Handwritten ✓

02 | note

A MONTH AFTER MRS. ACKERMAN pulled me into her office for a second time — for which I prepared and decided I now loved Chemistry — Ursula Ahmad and I were locking lips behind the cafeteria.

A funny thing had happened among the cheerleaders this fall. Originally I was with Lacey Hosseini, who had been my hook-up buddy since before the summer. She was a junior, too, with long dark hair and a curvy waist. I think she wanted to be my girlfriend, but she never said a thing to my face.

Lacey would make hints about spending holidays together and carelessly, carefully mention her favourite flowers — which, unfortunately, went in one ear and out the other — but she never sat me down and asked me out point-blank. Nice and straightforward. I would have said yes, too, if she had just piped up about what she wanted.

Anyways, I was totally content to keep seeing Lacey outside of school, within the bounds of the fuck buddy relationship, when disaster struck the cheerleaders and Ursula confessed her feelings for me to her entire friend group. Following those exciting-to-everyone-but-me events, Lacey decided to be a good friend to Ursula and end things.

After waiting the respectable five day flirtationship mourning period, Ursula went out on a limb and asked me out, for which I rewarded her confidence with moi. All six-feet of moi. We were taking things physically fast and emotionally slow; just the way I liked it.

I heard all the information about feelings and drama and girl code second-hand anyways, from the other guys on the varsity team who had cheerleader girlfriends — cough, Jamie and Francesca — and were mandated to keep up with the gossip.

To me, it was a travesty that I even had to store this vapid incident in my head, but Jamie insisted I memorised the dynamics so as not to put him in an uncomfortable position — because Franny was friends with Lacey — whenever we went to football afterparties.

I'm serious. Jamie made a whole afternoon of it, claiming the whiteboard in Dad's study and drawing the whole social situation in erasable marker. It was like learning a football play, except Jamie, Lacey, Franny and Ursula were the players, and I was the ball, being bounced around the four of them.

According to Jamie, who smacked a ruler on the stick figure titled U, "Ursula claims to have been in love with you since sophomore year. Remember Kay's older brother's party last year?"

I thought back to the party at Killian Fergusson's house, when he, Jamie and I were the only sophomore boys lucky enough to attend. There were a bunch of sophomore girls around, creepily enough. "Yeah."

"Since then."

"Shit," I raised my eyebrows. That was a long time to be girl-blue balled. Blue boobed?

"So at that party, Ursula drunkenly blurted it out to Lacey," Jamie explained, shifting the ruler to the stick figure labelled L. "But Lacey told all the cheerleaders she didn't remember, and that's why she went ahead and hooked up with you. It's just recently come to our attention that she did remember!"

Then Jamie stopped and stared at me with an expression so scandalised, I almost decided to do a dramatic gasp to humour him. He actually thrived on drama, despite his fervent protests. But I wouldn't sink to his level, and he grumbled at my stony expression before continuing.

"Anyways, half of them think Ursula broke the girl code by asking out a dude who was somewhat taken by her friend. The other half think Lacey broke the girl code by not backing off the night of the party when she realised her friend liked you." Jamie drew a huge split down the middle of the whiteboard, pinning U and the ball — me — on one side of the divide, L, F on the other, with poor little J sliced through the centre.