“Nick, quick, help, I’m about to die!” Fiona squealed.

Ah, triple drat. A real live ex-girlfriend and damsel in space-distress totally trumped fourteen-year-old boys, no matter how many of them there were. Nick dashed over to her and took over mission command. I hung my own coat on the rack and dragged myself to the boys’ booth.

But you know what? They all grinned at me in welcome, and Josh even scooted over to make room for me on the bench. At least I knew who my true friends were. Feeling grateful and loved, I sat down.

THPPPPTHPPPPTHPPPPT! I farted. Or so it seemed.

The boys died laughing. I pulled the whoopee cushion out from under me and flung it on the table, which only sent them into another paroxysm.

“Nick—–Krieger—is—behind—you,” Josh gasped between giggles. “He totally heard it over Galaga. Do you still want us to look without looking like we’re looking?” This sent them into yet another laughing fit.

“But don’t worry,” one of his friends said. “We’ll act like we think you’re hot.” They all snorted and dabbed at their eyes faux-girlishly with paper napkins from the holder. Then, as if on cue, they started their rhythmic heavy breathing, and I knew one of Josh’s raps was coming. The people in the booths around us turned to look, if they weren’t already staring at us outright because of the whoopee cushion.

Hayden C. O’Malley was your

Average girl

Thought she’d give the boarding, jibbing,

Riding a whirl

Thought she’d have some trouble kicking

Nick Krieger’s ass

But her secret weapon is she’s

Cooking with gas …

Not every one of Josh’s raps was a success, and this one trailed off to dissolve in a morass of laughter and fart noises. I laughed along with them, because it was funny, and because I was that much of a Loser.

But of course the whole time I was preoccupied, wondering whether Nick had gone home with Fiona yet. On the one hand, I hoped that the two of them got extra points and extra lives in the bonus round, and that they were sticking around for another hundred thousand points. On the other hand, Nick overhearing Josh’s rap would not be my shining moment.

“Do you think y’all could hold it down?” I finally asked the boys. “I appreciate your art, but there’s a difference between rapping about me on the slopes, and rapping about me in a restaurant where other people are trying to eat. The latter is very prepubescent.”

“Prepubescent!” Josh gasped. “Prepubescent!”

“I am totally pubescent,” one of his friends said.

Another said haughtily, “I will have you know that my mom and I are going to Aspen to shop for training bras this weekend.”

I rolled my eyes. “Later.” I slid off the bench and stood.

“Hey, we’re helping you go off the jump again tomorrow, right?” Josh asked, using the word helping very loosely.

“Yeah,” another boy said, “eleventh time’s the charm.”

I looked toward the Galaga machine. Fiona was still there, yet Nick was gone. Probably just to order her a drink. Ordinarily, I would have bounced all over the restaurant looking for him so I could flirt him out of Fiona’s pink-nailed grasp. But the whoopee cushion had taken the wind out of my sails.

As I walked through an open doorway decorated with broken skis and snowboards,

here he was again, sitting in another booth, handsome face lit softly by the dim overhead lamps and the Christmas lights outlining the ceiling. Colors danced in his dark hair as he laughed with Gavin and Davis and … Chloe and Liz.

Sure enough, Chloe and Liz had invited me here, Gavin and Davis had invited Nick, and they were all playing Cupid again. Even after the fiasco last night! But I knew for sure that either way, the couples were together, at least for tonight. Chloe and Gavin sat on one side of the booth, and I saw the backs of Liz and Davis on the other side. Nick had squeezed onto the end of the bench next to Gavin, which left only one place for me.

My feet felt like they had boots and bindings and two separate snowboards attached to them as I dragged myself closer and closer to the table of doom. Nick looked up at me. He didn’t sneer at me and turn away to make a joke about me to the table at large. He watched me coming, dragging my phantom snowboards across the room. I held his gaze. I knew he was about to humiliate me (again), but I would hold my head high while he did it. I slid onto the bench next to Davis, across the table from him.

“Hayden!” Chloe said. “Where’ve you been?”

I jerked my head in the direction of my brother. “Josh.”

Here it came. Nick offered another explanation with a smug grin. “Hayden’s having gastrointestinal issues.”

“You are?” Liz asked with real concern.

“Must be the tofu,” I muttered. When Liz continued to stare at me with wide eyes, I reached around Davis and patted her hand. “No, I’m not. Nick is kidding. Isn’t he hilarious?” I gave him a sickly smile.

He pointed at himself like, Who, me?

Conversation at the table went on without us. Gavin related the details of the trip to Japan his family was planning for next summer to visit relatives they hadn’t seen in years. Even if Liz and Chloe hadn’t completely made up with Davis and Gavin, it was so obvious they were couples, because they sat next to each other in the booth. I felt a flash of jealousy. Maybe it was just that the bet for Poseur tickets loomed over me, but I couldn’t shake the idea of all six of us triple-dating.

What if Nick and I were a real couple for once, out in the open? Nick and I would slide together onto the bench on one side of the booth, and all our friends would take it for granted. He’d been cruel to hint around at asking me out when he didn’t mean it, because now I couldn’t get it off my mind.

As if he knew what I was thinking, he startled me by pushing the big plate of community nachos in front of me. “No wonder you’re so skinny,” he said quietly. “Why aren’t you eating?”

“Hayden’s a vegetarian,” Liz called across the table, and suddenly it was community conversation.

“Oh yeah, I forgot.” Nick gave me a perplexed look, like he’d just found out I was a nun or a spy.

“How can you have gone to school with her for four years and not known that?” Liz challenged him. “Why do you think she’s the only person who brings her lunch on pepperoni pizza day at school?”

Davis could not get his brain around it. “Is it some Tennessee granola health club thing?”

“Just a granola health club thing,” I explained. “My family didn’t go vegetarian until right before we left Tennessee.” Luckily, I wasn’t the least bit self-conscious about being a vegetarian, because I knew it was good for me. If I’d been self-conscious, I might have begun to get uncomfortable right about then. With one short, unpainted fingernail, I traced a heart carved into the thick wooden table.

It was Gavin’s turn to look perplexed. “You’re from Tennessee?”

“Of course she’s from Tennessee,” Nick said. “Why do you think we always make fun of her accent?”

Gavin shrugged. “Because it’s there?”

Davis laughed and choked on his water. Liz pounded him on the back while Chloe commented, “Somebody’s being made fun of and you come running, no matter who or why, right?”

Gavin and Davis simultaneously said, “Right.”

“But I forgot you were a vegetarian,” Nick repeated to me. “I offered you nachos exactly like that in seventh grade, at this very table. You said you were a vegetarian and I nearly died of embarrassment for offering you meat.”

“And meat products,” Gavin couldn’t help chiming in.

But after Gavin’s comment, conversation stopped, and everyone stared at Nick. Nick? Dying of embarrassment?

He must have realized he’d blown his suave cover, because his face turned bright red.

Nick? Turning red?

“Excuse me,” I said, sliding off the bench. “I’m going to the ladies’ room.” I was a peeless goddess no longer. That was so seventh grade. Now I was in eleventh grade, and I peed. Though of course I didn’t need to at the moment. I needed to confer with my girlfriends.

“Me, too!” Chloe and Liz both said. The boys stood to let them out. Gavin and Davis grumbled about girls always having to go to the bathroom together. Nick never took his eyes off me. He knew my need to pee was a total put-on.

jib

jib

(jib) v. 1. to board around and over obstacles 2. such as Nick

Without waiting for the girls, I rushed between the booths and down a dark hall to the tiny women’s bathroom, which was wallpapered with women’s wipeouts. Big photographs cut out of the paper, pictures cut from magazines, and snapshots showed women on skis (and a few more recent shots of women on snowboards) taking hard spills and kicking up snow. Usually I found the bathroom highly amusing. Today, as soon as I opened the door, I stopped short. The walls were sending me a message.

But I didn’t stand there in awe for long, because Chloe burst through the door behind me. I hollered at her, “You’re trying to set me up with Nick again!”

“We are not,” Chloe insisted, moving over to let Liz through the door. “We thought about what you said last night. You’re right. We don’t want to throw away what we have with Gavin and Davis. So we thought we’d meet them here and reconcile. Without giving up those Poseur tickets.”

I folded my arms. “And you just happened to forget about that when you invited me, too? And Gavin and Davis just happened to forget they were meeting you when they invited Nick?”

Chloe tossed her blond hair and said, “Yes.”

“No,” Liz sighed, “we are trying to set you and Nick up.”

Chloe glared at Liz. “Remind me never to embezzle any funds with you. The least bit of pressure and you crack!”

“It’s not right to hide it from her.” Liz turned to me. “I definitely have misgivings about you getting together with Nick after that fire-crotch business in the lunchroom on Thursday.”

“Ah, update,” I said, turning a bit red myself. “He says I was wrong about that. I didn’t believe him at the time, but …” Something in Nick’s dreamy expression when he’d mentioned the seventh grade just now had made me wonder. Was it possible that he had defended me against Everett Walsh? It was all sort of medieval and chivalrous and romantic if I didn’t think too hard about it.

Liz nodded. “See, we may have been underestimating Nick. I feel responsible.” She leaned back against the wall. Her shoulders just covered an enlargement of a girl snowboarder in the midst of a spectacular face-plant. “Gavin and every other boy in school ribbing Nick about you … that all started in seventh grade. Remember that awful night at the Will Smith movie, right after you’d moved here?”

“Vaguely.” I rubbed my thumb across two chicks crashing into each other on skis as if I were getting bored with this convo.

“I remember,” Chloe called out. “I was trying to balance a couple of boyfriends at once. I had a lot to learn about cheating.”

Liz stared blankly at Chloe for a moment, then turned back to me.

“Will Smith movie,” I reminded her.

Liz shook her curls. “Right. I’ve always regretted telling you that Nick and Gavin had a bet about you. Nick had asked everyone not to tell you. Nobody wanted to go against what Nick said. But I couldn’t leave you out there alone, not knowing.” She shifted uncomfortably against the wall, like the snowboard in the picture was jabbing her between the shoulder blades. “I’ve been the butt of jokes before.”

I looked from Liz to Chloe and back to Liz. “Then why do you regret telling me?”

“I’m not sure anymore that he meant it as a joke,” Liz said.

“How else could he have meant it?” I shrieked. I looked to Chloe for help in talking Liz out of this insanity. But Chloe just poofed up her blond hair in the mirror, almost as if she agreed with Liz about this.

Liz shrugged. “I know Nick has a funny way of showing it, but I honestly think he’s got it bad for you. Chloe thinks so, too.”

Chloe nodded her affirmation. “So do Gavin and Davis. Seventh grade to eleventh grade—that’s a long time to go out of your way to be mean to somebody you can’t stand.”

I didn’t say it, but surely Liz and Chloe felt what I felt: a vibration shaking the bathroom and speeding up my heart rate at the thought that Nick really liked me. I could not fall for this and get hurt again, but Nick was so tempting. I wished it were true.

Feeling dizzy, I backed against the wall beside Liz for support. “This is why I wanted to talk to you chicks in here. I’m sure that, against my instructions, you told Davis and Gavin to tell Nick that I didn’t know his parents were separated, right?”

They eyed each other and nodded.

“But has he apologized for calling me a bitch? No. He came to my mother’s yoga class just now, and we argued about that. Then we argued about the fire-crotch business. Now he’s sitting across from me at a booth in Mile-High Pie, waxing poetic about the seventh grade. He’s basically followed me around all day and poked at me, without an apology in sight.” I whacked the back of my head on the pictures of snowboarders in mid-fall.

Liz gazed at me, wide-eyed and awestruck. “Wow. He’s definitely smitten. He wants to apologize, but he doesn’t know how to approach you because you’re mad, which makes him madder and madder.”