Page 201 of Something Rad
I feel the bed dip right beside me. “I have to leave for work in seven minutes,” my mom says. “Get started.”
forty-two
ROBBIE
I pull to a stop in front of the gas station, because it’s just become a habit at this point.
I’m on my way home from basketball practice, which means she will have just left the library and will be heading for her shift at Groovy Movie. But she almost never goes straight there. No, she almost always stops at this gas station on the way to grab a Jolt Cola. Sometimes, she also gets a Charleston Chew. And, some days, even a bag of potato chips, if she’s feeling crazy. I’m pretty sure they’re salt and vinegar flavored. I don’t know why, but that just makes sense to me. It seems to fit her. Somewhat polarizing, a little rough around the edges, can make you ache if you have too much but also constantly leaves you wanting more.
Yeah, that makes almost too much sense to be her flavor of choice.
Or maybe I’m just completely off my rocker.
She certainly makes me feel that way.
It’s been three weeks since Cooper and I have spoken. Three weeks since everything fell apart. Since I managed to screw up and she refused to give me a second chance. Three weeks since we went our separate ways in the courtyard, so much left to be said but none of it that really mattered.
It’s over. We’re over. Things are back to the way they should be. Or at least we’re both pretending that they are.
It took a full week for me to get out of the habit of picking Cooper up before school. For three days in a row, it’s like I was in a daze, driving straight there on autopilot. Then, on day four, I was so mad at myself over the previous three days that I spent the whole drive repeating to myself that I would go straight to school, only to find myself still making the wrong turn when I got to the stop sign that separated my routes and still ending up at her house anyways. On day five, I just gave into it, telling myself I was just going to drive by, convincing myself that if I stopped fighting it, maybe I’d just get over it. But then she was walking out of her front door at the exact moment I turned on her street. Our eyes caught immediately, and I didn’t know what to do. I slowed the car, waiting to see how she’d react. She didn’t. She never moved.
I still ask myself what I would have done if shehadmoved. What would have happened. If I would have given her a ride. If we would have just slid back into our easy rhythm, forgetting everything that had happened the week before. But then I made myself stop thinking about it. Because she didn’t move. And I brought my car back up to speed again, pretending I wasn’t watching her the whole way behind the shield of my sunglasses as I passed by her. I thought for a moment that maybe that was a mistake. I thought she might bring it up in Ms. Cage’s class that morning. But she didn’t. She didn’t say a word to me. And she still hasn’t.
But she hasn’t been perfect either.
I’ve caught her a few times with her head in a book, her body operating on autopilot, taking her to the places we used to meet one another. I’ve found her lingering by my locker as I approach it, only to catch herself before I get there, her body jolting when she realizes where she is and her feet carrying her away before I can ever confront her on it. I’ve caught her taking pictures of me at the basketball games. Far more pictures than she’s taking of anyone else on the team. Part of me wonders if she has some nefarious purpose for that, if she’s taking those pictures so she can bring them home and draw little impolite doodles on them or set them on fire. But another part of me hopes, for whatever sick reason, that she is simply using her photographer duties as an excuse to shamelessly watch me the way I’ve been watching her, her camera her shield in the way that my sunglasses and headphones are mine, making me looking totally oblivious to the outside world when, in reality, my entire world, my entirefocus, has been one particular thing for the better part of the last few months.
Watching Cooper is like watching a car crash to me; I don’t want to look, but I also can’t seem to look away. It’s like she’s a flame and I'm a particularly stupid moth. Like I’m a recovering addict and she’s the last hit of drugs around. She’s like a guilty pleasure. Like a beautiful disaster. Like a bag of salt and vinegar chips.
I don’t want to want her.
I don’t know what to do, with or without her.
I can’t let her go.
So that’s why I’m here again, on a Tuesday night, coming home from basketball practice, and stopping to watch the red-haired, stormy eyed girl of my nightmares buy a soda.
My eyes catch movement behind the windows of the gas station’s convenience store, and I see Cooper placing her can on the counter to check out.
Along with a bag of salt and vinegar chips.
I sink down in the seat of my car, letting my head fall back against the headrest as I shake my head.
“What the hell am I doing?” I ask myself.
I turn my head back towards the window just in time to see Cooper handing over cash to the boy behind the counter, giving him a huge smile. A smile that makes my heart thud painfully against my rib cage, because I’m not sure the last time I’ve seen her smile like that. It registers then that I know him. The boy she’s giving that smile to. It’s Doug Wells.
He’s on the football team; a starter, but not a star. He’s on the honor roll; one of the smarter kids in school and in one of the top spots in our class, but obviously not as high up as Cooper. He’s on student council; not a major officer position, but at least he’s involved. He’s a clean cut guy; tall frame, narrow waist, eyes that are always kind and not a hair out of place. He comes from a wholesome, well-rounded, All-American family; middle class, still-married parents, mom’s a teacher at our high school, dad owns our town’s auto shop, family dinners and church on Sundays. I’m pretty sure I overheard that he’s going to San Francisco State University in the fall; got some sort of scholarship that made his parents and teachers really proud.
That’s about the sum of what I personally know about Doug Wells, but it’s all I need to know to know that he’s the type of guy that could make Sara Cooper smile like that. The type of guy that couldkeepher smiling like that. The type of guy that I could never be for her. The type of guy that she wants, and is willing to take a chance on, because she knows she won’t be disappointed in the end. Doug wouldn’t drag her down. Doug wouldn’t have ever tried to change her.
That’s why girls like Cooper pick guys like Doug.
That’s why persistent and hardworking people like Cooper and Doug go on to live long, fulfilling lives taking the world by storm while the people like me who peaked in high school are left in their dust with the aftermath of us never having put the effort in to be anything more.
That’s the way it’s always been.
It’s about time I accept that.
