“What?”
I grab hold of his face. His eyes snap to mine at once, wide and quivering like two chips of aquamarine in an earthquake. “Look at me. Focus on me.”
Chad swallows hard, his eyes on me. He still hasn’t blinked.
“Now breathe.”
He takes in a deep breath.
“Let it out.”
He lets all his breath out—on my face. That’s grilled-chicken-and-green-bean breath, if you’d like to imagine it.
I squint. Well, I asked for it. “Breathe again.”
He sucks in a deep, long lungful.
“And let it out.”
Instead of exhaling, he says, “You’re not gonna tell anyone, are you? Like, even your girlfriends? Mindy? Her friends? Virginia at the hotel? Billy or Tanner or Cody or—or—or—”
“Chad.”
“Yes?”
“I’m not going to tell anyone. I won’t even write it in my cute pink diary. Breathe.”
He shuts his eyes and lets out his breath again.
I watch the muscles on his face relax.
He looks so beautiful with his eyes closed, like he’s asleep. There is something angelic about his face and his soft, plush, parted lips.
His eyes flap open and his left eyebrow shoots up. “You have a cute pink diary?”
I drop my hands to my sides. “I was kidding. Seriously, your secret’s safe. I just need you to stay calm so I don’t have to explain to anyone why a one-hundred-and-ninety-pound man fainted in the hallway.”
“Two hundred and five,” he corrects me.
I shrug. “Ballpark. I misjudged your muscle weight. But I can say you’re an easy six-foot-one, if we’re playing a game of height.”
He lifts both his eyebrows now. “Wow, now that’s good.”
“When you’ve been to as many model castings as I have, you get an eye for height and body types. Are you okay, now? Are we calm? Breathing properly? Or do I need to call you a paramedic?”
The corny question makes Chad let out a breathy chuckle. A smile soon spreads over his face. “No paramedic needed.”
“Good. Because I left my phone on the table in the cafeteria, and my leather satchel hanging over the back of my chair.”
“I left my phone, too,” he admits with another chuckle.
“And besides,” I go on, “I’m not really sure I’d want to call any help for you. I’d have to tell everyone first that I watched the big bad Chad Landry faint right before my eyes, because that’s a story no one’s gonna believe.”
That gets a full laugh from him. Now I know he’s truly alright. “I guess I deserve that, huh?” he says through his laughter.
A silence falls between us, both of our faces light with smiles and relief painted over them. I think we both needed this moment.
And for very different reasons.
“So you wanna go inside now?” I finally ask. “If my eyes aren’t deceiving me, it appears they’re serving dessert.”
Chad peers over his shoulder at the doorway to the cafeteria in thought. Then, as if distracted by some voice I can’t hear, he turns and gazes past me in wonder, his eyes searching further down the hall.
“Actually …” he starts, then scratches his chin and smirks. “I was just wonderin’ if the wrestling gym is unlocked or not.”
Wait. Wrestling gym? “Um, what?”
He walks right past me, as if drawn by some invisible guide. I watch him stroll halfway down the hall before he turns and waves at me to come, beckoning me.
Despite that natural we-shouldn’t-be-doing-this feeling in the pit of my chest, I also find myself excited at the prospect of getting the hell away from this reunion and being a pair of troublemakers in the unattended halls of Spruce High.
Without another thought, I hurry after Chad.
9
Then & Now
The doors to the wrestling gym are, sadly, very much locked.
But the side door to the locker rooms isn’t.
“We’re not supposed to be here,” I mutter, my voice echoing into every dark corner of the room. I almost bump into an opened locker, which has a plain red leotard hanging in it. “This can easily be construed as trespassing, even if it’s our reunion. Hmm, I always wondered why dancing and wrestling shared this gym.”
“And don’t forget the Theatre guys, too. Once, they rehearsed a bunch of fight scenes in here after school for two weeks straight when we had a big meet comin’ up. Ooph, our coach was hot about that. I remember he and the Theatre teacher goin’ at it. Hey, look what I found!” Chad stops by another open locker and lifts a white sock in the air. “A sock! Oh, phew.” He flings it to the side with a grimace. “Smells like somebody missed laundry day.”
This locker room feels strange, since it isn’t the main gym, which I’ll be happy never to step foot in again. The lockers here are less tall and arranged in wider, shorter aisles than the other, and if I’m not mistaken, the ceiling is dramatically high. If I listen carefully, I can imagine the chatter of dancers gathering by their lockers after a class and making fun of the one awkward girl who can’t seem to get her pirouette right. I hear the mocking laughs of mean girls, and I can see their sneering looks and snobby faces.