“You said I couldn’t shower before you dyed my hair!”
“I said you couldn’t wash your hair! Gross! You’re gross!” Roxanne says too loudly. Arizona hides her eyes. Anyone walking by would now wonder if she’s part of our group or on her own. She doesn’t fit. I shift away from her and watch the dude juggling by the fountain. Roxanne lights a cigarette and we share it, passing it back and forth, tilting our chins to the sky as we exhale.
“Montana show you the guy yet?” Roxanne says. We’ve been coming to the park every day since she got home, so she’s had several sightings of Bernardo, who sits on the bench across from us.
Arizona scans the park and points at a guy in a sleeveless tank. “Him?” she says.
I think she’s joking, so I scoff before realizing she was making a legitimate guess. “Oh. He’s cute, sort of. But no. Him.” I nod my head in Bernardo’s direction.
We’re all looking at him pretty intensely and I’m preening, running fingers through my almost pink hair and wondering if day-after wine smells good or bad on my skin. Truth be told, I didn’t want to let go of last night, and that’s why I didn’t shower. Why I had to keep that poodle stamp on my hand and the little bit of Karissa’s fruity perfume hanging on my skin.
Bernardo smiles. Points to his own head, then to my head, and gives a thumbs-up.
Swoon.
The boy across the park: he wears a man-scarf and has thick glasses with dark frames and cool sneakers, and sometimes he reads books in Spanish and sometimes he reads books in English, and when I found out from a little detective work that his name is Bernardo, I started writing that name all over my Lists of Things to Be Grateful For. I don’t know him, but he seems like someone to be grateful for.
I’m always grateful for dimples, after all.
He and his group of friends sit on the benches across from mine. We eye-flirted with each other for the first month. Nothing more. I noticed he was reading the same book as me. The Great Gatsby. I figured his school was probably doing a unit on it too.
Then it was the Stephen King novel I was chilling out with.
Then Catcher in the Rye.
Then The Hunger Games.
Then Valley of the Dolls.
After Valley of the Dolls we started nodding at each other. Then waving. Then holding the books up so they covered most of our faces and peering over the tops. It’s been the best, weirdest, quietest flirtation.
Arizona thinks it sounds creepy, but ever since she started at Colby she thinks everything I do sounds sort of lame or weird or creepy. Roxanne and I think it’s hot as hell. I can’t stop thinking about the messiness of his hair and the warmth of his eyes and the relaxed way he leans back when he’s sitting on the bench, how his body says I’m all good with his arms stretched out on either side of him, his elbows pointing behind him.
“There’s a guy like him on my floor at Bard,” Roxanne says. “But, like, a way druggier version of him. We made out at this party. Good kisser. Bodes well for your boy.” I don’t want to hear about Bard, but I try to smile and nod like I’m supposed to do.
“You colleged better than me,” Arizona says. “You need to teach me your ways so I can college better next year.” Roxanne says something about guys you meet in class versus ones you meet at parties and the differing hookup potentials of both and I tune out.
He gets up from the bench and doesn’t break eye contact with me as he walks over. He nearly trips over mariachi players and a kid on a motorized scooter that should be outlawed. It’s happening.
I don’t think Bernardo is walking toward me because of the almost pink hair. But I hope it’s made him realize I’m not the kind of girl who will wait forever for the cute guy on the other side of the park to say hello. And I’ve already been waiting two months. Since the moment it got warm enough to reasonably sit on a park bench for two hours every day after school. It’s what I used to do with Arizona and Roxanne, so it’s what I continued to do this year. I couldn’t think of how to do spring and summer any differently.
“He’s on the move,” Roxanne says.
“He wants to ask what the hell you have done to your beautiful hair,” Arizona says.