instead:
Okâsee you Friday!
âWhat do you think?â I asked Annie for the third time before I sent it. We were riding the subway to school. âI want to sound confident and not needy, you know? I mean instead I could sayââ
âSend it or Iâm going to kill you,â she said.
He didnât write back, and he didnât return to school. On Friday I didnât see him in the hallways, or in the cafeteria at lunch, or anywhere. At tutoring that afternoonâthe last tutoring session of the yearâI waited for him to show up. Annie wasnât at tutoring that day eitherâshe had her own awards ceremony that afternoon at Hunter College, for the winners of the Schilling Science Prize. Her parents, her grandfather, and her sisters were going.
Mrs. Peech had brought juice and popcorn to celebrate the last session. I crammed handful after handful of popcorn into my mouth and watched the door, waiting for him to arrive. I pretended to listen to the other tutors talking about summer jobs and classes and TV shows, but all I could think about was Will. I glanced at the clock. Thirty minutes till the festival started.
Twenty minutes.
Ten.
My stomach dropped.
He couldnât miss this. It wasnât possible. I couldnât go to Urbanwords alone.
There was a reason, there had to be a reason why he wasnât here. Cholera. A car had struck him like in An Affair to Remember .
It was four thirty. âLetâs clean up and head to the festival!â Mrs. Peech chirped.
I helped pack up the leftover juice and wipe down the tables and then picked up my backpack and followed everyone else out the door.
The Urbanwords festival had been set up in the lobby of our schoolâI wandered past tables representing literary magazines and poetry organizations from around the city. I kept watching the front doors, waiting for him to come, and when the ceremony started, I sat in the auditorium in a back row, alone.
The room was packed with kids and families, everyone hugging and picking lint off each otherâs clothes. All I had to do was walk across the stage and pick up the award. I stood behind the other kids, got the award, and followed along, but my knees felt wobbly. I returned to my empty row.
I could sneak out and leave, but where would I go? Home alone? I fingered the certificate in my lap. I touched its raised letters. âHonorable Mention.â Whoopee. Maybe if it hadnâtbeen a âmentionâ but a real prize, my mom and Will wouldâve come. There had to be a reason why he wasnât here. There had to be. I clung to the belief that something had happened. A subway delay. Or something simpler: heâd gotten the time wrong. I checked my phone to see if heâd texted me.
Nothing yet.
I felt paralyzed. Glued in place. I checked emails and voice mailsânothingâand then went to the message board. I hadnât been on the message board for a week, not since the kiss. I hadnât needed or wanted to. I hadnât even thought about it.
Normally there was a slow trickle of new messages, just a few new ones a day. Now there were 114 new ones.
Fran Gamuto had started a new thread. I clicked on it. Sheâd posted a link to a newspaper article. From this morning.
Freedom Airlines Flight 472 Wreckage Is Found
By HUMPHREY COLES
Investigators announced that they have located the wreckage of Freedom Airlines Flight 472, which crashed in the North Atlantic two years ago, renewing hopes that the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder can still be located and may explain what caused the plane to crash.
A team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution led the search. Three REMUS 6000 autonomous underwater vehicles helped investigators locate thewreckage nearly one and a half miles below the surface.
âItâs a happy discovery,â Frank Longbrown, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, said at a press
Okâsee you Friday!
âWhat do you think?â I asked Annie for the third time before I sent it. We were riding the subway to school. âI want to sound confident and not needy, you know? I mean instead I could sayââ
âSend it or Iâm going to kill you,â she said.
He didnât write back, and he didnât return to school. On Friday I didnât see him in the hallways, or in the cafeteria at lunch, or anywhere. At tutoring that afternoonâthe last tutoring session of the yearâI waited for him to show up. Annie wasnât at tutoring that day eitherâshe had her own awards ceremony that afternoon at Hunter College, for the winners of the Schilling Science Prize. Her parents, her grandfather, and her sisters were going.
Mrs. Peech had brought juice and popcorn to celebrate the last session. I crammed handful after handful of popcorn into my mouth and watched the door, waiting for him to arrive. I pretended to listen to the other tutors talking about summer jobs and classes and TV shows, but all I could think about was Will. I glanced at the clock. Thirty minutes till the festival started.
Twenty minutes.
Ten.
My stomach dropped.
He couldnât miss this. It wasnât possible. I couldnât go to Urbanwords alone.
There was a reason, there had to be a reason why he wasnât here. Cholera. A car had struck him like in An Affair to Remember .
It was four thirty. âLetâs clean up and head to the festival!â Mrs. Peech chirped.
I helped pack up the leftover juice and wipe down the tables and then picked up my backpack and followed everyone else out the door.
The Urbanwords festival had been set up in the lobby of our schoolâI wandered past tables representing literary magazines and poetry organizations from around the city. I kept watching the front doors, waiting for him to come, and when the ceremony started, I sat in the auditorium in a back row, alone.
The room was packed with kids and families, everyone hugging and picking lint off each otherâs clothes. All I had to do was walk across the stage and pick up the award. I stood behind the other kids, got the award, and followed along, but my knees felt wobbly. I returned to my empty row.
I could sneak out and leave, but where would I go? Home alone? I fingered the certificate in my lap. I touched its raised letters. âHonorable Mention.â Whoopee. Maybe if it hadnâtbeen a âmentionâ but a real prize, my mom and Will wouldâve come. There had to be a reason why he wasnât here. There had to be. I clung to the belief that something had happened. A subway delay. Or something simpler: heâd gotten the time wrong. I checked my phone to see if heâd texted me.
Nothing yet.
I felt paralyzed. Glued in place. I checked emails and voice mailsânothingâand then went to the message board. I hadnât been on the message board for a week, not since the kiss. I hadnât needed or wanted to. I hadnât even thought about it.
Normally there was a slow trickle of new messages, just a few new ones a day. Now there were 114 new ones.
Fran Gamuto had started a new thread. I clicked on it. Sheâd posted a link to a newspaper article. From this morning.
Freedom Airlines Flight 472 Wreckage Is Found
By HUMPHREY COLES
Investigators announced that they have located the wreckage of Freedom Airlines Flight 472, which crashed in the North Atlantic two years ago, renewing hopes that the flight data recorder and cockpit voice recorder can still be located and may explain what caused the plane to crash.
A team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution led the search. Three REMUS 6000 autonomous underwater vehicles helped investigators locate thewreckage nearly one and a half miles below the surface.
âItâs a happy discovery,â Frank Longbrown, the chair of the National Transportation Safety Board, said at a press
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