Leap Day Read online

  I’m about to head out of the room when I remember to get a hall pass. That kid isn’t going to get me twice! I debate a bathroom stop since now I have the time, but decide I’d better just hand in the note. I stand in front of Mrs. Lombardo’s desk waiting for her to look up from her paperwork. She has been at our school since it opened forty years ago. As the main office secretary, nothing gets by her. But since she refuses to use a computer, the stacks of paper on her desk are literally several feet high. She may not even be able to see me. I clear my throat and she looks up, surprised.

  “Oh, hello Josie,” she says in her too-many-cigarettes-over-too-many-years rasp. “What brings you to my part of town?”

  I reach in my pocket and hand the piece of paper across the desk, careful not to knock anything over. She tosses it on the top of the closest pile and says, “Let me guess, it’s your birthday and you need to go take your driver’s test.”

  I smile. “You’re good.”

  She shrugs. “It’s a gift. Also the mixture of fear and excitement on your face gave me a clue.”

  I laugh. People always tell me they can tell by my face what I’m thinking. I guess that’s what makes me a good actress.

  “Good luck on your driver’s test,” Mrs. Lombardo says, turning her attention back to her work. “You’ll do fine.”

  “Thanks, I hope you’re right.” I turn to go and remember the detention slip. Grudgingly I dig it out of my back pocket and hand it across the desk. “I forgot to give you this too.”

  She takes the slip from my hand, looks at it, crumples it up and winks.

  I love Mrs. Lombardo. Hurrying from the room before she can change her mind, I realize I still have time to get to the bathroom. As I push open the metal door to the stall I wonder if everyone has a favorite stall or just me. Each bathroom is different. In this one, it’s the last stall. But down at the other end of the hall, it’s the middle stall. And upstairs it’s the last stall again. Sometimes I’ll actually leave the bathroom if someone is in my stall. I’m about to flush the toilet when two girls come into the bathroom and immediately start screaming at each other. I sit there and listen, moving my feet back as far toward the toilet as I can.

  “You are such a liar,” one of them says. “You totally knew we were seeing each other.”

  “Hooking up one night after a party at the lake is not seeing each other.”

  They are silent for a moment but I can feel the tension through the door. I don’t recognize the voices.

  “It was more than that one time,” the first girl says, her voice bordering on hysterical now.

  “Listen, Marissa, I’m sorry, okay? What else do you want me to say? I can’t take back what happened, believe me, I wish I could.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean I wish I hadn’t slept with him, it was so not worth this.”

  “You SLEPT with him?” Now the girl is really wailing. “I just thought you fooled around!”

  “Why aren’t you mad at Steve? He was there too, you know!” “Because you’re supposed to be my friend. He’s just a guy.” I can hear her pulling the paper towels off the rack. Now she is blowing her nose.

  Even though I’m completely riveted, I also wish the bell would ring soon. The walls are starting to close in on me. In a minute I’m going to start sweating. Luckily I don’t have much longer to wait. The bell rings, and the front door to the bathroom clicks shut. It’s finally quiet. I flush the toilet and walk out of the stall right smack into the crying girl. She seems just as surprised to see me as I am to see her. I recognize her now. Marissa Badish, a senior. She and Rob did a science project together last year.

  “Are you gonna be okay?” I ask, running cold water over my hands.

  She shakes her head. More people file into the bathroom, but she doesn’t budge. “You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette, would you?”

  “No.” I wish there was something I could do for her. “Do you want me to go find you one?”

  A tiny smile flits across her face. “No, that’s okay. I’m trying to quit anyway.”

  “That guy sounds like a jerk,” I say, simply because I can’t think of anything else. “You’re better off without him.”

  “Probably,” she says. “But I really love him.” She splashes some water on her face, smoothes her hair, shrugs, then leaves. I stand there for a minute dwelling on her words. Feeling suddenly very immature in comparison to someone who is in love, I consider soaking my crumpled paper towel and throwing it onto the ceiling like we used to in middle school. Luckily, my better judgment prevails, and I toss it into the overflowing garbage and hurry to the gym. I’m not even going to bother getting changed because I’ll only be here for twenty minutes before my dad comes. I drop my bookbag on a locker room bench and wonder if Rob loves Anne. If he does, he sure hasn’t told me. I can’t even imagine what it must feel like to love someone and have them cheat on you.

  The other girls start changing into their gym clothes. As usual, Alyssa Levy strolls the full length of the locker room in only her gym shorts. Everyone else changes as quickly as possible, facing the lockers. But not her. She’ll even have a conversation with you while she just stands there with her perfectly proportioned breasts held proudly in front of her like they are on display at the science fair. I glance down at my own chest. My birthday wish apparently has not kicked in yet. I decide to wait in the gym. I’m about to push open the swinging door when Katy comes barreling in and grabs me, for the second time in an hour.

  “Josie! Did you go down to the office yet?”

  “What? Yes, to hand in my absence note. Why?”

  “Did you read it first?”

  “No, why would I? I gave it to Mrs. Lombardo. It was actually pretty funny.”

  Katy looks stricken. “Why was it funny?”

  “Just that Mrs. Lombardo guessed I was going for my test today, that’s all. She didn’t even open the note.”

  “So she didn’t read it?” Katy asks.

  I shake my head. “Why are you asking me this? What’s going on?” “It’s nothing,” Katy assures me. “I’ll be right back.” With that, she turns and runs out of the gym at full speed. She is being very strange today. And people think I’m the dramatic one!

  9:40 A.M. – 10:30 A.M.

  Chapter 3B: Everyone

  Arnold Slotnik whistles as he walks down the hall away from Josie Taylor. It felt as good as he imagined it would to give her that detention slip. If it had been almost anyone else he probably would have let them go. He wishes he could share the experience with his next-door neighbor Mitch Hurley, but Mitch is the last person he can tell. Arnold and Mitch used to play after school for as long as Arnold can remember. They would put on Mitch’s dad’s old Meatloaf albums and jump around his basement like they were in the band. They played video games for hours until Arnold’s mother warned them their eyes would start to bleed if they didn’t give it a rest. Then came that fateful day last summer when Arnold opened Mitch’s closet by mistake. Sure, it did have NO ADMITTANCE, PRIVATE, and

  KEEP OUT! THIS MEANS YOU written all over it, but he didn’t think Mitch would mind. After all, they were best friends. He was trying to find Mitch’s old pair of Rollerblades. Instead he saw all these pictures of the same girl tacked up on the inside of the door. They were mostly cutouts from school playbills; some were class pictures, one or two were from newspapers. He looked closer. One of the photo captions identified the girl as Josie Taylor. He was so stunned at this display that he couldn’t tear his eyes away. He was still staring at it when Mitch came in, found him, and told him to leave his house and never come back. Arnold is still furious that Mitch would let a girl come between them. When Arnold is a junior he will develop a huge crush on a girl in his after-school karate class and will steal the top of her uniform so that he can smell her perfume at night. He will finally understand what Mitch was going through.

  Arnold stops whistling as he nears the tired-looking man in the cru