2. Orion #3
After spending two whole periods together, I knew my fate was sealed. Mark was attached to me, and there was no way I’d be able to phase myself out of his life. At least not without actually telling him I was doing it.
God. I hated being new.
I hated not knowing anyone, and I hated not knowing where everything was. I hated the unfamiliar sounds and smells of a new school. I hated feeling turned around and even more uncomfortable in my own skin than usual—which, by the way, was already plenty uncomfortable.
When the lunch bell finally rang, I trudged to the cafeteria with Mark at my side. I didn’t want to sit with him, but I also didn’t want to sit alone. There were few things sadder than being new and sitting by yourself at lunch. I wasn’t sure whether sitting with Mark was one of those things.
As it turned out, I didn’t get a say in the matter. Mark grabbed a tray for me when we got to the front of the line and practically glued himself to me as we got our food.
The rigors of the day had started to get to me by then, and I didn’t have it in me to shake him, so I followed him to a table in the far corner of the room and found a seat.
I chose a spot on the side of the table that allowed me to turn my back to most of the people in the room, hoping it would limit some of the damage.
I ate my shitty cafeteria meal with aversion, queasy from a combination of nerves and a major sugar crash. My jaw worked overtime, champing dried-out tater tots as I tried to work out how to make them go down without gagging. All the while, Mark sat silently and watched me eat.
My will to live was waning at a rapid rate.
The roar of chairs being dragged over the floor, people talking, and the persistent clatter of cutlery on crockery were making me lightheaded.
As I ate, I mentally rehearsed a strongly worded argument in favor of homeschooling.
My mom was against it on principle. She said socialization was one of the most important things kids learn at school, and she didn’t believe I’d leave the house enough to socialize adequately if left to my own devices.
In the lead-up to the move, she’d made her position on the matter abundantly clear.
However, sitting there in the din of the cafeteria, I felt a flicker of optimism that by the time she heard the impassioned plea of my latest argument—I’m not going back there, and you can’t make me—she would see reason.
A firm tap on my shoulder jolted me out of it, making me jump. My head swiveled around accusingly to see who had touched me, and I found my nose almost touching a belt buckle. I blinked, and a denim fly with a very distinctive bulge under it came into focus.
The sight threw me, and so did what happened next.
“Whatcha doin’ over here, bud?” Jordan spoke in a ridiculous sing-song tone that made me smile way bigger than the situation called for. He gestured to Mark. “Why are you sitting with him? I thought you were gonna sit with me?”
I replied without thinking. My mouth moved and so did my tongue. The rest of me waited, half-curious, half-anxious, to find out what I was going to say.
“What’s the matter? You jealous?”
As the words left my mouth, my spine stiffened in horror.
There was something off about my voice when I spoke.
Something sweet and syrupy had been poured into it and shaken around.
It was something I’d never done before, but I recognized it all the same.
I’d heard other people talking like that.
I’d seen it in movies and on TV. I’d heard men speaking to attractive women like that. Boys talking to girls they liked.
Dread rushed through my veins with sickening speed.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mark’s lips form a small, tight circle.
Inside me, entire systems shut down and rebooted.
My brain went offline and came back with a panicked sense of urgency—I had to undo what I’d done.
I had to unsay it or go back in time and erase it.
The problem was, I didn’t know how to do either of those things.
Instead, I sat, mouth agape, as I waited for Jordan’s reaction. I knew it would be bad. I accepted that. I didn’t even blame him, really. I would have reacted badly if a boy flirted with me back then too. No boy in their right mind would put up with that kind of thing.
For reasons I can only put down to the hand of God, or an act of fate, what I said, or at least the way I said it, went straight over Jordan’s head.
It sailed clear over him without landing and flew out the nearest window.
It must have because there was no repulsion in his reaction.
No anger. No confusion either. Just a boundless enthusiasm for life and an unwavering certainty that boys flirted with girls, not with other boys.
He leaned down, slinging his arm over my shoulder and curling it most of the way around my neck. He laughed like he had before. Like it didn’t cost him a thing.
“You got me, bruh,” he said with an easy smile. “I’m a jealous guy.”