Cherry (9 page)

Lately, it was the only activity that managed to distract her from herself, so she'd been spending almost all of her free time there. She might not be able to give Layla a progress report on the sex pact, but at least she could make progress on something worthwhile. Today she was working on the layout for the Senior Superlative page. They hadn't voted on the Superlatives yet, but Emma knew they would soon and they'd need a layout. Might as well get a jump on it now. Someone would be voted Most Likely to Succeed. Someone would have the Best Eyes and the Cutest Smile. Emma thought she should nominate herself Most Likely to Have a Nervous Breakdown Slash Panic Attack Before Graduation.

“Your photo layout looks good,” Savannah said as she sat down at the computer next to Emma.

“My photo layout looks
excellent
, thankyouverymuch,” Emma confirmed playfully. “It's just . . . it's the
rest of my everything that's all over the place.”

“I swear you don't
look
like you're all over the place.”

“Yeah, well, you can't see or hear any of the thoughts inside my head.”

“Yeah,
well
, I think if I
could
really see or hear them, we'd have some sort of intense medical emergency on our hands,” Savannah said with a laugh.

Emma loved Savannah's laugh.

It was substantial and unapologetic and always the perfect pitch.

Savannah flipped open her notebook, and Emma couldn't help but notice an impressive collection of ­doodles and ­scribbles interspersed with a smattering of notes about the boys' soccer game. “I'm sports news editor,” Savannah explained.

“Really? Sports?”

“Yes.
Really.
”

“I mean. You just
look
like such a huge sports fan . . .”

“Little known fact: The sports section is the busiest beat on the paper. There are dozens of sports teams, and they all have dozens of games. There's always something to write about.” Emma nodded, sensing there was something more to the story. “Anddddd, yeah. I didn't get my shit together fast enough at the start of the school year, and all the other editorial beats were already taken.”

“So, we're saying my judgments are quite accurate?”

“If we must.”

“Oh, we must.” Emma laughed again.

Savannah laughed again too. Emma appreciated her laugh more and more each time.

“What's so funny?”
Nick asked on his way into the room.

“Sports,” Savannah said in a deep voice that made Emma laugh even harder.

“All right,” Nick said, clearly missing the inside joke. He grabbed his binder off the counter and then noticed the Superlative layout on Emma's screen. “Oh, whoa . . . ,” he said as leaned down, right over Emma's left shoulder, to get a better look. He didn't need to be quite so close to see it, but Emma would've been lying if she said she didn't like that he was standing there. “It's
brilliant
,” he concluded after another long look. “Em, your layouts are
always
worth geeking out about. Every single time . . .” Emma smiled, trying not to blush. Nick squeezed her shoulder and then ­hustled out the door. The girls watched him leave.

“I officially nominate him for Best Butt,” Savannah announced.

“Unfortunately juniors don't get to vote for superlatives.”

“What. Ever. You should add his butt to your layout. It's that good.” Emma hadn't really noticed his butt before . . . His lips? All the time. But never his butt.

Savannah's lips cracked into an embarrassed smirk. “I'm actually the weirdest,” she blurted out as if she simply couldn't keep the words inside for a moment longer. “Butts aren't even my thing, like, sexually speaking or whatever. It's not like the thought of them turns me on or anything, but I always feel as if I want to put my hand inside people's back pants pockets. It's not even that I really want to
touch
their butts or anything, but I just, like, need to know what my
hand would feel like inside their pocket. Don't worry, I'm super normal . . .”

“‘The only normal people are the ones we don't know very well,'” Emma replied. Layla had sent that quote to The Chat one time. Emma loved it so much she wrote it down on a Post-it note and stuck it on her bathroom mirror.

“So then you agree that I'm weird?”

“Oh, totally. But I am too.”

“You keep it together pretty well.”

“God no. I told you,” Emma insisted. “
My thoughts . . .
” She considered how much crazy she was willing to unleash into Savannah's world before deciding to open up a little bit more. “Okay, so you want to put your hands in people's pockets? Fine. That's weird. No question. But my weirdness is that I literally want to kiss everyone I meet.”

“Everyone?”

“Yup. Everyone.”

“By ‘kiss' you mean, like, a peck on the cheek or you actually want to stick your tongue inside their mouth?”

“Tongue in mouth,” Emma said with a giggle, but she was entirely serious. “It's not really even sexual, either. I just have this urge to know what it'd be like.”

Emma had never said that out loud before. She didn't know what it was exactly, but something about Savannah made her want to say it.

“All right. I feel good about that,” Savannah said.

Emma did too.

ALEX
still wasn't quite sure how she felt about Oliver.

“It's complicated,” she explained between bites of her chopped salad.

“Obviously. It
has
to be complicated or you would've gotten bored forever ago,” Layla said without judgment.

“True,” Alex agreed. “Sometimes I think he's a misunderstood nice guy. Other times I think he's the asshole everyone thinks he is. I can't tell. This morning he finally asked if he could see me somewhere besides his car.”

“Wait, w
hat
?!” Layla asked excitedly.

“Yeah. He said he wants to take me out somewhere,” Alex explained as if it weren't a big deal. “Act-u-a-lly he said he wants to go somewhere sexy with me, which sounds ridiculous, but I swear it came out of his mouth.”

“It's only ‘ridiculous' if you actually mean ‘hot,'” Layla said.

“It was hot, too, I guess, but who just
says
that?” Alex asked.

“
A guy with a lot of confidence in the size of his penis,” Emma quipped.

“You know,” Layla said seriously, “penis size is actually
not
the most important factor in determining the amount of pleasure a woman has in any given sexual experience.”

“Are you quoting the Sex Doc?” Zoe giggled.

“O-kay. I'm not having sex with Oliver. At least not on our first date,” Alex clarified.

  *  *  *  

EMMA
thought it was weird that Alex was even
having
a first date in the first place.

But, then again, maybe she was the weird one since everyone in The Crew seemed to be dating, too: Zoe and Austin were about to go on their second date. Layla and Logan had an official
sex
date on the calendar. And now Alex and Oliver.

“It's cool,” Emma said, tucking her hair behind her ears. “You guys go ahead with all that . . . I'll just hang out by myself. It's fine. Totally fine.”

“You
sound
totally fine,” Alex teased.

“Let's find you someone to date,” Layla said excitedly. “Or maybe someone you might want to hang out with. Like, for the pact . . .”

“I don't want to ‘hang out' with someone just because of the stupid pact.”

“Emma. The pact is not
stupid
,” Layla defended.

“You're obsessing about it. It's all you want to talk about anymore.” Emma directed that statement mostly to Layla, but she meant it for the other girls too.

“Em, it'
s just supposed to be fun,” Layla said, trying to calm Emma down.

“I think it'll be a lot more fun if we stop making such a big deal about it.”

“I swear I'm not trying to stress you out,” Layla insisted, “but I
am
trying to say that I think it matters. Or that I think it
should
matter. But it's obviously not something you
have
to do—”

“No, I know I don't
have
to,” Emma replied. “but school ending is already stressful enough, and now you decided that this has to have the same due date—”

“Emma!” Layla said, finally getting exasperated. “You're the one who's mushing it together with graduation”—Emma flinched at Layla's use of the G-word—“but for real if you don't want to do the pact, for whatever reason, just say so.”

“I want to do it!” Emma declared. But she knew there was a “but” somewhere inside of her too. She paused for a moment, trying to find the right way, or at least the right words, to best explain herself to her best friends. “
But,
” she finally managed to add, “there's nothing more frustrating than a feeling you can't quite explain.” The girls all nodded. Emma was relieved to see that they seemed to understand what she was saying even if she didn't quite understand it herself. “I'm starting to think that something is seriously wrong with me,” she added.

“Nothing is wrong with you,” Layla insisted. “And we always want to know what's going on, even if it's confusing, or hard to explain, or whatever.”

“I'm
just, like, frustrated all the time and I don't know why . . .”

“Sounds like you need to get laid,” Alex teased, like only she could.

“Ha. Thanks,” Emma said, finally cracking a real smile.

“Oh, look, there she is,” Layla said, seeing Emma's grin.

And Emma felt more like herself again, at least for a moment.

And she really
did
still want to get laid.

Or at least she still liked the idea of the pact.

Mostly, she liked that the girls were all in it together.

A few hours later, after Emma's last class of the day, she walked into the yearbook room, and was glad to find Nick, sitting by himself, working on the copy for the Superlative page.

“Lookin' good,” she said.

“Just trying to keep up with you . . .” Nick smiled. Emma slid a chair up next to his computer and watched him work for a minute. He didn't seem to mind. “So . . . what's up with you?” he asked after some time had passed. It was an innocent enough question, but Emma couldn't help but hear the weight of all her frustrations inside of it.

“Ohhhh . . . ,” Emma started, but before she could finish, she heard Alex's words from the lunch table echoing in her head:
Sounds like you need to get laid.

“
Ohhhh
,” Nick echoed back to her when she failed to say anything else. “I know you, Em, and I know
something's
up. Tell me what's bothering you.”

Emma shuffled through her bothersome thoughts and
ultimately decided to play it safe: college applications and grades and the end of high school and all that, she answered.

“Yeah, it blows.” Nick nodded. “
Especially
when you don't know what you're doing next.”

Yep
, Emma thought.

“My early application got rejected from NYU,” he added after another moment.

“Oh, that sucks,” Emma said before she could filter herself.

“Thanks,” Nick said, chuckling.

“Sorry, I mean—”

“No, you're right. It does suck. And basically everyone I've told so far just wants to say sorry and talk to me about things ‘happening for a reason' or finding a ‘bright side' and all that bullshit. But it's like, what if I don't want a bright side? Maybe I just need to sit in the rain cloud for a little while, you know?”

“I do,” Emma said, appreciating Nick's honesty.

“And what if things
don't
happen for a reason?” Nick asked, picking up steam. “What if it's all just random and the time we spend trying to make sense of everything is actually time that we're stupidly wasting because there is no meaning?” Nick looked up from the screen, catching Emma's eyes. She couldn't seem to take them off him. “I'm glad you get it,” he said.

Emma did get it. She totally,
totally
got it . . .

. . . just as long as she didn't have to define what “it” actually was.

“I feel like there's something more you're not telling me,”
Nick said intuitively. “I can practically see the thought bubbles floating up out of your hair.”

Emma shook her head no.

“Really? No? I put all
my
lameness out on the table and you still don't want to share?”

Nick licked his lips.

They looked particularly kissable.

“It's not that I don't
want
to share . . . it's just . . .” Emma could hear Alex's words echoing in her head again:
Sounds like you need to get laid.

“Come. On.” Nick pushed one more time. “What's on your mind?”

“Sex.”

“Ha. Right.”

Emma had answered so quickly and without hesitation that it took Nick an extended moment to realize she wasn't kidding.

“Wait,
actually
?” he asked, his eyes popping a little. Emma focused her attention on her fingernails. “Oh, all right, well, I didn't mean . . . ,” Nick bumbled, still surprised by Emma's boldness. “You know, sex is just, like, basically in my head a hundred percent of the time while all my other thoughts attempt to exist in front of it, so . . .”

Emma nodded, finally looking up long enough to make eye contact.