Quad Squad Read online

Andrea

  I can’t tell if Maya is mad at me or I’m mad at her but anyways I’m sick of it.

  The way it works at lunch at Kennedy is if you’re old enough to drive you’re out of there as soon as the bell rings but if you’re not you’re stuck at school with losers who have nowhere to go and bring their own sandwiches from mom no thank you so you either have to try to get a ride with a guy who has a car but then it’s like oh shit I’m in a car with a bunch of stoners heading to some sketch place to smoke or worse you’re just with some senior with a beard axe murderer, so if you’re in ninth and you’re hungry you haul ass as soon as the bell rings so you can get to the DQ and get disgusting fries or something equally gross, fake-ass milkshakes, those are actually good though sometimes, I get the peanut butter shake oh my God those are so sick when you just want something tasty, and then haul ass back so you can get to fifth on time to be fucking bored out of your mind.

  We were just starting walking and I was just checking my phone like a normal person and checking my makeup because after P.E. I’m always so gross and Maya said, “You’re not the problem, Andrea,” to me, like that was some consolation, like I’d been all worried about being the problem.

  I was like then who is the problem, thinking it not saying it, maybe you’re the problem Maya, even though me and Maya are chill a lot of the time, it’s just she gets, so weird sometimes.

  “It’s Sabrina,” she said kind of quietly but kind of not, and I was like, “Right?” because Sabrina has been totally ridiculous. Literally whenever Eric C. or one of those football guys who aren’t even on varsity walk by, Sabrina tosses her hair back which by the way isn’t even at all close to the fucking Pantene commercial she thinks it is, basically a bunch of flyaways and split ends but if she has any chance whatsoever does a total wanna be model walk, shoulders back sticking her little A cup boobs out, overcrossing her legs on every step like a retarded model like that’s why we call her SM, like to her face, for Supermodel, and she doesn’t even notice even though her full name is Sabrina Bernard, like wtf why would you be SM, she doesn’t even ask, she just smiles like it’s her name, because she knows she’d sound stupid for asking especially after a month, or else she thinks it’s because of S&M which everyone is supposed to think is so cool and sexy because it’s kinky but I think is totally gross.

  There were like 6 or 7 or 8 or 9 of us, Karen and Naeli and kind of behind us Sasha and Tony, they are by law unallowed to go anywhere without each other, they are literally goals, and Sandra the Korean chick who just needs friends and everyone feels sorry for her because it’s her year abroad thing, like, wtf do they not they have high schools in Korea? Plus me and Maya and SM Sabrina and Jerry and Tim who everyone calls Ben and Jerry because it’s supposed to be funny and Jerry is tbh a little bit chubby kind of in the face though not that bad, a little bit cute, don’t tell anyone I said that, I saw him with his shirt off working on his dad’s car this one time and it wasn’t chubby at all it was like, oh my, but anyway we were all already out past the fountain near K Building, and it was like oh, well, let’s just go to DQ because we can’t think of anything else to do and nobody supposedly had any smoke even though I’m not all about that life, but I was kind of thinking it would be okay to just get a little buzzed but still be able to like, function in bio, which was why Maya was mad at me I think, even though I didn’t do anything and she had already said I wasn’t the problem, but the fact was that a lot of the people we were starting to hang with or at least go to DQ, with were kind of stoners, not full-on but you know what I mean, @KarenandNaeli also surprisingly Korean Sandra, and Maya’s dad is totally incarcerated for drugs and she hates all of that stuff and everyone knows it, but she was blaming me like I had forced them all to come, you could totally by the way tell she was ignoring me with her eyes but still like talking to me but only when there was other people in our conversation. That sounds stupid but believe me I’ve known Maya since forever and that’s exactly what she does, it’s so fake.

  SM Sabrina kind of came up alongside me and said that maybe if I wasn’t doing anything that weekend I might want to hang with her and Rachel they were going to go to the mall, not the regular mall the outlet mall and I was supposed to be like, oh thank you so much for thinking of me, I’m so lucky you think I’m worth it to go to the stupid outlet mall to, but the truth was actually I do need new jeans, not like need them need them, but actually Brandy Melville has some cute stuff, so I said, “Yeah, no, sounds cool if I’m not doing anything,” even though or maybe because Rachel was going to be there and I haven’t seen her in like, forever, and obviously I wasn’t going to be doing anything, there’s never anything to do. Rachel never goes to DQ with us because she’s probably in the library studying some genius thing or in the office getting a medal for good behavior from the principal or some shit like that, or I don’t know. But not that I’m saying she’s stuck up because for a genius she’s surprisingly regular.

  I said to SM, “How come Rachel never hangs out at the DQ?”

  And SM said, “I don’t know, did you invite her?” like it’s my job to invite every single person who ever went to DQ, and Maya who wasn’t even in the conversation said, “I think Rachel has her thing after third or fourth on even days,” which meant that since it was an even day Rachel was probably already off campus going to her thing.

  And suddenly Karen and Naeli who were like nowhere near the conversation, like six sidewalk sections ahead, suddenly turned around and were like “What is her thing, anyway?”

  And I was all defensive, don’t ask me why, but I was like, “Rachel goes to a program, it’s a special Academy, on even days, but she’s cool.”

  “Oh, yeah, no,” Karen said, “She’s totally cool.”

  Naeli said, “I’m down with Rachel,” even though A. No one says I’m down with anymore and B. She so isn’t. I happen to know for a fact that Rachel would rather die than be stuck in a conversation with Naeli and her yoga pants, it’s like, okay, we all own yoga pants but at this point someone has to ask you do you own anything else?

  So then we were heading back and I was getting this, like, ice cream headache from the gross, gross peanut butter shakes they make at DQ and I said “This tastes like literally if you smeared peanut butter on a dog’s ass and put it in a blender,” and then everyone for some reason laughing so hard, like Naeli was bent over and like spittle was coming out of her mouth onto the sidewalk and Karen was holding on to her shoulders like hugging herself and shaking and shit and Ben and Jerry spit out their, like, burgers and stuff on the little grass area, so gross but funny and everyone was acting like it was the funniest thing anyone ever said, like have they never heard a joke before but I was laughing too, totally losing my shit, even Korean Sandra who obviously has no idea what’s funny was laughing because if everyone else is laughing you laugh too, she was doing that weird thing of putting her hand over her mouth and losing her shit, like crying tears, but then I thought actually she probably is high and that made me feel bad for Maya because she was the only one who wasn’t really laughing, and she had asked, she definitely had specifically asked for me to not invite people if they were just going to get high and I don’t know what all happened in the DQ bathroom, I mean, it’s, like, a largeish group of people all 6 or 7 or 8 or 9 of us, I mean I can guess when four of them aren’t even in line and you’re like where did everybody go, where they went, and I feel sort of bad, but still, I wish Maya wouldn’t be all bitchy about it, it’s just everybody laughing at something I said, and I kind of wished I wasn’t so mad at her or she wasn’t so mad at me but that’s kind of how it is when you’re best friends with someone which is kind of a middle school thing to call it, but that’s what we are.

  And it just sucks because if you say someth
ing really funny like this tastes like literally if you smeared peanut butter on a dog’s ass and put it in a blender then obviously you want everyone to laugh like insanely crazy about it but not if they’re high, that just makes it not that funny, because if you’re high everything’s funny, but nothing counts.

  And then Jerry said something like “Hey, Andrea, can I have some of your shake?” and then people were laughing some more, like gross who would want that shake that she said was gross, but I was in my head like oh my God he did not just say that because when my Mom was a kid, like a teenager or whatever, she was telling me, guys used to say, hey can I have some fries to go with that shake? And that meant like not your milkshake obviously and he was like staring at my ass when he said it, I’m not even joking with you, and I was like oh my God what a perv he totally knows he can get away with it by pretending that he’s talking about my milkshake and then I said, “You want some shake, you know where to come get it,” and kept moving on down the sidewalk in my new Adidas that have maroon stripes instead of basic black, just looking straight ahead, and only Naeli was fast about it and she was all “Oooh, guuurl!” and I was thinking okay wait, I hope I’m not being racist or anything, but I didn’t want to like respond to her because maybe this is like an African-American thing and I’m not black or whatever so I don’t know like the proper response? I was also thinking like, okay Jerry, two can play at this game, let’s see you take off your shirt and work on your dad’s car now, and he was like, “Maybe I will,” not about the shirt, about coming to get the shake, and I said, “okay, then, let’s see you try it,” but he was like, “But maybe I don’t like that flavor,” and Naeli was like “Oooh, girl!” again and I was like, okay, Naeli, enough already, you don’t have to say that every time he says anything, do you not have anything else you know how to say?

  But then why, explain this to me, like who said what to who, or what happened, because by the time I was in bio and in my seat and putting my name on the top of my sheet of paper even though I had like, literally no idea what we were studying, but at least I know you put your name at the top of the piece of paper, how come at that moment I got a text from Rachel who wasn’t even there, and it was just a picture of Ben and Jerry’s Peanut Buttah Cookie Core, a pint, and a picture of a dogs ass and I was like, oh my God.