Col and I are the same age—born only one day apart—and from the first day we met in 5th grade, when my dad introduced me to his new girlfriend and her kids, I just clicked with him. Sometimes we even pretended to be twins because we both have red hair and blue eyes. His hair is much darker, but it was enough to trick Hildy when we ended up on the same softball team in middle school and she freaked out when she thought we both had twin brothers.
All my friends know him because he comes to my softball games and he brings his friends down from Dire Ridge to go to parties and we dress up together for Halloween as things like the twins from The Shining, creepy doll versions of Raggedy Ann and Andy, and, of course—red-headed step-children. I never had to go to homecoming or prom alone because if I didn’t have a date, Col always went with me.
Bo doesn’t do things like that. He might come tow Hildy and I out of the creek when we’d get her quad stuck in the mud, but a minute later he’d be tossing firecrackers at our feet and hiding in Hildy’s closet to jump out and scare the hell out of us after we went to bed.
He holds grudges for much less. And even though Col knocked the shit out of him and made him look like an idiot in front of everyone, Bo didn’t ice me out. Oddly enough, that’s when he seems to suddenly notice I exist. And it starts with my hair.
At lunch, in calculus, in the hallway, in the parking lot after school—I’ll feel a tug on the back of my head and, every single time when I turn around, it’s Bo. Now he suddenly wants to talk to me. And I like talking to him, because he’s actually pretty interesting.
He does this every day, until the last day before winter break when he does something different. My elbow is propped up on the lunch table with my chin in my hand, and I’m staring across the cafeteria, spacing out. Bo sits next to me, talking to Jay, and when I look down, I realize that he’s combing his fingers through the tips of my hair. He does it absently as he talks, twisting the ends around his fingers, just below the edge of the table, like he needs to keep his hands busy. And when it’s time to go back to class, he stops, gets up, and never says a word. After a couple weeks, I finally ask him about it, to which he only responds with another question.
“Do you want me to stop?”
I brush it off. Bo likes to fuck with people. I’ve known that about him since the first day we met. But by the time softball starts in March, it dawns on me that something has fundamentally changed.
Bo always keeps a couple of black hair bands around his wrist for his hair that he wears in a long fade. But one day, in calculus, I’m pulling my hair back and my band snaps. It happens all the time because my hair is so thick. Not five seconds later, I feel a tap on my arm and, when I turn around, Bo is holding a beige hair band between his index and middle fingers. At first, I think it’s pretty convenient, because I only wear beige hair bands.
But when I look at Bo’s wrist, all of the hair bands are beige instead of black.
Is Bo my friend now? That doesn’t seem right. Because now he’s doing subtle things that go beyond what my actual friends do. It’s a slow burn, like a candle that takes forever to melt down, and then one day you realize it’s spilled wax everywhere and you’ll never be able to wash it out of anything it touches. Suddenly, everything is different. One day, I wake up and realize that Bo is different.
He’s my friend now—I guess—and we do things like walk out to the senior parking lot together after calculus.
He leans against the fender of my white Civic and takes a long drag on his cigarette, “Want to be my shotgun on Saturday?”
My eyes go wide with surprise, “Like, ride with you?”
“Yeah?”
I’ve never been anyone’s shotgun before. Because riding with someone while they drive fast is not the same as riding with someone while they’re racing. I throw my yellow leather tote bag across the console into the passenger seat and spin around, “Hell fucking yeah!” It’s not even a question.
Bo grins at me with amusement, “You can ride with me all the time if it gets you that excited.”
“I’ve never ridden with anyone before,” I admit with a shrug.
Bo pushes away from my car with a roll of his eyes, “I’ve got a lot of work to do on you, Maguire,” he winks as he steps past me, sending a wave of butterflies through my stomach.
“Hey,” I call after him, “who are you racing?”
“Be there and find out,” he calls back over his shoulder.
It doesn’t take me long to find out who he’s racing. I know as soon as I text Col and ask if he’ll also be at Leland’s. And then I conveniently leave out the part where I’m riding with Bo. That is, until Saturday, when I get out of Col’s car at Leland’s.
Fucking Colson…
And then after the race, he proceeds to almost knock the shit out of Bo—again.
“That was really dirty,” I say to Bo as we circle back to Canaan at the overpass at the creek, “Col could’ve gotten arrested.”
“I wouldn’t want to tarnish golden boy’s reputation,” Bo mutters, “he’ll get over it. But, hey,” he shifts and shoots over the bridge, sending a rush deep through my stomach, “look in the console. I brought you something.”
I furrow my brow, “Me?”
“Yeah, you,” he laughs.
I pop open the center console and, sitting right on top of a pile of charge cords, lighters, and a few packs of Marlboro Lights are two tickets. When I pluck them out to read them, my heart almost stops. They’re two general admission tickets to an Evanescence concert at the beginning of July.
I could absolutely die. Or maybe I’ll just start crying instead because I need to be alive if I’m going to have a chance at being that close to a stage with Amy Lee.
“Bo!” I shriek, jerking my head up, “You have tickets to Evanescence? I love Evanescence!”
“No shit, E,” he shoots me a sideways glance, “I know you love them, why do you think I got them?”
My mouth falls open and I press the tickets to my chest, “You want me to go with you?”
“Of course,” Bo smiles, “who else would I go with?”
I don’t know…someone else. Anyone else. Bo and I don’t do things together—not really. He might do things with Hildy and I, especially now that she’s dating Jay, but it’s never just me and him.
Until now.
Bo guns the engine, flying past the same police SUV parked under a catalpa that probably chased him across the county line less than an hour before. Col probably will get over what happened tonight. But I still don’t text him until I get to Hildy’s house and we’re safely in her living room playing Call of Duty on the sofa.
Col didn’t get arrested, he didn’t smash Bo’s face in, and he doesn’t sound angry. And that’s all I really care about. But he did kiss me. And I really liked it. And that’s probably really wrong because he was only trying to stop me from riding with Bo.
Col’s joking about it, though, and for some reason that gives me license to forget about it for the time being. Which is fortunate because right now, all I want to think about is Bo, Evanescence, and how each time Bo gets up, he sits back down closer to me until our legs are touching and our shoulders bump every time we laugh.
Sitting at the other end of the sectional, neither Hildy nor Jay see Bo reach up and run his fingertips up the small of my back whenever I lean forward, concentrating on sniping the enemy, or that Bo follows me when I go get another Diet Coke from the dark kitchen. As soon as I shut the refrigerator and turn around, I run straight into his chest.
