That's Not What I Heard Read online

  Maybe Teddy had confused even himself.

  “I guess I just mean … that I just want to make sure you know that there’s more to high school than just Teddy-and-Kim. There’s more to life than just Teddy-and-Kim.”

  Kim recoiled like she’d been splashed by icy cold water. Of course she knew there was more to life than her relationship! That was the exact reason she’d proposed the Secret College Plans Plan in the first place! Teddy—her Teddy—couldn’t possibly have said that. He couldn’t possibly mean it. But Teddy never said things he didn’t mean, so he must have meant it.

  “I know there’s more to high school than ‘just Teddy-and-Kim.’ ” Just. Kim couldn’t believe he was describing them as a just. Before this very moment, Kim hadn’t known that it was possible to air-quote coldly, but boy, she was air-quoting in the coldest way possible. “I have a very full life, Teddy. You just happen to be my favorite thing about it. But if you don’t feel that way, then you should just break up with me.”

  What was happening?! The words had tumbled out of Kim’s mouth before she even really knew what she was saying. Had she just told Teddy to break up with her?

  “Wow.” Teddy took a couple steps back, away from her. “Uh … okay, then.”

  Now it was Kim’s turn to stumble back a few steps. Her brain was malfunctioning. Okay? Okay?!?! She’d kind-of-accidentally told Teddy to break up with her, and he’d just said okay?!

  A breakup? It seemed impossible—a doomsday scenario Kim had never prepared for, but here it was, happening. Her destiny, all five foot ten of him, okay-ing her into a breakup she hadn’t wanted at all. This was it. The end. No solar flare, no sonic boom, just an okay and nothing more.

  She had to leave. She couldn’t even look at him anymore. But where could she go that wasn’t haunted by a memory of her-and-Teddy? Even right here in this gym, they’d survived running sprints together. Outside this room was the vending machine where he’d bought her more M&M’s as an apology for eating all of hers—the vending machine where he’d been about to buy her M&M’s before everything had gone so horribly, horribly wrong. And then out into the hallway where they’d held hands so many times. Nowhere was safe.

  But standing here, Teddy looking at her like she was a stranger, was the least safe place of all.

  So Kim ran. She ran faster than she’d ever run the bases in softball, even faster than she ran during that game in Elgin last year that went into extra innings. Kim flew out the door, past the vending machines, and down the hall, with no other thought than getting away as fast as she possibly could.

  Kim ran so fast she didn’t notice Phil Spooner, frozen in front of the vending machine, his fingers poised to press A3 so he could get a bag of Garden Salsa Sunchips.

  Very few people did notice Phil Spooner, as a matter of fact. First of all, he was a freshman, which already made him basically invisible to the senior class. Second of all, Phil had the kind of face that was best described as forgettable. The kind of face that someone had once described as “a white guy with … hair?” The kind of face that meant the office was unable to locate his school pictures this year because nobody could quite remember what he looked like. And third of all, Phil Spooner didn’t really have a “thing.” He wasn’t particularly brilliant in any of his classes, didn’t play any sports, couldn’t be described as artistic or musical or anything like that. He was just a guy. And there wasn’t anything wrong with being just a guy.

  But Phil Spooner wouldn’t be “just a guy” for much longer.

  Because Phil Spooner had inadvertently witnessed something monumental.

  The doors to the gym were propped open, like they usually were. And just as Phil had been about to press A3 and get those Sunchips, he heard someone say, clear as day, “If that’s how you feel, then you should break up with me!”

  And then Kim Landis-Lilley, of all people, had run out of the gym, crying.

  It didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to deduce what had just happened. Even a Phil Spooner could figure it out. As impossible as it was to believe, Kim Landis-Lilley and Teddy Lin had just broken up. And Phil Spooner was the only one who knew.

  There was a rumor that Kim and Teddy had been together since the day they were born. According to this rumor, their moms had given birth at the same hospital, and the nurses had found the two babies holding hands in those little plastic tubs people put newborn babies in. Phil didn’t buy that for a second. He’d visited his cousin Eva in the hospital when she’d been born, and Eva certainly couldn’t have reached an arm out of her little plastic baby tub to grab another baby’s hand. The whole idea was ludicrous, not to mention physically impossible. But maybe the rumor was more of a metaphor. Because Phil did know that Kim and Teddy had been together long, long before he had arrived at William Henry Harrison High, and he had assumed they’d be together long after he left.

  Phil pressed A3, and his Sunchips tumbled out of their appointed place. This was very interesting information, he mused as he retrieved them. This was quite possibly the most interesting information Phil Spooner had ever learned, and Phil Spooner certainly knew his way around interesting information. For example, he had learned a lot of interesting information when he’d visited the National Air and Space Museum with his parents in Washington, DC, last summer. But he wasn’t sure what, exactly, to do with his newfound knowledge.

  And just as he opened his bag and popped a Sunchip into his mouth, Jess Howard walked into the vending machine vestibule, cementing this as the most dynamic snack purchase Phil Spooner had ever made. Jess, Phil knew, was Kim’s best friend. Phil had seen Kim and Jess eat lunch together every day, a lunch that Jess always finished off with a single clementine. He also knew Jess had a great love for dystopian fiction and pink Starbursts, because she frequently spent her free period—the same free period Phil Spooner had—reading in the library and would often leave behind a pile of Starburst wrappers. Phil believed this to be accidental littering and not malicious, but he had no proof of this.

  Only a belief that someone who read that much couldn’t possibly be bad.

  “Are you looking for Kim?”

  Phil Spooner had spoken aloud to Jess Howard. They had been in the library for the same free period all school year—Phil tried to do some quick mental calculations to figure out how much time they’d spent together, but failed—and in all that time, he’d never once spoken to her. He’d admired her elegant hands as they unwrapped Starbursts, he’d noted her astounding focus as she read, but he’d never, ever spoken to her. As if a lowly freshman like Phil Spooner would talk to a senior like Jess Howard, but here he was: talking.

  “Yeah.” Jess looked at Phil like she hadn’t noticed him standing there. Probably, she hadn’t. That happened to him a lot. “Yeah, I am looking for Kim, actually. Who are you?”

  “Phil. Phil Spooner.”

  He held out his hand for her to shake, but she didn’t take it. Probably because there was visible Sunchip dust on it. Phil wiped his hand on his pants.

  “Okay, then, Phil Spooner. Have you seen Kim?”

  “She ran that way.” Phil pointed down the hallway with his still-orange finger. The Sunchip dust was more tenacious than he’d anticipated.

  “’Kay. Thanks.”

  Jess Howard turned to go. No! She couldn’t leave, now that they were actually talking!

  “Kim was crying,” Phil blurted out. Was that too negative? Should he have led with something nicer? So Jess Howard could see he was a positive, fun-loving guy? Well, maybe it didn’t matter. “Kim and Teddy broke up.” Phil saw quickly that this had stopped Jess Howard in her tracks.

  “No, they didn’t,” Jess scoffed. Phil had never heard someone scoff quite so thoroughly as Jess Howard scoffed in that moment.

  “They did. I heard it. And then Kim ran out, crying.”

  “No way.”

  This, Phil had not anticipated. That Jess—or anyone else—might not believe him. But why would she believe him? Who was he to her but an anonymous f
reshman with a forgettable face who had once been to the National Air and Space Museum?

  “They broke up. Seriously.”

  “Okay, Phil Spooner,” Jess said, like that was allegedly his name, although it was definitely his name. “Why did they break up?”

  Hmm. Well. As his theater teacher, Mr. Rizzo, liked to say, ah, there’s the rub. Phil didn’t know why they’d broken up. But he felt convinced that he had to know, or at least pretend he knew, or no one would ever believe he’d heard what he’d heard.

  As a general rule, Phil was not a liar. In fact, he considered himself a very honest, straightforward sort of person. When he’d read Divergent, because Jess Howard had been reading Divergent, he’d wondered if he might have been part of the Candor faction, because up to this point, Phil had really prided himself on his honesty.

  (Jess Howard, in case anyone was wondering, was Dauntless through and through, although Phil suspected she was probably Divergent as well.)

  But in this very moment, all Phil Spooner could do was lie.

  “He didn’t like any of her Instagrams!”

  Phil didn’t know why that was the sentence that came out of his mouth. But it was, and there was nothing he could do about it now.

  Jess Howard took a few steps closer to him. She was close enough that Phil could see how long her eyelashes were as she narrowed her large brown eyes.

  “Kim broke up with Teddy because he didn’t like her Instagrams?”

  He’d blown it. Phil had totally blown it. But he couldn’t do anything else but nod, solemnly, because once you’d started to improv, you had to go with it. He could hear Mr. Rizzo in his head shouting, “Yes AND, Spooner! YES AND! For the love of Leslie Howard, stop contradicting your scene partner!”

  (Phil didn’t know who Leslie Howard was. And he definitely didn’t love her.)

  “That scruffy-looking nerf herder,” Jess growled, of all the improbable things to growl. “I knew it. I knew that bothered her. But she can never admit that anything is wrong with perfect Teddy. But something’s gotta give eventually, right, Spooner?”

  “Right,” Phil agreed, unable to believe that this was, miraculously, working.

  “That was a really big win for them last weekend, and Kim was so proud of that pic with her and the rest of the team after the game. Do you know how hard it is to take a cute Insta in a softball uniform, Spooner? Do you know?”

  “I do not.”

  “Can you imagine having literally hundreds of likes and your own boyfriend isn’t even one of them?”

  “I literally cannot.”

  @The_Philver_Spoon had exactly two Instagram posts, both of which Phil had taken at the National Air and Space Museum last summer. He’d then abandoned Instagram after that brief experiment.

  “This is emblematic, honestly. It’s emblematic of the whole thing.” Phil had never been part of anything emblematic before. It was all happening so fast. “With Teddy and Elvis, it’s always baseball season this and baseball season that. You know, it’s softball season, too! That’s got bats! Bases! Balls! Hats! What about equality, Spooner? What about Title IX? What about respect?”

  “Oh, most definitely.”

  Phil didn’t even know what he was saying. But he knew he agreed with Jess Howard 100 percent, and that was what mattered.

  “Thank you, Phil.” Jess Howard placed a hand on his arm. A part of Jess Howard was touching a part of Phil Spooner. Phil stared at the hand, far more elegant up close than it was when he’d observed it from across the library, almost mesmerized by her warm brown skin and the bright pops of turquoise nail polish. Phil felt that same sense of wonderment and awe he’d experienced when he’d stepped through the doors of the National Air and Space Museum and hadn’t experienced since. “Thank you for letting me know,” she said seriously. “I have to go find Kim.”

  She disappeared then, but Phil swore he could smell a sweet, fruity scent lingering in the air.

  Like a clementine.

  There were a lot of injustices about being a freshman, but having a locker on the third floor was the worst of them all. And it wasn’t that Olivia Landis-Lilley minded climbing three flights of stairs, because she didn’t. Stair work was a good, challenging form of cardio, and she’d definitely noticed more definition in her calves since the beginning of freshman year. What she did mind was how much time it took. Sure, most of her classes may have been on the third floor, but lunch wasn’t. And making the trek down from the third floor to lunch meant the freshmen were always last to lunch, and therefore had the shortest lunch period, which was just rude. Never mind the sprint she’d have to do to come up here and get all her softball crap before practice at the end of the day. And again, the sprint up the stairs was good cardio, but if she was late to practice, she’d have to do more sprints, and she didn’t want to build up too much lactic acid. Olivia tried to stay positive, tried to remember the calf definition, but it was hard not to be grumpy anytime she’d made the climb to the third floor.

  “Olivi-aaaah.” Olivia’s best friend, Daisy, liked to address her like that, emphasis on the aaaah. Daisy popped around Olivia’s open locker, her topknot quivering from the sudden movement as she peered into Olivia’s space. “Did you do the Adverb Intro thing for Powell?”

  “Obviously.” Mama K still checked her planner to see what her homework was and then checked her homework to make sure she’d done it right. Annoying. Olivia probably could have forged a fake planner to throw her off the scent, but that seemed like more work than just doing her homework.

  “Well, Powell didn’t do a great job of introducing them, because I have no idea what an adverb is.”

  “Modifies a verb. Describes how you do something. Usually ends in -ly,” Diamond Allen said from down the hall, where she was stuffing books into her bag. “Can also be used to modify an adjective, but that wasn’t on the homework.”

  “Gracias.” Daisy scribbled on the blue worksheet.

  Another group of freshmen came up from lunch. Daisy scooted out of the way as Evan Loomis came over to open his locker, nodding at Olivia. In nearly a year of having lockers next to each other, the nod was the only form of communication they’d exchanged. Which was totally fine with Olivia. Unlike her older sister, Kim, Olivia did not believe you were forced by destiny to fall in love with someone just because they happened to come next to you in the alphabet. Of course Olivia loved Kim, in the way all sisters were kind of obligated to love each other, but she definitely didn’t understand her.

  “Can we help you?” Daisy must have been talking to someone behind Olivia. Olivia turned to see who it was.

  “Oh, hi, Phil,” Olivia said. Phil Spooner looked nervous—which was weird—as he shuffled from side to side in front of the lockers. Olivia hadn’t had a ton of interactions with Phil Spooner, but he’d been a totally serviceable partner in PE this morning. Usually, Olivia preferred to pick her own partner, but she knew Coach Mendoza wouldn’t stick her with a dud. Phil had done an A+ job of holding down her feet while she knocked out fifty-four sit-ups in a minute—a new personal best—and that made him more than all right in Olivia’s book.

  Phil still hadn’t said anything while Olivia had gone on that mental jog back to PE. He coughed once, awkwardly, but didn’t form any words.

  “Can I, um, help you?” Olivia asked, though not as rudely as Daisy had.

  “I have something to tell you,” Phil said gravely.

  Had he counted her sit-ups wrong? Had Phil fudged the numbers, for unknown reasons, and maybe she hadn’t broken her record? No. She’d counted, too. That couldn’t be it. So why was Phil Spooner standing in front of her, looking like he’d run over her dog?

  Olivia didn’t have a dog. She had a guinea pig named, stupidly, Baby Ruth, who everyone called Baby. And she really doubted Baby could have gotten out of her cage, out of the house, and onto the road. But that was the kind of devastation she imagined as she heard Phil Spooner’s awkward cough.

  “You’re being weird, Phil
Spooner.” Daisy narrowed her eyes and stuck her purple pen right through the middle of her topknot. “Spit it out.”

  Gabe Koontz arrived to open his locker, the one on the other side of Olivia’s, jostling Phil and Daisy and Olivia closer together.

  “Sorry,” Olivia said as she bumped into Evan Loomis.

  “No worries,” he said, and just like that, their months-long streak of only nodding to each other was over.

  “Kim and Teddy broke up,” Phil mumbled.

  “Kim Landis-Lilley and Teddy Lin broke up?!” Diamond Allen shouted from down the hall. She really had remarkable hearing.

  “I thought you should know,” Phil mumbled again.

  Maybe Phil had thought just Olivia should know. But now everyone knew. Olivia could hear them all talking, conversations traveling down the hall, a waterfall of “Kim-and-Teddy Kim-and-Teddy Kim-and-Teddy.”

  “Kim and Teddy really broke up?” Evan Loomis asked. Someone was being remarkably chatty today.

  “Really.” Phil nodded. “I’m sorry, Olivia,” he added, like he had actually run over her guinea pig, instead of announced that her perfect sister had parted ways from her equally perfect boyfriend, for some unknowable but undoubtedly perfect reason.

  Phil was looking at her like she should be upset, but she wasn’t. It’s not that Olivia had wanted Kim and Teddy to break up. Teddy was always really nice to her. And Kim and Teddy were never gross, like Sophie Maeby and Nico Osterman, who were also in Kim’s class. For example, Olivia had never seen Teddy’s tongue before, thank God, and she had seen Nico Osterman’s tongue multiple times, which told you everything you needed to know about the depth and breadth of Sophie Maeby and Nico Osterman’s crimes against PDA.

  No, Kim and Teddy were only gross in the way that sometimes things are so cute they become gross, like a folder with a picture of kittens sitting in flowerpots on it. Ms. Powell had this exact folder in her room, and sure, it never actively bothered Olivia during English, but she didn’t exactly love sharing a space with it, either. Which is why she usually hid in her room when Teddy came over, and left him and Kim to do gross things together like bake cookies or play catch or paint picture frames for displaying printouts of their selfies.