Free Thwonk by Joan Bauer

andstood back satisfied. She had a date. I’d never make the dance. I was so lame, I couldn’t even get a guy to fall in love with me with a poisoned arrow. Nina Bloomfeld came by, shaken. She had just seen Eddie Royce, her rotten ex-boyfriend, with another girl. I motioned her to sit down. I patted her hand. I’d been there a hundred times.
    She beat her fist in the air. “He cheated on me! He humiliated me! Who he dates shouldn’t bother me! I should be celebrating that he’s out of my life! Why, A.J., does it have to be so hard?”
    I said I didn’t know, but I knew how much it hurt. I had no idea how love even survived.
    “Does it get better, A.J.? Does time heal?”
    “Yes,” I lied.
    Nina nodded, lowered her head, and shuffled off. I leaned forward in despair. My parents were coming home tonight all lovey dovey, probably, from their weekend. They would ask how I was.
    “Just ducky,” I’d say.
    Unloved.
    Massively unappreciated.
    “
Hey, A.J.!
”
    I looked up.
    “Over here!”
    I looked up at the person who was waving at me with great emotion. I rubbed my eyes as he came closer. It couldn’t be, but it
was.
    Peter Terris was running toward me!
    My sinuses clogged with ecstasy. He was wearing sandy pants and a baby-blue sweater and he looked like a recruiting poster for Hunks from Heaven.
    “How’s it going?” he asked, smiling big and wide.
    I shook off the cobwebs of despair. “Not bad…” I was breathing through my mouth.
    He nodded and looked around. “So…” he said, grinning.
    “So…,” I said, waiting.
    “I was just thinking that…” He coughed.
    Yes?
    “Uh, it’s kind of surprising, isn’t it, A.J., that we’ve never gotten…” He stopped here and looked embarrassed.
    I sat ramrod straight. Gotten
what
? Engaged, married…
    “Gotten
together
,” Peter said. “You know…”
    I certainly did.
    I crossed my leg nonchalantly and tried not to hyperventilate.
    “Would you like to do that sometime—go out?”
    I felt that answering by leaping into his arms would have been forward, so I said, “Sure,” nice and casual and sat on my hands (they were shaking). I crossed my other leg, which had fallen asleep and now dangled from my thigh like a thick dead weight.
    “Could I have your number?” he asked.
    Could he?
    Peter held out his English Lit textbook and a Bic and said to write it on the inside. I opened the book just as cool as could be. There were lots of phone numbers written there. My mind stopped.
    “Your number,” he said again.
    I wrote 555; the pen went dry. I scratched it up and down to get the blasted ink moving, because Bic pens were never supposed to fail. Even if you forgot to take them out of your jeans and they ruined every last piece of decent clothing you had in the dryer, they went right on writing. Peter looked through his pocket. “I don’t have another one,” he said.
    I tore open my purse, dug through Kleenex, anti-histamine, nose spray, breath mints…no pen.
    Peter looked down and cleared his throat as Julia Hart walked toward us, scowling.
    “Just tell me,” Peter said anxiously. “I’ll remember.”
    “Five five five…,” I began.
    “Yeah…?”
    “Five five five…” I blanked. I couldn’t remember my own phone number! I knew it when I was in kindergarten; they wouldn’t let you go home unless you did. Myra Tanninger couldn’t remember hers and had it pinned to the inside of her coat in complete humiliation. I stood there like a massive stiff as Julia Hart walked faster and faster to claim what was unrightfully hers!
    “Five five five,” said a trusted voice behind me, “four two eight six.” It was Trish Beckman, Best Friend in the Epic Pinch. I turned to her gratefully.
    “I’ll call you tonight,” Peter said quietly, and walked quickly to Julia’s curvaceous side.
    He steered Julia past Big Ben, down the hall, past Mr. Zeid’s room…
    Trish turned to me, her mouth agape. “He approached you, A.J., in the presence