Page 10

*ross geller life*

“C AN YOU STIR THE NOODLES while I go change?”

“Sure.” I grabbed the long fork and stirred the spaghetti while I heard my mom run up the stairs to shed her scrubs and don the pajama pants she put on after she got home every day.

She used to come home from work and sit outside with Nana Marie, or take us out for pizza, or go for a walk around the neighborhood with some of the other moms.

But since Nana died, it was straight from work clothes to sleep clothes—every night.

She’d made my favorite—spaghetti and meatballs—to celebrate the first day of school, and it was, like, the one good thing that had happened to me all day.

Noah had already gone out to play basketball, and that made me extraordinarily happy. My brother wasn’t the worst—there were moments when I actually liked him—but tonight I just wanted to chill with my mom.

Because when it was only the two of us for dinner, we had a tradition. We ate dinner on the kitchen stools and rewatched episodes of Friends (her favorite show) that we’d seen hundreds of times. Something about it felt comforting, the mindless relaxation of letting everything go and watching TV, and I needed it that night.

Especially when (hopefully) my mom’s single days were numbered.

My phone buzzed in my pocket, and when I pulled it out, I saw a message from Allie.

Allie

I just did two backflips and a toe touch. What is this life??

Kennedy

I’M MAKING AN UNBOXING VIDEO BECAUSE THE UPS GUY FILLED MY PORCH WITH STUFF. FREE STUFF, FOR ME, BECAUSE OF GAMING. I SECOND THE WHAT IS THIS LIFE COMMENT.

What on earth was I supposed to add to this conversation? Our group chats were my favorite, our silly, endless discussions of nothing, but I literally had nothing to contribute.

I texted: I am stirring spaghetti. What is THIS life??

Their responses were immediate.

And made me feel better.

Allie

BE PATIENT, Em. You were the one who told us it could take a while before our… um, lives started randomly changing for no explainable reason.

Kennedy

IT’S TRUE!!! You were the expert out of the three of us, so OF COURSE your random inexplicable life changes will happen for no good reason if ours did .

I texted: That’s what I thought, too, but I’m starting to wonder.

“Here—let me drain.” My mom strode into the kitchen, took the pot off the stove, and drained the noodles while I sat down at the counter. “Tell me about the first day.”

“Eh,” I said, putting my phone away. I didn’t want her to know anything about the wishes. She’d always told Nana not to talk about the lore. “It was fine.”

“Aside from getting your schnoz smashed by a football, right?”

“Yeah, aside from that.” I shook my head and said, “I just can’t stand Jackson.”

“Really?” She glanced over as she rinsed the pasta. “I think he seems nice.”

“I mean, he’s fine, I guess,” I said. “But it seems like every time he’s around, things get messed up for me. He’s bad luck.”

“Did something happen other than the nose-bloodying?”

I shrugged since I couldn’t tell her about the wishes. “I mean, there was the time I got hit with a hot dog at the block party, and the time he knocked over my stuff with a rock, but really, it’s a vibe I get from him.”

“Ah, a vibe.”

“So, how was your day?” I asked, wishing she’d somehow shock me with a meet-cute. “Anything thrilling happen at the hospital?”

She drizzled oil over the noodles. “I work in the ER, kid—everything is thrilling.”

“Fair,” I said. “But, like, did you meet anybody interesting? Enjoy any part of your day more than usual?”

“Um, I met a kid named Ike who bruised his cheekbone by dropping an iPad on his face, so he was interesting, and I enjoyed coming home.” She dished up two plates, brought them over to the counter, and climbed on her stool. “Ooh—I love this episode. The Moist Maker is a classic.”

I sighed and wished she’d found something better than Ike.

We started eating, and it was a great episode, the one where someone stole Ross’s sandwich from the refrigerator at work. My mom and I laughed like we’d never seen it before as we wolfed down our spaghetti and meatballs.

It was so good, and the taste of Nana’s sauce reminded me of Sundays, when she used to spend all day on the meatballs.

But when Ross called his sandwich “the only good thing going on in my life,” I felt a little overwhelmed by my own patheticness.

Because at that very moment, Allie was practicing her amazing backflips for cheerleading practice. And a few houses down from her, Kennedy was making an unboxing video for her hundreds of thousands of YouTube subscribers.

But here, in my house, I was shoveling comfort food into my mouth and watching television with my mother, who sighed at least once an hour like she was dreaming of happier times.

I just ate the only good thing going on in my life.

I was getting a second plate of spaghetti when the doorbell rang.

“Noah?” my mom asked with a smile, because my brother always forgot to take his key to practice and had to ring the doorbell when he got home.

“Who else?” I said, rolling my eyes before going to the door.

But when I pulled it open, my brother wasn’t the person standing on the porch.

No, it was Jackson Matthews.

I opened the screen door and said, “Noah’s shooting hoops.”

“Why are you telling me this?” he asked, looking confused.

“Aren’t you looking for my brother?”

“ No ,” he said, almost as if he was annoyed by my assumption. “I came for the shirt.”

“The shirt?”

His mouth slid into a sarcastic grin. “The ugly shirt you had to wear all day.”

“Wait,” I said, shocked to my core. Was he serious? “You’re here for the shirt and you’re really going to wear it? To school ?”

He put his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and shrugged. “I said I would, didn’t I?”

I didn’t know what to say. Like, I literally had no idea how to respond to that.

He was really going to wear the ugly shirt because he felt bad about throwing the ball at my face?

“So, like, are you going to stare at me or are you going to get the shirt?”

“Oh,” I said, snapping out of it. “Yeah—one sec.”

I left him on the porch and went into the laundry room, where I’d dropped the shirt the second I got home. I picked it up and quickly sniffed it, and when I returned to the front door, folding the shirt as I walked, I was half surprised to see he was still standing there.

I guess part of me had assumed he’d change his mind and disappear.

“Here you go,” I said, holding out the shirt.

“Thanks,” he replied, grabbing it, the half-smile on his face telling me he knew he’d surprised me.

I started to close the door, then heard myself blurt, “What’s with the hat?”

His smile disappeared. “My head gets cold.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You sure? Because it looks like you’re literally sweating right now.”

He swallowed. “Of course I’m sure. Thanks for the shirt.”

And he turned and walked away, his long limbs loose and easy as he skipped down the steps and headed in the direction of his house.

“Why is Jackson always wearing a hat? It’s, like, eighty degrees outside,” my mom said, walking over and standing beside me in the doorway.

“He’s a little weird, I think,” I said, clueless as to what I thought about him.

Because he still had that “gotcha” gleam in his blue eyes, and I still blamed him for the hiccup in my wishes, but why had he come over for the shirt? He couldn’t actually feel bad about beaning me in the face, could he?

It was impossible to believe, but then he wore the ridiculous shirt the next day.

I was headed into my first hour class when the fluorescence of the T-shirt caught my eye. I looked down the hallway and there he was, walking with two of his friends, in the ugly shirt I’d given him the night before, with that stupid hat on his head. As if hearing my thoughts, he glanced over, but instead of making a big deal of it, he simply raised one eyebrow as if to say, What do you think?

I pursed my lips and shrugged.

Which made him grin.

It was a little confusing, because I truly didn’t know what to make of Jackson when he wasn’t causing bad luck for me.

First he wore the ugly T-shirt, then we gave him rides to early band on Thursday and Friday, and it wasn’t too terrible, mostly because he didn’t talk except to quietly make jokes about my mom’s taste in music.

Jokes that were spot-on and made me laugh in spite of myself.

He was also quiet in science, which was much appreciated as I tried figuring out the best way to make Evan notice I was no longer in possession of a swollen beak (and also that I was exactly the girl he’d always dreamed of).

Honestly, though, the thing I appreciated most about Jackson, truly, was the quiet fart sounds he made with his saxophone every time Mr. Keiser yelled at one of the flutes on the other side of the band room.

Keiser couldn’t hear him, but my section (French horns)—and the saxes—definitely could.

It made me want to giggle so badly.

I couldn’t, of course, because there was something about him that still felt sus, but a tiny part of me wondered if maybe he wasn’t going to be the cause of my demise.

It was possible that he wasn’t so awful (aside from that hat).

It was also very possible that the reason I was hating him less was because my friends were ditching me more. With each passing day they became more fabulous, making me hyperaware of how stuck in un fabulous I was.

Allie was busy every day, practicing routines with the other girls who were trying out for cheerleading. I nearly had a heart attack when she showed Kennedy and me one of the dances, because she was more than just graceful.

She was talented .

And aside from that, she was working her butt off to get better.

Instead of accepting the reality that she was now a graceful nymph, she spent every waking moment practicing. She practiced jumps, practiced cheers, practiced choreography. Allie was never not thinking about cheerleading.

I wanted to be annoyed with her, because she was doing all these exciting things with all these exciting people and I was a thousand percent left out, but how could I when it was making her so happy?

And Kennedy seemed to be more popular than Allie, if that was even possible. Every dude in the school was apparently a subscriber who watched her gaming streams. She was on the receiving end of name shouts everywhere she went.

“Hey, Holford!”

“Nice job last night, Ken!”

It was like everyone in the school was suddenly aware of how hilarious Kennedy was and wanted to be her friend. The weird things she’d always done—and had been mocked for—were now considered on-brand for her and funny.

So I was stuck in this weird place when it came to my friends. At school, things were normal among us, but I was invisible to everyone else in the world. Outside of school, they were too busy with their amazing new activities to have time to do things like ramble endlessly in the group chat or come over to my house to do nothing for hours on end.

Which was what we’d always done.

Together.

So what was I supposed to do, now that it was growing more obvious by the hour that my wishes weren’t coming?