style="font-size:15px;"> My palms immediately got sweaty. Sophie left, and I slowly turned around to face Steve. I couldn’t exactly read his expression as he walked along the path with his hands in his pockets, but I assumed it was some variation of insulted. “Hey,” he said quietly once we were face to face.
“Hi. Sorry I had to run off after class.”
“No problem.” He looked into my eyes. “I was wondering —”
I cut him off, “Did you mean you want to go out Saturday night as friends?” I smiled enthusiastically, as if I loved the idea. “Or, did you mean you want to go out on Saturday night for a date?” I wrinkled my nose and angled my eyebrows together to imply I wasn’t quite ready for that idea, which was true, so wasn’t hard to produce.
He hesitated for a second before he said, “Friends. Maybe we could go to the party Sophie’s band is playing at.”
“Oh, okay, sure.”
“Great.” He smiled and handed me a key chain. “I know this is kind of lame, but I went to Arizona over the summer. There is this famous architect place there —”
“Taliesin West.”
“Yeah, the Frank Lloyd Wright school. My dad made me go with him for a tour. I remembered when we did that career day in grade eight, you said you wanted to be an architect. And I know you’re always sketching buildings, so I thought you might like it. The key chain is the logo or emblem or something.”
“Wow. Thanks.” I honestly was impressed that he remembered my interest in architecture and was thoughtful enough to get me a souvenir.
“I’m glad you’re back. Things weren’t the same when you weren’t here last year.”
Aw, he was being so sweet. “Thanks. It feels good to be home again.”
He shifted his weight a couple of times. “Okay, well, um, I have a tennis team meeting, so, I guess I’ll see you around.”
“Okay, I’ll see you around.”
He headed towards the gym, and I walked slowly back into the students’ lounge, still processing what just happened. A boy asked me out. A cute, smart, super-nice boy, who obviously doesn’t mind my geek side. I had never thought of Steve in that way, but then again, I had never really thought of any guy as more than a friend. If there were such a thing as romantically stunted, that was me. Dating was a foreign concept to me. Everything I knew about boys was either from Sophie, who started dating when we were twelve. Or from observing Trevor, who had a different pretty girl hanging around him monthly. I didn’t actually have any hands-on experience, but there was no reason why the new Derian couldn’t have a boyfriend if I wanted her to.
Sophie sat up with a hopeful look on her face as I approached the table. “So, do you have a date with Steve for Saturday night?”
“As friends. I made that clear, since I’m not at all prepared to jump head first into the deep end of dating.”
“Yes! I can’t wait to help you choose an outfit.” She grinned and clapped her hands in front of her face. “Ooh, let’s make this even more interesting,” she said in a calculated tone as she stood. Her chair scraped loudly as it slid out behind her.
My mouth literally fell open as she crossed the lounge and leaned her hands on the table Mason was seated at. She spoke directly to him, not even bothering to acknowledge Corrine and Paige. When she pointed her thumb back over her shoulder, Mason glanced at me and smiled. I considered diving under my table. Sophie stood up straight and flipped her long black hair over her shoulders. She shot a look at the girls at the table, but it didn’t appear she said anything to them. The last thing she did was gesture at Mason in a see-you-there kind of way and turned to strut back towards our table. I stopped looking at Mason. Mortified.
“God, he’s gorgeous,” she sighed as she sat back down beside me.
“I. Am. Going. To. Kill. You,” I hissed and made a point of articulating each murderess word slowly.
“I didn’t even mention you. I just told him about the band. And pointed out that it might be a good place to meet people, you know, since he’s new in town.”
I shook my head in utter opposition. “You are so dead. When did everything become about getting Derian a date? Let’s find a new topic. Music, genetically modified produce, world peace, or—”
“Ah, come on. If having two guys to choose from isn’t fun for you, it will at least be entertaining for me to watch.”
“I’m so glad my non-existent love life amuses you.”
“An existent love life would amuse me more, especially if it’s with two guys at once.”
“I don’t have the time, skill level, or experience to date one guy, let alone two. Fortunately, there’s more to life than boys. How about we focus on something other than me finding a mate?”
“I’m not suggesting you go boy crazy, but it won’t kill you to take your nose out of a book and get a little action. Guaranteed, your health-class textbook will back me up. Getting busy is a normal, healthy part of adolescent social development.” She leaned over and interrupted Doug and his incentive program friends in the middle of a debate about some political conflict. “College guys will prefer a woman who knows what she’s doing, right?”
“Yup,” he said, without even hesitating. Then it hit him that he probably should have thought about it before he responded. “Was that a trap?”
“Nope,” she reassured him and turned back to me. “See. Trust me, my little dating Padawan.”
Getting a little action, as she put it, just for the sake of gaining experience, honestly didn’t appeal to me. Being the only university student who had never been kissed, however, was not all that appealing either.
The rest of the afternoon dragged because, as it turned out, not much had changed in the year I’d been gone. Same boring classes, same small-town teachers, and same shallow, immature classmates. After school, I walked across the grass to wait for Trevor. Since I didn’t have any homework to do and forgot to bring a book, I just sat on a bench next to the parking lot. The day hadn’t gone at all how I imagined it would go. A few people had welcomed me back. A few people had no idea who I was. Most people acted as if they hadn’t even noticed I’d been missing for a year. Not one person said anything about my dad. It wasn’t exactly bad, but it wasn’t what I expected either.
Twenty minutes passed before I realized Steve was one of the people playing tennis in the courts in front of me. When he finished his match, or game, or set—whichever it was, he walked over and sat beside me on the bench. “Do you need a ride?”
“No thanks. Trevor is picking me up after he finishes work.”
“Oh, is he your boyfriend or something?”
That was a first. People mistook him for my brother all the time, but nobody had ever asked if he was my boyfriend. “No. He’s my neighbour.”
“So,
