Artifact 3 All-Access Wristband #2
“Everything is problematic.” She shrugged.
“But, so, yeah. You know how everyone is obsessed with Bella immediately? All the boys want to date her. All the girls want to be her bestie…and maybe date her, too. It’s that whole not-like-the-other-girls thing.
And here I am, actually not like the other girls, and no one at this school appreciates it.
” She gestures to her outfit with a playful, self-deprecating grin.
“So I agree. Zero stars. Negative stars! I begged my parents to send me here, to a normal high school, so I could make some friends. I was homeschooled before—I know, big surprise. But I dunno. I might have gotten this wrong.”
I eyed her stacks of bracelets. They looked like the kind you exchange with friends.
She followed my gaze. “Oh, I made these for myself. You want one?” She took it off without waiting for my answer and slipped it onto my wrist like it was nothing, even though it felt like everything on that lonely day.
“What’s your name, anyway? That’s probably important to know if we’re going to get through this together. ”
“Um.” It took me a beat to remember my name because I was still caught on her last sentence. Does that mean…? “Harriet. I’m Harriet.”
She laughed, big and loud, but it was like she could see my secret blush. She reached and grabbed my arm, squeezing it reassuringly. “No, Harriet, good name! Just, I have an old lady name, too. Gaile.”
“Gaile and Harriet. We do sound like we’d be roommates at Leisure World.”
“Oh my god, truly, what were our parents thinking?”
I laughed, too—loud, like her. And it didn’t make me immediately want to shrink. “To be fair, I feel like old lady names are perfect for not-like-the-other-girls girls.”
“You’re right. Our high school fates were chosen,” she said, deadpan. “So hopefully the rest of these teenagers they sent over from central casting realize what that means and start properly worshiping us soon.”
Of course, no worshiping ever went down, but with Gaile, it felt a lot less important to fit in.
We fit with each other. We spent lunch periods talking about our favorite movies and passing back and forth our favorite romance novels by Becky Albertalli and Julian Winters.
We spent weekends trying to follow complicated hair tutorials on YouTube and drinking rose milk teas at the Merchant and shopping for more books at Bel Canto.
And without her, I probably would never have looked up from the ground long enough to notice Oliver noticing me.
“Don’t look now, but Edward alert at twelve o’clock.” We were sitting on the edge of the quad behind the pillar like usual.
“Twelve o’clock? Where is twelve o’clock?”
“I don’t know. I just always wanted to say that. Uh, up next to the coffee cart? Kinda near the table where they play Magic? We got company. I’ve always wanted to say that, too.”
I knew I should play it cool, but I was already glancing up, right into blue eyes that were, yes, looking directly at me.
He was tall and lanky, but with broad, strong shoulders.
Even from where I sat, I could see their definition, could probably trace the path of them with my fingers through the thin gray T-shirt he was wearing.
The shirt had a yellow banana on the front, which I didn’t know was from a Velvet Underground album at the time but was already planning on googling that night.
Dark wavy hair tumbled over his eyes, which really were the most perfect shade of blue, and his full lips lifted on one side, just slightly, like they stayed ready for a smile.
And it made me wonder what’d happen to me if he did smile, like how I’d continue to function, because just that slight upturn directed at me made butterflies start flapping away in my belly—no, pterodactyls—and how do you ever go back to normal after that?
“Hoa-hoa-hoa-hoa-hoaaaaa!” Gaile whisper-sang, but it might as well have been shouted through a megaphone.
“Shut up,” I said through clenched teeth, swatting her arm. My eyes dropped quickly, firmly back to the ground. “But also…who is that?”
“That’s Oliver from the football team. He’s one of the seniors in my geography class.”
I raised my eyebrow at her, because the guy was gorgeous—and possibly created in a lab somewhere based on my exact, specific tastes—but he definitely wasn’t a football player.
“Not the football team, the Football Team—capital F, capital T. The band. They play at the Mode a lot, which I haven’t actually been to because, as you know, my parents think live music will corrupt their precious youth, but I’ve heard of them.”
Of course he’s in a band. The pterodactyls let out a cheer as they did synchronized loop the loops.
I risked another glance up, and he was still staring right at me like I was the only person here in the quad to look at. Like he was a magpie and I was something shiny instead of dull.
And then he smiled, oh my god, he smiled. And it was even better than I anticipated—straight white teeth and deep dimples. I felt like I sprouted wings myself and was fluttering up into the sunshine.
“Oh, Harriet, he liiiiikes you.”
It was a moment just like the ones I read about in books, just like I saw happen to other girls in movies.
But it was happening to me, finally me.
Artifact 2: Ticket Stub from the Art Theatre
“You need to wear this dress.”
“I can’t wear that dress. I can’t wear a dress at all. It’s too try-hard.”
“Why do you even have this dress, then? If you’re not going to wear it.”
Gaile stood at my closet, holding up a puff-sleeved minidress that there was absolutely no way I could wear on my first date with Oliver.
He didn’t come up to talk to me that first day, letting the smile simmer in my mind for almost two maddening weeks.
But he eventually slid in next to me at the library, whispering a hey that made goose bumps ripple across my skin.
He picked up my copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, said it was his favorite, and I agreed even though I was only reading it for Freshman Lit Comp and I wasn’t actually sure how I felt about it yet.
He kept finding me on purpose, offering a thick book with an important-looking cover, a link to a sad, important-sounding album.
I didn’t love them, or even really like them, but I loved the way he looked at me as he excitedly waited for my opinion like it was the only one that mattered to him.
I knew what to say to keep that smile on his face, to keep the flying, fluttery feeling I began to crave.
And now we were finally going on our very first date—which felt so serious and grown-up, because who even got asked out on dates anymore?
An official date, and not just a hangout or a group thing.
“Girl, this dress is like the red dress in She’s All That…or the equivalent of, like, a whole-ass Princess Diaries Paolo transformation. Not putting on this dress—that’s basically spitting in the face of the canon. It’s blasphemy!”
Gaile’s and my mutual love of all things swoony had become our friendship shorthand.
“Okay, but I really hate that in those old rom-coms they have to change themselves to get the guy. What did they have against glasses, anyway?” I noticed that Gaile raised an eyebrow at me when I said this, but I didn’t clock it for what it was then.
I assumed she was just annoyed I wasn’t taking her fashion advice.
So I grabbed the dress and put it on, taking care not to mess up the lip gloss and mascara I spent forever getting just right.
“Now, are you going to be taking notes? Or wait, maybe you should just put me on FaceTime and carry me along in your pocket so I get it all live?”
“I don’t know, I was thinking you could just hide in the bushes outside the theater?”
She laughed. “For real though, you’re like the Christopher Columbus of dating, without the murdering and, I don’t know, syphilis…Well, I guess maybe Christopher Columbus is the wrong comparison. Who’s someone who actually discovered something?”
“Gaile, you lost me with the syphilis.”
“Oh, you know what I mean! You’re the first one of us to go on a real high school date, and we’re about to gain valuable intel here.
We can only learn so much from secondary sources.
And after you have the best night ever with Oliver and see how these things really go, I’ll know what to do when James finally asks me out, if he ever asks me out. ”
“He will!” My eyes caught on my phone, lit up on my bed.
“I don’t know. I really don’t know. He’s so nice, and he asks me so many questions when we’re DMing, but at school, it’s like I might as well be anyone else. And I just don’t get it, because…”
I was listening. I was. But I was also scrambling for my phone, reading the text that was there waiting for me, from him.
“He’s here!” I squealed, cutting off something about James’s rising sign. But Oliver was here. “It’s happening!”
“Oh, um, okay. Yay!”
I squeezed Gaile tight and grabbed my jean jacket for the cool November night air, blowing kisses behind me and promising to pick up the conversation about James later.
Then I ran to the door so my mom couldn’t notice Oliver outside and get there first. I nodded at her rushed reminders to make sure my location was on and to be back by my embarrassingly early nine o’clock curfew and something else probably just as cringy that I didn’t hear because I quickly shut the door, and there was Oliver.
Leaning on his car, glowing in golden-hour light—like a dream, like a scene from a movie, my movie.
His focused gaze felt like heat on my skin, but it was nothing like the familiar burning flush of embarrassment.
It was like being bundled up in a blanket that just came out of the dryer or sipping a cup of chamomile in front of a roaring fire.
The way he looked at me, it was the way I always wanted to be seen.
My face cracked into a smile so wide my cheeks instantly ached.