Dirty Little Secrets - C. J. Omololu [2]
“Who?” I asked, looking around. Somebody staring was generally not a good sign. Even worse if they were pointing.
She glanced over my shoulder and then back to me. “Like you don’t know who. Josh Lee who. In the popcorn line.”
As if I didn’t already know where he was standing, or that he was wearing the blue jacket with the koi design he got at the beginning of the year. As if I didn’t secretly watch him at lunch on the quad or practically lose my powers of speech every time our hands touched passing papers in physics.
“Right. I’m sure he’s staring at you, not me.” I pushed my hair out of my face and tried to look casually around. Kaylie was the one guys always stared at—tiny and cute, she could have been a cheerleader if she wanted to. Why she picked me to be her friend was still a mystery, but hanging out with her made my life seem almost normal.
She also never let a little thing like subtlety bother her. “Ooh, he’s with Steve Romero! We should totally go over there and talk to them.” She was a foot shorter than me but freakishly strong, pulling me in that direction before I could think up a good excuse not to go.
“No, Kaylie. Wait . . . ,” I tried, but we were already there.
“Hey, Steve, hey, Josh,” she said effortlessly. “What are you guys going to see?”
“That new Will Smith movie,” Steve said, peering over the heads in front of him. “If this line ever gets moving.”
“Oh, my God,” she said, sounding surprised. “We are too.” She bumped me with her hip and I managed a weak smile. I knew the smartest move I could make right then was to stand there and shut up.
“Hey,” Josh said to me. He didn’t look too annoyed and was even smiling a little.
“Hi,” I managed, glancing up at those deep brown eyes. He had a certain Johnny Depp-ness that made my heart race and my cheeks burn. Somebody somewhere in his family must have been Asian—he had the deepest almond-shaped brown eyes. I was afraid to look at them too long in case they swallowed me up.
Josh had been in my eighth-grade English class when I’d first transferred in from Catholic school three years ago. He’d sat right in front of me, and I spent the entire semester staring at the back of his head, fighting with myself not to reach out and run my hand over the short, bristly hairs where they faded into his neck. He always smelled like soap and laundry detergent, and I leaned forward on my desk as often as I could to get a whiff of the light, clean scent. No matter how hard I tried, I could never smell like that.
“Poetry,” Mr. Manillo had written on the board that first week. I groaned inside. I liked English well enough, but I absolutely hated poetry. Poets never said what they really meant, and your job was to spend hours trying to figure it out. In the end it usually wasn’t worth the effort.
Mr. Manillo turned to face us as he spoke about the mysteries of poetry. His eyes locked on mine and I quickly glanced down at my desk.
Too late. “Ms. Tompkins,” he said. “You must have a favorite poet. I’m sure they gave you a good poetry foundation over at St. Ignatius.”
Like most of the other teachers in this place, he either thought too highly of a Catholic school education, or he was making fun of me. I was never sure which it was.
“I don’t . . . ,” I started to say, but then noticed every eye in the room was on me. I knew my face was bright red and could feel droplets of sweat trickling down my back. I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, cleared my throat, and recited the only poem I had ever memorized.
Judging from the silence in the classroom, maybe a poem from third grade wasn’t the best choice. Mr. Manillo cleared his throat. “That was, ah, interesting,” he said. “And that piece was by . . .”
“Shel Silverstein,” I said quickly. “A Light in the Attic.”
The whole class started laughing. And I knew right away they weren’t laughing with me. I could hear other kids talking behind me. I glanced toward the open door, wishing the bell would ring so I could run out and be anonymous in the crowd. Instead, I stayed glued to my seat, staring straight ahead, my head pounding