The football presentation is over and the quiz bowling team is preparing to enter. Infinite Darlene is basking in her last round of applause. I swear she winks when she looks my way.
I focus on the seat next to Noah. I do not focus on his crazy-cool hair, or his blue suede shoes, or the specks of paint on his hands and his arms.
I am beside him.
“Is this seat taken?” I ask.
He looks up at me. And then, after a beat, he breaks out smiling.
“Hey,” he says, “I’ve been looking all over for you.”
I don’t know what to say. I am so happy and so scared.
There is a roar through the stands as the quiz bowling team is announced. They come sprinting on to the court, rolling for pins while answering questions about Einstein’s theory of relativity.
“I’ve been looking for you too,” I say at last.
He says, “Cool,” and it’s cool. So cool.
I sit down next to him as the audience cheers for the captain of the quiz bowling team, who’s just scored a strike while listing the complete works of the Brontë sisters.
I don’t want to scare him by telling him all the things that are scaring me. I don’t want him to know how important this is. He has to feel the importance for himself.
So I say, “Those are cool shoes,” and we talk about blue suede shoes and the duds store where he shops. We talk as the badminton team lets its birdies fly. We talk as the French Cuisine Club rises the perfect soufflé. We laugh when it falls.
I am looking for signs that he understands me. I am looking for my hopes to be confirmed.
“This is such serendipity, isn’t it?” he asks. I almost fall off my seat. I am a firm believer in serendipity – all the random pieces coming together in one wonderful moment, when suddenly you see what their purpose was all along.
We talk about music and find that we like the same kinds of music. We talk about movies and find that we like the same kinds of movies.
“Do you really exist?” I blurt out.
“Not at all,” he says with a smile. “I’ve known that since I was four.”
“What happened when you were four?”
“Well, I had this theory. Although I guess I was too young to know it was a theory. You see, I had this imaginary friend. She followed me everywhere – we had to set a place for her at the table, she and I talked all the time – the whole deal. Then it occurred to me that she wasn’t the imaginary friend at all. I figured that I was the imaginary friend and she was the one who was real. It made perfect sense to me. My parents disagreed, but I still secretly feel that I’m right.”
“What was her name?” I ask.
“Sarah. Yours?”
“Thom. With an h.”
“Maybe they’re together right now.”
“Oh, no. I left Thom in Florida. He never liked to travel.”
We are not taking each other too seriously, which is a serious plus. The paint on his hands is not quite purple and not quite blue. There is a speck of just-right red on one of his fingers.
The principal’s secretary has the microphone again. The rally is almost over.
“I’m glad you found me,” Noah says.
“Me too.” I want to float, because it’s that simple. He’s glad I found him. I’m glad I found him. We are not afraid to say this. I am so used to hints and mixed messages, saying things that might mean what they sort of sound like they mean. Games and contests, roles and rituals, talking in twelve languages at once so the true words won’t be so obvious. I am not used to a plain-spoken, honest truth.
It pretty much blows me away.
I think Noah recognises this. He’s looking at me with a nifty grin. The other people in our row are standing and jostling now, waiting for us to leave so they can get to the aisle and resume their day. I want time to stop.
Time doesn’t stop.
“Two sixty-three,” Noah tells me.
“?!???” I reply.
“My locker number,” he explains. “I’ll see you after school.”
Now I don’t want time to stop. I want it to fast-forward an hour. Noah has become my until.
As we leave the gym, I can see Kyle shoot me a look. I don’t care. Joni and Ted will no doubt be waiting under the bleachers for the full report.
I can sum it up in one word:
Joy.
Hallway Traffic (Complications Ensue)
Self-esteem can be so exhausting. I want to cut my hair, change my clothes, erase the pimple from the near-tip of my nose and strengthen my upper-arm definition, all in the next hour. But I can’t do that, because (a) it’s impossible, and (b) if I make any of these changes, Noah will notice that I’ve changed, and I don’t want him to know how into him I am.
I hope Mr B can save me. I pray his physics class today will transfix me in such a way that I will forget about what awaits me at the other end. But as Mr B bounds around the room with anti-gravitational enthusiasm, I just can’t join his parade. Two sixty-four has become my new mantra. I roll the number over in my head, hoping it will reveal something to me (other than a locker number). I replay my conversation with Noah, trying to transcribe it into memory since I don’t dare write it down in my notebook.
The hour passes. As soon as the bell rings, I bolt out of my seat. I don’t know where locker 264 is, but I’m sure as hell going to find out.
I plunge into the congested hallway, weaving through the back-slap reunions and locker lunges. I spot locker 435 – I’m in the wrong corridor entirely.
“Paul!” a voice yells. There aren’t enough Pauls in my school that I can assume the yell is for someone else. Reluctantly I turn around and see Lyssa Ling about to pull my sleeve.
I already know what she wants. Lyssa Ling doesn’t ever talk to me unless she wants me to be on a committee. She’s the head of our school’s committee on appointing committees, no doubt because she’s so good at it.
“What do you want from me now, Lyssa?” I ask. (She’s used to this.)
“The Dowager Dance,” she says. “I want you to architect it.”
I am more than a little surprised. The Dowager Dance is a big deal at our school, and architecting it would mean being in charge of all the decorations and music.
“I
