Five
before
This was how it went:
Cary and Shiloh rode to school together.
And when they got there, they stood with the same group of guys next to somebody’s locker. Unless Shiloh was irritated with
one of them. Then she went and hung out with the girls from journalism. Or she went to the journalism room and worked—Shiloh
was editor-in-chief of the newspaper. Sometimes she stood out on the school’s front steps with a group of sophomores and juniors,
because she had a crush on one of them—Kurt. He lived in a nice neighborhood and was good at math.
Sometimes Shiloh had morning drama club. (With Cary.) Or morning science club. (Also with Cary.) And sometimes she had to
get to school early because she hadn’t done her homework and she had morning detention.
Once school started, she’d go to first-hour journalism, and Cary would go to ROTC.
And then he’d come down to the journalism room, because they both had study hall there. With Mikey. And the three of them
would fuck around in the darkroom. (Like, platonically. Obviously.) Or they’d fuck around in the computer lab. Or, if they
were on deadline, they’d work.
And then blah blah blah class.
And then lunch with Cary and Mikey and a bunch of other journalism people. Shiloh got free lunch, but she shared it with a
girl named Lisa, in exchange for Lisa buying them both ice cream cones every day for dessert.
Then more class. French. Literature with Cary. Yearbook.
Always something after school. Play practice. Newspaper stuff. Mikey started an Amnesty International chapter, and they all joined. They wrote letters to the president of Chile, asking him to free political prisoners. Cary had ROTC junk after school sometimes, so Shiloh found other things to do. She was helping the art teacher rebuild the school mascot, even though Shiloh wasn’t in art and she didn’t have any school spirit. Kurt, the junior she liked, was on the men’s volleyball team, so sometimes she went to the practices.
If Shiloh didn’t have anything else to do after school, she’d hang out by the flagpole and wait for Cary.
If she wanted to, she could walk home by herself. But she never did.