The Six Rules of Maybe

Reilly Ogden said next to me as I walked into the cafeteria. Nicole had gotten to our table early, and I gestured to her, indicating the salad bar. I’d skipped making my lunch that morning, purposefully avoiding the kitchen. I’d heard Hayden down there, sipping coffee and reading the paper and telling Zeus that he didn’t know what the world was coming to.
    “Reilly,” I warned. He wore tight black jeans and a T-shirt that said Hang Ten! over a surfer cresting a wave. His eyes looked as big and wide and gawking as Mrs. Martinelli’s behind her glasses.
    “Just listen. All I’m asking is that you commit to me until the end of the summer. Three months. And if you’re not satisfied, it’s over.”
    I couldn’t help myself. I laughed.
    “You don’t lose a thing that way. It’s like a money-back guarantee.”
    “Reilly, no. I’ve told you a thousand times. You’re a great guy, but no.”
    Evan O’Donnell and Jake Tafferty came along then, cut right between me and Reilly in the lunch line. Their girlfriends, Melissa DeWhit and Casey Chow, joined them, sending Reilly farther and farther back. I felt a little bad for him, but not bad enough, and it was other people’s cruelty anyway, not mine. I put my money into the lunch lady’s bread dough hand and moved ahead with my tray.
    I reached for a pair of salad tongs just as Shy reached for the other. I looked up at him and he blushed red-fierce. And then he grabbed the tomato spoon just after me, and then the garbanzo one, and every other spoon just after I did. I looked at him again and he grinned a little, shrugged. He was playing with me, I realized. I smiled. Our eyes had a conversation.
    “See ya,” he said.
    When I got to the table, Nicole hit my arm with the back of her hand. “Did Shy just talk to you? I swear I saw his lips move.”
    “He said, ‘See ya.’” Jasmine scooted over to make room for me.
    “Are you kidding me? He talked to you? On his own? I’m so jealous.”
    “We really got to know each other,” I said.
    “I told you he was an intellectual,” Kiley said. She’d gotten over the breakup with Ben and was doing her Biology homework due after lunch.
    “God, he’s cute,” Nicole said. She watched Jesse leave; we both did. I didn’t want to call him that name anymore, Shy—he had his own name. He had a Coke under his arm, his salad in his hand. He had a book, too. Some kind of Roman history, I thought, by the look of the cover. I didn’t know where he went to eat. Maybe the track. Maybe the lawn that looked over the north waters of the strait.
    “What he said about politics and the economy was mind-blowing,” I said.
    “Classical fucking music, too,” Jasmine said. Her life was that cello.
    “He’s probably a science genius,” Kiley said. She was the science genius herself. She could do that homework with her eyes closed. She was pretty and smart but still managed to be mostly unnoticed by anyone but us and Ben, who was cute and smart and basically unnoticed, too.
    “Definitely well rounded,” Nicole said. No one mentioned the Roman history book. The actual details of him didn’t matter. “Did I tell you I saw him running all the way out by the ferry terminal with the cross country team? Mom and I were picking up my aunt Suzie. Dad’s sister? Mom figures it’ll piss off Dad to have her stay with us instead of him. Anyway, I got this picture when we were driving past.” She took out her phone, pressed the buttons with her thumb. She passed various ghostly images her camera had accidentally taken of the inside of her purse until she came to an image that she handed over for me to see. A blur of white and a blur of blue. “That’s his tank top. The car was moving.”
    “Nice. It really captures his true personality,” I said.
    Nicole put the phone back in her purse. “I can’t believe he talked to you.” She seemed almost mad. It made me a little mad back. Shame on him for not following the script of her imagination.
    “We’re getting married next month,” I said.
    “Ooh, bitch fight,” Jasmine said in her little tiny voice.
    *
    Mrs. Martinelli’s flowered stretch pants were pulled tight over her big rear end as she bent over her sprinkler, adjusting it on a new place on the lawn. She looked up when she saw me slam Derek’s door shut.
    “Scarlet! Wait right there.”
    Oh no. I stood at the edge of her grass, surveyed things. There were no new messages from Goth Girl, and there was no sign of