answer a question—to see if we're following along. Each time he calls on Stacey, she startles and gives him a blank stare from eyes ringed in too much black liner.

Is that a cliché? Too much eyeliner on the girl who isn't paying attention in class?

This is just a thing we do, I guess—determine who people are by what they look like. A smoky eye means you're mysterious and dangerous and a little wild, right? Too sexy to care about geology.

Don't judge a book by its cover. Mom is always saying that, but most of the time, I think that's exactly what people are asking us to do: Please. Judge me by my cover. Judge me by exactly what I've worked so hard to show you.

Stacey used to play soccer with us, back in junior high. Now she's on the drill team with the rest of the girls whose nails are long and bright and covered in sequins. Most of the girls on drill are dancers—or wanted to be when they were little.

When we were in first grade, there was a big flood, and Miss Candy's School of Dance was nearly washed away. So was the factory where Candy's husband, Jim, worked with my dad, making lightbulb sockets for the glove compartments of every GM car built in North America.

The factory owners decided not to rebuild and moved the plant to India to be near cheap labor. Miss Candy decided not to rebuild and moved Jim to Gary, Indiana, to be near her sick father. The ballet girls eventually found that their last dance option in Coral Sands was the drill team.

They all wear a lot of eyeliner during performances, but most of them wash it off afterward. Stacey doesn't wash hers off. She has no problem attracting guys—any guys. All the guys. Jocks, preps, burnouts. Sometimes, it seems as though she's dated half the junior class. But mostly Stacey likes the guys with
long hair and trench coats. They've got the weed, after all.

I know that Dooney loves to smoke out. Maybe that's how the party got moved to the basement after I left. Stacey had weed and Dooney wanted to smoke, so everybody went downstairs. There have been plenty of rumors that Stacey and Dooney have been talking to each other, even though Phoebe has been Dooney's girlfriend since last summer.

Having a girlfriend has never stopped Dooney from flirting with other girls. A random kiss at a couple parties, an ass grab in the hallway; then Dooney and Phoebe fight and get back together a week later. I don't know how Stacey ended up in that picture with Dooney and Deacon, but I have a hunch that her access to the best pot in Coral Sands was a factor.

I glance over at Lindsey's desk. A page in her binder is already covered with notes I'll have to borrow later. As I tune back in, Mr. Johnston clicks through some slides on his laptop.

“We'll be taking a field trip to the Devonian Fossil Gorge in a couple weeks,” he announces. There are groans and moans as he holds up his hands and waits for things to quiet down, pausing at a shot of the reservoir spillway just outside of Iowa City.

“The floods of 1993 and 2008 stripped away fifteen feet of sediment left by glaciers in the last ice age,” he explains. “I know you all find this thrilling, but it finally gave us a horizontal plane where we could observe fossils. It's actually pretty cool. I'll have permission slips for you on Friday.”

He clicks to a close-up of the bare limestone at the base of the reservoir. I catch my breath as the outlines of a hundred
different fossilized organisms pop into sharp focus on the screen. It's beautiful. The floodwaters that carried away Miss Candy's studio and my dad's job left behind the outline of an ancient world, evidence of the way things used to be.

“Remember,” Mr. Johnston says, “nothing is exactly as it appears. The closer you look, the more you see.”

There are still ten minutes of class to go, but something outside the window catches my eye. A hawk circles the trees at the back of the parking lot. She soars out of sight over the school, then appears again and perches on a nest lodged at the highest branches of the tallest oak. Is this what Stacey is always staring at?

Nothing is exactly as it appears.

The closer you look, the more you see.

IT WOULD SEEM
there's an epidemic in our cafeteria today, and its only cure is interaction with a smartphone. Everyone is staring at their screens, strangely muted, eyes open, mouths closed, like the whole student populace decided it was a good idea to take it down a few decibels.

Usually this place requires earplugs, especially at the farthest tables by the big glass doors where the Buccaneers gather to graze. Leave it to our landlocked alumni association to come up with a pirate-themed mascot. Maybe it was a subconscious connection to our ancient history—the same reason our French class got such a kick out of conjugating all of the verbs
a la plage
(“to the beach”) with Ms. Speck last year:

Iowa was once an ocean.

Most days the varsity Buccaneers live up to their name—swashbuckling through lunch at full volume, but there's an eerie, quiet urgency about their table today. Dooney and Deacon exchange terse whispers with Greg Watts. Randy Coontz is trying to convince them all of something, but seems to be failing.

I leave the food line with a tray but before I walk down the three stairs to the level with the tables, I pause to scan the decks from this crow's-nest view. Not too long—or everyone might stare at me—but enough time to chart my course.

Lately, I've been hoping I'll catch Ben's eye from this top step and see that he has saved a seat for me right next to him, across from Phoebe and Dooney. This hasn't happened yet. It's one thing to talk to somebody. It's another thing to eat lunch with them. The basketball Buccs keep tight ranks.

Today, I don't see Ben at all—or Phoebe for that matter. Ben may have snuck off campus with a couple of the seniors. Juniors aren't supposed to leave for lunch, but the varsity players get a free pass on most of the little rules like that.

Christy waves me down toward our usual table with Lindsey and Rachel. I am about to join them when I see a flash of long dark hair and bright red nails at the Coke machine. Something loosens in my chest—a knot I hadn't realized was there. Stacey is here after all
.
I turn toward her as she grabs her Diet Coke and spins around—but it isn't her after all. It's a freshman I remember from JV tryouts when I helped Coach Hendrix
time the hundred-meter dash. She was fast, but afraid of getting kicked. I knew she didn't stand a chance once scrimmages began. There are two types of team hopefuls: those who pull up short, close their eyes, and brace for impact, and those who race toward the ball almost longing for the possible pain of a collision. Only the latter makes a good soccer player.

I walk down the stairs with my taco salad and sit across from Christy, who is finishing off everyone's fruit cup. I hand her mine without a word and begin fishing the tortilla strips out of the lettuce. Every other Monday, I ask them to put the tortilla chip strips on the side. Every other Monday, I am ignored. As quickly as I pick them out, Christy crunches them down. This is our system.

Lindsey and Rachel are both staring at their phones. We only have these scant twenty minutes to tap and tweet and text before fifth period begins and our blinking handheld portals to Anywhere But Here must be switched to silent in our lockers for another fifty minutes.

“What's with everyone today?” I ask Christy.

She shrugs, chewing. “Whadayamean?”

I point my fork toward Lindsey and Rachel. “Everybody with their faces buried in their screens. Are they looking for clues to find the horcrux? What's so interesting?”

“Just catching up on Dooney's party,” says Rachel, without looking up. “Hashtag ‘doonestown.' Some crazy pictures.”

“As long as none of them are of me
.
”

Rachel laughs it off, but it makes me nervous.

“Hey—what's this hashtag?” Lindsey holds her phone out to Christy, who takes it from her and shows me. The picture of Stacey passed out is somehow worse now that I know she's not at school today. There are three hashtags: #doonestown #buccs #r&p. I shrug and keep taking bites of my salad, but the ground beef is tough. I think of Ben's contention that the tacos are made of cats and smile to myself.

“What's so funny?” Lindsey misses nothing.

“Huh? Oh—nothing. Just . . . thinking about something . . .”

All three of them start in at once:

“Oh, I'll bet you are.”

“You mean some
one
.”

“I won't tell you his full name, but his initials are B-E-N-C-O-D-Y.”

I am laughing because what else can you do when your friends torment you, and they're right? My phone buzzes in my purse. I fish it out and see a text.

Can u talk? Sr. stairs.

Lindsey sees the name before I can shield the screen. “It's from Ben!”

The volume from Christy only goes one way in these situations: up. As quickly as I can, I drop my phone into my purse and pick up my tray. Rachel squeezes my arm and raises her eyebrows in excitement as I slip away from the table. The catcalls from Christy follow me, and are met with a general wave
of noise from the rest of the cafeteria—as the corn syrup of every Coke and cookie ingested hits the collective bloodstream of Coral Sands High. The strange hush is over. The tipping point toward bedlam has been achieved.

The tone will pulse to end lunch in exactly four minutes. It will take me one minute to drop off my tray and walk to the senior stairwell. There will be three minutes of relative quiet before the wave crests and tears through the halls.

I walk as quickly as I can. I see him as I pass beneath the stairwell and pause in the shadow. He is leaning against my locker, staring at his phone. Is he swiping through the same hashtags Lindsey is patrolling? Or is he waiting for a text from me?

The straps of his backpack frame his chest in a way that makes my knees weak.
Better keep walking or you might fall down.

He glances up as I approach and slips into an easy smile that warms me from the inside out. Once more, I'm reminded why all the guys on the team look up to him—even the seniors.

“There you are.”

Was there ever a more perfect greeting? Not a grunted “hey” or a “where've you been?” but
There you are.

As if he couldn't go on until I arrived.

As if he'd have waited forever, but is so happy he won't have to.

“In the flesh.” I smile back, and what possesses me I cannot say, but right there, four feet away from him and closing in, I
spin on the toe of my flats. Just once.

I am not a girl for cutesy. I am not a girl for foundation on school days or mascara on weekends or fingernails that hamper typing. But here, in the hallway, this guy who leans on my locker like he owns that space—like he belongs in my world—has inspired me to whimsy.

He laughs at my twirl, his head thrown back slightly, a strand of his bangs falling down into his eyes. I reach up before my brain can stop my arm and tuck it back into the pile.

“You needed to see me?”

He nods, and exhales like he's got something important to say—something he's worried about. “Wanted to ask you a question,” he says, then bites his lip.

“Shoot.”

He glances over my head with a little boy's shy smile and a squirm I remember seeing a long time ago.

“I don't wanna mess anything up,” he says softly.

When I hear those words, I know for certain that things have been different since September. It wasn't a figment of my imagination. My fingers tremble just a little as I rest my hand on his chest. “You can't mess up what's already changed.”

His whole body relaxes and he wraps his hand around mine, holding it there over his heart. I recognize this feeling. It's the same one from the other night, when he leaned his forehead against mine. The air is ripe with possibility.

Finally, he breaks the silence. “Will you go to Spring Fling with me?”

“As . . . friends?”

He shakes his head. “As more than friends.”

I squeeze his hand harder—partially from excitement, partially to stay upright.

“Wanted to ask you at Dooney's party,” he says, “but I chickened out.”

I nod without taking my eyes from his. I didn't just imagine that moment. He felt it, too. “Probably better this way, 'cause, you know, now I'm not . . . wasted.”

He laughs, that easy, quiet huff from earlier in geology, a laugh that you only notice if you're watching. “Yeah. I didn't know if you really felt this way or if . . . you know—”

“It was the Cabo Wabo?”

He nods.

Without moving my hand from his, I straighten up, shoulders back, all business. “Ben Cody, I, Kate Weston, being stone-cold sober, will hereby accompany you to Spring Fling.” I move my other hand up to his cheek, and whisper, “And anywhere else you want to go.”

When you have an unexpected crush on your childhood best friend, you spend a lot of time imagining the way you might kiss him one day. The fantasies I entertained of this moment were ridiculous clichés, based on movies and TV shows and the romance novels I used to find in the pool clubhouse at Grandma Clark's condo. These scenarios often involved a helicopter over the Grand Canyon, a ski lift in Colorado, the top of the Eiffel Tower amid fireworks, or an unspecified beach in California.

But then it happens.

Right here in the hallway at Coral Sands High School, next to the senior staircase, in front of my locker. He wraps an arm around my waist, pulling me into him like it's the most natural, least preposterous thing ever.

Then he's kissing me. And I'm kissing him back.

I forget to be concerned about being good at it, or what I should do with my hands—or my lips. It all seems to happen on its own. I don't worry for an instant that there aren't fireworks over our heads or waves crashing across our feet. The
where
doesn't really matter at all. Turns out any ordinary place can be made extraordinary by the presence of the right person.

We're still kissing when that god-awful tone sounds, only this time I don't jump out of my skin. It doesn't faze me at all. In fact, neither one of us seems to hear it. With that blaring of the concert B-flat, a wave of students crashes down the hall. At some point, a gasp from Rachel filters through, then a shouted laugh from Christy. I become aware of male voices across the hallway chanting
bros before hoes
but we keep right on kissing.

All of the games and pretense, all of the manners and posturing are swept away. The truth of Ben and me is out there for everyone to see, laid bare in front of a bunch of hooting Neanderthals.

And we don't care, because we have each other.

Greg and Randy start chanting along with Dooney and Deacon. It reaches a fevered pitch and makes Ben and me start to laugh. We're both blushing as we take a step back.

He squeezes my hand.

He promises to call me later, even though he doesn't need to.

I already know he will.

Lindsey lets out a tiny squeal and four italicized rapid-fire questions. “Where did
that
come from? What is
happening
? Are you
official
? Tell me
everything.
” Christy is making gagging noises as she digs around in her locker for her books. Lindsey punches her in the shoulder. “I thought it was sweet.”

Rachel slowly shakes her head and stares at me. “You know how to pick 'em, Weston. Hashtag: total package.”