Pretty Little Things. Jilliane Hoffman

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      When the last bell rang on Friday afternoon, Sawgrass Middle exploded like an overfilled cake pan in a hot oven. A thousand bodies simultaneously poured out every door, scrambling for a school bus or the car rider pick-up line, hurrying to unlock bikes or meet up with friends for the walk home. Homework, tests and projects were three long days off. For a half-hour, deafening chaos ruled the crowded schoolyard.

      And then it was over.

      Perched on her tippy toes atop the hand dryer in the girls’ bathroom, Lainey watched out the tiny crank window as the last of the packed yellow buses pulled out of the roundabout, and the crazed chatter of fifty or so screaming voices slowly faded away. Crumpled pieces of paper and empty snack bags dotted the deserted schoolyard, rolling like tumbleweeds across the parking lot and football field. There were no after-school activities, club meets or conferences on Fridays at Sawgrass – even the teachers left when the last bell sounded. By now, the halls were as lifeless as the parking lot.

      Lainey exhaled the breath she’d seemingly been holding all day – all week actually – and climbed down from the dryer, grabbing her book bag from the handicap stall, where she’d hidden out since the bell rang. With her bus long gone, she was now one step closer to going through with this. She checked her cell – it was 4:10. She had time, but not too much, considering she still had to put on make-up, get dressed and catch the 5:10 bus up on Sample Road that would take her over to Coral Springs High. Then she had to find the baseball field parking lot. Not too much time was good, she told herself, as her stomach started to flip-flop again. She didn’t want any downtime to think about what she was doing or why she shouldn’t be doing it, because she knew that she’d probably chicken out. That was one reason why she hadn’t told a soul about meeting Zach tonight. Not even Molly. Because she didn’t want anyone talking her out of it. The other was more of a personal safety net. If, God forbid, Zach didn’t show up – if, say, he stood her up – well, then no one would ever have to know about that either and she wouldn’t have to feel like such a total loser for the rest of her life every time she got with her friends. ‘Remember Lainey’s first date? Not!’

      She shook the voices out of her head. She’d come this far and she wasn’t turning back. Just wait till she told everyone about her date with her football player boyfriend. That he took her to the movies. And dinner! And he didn’t just have a car – he had a BMW! Jeesh! She’d have to figure out a way to get him to take a picture with her with the car on her cell just so she could show everyone, she thought, as she changed into Liza’s prized jeans and a cute Abercrombie T-shirt. She’d wear her sneakers for the walk to the bus stop, then change into Liza’s BCBG booties when she finally got to the high school. She dumped the plastic sandwich bag full of makeup that she’d pilfered from Liza’s dresser into the sink next to hers. If her sister knew she’d raided both her closet and her drawers she’d go postal, so everything had to be back in its proper place by midnight, which was when Liza got off work at the bowling alley. She picked through the pile of compacts and lipsticks, before settling on a brown and green eye-shadow palette. She hesitated for a moment, swirling a finger over the shimmery powders. Besides Halloween and the occasional lip-gloss, Lainey had never really put on makeup before. She hoped she could remember what stuff Molly had used on her face last weekend and in what order she’d used it. She didn’t want to look like a clown.

      A half-hour later she stepped out of the bathroom and smack into the janitor, almost landing face first in the oversized yellow mop-bucket he was pushing. They both gasped. Then the janitor looked around frantically, like he’d recognized Lainey from an FBI wanted poster, yelling something that she didn’t need to speak Spanish to understand.

      Time to go. She walked as fast as she could without running for the main doors, praying that the rule of no one sticking around the school on Friday afternoons applied to those warm bodies in Administration as well.

      It was a good thing she’d worn her sneakers. By the time she made it to Sample, she was completely out of breath and had to run to catch the bus. She settled into a front seat, all the while avoiding the stare of the disheveled old man across from her who was slurping an orange and eyeing her carefully. She wiped her hands on her jeans and quietly asked the driver to let her know when her stop was, then watched out the window as the string of stores, banks and restaurants slipped past in a blur. Places she’d eaten at or shopped at dozens of times, but today, she thought, trying to restrain the smile that threatened to commandeer her whole face, it was like she was seeing them all for the very first time.