A Week of Mondays (5 page)

Owen snatches up a piece of banana bread. “Great. We'll take it.” He hands her a dollar and unwraps the bread, stuffing a piece into my mouth.

“Oweh,” I complain as I chew and swallow. “I can feed myself, thank you very much.”

He hands me the bread and I take another small bite. I admit I do feel better with something in my stomach. As we walk across the hallway to the gym, I peer hesitantly through the open doors. The bleachers are almost full. I can feel the banana bread rising back up in my throat.

“I can't do this,” I tell Owen, shoving the bread back into his hand. “I'm gonna throw up.”

A moment later, I feel a hand on my arm. “There you are!” Rhiannon says in her usual clipped, imperious voice. “I've been looking
everywhere
for you.” She drags me into the center of the gym, and I turn back to see Owen taking a seat in the front row of the bleachers.

“Did you practice your speech?” she asks.

I falter and then ultimately decide that with Rhiannon, it's easier if I just lie. “Yup.”

We position ourselves next to the other candidates and I scan the crowd for a friendly face.

Why does everyone look like they're scowling at me?

My gaze lands on Tristan. He gives me an encouraging smile and I feel my stomach settle.

Talk to him,
I tell myself.
Give the speech to
him
. Forget about every other face in this room.

“Calm down, everyone!” Principal Yates, a plump woman with an unfortunate unibrow, booms over the speaker system. “Calm down.”

A hush falls over the room. It's punctuated by sporadic coughs and the sound of students fidgeting on the uncomfortable wooden bleachers.

“We're excited for this year's class election speeches!” Principal Yates says, with such fervor it's clear she's expecting a burst of raucous applause to follow, but it's like crickets chirping out there.

She clears her throat. “We'll hear a short speech from each vice presidential and presidential candidate, starting with the freshmen and ending with the seniors.”

I find Tristan in the audience again, but he's not looking at me. He's staring down at his phone. So I glance at Owen in the front row. When I catch his gaze, I notice he looks panicked. His eyes are open much wider than usual and he's staring slack-jawed back at me.

I make a “What?” gesture with my hands. He responds by slowly pointing at his mouth.

Oh crap, do I have something stuck in my teeth?

Trying to be stealthy, I reach up and touch my lips, hoping to subtly rub my finger against my gums. But as soon as my hand makes contact with my mouth, I understand what Owen is trying to tell me.

I don't know how I didn't feel it coming on. The numbness. The tingles. The pressure of the skin filling with excess blood.

My lips. They're swelling.

Horrified, I look to Owen, who peers down at the half-eaten banana bread sitting in his lap, then back at me. He mouths one word. I don't need to read lips to understand. It's the same word that's flashing in my mind like a NORAD alarm.

ALMONDS.

 

I Fall to Pieces

There are really only two possible explanations here:

1) Daphne lied to my face about the almonds in order to see me humiliated in front of the entire school.

2) Daphne didn't
know
about the almonds.

As I stand in front of an entire gym of restless teenagers and try to block out the sounds of the final sophomore candidate's speech, I scan the crowd for Daphne. Maybe I can deduce her motives (or lack thereof) by the smug (or clueless) expression on her face, but I can't seem to find her. Instead, my eyes fall back on Owen, who's pantomiming dramatically to get my attention. I squint, trying to decipher his movements. But, to be honest, they have more resemblance to some interpretive modern dance than actual sign language.

He's either miming that his head is on fire or he's asking me what on earth I'm going to do.

I reach up to touch my lips, hoping to gauge the severity of the reaction. Maybe there was only a trace of almonds. Maybe I can get my speech over with before my lips turn into full-blown whoopie pies.

But as soon as my fingers brush against the taut, swollen skin, I know I'm in trouble. I can definitely feel my lips on my fingers but I can't feel my
fingers
on my lips.

There's a jab at my arm and Rhiannon is looking at me with bug eyes, as if to say “What's the matter with you?”

“You're up,” she hisses.

What?

I incline my head toward hers. “I can't do this,” I try to whisper, but the words are garbled and clumsy.

Does she not see my lips? Does she not get how disastrous this is going to be?

She gives me a little shove. “Go.”

As I slowly approach the microphone stand, I lock eyes with Owen once more. From the look on his face, I realize he can't believe I'm going through with this.

That makes two of us.

A snicker breaks out among the students. No doubt someone has noticed my inflated lips and is spreading the word swiftly.

I clasp my index cards in my hand and step up to the microphone.

Just keep it brief. Introduce yourself. Read some of the buzz words from the cards and then take cover.

I glance down at Rhiannon's perfect girly handwriting. The ink seems to be running, like someone spilled water on it.

Are my eyes swelling, too?

“Hello,” I say into the microphone. I can hear the amplification through the gym's speaker system. The word comes ricocheting back at me a split second later like a distorted boomerang. But it doesn't sound like “hello,” it sounds like “he-wo.”

The snickers instantly turn to giggles.

I take a deep breath. “My name is Ellison Sparks and I'm running for junior class vice president.”

I cringe, waiting to hear what I really sound like. I only catch the tail end of the sentence.
Vife pwesheden.

This is it. This is the end. I always wondered how I was going to die. And silly me, I thought it would be something epic and tragically romantic. Like sharing a vial of poison with my star-crossed lover. I never thought it would end like this.

Metaphorically stoned by my peers.

Murdered by my own kin.

I rush through the rest of the speech as fast as I can, trying to focus on moving my thick, dragging lips while at the same time attempting to block out the echo of my voice reverberating back at me.

The giggles have escalated to full-blown laughter now. I can feel Principal Yates's muscular arms flapping somewhere behind me, trying to silence the growing unrest with wide sweeps of her hands, but it isn't working.

I peer up at Tristan, hoping he'll pass on some of that confidence he seems to possess so easily. He catches my eye and then looks away. That's when it hits me.

I'm not just embarrassing myself. I'm embarrassing
him.

All those girls who doubted his sanity when he started dating me—who still doubt it—were right. What is he doing with me? I can't even read a few words off an index card without making a fool of myself.

At least he's not laughing like everyone else.

At least there's that.

“Thank you for your attention and please vote for Marshall/Sparks for your junior class president and vice president.”

I stuff the index cards back in my pocket and run from the gym. I don't wait for applause. I know there won't be any. But the laughter follows me down the hall.

 

Who's Bending Down to Give Me a Rainbow?

1:39 p.m.

I don't see any reason why I can't stay in this bathroom for the rest of the day. It's got everything I need, really. A toilet. A sink. Plenty of light from the window above the last stall. It's like my own little apartment inside the school. There
is
the issue of food, but after what happened back there with the banana bread, I'm fairly certain I'm off food for a while.

I won't be able to vote. That's one downside to hiding out in here. Students will be casting their ballots when they get back to their homeroom classes. But I don't think it really matters. After that debacle, there's no way Rhiannon and I are winning this thing.

I pull a paper towel from the dispenser and wipe the remnant tears from my eyes and then blow my stuffed-up nose.

I've now cried twice in one day.

I'm on a roll.

I toss the towel in the trash and stare at my reflection in the mirror for a long hard minute. My lips are still absurdly enormous. I contort them this way and that, puckering them like a fish and flapping them like a horse. Anything I can do to try to encourage the blood to flow back out. I guess I should be grateful. I could have been born with a
deadly
nut allergy. I could be in an ambulance right now on my way to the hospital.

I really do look like a cartoon character. And here I thought guys
liked
girls with big lips. Maybe just not
this
big.

I purse my lips in the mirror, giving my best sultry bedroom eyes. “Well, hello there,” I say breathily to my reflection. “Come here often? What's that? You think I'm sexy?” I make a kissing sound and then quickly wipe the drool that dribbles out as a result.

I lean forward, pretending to give the stranger in the mirror a big, slobbery, swollen kiss. But my romantic moment is cut short when I hear footsteps outside the bathroom door.

Is the assembly over already?

Panicked, I glance into one of the stalls, searching desperately for help. The porcelain toilet stares unsupportively back at me, as if to say “So what's your brilliant plan now, genius?”

Since I don't live in a
Harry Potter
movie, I suppose
in
is out of the question. And that means there's really no place left to go but up. Cringing, I climb onto the questionably clean seat, perching on my tiptoes along the rim and bending myself awkwardly into a crouch.

Classy, Ellie. Really, really classy.

I silence my thoughts with a grit of my teeth. Right now I just have to concentrate on not falling in. This isn't as easy as they make it look in the movies.

The door opens and someone walks in. I hold my breath. The footsteps pause for a moment, then shuffle hesitantly before pausing again.

What is this girl doing?
Is she checking each individual stall for the cleanest one? Get on with it already! This is a public high school. There
are
no clean stalls!

I bite my tongue against the slight quiver in my upper legs. How much longer can I realistically keep this up? But it's not like I can come down now, because then whoever's in here will know that I've been squatting atop a toilet seat.

“Ellie? Are you in here?”

I blink in surprise at the sound of the distinctly
male
voice. “Owen?”

“What are you doing?”

I hop down from the toilet seat, my thighs screaming with relief, and open the stall. There's Owen, all gangly six-foot-one of him, standing in the middle of the girls' bathroom. I remember the summer that he sprouted. It was when we were counselors in training at Camp Awahili. I didn't notice the growth spurt because I was with him every day, but when his parents came to pick him up at the end of the summer his mother nearly fainted when she saw him.

“What are you doing in here?” I ask.

“Looking for you,” he says, as though it's obvious.

I awkwardly massage my thighs as I hobble out of the stall.

“Hiding out in the bathroom?” He raises an eyebrow. “A little cliché, isn't it?”

I run the faucet and scrub my hands. “It's only cliché because there's nowhere else to hide in a high school.”

“Janitor's closet, theater dressing rooms, that weird little patch of trees behind the track.”

I pull a paper towel from the dispenser. “You've spent way too much time thinking about this.”

“So,” he begins, changing the subject. “I looked up the most popular recipe for banana bread on my phone.”

“And?”

He cringes. “And it has almond
extract
in it.”

I slump. “Do you think she did it on purpose?”

“Put almond extract in her banana bread on the off chance that Ellison Sparks comes to buy something from the cheerleader bake sale right before her election speech? Now you're sounding like a paranoid politician.”

I slap his arm. “No, I mean, do you think she deliberately
lied
to me about there being almonds in the bread?”

“Honestly? No. I think she probably didn't know.”

I sigh. He might be right.

“Anyway”—he pulls a small pill from his back pocket—“I got this in the nurse's office. Benadryl. It'll help with the swelling.”

Gratefully I lunge for the capsule, popping it in my mouth and swallowing it dry. “Thank you!” I croak.

“I know what you need,” he says, pulling my phone from the back pocket of my jeans. A few seconds and several swipes later, the catchy opening bass solo of “Windy” by The Association funnels out of the speaker.

He's accessed my “Bubble Yum” playlist, consisting of all the bounciest pop songs of the sixties.

The gesture is sweet, and honestly, watching Owen jump around the girls' bathroom singing
“Who's peeking out from under a stairway”
is
rather comical, but I'm far too depressed to even crack a smile.

I take the phone back from him, turn off the song mid-chorus, and return it to my pocket. “Thanks, Owen, but I'm not in the mood.”

“That's the whole point of the ‘Bubble Yum' playlist,” Owen argues. “To
change
your mood! You said so yourself.”