Galgorithm (13 page)

29

STUDENT GOVERNMENT IS JUST A
few doors down from anime club but has much more luxurious digs, meeting in an extra-large conference room with a lectern, a gavel, and a whiteboard. It's from this lectern, with said gavel, that Rebecca, as Student Council president, wields influence.

Rebecca and Adam have also been using this room to finalize their proposal for a second extra period after school. They posted fliers around the hallways promoting the idea and announcing an “open meeting,” which they are hosting together, to discuss it and seek approval. Approval from who, as Tristen would say, or
whom
, as Jak would say, I have no idea. It's really the nerdiest idea ever, and one they'll only get to enjoy for a couple more months anyway. But you know these overachieving types, always trying to leave a legacy.

I haven't come to the open meeting to check on their progress, though. No, after hearing some pretty unbelievable chitchat in the halls, I've come here to see if Rebecca and Adam are hooking up.

When I told Adam what I was feeling, or thought I was feeling, for Jak, I never meant to come between them. At least not explicitly. But that's exactly what happened, and I should have seen it coming. According to the dribbles of information I get from Jak, Adam has remained aloof. Making matters worse is Jak herself, who is ambivalent on her best day and standoffish on her worst, and has not made much of an effort to show Adam she's still interested.

When I first heard gossip about Adam and Rebecca, I dismissed it out of hand. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. They
have
been spending a lot of time together. And they do have a lot in common, considering they both already have two-page resumes. Sure, Rebecca is a put-together prep and Adam is a disheveled doofus, but he learned enough from me to win over Olivia and charm Jak, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that he could succeed a third time.

When I open the door to the student-government office, Rebecca and Adam are standing at the conference table. Rebecca is wearing a fashionable gray button-down, and Adam looks like he robbed a big and tall store under the cover of darkness. But together they pass for the cliché version of
an illicit office romance: sleeves rolled up, hands accidentally touching over a stack of paperwork. I half expect Adam to sweep everything off the desk and take Rebecca right there in front of me.

Alas, they just greet me warmly and invite me inside. I'm not surprised that I'm the only one who bothered to show up for this thing.

“How's it going, guys?” I ask innocently.

“Pretty good so far,” Adam says.

“What do you think about these names for the extra period, Shane?” Rebecca asks. “Extra Extracurricular, Double Extracurricular, or ECX, which stands for Extracurricular Extreme.”

“Definitely ECX.”

“See, I told you,” Adam says to Rebecca. “Your idea is the best.”

“You're sweet,” Rebecca says, and brushes his shoulder with her hand.

I can't confirm that something is happening between them, but something is definitely not
not
happening. The whole thing makes me kind of squeamish. I feel bad for Jak. I need to get out of here.

I am starting to offer hasty goodbyes and retreat when Rebecca suddenly gasps.

“What's wrong?” I ask.

“Get out of here!” she yells.

At first I think she's yelling at me. But then I spin around and realize she's talking to Harrison, who has appeared in the doorway behind me.

“Hi, Rebecca,” he says.

Rebecca shakes her head. “Not now, Harrison. I can't do this.”

“What's going on?” Adam asks.

No one responds. I'm willing to bet that Adam still doesn't know about Rebecca and Harrison's history.

“Is he the problem?” Harrison asks, as he enters the room. I can see he's clutching one of the fliers advertising the open meeting. “Is he why you won't return my texts? Why do I have to track you down like this?”

“He has nothing to do with this!” Rebecca says.

The “he”
Harrison is referring to is me. Not Adam, who is standing
shoulder to shoulder
with Rebecca, but me, who is standing across the table.

“I'm not doing anything!” I insist.

“You better shut up, dude,” Harrison says to me. There's only five feet of space between us.

“Um, am I missing something?” Adam asks.

“Harrison,” Rebecca says calmly, “you know as well as I do that we're not dating anymore because of your temper and your need to sneak around. I've had enough. I want someone stable, who can be my partner. In public.”

She places her hand on top of Adam's on the desk.

“Wait, you guys used to date?” Adam says.

All of a sudden Harrison steps to me, grabs me by the front of my collar, and pushes me against the wall of the room.

“Harrison, stop!” Rebecca pleads.

Adam doesn't move.

Harrison cocks his fist back to punch me. I recoil in fear.

“Harrison,” I plead. “Lemme go!”

Harrison keeps his fist cocked and considers his options. He's not making any sense. I wish I could get inside his head and see how he ticks. Probably like a time bomb.

“What's going on in here? Let go of him!”

Harrison freezes. We both look up. It's Ms. Solomon. Yes, Deb, who also happens to be the student-government faculty advisor, and who has just entered the room to play savior.

Harrison sneers at this missed opportunity, lets go of my collar, and even straightens it out a bit. “Just fooling around,” he says to Ms. Solomon. “Right, Shane?”

He glares at me. “Right,” I mumble.

“Everyone out except student-government participants!” Ms. Solomon says. “I don't want to see any more horsing around!” She points at the door.

But the doorway is now blocked—by Tristen.

Harrison continues anyway, nearly bumping into her once again. They barely acknowledge each other, and then Harrison slips by and exits.

I take a moment to breathe.

“Out!” Deb says to me.

“Come on, Tristen,” I say.

I grab her by the hand and pull her out of the room. ­Harrison is already halfway down the hall by the time we exit, and then he takes the stairs to another floor. Deb closes the door behind us. It's now just me and Tristen in the hallway alone.

My head is spinning, metaphorically and literally. I'm dizzy.

“Are you okay, Shane?” Tristen asks. “You're all red. What happened to your collar?” She must have just missed the action.

“What? Yeah. I'm fine. How did you know I was in there?”

“I didn't. But I saw Adam's name on some fliers and I figured I would ask him where you were. I messaged you, I tweeted you, I sent you like a million snaps.”

“I'm sorry,” I say. “It's been a crazy week.”

Since our rendezvous in the park I've been trying to slow things down with Tristen. Just long enough to clear my head and reconcile my feelings for Jak.

“You want to come over to my house tonight and watch a movie?” she asks. “My parents will be home, but they'll let me keep the door closed.”

I hesitate.

A growing chorus inside my head is telling me to just go with it. When in my life will a girl like Tristen be this obsessed with me? Things with Jak have gone nowhere. Why am I putting myself through all this?

“Just come over,” Tristen says. “I have new brochures from that save the dolphins organization I want to show you. They're so cute! Just like you!”

She takes my hand. I consider the sordid game I'm playing between Tristen and Jak and Adam and Rebecca and Harrison. Like those dolphins, I've entered into dangerous territory. The question is, who will be there to save me?

30

“HERE YOU GO,” JAK SAYS
as she tosses my Fitbit at me. “You think just because you were all sweet and helped me when I was drunk you could get out of this? Nuh uh. Besides, they're waterproof. You didn't even need to take them off.”

We're sitting at Jak's kitchen table, and she's returning the Fitbit I left in her bathroom when I took her home from the party.

“I charged them and everything,” she says.

She slips hers back on her wrist and I do the same.

Jak's kitchen is rustic and eclectic—wooden table and chairs and purposefully mismatched place mats and utensils
.
Too many containers of Chinese takeout sit in front of us. We've been slowly but surely working our way through them. Jak is wearing sweatpants, as promised.

“I'm not gonna lie,” I say. “I thought the step competition was over.”

“Never.”

“Well, do the steps I took while carrying you home count as double?”

“Touché, Chambliss. Touché.”

It's been a rocky couple of weeks since the keg party, but I think things with Jak are finally getting back to normal. We've returned to the rhythms of joking and poking fun that have made our friendship special from the beginning. I don't know if I will ever be able to look at her the same way I did before I saw her soaking wet and half-naked, but I've begun to realize there is no way to further explore my feelings for her without actually telling her about them. And that's just not something I'm willing to do. It's too risky. Those are words I can't take back.

“By the way,” Jak says, “have you heard about Adam?”

“Uh, what about him?”

“Supposedly he's seeing Rebecca Larabie.”

“Oh, yeah. I guess I heard something about that.”

“I thought she was dating Harrison.”

“No, that's definitely over.”

“Oh.”

“Are you upset?”

“Nah,” Jak says. “I did like Adam. But we only hung out a few times. It is what it is. He sent me a nice text the other day, just saying hello.”

I could have talked to Adam as soon as I realized he was backing off from Jak. But Jak never really seemed very broken up about it, as near as I could tell, so I figured why get myself further involved? And now Adam and Rebecca are together, and Jak is . . . well, now Jak is available. Theoretically.

“At least I can officially cross Adam off my list of potential prom dates,” Jak says.

Prom. It's barely even been on my radar.

“
You
have a list of potential dates?” I say. “You never talk about prom. I thought you said it was . . . what do you always say it is?”

“Part of the prom-industrial complex.”

“Right, that.”

“Yeah, well, it
is
super lame,” she says. “But I want to go anyway just to prove to everyone how lame it is.”

“Yeah that'll show 'em.”

“What's going on with Tristen? Now
she
could fill out a dress.”

“Status quo.”

“I don't know what that means.”

“It means the same.”

“Are you kidding me, Chambliss? I'm in the ninety-ninth percentile of all English students. I know what ‘status quo' means.”

She flicks an unopened soy sauce packet at me. I let it hit me in the cheek and fall onto my plate.

“You have superlative reflexes,” she says, before adding, “That means
good
.”

Jak smiles at her own cleverness. She takes out some ChapStick and applies it.

“What kind is that?” I venture.

She shrugs. “I don't know. The black tube is just regular, I guess. I like it 'cause it's the same kind my dad uses. When I use it it's like getting a kiss from my dad!”

Well, that didn't go in the direction I was hoping.

She puts some more on. “Why?”

“No reason. Just curious.”

“Which kind do you use?”

“You know I use the blue tube, with moisturizer.”

“Eww, blue is the worst. It tastes like cough medicine.”

“Well, then you can't have any of mine.”

Jak shrugs and goes back to eating.

When I used ChapStick to lay groundwork for future physicality with Tristen, it went so smoothly, unlike this. I'm reminded of the conversation I had with Jak in the cafeteria, when she was making fun of me for not being able to take off her bra. Even though we were joking, that was a pretty racy topic. Is it possible that, in her own way,
Jak
was laying groundwork for future physicality with
me
? Or am I just grasping at straws and bra straps?

The Galgorithm has been wearing on me lately. Guys constantly expecting advice and direction. It's a grind. I don't
have all the answers. And that's never been truer than right now, when I'm desperately trying to use my “expertise” in my own life.

“Jak,” I say, “you know what I never noticed about you before? Your eyelashes. They're so long.”

“My eyelashes?” she says, and instinctively bats her eyes.

“Yeah.”

Jak thinks about this. Probably for the first time in her life, she is silent for more than fifteen seconds.

Finally she says: “My eyelashes are the
worst
. They're so short and dry. And I think they have split ends, which I didn't even know was possible. Like, how can you have split eyelashes? It's probably because I always forget to wash my face.”

She goes back to eating. “Why are you even looking at my eyelashes? Stalker.”

So much for that.

Whatever I may feel for Jak, it's pretty obvious she doesn't feel the same way about me. I'm sick of being confused, and I'm fed up with carrying the burden of everyone else's dating issues on my shoulders to boot. AP exams are approaching. And then finals and then prom and then graduation and then summer and then college. It's all happening too fast. Something's gotta change between now and then. Before
everything
changes.