Galgorithm (19 page)

42

GETTING CLOBBERED IN THE FACE
is not as dramatic as it looks in the movies. I didn't heroically absorb the blow like Liam Neeson. No, I immediately crumpled to the ground in a heap. I bled. I whimpered. Harrison fled the scene immediately. I later found out that he hurt his hand on my skull, couldn't pitch, and we lost the playoff game. So, good times had by all.

Adam and Rebecca helped me get home, but I got the feeling they couldn't wait to be alone together. Adam stood up for Rebecca and threw the first punch. Even though he missed by a long shot and got shoved to the pavement instead, he scored major points. I expect him and Rebecca to have a long and happy relationship.

I'm not so fortunate. I'm lying on the floor of my
bedroom with an ice pack on my eye. I'm trying to keep the swelling down as much as possible. If I'm lucky, it won't look so bad by the time my parents come home from work. The last thing I need is for them to make a big deal out of it or call the school. I'll just tell them I fell. I was never the most coordinated kid anyway.

There's a crack in my ceiling that I've never noticed before, probably because I don't usually lie on the floor. It starts off pretty small and then forks into a bunch of secondary cracks. It gets worse the farther you go. Kind of like my high school career and my life in general.

My phone rings, and I see that it's a FaceTime request from Jak. I hold the ice pack on my eye with one hand, hold up my phone with the other, and accept the request. She gasps when she sees me on-screen.

“Oh my God! I just heard. Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I say. “It looks worse than it is.”

“Take the ice pack off so I can see your eye.”

I do.

She gasps again.

“Is it bad?” I ask. It's hard to tell on the tiny image of myself in the corner of the screen.

“Well,” Jak says, “that depends on your definition of bad.”

“Wonderful.”

“The good news is that you can't get any uglier.”

“That's a relief.”

I put the ice pack back on.

An outside observer might not sense anything amiss in this conversation. But I can tell that things are not the same. In the week since our encounter in the street, Jak and I have pretended to go about things like normal. But Jak is faced with the twin burdens of still being annoyed with me about the Galgorithm
and
knowing that I'm in love with her. Yes, we're joking around on the phone. But it's not as fluid and familiar as it once was.

“Do you need anything?” Jak asks. “Do you want me to come over?”

“No. It's okay.”

My head is starting to throb.

“Shane?”

“Yeah?”

“You can't be mad at me,” she says.

“I'm not mad at you. What makes you think I'm mad at you?”

“I know you, Shane.”

“You know how I feel.”

“You promised me it wouldn't be weird.”

I did promise that. But it's just been getting weirder and weirder each day.

“I know,” I say. “I'm trying. It's hard.”

“I don't want to fight with you anymore,” Jak says. “But don't think this has been easy for me, either. I'm the responsible one in our friendship. It's the worst.”

“Really?
You're
the responsible one, Jak?”

“Shane, you do realize that you're not supposed to put the ice pack directly on your face, right? You're supposed to put a towel under it. You're turning red.”

“
You
put a towel under it.”

“That doesn't make any sense.”

There's a lull in the conversation. There never used to be
any
lulls in our conversations. We could talk for hours without anyone ever taking a breath. But now we're just staring at each other via FaceTime and neither of us knows what to say.

I feel like senioritis is pervading all aspects of my life. I can barely bring myself to go to class anymore. And me and Jak . . . now that I know that we can't be together, it seems like we're just going through the motions.

Jak sighs. “It's tough for me to see you like this,” she says.

“You can fix that, Jak. You can change it. You can tell me you feel the same way about me. Then I won't look so depressed.”

“I meant it's tough for me to see you with a swollen eye.”

“Oh.”

Another lull. We're trying too hard. We're not on the same page. Our best friend telepathy is gone. It makes me ­incredibly sad.

“I wish we could go back in time,” I say. “Before I said anything, before I was outed, before the Galgorithm, before Voldemort. Before everything changed.”

“So, like eighth grade?”

“Exactly. Eighth grade. I think that's when life peaked. Girls weren't an issue. Me and you were buddies.”

“It was simple.”

“Yeah.”

“Of course,” Jak adds, “in eighth grade you were covered in acne. Like, head to toe. I didn't even want to be seen with you.”

“I'll take acne over this any day.”

I remove the ice pack from my face again.

“How does it look now?”

“You've still got a couple of pimples. One on your nose—”

“Not my acne! My eye!”

“Go easy, Chambliss. I'm just messin' with you.”

“I know.”

I'm glad Jak still cares enough to tease me.

“You want to know how it looks?” she says. “It looks like you got punched in the face by the starting pitcher of the baseball team. Or former starting pitcher, now that we lost.”

Another lull.

Jak looks at me, and all I want to know is what she's thinking. Deep down I hope and pray that she's not telling me everything. She's ten blocks away, yet her image is being bounced to space and back. There's meaning in her face that's lost in the journey, that I can't parse right now and may never be able to.

My friendship with Jak has survived tough times. But not anything like this. We're out of sync and out of sorts. I want her to forgive me. I want her to love me back. I want her to be lying next to me.

Alas, as the girl with the bar code tattoo once told me: Life is easier said than done.

43

I'M SITTING IN THE CAFETERIA
by myself with a black eye and a broken heart.

All the upperclassmen who have off this period have left campus to get lunch, and most of the underclassmen, who technically aren't allowed to leave school grounds, have joined them. It's the first of June, and with summer so perilously close all rules are going out the window.

I haven't brought food with me, nor have I bought anything. I'm not hungry. I'm just staring out at the sun-drenched lawn that borders the cafeteria. Even the squirrels scatter at the sight of me, probably noticing my eye and thinking I'm a giant raccoon.

I've been beaten up inside and out. Besides the occasional nerd who solicits me for dating advice (which I don't give) and
the handful of allies who have remained loyal, I am essentially a pariah in Kingsview. I've resolved to serve out the rest of my time in high school as a weird loner.

My parents warily accepted my explanation that my injury was the result of an errant doorknob. Harrison told his coaches he injured his hand during a bench-clearing brawl (that he himself sparked) earlier in the playoffs. I guess that was better than admitting he got into a fight off the field. I told Adam and Rebecca not to snitch on him. Things are bad enough. I don't need to get blamed for the misfortunes of our baseball team too.

This may be the lowest point of my entire life. I'm just plain wallowing in it.

But even the darkest days can be brightened. Even the gloomiest forecast can be wrong.

And today that hope, that ray of sunlight, comes in the form of two bubbly sophomores who enter the cafeteria holding hands and looking for me.

Hedgehog and Balloon.

I can't believe my eye (the other is swollen shut) when they sit down across from me. I haven't seen either of them in weeks.

“Please tell me this isn't some sort of sick joke,” I say.

Anthony shakes his head. “Nope. Hedgehog and Balloon are back!”

I still think they're playing a trick on me until Brooke starts to nod.

“It's true,” she says.

I literally pump my fists overhead and cheer. “Yes! You don't understand how happy this makes me.”

Brooke smiles and rubs the back of Anthony's neck, below his spiky hair.

“So . . . ,” I say, “are you gonna make me beg? Tell me what happened!”

“Well, ever since the article came out, I've been thinking,” Brooke says. “What's the most important part of a relationship? Is it
how
you got there? Or is it that you got there at all?” She looks lovingly at Anthony. “And I realized that it doesn't matter how Hedghog and I got together. All that matters is that we
are
together and we belong together.”

“That's what I've been trying to tell you!”

“I know, Shane. But I had to figure it out for myself. I got a little caught up in the scandal of it all. And I still think the whole Galgorithm thing is a bit creepy. But you're right, the fact that Anthony cared enough about me to
be
creepy in the first place is pretty darn romantic.”

She kisses him on the cheek.

“And you told her . . . ?” I ask Anthony.

“Everything,” he says. “I told her everything. That you helped me figure out what her interests were. That you helped me write all those text messages. Everything.”

“They were your words,” Brooke says to me, “but they were coming from Hedghog's heart. So I guess what I want to
say to you, Shane, is
thank you
. Thank you for being ­Anthony's guide and advisor and messenger. Thank you for bringing us together.”

“Yeah, man,” Anthony adds, “thank you. Me and Balloon have had our ups and downs. But we would be nothing without you.”

“It was my pleasure, guys. Really. I'm glad it all worked out.”

I can't tell if I'm tearing up or if my shoddy eyelid is just leaking. Probably a little of both.

“Is your eye okay?” Anthony asks. “We heard the rumors about Harrison. What a tool.”

“Yeah, yeah, it's nothing,” I say. “Sometimes a good punch clears your head.” (This has not been the case with me, of course. Things are hazier than ever.)

“I also wanted to let you know that I took the article off the newspaper website,” Brooke says. “I know that's probably too little too late, but I thought it was the right thing to do since I kinda didn't ask you for your side before publishing it. Also, possibly committing libel in high school probably won't help my investigative reporting career.”

I chuckle. “I appreciate that, Brooke.”

“The comments section was quite . . . colorful, to say the least,” she adds. “But with it all gone at least you'll be that much harder to google.”

“Thank you.”

“Um, and . . . ,” Anthony starts.

“Don't,” I say. “You don't need to apologize for being one of Brooke's sources for the article. If I were in your shoes, I would have also spilled my guts. ‘Deny till you die' is just a stupid saying.”

“Oh, thank God,” Anthony says. “I have been racked with guilt for weeks. My hair has been falling out.”

I can only imagine what
that
nightmare scenario looks like.

“It's all good, buddy. I like to think you two did me a huge favor. Me? A dating guru? What a joke. I don't know anything. And I can't even get my own life in order.”

“Shane,” Brooke says, “that's crazy. Think about how many people you've helped.”

“Yeah,” Anthony says, “you can't retire. Guys like me need you!”

“Hmmm,” I say. “Well, maybe I could get an eye patch and be the dating pirate. ‘Excuse me,
arrr!
you a Gemini?'”

Brooke breaks out laughing at my imitation. And, wouldn't you know it, she sounds exactly like a squeaky balloon.

“So what's next for you, Shane?” Anthony asks.

“Well, first I'm gonna take some Advil because right now I see two Hedgehogs and three Balloons. After that, well, we'll see. You guys have given me a little bit of hope.”

Sometimes, that's all you need.

44

I BURST INTO THE TEACHERS'
lounge and start scanning the room. I'm on a mission. But I'm also disheveled and have a black eye, so all the teachers in the lounge are wondering why a feral student is going rogue in their private area.

Buoyed by Hedgehog and Balloon's reconciliation, I've come here to see if I've still got it. Maybe I can still make a difference.

At first I think I've come up empty. I stalk through the lounge without finding what I'm looking for. Finally I reach the kitchenette in the back. Inside are a coffee machine, a fridge, a two-person table, and Deb sitting with her back to me, reading her iPad. Her seemingly floor-length hair is unmistakable. Bingo.

“Ms. Solomon,” I say, “can I talk to you for a second?”

Deb turns around to look at me. “Oh my. What happened to your eye?”

“It's nothing.”

“Is that from the same boy who was harassing you in the Student Council office?”

“No,” I lie. “This was just an accident. Thank you, by the way, for helping me that time. Everything is fine, though.”

“Okay,” she says, remaining unconvinced. “What can I do for you?”

I enter the kitchenette area and sit across the table from her.

“It's Mr. Kimbrough,” I say.

“Shane.” She lowers her voice. “I don't think we should talk about this right now.” As in,
all my coworkers are in the other room
.

“It won't take long,” I say, trying to be as discreet as possible.

“You shouldn't be involved, Shane. You shouldn't even be in here.”

“Please let me say what I have to say. You need to hear it.”

“All right,” she says, crossing her arms.

“First you should know that this is coming from me. He doesn't even know I'm here. It's just that Mr. Kimbrough, um, Bob . . . he's great. He's a good teacher and a great guy. I know he gets a little carried away sometimes and is a little over the top, but that's just because he cares about you so much. I've never met anyone with such a heart of gold.”

“I appreciate you saying all this, Shane. Bob is lucky to
know you. He really is. It's just . . . that
formula
. That algorithm. It was too much. And too public.”

“I know,” I say. “The texting. And the ‘moves.' It's a ­little creepy. But that's
my
fault. All those things were stupid stuff
I
told him. He only posted it because he was excited. He was so happy when he was around you. I just think it was his misguided attempt to share some of that happiness with the world. His heart was in the right place. And it's a big heart.”

She looks at me like she's possibly considering my plea.

“You have to give him another chance, Ms. Solomon. I promise you he's worth it.”

Suddenly another voice is heard.

“Shane? What are you doing here?”

We look up to see Mr. Kimbrough.

“Your eye! What happened?”

“Nothing. I'm fine.”

He enters the kitchenette area as well.

“Hey, Deb,” he says.

“Hi, Bob. Shane here was just telling me some very nice things about you.”

Mr. Kimbrough looks at me, ashen. Then to Deb: “I swear I didn't put him up to it. I—”

“It's okay,” Deb interjects. “I know. It's all right.”

“Mr. Kimbrough,” I say, “I was just telling her that the whole Galgorithm thing was my fault and that she shouldn't
blame you for it and that you got a little carried away and that she should give you another chance.”

“Well, I think a
little
carried away might be a bit of an understatement,” he says.

Everyone chuckles, and this thankfully cuts the tension just a bit.

“I'm grateful for you coming here, Shane, and for everything you've done, but I can handle this myself.” He turns to Ms. Solomon. “Deb, I know I've said this before, but I'm sorry again for my behavior. It was inappropriate. It was immature. It was downright one three five seven nine.”

Deb and I both look at him quizzically.

“Odd. My behavior was downright odd.”

I shake my head, but Deb laughs. I guess in a weird, teachery way, Mr. K. can be quite charming.

“I would love to go out with you again,” he continues, “under more . . . normal circumstances. But if you would prefer to just be friends and coworkers, I totally understand.”

Taking the high road as always. Good for you, Bob. Now Deb will take the bait, accept your apology, and be so impressed that she agrees to take you back. Happy ending for all!

Deb smiles. “Bob, I've really enjoyed our time together. You're sweet and funny, and I love your math jokes.”

Mr. K. looks at me as if to say:
See, at least someone appreciates them!

“But,” she continues, “I think I would like to just be
friends. It would be so much less complicated. It doesn't mean I don't care about you.”

Mr. K. nods his head solemnly. “I understand,” he says.

They share a tender little moment.

But I'm having none of it.

“What do you mean, you understand?” I exclaim. “This isn't how it's supposed to go!”

Bob and Deb look at me like the naive teenager I am. “Things don't always work out the way you want them to,” Mr. K. says. “But it's not always a bad thing. It's just the way things are.”

Deb adds: “Bob's right. You're something else, Shane. I've never met a student quite like you.”

Mr. K. nods in agreement.

I stamp my feet like a child.

“Are you gonna be okay?” Deb asks me.

I honestly don't know the answer to that question. So I say the first thing that comes to mind. “Does this mean you're gonna start giving pop quizzes in history again?”

Deb furrows her brow at first, having no idea what I'm talking about. “Ah,” she says, “right. Your friend Jak is in my class. Well, tell Jak she has nothing to worry about. And I didn't even count her as absent that day she cut.” She smiles. “Now you should probably get to your next period.”

Deb stands up, next to Bob.

I stand as well.

“Thank you for everything, Shane,” Bob says.

I give them one last look before I leave. I used to avoid Mr. Kimbrough when he needed advice. Now I want nothing more than to see him and Ms. Solomon together. He seems content to just be friends with Deb, but I hate the fact that he's accepted defeat.

I guess he's right: Not everyone gets what they want.

And I'm resigned to the same fate.