It took us about an hour to get through his homework, but he seemed a little more positive once we finished.
“Thanks,” he said as he put away his book. “That helped. Maybe I can pass this class.”
“Of course you can,” I said, then felt immediately stupid. I hoped I didn’t sound like his mother.
A car pulled up, its bass pumping so hard that the windows rattled.
“You guys sell burgers?” someone yelled. I was about to snap that no, we certainly did not sell fast food when Eli leaned out the window to slap hands with the driver. It was Trent Adams. Eli told him to come on in, so Trent parked his car and came around to the back.
If you saw Trent walking down the street you might assume that he played basketball. He was long and skinny and kept his dark blond hair buzzed. I could see why Lan, like half the girls at our school, found him so attractive.
“Hey, Kate,” Trent said. He looked around for a place to sit, decided that the room was too small and leaned against the wall instead.
“Hi, Trent. You want something to drink?”
“Kate makes an awesome latte,” Eli said.
Trent shook his head. “No. Thanks, though.” He looked at Eli. “You ready for tonight?”
Eli stiffened. I thought I saw him tilt his head toward me. Trent glanced in my direction. “So, Kate,” he said, switching topics completely. “Brady tells me your history class has gotten kind of interesting.”
My very first thought was that he was referring to our unit on the Carthaginians and was making a joke. Then I realized that he meant the morning debates.
“Yeah, it’s kind of a Tiffany versus Brady type thing,” I said.
“I heard Lan was taking on Her Majesty, as well.”
I knew Lan would be thrilled when I talked to her later on and told her that Trent had actually mentioned her in conversation. I smiled. “Lan takes on a lot of things,” I said. We laughed, even though I wasn’t quite sure what I’d said that was so funny. I felt a little uncomfortable around Trent, like I had to try and impress him. I wanted him to think I was okay, but I didn’t know why I needed his approval.
“Hey, Kate, we’ll lock up tonight, okay?” Eli’s back was to me as he stacked cups that didn’t really need stacking.
“Oh. Okay, sure.” I was confused. Eli seemed suddenly cold. He wasn’t looking at me and I wondered if I’d said something to upset him.
“Nice seein’ you, Kate,” Trent said.
I took this as my cue to leave and gathered up my bag and pulled on my jacket. I left without saying goodbye to Eli and waited outside for my dad to arrive. I didn’t have to wait long, but the entire time all I could think of was how I had been kicked out of the one place where I always felt I belonged.
EDEN ALDER WAS HAVING a heart attack. At least, that’s what she told us on Monday at lunch. As editor of the Cleary Chronicle, our school newspaper, Eden had a “gut-wrenching” decision to make about the front page of the next issue: should she give lead-article status to the late-night protest over the “school mural” (as it was now being called) or Tiffany Werner’s birthday party?
The choice seemed simple to me, but Eden was in full-out panic mode. She had three hours until deadline and her staff was in an uproar. Half wanted the protest to be featured front and center while the other half argued that it was old news and had already been covered in the local papers. Tiffany’s party, however, was fresh news and of much more interest to the average Cleary High School student.
Lan and I listened to Eden as we ate our lunches. I, for one, was glad to be discussing something other than Trent Adams. I had spent the weekend at Lan’s house, and all she wanted to talk about was her current crush.
“How did his voice sound when he said my name?” she asked as she made banana spring rolls. Ever since the ninth grade Lan had made it her mission in life to get me to try new foods. At her insistence, I had sampled sweet mung bean soup and carp cooked in coconut milk and thang long fish cakes. If it were up to me, I’d live on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but I appreciated Lan’s efforts to expand my culinary horizons. Every once in a while, she made something that I loved, but most of the time I couldn’t figure out what animal I was eating and wasn’t sure I really wanted to know.
“His voice? It sounded the way it always sounds,” I had replied.
Lan looked like she was concentrating hard on a complex chemical equation. “I need more information,” she said. “Help me out here.”
In the end, I retold the story of Trent’s brief visit to Something’s Brewing about a hundred times, never altering a detail. I didn’t talk about how it made me feel to have Eli give me the cold shoulder. Lan wasn’t really interested in that, anyway. She wanted to talk about Trent again at school that morning, and of course rehash it at lunch, but Eden’s dilemma had taken center stage, much to my relief.
Eden sat with her head in her hands, moaning about the tough decisions she was forced to make while Lan and I tried to offer our sympathy.
“I mean, it’s only the most important decision of my life!” Eden wailed. I glanced at Lan, who was picking at a salad. Eden had a tendency to exaggerate—not exactly a good quality in a journalist.
“I think it’s pretty clear,” I said. “The protest is much more interesting. It affected more students directly.”
“But that’s just it,” Eden said. “Only three boys were arrested, and they were released with a warning two hours later. No big deal. But the party? That affects hundreds of students.”
Tiffany Werner had announced on Friday that she was, indeed, throwing a party.
A big party.
To quote Tiffany exactly, “The biggest party this town has ever seen.” Her parents had rented out the country club, hired a band and booked caterers to celebrate Tiffany’s sixteenth birthday, which was, for some reason, a huge event. Monumental, people said. As if girls didn’t turn sixteen every day of the year and therefore it was a rare milestone that required a celebration ten times bigger than most people’s weddings.
There were a few people on the Cleary Chronicle staff who argued that Tiffany’s party would cause issues to fly off the shelves, or in the case of the Cleary Chronicle, to be plucked off the tables set up outside the cafeteria.
Tiffany’s story held a hint of mystery: two hundred and fifty students would be invited, but no one had yet received an invitation. The protest story had a bit of violence: a few kids had thrown bottles and were escorted “downtown,” where they had to wait in a holding cell until their parents came to pick them up. My dad had been there, cuffing freshmen and putting them in the backseat of his car. I didn’t ask for specifics and he didn’t offer any, but it was all over school and people were giving me some distance when I walked down the hallways as if I had something to do with it.
“But, Eden,” I argued, “you’re always saying that the school paper is like a time capsule. When people look back on this issue in ten years, what do you think they’ll find more important? A student protest or a birthday party?”
“The protest,” Lan said. She knew there was no way she was getting an invitation to Tiffany’s party, and I think she wanted to diminish its social importance as much as possible.
Eden seemed to consider this. She pushed her disheveled hair off her face and sat up straighter. “Okay,” she said, taking a deep, dramatic breath. “You’re right. Okay. I know what I have to do.”
Austin