The weird thing is that I was less self-conscious about it then, when if Ty had really been observant, he might have noted I had nothing to put in the bra, than I am now, when the need is undeniable. Or maybe that’s not weird at all. Maybe that is exactly why I’m more uncomfortable now talking about bras. Because the idea of breasts is something you hold in your mind. The reality of breasts is something that sits in the middle of your chest, right there between you and your little brother. Right there in your bras.
I buried the bra in the Greer pile and launched myself into Ty. I sat on his chest, my knees pinning his arms, until I wrestled a pair of his own underwear onto his head. “Look! Tyler wears UNDERWEARS? Dad! Can you believe this? Look at Ty’s underwears! Oh my gaw-ahd!”
That picture was Dad’s lock screen, until Mom told him to put something more appropriate on it. His current screen is a picture of me and Ty at a restaurant, leaning our heads together but not touching at all.
CHAPTER 16
The minute bell rings and Jackson still hasn’t shown up. I plod off to class, disappointed. Everyone else looks nervous. We have a test today.
Carlisle Patone has sharpened his pencil to a laser and is writing in a four-point font so he can get the most information on the page of notes we are allowed to keep.
“That’s just going to make it worse. You’re not going to be able to find anything,” I warn.
“Easy for you,” says Carlisle, and keeps transferring nonsense from his notebook to the cheat sheet. Someone should put Carlisle out of his misery and bump him back to Algebra II.
Three boys are passing a calculator back and forth and laughing. Most of us discovered the list of words you could make by flipping the calculator upside down in fifth grade, but there are a few kids who still find it amusing to come up with equations whose answers spell out funny words, even on a multifunction calculator that has an entire alphabetical keyboard mode.
7734 = hELL
8075 = SLOB
3722145 = ShIZZLE
312237 = LEZZIE
Here’s what I don’t understand: If they can CGI a chimpanzee so realistically that my grandpa won’t stop talking about how the movie studios could train those monkeys to fight on horseback, why can’t Texas Instruments create a graphing calculator where no one thinks 58,008 reads “BOOBS” upside down? Or more correctly, “BOO,BS” upside down?
Maybe the engineers at TI are adolescent boys. Adolescent boys who were too smart for school math, who had to go to special math college and then got jobs making calculators.
I catch Kyle Tuck motioning to me, and I assume he’s come up with some equation that equals 5319918. Breasts—especially especially big or especially small ones (55378008), and especially especially mine—are endlessly amusing to Kyle.
For a smart kid, he really is dumb.
The test is easy. I only need my half-size cheat sheet on two problems. I’m the second one done, a full forty minutes before Carlisle. I fish my phone out of my bag to play Zombie Sudoku (which is just Sudoku, but instead of numbers, you fill in the blocks with nine varieties of undead) under the table. Technically, we’re not supposed to have them in class during a test, but there is nothing else to do.
Right away I see that there is a picture from Jackson. I pretend to be adjusting my shoelaces so I can lean close enough to my phone to see it.
It’s his forehead, and there is a red line above his eyebrow about an inch and a half long, with a whole row of stitches squeezing it together. Tyler has had so many gashes on all parts of his body that I can tell Jackson’s stitches are expertly done, and I say a silent thanks to Relocation Advisor Kathryn Walsh for including Best Emergency Rooms in her list of recommendations. She may have saved Jackson’s beautiful forehead.
What happened?
Qmonster.
Quinlan did that??
Yep.
???
My mind is reeling, in part because I’m wondering what that grumpy Grumpy thief did to him, and mostly because he just texted me a picture of his stitches. Before I can respond, he writes
We’re leaving the ER now. I’ll tell you at lunch?
Lunch? He knows he’s not texting Max Cleave, right? He’s not texting the taco truck?
“Greer? Do you have a phone out?”
The whole class, the ones done with the test and the ones not done with the test, looks at me like I’ve just been caught standing over a murder victim with a bloody knife in my hand.
“Bring it here, please.”
I keep my head down so no one can see my expression as I bring my phone to Ms. Tanner at the front of the room. I have never been in trouble in math or in any other class that anyone can remember. They think my cheeks are hot because I am ashamed. They are wrong.
Ms. T puts my phone in a basket she keeps on her desk for just this purpose.
But not before I send back an emoji of a lunch box and a thumbs-up.
CHAPTER 17
“What are you doing? Come on,” demands Maggie. She’s holding a tray with school salad (one leaf of lettuce, four baby carrots, and a giant foil packet of Ranch) and a yogurt drink. Natalie and Tahlia drift up to us with their own collections of food. This is who I’ve eaten lunch with since eighth grade, and probably always will, whether or not any of us likes it. That’s just how lunch goes. I usually nab a small circle table for us because I bring lunch and can get there first, but today I am standing on the edge of the lunchroom looking for Jackson.
“Jackson got stitches this morning and he said he’d tell me about it at lunch.” I can see Natalie raise her eyebrows at Tahlia: interesting new development.
Maggie takes it in stride. By now she’s met Jackson and she seems to be buying my story that he is more or less a client of mine. “Okay, we’ll grab a table. Bring him over when you find him.” She beelines for the last empty circle with the other girls in tow. She smacks her tray down seconds before a couple of juniors get there.
I was not picturing that I was going to sit with Jackson and Maggie and Natalie and Tahlia. I was hoping for something more like just the two of us, at a wrought-iron café table in a sun-dappled grotto in Italy. But there’s only the mayonnaise-dappled cafeteria at Kennedy, no grotto, and it’s too crowded to take up a whole table for just two people anyway.
I spot him across the lunchroom. He’s got a square of gauze taped over half his forehead, which catches people’s attention. Maggie’s brother and a couple of other guys stop him and I can read his lips saying, “Eight stitches.” They all laugh and Max puts his hand on Jackson’s shoulder, like busting his head open is a great accomplishment. For a second I think he’s going to leave with them, but I see him point my way and soon he’s threading his way through the crowd.