The New Guy (7 page)

After I get home from dropping Alex off at his house, I’m planning to review all the freshman submissions for the
Crest
. But Sadie texts what I know is not an innocuous
So what’s up??,
and I find myself typing what’s practically an essay about walking dogs and eating doughnuts and meeting my parents, and I save the kissing for the very end of the story. It takes so long that Sadie sends two follow-up texts
(TELL ME EVERYTHING
and then
You’ve been typing for an hour so maybe you should just CALL ME JULES)
in the meanwhile. But I finish the whole thing and hit send, and then I’m holding my phone and thinking about Alex.

Is it too early to text? No, I’m pretty sure once you’ve kissed someone a bunch of times, you can at least text them.
Thanks for walking dogs with me today!
feels like a safe start, but I don’t have a chance to see how long he’ll take to respond, if he responds at all, because Sadie’s calling.

“Oh my god, Jules,” she says before I can even say hello.

“Is it surprising?” I ask. “Are you surprised?”

“After seeing how he’s been looking at you for this whole week now?
No.
I just want more details.”

“I texted you every detail!” I say.

“I don’t care. Tell me everything again.”

I can’t blame Sadie. This is definitely the only non-dorky exciting thing that’s ever happened to me.

“Did you feel like you were kissing in outer space?” Sadie asks after I repeat the whole story.

“Sadie, I still don’t know why you think that means something romantic.”

Alex is at my locker when I get to school on Monday morning, and even though we’re in a crowded hallway, we have the briefest kiss. And even though it happens in a flash, my heart still thuds just as heavily as it did on Saturday, when we didn’t have a time limit or an audience. I think about every overdramatic pop song I’ve ever heard about pounding hearts, and it turns out they aren’t actually overdramatic at all.

As I open my locker, a bright blue slip of paper falls out, and when I lean over to pick it up, I see that this is happening to everyone around me too.
TALON IS ALMOST HERE
, it says, and it has the same eagle icon as last week’s flyers.

“This is so weird,” I say, crumpling it up.

“Maybe it’s something cool,” Alex says, and he does his cocked-eyebrow thing again. I want to try for another brief kiss, but already there are so many more people around, and also I’m turning it over in my head how something to do with a boy’s eyebrows could make me feel so weak. Another thing
from songs that I’m now seeing as total reality. The weakness, that is, not specifically the eyebrows.

“Guys, what is TALON?” Sadie is holding up the slip of paper as she walks over to us. “You know mysteries irritate me.”

“Things don’t usually stay mysteries for too long,” Alex says, and I have the urge to correct him. Lots of mysteries, like Amelia Earhart and Stonehenge and what happened to the pea puree in that episode of
Top Chef
, have never been solved. But I guess TALON is probably not exactly at that level of mystery or importance.

Sadie smirks in my direction. I notice that the tips of her purple hair are now hot pink. “So, what’s new, everyone?”

“Your hair looks cool,” Alex tells her.

“Thanks! The great Paige Sheraton wasn’t happy, of course.”

Alex scrunches up his face in confusion. Even this expression makes me want to grab him and kiss him. “Why would Paige Sheraton care about your hair?”

“She’s Sadie’s mom,” I explain. I want to add that, actually, Paige Sheraton doesn’t care about Sadie’s hair, but if she shows mild surprise at Sadie’s new hue, Sadie takes great offense.

We split up in the directions of our classes, and even though I’ve told Sadie nearly everything on the phone, it’s strange to be in person with her and for her to possess all this knowledge.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asks as we walk into Ms. Cannon’s classroom. “It’s my hair, right? I was trying
for this whole ombré thing, but I’m worried it didn’t come out like I wanted.”

“Your hair looks fine,” I say, and then I feel bad because Sadie’s probably aiming for better than
fine
. “I figured you’d tease me about Alex. Sorry.”

“TEASE YOU?”

Everyone already seated stares at Sadie, even though they should be used to her volume by now.

“Jules. We’re not in middle school. You’re falling in love with a dreamy guy. This is awesome, not tease-worthy, you weirdo.”

Her volume’s still, well, up, which means everyone seated around us swivels to look. No one asks aloud, but it’s as if everyone’s asking with their eyes, and this is not what I want. I don’t even know how real it’s going to be. This is new and crazy and dreamlike, and people wake up from dreams or return to sanity or grow tired of new situations. For Alex and me, it could be any of those things. But also, maybe it won’t be.

I expected senior year to be different, because of the
Crest
, and also because, well, senior year is just
supposed
to be different. And of course I’m already filling out practice applications and outlining my college entrance essays.

But now there’s Alex.

And my life, like the lunchroom table, seemed like it was already too full for him, but maybe things that I didn’t think had any flexibility actually do. And instead of the jittery sensation that normally accompanies my realization that I might have been wrong about something, I still feel like me.

We work together again at Stray Rescue on Wednesday. After, we hit Donut Friend; and after that, we walk along York past the clusters of shops and restaurants.

“My mom wants to have you over for dinner,” Alex tells me. “She just says we have to unpack more first.”

“I don’t mind if you aren’t unpacked,” I say.

“Mom does,” he says. “Warning, if it’s not obvious: My parents aren’t as cool as yours. Dad teaches some advanced mathematics thing I don’t even understand, and Mom teaches kindergarten.”

“I’m sure they’re fine,” I say. “And you saw mine at their very coolest.”

“I guess I feel like mine are still…” He takes a pause. “Trying to make stuff up to me.”

I turn to look at him. “What stuff?”

“The whole Chaos 4 All thing…” He shrugs. “It was a weird life.”

“Everyone loved you.” I try to say it with a smile he can hear. “The world did.”

“Our music,” he says. “Our one song, which we didn’t even write. Not so many people cared about the next one, and by the third single… Most people don’t notice that the world isn’t revolving around them, but once it feels like it does, it’s hard to go back. And there was other stuff, which I don’t even want to talk about.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“I’m fine now,” he says. “But then it was hard, I guess. No one tells you how to suddenly
not
be famous.”

“No one tells you how to be famous either,” I say, and he laughs.

“Nah, people are
hired
to teach you how to be famous. Media training, publicists, all of that. I was good at it. I could teach you how to be famous if I wanted.”

“If
you
wanted?”

He turns and kisses me. “If
you
wanted. But I wouldn’t do that because it’s bullshit and fake, and it’s all behind me now. Also, you’d be bad at it.”

“What?”

“We’d have to call in the best media-training team in the world,” he says. “Your face shows
everything
. You couldn’t smile at a dumb entertainment journalist. You made, like, seven different weird faces just in the last thirty seconds.”

“Sometimes I feel like my face just does its own thing,” I say.

“It’s cute,” he says. “Don’t gain control of your face. I’d miss all your weird looks.”

We’ve made the full loop around and are back at my car. “I should probably go home,” I say. “There’s so much calculus.”

“Sounds scary,” he says with a grin. “You should go conquer calculus.”

I take Alex home and—after losing plenty of time kissing while parked down the street from his house—head home. Mom’s almost finished making dinner, and even Darcy’s
home before me, and I wait for a lecture on how late I am as they carry the salad, sole, and quinoa to the table. But it’s just a normal dinner.

After we eat, I stack my textbooks on the kitchen table and realize I have more homework than usual, and I should have started hours ago. I feel guilty for ignoring it for the extra time I spent with Alex, and then I feel guilty for regretting any moment with him, and then I’m back to feeling like an underachiever, and it just keeps circling.

“Do one thing at a time,” Darcy tells me gently after I’ve shooed them off again and again. “It’s not even that late, kiddo. You’ll be fine.”

“Why aren’t you disappointed in me?” I ask while flipping through my economics textbook. “I’m throwing away my academic career for a boy.”

“You lost your afternoon because you were spending time with someone you like,” she says. “It isn’t a crime.”

“Brain food,” Mom says, bringing me an orange she’s already peeled and segmented for me. I don’t think oranges are considered brain food by any experts, but the gesture is so nice I just thank her.

“I don’t understand why I’m not in trouble,” I say. “I’m not responsible.”

I don’t say the rest of it, which is that I’ve done plenty of Googling, and my sheer existence must have been really expensive. I once overheard Mom and Darcy say to Paige and Ryan, Sadie’s parents, that if it had been financially feasible,
of course
they would have had another baby, but it seemed more important to give me the best life they could. Me! So I have to turn out to be better than average. I don’t want to be irresponsible. I want to be worth the money.

“You’re the most responsible person I know,” Mom says, which makes Darcy furrow her brow. “Sorry, hon, you’re fifty-one. You’re supposed to be responsible. Relatively speaking, Jules is much higher-ranked.”

“If we had a discussion about all the irresponsible things the two of us have done in the name of love,” Darcy says, “you’d never finish your homework. So you’ll have to trust us that you’re in good company.”

My face flushes. “Don’t say
love
.”

“In the name of
like
, then.”

The name of
like
actually seems like a good place to be.

“You look tired,” Sadie says as she sits down next to me in women’s history on Friday morning. “Also, hi.”

It’s not the greatest way to be greeted by your best friend, but she’s not wrong. “I was up too late last night,” I say.

“Ooh!”

“We were just texting,” I say, which is true but also only a tiny glimpse of what that actually means. When it’s nighttime and you’re in your bedroom and you’re manually tapping out messages, even about unromantic topics like Topics in Economics and rescue dogs and cafeteria nachos, you can feel really close to a person.

Before Sadie can ask another question or Ms. Cannon can take roll call, the TV in the classroom turns on automatically. Because the classroom door is open, I can tell that this is happening throughout the school. It’s programmed to be possible in case of emergencies or other major news, but no one panics because it’s apparently pretty easy to hack. Last year
the TVs turned on throughout the school during finals week, and it was just someone’s butt. The mystery was never solved, because school administration couldn’t just ask students to show their butts to prove it wasn’t them.

But this time it isn’t a butt. It’s a face. Specifically, it’s Natalie’s face.

“Welcome to TALON,” Natalie says, and then the eagle logo and TALON appear on the screen. This doesn’t look like the videos Sadie and I used to film at her house with her mom’s iPhone. The logo and word look much sharper and better designed on-screen than they did on the flyers. Natalie’s wearing a navy pin-striped blazer and a crisp white shirt, and she looks like a real newscaster.

“It’s 2016,” Natalie continues, as if that fact is news, “and it’s time to get all the news that matters to you and your Eagle Vista classmates in a way that fits your life. Go to WeAreTalon.com or the WeAreTalon channel on VidLook to find out more.”

“What?” I say aloud, and everyone else is paying such close attention to Natalie that it’s like I spoke out of turn in a library. Meg Hartzman even literally shushes me. I look to Sadie for support, but her eyes are on the screen.

I know that back in the eighties someone donated some camera equipment to the school and they tried to make a news program, but according to old issues of the
Crest
, it lasted only a few weeks before imploding. I thought Eagle Vista Academy had learned a lesson from the eighties. Eagle
Vista Academy supposedly honored tradition.
We honor tradition
, it reads on the front page of the official website.

Natalie recaps the first week of school details, like the names of new teachers, the changes made to the school lunch menus, and the upcoming dates of the first events of the year. These are the details we’ll be listing in the issue of the
Crest
that comes out next week.

And now, do we even need to? We’ve been scooped.

“Now I’m going to throw it over to Kevin Fanning for AroundTown, where we’ll cover news about not just the school but the larger Eagle Rock community. I’ll let Kevin tell you more.”

The video seamlessly cuts to Kevin, who was also conspicuously absent from the
Crest
meeting this week. I flip to a blank page in my notebook and jot down the names of all of last year’s staff members who are missing from this year’s crew. Jesse Walters shows up after Kevin, and then Joramae Reyes. I check them off my list as they appear. They’re all wearing professional attire that looks good on camera—even Jesse, whose normal uniform is a ragged band T-shirt and beyond-faded jeans.

The camera finally cuts back to Natalie, and I exhale a teensy bit of relief that not every single person on my list has appeared.

“Last on our program, a new segment from a new student.”

It’s another perfectly edited cut, and then another face is on the screen.

Alex.

“What?” I say, again, aloud, and louder. This time, Sadie turns to me with her eyes wide. Her expression matches my emotions.

“Shhhh!” Meg says, again.

“Hi, I’m Alex Powell, and this is”—a logo appears on-screen as he says it—“Alex 4 All.”

I realize he’s wearing the same shirt as he was the day we met. His first day in school, the second day of the school year. I wonder if TALON meets when the
Crest
does, because that would have been the same day as well. I think of Alex’s sugar-coated lips as he confided all about his past to me. And I realize that by then he’d already filmed this. He’d told Natalie and company way before he’d told me. At least a full twenty-four hours. Alex knew all about this airing today when I was curled up in my bed sending him messages last night.

As Alex throws it back to Natalie, Sadie whispers, Sadie-style, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I say just a little too loudly. It’s for everyone else’s benefit, but it must have sounded believable because Sadie turns away from me, and then I’m just stuck with my own thoughts in my own brain as Natalie says that she’ll see us in a week. The credits roll, and every person I hadn’t yet checked off the list is there in some behind-the-scenes capacity.

Those people all chose to work with Natalie at the helm, not me.

“Now that
that’s
over, let’s try to get some work accomplished today, shall we?” Ms. Cannon’s tone is just annoyed
enough for me to briefly feel love toward her. But then she takes roll and moves onto women in ancient Egypt and she sounds just as annoyed, so the love in my heart is gone as quickly as it arrived.

The sound of everyone’s pens flying across papers jolts me out of whatever state I didn’t know I was in. I know everyone else hasn’t had their entire world splintered into… world shards, but I wish I could yell at them for just going on with their lives. With
Egypt
.

I raise my hand, even though it seems like Ms. Cannon is in the middle of something at least fairly important. I’m dealing with something that’s unfairly important.

“Miss McAllister-Morgan, if this isn’t an emergency, I suggest you hold all your questions until I’m through this section.”

“This is an emergency,” I say, even though anytime a girl throws around the word
emergency
, people will assume it’s something to do with your period. “May I please be excused?”

Ms. Cannon sighs loudly but dismisses me. I grab all my things and run out the door, down the hall, and up the stairs to Mr. Wheeler’s room. He’s in the midst of what looks like freshman English—everyone’s super young and staring at him like all his words are important.

“Hi, Jules,” he says. “This is a surprise. Is everything all right?”

“
No.
Obviously everything isn’t all right,” I say, and his eyes go huge and round behind his glasses. “TALON?”

“Oh, that.” He chuckles. “Pretty cool, huh?”

“NO,” I say, again.

“Jules.” He sighs and gestures to the hallway. We walk out of the classroom, and he shuts the door behind him. I want to say he probably shouldn’t trust a whole class of freshmen in an enclosed room, but that is far from my priority right now.

“They scooped us!” I say. “Every single thing we’d cover in the paper next week, they’ve already done it.”

“Not everything,” he says. “We can go much more in depth in an issue of the
Crest
than they can in ten minutes once a week.”

“No one will read us now,” I say. “They’re destroying a hundred-and-four-year-old tradition.”

“Do you have a class right now?” he asks.

“Of course I have a class right now. This is much more important.”

“Jules, get back to your class. We can talk later.”

“Mr. Wheeler—”

“I’ll see you in fourth period, Jules,” he says, and walks back into the classroom, shutting the door behind him. I stare at the closed door with my mouth open for probably much longer than is even borderline acceptable, and turn around to head back to women’s history. But if I couldn’t sit still in there before talking to Mr. Wheeler, how can I manage now? I thought of all people, someone with old-man sweaters and an antique wristwatch would care about legacy and tradition. I was never exactly thrilled that it felt like Mr. Wheeler and I
might have a lot of things in common, but it’s actually worse to realize that, except our semi-shared backyard, we don’t.

I’ve never skipped a class before. But I walk to the library and find out that no one even challenges me as I slip in and take a seat at one of the private-study desks. Could I have been a truant this whole time? I guess real truants don’t hang out at the school library. Probably also they don’t refer to themselves as truants.

Maybe I was just so excited about all the good stuff with Alex that I missed this. I get out my phone and scroll through all my texts. For someone I’ve only known for less than two weeks, there are a lot to go back through. But Alex didn’t mention TALON, Natalie, or extracurriculars at all.

I wonder if I’m naïve to think once someone’s tongue has been inside your mouth, they owe you at least that much information? Yes, all right, fine, that much I know is naïve. On TV, people sleep with each other just to get secrets or betray someone else or, even, just because they want to. Kissing is nothing.

Sadie’s at my locker when I arrive after first period. “Are you okay? For real?”

“For real, no.”

She gives me a hug and kisses my cheek. In the flash of that moment she’s just like her mom, but since I don’t want to turn a sweet moment into what Sadie might interpret as a mean one, I keep that to myself.

“He
lied to me
, Sadie.”

“Okay, he didn’t tell you about their stupid show, big deal.” But even as she says it, I can tell from her eyes that she knows as well as I do that it
is
a big deal. “Aaaand here he comes right now.”

“Noooo.” I jam my women’s history books into my locker and attempt to extract my Latin textbook. “Why can’t I do this faster?”

“Hey,” Alex says. “What did you think?”

“She’s in a hurry,” Sadie says in a chilly voice. “Come on, Jules.”

I yank the book as hard as I can, and whatever it was caught on gives way and the book shoots across the hallway.

“Ow!” someone yells, and I see that it was Justin making his way over to Sadie.

“I’m so sorry,” I tell him as he brings my book back to me.

“I didn’t know Latin was so dangerous,” Alex says.

Sadie shoots him a warning look before tending to Justin’s injury. I tuck the book under my arm and take off down the hallway.

“Jules, wait up.” Alex strides up next to me. “What’s going on?”

“What do you
think
?”

“Uh, I seriously have no idea.”

I reach the doorway of Latin and decide to walk right in. I’m not expecting Alex to follow me. Everyone already seated stares at him like a celebrity. Okay, technically, I guess he kind of
is
a celebrity.

“Can you just talk to me?” he asks. “I’m really confused.”

“I’m in class,” I say. “And I don’t want to talk to you.”

He sighs but doesn’t move for a few moments. “Fine.”

And then he’s gone.

In fourth period, I assume that even with Mr. Wheeler’s complete lack of understanding of the gravity of the TALON situation, the rest of the staff will be in my corner.

And it’s true that everyone is talking about TALON.

“Natalie looked really pretty,” one sophomore says.

“I think it’s so cool Alex Powell can make fun of himself!” says a junior.

“The graphics looked crazy professional,” Thatcher says, and then, when I glare at him, “What?”

“I know that TALON looked very impressive, but we need what we’re doing to still matter,” I say. If I were in a TV show, the music would swell and I’d rise to my feet and deliver a moving monologue about tradition and journalism and our founding staff back in 1912. People would feel so much they’d
cry
.

I know better than to try it, though.

“Hey, guys, what we’re doing still matters,” Mr. Wheeler says. “Maybe print media is dying out, maybe it isn’t. Let’s just keep doing a good job. The
Crest
is funded through at least this year, so if we’re going out, we’ll go out with a bang.”

“‘If’?”
I realize I’m yelling, again, so I take a deep breath.
“Don’t you care that something that’s mattered for so long could
just disappear
? We’re an endangered species. Think of how much people do to protect the South China tiger.”

“I have literally never heard of the South China tiger,” Mr. Wheeler says. “But I know you and your family are big animal lovers, Jules. Let’s get moving on the next issue. Has everyone turned in their pieces?”

The room springs into action, which is a moment that, no matter how many hundreds of times I experience it, feels beautiful and perfect. The motion and buzz give me energy, and I’m sure I can figure out a way to have this for the rest of my life. The
Crest
is really only my beginning and I know it.

But that doesn’t mean I want the
Crest
to go away once I’ve graduated and literally moved on. And I can’t believe that it feels like no one else would even notice.