Rules for Being a Girl

She gets to her feet before offering a hand to help me up, the two of us heading downstairs and past my parents watching an old Tom Hanks movie in the living room. “Have a good night, Mr. and Mrs. Lospato!” she calls brightly, pulling her jacket off the overloaded hook in the foyer before turning to me one more time.

“He really did all that stuff?” she asks now, and her voice is very quiet.

“Yeah,” I say, still swallowing down that crying feeling one more time. God, how could I have been so stupid? “He did.”

Chloe nods, and for a moment it looks like she’s going to say something else, but in the end she just reaches out and unlocks the deadbolt, icy December air slicing into the house. “I’ll see you Monday,” she promises, and just like that she’s gone.

Eight

I spend the rest of the weekend helping my parents get the Christmas decorations out of the attic and watching Home Alone on cable, trying with extremely limited success not to think about what happened. By the time third period rolls around on Monday morning, I’m a nervous wreck. For a minute I honestly consider skipping English altogether, but that’s ridiculous, isn’t it? What am I going to do, just cut every day for the rest of the year?

Bex isn’t in his classroom as we’re filing in, and for a moment I wonder—with a mixture of hope and deep, horrifying dread—if maybe he isn’t even here today. Did somebody find out what happened between us? Did Chloe turn around and tell? I’m about to hiss her name across the room when Bex ambles in and shuts the door behind him, raising a hand to say hello.

“Sorry I’m late,” he says, dimple popping in his cheek as he slings his messenger bag over the back of his chair. “Vending machine in the cafeteria is eating dollars today, just FYI. Not that I was just in there trying to make breakfast out of some barbecue chips and a KIND bar or anything.”

He launches into a detailed biography of Joseph Heller, because we’re supposed to start Catch-22 this week. I feel like someone hit me over the head. I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this bland, aggressive normalcy; for one disorienting moment it occurs to me to wonder if maybe I really did make the entire thing up.

Then I remember the press of his mouth on mine, and shiver inside my uniform blouse.

“First forty pages for tomorrow,” he calls as the bell finally rings for the end of the period.

I’m shoving my notes into my backpack when he catches my eye from the front of the room.

“Hey, Marin,” he says, the very theology of casual, “stick around for a sec, will you?”

So we are acknowledging what happened, then. Right away my skin prickles tightly and my face is on fire. I nod, hanging back as everyone else heads out into the hallway, ignoring the look I can feel Chloe shooting me as she makes for the door.

“So hey,” Bex says once we’re alone, perching on the edge of his desk and scrubbing a hand over his clean-shaven face. “I feel like we should probably talk, yeah?”

“Um,” I say, pulling the sleeves of my uniform sweater down over my hands and crossing my arms like an instinct, shifting my weight in my beat-up Sperrys. “I mean—yeah, I don’t know if—”

Bex smiles. “Marin,” he says, holding his hands up. “It’s just me, okay? You don’t have to be afraid of me, or stand here looking like you wish you were dead, or anything like that.” He rubs his cheek again, looking sheepish. “Obviously, I . . .” He trails off. “We just . . . I think maybe we had a little bit of confusion there, that’s all.”

I blink. “Confusion?” I repeat, before I can stop myself.

“Bad communication,” Bex continues with a shake of his head. “Mortifying for both of us, obviously. But it happens.”

“Um.” I swallow. “Sure. Yeah.” On one hand, there’s something reassuring about the way he’s talking about this, like it’s just a dumb, awkward thing that happened and not the end of the breathing world. On the other, it occurs to me that he hasn’t actually apologized for doing it.

But maybe he doesn’t owe me an apology?

After all: I went to his house. I flirted with him. It’s not like I hadn’t thought about it before.

“In any event,” Bex says now, sliding off the edge of the desk and heading for the doorway, “I just wanted to clear the air and make sure we can both move on without any weirdness. Honestly, you’re such a great student, and I’d hate for this to get in the way of whatever amazing thing you’re going to do when you get out of this place.” He holds his hand out, like we’re about to finish a business meeting. “So. We cool?”

“I—yeah, of course,” I say as we shake, the touch of his smooth, cool palm sending a fresh wave of ickiness through me. “We’re cool.”

Nine

Chloe’s waiting for me at our usual spot in the cafeteria, her untouched tray sitting on the table in front of her. “What did Bex want?” she asks, as soon as I sit down.

I shrug. “Just to make sure everything was good, I guess. Like, after—” I glance around. “After.”

Chloe nods. “And you told him it was?”

“I mean, yeah.” I pull a baggie of grapes out of my lunch bag, plucking them all off the stem at once to avoid looking at her. “What else was I going to say, right?”

Chloe frowns, her signature red lipstick slicked neatly across her mouth. “So it’s not?” she asks. “Good, I mean?”