Being Friends With Boys (4 page)

“Well, congrats,” Trip says after a beat. “It’s . . . cute.” To Oliver he says, “You see Simon’s post last night?”

Oliver nods and wraps his arm around Whitney, who has sidled up to him from nowhere—not liking it, I suppose, that he was away from her for a full two minutes.

“Cool.” Trip looks at them, then me.

Why is this awkward all of a sudden? Oliver should be joking and talking and tied up in Trip’s opinion just like before. I shouldn’t be feeling like a wonky but necessary third wheel, the one keeping the tricycle from propelling itself into oncoming traffic.

“I’m going to put these up.” I lift the envelope, show my roll of tape.

“Good work, Spider,” Oliver says after me. As I turn to say thanks, I catch Trip watching, and he doesn’t look pleased. I almost ask does he want to come help me, but asking him to participate in his own replacement would just be weird.

I get four flyers hung up—the crucial one near the band hall, and three others in strategic places by the cafeteria and the library—before the bell rings. I’ll do the rest later. And check back on these to see if anyone’s pulled off a tab.

Walking with Trip between first and second periods is a little more normal than the parking lot scenario. Apparently two seconds after I left, Whitney was all “What’s up with
that
?” about the flyers, because Oliver hadn’t told her about the auditions at all.

“Five-minute tirade about his lack of communication and respect.” Trip’s giddy, describing it. “Finger in his face and everything.”

I groan. “Could he please go ahead and dump her?”

Oliver and Whitney have been going out since the party Sad Jackal played in July, and Trip and I really hoped the start of school would break them up. As an outlet for our Whitney disdain, we have written out several little scenarios in the notebook, all of them involving Oliver dumping Whitney in dastardly and creative ways. My favorite depicts Oliver rowing Whitney out to an island, abandoning her there, and tossing out bottles with messages that say
NOT EVEN IF WE WERE STRANDED ON A DESERT ISLAND
into the boat’s wake.

“She does have a great rack, though,” Trip says. “You can’t argue.”

I swat him on the arm. “Annoying much?”

He shrugs. “I’m just saying.”

“Okay, well.” We are at my math class. I hold up the notebook he just handed me. “I’ll return it before lunch?”

“Duh.”

I watch him walk away. He must know that I do this now, because today he turns and gives me a wave before he disappears around the corner.

When I’m able to read the notebook, though, I discover that as soon as his dad heard Trip wasn’t doing Sad Jackal anymore, he started pushing Trip extra hard about joining a sports team again, or else the martial arts stuff his dad’s obsessed with. And it sounds like Trip’s actually considering it:
The thing is, after dinner I was laying there listening to music (too late to call you, sorry), and I remembered hearing that when your body’s engaged in one mindless activity, it leaves the creative part free to create.

I’m still working on my response to him in 20th Cen. As soon as Dr. Campbell turns out the lights for the overhead projector and his eighteen-year-old notes (which he expects us to copy and memorize whether he actually lectures on them or not), the guy in front of me, Benji, turns around and whispers, “That’s not history, is it?”

“None of your business,” I hiss at him, indicating he should
turn around and focus, which I should be doing too. We had our first test last Friday, a take-home. But Campbell managed to make it hard as hell, and I know I’ll be lucky if I get a C+.

Still, I want to finish my response to Trip in time for our switch-off.

Learning ninja skills is possibly cool
, I write, but then I hesitate. I want to be encouraging. I do. But Trip’s dad is militant about Trip conforming to his hard-core ideals. He wants a machine, not a musician. That Trip is even considering his dad’s suggestions now, especially after all the fighting they did over the summer about the band, well—it’s a little disconcerting.

I just want to protect that musical genius I admire so much
, I write.

I’m debating telling him I’m worried that our busy schedules might make it harder for us to hang out, when Benji, in his ohso-not-subtleness, reaches over his shoulder and drops a messily folded note on my desk.
We should team up for these tests. You up for it?

I look down at my two notebooks: one a distracted hodgepodge of history, one a distracted, still not fully articulated mess about—whatever. I picture my report card, probably coming up before I know it.

Sure.
I write back.
When. Where?

After class, Benji bolts from his desk, but then waits for me
outside the portable building and takes my arm like we’re at the opera.

“You mean it?” he says.

“Sure, Benj.”

“Okay, well. I can’t truly hang until four or something this afternoon. Detention.”

“You have detention already?” I unhook my arm from his. It feels weird being that close to him.

He shrugs.

“Okay, so, fine,” I say. “But are you really taking notes in class or not? You’re not getting me to do all the work.”

He slow-smiles at me, shaking his head. From under those long bangs, his eyes are serious, and he holds out his hands as if in surrender. “I will be useful.”

We’re getting close to the main building, the busy double doors.

“That remains to be seen,” I tell him over my shoulder. “I’ll meet you this afternoon.”

I don’t know why I think this as I walk off, but I hope to god he is not, in any way, looking at my ass.

Waiting for Trip, to hand off the notebook before he has AP Physics and I have lunch period, I try to wrap things up by telling him about Benji and how I’m incredibly curious about this “study session.”

“Ah-ah-ah,” I hear Trip call across the courtyard. “Editing is cheating. Raw, unbridled honesty is the whole point.” He gets to where I’m sitting and stands over me.

“Oh yeah, like all the honesty in those mysteriously missing pages?”

His hand goes to his chest. “Are you accusing me of censoring myself?”

“No. I’m accusing you of not doing a better job of editing yourself. If you’re going to tear things out, you should really make sure they flow—” I start flipping, to show him, though he already knows the gap from August is totally there.

“You were in a difficult place.” His face is fake sympathetic. “Jilly was getting ready to leave, and school was coming up, and I just didn’t think you needed to hear about me reuniting with my long-lost twin brother, who was also king of Persia and wanted me to be in that action movie with him and our equally long-lost uncle, the famous movie star.”

“I don’t think Persia is a country anymore.” My eyebrows are frowning but my mouth is smiling.

“I think you need to work on your geography.”

“That’s not the point.”

“You are completely right.” He takes the notebook from my hands. “The point is that I’m going to be late, and we’re getting nachos in only two nights.”

“You’re right—that
is
the point.” I pat my stomach.

He moves off, back toward the stairs, and we holler, “See you—if I don’t see you first!” at the same time. The late bell rings over us, leaving me to spend the rest of lunch taping more Sad Jackal flyers in the open halls.

When the notebook comes back to me before psych at the end of the day, Trip has ignored basically everything I’d said in it. There aren’t any How Oliver Should Break Up With Whitney cartoons, or any comeback in Jessica Stine’s defense (seeing as she is the third hottest girl in school) regarding my snark that I’m not sure whether what she had on this morning was a dress or just a T-shirt. Instead he’s written, in big block letters,
DO NOT HANG OUT WITH BENJI MCLAUGHLIN
. I’m all ready to write a snappy response when Oliver leans across the aisle to bump my fist.

“Good work, Spider. The flyers look great. And did you see that six tabs are already missing off that one?”

My shoulders flush with a proud orange feeling. Why this makes me ask, “Hey, what do you know about Benji McLaughlin?” I’m not really sure.

Oliver shrugs. “Skate punk. Pothead. Basically decent. Why?”

“He sits in front of me in history.” I try to say it with nonchalance. “Just wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to contract some horrible disease.”

After school, I wait at the empty soccer fields for Benji to get done with his detention. I’m pretending to do my film studies reading, but after about two minutes, I have to call Trip.

“What the hell ‘Don’t hang out with Benji’? In all caps? Like you’re my mom?” I say as soon as he picks up.

“And a lovely good afternoon to you, too.”

“What do you have against Benji?” I keep going. “He’s a total idiot.”

“Why are you studying with him, then?”

“Whatever.”

“Benji is not at all interested in your Twentieth Cen. grade. Or his.”

“You think I can’t handle Benji McLaughlin? I handle
you
every day.”

He ignores my insult. “I think you can handle him. You just might not want to. Or maybe you will.” His voice is a little mean. “And he tears through girls, believe me.”

Everything switches around in me then. It never would have occurred to me to think of Benji in any romantic way, but suddenly I am picturing us making out under the bleachers. I am picturing his hand in my pants.

“So what if I did? Want to?” I stumble over the words. “And besides, when did you ever spend enough time with him to
know how he treats his girlfriends?”

I am glaring at the empty soccer field as though I am trying to stare Trip down. We are in dangerous, embarrassing territory this minute, him even hinting about my being with a boy. My last boyfriend, Clay, broke up with me weeks before Trip enrolled last semester, and I haven’t had a date or even a crush since. Though Trip dated someone for a while at the end of the year last year, it wasn’t that big a thing to either of them, and it was over before we started doing so much band stuff this summer. For most of our friendship, we’ve both been unattached. He hasn’t been interested in anyone, and I’m not the kind of girl that boys like, anyway.

But as my long friendship with Oliver —and even Abe— has proven, when you’re friends with a boy and then suddenly you have to talk about dating, it can get strange. Sure, boys want to tell you all about their hookups, until they remember—by some slip in the conversation—that you’re a
girl
, and then they get weird and uncomfortable. It’s important to stay expressionless when it happens, even though you also have to keep doling out girl-sided advice. Because that’s why they’re telling you. They
want
to know what it’s like from a girl’s side. But if you ever attempt doing the reverse—talking about your own hookups or crushes—and especially if you even slightly mention any kind of physical whatever, everything shuts down and gets awkward. It’s
safer to be completely neutral on the matter. It’s safer if they don’t think you have a vagina at all.

“Look.” I change tactics. “It’s not like I don’t think Benji is a little . . . off.”

“So then—?”

I can just
see
him twirling his hand in that arrogant way.

“So if
you
were in my history class, it might be different. But I have to make do with what I’ve got. So cut me some slack.”

He’s quiet a second. I’m not sure what he’s going to say.

“Like maybe you should cut me some slack about not hanging with Sad Jackal anymore.”

My pulse accelerates and my face warms. “When have I ever given you any crap about that at all? I think that maybe you should care less who I care whether you hang out with or not.”

Yikes. That was mean-sounding. And probably not English.

“I’m just exploring alternatives,” he says finally.

“Well, maybe so am I.”

It feels like a fight. And yet it also just feels like a regular conversation. I’m not sure if I like either option. I’m not sure why.

“Good luck with your studying,” he says. There’s acid in that last word.

“Thank you.” I choose not to engage.

We hang up.

“Well, that was a disaster,” I say out loud.

But I only have to look at my reading for about forty-five more seconds before I hear Benji crunching through the leaves and pine needles behind me.

“’Sup,” he says when I turn around. Like he’s doing me a favor by actually showing up.

I stick my film studies into my satchel, pull out the notes from 20th Cen.

“I figure we should compare notes” is all I say to him.

He clomps up onto the bleachers next to me. It is gray and overcast: looking like it should be cold, making it even more uncomfortable that it’s lightly humid and really too warm for a jacket, though he has one on. The minute he sits down, he rummages around in it (multipocketed, army-green canvas) and takes out a crumpled joint.