Shuffle, Repeat (19 page)

The lights cut off and the glare is replaced with darkness. I can't see him, but I can hear his voice.

“June, what are you doing?”

I know I need to say something important and epic and romantic, because this is a moment that requires an important, epically romantic gesture, but the words aren't there. Instead, all I have is the overwhelming fear that I've already lost the one person I want the most to find.

So I blurt something out—something that hasn't always come naturally to me.

The truth.

My cocoon is soft around me. Protective. Warm. I'm nestled inside, happy and comfortable, and when a muffled sound edges against my consciousness, I shake my head in irritation. I bury myself deeper in my own shell, no reason to become a butterfly, no need to change….

But it's not a cocoon; it's a quilt. And the sound is coming from somewhere outside.

A horn.

The behemoth's horn.

Ack!

I fly out of bed, and now that I see my phone on the nightstand, I have a fuzzy recollection of turning off its alarm. I grab the skirt from last night, the one I dropped on the floor before crawling under the covers a couple hours ago, but it's greasy with vegetable oil, so I rush to my dresser. I find a pair of jeans and am yanking them on when my door opens. I squeal and whip around, thinking it's Oliver, but it's only Mom. Her hair is stringy against her face and she has mascara smudges under her eyes. We stare at each other. “You don't look good,” I finally tell her.

“Speak for yourself,” she says, and I remember that I didn't even wash my face or brush my teeth before falling asleep last night. And by “last night,” I mean “earlier this morning,” since that's when Oliver dropped me off. “I told Oliver to go,” Mom says. “I'll drive you.”

In the car on the way to school, Mom says she's proud of me. “But FYI, you still have a curfew.”

“That's fair.”

“By the way, don't drink too much at Michigan,” she says. “This type of headache…it really sucks.”

I miss homeroom, but I rush through the snowflake-strewn halls and into English just as the bell is ringing. I slide into my seat, my hair twisted into a still-damp knot atop my head. I had time to take a quick shower, but not enough to use a blow-dryer.

Everyone is laughing and chattering, and no one has their books with them. “We can't,” Lily tells me. “They changed the locks on all the lockers.”

“She knows.” Shaun plops down next to us. “June helped.”

Lily stares at me. “Who
are
you?”

I don't answer, because I'm still trying to figure that out for myself. Apparently I'm the awful cliché mess who has it bad for the boy everyone wants. I'm not sure if I'm more terrified of running into Oliver today and having to make small talk or of not seeing him at all.

Ms. Jackson doesn't even try to have class. “I'm grading papers. Keep it to a dull roar.”

She sounds amused, which is why Shaun asks the question. “You're actually not mad at us about the prank, are you?”

The corners of Ms. Jackson's peach-slicked lips twitch upward. “Let's just say I'm relieved my car isn't covered in pigeon shit.”

The room bursts into uproarious laughter and she waves us toward the door. “Go.”

Every hallway is lined with students spinning dials and yanking against shackles before stepping to the next locker and trying again. After forty-five minutes, I finally find my combination lock on a locker by the math rooms. “Winner!” I shout, which is apparently what we're supposed to do. Just like everyone else's, my victory yell is met with cheering and applause.

It attracts the attention of Ainsley, because suddenly she's right there with her arms around me. “We did it! We're rock stars!”

I pat her on the back as Oliver arrives, brandishing a lock. My heart jolts when I see him. “Mine was on third,” he says. It appears that he is unaffected by exhaustion, because his eyes and hair and everything are as bright and perfect as always.

Ainsley gazes up at him with adoration. “Isn't he a genius? Most epic prank ever and all because of him.” She rises on tiptoes to kiss Oliver, and it lands on me like a piano.

“I gotta go—” I start, but Ainsley suddenly grabs my arm.

“Oh my God, what are you doing for spring break? Kaylie flunked algebra, so her mom won't let her go, and now we have an extra bed in the cabin. It's in Cheboygan. Want to come?”

“June's going to New York,” Oliver says quickly.

Actually, I'm not, because Dad got cast in a new play, so he's going to be in rehearsals, but this is definitely not how or when I wish to share the information that the Grand Plans for my senior spring break involve me at my house with my mom. “Sorry,” I tell Ainsley. She hugs me again.

When I return her hug, my gaze accidentally floats up to Oliver's face. We make eye contact and he smiles at me.

I look away.

Luckily for me—but unluckily for them—neither Darbs nor Lily has big spring break plans. That's why we decide to schedule a Girl Day, when we go out to lunch before splurging on manicures and shopping. When we all have pretty fingernails, we hit a bookstore (my choice), then go kiosk-hopping in the mall (Lily's), and then make our way to a craft store (Darbs's).

“I like the soy wax,” Darbs tells us as we browse the candle-making aisle. “It's better for carrying the essential oils.”

“How about this color?” Lily holds up a tube of light blue candle dye. “Look, it matches.”

She flutters a periwinkle-tipped hand at us and I look down at my own fingernails, painted a bright red. Halfway through the manicure, I realized I was channeling Marley Flagg with the color, but it was already too far gone to switch. Now I can see that I've already chipped my ring finger.

Figures.

“Are you hanging with any of your rah-rahs over spring break?” Darbs asks me. When she sees my quizzical look, she clarifies. “Cheerleaders. Jocks. Assholes.”

“Some of those assholes are my friends,” I tell her.

“Seriously, June.
Theo.
”

“Gross,” says Lily.

“Not Theo,” I tell them. “Definitely not Theo.” I look at Darbs. “Are you hanging with Ethan?”

“Unclear.”

“If you're not, Lily should go make out with him,” I say, and then Darbs and I crack up. Lily only blinks at us, so I explain. “Because I did it over summer break and Darbs did it over winter break, so spring break—your turn.”

“Actually, hold off on that,” Darbs says. We turn to her, surprised.

“You actually like him!” Lily accuses her.

“Maybe,” she says. “I don't know. I just don't want anyone else putting their tongue in his mouth yet.”

“That's fair,” says Lily.

We reach the end of the aisle and round the corner to find Zoe Smith carrying a plastic store basket. After we all exchange hellos and commiserations about a lame spring break, she shows us what she's buying. “They're candy melts,” Zoe says. “All you have to do is cook them down and pour it into molds. They harden into chocolate candy, like magic.”

Lily looks down at the bags in her basket. “But they're already chocolate candy,” she says. “They're shaped like little hearts.”

“I know,” says Zoe. “But after I'm done melting and pouring, they'll be shaped like little teddy bears. Way cuter.”

“Are they a present for someone?” Darbs asks, and Zoe shakes her head.

“I wish. They're for home ec, which is bullshit. It's supposed to be an easy class, but somehow I'm failing it. My GPA is all screwed up, so I have to cook for extra credit over spring break—how shitty is that?” We all agree it's shitty, and Zoe continues. “Even Oliver Flagg—who only took it because of that bet with Theo—even
he's
getting a better grade than me. When a jockstrap like that is schooling you in flambé, you know you suck.”

Anxiety tickles my insides. I forgot about the bet, and I never found out what it was about. Suddenly, I feel like I really, really would be better off in blissful ignorance.

Darbs is the one who asks, “What bet?”

“Oh, you don't know this?” Zoe sets her basket on the floor at her feet. “So Oliver started dating Ainsley sometime last year, right?”

I hearken back to eleventh grade, when Itch moved to town. When I was the girl who got the new guy. Back then, I wasn't exactly paying attention to Oliver, but now that I think about it, Zoe's time line seems right.

“It was around this same time,” Zoe says. “Spring break adjacent. Oliver bet Theo that he could get into Ainsley's pants by the Fourth of July.”

“No.” I don't realize I said it out loud until everyone looks at me. “Oliver's not like that,” I say as an explanation.

“Please.” Zoe snorts. “They're
all
like that. My brother's on the track team. He's the one who told me.”

I turn into a statue. Cold. Hard. So still that I can't turn my head to look at Lily or Darbs.

“All the letter jacket guys knew about it,” Zoe says. “Oliver didn't make the deadline, so he had to sign up for home ec. And yet he's still killing it while I'm flunking the class.”

The waves of horror wash up and over my statue self. I've been feeling jealous of Ainsley when really I should have felt
sorry
for her. And Theo—thinking he's the devil incarnate, but now it turns out Oliver is just as terrible. Or even worse. Because Ainsley is
his
girlfriend. He's supposed to cherish her, protect her, be
kind
to her. Not treat her like an
object.

Oliver.

I am so disappointed in him I could cry.

Zoe is still talking. Something about how she also needs to do an extra-credit sewing project and do we think latch-hook counts. I don't answer and neither do Darbs and Lily, because they're both looking at me.

Looking at me with pity.