Free Spontaneous by Aaron Starmer Page B

headphones were always on and her head was always buried in a tablet. And yet . . . and yet . . .
    She had a boyfriend. A
serious
boyfriend. Her consummate companion since ninth grade was Elliot Pressman, a fellow hacker, a fellow gamer, a fellow cosplayer. In other words, Cranberry was not gay. She was a lot of other things. She was black. She dyed her hair—pink being the latest and last incarnation. She was aggressively nerdy. But she was not gay.
    Elliot Pressman could certainly attest to that fact.
    When word got around that Cranberry was gone too, everyone turned to Elliot’s Tumblr to offer condolences. What we found there was a tribute to a girlfriend. Tender and, well, I should let it speak for itself:
    Cranberry, my love. While I was making love to you last night with the moonlight streaming in through the windows and caressing our naked torsos, and as the sweat from our bodies pooled up on the floor, and when our moans of pleasures shook the heavens, I knew our love was eternal and . . .
    Okay, that’s about enough of that. It goes on and on and you get the picture. Turns out Cranberry, bless her heart, was a wildcat in the sack, a lover for the ages. At least by Elliot’s estimation. Not that he had many points of reference, but there are worse ways to be remembered by your boyfriend. No wonder I was once jealous of the girl.
    That was a while ago, late spring of sophomore year. Tess and I were in chemistry. I was doing my best maintaining-my-B by gazing out the window at a gym class softball game. Cranberry and Elliot were in the outfield, but they weren’t exactly waiting for their call up to the big leagues. They were lying next to each other in the grass, holding their phones aloft. Their other hands were buried in their softball gloves, but since Elliot was a lefty, and Cranberry a righty, they could hold hands with the gloves. How very cute and hygienic.
    Ms. Schultz, our boxy and Botoxed gym teacher, must’ve had a romantic streak, or maybe she’d stopped giving a damn—rumor had it, she was perpetually on the verge of retirement—because she didn’t budge or blow her whistle when the couple ignored the pop fly that dropped a few feet from them. Greg Holder sprinted in, scooped the ball up, and fired it toward second base, but not before shouting something at the couple.
    â€œGet a room”?
    â€œEmail me that selfie”?
    â€œLong live your everlasting love”?
    I don’t know, because I couldn’t hear. But I could certainly feel the pangs of my insignificance as I sat there in a class that promised the world could be broken down into formulas.
    Okay, fine. Then what the hell was the formula for what these two lovebirds had?
    When the bell rang and broke me out of a daze of self-pity, I turned to Tess and said, “I would kill to have a boyfriend like Elliot Pressman.”
    â€œReally?” Tess said as she packed up her notebooks. “But he’s so . . . Elliot.”
    â€œSometimes all you need is an Elliot. A guy who’ll hold your hand with a softball glove while you update your status. A guy who won’t expect you to do things like talk to him or bathe.”
    â€œSo who’d you kill for your Elliot?”
    â€œCranberry, I guess.”
    â€œOh no. Not Cranberry. Cranberry is innocent. Cranberry is harmless.”
    â€œFor me to find happiness, Cranberry got to get got,” I said, and I held my hand out like I had a gun and tilted it sideways for the gangsta effect.
    Of course, our incredibly kind chem teacher, Mrs. Otieno, was standing behind me when I did it, and I turned around and witnessed this tolerant woman, hanging and shaking her head. Not in disgust, exactly. In exasperation.
    I felt like a total shit.
    I don’t know if Cranberry’s spontaneous combustion made a lot of people feel like total shits, but it certainly made them rethink things. Besides