That's Not What I Heard Read online

  It was like they were running a summer camp for codependency.

  “Why would you know this?” Daisy asked. “Like, I gotta be honest, Phil Spooner, this is pretty random, coming from you.”

  “Yeah, Phil,” Diamond Allen chimed in. Olivia hadn’t realized she’d come over. Olivia hadn’t realized an entire crowd of freshmen had formed around her locker. Or that even Gabe Koontz and Evan Loomis were looking at her. After a lifetime of anonymity, Olivia was finally interesting. Not because she was the only freshman on the varsity softball team, not because she had the fastest mile time for girls in her class, not because she’d knocked out fifty-four sit-ups this very morning, but because of her sister. Awesome. Exactly like Olivia had always dreamed it would be. “Who told you this?”

  “Nobody told me this,” Phil said, his voice getting louder. “I was there. I was there when it happened. I heard it myself.”

  All around Olivia, all she could hear was shouts and shrieks and “What!” and even more “Kim-and-Teddy Kim-and-Teddy Kim-and-Teddy.”

  “What did they say, Phil?” Diamond asked eagerly as more voices from the crowd joined in.

  “Yeah!”

  “What did they say?”

  “Who broke up with who?” Evan Loomis, again? Olivia stared at him in bewilderment. He’d finally decided to speak, and this was what he wanted to talk about?

  “It’s with whom, Evan, and you should know that!” Diamond Allen said. “Is nobody else paying attention in English?”

  “I am,” Olivia muttered, but no one could hear her. She’d found herself somehow pushed away from her locker as the crowd pressed eagerly toward Phil Spooner, her backpack abandoned among the teeming masses. She couldn’t even hear what Phil was saying anymore. Not really. Something about Instagrams, maybe? That didn’t make any sense. DMs? That made less sense. A Mercedes-Benz? Definitely not. Now she was just rhyming random words. Olivia couldn’t even make out who had broken up with whom. As if Kim could ever break up with Teddy.

  Kim. Olivia thought about her sister, actually thought about her sister, for the first time. If Teddy had broken up with Kim, she was going to be devastated. Like, someone-ran-over-her-nonexistent-dog devastated. Olivia couldn’t even remember a time before Teddy. Kim and Teddy had been best friends since before Olivia could remember. Maybe even since before she was born. There were pictures of a tiny Teddy next to an infant Olivia! Teddy was even more integral to Kim’s life than Olivia was, which was kind of depressing. What would Kim do without Teddy? She didn’t do anything without him now. Even when they were separated, which was rarely, they were in constant communication. When they’d gone to the Bahamas on vacation this year, Kim had set up a FaceTime with Teddy so he could watch her eat breakfast. It was way more embarrassing than all the people taking pictures of the buffet. What if Kim was physically unable to function without him? Would Olivia have to feed her, like a baby?

  Olivia was already the sole caretaker for Baby the guinea pig. She wasn’t sure she had time for the care and keeping of a distraught older sister. Olivia had a lot going on. Not that anybody else seemed to notice. Or care.

  BANG! The door to the third-floor copy room slammed open with such force that Diamond Allen screamed. Standing in the doorframe was a shocked Ms. Powell, clutching a folder that was mercifully free of cats.

  “Loitering!” Ms. Powell said, the giant statement necklace on her chest quivering with indignation. “Loitering is strictly prohibited by the Student Code of Conduct. I suggest you get a move on if you want to avoid detention!”

  Everyone started to disperse, and the “Kim-and-Teddy Kim-and-Teddy Kim-and-Teddy” was more of a murmur than a roar, but it was still going. Could Phil Spooner be right? Had Kim and Teddy really broken up? Obviously, Phil Spooner had no reason to lie, but the whole situation was so unbelievable, Olivia was having a hard time processing any of it. Like when Daisy showed her that video of a guinea pig on a skateboard. It just didn’t make any sense. Guinea pigs didn’t have the mass necessary to steer a skateboard. And Kim didn’t have it in her to break up with Teddy. Which meant Teddy must have broken up with her. Although that made about as much sense as a guinea pig on a bicycle. Nothing made sense.

  “Are you okay, Olivia?” Ms. Powell asked urgently, now that they were almost alone in the hallway. Phil Spooner had gone, taking his news with him. Only Daisy and Evan Loomis were waiting in the hallway, standing by Olivia’s locker. Evan was holding Olivia’s backpack. He must have picked it up to save it from trampling, since it didn’t look trampled at all. “Olivia. Are you okay?” Ms. Powell asked again.

  “Um. Yes?”

  Olivia knew that yes wasn’t a question. It was supposed to be an answer. But she did question why all these people thought she was so upset. Maybe they’d assumed Teddy Lin had been the brother she’d never had.

  Oh, for Pete’s sake, Olivia thought as Ms. Powell patted her arm comfortingly. It’s not like Kim and Teddy had gotten divorced. They’d broken up. And it had nothing, nothing whatsoever to do with Olivia.

  “Carry on, Olivia!” Ms. Powell proclaimed, like she was Winston Churchill or something. Olivia felt reasonably optimistic that she’d have no problem carrying on. With one final pat, Ms. Powell shut the door to the third-floor copy room firmly behind her and sprinted down the hall. Ms. Powell ran like she’d never heard of lactic acid buildup in her life, and if she hadn’t been weighed down by that statement necklace, Olivia suspected she might have made pretty good time.

  Ms. Powell, in general, did not run. She believed exercise was for people who had time, and time was emphatically a thing Ms. Powell did not have. A math teacher, for example, might be able to exercise. Math teachers could never understand how time-consuming it was to grade essays, dozens and dozens of endless essays. Ms. Johansson, for example, was always going on about her Zumba marathons or her HIIT intervals or her CrossFit box, whatever that was. If Ms. Powell had the kind of time Ms. Johansson did, maybe she’d have a CrossFit box, too. Maybe she’d run. But Ms. Powell ran today. She ran like she didn’t know running in the hallways was expressly prohibited by the Student Code of Conduct.

  God, these stairs are brutal. Ms. Powell hated being stuck up on the third floor with the rest of the ninth-grade team. It was always a thousand degrees up there, except in the winter, when it was negative a thousand degrees, and it took her forever to get down to the teachers’ lounge. But today, it took her no time at all. Because even though the door to the third-floor copy room had been closed, and even though both copiers had been noisily printing away, Ms. Powell had heard every word Phil Spooner had said.

  Well, she’d heard almost every word. But she’d heard more than enough.

  On good days, Ms. Somers saved her Light ’n’ Fit Strawberry Cheesecake Greek yogurt for last. Today, she whipped off the lid and dug into it first.

  Was it summer yet? So far, the last quarter of the year felt longer than the other three put together. It had been worse than the stretch from Columbus Day until Thanksgiving break, which Mr. Rizzo liked to call Awful-tober.

  Clearly, she wasn’t the only one feeling the strain. As she looked around the teachers’ lounge, she saw purple bags under everyone’s eyes and giant mugs of coffee in everyone’s hands. Ms. Somers’s eyes met Coach Mendoza’s, and he nodded at her sympathetically from his table where he sat with the other PE teachers, each of them demolishing their own rotisserie chicken. Ms. Somers wondered sometimes if maybe they all shared a Costco membership—they’d gone through a staggering amount of chicken this year. A chicken every day for lunch, for how many school days so far this year … ? Well, she wasn’t a math teacher. Yes, there was plenty of math involved in teaching orchestra, but none of it, luckily, involved word problems.

  “You’re not gonna believe this.” Ms. Powell burst into the teachers’ lounge like she’d run all the way there from the third-floor copy room, frizz escaping from her bun and papers escaping from the manila folder she was carrying. Maybe she had run all
the way from the third-floor copy room. “Kim Landis-Lilley and Teddy Lin broke up.”

  “They did not,” Mr. Rizzo scoffed from over by the Keurig machine. “Did someone use up all the Donut Shop K-Cups?”

  “They did, Rizzo.”

  “Who did? Who used them up?” he demanded, eyes darting around the room. “Everyone knows I need my lunchtime Donut Shop!”

  “Not the K-Cups. I’m talking about Kim Landis-Lilley and Teddy Lin!” Ms. Powell slammed her folder down on the table where Ms. Somers was sitting. Ms. Somers jumped at the force of the slam and watched a purple worksheet fly across the table to land on top of her quinoa salad. Carefully, she removed the Advanced Adverbs! worksheet from her lunch and put it back on top of Ms. Powell’s folder.

  “They did not, Powell.” Evidently giving up, Mr. Rizzo grabbed a regular dark roast K-Cup from the wicker basket in the cabinet under the Keurig machine. “I literally just gave them a PDA warning.”

  “Well, the times, they have a-changed since then. I heard Phil Spooner telling a group of people just outside the third-floor copy room.”

  “That’s your source? Really? Phil Spooner?” Mr. Rizzo asked skeptically. “Come on, Powell. You’re better than that.”

  By this point, everyone in the lounge was watching Ms. Powell and Mr. Rizzo face off. Even the PE teachers had stopped eating their rotisserie chickens.

  “Who’s Phil Spooner?” Mr. Dykstra jumped in, the Major Battles of World War I quizzes he’d been grading pushed off to the side.

  “Phil Spooner’s a freshman. That’s the kid whose school pictures got lost,” Ms. Johansson clarified. “He doesn’t know Teddy or Kim. Why would he have any kind of valuable information?”

  “Spooner and Landis-Lilley—Olivia Landis-Lilley,” Coach Mendoza clarified, “were partners in PE this morning. He might have picked something up.”

  Ms. Somers shot Coach Mendoza a look. She would have thought he’d be above gossiping about students. He shrugged at her, grinned, and then ripped a leg off his chicken.

  “Irrelevant.” Mr. Rizzo popped his K-Cup in the Keurig and turned to face them as he brewed his coffee. “Teddy and Kim were kissing in the cafeteria after whatever block of PE Phil and Olivia have together. So I don’t care how many partner sit-ups they did. It’s got nothing to do with anything.”

  “Olivia Landis-Lilley has everything to do with everything,” Ms. Powell shot back. “Because she was in the group of freshmen Phil Spooner was talking to. And when Phil said Kim and Teddy broke up, Olivia didn’t deny it.”

  The lounge was stunned into silence for a moment. All they could hear was the sound of Mr. Rizzo’s K-Cup finishing its final brew, and then Ms. Johansson taking a very slurpy sip of Diet Coke.

  “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Ms. Somers was surprised to find herself saying. Coach Mendoza winked at her. Shoot! She didn’t want to get involved! She always thought it was weird, the way all of her coworkers knew which students were dating each other, and now here she was, just as bad as they were. She frowned at Coach Mendoza. He shook his head and laughed, quietly, as he grabbed the communal bottle of Frank’s RedHot and dumped some more on his rotisserie chicken. “I mean. Maybe Olivia just didn’t want to gossip about her sister.”

  “You have a sister, Somers?” Ms. Powell asked.

  Ms. Somers shook her head. She did not, in fact, have a sister.

  “I rest my case,” Ms. Powell said.

  Ms. Somers wasn’t sure what the case was. Then again, she didn’t have a sister. Maybe that was exactly Ms. Powell’s point.

  “So?” Ms. Johansson took another extraordinarily slurpy sip of Diet Coke. “What happened?”

  “Well.” Ms. Powell cleared her throat. “Phil Spooner wasn’t exactly clear on what exactly happened …”

  “Oh, color me shocked.” Mr. Rizzo tossed the empty K-Cup into the trash can.

  “Two points!” Coach Mendoza said quietly. He got up and walked over to the whiteboard. Ms. Somers had to scoot her chair in so he could squeeze past her to put two new hash marks next to Mr. Rizzo’s name on the K-Cup Basketball scoreboard. For a PE teacher, Coach Mendoza really didn’t smell like sweat at all.

  “What, exactly, is your problem with Phil Spooner?” Ms. Powell asked.

  “Have you ever tried to put Phil Spooner into an improv group?” Mr. Rizzo stirred his coffee aggressively. “He is dead weight onstage. Not even Diamond Allen could save him, and that girl was born to yes, and.”

  “Hello? Who cares about Phil Spooner’s improv group? What did he say?” Ms. Johansson pressed. “Spill it, Powell. What did Teddy do?”

  “Why are you assuming it was Teddy?” Shoot! Ms. Somers had already forgotten her vow to stay out of it.

  “He’s a guy.” Ms. Johansson shrugged.

  “Teddy Lin is a sweet kid,” Ms. Somers argued. Staying out of it was out the window, apparently.

  “Landis-Lilley’s a great kid, too,” Coach Mendoza said. “Kim Landis-Lilley,” he added, for clarification.

  They were both great kids. Kim and Teddy were really sweet together, too. Not like some of the other couples in the senior class, like Nico Osterman and Sophie Maeby, who were always in detention for excessive PDA, or even Jess Howard and Elvis Rodriguez, who argued all the time.

  Ms. Somers would never admit it out loud, but if Kim and Teddy had broken up … Well, the very idea of it had her a little shook. Ms. Somers knew she certainly shouldn’t place her faith in true love in a high school relationship, but they were just so cute together. She didn’t even give them a PDA warning that time she saw them holding hands while they watched an abbreviated version of The Merchant of Venice performed by a visiting theater group at an all-school assembly at the end of the first semester. She couldn’t. It had been too adorable.

  “Let’s have it, then, Powell,” Mr. Rizzo said. “What did Phil Spooner say? Which one of these perfect specimens screwed up?”

  “Now … I can’t be exactly sure …” Ms. Powell sounded nervous, almost. “But it sounded like Phil Spooner said something about Kim sliding into someone else’s DMs.”

  Mr. Rizzo burst out laughing.

  “What’s a DM?” Mr. Dykstra asked, his mustache twitching.

  “Oh God, Dykstra, you don’t need to know.” Rizzo was still laughing. “Powell, check your ears. There’s no way that’s what it was. The kids aren’t even on Twitter anymore.”

  The kids weren’t on Twitter anymore? This was news to Ms. Somers. What were they on, then? When did she get so old?

  “That’s what he said!” Ms. Powell exclaimed.

  “Come on. What’s a DM?” Mr. Dykstra insisted.

  “Direct message.” Ms. Johansson popped open another can of Diet Coke. Someone was going into fifth period well caffeinated. “It’s a way to communicate privately on Twitter. It’s how all the former Bachelor contestants hook up with one another. Or how regular people hook up with pro athletes.”

  Ms. Johansson knew a lot about hooking up with famous people. Ms. Somers eyed her curiously. Had Ms. Johansson been hooking up with famous people all year and holding out on them? Now that would have been a really interesting conversation. Usually, at lunch Ms. Johansson talked about That Time She Went to Cabo with Her Girlfriends, or the fact that Old Navy had really good activewear at a great price point, and neither of those was a particularly interesting conversation.

  “Is Kim Landis-Lilley hooking up with a former Bachelor contestant or a pro athlete? Somehow, I have a hard time picturing either one,” Mr. Rizzo said. “Especially considering that she is a high school student.”

  “I’m just telling you what I heard!” Ms. Powell collapsed into the empty chair next to Ms. Somers, narrowly avoiding dunking her elbow into Ms. Somers’s quinoa salad. Ms. Somers quietly scooted her salad out of dunking range.

  “Maybe you misheard. Maybe they were talking about a different kind of sliding,” Coach Mendoza suggested. “You know. Baseball. Softball. Lin and Landis-Lilley are bo
th in the middle of pretty intense seasons.”

  “Oh, it’s always balls and bats with you boys!” Ms. Powell sighed.

  Coach Finn, who was not a boy, shot Ms. Powell a very pointed look before polishing off the last of her rotisserie chicken.

  “Listen,” Ms. Powell said. “I know what I heard. Kim Landis-Lilley and Teddy Lin broke up. And it sounds like it was all Kim’s fault.”

  “Watch it, Powell.” Coach Finn stood up and stretched. Ms. Somers could hear her vertebrae crack from across the room. “No smack talk about my best outfielder. Or I’ll have you, and anyone else who says anything about Kim, running laps around the diamond.”

  “I’d like to see you try,” Ms. Powell muttered.

  Ms. Somers would also kind of like to see her try. Not that she had anything against Ms. Powell, not really, but Ms. Powell had a tendency to ask really long-winded questions at after-school all-staff meetings when Ms. Somers would rather be headed home. Watching Coach Finn boss her around the softball field would be pretty satisfying.

  Coach Finn picked up her empty rotisserie chicken container and hurled it across the room, where it landed neatly in the trash can.

  “How many points is that?” she asked.

  “It’s called K-Cup Basketball, Finn.” Coach Mendoza shrugged. “You don’t get any points for plastic chicken tubs.”

  The bell rang, startling Ms. Somers like it always did.

  “You’ll see!” Ms. Powell called as the teachers filed out of the lounge, hurrying to class. “They broke up, and I told you first!”

  “Hey, Somers.” Coach Mendoza stopped on his way out of the room, leaning over Ms. Somers’s table. She watched the stopwatch around his neck swing back and forth. “You get all your chaperone credits yet?”

  “Not yet.” Ms. Somers put the lid back on her Tupperware and zipped it into her lunch bag.