I leave the music room and walk into the hallway. Standing a few feet away from me are Alex and J.J. It's the vintage high school "boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy impregnates girl" pose: Alex has her back against a steel locker with a textbook held demurely in front of her chest. Her lustrous blonde hair flows over her shoulders. J.J. is leaning into her with an arm outstretched, his palm against the locker. Alex acts like she's trapped, but, really, she could leave any time she wanted. To J.J. her eyes are warm and open, not at all like the daggers that pierced me in English. I have to walk past her to reach my next class.
Maybe if I pretend not to see Alex, she won't notice me. I stare at the laminate floor and watch my brown Aldo pumps and Kyle's black Doc Martens approach Alex's black flip flops and J.J.'s beige sandals. Heel, toe, heel, toe.
I'm two paces down the hall. Now three. Four. Alex hasn't notic–
"Hey, Rebecca," I hear her say, "can I talk to you for a second?"
Damn it.
I look up. A bright smile lights Alex's face. It's warm and inviting. I don't trust it for a second.
"Sure, Alex," I say. I keep my arms at my side to appear casual, but my guard couldn't be higher. "What's going on?"
"Nothing, just girl talk," she says. She indicates a door with a logo displaying a black stick figure wearing a dress.
Alex wants privacy. My stomach clenches.
"Um, I guess."
She slips out from behind J.J., lightly grasps my arm and ushers me towards the washroom door.
"'Sup, Rebecca?" says J.J., hands in his pockets. He even makes leaning against his locker cool. Alex's grip tightens as she flashes Kyle a smile that would melt Antarctica.
The opening refrain to Hector Berlioz's March to the Scaffold sounds in my head and my stomach plummets. This is clearly not going to be "girl talk."
The washroom has horrid brown tiles plastered all over the walls, a long white counter, three steel sinks in front of a large rectangular mirror, and those ugly white paper towel dispensers with the serrated edge on the bottom to help you rip a section off a roll of coarse brown paper. It smells of hairspray and toilet bowl cleaner. There are smears of mascara and rouge on the counter and water flows through pipes behind the tile.
Alex stands and looks at herself in the mirror. She smoothes out a wrinkle in her blouse that doesn't exist, pulls a tube of lipstick out of her pocket and leans forward to better see her reflection.
"Tell me, Rebecca," she says, as she applies lipstick, "what do you see in the mirror? Not in mine, in yours."
I face my reflection. "I see myself," I say. This isn't what I expected.
"No, silly," she says, slipping the tube back into her pocket, "be more specific."
"My face," I say. "Long curly red hair. Green eyes and freckles."
"What else?" she asks. From the same pocket she produces a white oval compact and touches up her smoky brown eye shadow to bring out the blues of her eyes. "Be honest."
Alex is creeping me out.
I take stock of my small chest under a red sweater and my straight hips in blue denim jeans. There's no way I'm turning around to check out my butt with Alex here.
"I don't know," I say. "I see me."
"Now look at me," says Alex. She slips her compact back in her jeans and her face appears in the mirror next to mine. "What do you see?"
I stare at her.
"You," I say flatly. She's impossible to miss. Luminous blonde hair to her shoulders, her porcelain skin, a figure I couldn't obtain without a lifetime membership to Jenny Craig.
"I'll tell you what I see," says Alex, her elbows raised as she runs her fingers through her hair. "I see someone who every guy in this entire school wants to hook up with. I see someone who turns heads when she walks down the street. I see a face on the cover of Elle."
Bitch.
She stands behind me and adjusts my shoulders so I'm squarely reflected by the mirror. I am a deer in headlights.
"You, on the other hand," she says, arranging my hair so it hangs evenly down my back. "I see a girl with a scraggly orange mop, a body like a chubby boy, and a face that's only attractive when the lights are off."
My eyes start to sting.
"I've seen how you look at him," says Alex.
"I don't know what – " I begin to say, but my chin starts to tremble.
"I don't know what that kiss was all about, but I'm not stupid. He is way out of your league. Get your head out of the fucking clouds."
Alex walks to the door and stands with one foot in the washroom and the other in the hallway. "Thanks for your help, Rebecca," she calls. "See you at rehearsal." Then the door creaks shut.
I open one of the stalls, step inside and bolt the lock. My back presses against the steel as I wipe my eyes, trying not to make myself look worse than I already do.
The bathroom door creaks again.
"Hello?" says a voice. It's Kyle. I pull a tissue out of my jeans pocket and dab my eyes. Go away, go away, go away.
"What happened?" he says. His voice echoes against the tiled walls.
"What difference does it make?" I say, staring at the white toilet bowl. I smell the strong stench of cleaner. Kyle raps gently on the stall door.
"Can you just come out?" says Kyle. "If someone comes in here and sees me I'm in deep shit."
I crack a smile and bang the back of my head against the stall door, not sure if I should laugh or cry. After a few moments I open the door to find Kyle waiting patiently on the other side.
"What did she say to you?" he says. He's even brought his guitar case into the washroom.
"Nothing I didn't already know," I say. The mirror reflects my bloodshot eyes and red and puffy cheeks. "I need to wash my face," I say, trying not to cry more.
"I'll wait outside," says Kyle. He opens the washroom door, makes sure the hallway is empty, then leaves.
I wash my face with hot water, then dry it with those horrible beige paper towels that rip your skin. I look pathetic and feel worse. Mom better not hear about this.
The first post-lunch period begins as I step into the hallway. Even though it's empty, I feel as though there's a giant spotlight on me, and that a single glance in my direction will reveal that I've been balling my eyes out after being shot by a raven-haired terrorist.
"What did she say?" repeats Kyle. I force a heavy breath to come out as several softer ones.
"Nothing."
"Right, like I believe you," says Kyle.
I can't believe how blunt he is. At least the washroom doors are thicker than the ones outside Mom's office. "Look," I tell him, "it's nothing I care to repeat. Just forget it?"
"I'm just trying to help, Rebecca."
Fine. "She told me to stay away from J.J." I sniffle. "What do the J's stand for?"
Kyle's face darkens. "I asked him when we first met. He said not to ask."
Evidently J.J. is not his favorite person. I'd love to ask why – I have a thing for gossip. But Mom's always said that people who love secrets more are the ones who won't keep them. She's right, of course.
"I guess Alex feels threatened," he says. He tugs at one of the straps of his guitar case uncomfortably. "Maybe he has the hots for you. He did just kiss you on the cheek, right in front of her."
Yeah, and that sure helped my relationship with Alex. "Why would he look at me?" I ask, incredulous. "I'm just meand she's...well, she's her."
"I think you're pretty," says Kyle. He's so matter-of-fact about it, like he's ordering a pizza.
Here we go again. This always happens. The hot girl gets the hot guy, and I get the one who sleeps with his guitar.
"Where's your next class?" asks Kyle.
"I'm not going," I say. The idea of walking into a classroom late is bad enough. The idea of walking into a classroom late when everyone can see I've been crying is much, much worse. "I'll read in the cafeteria."
"I'll walk you."
Kyle escorts me through the hallway. If he were someone else, this would be extremely romantic. But for some reason it just rubs me the wrong way.
"Forget about Alex," says Kyle as we round a corner. "She's got her own problems. This probably has nothing to do with you anyway."
We enter the cafeteria and its vast ocean of rectangular tables and orange plastic chairs. Kyle leads me to a table in the corner and actually pulls a chair out for me. I sit at the table with my chin on my hands, miserable.
"Hang on a sec," he says, tossing his empty bottle of Diet Coke into a recycling bin. He walks to a vending machine in the corner, inserts a coin and takes a fresh bottle from the slot at the bottom.
"I have to get to class," he says. "Mac will wonder where I am. Just do your homework. By the end of the day you'll barely remember what she said. I'll meet you here after the bell."
A faint smile crosses my face. For someone who thinks that Diet Coke is one of the finer things in life, he can be awfully sweet at times.
I'm still never going to date him, though.