A La Carte (2 page)

“I'm starving.” She blushes. “I skipped breakfast, but I have a granola bar in here somewhere. I swear I won't eat the experiment.”

“You don't want to eat this stuff, I promise you,” I reply as Mr. Wilcox slides a stack of paper towels, a plate of dry toast, a packet of jam, and a plastic knife onto our work space. The anemic toast slices make me shudder. “I mean, the name: should we really
wonder
about bread?”

Cheryl snorts. “Good point.”

“People, be sure to put the paper towels where the toast will fall,” calls Mr. Wilcox, moving around the room. “And before you drop the first slice, make a prediction. Is it going to land up? Is it going to land down?”

“Is it still good if it has a bite out of it?” someone yells back.

Involuntarily, I glance over my shoulder. For a moment, I thought that was Sim. He's funny in that kind of snarky, sarcastic way that drives teachers nuts, and I could see him eating his experiment just to get on Mr. Wilcox's nerves.

“Ready?” Cheryl asks through a mouthful of granola bar.

“As I'll ever be.”

Cheryl pushes the toast, and it lands, unpredictably, on its back.

“Well, that was exciting,” I sigh. “We're supposed to do this twenty times?”

“
And
write our
observations,
” Cheryl reminds me perkily.

She carefully picks up the bread and nods to me. “Your turn.”

“Great.” I nudge the bread off the desk. It splats onto its face.

Cheryl is a good partner. She quietly does her half of the work, and I do mine. It is completely monotonous. No wonder Sim cut today.

Him again! I give the bread a particularly vicious jab. It flips off the edge of the desk and bounces.

“Oops.”

“Think we get extra points if it flips twice?”

I have to stop thinking about Simeon.

I mean, he was my best friend. But that's
was.
Past tense. We met each other in grade school—when Simeon's older brother, Carrigan, got held back into our class. Carrigan tortured everybody smaller than him in our class, and when he came over to play once, he broke my Easy Bake Oven—
on purpose.
It was war from then on.

Carrigan was a jerk to everyone, but he treated Simeon worst of all—broke his glasses, stole his watch, broke the lock on his locker since he couldn't figure out the combination. If there was anyone picking on Sim, Carrigan was leading the charge. The day in sixth grade that Carrigan “accidentally” tripped Sim and made him cry during a game of capture the flag, I'd had enough. On behalf of all the other nerds at Redbud Middle School, I kicked Carrigan right where it counts and made a friend—and an enemy—for life. Everybody called me Simeon's girlfriend for the rest of the school year, but I didn't care. Nobody breaks my Easy-Bake Oven.

“Ten more to go,” Cheryl cheers sarcastically, picking up the bread again. “Woo-hoo!”

“My observation is that this is the most boring assignment I've ever done,” I say.

“Mr. Wilcox says our write-up should include any ‘lingering questions' we have about this experiment. I have one: Why do I care?”

“That's pretty much the only question I have.”

Another Sim-ism. I glance over at his desk before I can stop myself.

Sim Keller and I were pretty much inseparable right on through middle school. We used to hang out at the restaurant after school in sixth grade, when it was still new and exciting to me. Mom would give us a plate of cookies and sit us on stools, safely out of the way, to watch the action. “And don't touch anything,” she would instruct us. Most of the time, we didn't. Sim started calling the time we hung out together “kindergarten,” because of the cookies and milk.

In eighth grade, when Mom decided I was trustworthy enough to go home after school instead of be at the restaurant, the tradition continued. Sim came over, and we had cookies—now cookies I baked—and did our homework while watching TV. Everything was fine, right until the time he brought Rachel Sconza over after school.

“So, you guys are here, by yourselves, every day?” Rachel's dark eyebrows were lifted.

“Well…yeah,” I said, feeling my neck heat.

“So, is he a good kisser or what?” Rachel was the most popular girl in the eighth grade, and she'd already had two boyfriends.

“Uh…” I felt my neck scorch. “I…we…”

“You mean, you haven't even tried?”

I shrugged, tongue-tied. I'd nurtured a tiny crush on him forever, but…kiss him?

“I'll find out,” Rachel announced, and she yelled into the living room, “Hey, Sim!”

Rachel Sconza rated all the boys in our yearbook, and Sim got a nine out of ten for kissing. By freshman year, things got even worse.

I ran into Sim at his locker one day after second period.

“Hey. How'd you do on the quiz?”

Sim grinned at me, shrugged. “Okay. I went to a party with Lana Enriquez this weekend, so I didn't actually get much studying done, but you know Wilcox—I'll ask for some extra credit, and it'll be all right. He's cool.”

“Lana?” I frowned. “I thought you and Fay—”

“History.” Sim grinned and bumped my shoulder with his.

“That was quick.”

Simeon shrugged again, his eyes bright. “So, you going to this Halloween dance?”

I shifted my books. “Nah. Don't think so.”

“Oh, come on, Laine! You never go anywhere.”

“Are
you
going?”

“Yeah. You want to meet me there?”

“Okay.” I'd been nonchalant, but deep down, I was thrilled. In spite of everything—all the new friends and the girlfriends—it looked like we were still the same good friends as always.

The Halloween dance turned out to be one of the best times I ever had at a school function, ever. Even though Sim wasn't even in costume and I was wearing a green dress and heels and
wings
(I told people I was the absinthe fairy from
Moulin Rouge
), it was amazing. When we got there, Sim talked the guys who were running the haunted house into letting us play with the projector for a while, and we put up some bizarre effects on the walls. The dance floor was so packed we could hardly move, but Sim grabbed my hand and started dancing with me, and suddenly we were surrounded by all these people—juniors and seniors and kids from our own year—waving and slapping Sim on the back. Most of them gave me a nod too, like maybe I was a little more interesting since I was with Sim Keller. That night I felt incredibly cool, and lucky.

By junior year, Sim and I didn't see each other much, and I realized that I'd somehow become a loner. It isn't like he was mean to me or anything, not on purpose, really, but we sort of moved in two different worlds—his had people in it, and mine had food. And every time I've seen him this year, Sim has always been in a crowd I don't know. He, of course, knows everybody—from jocks to artsy goths to preppies to skaters to stoners. This year he's been super-busy juggling all his friends. I feel like I got lost in the shuffle.

Last semester, when Sim started cutting physics, I saw him hanging out in the quad during lunch, kicking a Hacky Sack, and I told him he'd missed a quiz—just to be polite, not like I thought he'd care.

“Ooh.” Simeon's reaction was to be goofy, smack himself on the forehead as if he'd forgotten about it. “Physics, huh? Guess I flunked,” Sim cracked, and all the guys around him laughed.

I smiled a little, shifting my weight around, waiting for Sim to kick the sack to someone else and talk to me. I watched as he instead concentrated on the sack, catching it on the inside of his right foot, kicking it to the outside behind his back, and then catching it in his hands. He stopped and tossed the hair out of his eyes, barely winded from his freestyle exhibition. The guys he was with slapped his hands and congratulated him, and he finally turned to me.

“So…did you need something?” he asked, tossing the sack from hand to hand.

My face felt like it was on fire. “Um, no,” I said, flustered. “See you.” I went to hide in the bathroom until lunch was over, feeling like the biggest idiot at Redgrove. The worst thing was he'd said something to the guys when I left, and I heard them laughing…at me.

What was I thinking? That I was some kind of cool skater type he'd want to talk to around his guy friends? I promised myself that was the last time I'd talk to him at all, the last time I'd care if he showed up to class or not. And it was the last time. I've seen him around campus, and I haven't said a word. He goes his way, and I go mine.

The pathetic thing is, I don't think he's really noticed.

Okay, enough. This is the last time I think about Simeon Keller today. Right this minute, I am going to focus on Cheryl and this wonder-what-toxic-chemicalit's-made-of bread. I won't think about anything but what I'm supposed to be doing: this exciting assignment that Mr. Wilcox has so graciously set before us. Right.

“Seven to go. Should we put the number of little hairs in the jelly as part of our observation?”

“I think we should,” Cheryl says seriously. “There's got to be some kind of line of scientific inquiry we can answer about what's on the floor of the physics classroom.”

“I'm glad we have the first physics period of the day,” I say. “Even with the paper towels, the floor is going to be nasty by sixth.”

Eventually, Mr. Wilcox starts bellowing again, so it'd be easy to pull out a pen and take notes and stop thinking, except that I don't do either. Instead, I find myself doodling: “Simeon Michael Keller.” I cross out the name and sigh.

My teachers tell me I'm goal-oriented. My grades tell me I've got a decent brain—when I make the effort. I'm smart—smart enough to know that Sim's not worth losing sleep over—but for some reason, he's still on my mind.

It's not just that he's cute—although he is really good-looking, with that kind of little-boy-lost/bad-boy look going for him with his black wardrobe, his funny-colored amber eyes, the thick, long lashes, and the collar-length dyed-black hair in his eyes. It's just that I knew the real Sim, once upon a time. I knew his freaky parents, his brother, his situation, and even if he pretends everything's cool now, I know it's not.

I sigh and pick up my pen. That was then, this is now. I'm putting Simeon Keller out of my mind this MINUTE. Permanently. This drama is all ancient history anyway. Simeon was my friend, and now he's not. Period. I'm not going to waste any more time worrying about him. Instead, I think about the crunchy, chewy artisan bread we have at the restaurant and how I should try and make a loaf this afternoon. I have to do something to cleanse my soul after this class with its pseudo-food and factory-made bread. Maybe tomorrow I'll bring some to Mr. Wilcox so he'll know what real bread is supposed to look like.

Nah. He'll probably make me do another experiment, and I can't stand wasting
real
food.