Anything You Want by Geoff Herbach

murmured, shaking his head.
    â€œPlease leave so Maggie and I can get prepared for the day,” I said to Darius.
    â€œHoly Christ!” he shouted. “Is that it?” His eyes looked like Ping-Pong balls. He didn’t move.
    â€œDarius, please,” I said.
    Then he slammed the door shut.
    Without saying a word, Maggie and I pulled on our clothes. We both went into the bathroom together. She peed while I brushed my teeth, which was pretty awesome. Pretty adult, right? Then she used my toothbrush to clean her chomps.
    â€œI look like shit,” Maggie said into the mirror. “I haven’t gone to school without showering since sixth grade.”
    â€œYou’re still a hottie,” I said.
    Luckily I no longer lived in the fantastic mullet house on the west side of town. That would’ve been a long walk, and we might’ve missed the quiz. The high school’s only a five-minute hike from the suite. We got to school right as the bell rang between second and third period. We blended into the flow of kids in the hall, grabbed our books (and my inflatable school doughnut) from our lockers, and met in the doorway to Mrs. Mullen’s junior English class. We smiled and kissed quick.
    Maggie whispered, “I just realized I wasn’t sick at all this morning. You can even cure morning sickness, Taco Keller.”
    â€œYes, I can,” I said. “I take care of things.”
    Then we started making out, blocking the door for everyone else.
    â€œExcuse me,” Mrs. Mullen said. “Could you please get your hormonal rears in your seats so I can start my class?”
    Maggie Corrigan and I laughed.
    Both Maggie and I aced that quiz. It was about comma use, which I totally understand. Maggie is just great at English because her dad wears those leather patches on the elbows of his English professor jacket.
    Our new life together was off to such a great start. But after English, we had to split up to go to different classes. She went to gym to whack some birdies, and I went to calc, which was killer. Mr. Edwards, the calc teacher, would just split my brain in two, making us do things that were so hard and useless. That day, for instance, he stood in front of class and said, “Today we’re going to construct a relatively simple model of change having to do with the speed of a cannonball.”
    Now I’m all about cannons. They’re loud, which I like. But I don’t need an equation to know what happens to the speed of a cannonball after it’s fired. I’ve seen it on TV. It flies through the air, slows down, and then stops eventually (usually in the hull of a ship or in the wall of an old-time army fort). Why would I need a mathematical model to predict that?
    Anyway, I couldn’t concentrate on cannonballs. I was worried about Maggie, worried what would happen to her, psychologically speaking, if she didn’t have her old pal Taco standing by to cheer her up. If I was nearby, I could take care of things, keep her from feeling sick. But no, I had to think about cannonballs!
    Mr. and Mrs. Corrigan were worried about Maggie too apparently. The school called them to let them know Maggie showed up. (School didn’t call Darius to let him know I had arrived, by the way). Then the Corrigans came to school and pulled Maggie right back out of school. They took her home.
    I found out in the hall after calc. Akilesh Sharma, who had passed calc as a freshman, so he wasn’t in class with Brad Schwartz and me, asked, “What’s wrong with Maggie Corrigan, man?”
    I stopped in my tracks. “What do you mean?”
    â€œI just saw her crying on the way to the parking lot with her parents.”
    â€œDid someone die?” Brad asked.
    â€œDid she kill someone?” Sharma asked.
    â€œNo. Oh no!” I cried. When Maggie was with me, she felt good, healthy, happy. When she was with her parents, she wanted to die and get an abortion too.
    I