“Really?”
“Yeah,” Julia said. “If you buy me a slice of pie, all is forgiven. We still have to exchange stories from the night.”
Dave thought of Gretchen, the strange appeal of those crooked teeth. It felt weird to bring her up, though; he’d never talked to Julia about girls. She’d talked to him about the few guys she’d fleetingly dated, and had on occasion tried to pry out from him some admittance of a crush on anyone. But for obvious reasons he’d always said there was no one he was interested in. Bringing it up now felt somehow wrong. Plus “a girl and I talked for a while” was not much of a story, so the next thing that came to mind was the flip-cup tournament. He chuckled to himself, though a distinct feeling of shame goose-bumped up his arms. “Embarrassing is good, right? We were here to fit in in an almost gross way?”
“Oh God, what’d you do?”
“Let’s say I really embraced the spirit of the Kapoor party.”
“Eww, Dave, did you buy a polo shirt? I’m going to have to cut you out of my life, aren’t I?”
Dave put his hands in his pockets, turning the corner toward the street where the diner stood, lit up against all the darkened storefronts. “I don’t think I’m ready for that,” Dave said, adding a chuckle.
THERE WAS NO greater proof of an underlying human connection than the universal hatred of Monday mornings. Everyone wore it on their faces: students with hair sticking out in every direction, as if trying to get away. Teachers sat at their desks scowling at their lesson plans. The principal looked as if he was suffering a nervous breakdown. The halls were practically an obstacle course with people lying down with their legs sprawled out, backpacks tossed in front of their lockers as pillows.
Dave had slept in most of the day Saturday and then stayed up on Sunday night supposedly trying to do homework, but really just rebelling against the thought that they were still assigning homework to seniors in March. He’d gotten into college—couldn’t they just accept that he’d succeeded at this whole high school thing and leave him alone?
He’d slept less than four hours, and when Ms. Romero took attendance in homeroom, saying “here” physically hurt. Julia arrived a couple of minutes late, her earphones still in, a yellow tardy sheet from the office in hand. She hadn’t bothered to change out of her pajama pants, and her hastily combed hair made Dave think of what it would be like to wake up next to her. She gave the tardy slip to Ms. Romero wordlessly and then plopped down next to Dave, pulling one of the earphones out and handing it over, as per tradition.
Julia hated talking in the mornings, and so Dave knew to listen to the music until she was ready. Neko Case crooned beautifully for a while as Ms. Romero struggled to put the morning’s announcements up on the projector. This was how to combat the awfulness of Monday mornings. The PA went off, but no one cared to listen. A succession of yawns made its way across the room, knocking a couple of heads down to rest on their desks.
“I’ll be right back,” Ms. Romero said, at which point the silence in the room started coming apart. Bouts of isolated whispering grew into all-out conversations that filled the room.
Neko Case’s voice stopped abruptly, and Dave heard Julia’s sandals fall to the floor. He kept the muted earphone in, always happy to be tied together to her.
“How was Carmel?” Dave asked. She’d left early Saturday morning with her dads to go visit her grandparents, returning on Sunday when Dave was knee-deep in unjust homework assignments.
“Pretty. It’s always pretty.” She put her arms on her desk and lowered her head down, looking up at Dave with tired eyes. “I was thinking more about the party.”
Dave raised an eyebrow at her. At the diner after the party, Julia had told him about her misadventures while they were split: a couple of guys’ awful attempts to make out with her, their worse attempts at interesting conversation. She’d ended up playing video games in the basement with a group of juniors—stoner clichés that she hadn’t expected to run into at the party, but clichés nonetheless. They’d joked about Dave’s embarrassing flip-cup skills. Throughout the weekend, Dave’s thoughts had returned to Gretchen, how he’d kind of fallen in love with the mood of the party. He’d assumed Julia had talked it all out of her system, though.
“Really? What were you thinking? How much fun you had?”
He smirked, but Julia surprised him by answering, “God, yes. It was so awful, I couldn’t help but enjoy myself.”
She pulled out her earphone and then plucked Dave’s out, wrapping the cord around her phone. “There were so many clichés, I don’t think we even touched on all of them at the diner. Did you see the girl puking in the bushes? I thought it was you for a second and I was really proud of you, but then I realized that she was five feet tall and had red curly hair and way bigger boobs than you do.”
“You mean April Holmes? She was in a miniskirt.”
“You could have been in a miniskirt. I think you have the legs for it.” She sat up and put her phone away in her bag, which was this hand-stitched, colorful knapsack thing that her mom had sent her as a gift from Ecuador. “Anyway! I think we should do more.” She’d talked herself fully awake now. In the background, Ms. Romero had finally succeeded in getting the projector to work and was asking if anyone had any questions about the bulletin. She said it in a way that made it sound like she had no interest in answering any of those questions.
“More parties?”
“No. Well, yes. But I was thinking of more Nevers. Do you have the list?”
Dave rummaged through his backpack until he found the folded sheet of paper, a little bent at the corners from whatever it is that happens inside backpacks that ensures all papers get ruined. He pulled out a chocolate muffin as well and peeled off the Saran Wrap while Julia looked at the Nevers. His mom had loved those chocolate muffins, and now his dad kept them stocked in the house, making trips to Costco specifically to get them. Dave made eye contact with Nicky Marquez across the room, whom he had talked to at some point at the party. He hadn’t known a thing about Nicky before, but now he knew that his parents were migrant workers, and that he hadn’t learned English until he was nine.
Julia drew a red line across Never number three. “We can have so much fun with these.” She brought the paper closer to Dave, so he could read with her. It always drove him crazy how easily she minimized the distance between them, as if it didn’t mean anything. And then, almost out of nowhere, he thought about sitting next to Gretchen, how he was looking forward to seeing her in chemistry third period.
“We’re definitely dying our hair crazy colors.”
“We are?”
“This week,” she said, folding both hands on the desk and resting her chin on top of them, continuing to read the list, the matter not up for discussion. “Actually, we’re doing all of them.” She sat back up quickly, smiling. “It’s the perfect way to end the year,” she said. “It’s been so boring; this’ll be the perfect end-of-high-school celebration. Embrace the clichés so tightly they’ll suffocate. I think my mom would approve.”
Dave eyed the clock. Homeroom was almost over. His tired brain tried
