Looking At Us

1. megan

The day I met Cris was the day my phone almost got run over by his truck. Before that, however, I was chasing Cody Spentz around the school parking lot. 

     ‘‘Dammit, Cody! Give me my phone!’’ I yelled, sprinting around the corner of the school as he raced across the road. ‘’I will seriously tell Mr. Jackson about this and you will be screwed for life!’’

     Cody stopped on the other side of the road and faced me. He was tall and tan and had recently adapted a buzz-cut/mohawk hairstyle. His eyes were cold coffee. His smirk told everyone that he was a troublemaker and he screwed girls in his spare time. 

     Cody said, very fluidly, ‘‘You want your phone? Come get it.’’ And then he slipped it down his jeans, right between his muscular thighs. 

     And so we were running again, down the road and through the cars in the parking lot. Partway through, I ran straight into Shain, my best friend. She gave me what I call her ‘supernatural’ look: wide, gray eyes and a raised chin so that you could see the connect-the-dots spiderweb of moles on her neck. 

     Without pausing, I said, ‘‘Cody has my phone. Down his pants.’’

     ‘’Oh, snap,’’ Shain replied. 

     I kept running. 

     I found Cody standing at the edge of the school parking lot, where the newborn couples came and made out in peace without getting embarrassed. Just to prove my point—a guy and a girl were walking away from us, their hands shoved in their pockets, teeth marks on the girl’s neck. Cody was observing the girl thoroughly. 

     I walked up to him, clutching the cramp in my side. ‘‘I want my phone back.’’

     ‘‘What’s the magic word?’’

     ‘‘Please,’’ I said. 

     Cody smirked. His eyes darted from my head to my toes once. He wet his lips ever so slightly, and he took a step closer to me. 

     ‘’Oh, God,’’ I said, suddenly realizing what he wanted. ‘‘God, no. Please, no, Cody.’’ 

     ‘‘You want it?’’ His white teeth flashed at me, and he moved even closer. ‘‘Get it yourself.’’ 

       I hated this boy. 

     I would not allow myself to become prey for Cody Spentz, for this asshole of ninth grade. I would not put my hand down his pants. I would not fall into his temptation. I would not have my photo pasted on the bathroom mirror with the word slut beside it. 

     No. 

     ‘‘You’re a dick.’’ I wanted to slam my knee into his crotch, but I would risk damaging my phone, so Cody got off lucky. 

     This didn’t seem to bother him. He grinned dejectedly and backed away from me, reaching into his jeans and pulling my phone out. I would have to wash it with disinfectant afterwards. 

     ‘‘Suit yourself,’’ Cody said coolly, and laid my phone on the pavement. I moved forward, about to grab it and run away from him, when a growling sound filled the air. I looked up and tensed: a huge red Chevy truck was about to crush my phone. 

     There are pros and cons to being me. The pros are that I have the best friend in the world, I suck at P.E. (it will get me out of becoming a sweaty soccer player or whatever), and my phone will get Wifi when nobody else can. The cons—well, sometimes I tend to do something stupid in order to rescue something (or someone—but that’s another story). Like throwing myself in front of a truck. 

     Brakes screamed. Dust threw up in my face. Heat and engine breath slapped my skin, strong and malodorous. 

     I heard Cody say, very quietly, ‘’Oh, damn.’’ 

     When I opened my eyes, the world was unfocused and muted. There was a rusted fender inches from my face. The Chevy logo crouched above it, regarding me like I was an obstacle preventing it from getting a new paint job—and it seriously needed one. 

     There was the sound of a door opening and closing. It was going to be an eleventh- or twelfth-grader coming to investigate, I was sure of it, and when I looked up, my fear doubled. 

     There was a girl in my grade named Cori Williams, and there are three simple things I could say about her: she’s beautiful, she’s dangerous, and she’s . . . intricate. She will take a boy’s heart and then twist it up with another girl’s. She will steal secrets and destroy a relationship, or she will build a new one out of it. She is an expert on love. 

     Three months ago, Cori and a guy named Cris got together. Cris was an eleventh-grader: tall, handsome, powerful. I saw them holding hands in the hallways, her sitting on his lap and stealing his food, him kissing her goodbye at her locker. The way their mouths slid against each other, raw and dedicated . . . it made my heart ache for someone to love me like that. 

     Two months after they got together, they broke up. Cori slapped him. She’d always said that his eyes were the best color of sepia; moments captured in his vision like photographs. 

     She had been right, because I was looking straight at them. 

     Cris stood at the edge of his battered Chevy, tall and elegant against a dilapidated hunk of metal. He stared down at me pensively, his eyebrows creased in recognition, his lips pursed in some kind of hidden memory. His hair was red and wild. I tried to remember his last name, but I couldn’t. 

     Hurriedly, I grabbed my phone and stood up. 

     ‘’Hi,’’ I said. 

     Cris nodded tensely. ‘’Hi,’’ he echoed. His voice was deep. 

     I tried again, hoping to sound more confident: ‘’Um. Sorry. I was just getting my phone. It was on the ground.’’ Damn, damn, damn. 

     Cris was still staring at me, though it wasn’t as thorough. His head was tilted to one side, and there was a smile trying to get onto his face. Possibly. 

     I jerked as cold fingers touched my waist; Cody had tried to snake his arm around me. I smacked it away, and the adrenaline reminded me why I was here in the first place: Cody had stolen my phone, and I was chasing him, and . . . why was Cris here, again? 

     Quickly, as though none of this had ever happened, Cris raised his eyebrows and turned away, back to his truck. He said, ‘‘Seeya.’’ 

     I took a few steps away from Cody, but I turned at the sound of Cris’s voice. 

     I said, ‘‘Seeya.’’ Just like him. 

     And for the second time that day, I ran.