Snark and Stage Fright by Stephanie Wardrop Page B

because he was still being tolerant of my vegan eccentricities or because he just didn’t care what I did any more. Shondra and I told them about the emergency kid today and how brave he was and she said that I was so “awesome” with the boy’s little sisters and described the animals I drew with them. If I’m ever on trial and need a character witness, I’m calling Shondra. Los seemed impressed with her pimping my mad people and drawing skills.
    “You need to design a new tat for me, Georgia,” he insisted as he set down his Coke and swiveled, lifting his shirt to reveal the spot on his back where the tattoo would go. “I don’t know about an otter in a top hat, though. Can you do a dragon, maybe?”
    “Oh, she can do a dragon,” Shondra assured him.
    “What do you think, Endicott?”
    Michael shrugged slightly and admitted, “She can draw a mean frog intestine,” because we had split the work fifty-fifty in bio lab last year when we had been reluctant lab partners. He’d thought my refusal to participate in dissections would ruin his GPA. I’d thought he was a grade-grubbing snobhole. That seemed about a million years ago, suddenly. I wished we could go back to bio lab and start all over again. I’d even consider slicing that frog this time. At least the earthworm.
    “Sick! How hot would that be?” Los asked Shondra, pulling on one of her braids. I felt tears welling up in my eyes because Los and Shondra were still that way and now Michael and I were not.
    The impossibility of turning back time became even clearer to me later when I stood between Michael’s silver BMW and my mom’s battered Honda in the almost empty parking lot. He had already gotten into the car and seemed ready to drive off without acknowledging our relationship had changed—or had ever been.
    I couldn’t stand one more second of that and tapped his window until he rolled it down. “So what’s going on?” I demanded, sounding exactly like every psycho ex-girlfriend in a very bad sitcom. “Is it over between us?”
    He gripped the steering wheel for a second and sighed. When he turned to me, his eyes had this hard-as-flint look like he was a cowboy in some old movie my dad would watch.
    “I think I just need some time,” he said, “to think things through.”
    I felt like someone had reached down my throat and yanked out all of my vital organs one by one. What’s to think about? I wanted to yell. Either you still love me or you don’t. Shouldn’t you know the answer to that question? But I was determined to not continue to be Stereotypical Ex so instead I said simply, “Okay.”
    A quizzical look crossed his face for an instant like he was surprised by this answer, but he gripped the wheel again and said, “Okay. I’ll call you.”
    I didn’t point out that I was still waiting on that first promise to call that he’d made days ago after dropping me off at home. I just got in my car and waved a little as I drove away, focusing on making that wave as offhand as possible and not crying in front of him.
    I waited until I was a good half-mile away before I did that.

9  Broken (up)
     
     
    The first day of school came, as it always does, too quickly.
    While I didn’t want to spend any more time at home wallowing in my own crapulence, I also did not want to return to Longbourne High’s hallowed halls. I knew the second I saw Michael there, I would either run away or throw myself at his feet, wrap my arms around his ankles, and wail like a police siren, as if that would make me appealing again. Fleeing or clinging—either way I would look like an idiot.
    To make the return even less bearable, for the first time in my life, I didn’t have Tori with me to take the school year’s first walk down the halls because we’d dropped her off at Williams a week ago. Trey had come along and watching him and Tori say goodbye had made me wonder if it was ever really worth getting close to somebody if you were only going to lose