Chapter Auggie #2
“See, I’d want to have a house this nice, but I also wouldn’t have the energy to work all day and then come home and do this.” Mayte gestures around the room.
“Oh, my mom doesn’t work,” I say.
“Like, at all?”
“Nah. She’s done a lot of volunteer stuff at a women’s shelter and at the library since Kate and I have gotten older. She has yoga on Thursday afternoons, which is why I knew she wouldn’t be home now.”
“Kate’s your sister?” Mayte stands up and wanders to our family photos hanging on the wall.
“Have I never mentioned her?” I ask.
“I think we’ve been a little preoccupied with talking about my sister, lately,” Mayte says. “She’s really pretty.”
“She got the good genes, I guess.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” she says.
I roll my eyes and lean back on the couch, hoping that maybe I can hide the blush I feel creeping onto my cheeks.
“She got the good genes, and I got my mom’s shitty teeth.
” I spin a pencil I found on the coffee table.
“I brush my teeth every night and every morning and do you know how many cavities I had the last time I went to the dentist?”
Suddenly, I hear the front door unlock and open, footsteps moving into the kitchen.
“Mom?” I call. “I thought you had yoga.”
The footsteps quicken as Kate pops into the living room. “Auggie?”
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“What are you doing here?” She looks behind me at Mayte and smiles. “Hey. Mayte Morales, right?”
“Yeah,” Mayte says, waving back. “Kate?”
“Yep. Sorry about your sister,” Kate says, and I see a flash of darkness pass over Mayte’s face despite the smile she keeps on her lips. “I heard what—”
“Okay, but what are you doing here? You have class,” I say.
“You have class,” Kate says, narrowing her eyes.
Mayte throws her hands in the air. “Hooray, look, we’re all ditching!”
Kate glares at me. “If you tell Mom, I will murder you.”
“Right back at you,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest.
And then I hear the front door close and in walks Mom. We’re all silent as she stares at us.
“I thought you had yoga,” I finally say.
“I thought you had school,” she says.
I nod. “Touché.”
Mom drops a few grocery bags on the table and begins putting the food away. “My kids dragging you into trouble, Mayte?” she asks.
Mayte swallows audibly and says, “Actually, I think I’m the one dragging your kids into trouble.”
“She dragged me into trouble,” I say. “Kate dragged herself into trouble.”
“Hey!” Kate shoots back.
“Why are you guys skipping?” Mom asks.
Mayte hesitates, and before she can say anything, I jump in. “I was going to help Mayte work on an essay.”
“Yes, an essay!” Mayte says. She turns to me. “I do actually have an essay I need help with.”
“Skipping school to do more school,” Mom says. “Figures.”
“Yep, essays,” Kate says. “You know me and my essays!”
My mom starts the oven and leans against it. “I bought stuff to make pizza for dinner. I’ll throw a second one in for you guys. There’s olives, mushrooms, pepperoni—”
“Just cheese, please,” I say.
Mayte giggles.
“What?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she says.
“What?” I ask again.
She motions from my head down to my feet. “You look like a human cheese pizza,” she says.
“What the hell!” I say. I throw a pillow at her and she catches it.
“Okay, but right?” Kate says, jumping onto the couch beside Mayte. “Cheese pizza. Polo shirts—”
“Vanilla milkshake,” Mayte and Kate say at the same time. They both begin to laugh hysterically.
“Yes, it’s so funny that I like the classics,” I say.
“No, but, like, I don’t mean this in a weird way,” Mayte starts. “But I feel like if you didn’t dress like you were getting ready for a family Easter photo every day, you might be kinda cute.”
I freeze. “Why would you say that?”
Kate grabs Mayte’s hands in hers. “You get me.”
“Kate’s been trying to tell him that for years now,” Mom says from the kitchen.
“My friends always say he’d be hot if he dressed better,” Kate says.
“Because he would!” Mayte says. She reaches over and shoves my hair upward, revealing my forehead. “You’ve got pretty blue eyes that would pop if you wore something that color and not, like, this pasta water shirt.”
“It’s yellow,” I say.
“Why do you have so much yellow in your closet? It doesn’t look good on you. It’s, like, the exact color of your hair and makes you look paler than you already are. Which is very pale,” Kate says. She tilts her head and looks at me. “Imagine if he stopped parting his hair in the middle like that.”
“Oh, that would look so good.”
“I hate you,” I mutter, glancing at Kate, and shake Mayte’s hand away.
“Mrs. Peterson,” Mayte says. “Do you have hair gel anywhere?”
“Please don’t put hair gel in my hair. I don’t want to be greasy,” I say. I try to climb off the couch, but both Kate and Mayte pull me back down.
“Auggie’s basically the same size as my dad,” Kate says. She grabs Mayte’s shoulder. “Can we give him a makeover?”
“I’ve been wanting to since the day I met him,” Mayte says.
“You have?” I ask.
Kate grabs Mayte’s hand and pulls her upstairs.
“There’s hair gel under the sink on Dad’s side,” Mom calls after them.
The living room is silent except for the click of the oven as it heats up, and I can hear Mayte’s and Kate’s voices upstairs, but I can’t make out anything they’re saying. Mom comes over and sits on one of the couch arms. She leans over and kisses my head. “She doing okay?” she asks.
I shrug. “She was crying in the hallway so I asked if she wanted to come over. We don’t actually have essays to edit.”
She wraps her arms around me and kisses my head again. “You’re a good man, Augustine.”
“I wasn’t just going to leave her on the floor.”
“Of course not.” She scoots over so she’s sitting beside me on the couch. “She’s a pretty girl—”
“We’re just friends,” I say before she can even try to insinuate something else.
“She said she thinks you have pretty eyes,” Mom says.
“She also hates my hair and said I look like pasta water.” I reach for the pencil on the coffee table to spin it again.
Mom wriggles her eyebrows but doesn’t say anything else, walking back to the kitchen.
We are just friends. And of course she’s pretty.
Obviously she’s pretty. Anyone can see that Mayte Morales is easily one of the prettiest girls at our school.
And I am Auggie Peterson, vanilla milkshake incarnate.
Mayte and I are not a thing and couldn’t be a thing, even if I did want otherwise.
If I was Mayte, I’d be glad I dodged the bullet of having to say I was her first kiss.
“Okay, don’t be mad,” Mayte calls, running down the stairs with a pile of fabric in her arms. “Kate told me I could do it.”
“I did and I don’t regret it,” Kate says, following her, also holding a pile of clothes.
“This first,” Mayte says, handing me a pair of gray sweatpants, a blue hoodie, and what has to be one of Dad’s jean jackets because I definitely don’t own one. “Cuz I don’t think you’ll hate it as much.”
I look at the clothing and then back up at Kate and Mayte. “Why are there two jackets?”
“A hoodie and a jacket,” Kate says. “Go put them on.”
“Like, the jacket over the hoodie?” I ask.
“No, put the hoodie over the sweatpants as an extra leg layer.” Mayte rolls her eyes. “Yes, over the hoodie!”
Mom comes back over and stands with the girls as I sigh and head to the bathroom to change. When I come back out, Mayte reaches forward and rustles my hair like she’s petting a dog who’s been a particularly good boy.
“We decided you don’t need gel,” Kate says. “You just need to not look like you’ve brushed every single strand of hair and purposefully chosen clothes that make you look like you’re going for sitcom nerd. And not sitcom-nerd chic.”
“These are my pajama pants,” I say, staring down my legs. “Also, the double jacket thing is bulky.”
“Well, it’s the look now,” Mayte says.
“Wearing pajamas to school?” I ask.
“They’re not pajamas.”
“Turn around,” Mom says, and I do. “They make your tushy look great.”
“You did not just say that,” Kate says.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” Mom says.
“I’m not going to look at my brother’s tu—butt,” Kate says. “But I guess you don’t look terrible in this.”
Mayte looks me up and down and up again, and our eyes meet and hold. Look away look away, I think, but she doesn’t, and I don’t either, even though I can tell that she’s thinking the same thing.
“What do you think?” I ask, holding my arms out.
Because I think Mayte Morales, the prettiest girl in our school, thinks I look good. And I hate that I want to hear her say it.
She smiles. “I like it,” she says. “You look so different, though.”
“That’s the point, isn’t it?” I ask.
“Oh!” Mom says, grabbing Kate’s hand. “Your dad has a bunch of old stuff from when we were younger in a box in the basement. There’s definitely some unique stuff there.”
“Oh, vintage is so in right now,” Kate says, turning and dragging Mom toward the basement. She looks back at Mayte. “I’ll look for any prize pieces and bring them back.”
Mayte flashes two thumbs-up. “Perfect. I’ll get him in his next outfit.”
Kate and Mom disappear down into the basement.
Mayte and I are alone in the living room now, neither of us saying a word, and she gives me the clothes in her hand, our eyes locking again. Her hand brushes mine. I look down at what she’s handed me.
“Did you cut up my pants?”
“Kate told me I could!” she says. “You have, like, four pairs of the exact same ones!”
“Because I wear four pairs of the exact same ones!”
“It’s cool to look casual now, Auggie,” Mayte says. “Like you’re not trying so hard to be perfectly polished and hot.”
“You always look perfectly polished and hot,” I say, and feel color rush to my cheeks. “I mean—” I stare at the clothes in my hand, trying to avoid the intense eye contact that we can’t seem to stop making. “I mean, you know what I mean.”
“But it’s like perfectly polished and hot without trying to be perfectly polished and hot. Messy bun, ripped jeans, cropped sweatshirt,” she says.
“Whatever,” I say, walking back to the bathroom to try the clothes on.
I come back in a different “cool” vibe: newly ripped jeans and a navy blue sweater that I’ve worn on Christmas a couple of years in a row.
“What do you think?” I ask, doing a little spin as I walk into the living room. “Perfectly polished and hot or what?”
Mayte looks up at me and both her phone and her jaw drop.
Never has someone’s reaction to me walking into the room sent this kind of confidence flooding through my body.
“Um—I—” she stammers. She stands up and walks toward me. “You look great.”
I notice our height difference for the first time as I look down to meet her eyes. “You look surprised.”
She does the “air out of her nose” laugh, and her cheeks flood pink.
Oh man, is this girl beautiful.
“Not surprised,” she says, and there’s a breathiness to her voice that I haven’t noticed before. “I just… um… I don’t know. It suits you. It makes your eyes pop just like I thought it would.”
“Yeah?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
She reaches up and uses her fingers to push my hair back off my forehead. My skin burns where she touches it. “I really like the way your hair looks when it’s messy like that.”
“Yeah?” I ask again. I can’t think of any other word that exists. I can hear my heart beating. Can she hear my heart beating?
“Yeah.”
Ask her! my brain screams. Ask if you can kiss her!
“I… um… Mayte,” I say, and it comes out a whisper.
“Hmm?” she asks, touching my hair again.
“He looks so hipster,” Kate says, walking into the living room with a pile of clothes. Mom follows. Mayte almost dives back onto the couch.
What.
Was that?
“I’m not a hipster” is all I can say.
“Who’s your favorite band again?” Kate asks.
“I don’t know if you know them—” I start, but Mom interrupts me.
“I like this look,” she says. “It’s very Auggie. You look like you climbed out of Dead Poets Society.”
“I… if that’s true I might be okay with that,” I say, my hands buzzing with pins and needles and lakes of sweat.
“What do you think, Mayte?” Mom asks.
“Um… I think he looks great,” she says, the volume of her voice barely above a whisper as she stares at her phone, which is still on the carpet.
“Now this!” Kate says, shoving more clothes into my arms and pushing me toward the bathroom.
I stare at myself in the mirror once I lock the door.
What was that?
I see it, though. The whole Dead Poets Society thing.
I’m giving off Todd Anderson vibes, what with my hair starting to return to its natural middle part.
I screw up my hair the way Mayte had. There we go.
Neil Perry vibes. I kind of like it. Even though I do think the ripped jeans thing is one of the stupidest fads I’ve ever seen.
I stand for a second and listen to Mom, Kate, and Mayte in the living room.
They’re all laughing, and I can’t help but smile.
I haven’t heard that come from Mayte since before Aida died.
Sure, she’s chuckled or done the “air out her nose” thing when I say something stupid, like today in the hallway, but not that full, bright laugh.
Where is my notebook? I need this moment.
I need these records. I try to memorize the sound, the feeling in my head and my heart and my body, hold it in my mind, find the right words to capture it.
So everyone who reads my story can feel it too.