The library and the theatre were combined into one glorious room, my favorite room in the school. The stage was where drama class usually practiced, but that day in August, we were in the back, by the bookshelves. Our teacher, Ms. Tsegaye, was sitting in the front row, making notes on a clipboard. The tech class met backstage, and they were making more noise than was probably necessary to learn about properly cueing sound effects. Drama class was one the seven other classes I shared with Garrett besides chemistry. The only other people in were Sophie, Charlotte, Cal, Jose, and an exceedingly strange senior boy named Sy. Charlotte was also a senior, and my personal role model, especially when it came to makeup techniques

"Ms. Tsegaye?" I asked.

"Yes, Penny?"

"When is the cast list going to be up?" Charlotte, a senior girl in my class, sat up and turned around in her chair, to join to our conversation. Out of everyone in 7th hr. drama, we were the only two who regularly participated in the shows. This year, we were doing an original production, that the creative writing class had written. I was skeptical, but I mainly did the plays to get time off of school, and free meals backstage. Actually, that wasn't true, I knew I never had a shot at a main role, since I wasn't one of Ms. Tsegaye's favorites.

"I don't know," she said. "To be honest, it's whenever I find a guy who's willing to play the dad." Charlotte nodded seriously,

"Guys are hard to come by. Why won't you do it, Garrett?"

"He wouldn't really be right for that part, anyway," Ms. Tsegaye said, a little coldly, but honestly. No one would ever believe that Garrett was somebody's father, unless the mother also happened to be a teenager and the child was a baby. "I'm looking for a guy who looks older, and can give off an aura of authority. A junior or a senior."

"Jose?" Charlotte suggested.

"Now you're just grasping at straws," I told her, but I smiled at Jose, so he knew I was kidding. The whole class had started listening, even though I doubted they really cared. Our low-budget productions were hardly the crowning joy of the Academy.

"Cal should do it!" I said, forgetting for a moment that he could like me, or I could like him. I suggested it because there was no one else, and because I cared passionately about the state of the drama department.

"Cal?" Ms. Tsegaye looked at him expectantly. "It's a big part, but I'll give it to you if you'll take it. Do you want to come do a cold reading?"

"Cold reading?" I wondered again why he ever signed up to take that class.

"It's when you just look at the script and read from it without having ever seen it before," I told him.

"No, I don't really want to do that. I've never been onstage before. I could never do that. I'd just embarrass myself."

"Come on, Cal, please? We really need another guy." I was practically begging him, and he relented.

"I guess I could try it." He appeared uncomfortable and unsure of himself as he walked over to Ms. Tsegaye, and fumbled with the script she handed him.

"Page 5. Start reading where it says, Dad." He stumbled through his lines, messing up about every third word in the first sentence. I could see his hands curling into fists at his sides.

"Relax," Ms. Tsegaye told him. "You're doing fine."

"You're doing fine," I said. He relaxed a little bit. His speaking voice was nice, when he could get the words out.

"You've got the part," Ms. Tsegaye said, when he was done.

"I wish it were that easy for girls," I said to Charlotte. She nodded vigariously, because she had been in the theatre program for five years and had yet to be anything more than a question mark or occasionally a dancing tree. She also did a lot behind the scenes, like makeup and painting the sets, plus she was a senior, so she deserved a speaking role even more than I did.

"You did really good," Garrett said.

"Well," Charlotte corrected him. Charlotte was somewhat of a grammar stickler; she hoped to be a creative writing major, in college.

"Yeah, congratulations, Cal. I mean, not like there was any competition or anything." I was joking around, like I was talking to one of my regular friends, but when I saw the defeated expression on his face I immediately felt badly. "Just kidding," I said.

"Penny!" Ms. Tsegaye chided me, even though she was used to my sarcasm.

"I wasn't offended," he said quickly. "I know you're kidding, even though it's true. I'm the complete opposite of confident."

'Well, you're going to have to get over that to be in the play," I told him.

"I really hope so, because I miss so much because I'm not confident."

"What do you mean?"

"Not being confident means you can, like, miss opportunities, because you don't think you will achieve that goal or in some cases it means not getting to be with the person you want to be with."

"Oh, well try having a little confidence sometimes! You might like it."

"I might," he said, and then the conversation was over, so he and Jose returned to their seats in the back of the classroom, by the last row of bookshelves.

"So, Cal likes you," Garrett informed me, when everyone had completely gotten back into their assignments, and was talking over us. "I wasn't going to tell you, but Eva told me to. She's really excited about it." Eva wanted everyone to have a boyfriend, just because she did. Or at least me, since she recently found out I was her only straight, single, female friend. People in new relationships have difficulty imagining that the people who aren't can be happy.

"Awww, that's so cute," was my first reaction, even though I had a million other questions. I wasn't sure whether to believe Garrett or not. My friends had a consistent track record of being wrong, but I still blindly listened to them. Their information was, more often than not, completely unreliable. In eighth grade, Sophie and Ben convinced me that Jacob was going to ask me to prom. "Any day now," they would say. "Maybe after the Cross Country meet." I went to more cross country meets that year than I can fathom. Especially ridiculous, since cross country was not a spectator sport. I got shushed once at the Detroit Open, because it's apparently an athletic pastime that demands to be viewed in silence. "Wait, why weren't you going to tell me?" That was the most pressing issue, right behind the fact that Cal had a girlfriend, or was supposed to, anyway. Garrett shrugged in response, barely bothering to lift his head up from writing his section of the dialogue. We were supposed to be finishing our creative speeches today, which we had worked on in partners. Ours was about a girl who took the fall for her friend in a convenience store robbery, and then was tried as an adult in court. I was playing the girl, naturally, and Garrett was supposed to be writing the part of the interviewer. We had been working on it for two weeks, but had only written half a page. As the world's worst procrastinators, we would've rathered talked the entire class period, and stayed after school for hours to finish it up.

"He told me not to tell you. He wants to tell you himself. He wants to ask you out, or to homecoming."

"Homecoming isn't for another three months," I expertly observed. "Can you stay after school today?"

"Why? We can have this conversation right now. Cal can't here us." Cal was on the other side of the room, at a table with Jose and two empty chairs. They were bent over their work, whispering intently, and would, every so often, ferociously erase their work. .

"No, that's not right," I heard Jose say. "Maybe we should start over. I'll be the dog, and you'll be the cat."

"We don't have time to start over. It's fine the way it is."

"Then you need to figure out how to be a better dog, because what we have now just isn't working." I stopped eavesdropping, and turned my attention back to my own partner.

"Okay, first of all, they definitely can hear us." . Sophie and Charlotte were working quietly, and Sy was in the corner, rocking back and forth, muttering something under his breath in unintelligible German. "Second, that's not what I was talking about. We need to finish our project. Can we do it after school?" He glanced up at the clock dismissively.

"We have, like, forty minutes left."

"You and I both know that we're not going to finish today."

"Okay, fair enough. Zee has volleyball practice until 5. I'll just call Tiffany and tell her to pick me up then." I usually didn't find the hilarity in rebellious teens calling their parents by their first names, but whenever Garrett did it, it made me smile. Probably since TIffany was barely older than my brother, Nathan.

"Zee doesn't really look like she would be a volleyball player," I commented. She was a female version of Garrett, in all her petiteness, despite the fact that they had different fathers. Their main physical distinction manifested itself in the eyes; Garrett had tiny brown slits, which looked out of place without his geek-chic glasses. Zee's eyes were huge, like blue bowling balls in her skull, taking up almost her entire face and distracting you from the conversation.

"Yeah, I don't know. She does it because her friends do it." Zee had two extremely loyal minions, who trailed behind her like lost puppy dogs. I would've felt sorry for her for not having more friends, but ninth grade is a universally weird time, so she was probably fortunate to have that many.

"Are you sure you don't mind?"

"I didn't want my mom to have to come here twice, anyway. We have to finish this fucking project." I shook my head and stared at the same blank page we had been staring at for the past two weeks.

"We're never going to finish this fucking project, are we?"

"Not a chance."

"You know what? We can just hang out after school. I'll finish this at home later."

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know. I'll figure it out." I paused for a moment, considering his proposition.

"You know what? I would challenge you on that, but I have no idea what to do." He laughed,

"We are literally the worst ever. We should not be allowed to work together on anything."

"I'm going to let you handle this one, sport."

"You and me... We're not gonna... we're not gonna get this project done. It's just not realistic. We need to tell Ms. Tsegaye that we're not capable."

"Or just accept the fact that she's going to throw us off the edge of a building."

"Or save her some time and just jump off ourselves."

"Wow, Garrett, that was surprisingly dark for you."

"I've been trying out morbid humor lately," he said, casually. I heard Jose's voice from the other side of the room, rising above Garrett's, and Sy's muffled foreign languages.

"I think my mannerisms are totally appropriate for this scene. If I lick my hand when I say 'meow,' it will take the audience into the world of the cat." None of us took our drama assignments very seriously, but Jose, being as high strung as he was, constantly worried about failing. Ms. Tsegaye had already told us she had never failed a student, and had no intentions of doing so, which was the wrong thing to tell students such as Garrett and myself, but the fear still loomed over him. Sometimes, Sophie, Charlotte, Garrett, and I would mess with Jose, playing with his emotions and making up fake assignments we had never been given.

"You know we have a test today, right?" I had walked into class saying.

"What?" I could practically feel his heart rate speeding up, and see the blood vessels in his forehead popping. We didn't have tests in drama, since it was an elective class, but he still bought into it, hook, line, and sinker.

"Jose, you know we have to have this interview memorized, right?" I said. That was actually true, making Garrett and I's lack of progress even more terrifying. If the class had more than seven people, and if five of those weren't my good friends, I would've been much more motivated. Everyone would know what a terrible job we did.

"I know! And I'm freaking out about it." Ms. Tsegaye must've heard him, because she got up and started walking over to where we were all working.

"I don't want you all to stress about this. As long as you do you work, and you present the main idea of the skit, you'll be fine."

"She's so nice about it," I said. "It almost makes me not want to let her down.

"Almost," Garrett said, "but not quite enough."

"You know, this is kind of random, but can I just say that when our geometry teacher told us we needed a compass? I've been thinking she meant like a north south east west compass. And I was like, 'why do I need a seafaring navigational device for my 11th grade math class?'"

"Penny... how," Garrett laughed.

"Penny and Garrett, are you working?" Ms. Tsegaye rarely fussed at us, so we knew it was time to settle down.

"Yes ma'am!" Garrett answered.

"You don't look like it."

"We're brainstorming, Ms. Tsegaye," he said, then flashed a smile, showing off his yellowed front teeth. Garrett had an extremely convenient talent for charming our teachers. I was almost the exact opposite, so I kept my mouth shut, and let him do the talking. He had also gone to camp one summer in Arkansas, when he was eight years old, and another kid kneed him in the jaw. That caused him to get two fillings, which didn't match the coloring of the rest of his teeth. He couldn't get permanent replacements until he turned eighteen, but I secretly thought the fact that his one physical flaw was so noticeable was also sort of endearing. He hated Arkansas, because of that camp he went to. I loved Arkansas, because I had family there that I visited every summer when I was younger. If I ever moved outside of Michigan, and it wasn't to New York City, it would be to Arkansas, more specifically Texarkana, a wonderful little town on the Texas/Arkansas border.

"Well, I'm all about brainstorming," Ms. Tsegaye said, "But you had all last week to brainstorm. I want to see words! I want to see that page come to life!" She was the stereotypical over the top drama teacher, who wore blue eye shadow and matching colored shawls, and misused our class to help paint sets for her latest musical production. This was my third year in her class, and the third year that all of my pleated school skirts were splattered with acrylic paint.

"Yes ma'am," he said, and smiled again. His teeth, as mismatched as they were, also remained perfectly straight, despite never having braces. I had braces for two and a half years before I was rewarded with my million dollar smile.

"That smile right there," Jose had told me once, "Is the smile that's started and ended wars." It was my only good feature, besides my curly hair, but even that was fake. My complexion was nice enough, but only when I blended my makeup properly, which, according to Charlotte, was not often.

"We should all pool together for Christmas and buy Penny some decent makeup," she had told everyone. Then I joked,

"The more attractive I am, the better off this drama class will be."

"Yeah," Charlotte had said, "Christmas might be too long to wait." She was also extremely conservative. That caused her to be unpopular among her liberal classmates. It was a Catholic school, but a Catholic school in Detroit all the same. She took controversial stances on hot button social issues such as gun control, gay marriage, and drug legalization.

"Sophie and Charlotte, how are you coming along?" Ms. Tsegaye asked them.

"We're fine," Charlotte said. "I just have to keep Sophie on track."

"Hey!" Sophie chided her partner.

"Wait!" I clapped my hands in the air, with a sudden realization.

"You have an idea?"

"Absolutely not. I just remembered what we were talking about before. Cal likes me?"

"Yes. How many times do I need to tell you that?"

"Until I believe it."

"Well, believe it."

"Come on, Garrett, I know you guys lie to me all the time. I'm so gullible."

"Not me!" Garrett feigned offense. Ben was, admittedly, a far more likely culprit. In ninth grade, Ben and I voluntarily engaged in a rumor war, where we spread false information about each other throughout the student body, and whoever's lie was perpetuated the longest was considered the winner. He won, with a rumor about me making out with a llama that spread like wildfire. Whenever anyone asked me about it, I replied,

"We did a lot more than that," which always got a laugh.

"Okay, you're usually pretty honest," I admitted to Garrett. "At least compared to our friends. But that's not saying much."

"And loyal," he insisted.

"And loyal."

"And attractive."

"Whatever. You're the best friend anyone could ever ask for. Happy?"

"Yes, very. You seem really happy right now, Penny."

"What?"

"You're like, smiling weirdly."

"I'm always smiling," I said.

"That's true. But this is different. You're like, bouncing up and down."

"No I'm not."

"Yes, you are. Look- you're making the table shake. I would care, if I were writing anything down. But I'm not, because we still don't have a single good idea."

"Okay, well, forget about that for right now. Isn't Cal dating Heather?"

"They broke up while we were on our camping trip. Cal told me, when we got back."

"Was this the same conversation where he told you he liked me?"

"I don't know, Penny. We have a lot of conversations. I don't write in my diary about all of them."

"Well, you should. Then maybe your information would be more useful to me. I still can't believe that you told Eva, and you weren't going to tell me!"

"Shut up."

"Garrett, that's-"

"No, shut up. I think they're talking about you over there. Jose and Cal are not the most subtle people in the world." They weren't, and Jose had no concept of when it was appropriate to talk about something. I knew this, because he asked me out for the first time after Ben's uncle's funeral. Ben was unbothered since, in his words, "I didn't really like him that much, anyway."

"Do you have any other classes with her?" I heard Jose asking.

"Yeah, she's in my chemistry class."

"When are you going to ask her?"

"I don't know."

"Hey, hold on, let me try something real fast. Penny!" Jose's voice only became slightly louder when he called my name.

"Yes?" I answered immediately. I probably should've paused first, to create the illusion that I wasn't listening in, but they weren't perceptive enough to pick up on that.

"Are you going to homecoming with anyone?"

"I don't know yet," I said, which was the truth. I wasn't going to let my friends pull another Jacob on me.

"Would you say to no to someone?"

"Yeah, if I didn't want to go with them.," I took the honest route again. The conversation abruptly ended, and Garrett hissed,

"Why did you say that?"

"It's true."

"Would you say yes to Cal?"

"Probably. I don't know."

"Well, you should've just said you would say yes to anyone."

"I wouldn't say yes to anyone, Garrett. That's kind of a sweeping proclamation. Besides, I don't want to look too easy." All of my decisions regarding this non-relationship were very calculated.

"Cal's emotions are in a very fragile state." I frowned, and asked,

"Why?"

"His emotions are always in a fragile state. Believe me, I've know this guy for years. He's, like, eternally on the brink."

"On the brink? Of what?"

"I don't know. I mean, I was implying suicide but I know realize that's not true and probably a little too dark for this conversation. Damn, I need to get out of this morbid humor phase. Hey, another reason I told you is because I need to tell Cal if you don't feel the same way."

"Why are you the messenger?"

"Because, I'm like, waist deep in Cal's love life. There's no getting out of it now. You both need my help." Garrett fancied himself to be a relationship guru, even though Eva was his first girlfriend. "Think of me as the guardian of Cal's fragile emotional state."

"I'm not going to do that."

"Okay, whatever, Penny. Ugh, stop smiling. We don't have anything to fucking smile about until we get this fucking project done." I glanced over at Cal and Jose's table. Cal was looking at me, but quickly averted his eyes. They really were working on their project, though, which I was impressed with. I doubted Cal would care if Jose wasn't his partner. I wondered absentmindedly why he was even taking that class. He was a baseball player, not exactly the next Neil Patrick Harris.

"I thought you said you would take care of it."

"Yeah, well, I say a lot of shit I don't mean."

"Really? Cause I thought you were the most loyal, honest-" Garrett kicked me in the shin. "You've got to stop interrupting me though."

"He's coming over here."

"What?" Garrett tightened his jaw and didn't respond.

"Hey, Garrett, can I talk to you for a second?" Cal was standing over our table, still not making eye contact with me. "Hey, Penny."

"Hey, Cal!" I put a lot more enthusiasm behind my greeting than he did, to show him that everything was normal.

"Yeah, bud, sure. Just give me a second," he told me, and then winked. They went off to another corner, and Jose followed them. I was sitting along, and Sy looked up at me, from a few feet away.

"How is your day?" He asked me. He was a little off kilter, but he asked me how my day was every single day for the past two months of school, which I had to appreciate. I made the mistake of telling him hello in the hallway one day, and he followed me to my next class, barking behind me.

"Awesome. I'm having a really awesome day, actually. How about you?" As practically an only child since Nathan had left the house, I was trained to turn that question back around. Adults loved it- so did Sy.

"Not the best," he admitted.

"Oh, well, I hope it gets better," I told him. "Were you speaking in German earlier?"

"Yeah, I speak German," he said, like it was no big deal. "I don't remember how I learned it. I've just kind of always known it, you know?" I nodded.

"I know."

"So, it happens to you too?"

"Oh, no, not at all. I have no idea what you're talking about, but it sounds really strange." Cal and Garrett were sitting in chairs against the wall, that were lined up next to each other. Garrett was nodding, like he did when he was on auto pilot, and he was just trying to convince the other person in the conversation he was listening. Cal was repeatedly making the same urgent hand gestures, with both his palms outstretched and abruptly moving up and down. Garrett said something, and Cal didn't respond for a moment.

"Were you late to school today?" Charlotte asked.

"What?"

"Were you late to school? I was forty minutes late, because of an accident on the highway." Charlotte and I lived a half hour away from the Academy, because we lived in the same suburb, Birmingham. That created a special bond, and provided us with endless conversation topics.

"I was a little late. I left early, though, so I just caught the tail end of the accident. Nobody who's not from the Burbs understands." Charlotte shook her head and clicked her tongue, like it was the saddest thing imaginable. "Did you see the filter we got on Snapchat?"

"Finally. I was using the Detroit one. Can you imagine? People thinking I lived in Detroit?" Garrett sat back down out my table, and I think I said some words,

"Yeah, pretty disgusting. What did he say?"

"What did who say?"

"Oh, sorry Charlotte, I was talking to Garrett."

"What did who say?" Garrett asked.

"Don't play games with me, Garrett."

"Oh, Cal?"

"Yeah, Cal. The one you just finished having a secret conversation with, in the corner."

"He was being a little bitch about asking you out."

"What do you mean?"

"He kept saying he wasn't good enough for you, or some shit."

"And what did you say to that?" I asked, annoyed that I had to keep prompting him.

"I said, 'stop being a little bitch about it.'"

"And did he?"

"I think so. I mean, he's still a little bitch, just about other things. But I can talk Cal into pretty much anything. Anyone can talk Cal into pretty much anything. I never understand why he's like, the leader in his friend group. They can all tell him what to do, but at the same time, it's like they think he's the coolest of them. He's really such a pushover, though." As loyal as Garrett was to his friends, he had a nasty habit of gossiping about his acquaintances.

"Aren't you his friend?"

"Acquaintance," Garrett corrected.

"Oh, right. There's such a difference."

"There is. He's only come to my house once before. Tiffany said that he was good-looking, and that kind of freaked me out a little bit."

"Tiffany would never."

"There's no telling what Tiffany would do. She just went through a breakup. I'm not taking any chances."

"Garrett and Penny?"

"Yes, Ms. Tsegaye?"

"Have you made any progress since I last checked up on you?"

"We know exactly what we're doing now."

"And what is this?"

"Well, Penny does these great impressions of animated cartoon characters." That was true enough. All I did was pitch my voice higher, make it a little more gravelly, and say the catchphrases of famous Disney characters. It was a hit with my friends.

"So we're going to use that, somehow," he finished.

"That's a great idea," Ms. Tsegaye said, and I knew she wouldn't crack down on us until the day of presentations. Whenever we were doing a play, she kept herself remarkably collected until opening night, and then lost her shit all over the place. We called it, "going Ms. Tsegaye," whenever someone who typically didn't get angry overreacted. "Just make sure you have something worth showing the class tomorrow, and it's memorized."

"Yes ma'am," Garrett and I said in unison, then we both glared at each other. When she walked away, I told him,

"Only one of us can say it. It makes it seem sarcastic if we both say it."

"You're right. We need to work on that. Next time, I make the case, and then you say yes ma'am at the end."

"That's what I was trying to do."

"But we didn't talk about it beforehand."

"I was hoping you would just read my mind."

"Usually I can. My telepathy must be off today."

"Anyway, back to the more important conversation."

"You mean, the one about our project?"

"Were we ever having a conversation about our project?"

"I was trying to. You keep distracting me."

"No, I meant the one about Cal."

"Well, do you like him?"

"I don't know."

"Would you say yes if he asked you out?"

"Probably not. I mean, you know how my parents are. It was an act of congress to get them to let me go out with Jose, and they already knew him."

"Yeah, but Jose was bisexual."

"Isn't Cal bisexual?"

"Yeah, but your parents don't know that. They don't have to, anyway. If you don't tell them." I rarely told my parents things about my friends, especially information of that caliber; they found out Jose was bisexual through Eva's parents, who were southern Baptists, a delightful mixture of judgemental and gossipy. Eva's parents essentially outed Jose to the entire religious adult population of Detroit.

"Tell me something, Garrett- why do I attract exclusively insecure, bisexual guys?" Garrett burst into silent laughter, which is what he did when he thought something was really funny, and buried his face in his hands, pushing his glasses all the way up to his forehead.

"I don't know," he said, once he collected himself, "but that is so perfect. And true."

"I might say yes if he asked me to the dance, though." And here's where I make a confession: I never liked Jose that much, it was just extremely convenient to date him, since we were already friends and he was interested in me. Our dates weren't awkward. We had the same sense of humor, and a predetermined list of acceptable discussion subjects. My parents, albeit their strictness, knew Jose, and liked him, so although it took some convincing, they eventually relented.

Garrett and Eva started going out around the same time, during the summer, and everyone knows that once your best friend gets a boyfriend, you have to scramble to find someone, fast. I remember we had a going away party for our friend, Toni, who was an African exchange student moving back home, over the summer. Eva, Garrett, Jose, and I were all sitting on the same bench. The boys had their arms around us, and Eva and I exchanged a glance, that said, "how did we get here? How did we both get so lucky?" We broke up the next week. I couldn't stand being attached to someone, when I wanted to be the center of attention, going around the party and socializing with all my friends. I suffered from classic youngest child syndrome. I swore that the next person I dated would be someone I preferred to hang out with over my friends. That would have to be a really special person, because all of my friends were special people.

But my main purpose in all this seemingly pointless narrative is to say that, at age 17, I had never once attended a dance with a date. I thought that if I went out Jose, at least until October, we would be able to go to homecoming together. That thought excited me, and motivated me to date him for a few extra weeks. I don't deny that was an incredibly selfish incentive, and I felt terribly about it, but I also knew that people have remained with their significant others for much worse reasons. Eventually, my desire to be the grand fromage of the summer social scene dominated my infatuation with corsages.

Okay, let's make a pros and cons list." Garrett loved to make pros and cons list. He would never make any decisions if he didn't. "Pros?"

"You know him better than I do. What are the pros?"

"Pros: He's attractive."

"You think he's attractive?"

"Don't you?"

"Well, yeah, but I have terrible opinions on people's attractiveness level. I always have to confirm it with London and Eva. I mean, I found Jose mildly attractive, at one point."

"Jose's not a bad looking dude, either." I gave him a dubious look, and Garrett backtracked: "But Cal's more attractive. I think a lot of people would agree with you on that. Tiffany definitely would, anyway. She always comments on the attractiveness levels on my friends when they come over."

"Okay, keep going. Do we have any other pros?"

"He's athletic, if you like that sort of thing."

"Is he, though?"

"I don't know. He plays a lot of sports. Are you asking me if I've ever seen him play? Because the answer would be no, but I would still consider him athletic, at least compared to me, or Ben, or Jose."

"I'm not sure if that's a fair comparison, though. You guys have to be the three least athletic people in the entire school." I wasn't being needlessly cruel. We already had this discussion, numerous times before. "More athletic than Chet?" Besides being an Eagle Scout, Chet daylighted as a member of the varsity football team, which was perfect, because London was a cheerleader. They were living the high school dream, Jack and Diane style.

"Okay, I have seen Chet play, for like, five seconds once, when they let him off the bench. And I can say with almost complete confidence that Cal is more athletic."

"Didn't you see him play in P.E. before?" At the Academy, we were required to take four years of physical education, which Garrett and I had already completed, since we had both been going there since seventh grade. It was separated by gender, so I never had the pleasure of watching the twenty-something other boys in my class climb a rock wall, or play kickball. Or do homework, which is actually what we did most days. The class was "coached" by a burnout history teacher, who had three kids, and wore a lot of cardigans and fringed cowboys boots, generally giving off the impression that she didn't care about anything.

"Play what? Ultimate frisbee? I don't know, Penny, I was hiding in the locker room most of the time in that class. Listen, he's the son of the baseball coach, so I'm going to go ahead and make the wild assumption that he's good at baseball, for the purposes of this pros and cons list."

"I'm going to forget you told me that, so I won't know a creepy amount of information before we go out on our first date."

"Suit yourself. Also pros, he's sweet. Like, really, really sweet."

"How do you know?"

"We've been friends for years, I told you. He would never hurt anybody. He's the sweetest guy I know. Ask anyone. Ask London. She knows him pretty well."

"Really?"

"Remember the last day of school freshman year?"

"The day we went to the beach?"

"Yeah, well, remember that picture we took? The one where we're all linking arms and have our backs turned in front of the lake?"

"Of course I do! Jose's grandmother took that," I mused. "We meant to recreate that picture, but we never went back after that year."

"It was me, you, London, Eva, Sophie, and Jose, right? Well, we wanted to alternate, like, boy-girl-boy-girl. But there wasn't enough guys. So London called Cal, and invited him to go with us."

"I vaguely remember that. I showed that to my parents and they didn't ask who the other guy was, and I thought that was funny. They're usually so protective of everyone I hang out with. Don't tell me that was Cal!"

"Don't you remember?"

"I guess I do now, but it didn't really make that much of an impression on me. He didn't talk that much. I think I'm even standing next to him in the picture." I discreetly took Garrett's borrowed phone out of the front pocket of my bookbag, and scrolled through instagram. "Yeah, I see it! It's from seventy-three weeks ago."

"Why are you telling me this information? I already knew about the picture. I'm the one who told you about the fucking picture."

"My brain is hurting from the way this picture predicted the future seventy-three weeks in advance. And from the fact I apparently thought it would be cool to wear a poncho."

"Is that a poncho?"

"No, I'm just making fun of myself. I think it's some sort of swim suit cover up. This was before my parents let me wear a bikini." The summer I was allowed to wear bikinis in mixed company was a great victory in my life. "Anyway, he must've been with us the whole day, I guess. And London invited him, huh? I really don't remember him at all. But I think I remember liking standing next to him... Because Jose just had his knee surgery, so he kind of looked like a cripple from behind. No offense."

"He's a man of few words," Garrett confirmed. "Or, at least, he's kind of weirdly shy around people he doesn't know. I think it's because he's always attached to that best friend. What's his name? Richie?"

"Are you really asking me this? I barely knew Cal existed until, like, two weeks ago."

"Well, apparently he knows you exist."

"I think I'm too flattered to be weirded out."

"Good," Garrett said, "Besides the fact that I'm waist deep in Cal's love life and this is practically my job, I also like both of you a lot. And I want you both to be happy. So it would be really exciting, for me personally, if you two got together."

"What are the cons?"

"Cons: Sex."

"Has he had it?"

"I mean, he's never come up and told me, 'dude, I lost my virginity.' But that's because he probably did before I met him. I'm assuming this based on the number of other relationships he's been in, and the other kinds of guys he hangs around. I ran the statistics on it, and the probability that he's a virgin is zero."

"I don't know how I feel about that. How should I feel about that?" My automatic reaction was shock, and then disgust, but I didn't know if that's how I felt, or how the Academy or my Jewish parents told me to feel. I didn't have a purity ring or anything like that, just the knowledge that everyone in my life would be deeply disappointed if I had sex before marriage.

"It's interesting, because I didn't really care about that at all before I met Eva. I mean, I never had a girlfriend before I met Eva either. But I had always just assumed I would have sex before I got married, you know? It's one of those things you read about, and you see on TV, and you're like, well of course that's going to happen to me. It happens to everyone." I thought Garrett's confidence was amazing, considering he was a 5'6, glasses wearing theatre geek, with an inclination for choreography and a fascination with Louis Vuitton. He was the kind of guy everyone's moms let their daughters hang out with one on one, because they thought he was gay. "But then I met Eva, and we talked about it, and she didn't want to, of course. And I acted like I didn't want to, either."

"Just to get her to like you?"

"At first. But then it was like, I felt the same way, because she did." It occurred to me in that I was talking about a wildly inappropriate subject matter, in class, with someone of the opposite gender, but in the words of Garrett, we were already "waist deep."

"So, if she said she wanted to have sex, would you want to?" He didn't respond, and for a moment, I thought I might have gone too far.

"I mean, I would want to," he answered honestly. "But I wouldn't. Because I don't think there's a world where Eva could have sex before marriage and wouldn't regret it. I don't want to be a regret for her."

"That's really sweet," I said, like I was surprised, even though I shouldn't have been, since Garrett was that kind of guy.

"Not as sweet as Cal would be if you went out with him," Garrett tempted me.

"Would he expect me to have sex with him?"

"I don't know. I could talk to him about it." For some reason, Cal was wrapped up in his own little world, and seemed immune to our conversation about him.

"We're both, like, solid sevens," I commented, which was a little rude, and very objectifying.

"What?"

"Like, on a scale from one to ten. We're both sevens."

"Does that mean you'll go out with him?" I laughed,

"No. And I don't think you should talk to him about it, either. It's a little early in our non-relationship to be talking about hypothetical sex. Are there any other cons?"

"He's not that smart."

"Garrett!" I chastised him.

"What? Okay, it's not that he's dumb, it's just that he doesn't apply himself, which is dumb." That was easy enough for Garrett to say. He was able to coast through classes on a solid B streak without opening a textbook. Not a straight A student, like Eva was, but still academically competitive. Sophie, Garrett, and I took a lot of the same courses, and we were constantly comparing grades. Garrett usually came out on top, with me in second, and Sophie lagging behind, her math and chemistry grades usually requiring resuscitation.

"I think he's smart," I decided. "He looks smart. He gets a lot of answers right, in Chemistry. He seems like he tries really hard."

"That's even worse. I was giving him credit, by saying he just didn't care. If he does care, then yeah, he is dumb."

"Garrett, come on."

"What?"

"Not everyone can get through school with their eyes closed and their hands tied behind their back like you do."

"Penny, you're being very argumentative today. Fine, he is smart, and he's not athletic, and he's probably a virgin. How do you like that?"

"Sounds like my dream guy," I smiled.

"So, can I go ahead and give him the green light?"

"I'm not going to say yes if he asks me out," I warned. "I don't know him well enough. But you know me- I'd do anything to coerce someone into going to a school dance with me."

"That's the whole point in dating someone, Penny. You get to know them, on the date."

"Sorry, I forgot that you, Garrett, in all your infinite wisdom, know everything there is to know about dating and relationships." Garrett and I had a habit of overusing each other's names in the conversation, even when we were talking to each other directly.

"I'm going to go ahead and give him the greenlight then."

"About the dance?" He didn't reply. Instead, he looked down at our paper, and pretended to be writing something. I knew better. "Garrett!"

"Look, you're making me regret having this conversation, okay? Eva just wanted me to give you a heads up. By the way, Jose is super pissed at me, because I told Cal I would help him ask you, if you wanted. Jose was going to ask you, as like, a last ditch effort. He told me he needed closure on your relationship."

"Okay, now Cal has to ask me, because if Jose asks me, I have to say yes."

"You don't have to do anything."

"Yeah, I do. I'm not going to say no to Jose, and then proceed to go in the same homecoming group with him, and neither of us have dates. But at the same time, I really, really don't want to go with my ex. That would be weird, right?"

"That would be weird."

"Okay. Good. I had to have that confirmation. I'm glad you told me. About Cal, I mean. Eva had the right idea. I needed a heads-up, so I can decide what I think about this whole situation."

"I can tell you like him."

"I don't know how I feel yet."

"Yeah, well, that's what I'm here for. To tell you how you feel. And I'm telling you that you haven't stopped smiling since the beginning of this conversation."

"I told you, Garrett, I'm always smiling."

"Not like this."

"Garrett and Penny," Ms. Tsegaye warned us.

"We're working!" Cal looked over at us, and smirked, pretending to shush me from across the room. I smiled back at him, like a maniac, and he looked away.

"I swear, Garrett, if you're making all this up...."

"He's shy," Garrett insisted. "Cripplingly shy."

"He'd better be, or I think I just made myself look like an idiot."

"What else is new?"