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He told me to look out for you.
Because she should get to know me, or because I am someone to avoid?
I decided I would definitely have to use one of my other favorite techniques: bringing Liam up into every single conversation and asking what everyone else thought he might have meant.
I had just decided to go to the nurse’s office because of imaginary cramps and say that I was really not able to stay the rest of the day when Brett popped up out of nowhere.
“Hey, Bridget—ready for this test in NSL?” I always hated small talk about classes, particularly National, State and Local Government. Blech.
“Ugh, Brett, what are you—” Wait.
“What test?”
“What test?” He repeated my words with an entirely different inflection, one that implied that I was very, very stupid.
“The midterm, Bridget. You studied for it, right?”
“No? When is it?”
“Today, in like—” he looked at his watch—which, incidentally, looked like it was taken from the personal wardrobe of Inspector Gadget “—forty-six minutes.”
He was still looking horrified at my unpreparedness.
“How much is it worth?” I asked, feeling a little breathless. Today sucks, I thought.
“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 over her words “.wondering if you guys wanted to come over to my house tonight. I mean, it’s not going to be like a big deal party or anything. Not like your parties.”
“Have you ever actually been to one of my parties?” I asked impatiently, barely interested in the conversation.
“Um. No, but, I mean, I hear they’re great.”
I narrowed my eyes at her and cocked my head a bit to the side. She cleared her throat.
“Well, anyway, it’s just going to be like board games and stuff. My parents will be there.” She looked sheepish.
I waited to see if she said anything else. When she didn’t, and instead shifted her weight uncomfortably, I smiled.
“Uh-huh. Well, I know that I’ll be busy tonight. I don’t know about the other girls. Michelle? Jillian? Busy tonight? Want to go play some board games with Laura and her parents?”
Michelle shook her head down at her food, her face red. Jillian looked sympathetically at Laura and then said something about plans with her mom.
I crinkled my nose, and made a tsk-ing sound as I turned back to Laura looking regretful.
“Aw, that’s too bad. Maybe next time?” I smiled dismissively, and looked back down at my magazine.
“You know what, Bridget?” Laura asked, her ears turning red.
I gave her a challenging look.
“What’s that?”
“You’re just …”
There was a lurch in my stomach. I would not be told off, and I could tell that was where this was going. But I’d learned long ago to deflect this sort of thing.
“I’d stop now, if I were you. Which thank God I’m not.”
I watched her fury grow, and I felt the growing sense that I’d really gone too far.
“I’d always rather be me than you.” And she walked away.
I scrambled to think of something to say. I thought of nothing. I’d never had to. Since when did anyone challenge me?
I knew I’d been unnecessarily cruel to her, and I felt kind of guilty. But my day had sucked so far, too, and no one was apologizing to me. “Bridget—”
“So I ran into Anna today,” I started, cutting off Michelle. I knew she was going to give me grief and I just couldn’t deal with that on top of it all. Plus, I had to pretend that what had just happened didn’t bother me.
“And she introduced herself to me and all—she already knew my name—and then told me that Liam had told her to ‘look out for’ me. What do you suppose that means?”
Jillian, always interested in a good outrage, gasped and dropped her celery stick.
“He said that?”
I enlightened her on my theories of what he might have meant, and we talked about it for the rest of the period, eventually agreeing that he must have meant that I am so popular she’s bound to run into me, and to then introduce herself.
As soon as the bell rang indicating the end of lunch, I told Michelle about the deal I’d made with Brett. Well, I told her the half she needed to know, which was that she was sitting with him on Monday at lunch.
She raised her eyebrows at me.
“I’m what?”
“It’s no big deal. Seriously, I said I’d get him a date, and all he wanted was to ask you out himself.” She stared at me.
“Oh, my God, Michelle, just say no to him, it’s not that hard.” “Bridget, you can’t just—” What, now she was going to start rebelling, too? “Well, you’re going to sit with him, so …” I let the so hang in the air, letting her fill in the blank for herself with stop arguing with me. I smiled superficially, wiggled a goodbye with my fingers to Jillian and then strutted off to class. I didn’t look back to see what Michelle did next.
As I walked away, I began to wonder if what I was about to do was wrong. Sure, chances were that Brett wouldn’t get caught helping me, and that he wouldn’t dive into a depression when Michelle said no to his date. But still—what if we did get caught? What if he did fail the class, and it was my fault? What if between that and Michelle rejecting him, he did slip into a depression? Anyone would, after being expelled from this school. It was such a high-profile place that anything that happened here was practically in the society pages.
But no, I thought to myself. I was giving my actions far more credit than they deserved. Brett would be fine. We wouldn’t get caught, and even if we did … Brett would be fine.
My conviction wavered a bit once I walked into my NSL class and saw that there was a substitute teacher.
Okay, this could go one of two ways. Either the sub was nicer than Mrs. Remeley, our usual teacher, or she could be nasty.
Nasty like that teacher we’d had in middle school who kept telling us to sit up straight and hold our books a certain way during reading time.
Nice like my first-grade teacher with Valentine’s Day candy and the inability to stop me from doing what I wanted. Which, in first grade, was to use Brett to my advantage.
On my way to my seat, I watched her. She looked to be about in her fifties, but according to the chalkboard, she was a “Miss.” Miss Smithson. She was mousy and looked nervous. I instantly felt some indefinable emotion for her.
Brett was in his seat looking down at his notes when I sat down. I tapped him on the shoulder.
