If Jane had actually been in the classroom for that line, it would have helped. We found out later that when we were in American Lit, she was in Shakespeare, which M couldn’t manage to talk us into at the time. We were sure kicking ourselves after we found that out.
***
Randy
Oh what a gal, what a gal. Wearing a Jedi robe and this funky, punky combo with a rocker hippie vibe, she changed our fucking world.
Figures M would make the move right then and there, as he saw what I saw: Cal’s face when his interest peaked. Nick’s intel had proven massively helpful too, and just like I ran numbers faster than a bookie’s calculator in my head, Cal ran a breakdown of facial cues, body language, and words underneath words. His analysis of people was spooky, but he denied the same kind of “gifts” his extremely intuitive mother boasted. That he’d taken notice, and made that declaration? Oh my god, the boy was smitten.
Just like me and M.
“Seriously though,” I put right it out there. “I’ll calculate the odds and take all bets. Jane will be our prom date, then subsequently girlfriend, by summer. Hit me up at lunch if you want in, and for fuck’s sake don’t ruin this for us by blabbing to Jane.”
“Yeah,” M agreed, “we’ll woo her on our terms. Trust has to be built, and believe me, build it we shall.” I could see his mind working.
Whispers passed from one person to the next, and messages were quickly sent on phones. No one wasn’t going to know about this (except maybe Jane herself), by the end of the day. I smiled hugely just imagining it, and that kept me going through the ungodly early morning.
The teacher walked in about five minutes before the bell rang, a petite woman with long curly hair, and Jane turned up literally two seconds before the thing went off. M acted as though she hadn’t thrown him for a loop, waving as she entered the classroom. She went red again before averting her gaze and hurrying to her desk, out of breath. I noticed that she was now carrying not one, but two books, and I knew both my buddies would pick up on the same.
So despite the ridiculousness of her excuse, she actually did go to the library.
Class started, and Ms. Terra, our teacher, passed out the syllabus. I was glad the guys and I had decided to do this year in English together (the only year you could opt out of a normal full year grade-level class), because as I read the list of books I almost groaned. I knew logic and patterns and could recite pi to too many damn numbers to get laid (even though I did), but I did not get or care what the significance of the pickle dish in Ethan Frome was supposed to be from the last class. God that book had been a drag.
M and Cal were all up on that shit, so they’d helped me through it.
And now… now we were staring at a list of even more books I wouldn’t get, but this time I was excited. By some hilarious coincidence, Dracula, by Bram Stoker, was listed as one of the books we’d be reading.
Alright. I cracked my knuckles. I could do this. It was just a different kind of analysis, and there was data. I’m sure Jane could be enticed toward tutoring me, too, once we opened her up a little bit.
I wondered how much she knew about M and us- as until that day- we were only publicly known as a solid clique. After that morning? We were the talk of the school, having suddenly become perverts for wanting Jane all together, but no one seemed to think it was bad. Just “super-freaky”. If M suffered a dive in popularity afterward, he didn’t even blink. It didn’t matter if his list of interested dates dried up, because we’d made ourselves known as suitors to the weirdest girl in our school.
A girl whose crushes were never known. A girl who had only a handful of close friends from the entire senior class. Everyone else she grew close
with were underclassmen, as we found out.
I think all three of us kept an eye on her the entire class period that first morning, and she was twitchy, getting herself ready and together before the bell chimed. When it did, she grabbed her stuff and bolted without a look back, disappearing into the milling crowd that mostly had yet to know what happened.
Ahhh, that calm before the shitstorm.
Second period we had to split up, but we were reuniting in lunch that afternoon (fifth period), and would talk battle strategy then.
“No further classes with her so far,” Cal reported. “I had German second period, Mechanics and Engineering third, and study hall fourth.”
“I had Photography and Advanced Film & Vid with an AP Calculus chaser,” I said. “Not a whiff of her.”
“My second period was P.E., and she wasn’t there,” M reported. “Also, really glad I went with a low impact class. Yoga actually helped put me back in my right mind at 8:45 in the morning.”
“What about third and fourth?” Calvin asked insistently.
“Study hall followed by Computer Science. Nothing.”
“Then we reconvene at the end of the day and follow up. There’s only so many classes. One of us has got to have something else in common.”
My big strapping friend had a bug up his ass for the first time ever, and I loved seeing it.
“And you both know we’re attending that improv club on Friday, don’t you?” M rhetorically asked us, preening himself.
“Do you even need to ask?” I snarked. “Of course we are. If it’s exactly what I think it is, it should be hilarious, and we’ll get to observe her in her element.”
“Our opening shot here has got to be perfect,” M was saying, looking enthused as I’d ever seen him. “We need to show her we’re not in this as some kind of lark, and I know exactly what I want to do, to start.”
“You’re thinking books, aren’t you?” Our biggest bro said.
“Yes exactly! Books. Maybe if she felt a connection via a thoughtful gift, she’d let us in. We should do some more digging and see what we can find out.”
As we sat talking, eating in between sentences, some guys sat down at our table and crowded around. Usually we got a bunch of girls who flocked us every lunch period, most of them cooing over M, but today we’d been left alone. There were whispers though, and everyone was watching us. Had been the whole time.
I smirked broadly. Let ’em. After what we found out about Jane, I think I knew exactly what would get her to trust us. And I knew just how we could do it. A gift wouldn’t hurt though- and it would show the rest of the school we were serious.
“So what the fuck? You guys came out as sex freaks this morning?” This kid Barry asked, sitting at the end of our table with his arms folded on the surface. I rolled my eyes.
“This morning?” I cracked, my mouth going off before my brain remembered I was the scrawniest dude in the entire grade. Even the freshmen who hadn’t yet hit their full height were bound to eclipse me. “I’ve been a sex freak as long as I’ve known me, Bar.” He visibly bristled, but my retorts were always zingers because no one ever expected the shit that flies out of my mouth.
“What- fine- maybe you, but what about mister heartbreaker and the clean-cut football star here? Everybody’s talking about how the most popular guy in the school was shot down this morning by Jane Callahan of all people, and that our most visible but least chatty jock broke what we all thought was a vow of silence and told everybody they were gonna split her three ways. Like what the fuck?”