A Week of Mondays

  I make a “What?” gesture with my hands. He responds by slowly pointing at his mouth.

  Oh crap, do I have something stuck in my teeth?

  Trying to be stealthy, I reach up and touch my lips, hoping to subtly rub my finger against my gums. But as soon as my hand makes contact with my mouth, I understand what Owen is trying to tell me.

  I don’t know how I didn’t feel it coming on. The numbness. The tingles. The pressure of the skin filling with excess blood.

  My lips. They’re swelling.

  Horrified, I look to Owen, who peers down at the half-eaten banana bread sitting in his lap, then back at me. He mouths one word. I don’t need to read lips to understand. It’s the same word that’s flashing in my mind like a NORAD alarm.

  ALMONDS.

  I Fall to Pieces

  There are really only two possible explanations here:

  1) Daphne lied to my face about the almonds in order to see me humiliated in front of the entire school.

  2) Daphne didn’t know about the almonds.

  As I stand in front of an entire gym of restless teenagers and try to block out the sounds of the final sophomore candidate’s speech, I scan the crowd for Daphne. Maybe I can deduce her motives (or lack thereof) by the smug (or clueless) expression on her face, but I can’t seem to find her. Instead, my eyes fall back on Owen, who’s pantomiming dramatically to get my attention. I squint, trying to decipher his movements. But, to be honest, they have more resemblance to some interpretive modern dance than actual sign language.

  He’s either miming that his head is on fire or he’s asking me what on earth I’m going to do.

  I reach up to touch my lips, hoping to gauge the severity of the reaction. Maybe there was only a trace of almonds. Maybe I can get my speech over with before my lips turn into full-blown whoopie pies.

  But as soon as my fingers brush against the taut, swollen skin, I know I’m in trouble. I can definitely feel my lips on my fingers but I can’t feel my fingers on my lips.

  There’s a jab at my arm and Rhiannon is looking at me with bug eyes, as if to say “What’s the matter with you?”

  “You’re up,” she hisses.

  What?

  I incline my head toward hers. “I can’t do this,” I try to whisper, but the words are garbled and clumsy.

  Does she not see my lips? Does she not get how disastrous this is going to be?

  She gives me a little shove. “Go.”

  As I slowly approach the microphone stand, I lock eyes with Owen once more. From the look on his face, I realize he can’t believe I’m going through with this.

  That makes two of us.

  A snicker breaks out among the students. No doubt someone has noticed my inflated lips and is spreading the word swiftly.

  I clasp my index cards in my hand and step up to the microphone.

  Just keep it brief. Introduce yourself. Read some of the buzz words from the cards and then take cover.

  I glance down at Rhiannon’s perfect girly handwriting. The ink seems to be running, like someone spilled water on it.

  Are my eyes swelling, too?

  “Hello,” I say into the microphone. I can hear the amplification through the gym’s speaker system. The word comes ricocheting back at me a split second later like a distorted boomerang. But it doesn’t sound like “hello,” it sounds like “he-wo.”

  The snickers instantly turn to giggles.

  I take a deep breath. “My name is Ellison Sparks and I’m running for junior class vice president.”

  I cringe, waiting to hear what I really sound like. I only catch the tail end of the sentence. Vife pwesheden.

  This is it. This is the end. I always wondered how I was going to die. And silly me, I thought it would be something epic and tragically romantic. Like sharing a vial of poison with my star-crossed lover. I never thought it would end like this.

  Metaphorically stoned by my peers.

  Murdered by my own kin.

  I rush through the rest of the speech as fast as I can, trying to focus on moving my thick, dragging lips while at the same time attempting to block out the echo of my voice reverberating back at me.

  The giggles have escalated to full-blown laughter now. I can feel Principal Yates’s muscular arms flapping somewhere behind me, trying to silence the growing unrest with wide sweeps of her hands, but it isn’t working.

  I peer up at Tristan, hoping he’ll pass on some of that confidence he seems to possess so easily. He catches my eye and then looks away. That’s when it hits me.

  I’m not just embarrassing myself. I’m embarrassing him.

  All those girls who doubted his sanity when he started dating me—who still doubt it—were right. What is he doing with me? I can’t even read a few words off an index card without making a fool of myself.

  At least he’s not laughing like everyone else.

  At least there’s that.

  “Thank you for your attention and please vote for Marshall/Sparks for your junior class president and vice president.”

  I stuff the index cards back in my pocket and run from the gym. I don’t wait for applause. I know there won’t be any. But the laughter follows me down the hall.

  Who’s Bending Down to Give Me a Rainbow?

  1:39 p.m.

  I don’t see any reason why I can’t stay in this bathroom for the rest of the day. It’s got everything I need, really. A toilet. A sink. Plenty of light from the window above the last stall. It’s like my own little apartment inside the school. There is the issue of food, but after what happened back there with the banana bread, I’m fairly certain I’m off food for a while.

  I won’t be able to vote. That’s one downside to hiding out in here. Students will be casting their ballots when they get back to their homeroom classes. But I don’t think it really matters. After that debacle, there’s no way Rhiannon and I are winning this thing.

  I pull a paper towel from the dispenser and wipe the remnant tears from my eyes and then blow my stuffed-up nose.

  I’ve now cried twice in one day.

  I’m on a roll.

  I toss the towel in the trash and stare at my reflection in the mirror for a long hard minute. My lips are still absurdly enormous. I contort them this way and that, puckering them like a fish and flapping them like a horse. Anything I can do to try to encourage the blood to flow back out. I guess I should be grateful. I could have been born with a deadly nut allergy. I could be in an ambulance right now on my way to the hospital.

  I really do look like a cartoon character. And here I thought guys liked girls with big lips. Maybe just not this big.

  I purse my lips in the mirror, giving my best sultry bedroom eyes. “Well, hello there,” I say breathily to my reflection. “Come here often? What’s that? You think I’m sexy?” I make a kissing sound and then quickly wipe the drool that dribbles out as a result.

  I lean forward, pretending to give the stranger in the mirror a big, slobbery, swollen kiss. But my romantic moment is cut short when I hear footsteps outside the bathroom door.

  Is the assembly over already?

  Panicked, I glance into one of the stalls, searching desperately for help. The porcelain toilet stares unsupportively back at me, as if to say “So what’s your brilliant plan now, genius?”

  Since I don’t live in a Harry Potter movie, I suppose in is out of the question. And that means there’s really no place left to go but up. Cringing, I climb onto the questionably clean seat, perching on my tiptoes along the rim and bending myself awkwardly into a crouch.

  Classy, Ellie. Really, really classy.

  I silence my thoughts with a grit of my teeth. Right now I just have to concentrate on not falling in. This isn’t as easy as they make it look in the movies.

  The door opens and someone walks in. I hold my breath. The footsteps pause for a moment, then shuffle hesitantly before pausing again.

  What is this girl doing? Is she checking each individual stall for the cleanest on
e? Get on with it already! This is a public high school. There are no clean stalls!

  I bite my tongue against the slight quiver in my upper legs. How much longer can I realistically keep this up? But it’s not like I can come down now, because then whoever’s in here will know that I’ve been squatting atop a toilet seat.

  “Ellie? Are you in here?”

  I blink in surprise at the sound of the distinctly male voice. “Owen?”

  “What are you doing?”

  I hop down from the toilet seat, my thighs screaming with relief, and open the stall. There’s Owen, all gangly six-foot-one of him, standing in the middle of the girls’ bathroom. I remember the summer that he sprouted. It was when we were counselors in training at Camp Awahili. I didn’t notice the growth spurt because I was with him every day, but when his parents came to pick him up at the end of the summer his mother nearly fainted when she saw him.

  “What are you doing in here?” I ask.

  “Looking for you,” he says, as though it’s obvious.

  I awkwardly massage my thighs as I hobble out of the stall.

  “Hiding out in the bathroom?” He raises an eyebrow. “A little cliché, isn’t it?”

  I run the faucet and scrub my hands. “It’s only cliché because there’s nowhere else to hide in a high school.”

  “Janitor’s closet, theater dressing rooms, that weird little patch of trees behind the track.”

  I pull a paper towel from the dispenser. “You’ve spent way too much time thinking about this.”

  “So,” he begins, changing the subject. “I looked up the most popular recipe for banana bread on my phone.”

  “And?”

  He cringes. “And it has almond extract in it.”

  I slump. “Do you think she did it on purpose?”

  “Put almond extract in her banana bread on the off chance that Ellison Sparks comes to buy something from the cheerleader bake sale right before her election speech? Now you’re sounding like a paranoid politician.”

  I slap his arm. “No, I mean, do you think she deliberately lied to me about there being almonds in the bread?”

  “Honestly? No. I think she probably didn’t know.”

  I sigh. He might be right.

  “Anyway”—he pulls a small pill from his back pocket—“I got this in the nurse’s office. Benadryl. It’ll help with the swelling.”

  Gratefully I lunge for the capsule, popping it in my mouth and swallowing it dry. “Thank you!” I croak.

  “I know what you need,” he says, pulling my phone from the back pocket of my jeans. A few seconds and several swipes later, the catchy opening bass solo of “Windy” by The Association funnels out of the speaker.

  He’s accessed my “Bubble Yum” playlist, consisting of all the bounciest pop songs of the sixties.

  The gesture is sweet, and honestly, watching Owen jump around the girls’ bathroom singing “Who’s peeking out from under a stairway” is rather comical, but I’m far too depressed to even crack a smile.

  I take the phone back from him, turn off the song mid-chorus, and return it to my pocket. “Thanks, Owen, but I’m not in the mood.”

  “That’s the whole point of the ‘Bubble Yum’ playlist,” Owen argues. “To change your mood! You said so yourself.”

  “Yeah. I did. Back when my biggest problem was a B minus on a calculus test and my sister’s Urban Dictionary obsession. My life is over now. Over. I can never show my face out there ever again.”

  Now the tears are falling for a third time. Gosh, who opened the floodgates today?

  I don’t understand. Yesterday my life was amazing. And just like that, it’s turned into total cow plop.

  I grab for another paper towel and dab at my nose.

  “Let me see,” Owen says.

  “What?” I turn, and before I can react, Owen’s hands are on my cheeks, holding me still. His face lingers close to mine. Closer than I think we’ve ever been before. I glance down. His eyes are determinedly focused on my swollen lips, his brows knitted in concern. I’m actually surprised by how warm his hands are. Did he stick them in his armpits before he came in here, or are they always that warm? I’ve known him for seven years. How come I’ve never noticed the temperature of his hands before?

  “I think the swelling’s going down,” he assesses, sounding remarkably like a doctor.

  His eyes drift up and, for a brief moment, land on mine. I can see the tiny flecks of brown in the green. I never noticed that before either.

  It’s weird, yet oddly not weird, to be this close to Owen.

  And then it feels weird that it’s not weird.

  Owen suddenly seems to become aware of our proximity and steps back, his warm fingers sliding from my face.

  “Thanks,” I mumble lamely, and look away.

  He takes an exaggerated deep breath and glances around the bathroom. “So this is what it looks like in here?”

  “Does it live up to your fantasies?”

  He scowls. “Only pervs fantasize about the girls’ bathroom.”

  “So you’re calling yourself a perv?”

  He flashes me a mischievous grin.

  And just like that, we’re back to being us.

  “I don’t get it,” I complain. “What is it about the girls’ bathroom that’s so enticing? It’s not like we come in here, strip off all our clothes, and dance naked together.”

  “Shhh,” Owen whispers desperately. “You’re ruining it.”

  “People pee in here. Among other things.”

  “La la la!” Owen sings, covering his ears. “I’m not listening!” He waits to make sure I’ve finished talking and then slowly lowers his hands.

  “Sometimes I come in here and it smells so bad it’s like a rhinoceros took a huuuuge—”

  “LA LA LA LA!” His hands fly to his ears again.

  I laugh. Owen watches me, his face breaking into a beatific grin as his hands lower once more.

  “What?” I ask, tilting my head.

  “You’re laughing.”

  I scoff. “Yeah, because you’re acting like an idiot.”

  “Mission accomplished.”

  I Can’t Help Myself

  1:50 p.m.

  The bell rings and Owen ducks out of the bathroom before anyone wanders in. I take a few minutes to collect myself. The swelling hasn’t completely gone down but it’s definitely chilled out a bit, thanks to the Benadryl. Now it just looks like I’m addicted to lip-plumping gloss, as opposed to looking like I just got out of the ring of a heavyweight boxing championship.

  If you think this is bad, you should see the other guy.

  I comb my fingers through my hair, trying to give it a bit of lift. It’s still limp and yarnlike from my jaunt in the rain this morning. But really, the only thing that needs help right now is my attitude.

  Owen is right. I need to snap out of it. Change my mood.

  I remove the index cards from my back pocket, rip them in half, and toss the pieces ceremoniously into the trash can, watching them scatter like giant snowflakes against the black liner, landing among the other discarded items.

  Rhiannon’s speech. In the trash where it belongs.

  I swipe on my phone and press Play on the song that I so rudely dismissed.

  The Association continues cheerfully crooning about Windy and her stormy eyes, and I try to let the music lift me. Eyeing the door to make sure it doesn’t burst open, I even bounce a few times along with the bubbly tune. I once watched a documentary about how dancing actually has the ability to alter people’s emotional states. For a minute there, it seems to be working. I can feel my heart lightening.

  Then I hear the school secretary’s voice come over the loudspeaker. “Ellison Sparks, please report to the counseling office.”

  I stare up at the ceiling and throw my hands in the air. “Really?”

  How on earth did I end up on the universe’s hit list today?

  Just like that, my mood slumps again. I turn off the
music and slip my phone back into my pocket. Then I wait for the seventh-period bell to ring. If I have to go back out there, it’s not going to be during rush hour.

  1:56 p.m.

  “Hello! You must be Ellison!” The guidance counselor jumps from his chair as I walk in and sit down across from him. He’s a ruddy-faced middle-aged man who is wearing an actual bow tie. He offers me a seat before noticing that I’ve already taken one. He attempts to slyly turn his outstretched hand into a hair check. “Great to see ya. Really swell. I’m Mr. Goodman. But you can call me Mr. Greatman, if you want.” He guffaws at his own joke and then swats it away with his hand. “Just joshin’ ya! So how ya doing? Ya holding up okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I mumble.

  “Well, that’s good. Just swell. Really swell. Now, let’s get down to business. Junior year. It’s a toughie, am I right? Or am I riiight?”

  Did he just wink? I think he just winked.

  Now he’s staring at me, expecting me to answer. I worry he might actually hold that disturbing clownlike grin until I reply.

  “Yep,” I say, forcing a smile. “A toughie.”

  He chuckles heartily, his trimmed mustache actually oscillating.

  “And don’t forget about those colleges! It’s time to start thinking about your future.” He says “your future” in an obnoxious chewed-up baby voice. Then he makes two pistols with his fingers and shoots them in my direction. “Pow! Pow!”

  Am I supposed to play dead?

  “That’s actually why I called you in here,” he continues, growing serious. “Us trusty guidance counselors have been assigned to meet with every student in the junior class to talk about the next two years. Have you given any thought to where you want to apply?”

  “Uh,” I stammer. “Not really.”

  “Well, ticktock, ticktock! Time’s a runnin’ out.”

  He opens a file on his desk and skims it with his finger. “Let’s see here. Well, well, you’ve been a busy bee—4.0 GPA, three AP classes this year, junior varsity softball, running for vice president, honor society.” He closes the folder with a pat. “I don’t know how you do it. When do you ever find time for yourself?”