“Thirty percent, just like the final, and then the other forty percent is homework and the other quizzes and stuff.”
Oh, no. I had gotten a D on the last quiz and forgotten about three homework assignments. On last week’s progress report I’d had a seventy-two percent in the class. I had to pass.
“Brett, there’s no way I can study enough during this lunch period. You have to help me.” I said this last part like it was obvious.
“I can’t help you study, Bridget, I have no time—” “No, not study, Brett, you have to help me during the test.”
Technically, I was asking for a favor and, really, one shouldn’t treat the person she wants a favor from like he’s stupid. But Brett didn’t seem to notice. His expression just turned from worry for me to worry for himself.
He understood exactly what I was saying.
“I can’t, Bridget. If we got caught, I’d fail this test, then my grade would drop down to a sixty-six percent. I have to work really hard to keep my grades high enough to get into college.” He shook his head.
“There’s no way.”
“Oh, my God, we’re not going to get caught.” I had no idea if we’d get caught, but I tried to sound confident.
“This’ll be so simple, she’ll never notice. Okay, are you right-handed?”
“Yes?”
“Okay, then you sit to my left, and I’ll sit behind Walco, he’s huge, Mrs. Remeley won’t be able to see me look at your paper. All you have to do is write really clearly and keep your paper diagonal toward me. It’ll be no problem, it’s how most people write, anyway.”
He looked firm on his refusal. And then the obvious struck me.
“Michelle. I’ll trade you Michelle!” I said it like I’d figured out the Da Vinci Code or something.
Brett had had a totally annoying crush on Michelle since, like, first grade. She and I hadn’t really been friends yet at that age, but my mom knew her mom, so we played with each other. She used to get secret-admirer cards and letters. A fact I teased her about because I was positively green with envy, and resentful that no one sent any to me. Except for that one I’d written to myself once, and claimed it was from resident cutie J.R.
We didn’t know for sure who was writing them to her until one day in fifth grade, when I caught Brett in the cubby room writing one while everyone else was playing Heads Up Seven Up. I’d been cold and going to get my jacket when I found him.
There he was, sitting in the corner with a piece of pink construction paper on his lap, writing in the boyish handwriting I recognized from all the other valentines over the years.
Lying on the floor next to him were several failed attempts. I remember the validation of my suspicions that it was he who had been writing them feeling like a victory.
Snatching the card from his lap, I ran out of the cubby room shouting “Brett loves Miche-elle” in that singsong voice strictly used in this particular brand of torture. Everyone’s head had shot up, and I read the poem aloud.
Though my love goes unrequited I’ll love you beyond when the pigs are flighted.
Though I may be a snowball, and you the heat I’ll melt with you if you stay as sweet.
You are Michelle, my belle,
And without you, this place would be …
Brett would later insist that he hadn’t intended to put hell at the end of the poem, but was going to somehow rhyme dwell. But to us, it might as well have been written there.
None of us knew the real meanings behind the words. Even so, the class got what the poem meant: it meant that Brett wanted to be K-I-S-S-I-N-G Michelle. Sitting in a tree, if you went by our prediction.
Brett had stayed in the cubby room the entire time I read it, and the only other person, besides him and our dimwitted teacher, not joining in the roar of laughter was Michelle. She had turned a deep shade of red and then run to the bathroom. Brett went to the office and got picked up early that day.
All the while, our teacher handed out bags of heart-shaped candies, an uncomprehending smile on her face.
A few years later, when we all entered middle school, Brett had come in with a seriously misguided attempt at dyed black hair, which had come out a sort of awful, metallic blue, and a newfound interest in all things rebellious. He didn’t start dressing normally again (i.e., not wearing the goth-style pants that looked like an entire flap of a circus tent had been stitched together) and stop skipping school until tenth grade. That was also when he started obsessing about the grades he couldn’t seem to keep up very easily.
Judging by the way Brett never spoke to Michelle again and instead gazed at her every chance he got, I was pretty sure he still wanted to sit in a tree with her. Lucky for me, his expression when I said her name removed all doubt from my mind.
“What about Michelle? What do you mean you’ll trade her?”
“I’ll get you a date with her if you give me the answers.”
He hesitated. I saw something that looked like the tiniest bit of consideration in his eyes. I jumped at it.
“Come on, Brett, it’s totally worth it. It’s not like we’ll get caught. And, be real, when else are you going to have a chance with Michelle?” He looked a little offended and, for some reason I could not imagine, amused.
I would have felt bad saying that he didn’t have a shot with her except that it was true. And just because I pointed out the obvious didn’t mean it was my fault that he never would have asked her out.
“It’s not right, you can’t expect to just trade her like money or something.” He seemed to give himself an idea.
“Here, just ask her to talk to me. I’ll ask her out myself.”
Ha! He was making this way too easy.
“So we have a deal.” It wasn’t a question. I wanted him to feel like he had already agreed.
“She’ll sit with you Monday at lunch.”
I snickered to myself and walked past him to the cafeteria. But as soon as I walked away, Liam loomed in my mind again, removing any trace of laughter.
I STAYED QUIET THROUGHOUT the lunch period, ignoring the gossip Jillian was imparting to Michelle. Instead of participating, I spent the whole period looking through my Allure magazine and glancing at Liam as furtively and often as possible.
He was about six foot three, his body lean and toned. His hair was the dark, shiny brown that you might see in a shampoo commercial, and reached down just past his dark, straight eyebrows. His eyes, though I couldn’t see them from where I sat, I knew to be the same light color of a swimming pool. The dark circle of his pupil and his thick, dark, straight eyelashes made the color seem even more striking.
He was sitting with Anna, who was taking a bite out of a cheeseburger. Eyeing the bottle of Coke Classic that sat in front of her, I wondered how she ate like that and still stayed so thin. Even if we had been friends, though, I never would have asked her that—that was what people asked me.
Not the other way around.
I decided that of all things, I didn’t have the energy to look at the pair of them.
“Bridget?”
I blinked away images of times Liam’s eyes had been close enough to mine that I could memorize them.
“What?” I snapped, and looked up to see a girl named Laura’s eager-looking face.
She recoiled slightly at the harshness in my tone.
“Um. Well, I was, uh …” she nervously tripped