I think about my phone background again, the photo I’ve had there for nine whole months.
Have the three of us taken any photos since then?
“You talk about the three of us having this great last summer,” Mara continues, “and I’m sorry—you know we love you—but it’s a little hard to believe.”
Her words weigh me down, dragging my shoulders nearly to the floor. Our lane goes wobbly. My friends and I don’t ever argue like this. In my head, our relationship was rock solid. It can’t be true that in reality, it was crumbling.
“You guys keep playing,” I say, slipping off the bowling shoes. “I need to get some air.”
Several Occasions on Which I May Have
(Inadvertently) Abandoned My Friends for Neil McNair
NOVEMBER, JUNIOR YEAR
Kirby and I were in the same AP US History class, and Ms. Benson let us pick partners for an end-of-semester project. Kirby assumed we’d work together, but because I knew Ms. Benson did not buy into the bullshit “everyone in the group gets the same grade” philosophy, I locked eyes with McNair instead. We traded a nod that meant we were on the same page: we’d try to sabotage each other by working together. We each got a 98.
MARCH, JUNIOR YEAR
McNair and I stayed late after quiz bowl practice. We argued for so long about one of the answers that we got hungry and wound up continuing our debate at a hole-in-the-wall Mexican place down the block from school. He was so annoying that I could barely enjoy my veggie burrito. I was supposed to be at Mara and Kirby’s dance recital, but I lost track of time and only caught the second half.
SEPTEMBER, SENIOR YEAR
Kirby and Mara and I planned to go to the opening night of Kirby’s favorite Marvel franchise sequel, but I had to help student council tally the votes for president because it just wasn’t possible they were split exactly down the middle. By the time we finished counting and recounting at one a.m., it became clear that it was possible. And I had missed the movie.
MAY, SENIOR YEAR
It’s tradition for seniors to hold a silent auction every year to raise money for the school. Everyone in the senior class and their parents are invited to offer something—an item, an experience—and we make the rounds of the room to scribble down their bids. It’s pretty posh for public school. Kirby, Mara, and I dressed up and ate fancy food together most of the night—until a basket of high-end cheeses disappeared, and as copresidents, McNair and I had to track it down. Turned out, a little kid had wandered off with it, but it took us the better part of an hour to find it tucked into a stroller.
TODAY
… Oh.
2:49 p.m.
THE ARCADE’S PINBALL machines devour my quarters. Obsessed with Neil McNair—it’s laughable, really. We’ve had nearly all the same extracurriculars, the same classes. That’s not obsession: that’s both of us working toward a singular goal only one of us could ever get.
What would the alternative have been? I had to get inside his head, figure out how to take him down, solve problems only the two of us could. I never fully cracked him, though. That’s the strangest part. All these years without dark secrets or embarrassing confessions. With us, it’s strictly business.
Still, I can’t get my friends’ words out of my mind.
I think you’re a little obsessed with him.
God, even now I’m thinking about McNair instead of my friends, the people I’ve all but abandoned this year.
We’re not allowed to leave the safe zone until three, and pinball is easier than self-reflection. It reminds me of one of my favorite romance-novel first dates. In Lucky in Lust, Annabel and Grayson spend hours in a run-down arcade, drawing a crowd as she grows closer and closer to beating a pinball machine’s high score. The whole time, she’s almost fully focused on the game. She can feel adorable history teacher Grayson’s presence next to her, the heat of his body, the scent of his cologne. And when she claims the high score, he wraps her in this incredible victory hug that she feels down to her toes. I didn’t know hugs could be that hot.
I don’t have Annabel’s luck in lust or in pinball. After I lose a few more dollars in quarters, I check the time on my phone. Somehow it’s been only five minutes, but I’m not ready to go back quite yet.
Distantly, I hear someone say my name. I turn my head, but the given way the conversation continues in hushed tones, I’m not sure anyone was actually calling me. I’m not being beckoned—I’m being talked about. The arcade is on the top floor, above the lanes, and it’s tough to make out the conversation amid the sounds of pins clattering and people talking, laughing. I’m alone in here, probably because everything looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in the last twenty years, including the carpet, which is the saddest shade of greige.
But then I hear my name again, and this time I’m sure it’s coming from the food court across from the arcade.
There’s no door separating the arcade from the hall or the food court—but there’s a potted plant at the arcade’s entrance that’s roughly my height.
What I’m doing is ridiculous. I’m aware of that. And yet here I am, creeping toward the plant, hoping its leaves can hide most of my body. When I peek between them, I spot about a dozen Westviewers huddled in the food court, the kind that serves plastic pizza and one-dollar sodas. Savannah Bell is at the head of the table, and she looks about as thrilled as I did when I learned the votes for student council president were split right down the middle.
“Aren’t you sick of Rowan and Neil winning everything?” she’s saying, waving a cup for emphasis. “Every test, every competition, it’s Neil and Rowan, Rowan and Neil. If I never hear their names together again, it’ll be too soon.”
You and me both.
“It’s the last day of school, Sav,” says Trang Chau, Savannah’s boyfriend. “Why does it matter?”
“Because if one of them wins today,” Savannah continues, her earrings trembling with the indignity of it all, “then they win high school. They get to go off to college all smug, thinking they’re better than the rest of us. Think how satisfying it would be to take them down a peg. Valedictorian and salutatorian, beaten at their very last game.”
This conversation feels sinister, somehow. McNair and I earned every accolade, every win.
“I always assumed they were hooking up,” says Iris Zhou, and I fight the urge to gag myself with a plant leaf.
“No. No way,” Brady Becker says. Bless him. “I did a group project with them last year, and they nearly killed each other. It was fucking brutal.”
“I don’t know.” Meg Lazarski taps her chin. “Amelia Yoon said she saw them go into the supply closet together during leadership last month, and when they came out, Neil’s hair was a mess and Rowan was totally blushing.”
I muffle a laugh. The closet was tiny, and I’d accidentally brushed against him while reaching for a jar of paint. Simple proximity to another human being in an enclosed space would make anyone feel flushed. As for his hair: well, it was AP test week, and some people play with their hair when they’re anxious. Guess we have that in common.