landslide

*I took my love and I took it down*

***

"Lizzie!" my mom exclaimed. "You're going to miss your bus!"

"One sec, Mom!" I called back. I gave myself a once-over in the full-length bathroom mirror. After an hour-long battle with my straightener, I'd finally got my hair perfect. Another twenty minutes had been spent applying a touch of concealer, light pink lip gloss, and as much eye makeup as I could pull off without looking Gothic. I'd picked out my outfit two nights ago, while on the phone with Miranda, who'd still been in Mexico at the time, and supposedly came back late last night. We'd decided on a sleeveless black cowl-neck sweater and these vintage-wash jeans, complete with black flip-flops accentuated with rhinestones. Uneasily, I mumbled to myself, "This is it, McGuire. High school." I took a deep breath, and practiced my sophisticated walk into the kitchen.

Sophisticated, chin up, shoulders back. Just like they said in Teen People.

Two seconds later, I found myself sprawled across the floor with pain shooting through my knees. "Ow!" I cried out, getting to my feet and rubbing my knee.

Gee, if this is any kind of foreshadowing for the rest of high school, I don't think I wanna live to be a senior.

"Lizzie!" my mom fussed, rushing by the stairs. She was all dressed and ready to go to work. Over the summer, she'd accepted a job as a teacher at Matt's school. "Are you okay, sweetie?"

"Mom!" I groaned. Like I needed her getting all mushy now. "I'm fine."

"Oh, Lizzie!" she cried out dramatically, coming closer and wrapping her arms around me. "Off to high school. Sam, our little baby's growing up!"

My dad came in from the stairs, rubbing his eyes sleepily. "Baby? We don't have a baby."

And of course, the Devil chose that as his moment to make his grand entrance. "Why, don't you look particularly unattractive today, Lizzie."

I broke out of my mom's suffocating embrace long and made a beeline for Matt. "I swear, I'm going to—"

"Lizzie!" my mom cut in. "The bus is here!"

"Kill you…later," I finished, threateningly, grabbing my backpack. "'Bye Mom, Dad! Have a good day!" I added, blowing a kiss to each of them.

"Don't look anyone straight in the eye! You'll turn them into stone!" Matt called innocently as I darted out the door.

"Ugh. I swear," I muttered under my breath, heading across the lawn. "Why can't I have a nice little brother?" He'd worship me, and clean my room, and…

I climbed onto the tiny yellow bus stopped in front of my house. "Good morning!" the heavyset bus driver boomed cheerfully.

I returned the greeting with a simple hello. There was only two other people on the bus, Parker MacKenzie and some long-haired lanky guy I'd never seen before. Ugh. I'll pass on those two. I opted for an empty seat in the back.

Sighing and heaving my backpack down next me, I wondered how things would be with Gordo. His stop was next, I think. We'd parted on a kind of awkward note. Okay, more than kind of. In the few weeks of junior high, something changed in Gordo. During this murder mystery party, and through the most unlikely of people, Kate, it became clear that he'd liked me and had for some time. And after that, he wrote a really short, but sweet thing in my yearbook, and I kind of kissed him on the cheek during our class photo. It was a surprise to both me and him, and after that, it kind of became blaringly obvious that we both liked each other. And then came the part we'd both been dreading—the part where we decided what to do next. Go for it, risk the friendship? Stay friends, be awkward? Neither of us are active decision makers, and neither of us wanted to deal with having to choose between friendship and well, romance. And so our decision was made for us two days after graduation, Gordo was accepted in some summer program where you travel the world. He called me that night, in a friendly, casual kind of way, and then slyly mentioned it. I didn't want him to go, but not wanting to seem too pushy, I told him he should do what he wanted.

I guess he took that as an "I don't like you Gordo, GO!" because the next day he stopped by my house and announced he was on his way to the airport. Can you say awkward? Awkward goodbye, complete with an awkward hug and an akward kiss on the cheek, delivered last-second by him this time. I realized I made a huge mistake, and told him I'd miss him and to have fun.

He'd written me a few meaningless little postcards, explaining that they weren't really allowed to use phones except to call their parents, and telling me all the cool places he was seeing. And he always signed them "Gordo". Not "Love, Gordo" or anything like that. Just "Gordo". And then he'd written to tell me that he, like Miranda, would be coming home the night before school started.

My summer was kind of blah. Without my two best friends, there wasn't much else to do. I bonded with my little brother, a phase which lasted about two days, occasionally went to the Digital Bean just to see if anyone would be there. A few times I'd bumped into Ethan Craft and some of his friends, and I'd played video games with them. I went on a two-week family vacation to Florida, and hung out with the girl April most of the time. But other than that—not much.

I was looking forward to seeing Gordo again as much as I was dreading it. After a lot of time spent thinking, I freaked out. What if we did start, like, going out, and broke up? Would I be out a best friend? I'd rehearsed a million times what I was going to say to him, how I was going to act around him, but I still wasn't sure.

The bus halted in front of his house, and I saw him dash across his lawn. When he got on the bus, he stood, searching the bus, as I had.

Should I pretend we never knew we liked each other? Do I still like him? Well, I guess we're about to find out!

"Gordo!" I called out, a little too desperately. "Um, come sit back here."

His eyes finally locked with mine. He smiled at me, but if you ask me, the smile looked a little forced.

It's now or never, McGuire.

He slid into the seat across from me. "You look great," he cut in, his words slicing clean through the thick tension. "I, I missed you."

I grinned, relaxing a little. "Ditto. The summer was so not the same without you and Miranda. Please, I did, like, nothing. How was traveling the world?"

He launched into an excited description of his ventures through Italy and Paris and Australia, but I wasn't really paying attention. Something was different about Gordo. He was tan, rather unusual for him, but something—

"You cut your hair!" I blurted out. Was I losing my keen eye for noticing things that were different? I'd been so nervous before that I hadn't even noticed the shaggy mop on his head was gone, and in its place, a cleaner, shorter, spikier work of art. Well, close enough. Wait—what?! Gordo…haircut?

"Yeah, well, I," he mumbled. "It was hot in some of those places. More practical this way."

He looked good. Different, not the typical Gordo I'd become accustomed to, but good. "You look good," I told him dutifully, panicking silently. Where was Gordo? I mean, yeah, he looked good, but this wasn't him. "Gordo…you're not trying to…fit in, are you?" I teased him. What he didn't know was that I wasn't just playing around with him.

"Of course not!" he retorted, a little too quickly, the faintest blush appearing on his cheeks. "I'm not about to cave into the enticements of peer pressure to look like everybody else, see?" he added, gesturing toward his shoes. Beat-up Converse sneakers. Years old.

I sighed inwardly, somewhat relieved. See? Still the same Gordo. I've got to stop worrying. Nothing's changed. I laughed, and then for a while nobody said anything. Uh-oh. Alert: now leaving friend mode. Entering: entering…well, the land of the unknown. I wasn't sure at the moment where we stood, or what, but I figured I'd be safe to leave it as friends for now. Come on, Lizzie, I told myself. There's no way you could have like liked Gordo, or like like him now. He's your best friend, so cut this out. Get your act together! So what, you kissed him on the cheek. Friends do that. Right...um, right?

I had to make sure I was right. Gordo's eyes were on me intently, but it was hard to say what I was thinking without everyone else hearing and understanding. The bus was starting to fill up with some new faces, most old. The thing I knew we were both thinking was just hanging in the air, waiting for one of us to touch upon it, acknowledge its presence.

"Uh, Gordo?"

"Yeah?"

"About, um, well, you know, it was just kind of nothing, right?" I began timidly. Wow. That made a lot of sense. Not.

He took a deep breath. Somehow he was smart enough to make sense of my nonsense. "I…guess." Actually, it was really more of a question than a statement. One I didn't know how to answer. I looked away from his, shifting my eyes from the window to the floor to my lap and back to the window.

Friend mode! Friend mode! You better get back into it or you'll be—

"Wait!" I cried out suddenly, forgetting about Gordo and everything else. The bus had just passed by Miranda's house.

And on the front lawn was a huge FOR SALE sign.