Olivia Christakos and Her Second First Time (2 page)

He helps me stand. “Did you hurt yourself?” He glances down my leg to my twisted foot. It pulses with pain.

“I’m fiiiiine,” I say. The word comes out drawn-out and drunkenly and I hate the way I can’t seem to control my speech. The sharp pain in my ankle fades to a dull ache thanks to the alcohol, but I bet it’ll scream tomorrow.

“Do you want to sit down or something?” Wyatt asks.

I shake my head.

“That’s a good idea,” Chloe hollers. “You sit with Wyatt, I’ll get the next round, and we’ll see if your ankle feels better after a few minutes.” There are no empty seats in the entire place, much less one close by. Chloe leaves me anyway. I try to stand on my own and release myself from his grip—I’m so not the damsel-in-distress type—but he’s stronger than my liquored-up muscles. I don’t have time to waste on being injured. I have someone I need to find. “I’m fine,” I repeat, trying to yank my arm away. But he must not hear me over the music.

Wyatt notices the lack of tables too. I prop myself against the wall and don’t need his assistance anymore, but he keeps his cool hand on my arm. Even in my drunkenness, I know it’s awkward. I stare at him, wondering how much he’s had to drink. He blinks back at me. He still has those boyish brown eyes. I can’t tell if he’s drunk, though. He seems totally sober. Plus, gauging someone’s drunkenness when I myself am toward the end of the sober spectrum probably isn’t entirely accurate.

Wyatt licks his lips after I stare at him longer than necessary. He only does that when he’s nervous, and the movement makes me smile. I should say something to him.

Chloe returns then, handing me a pink drink. She sips at hers and her eyes scan the room, obviously forgetting my injury.

My eyebrows scrunch together while I continue to stare at Wyatt, not confused but remembering. “You...you used to wear He-Man underwear.” I can’t believe, out of all the memories collected over the years we spent growing up together flitting through my brain, this is what pops out of my mouth.

Chloe chuckles and waggles her eyebrows. “Wow, Tartar Sauce, I never knew.”

“Don’t call him that,” I snap, even though I did just moments before. I know she’s only teasing—she’s the type to catch and release a house spider—but still. I put my old Defending Wyatt Rosen hat on. It’s been a long time since I’ve worn it and it makes me feel like my night has been filled with new purpose. “He doesn’t smell like fish anymore. And, he’s my...friend.” I have no idea why that word has come out of my mouth. Damn pink drinks.

Wyatt’s eyebrows raise, but he says nothing.

“You were a complete bitch to him growing up and I can’t tease him a little?” She bends to remove my shoes, suddenly remembering why Wyatt is still holding onto me. I glare at her and she sighs. “You’re looking good, by the way.” She directs this comment to Wyatt, trying to make up for her bitchy behavior. She does this thing where if she thinks she’s offended you, she’ll throw in a compliment to tip the scales back her way.

Wyatt says nothing during this exchange, just watches us like we’re a couple of dying butterflies trapped in a glass jar. I’m sure I look a mess. But why should I even care? It’s only Wyatt. Little Wyatt Rosen with his He-Man underwear. But he obviously isn’t the same boy—he has an unfamiliar confident air about him—and looking at him makes me self-conscious.

Subtly, I bend my head down to my armpit and sniff. Wyatt’s eyes narrow just the slightest and I straighten. I know I’m sweating, but I can still only smell the perfume Chloe practically spilled on me earlier. Thank God.

Chloe’s done with her task and my feet feel much better without any shoes.

I realize I’m leaning into Wyatt while Chloe, now holding my heels, chats up a guy in an orange long-sleeved T-shirt, manpris and sandals who’s playing pool nearby. My mind screams at me to move away from him like,
what the frick are you doing?
Go find James!
But being around Wyatt subdues the homesickness feeling that I had earlier. He was a backdrop to my childhood.

I don’t know what else to say to him and I don’t think I’ve made a great impression so far because he isn’t saying anything either. He’s just standing there, watching people dance, gripping his phone like he was in the middle of texting someone before I practically fell on him.

I grab the phone and tap on the camera app. “Let’s take a pic together,” I say, slurring in his ear. Before he can protest, I lean my cheek into his lightly stubbly one, smile widely, and tap the button.

The picture is awful. I’m red and sweaty, obviously drunk. I press the trash button, but before I can confirm it, he snatches the phone from my hand and stuffs it into his jeans pocket.

I raise my eyebrows at him.

“It’s a good picture,” he says with a shrug.

“Yeah, maybe of you,” I tease, poking him in the ribs. Then I realize that I didn’t even check to see what he looked like in the photo. Either way, I’m flattered that he wants to keep my picture. Maybe he’s feeling nostalgic too. “What’re you doing in L.A. anyway?” I ask. “Are you going to school here too?”

“Um, no,” he says, licking his lips some more. “I came here with some friends.” He gestures behind him where two boys are kissing against a wall. One of them might be Steven Marcon, Wyatt’s school friend, but it’s hard to tell with a boy dangling from his lips. “I’m the third wheel. I’m kind of glad you fell at my feet.” He blushes, then must realize what he’s said because he starts to stammer. “I—I didn’t mean—”

Chloe tugs on me, done with her conversation with Manpris Man. “Let’s go smoke,” she slurs, her eyelids heavy. “I spent all that time talking to the guy and he’s here with some other dude. That sucks. We should go to a straight bar next time. I mean, I know we didn’t want to get hit on tonight, but dammit...” she keeps blabbing while tugging me off the wall.

Wyatt’s grip on my arm resists for an infinitesimal second and then releases. My skin feels cold in the wake of his touch. Before we’re too far away, the drinks take over my brain and I want to say something to him. To my horror, what comes out is “By the power of Grayskull!”

Chloe giggles, yanking on me.

“Do you think he’s gay?” I ask Chloe, who has a pink lighter at the ready. She doesn’t hear me, which is good. I shouldn’t want to know the answer to that question. I have James.

We’re to the door and already I’m scanning for his Bronco or Tyler’s Jeep. On the way out, I bump into the bouncer. “Sorry, Pete!” I shout and giggle at how loud I am now that I’m outside.

But Pete doesn’t seem bothered. “Are you behaving, ladies?”

“Don’t we always?” I say with a little laugh, lifting a cigarette to my mouth. Chloe lights it for me. I take a pull.

My bare feet are cool against the sidewalk—the one that I wouldn’t touch earlier, before all the tequila—and the cool, summer night air is welcoming on my sweating body. I lean into the side of the building, my head spinning. But I feel good and the heaviness from earlier—when I’d overheard my “friends” in the bathroom talking, hurting my ankle, and embarrassing myself in front of Wyatt—floats away in an imaginary balloon. Chloe slips the cigarette from my fingers.

“Hey!” she says, elbowing me. “Isn’t that James and Tyler?” She points a manicured finger toward an approaching vehicle.

My insides tighten. “Are they leaving already?” I step away from the wall, staggering a little and squint down the road to where Chloe is looking. James drives a white Bronco, but the vehicle coming down the road looks sleeker, like a minivan or something. Doesn’t look like Tyler’s Jeep, either. It’s barreling down the street, faster than it should be. Most of the traffic on this street comes from the two bars, especially this late at night—Pink Dollars, and its sister bar across the street, Blue Coins. Whoever is behind the wheel is probably drunk.

Just then, the Cub Scout from earlier whizzes toward us on his bike. He swerves to miss me and ends up in the street. He crashes hard on his elbow, the bike on top of him, in front of the oncoming car.

Some drunk guy on the other side of the street shouts something too slurred to understand completely, something like
get off the street
,
man
or something and the girl he’s with squeals, “Ohmygod!”

My hands go reflexively to my belly, to the memory there. The boy struggles to stand. His shoelace is caught in his bike chain.

Without another thought, I drop my bag and, ignoring my hurt ankle, jump out into the road. Someone yells from behind me, maybe Chloe, and a man’s voice says something comforting in return. I rip the lace from the chain, push the bike off the boy and shove him out of the way of the car to the other side of the street. The boy, confused, stumbles over the curb and falls onto his butt on the sidewalk.

A man in a black jacket runs over to him, bending down to assess his injuries. A few ladies follow, shrieking and cooing.

The minivan doesn’t honk, doesn’t swerve to miss me, and my brain freezes—shocked into stillness. I can’t move or breathe. Whoever the driver is isn’t looking at me. He’s peering down at something in his lap or his hand. Or maybe he’s passed out.

As the headlights press closer, bathing me in light, my brain restarts. I turn, take a step, and my world goes black.

Chapter Two

Second Grade

The weird boy from Mr. Trainor’s class was moved into my class. I leaned over to my new friend, Chloe, who’d moved from Colorado, and pointed when he walked in. “What’s he wearing?” I asked her. “He looks dirty.”

She giggled, writing her name on the inside of her new Lisa Frank folder. She was obsessed with school supplies, especially those designed with rainbows and unicorns. She even wore a bright-pink hair tie with a little toy unicorn in the side of her hair. “The only reason he’s in this class now is because Jackson Parrish told everyone he smells like fish. They moved him so Jackson would leave him alone.”

Ms. Fring was next to us suddenly, a hand on the weird boy’s shoulder. “You can sit here,” she said to him, and he sat down right next to me. And he did smell like fish. I wasn’t rude enough to plug my nose, but I wanted to. Instead, I breathed through my mouth and prayed for Monday, when Ms. Fring would move our desks around.

With a sideways glance, I examined the weird boy. He wore a brown-and-white-striped shirt with a large collar that looked to be made of the same fabric my Grandma Edna wore and faded, stained jeans with a big hole in one knee. His hair was floppy, curly and brown and fell into his face, like he was purposely hiding behind it. No wonder he got made fun of. There was nothing to like.

I leaned as close as I could to Chloe because she smelled like baby powder and soap and pretended not to watch him. Then I took out a piece of paper while the teacher was talking to the principal out in the hall and started folding it into paper fortune-teller. Lauren Michaels taught me last year and now I was fast enough that I could make one in under a minute. But the faster I could make them, the sloppier they turned out. Like this one. None of the folds lined up and I had to start over.

“Here,” the weird kid said, pulling the paper free of my grasp. “I’m a great folder.”

I was too surprised to argue and my instinct was to push myself back into my seat, away from his possible touch. He didn’t seem to notice though, even though I couldn’t really see his expression through all that hair. I could barely make out a large nose and the bottom of his chin.

I elbowed Chloe and pointed for her to look. Her blue eyes went wide, reminding me of this Precious Moments doll I had at home on my bookshelf. “Your paper is gonna smell like fish,” she whispered.

Another minute passed and the weird boy handed back my paper, now folded into a sharp, crisp fortune-teller. When he turned his face to me, he smiled, and I was surprised at how wide that smile was, how white his teeth were. Maybe he wasn’t dirty after all. “My name’s Wyatt,” he said. “What’s yours?”

“Olivia Christakos,” I said. And when he just kept staring at me, I looked down to the fortune-teller. “Thanks for this. Nice, um...folding.”

He beamed and I kind of felt proud that I could make him happy. Even though he was the weird kid.

When he wasn’t looking, I sniffed the paper. It didn’t smell like fish. It didn’t smell like anything at all, which made me think Wyatt kept his hands clean.

At recess, when Chloe and I were spinning around on the bars, I watched Wyatt. Not on purpose, really, but because he was sitting in my line of view. He had his back pushed against the brick building and was drawing something, looking up from time to time, like he was sketching the scenery. I had this urge to see what his picture looked like.

I kept wondering what it could be—the palm trees, the playground equipment, one of the other students—while I spun over and over on my bar. Chloe was on the bar next to me doing the same thing, singing a song we’d just made up the other day about friends. We planned to sing it at the talent-show auditions.

When I got too dizzy and needed to take a break, I sat on top of my bar and pretended not to watch Wyatt. I couldn’t explain my fascination with him. Maybe it was because he was so weird but seemed nice.

Wyatt smiled while he drew. It started out slow, like he didn’t realize he was doing it, and then it widened into the one he’d given me in class. I couldn’t help it; I felt myself smiling too. My hand flew up to cover my mouth so Chloe wouldn’t see.

Then, with that huge smile on his face, Wyatt closed his notebook and stood. He was still looking at his closed notebook when he started walking around the building and he ran square into Jackson Parrish.

My insides shriveled. I hopped off the bar, but wasn’t sure what I should do, if anything. “Gross!” Jackson’s voice floated over the blacktop. “You got your fish smell all over me.” He pushed Wyatt. Wyatt didn’t react, but he was definitely no longer smiling. And I didn’t like the frown. “You know...” Jackson continued. “When my mom makes fish, she at least offers me some tartar sauce.”

My ears felt hot and I heard Chloe say something behind me. Ignoring her, I charged up the hill from the playground, walked across the blacktop and right up to that bully Jackson Parrish. My vision swam and I felt my arm lifting, my fingers forming a fist. And then something hit something else and my hand felt broken.

There was a lot of noise then and someone grabbed me. Pulled me away. A bundle of feelings squeezed at my stomach as my vision returned. I saw blood on Jackson’s face and shock on Wyatt’s.

“Why would you do that?” Wyatt asked as Jackson began to cry. Ms. Fring headed over, a look of confusion in her eyes and mouth, which was pinched into an “o.”

I shrugged, but I think I knew why I did it. I didn’t like not seeing Wyatt smile.