Free Mothership by Martin Leicht, Isla Neal

Keats trying to say here?”
    Cole Archer has only been at Lower Merion for two months or so, but already he thinks he owns the place. Like, just because he has beautiful eyes and lips with exactly the right amount of pucker and, okay, every time he wears shorts I get goose bumps from looking at his Michelangelo-sculpted calves, that does not mean he’s all that, you know? God, talk about being full of yourself. The guy is a goon .
    “I don’t know,” Cole tells Mrs. Kwan. “Keats is way too moody for me.” The poem’s not even up on his lap-pad. He’s been watching epic fail vids of would-be martial artists for the past half hour. “I think he just likes to hear the sound of his own voice.”
    If I were the one to give this answer, it’d be Elvie in detention time for sure. But Cole’s hot, so he gets away with it. Even the teachers aren’t immune. It makes me want to upchuck, really. The one time he actually spoke to me was when my phys ed class was running laps past the boys warming up for varsity jai alai, and he asked me if I had any gum. Really. Because everyone keeps gum tabs in their gym shorts.
    When Mrs. Kwan finally turns her attention back to the nerd section of the classroom—the kids who actually have a chance at caring about bird poetry—there is a quiet psst! from my left. I look to the side, and see Britta McVicker holding out a vanilla frosted cupcake with a grin so toothy she couldbe the “after” shot in an orthodontist’s ad. But when she sees me looking at her, the grin turns quickly into a sneer. “Not for you , chunky,” she tells me. And really, I should probably feel flattered that she even deigned to acknowledge my presence. Britta is queen of the innies, and if you listened to them, you’d never know they went to school with twelve hundred other kids. She rolls her eyes at me with an exasperated “God,” only to flip the charm on again when Cole leans back to take the cupcake. “A sweet for my sweet,” she tells him.
    Oh, yeah—the final reason that Cole Archer is dumber than a sliced banana? He’s dating Britta McVicker. Talk about vomit in my mouth. If he can’t see that Britta McVicker is the spawn of Satan, he should be checked for functioning brain waves. But Britta and Cole were LM’s “it” couple almost the instant Cole arrived.
    “Thanks,” Cole says as he takes the cupcake. Then he sees me glaring at him and winks. “Hey, Elvs.”
    Elvs? For serious?
    “Douchetard,” I cough. Still, my heart skips a beat. Cole knows my name.
    Well, part of it.
    Cole raises an eyebrow before turning around and taking a massive bite out of the frosting while from my left Britta squeals with happiness. And they continue their bite-squeal-bite flirtation, all through Mrs. Kwan’s boring-ass lecture about symbolic birds and my general wonderment about how one might go about committing suicide with nothing but a lap-pad and a bottle of hand sanitizer, until Cole finally finishes the damn cupcake. That’s when the back of his neck—which, okay, yeah,I was staring at again—turns as purple as an overripe plum.
    I’m shifting my way forward in my seat—because I think he might be choking to death on cupcake crumbs, and I’m wondering if Britta could possibly get a life sentence for that—when I see it. Scrawled on the inside of the cupcake foil is a note from Britta.
     
    Want to do it in the handicapped bathroom after gym?
     
    Who said pod people can’t be romantic?
     
    “God, talk about a gag-fest,” I tell Ducky as we walk home from school that afternoon. “You should have seen it.”
    “I feel like I have,” Ducky replies. “You’ve told me the story in painstaking detail about, oh, nine hundred times now. You’ve painted me quite the mental picture.”
    I kick a pebble over in his direction. “Stop being so dramatic,” I say. “I didn’t tell you everything yet. I didn’t tell you about what kind of cup—”
    “Chocolate with vanilla frosting.”