I could already see the down-shift in his mood happening. “Ben, you know that’s not true,” I said, my voice soft and careful. “I know I don’t know what it’s like for you, but the way you’re dealing with it isn’t healthy. ”
Ben blew out a frustrated breath, pocketing his things again and heading for the door. “You’re not a doctor yet, Becca, so quit trying to fix me. ”
“Ben, wait. I’m sorry. I just—just—I want you to be happy. Th-that’s all. ”
He stopped in the doorway and glanced at me through a curtain of stringy hair. He gave me a look that was deeper than I thought Ben capable of. “The problem is, when I am happy, no one can handle it. And when I’m not happy, they can’t handle it. It’s not that I don’t care about my life or my future, Becca. I do. I just know that I’m limited, okay? What happens up here,” he tapped his temple, “inherently limits what I can do in my life. Drugs, no drugs, pot, no pot, there’s just no good way to handle my shit. I’ll never accomplish important stuff like you will, Beck. I know that. I’ve accepted it. I’m just gonna live it up and enjoy my life as much as I can for as long as I can. Eventually it’ll all catch up to me. I know that, too. But it’s my life, my choice, and no one else’s. ”
“Just be careful, okay?”
He nodded, smiling at me. “Sure thing, Beck. ” He turned away and closed the door, then poked his head back through. “Hey, by the way, if you ever want help sneaking out to see Jason Dorsey, let me know. I’ll cover for you. ” He winked and was gone before I could reply.
* * *
Jason
I’d barely even seen Becca twice in a month, and those were both fleeting glimpses in passing at school. We didn’t have any classes together this semester and we had different lunch periods, too. She caught up to me at my locker right before I was heading out to practice one Friday in mid-October. It was cool outside, so she was wearing a floor-length blue wool skirt, a white V-neck T-shirt, and an unbuttoned gray sweater. Her clothes were cut so that they clung to her curves without being overtly revealing, and I found this the sexiest thing ever. Any girl could put on a push-up bra and a low-cut shirt so she spilled out. It took class and style to look deliciously sexy without looking skanky, and Becca pulled this off with every outfit she wore.
“Hey, Jason. ” She leaned against the locker beside me, mere inches away, so close I could smell the conditioner in her hair and the body lotion on her skin.
I wanted to bury my face in the hollow of her neck and smell her, bury my face in her springy hair. I didn’t, though, because that might come across as slightly forward in this stage of the game. I tossed my history book in my backpack and zipped it shut, then hung it off one shoulder before pivoting to lean against the locker, facing Becca.
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“Hey, Becca. ” I crossed one foot over my ankle and my arms across my chest. I felt a glimmer of pride when her eyes followed my arms and traced the bulge of my pecs. She liked what she saw, which meant I’d be pounding the weights extra hard today.
“I’m sorry I never got a chance to see you again. Father has me on lockdown. ” She tugged on one of her curls, making it bounce up and down.
I made an irritated face. “He really keeps you on a short leash, doesn’t he? Damn, that sucks. ”
“I did lie to him, Jason. ”
I huffed in irritation. “You’re a teenager. It’s par for the course. We’re supposed to sneak out and lie to our parents. We weren’t doing anything bad. You shouldn’t have gotten grounded for this long. ”
“Yeah, that’s what Ben told me, too. I just…I’m not sure I’m ready to openly defy him. Besides, my bedroom is on the second floor. I’m not sure I’m brave enough to sneak out that way. ” She hiked her backpack higher up on both shoulders. “Ben said he’d help me sneak out, but…I’m just not-nnn-not sure. ”
I was realizing she only really stuttered when she was nervous about something, and I hated hearing her struggle. I could see how she berated herself mentally after every fumbled word. “Hey,” I said. “It’s fine. I’m not trying to encourage you to, like, become a delinquent or something. I want to see you, yeah. But I don’t want to be the cause of adding more trouble to your life. ”
She smiled at me. “You’re sweet. I’m in no danger of becoming a delinquent. I’m just considering a few white lies so I can hang out with a friend. ”
“Is that all I am to you?” I said, only half-teasing. “A friend? I’m wounded. ”
Becca either didn’t catch the humor in my voice, or chose to ignore it. “What did you have in mind, if friends isn’t enough?” Her eyes were wide and fixed on mine, serious and so brown they were all but black, shot through with streaks of lighter brown around the pupil.
I tried and miserably failed to pull my gaze from her mesmerizing eyes. “I don’t know. More?” I swallowed the ball of hot embarrassment in my throat and went for broke. “My girlfriend?”
Her eyes went even wider, and her mouth dropped open slightly. She sucked in a long, hard breath, and I couldn’t help but admire the way the sudden inrush swelled her br**sts in the soft cotton of her white shirt.
“Y-your g-ggg-girlfriend? Ww-we wwwww—damn it. ” With each stuttered word, she blinked hard, as if a circuit in her brain was catching on a loop; she closed her eyes and seemed to be counting mentally. “We went on one date, Jason. ” Each word was carefully enunciated and nearly monotone, as if she was reading something out loud.
I made sure to not show any reaction to her struggle, just waited until she said what she had to say. It was painful to watch her struggle with both her words and her embarrassment.
“But it was a really awesome date,” I said.
When she responded, her words were smoother and more natural, but some beginning syllables were slightly drawn out, like a stutter corrected midway. “True. But shouldn’t we go on another date before we make anything official?”
I shrugged. “Sure, if you want to do it that way. Won’t change anything for me, though. I really like you. ”
She didn’t speak for so long I wasn’t sure if she was going to. She seemed to be either scripting out her next words, or considering whether to say them at all. Eventually, she did speak, and it all came out in a rush, as if she was spitting out the words before she could take them back or chicken out. “I’ve had a crush on you since fourth grade. ” She looked away, her dusky skin pinking slightly with a blush of embarrassment.
“Fourth grade? Nell told me seventh. ”
Becca huffed and sputtered in anger. “She told you? I’ll cut a bitch!”
I laughed so hard I snorted, which only made me laugh harder. “You’ll cut a bitch? Oh, god, Beck, you shouldn’t try to talk street. Make it stop!” I sucked in a breath, then made the mistake of glancing at Becca, who had her arms crossed beneath her br**sts and was glaring at me with a complex mix of emotions on her face. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just too funny. ”
“Are you done yet?” Becca spat out the words.
I breathed deeply and tried to compose myself. “Yes, I’m done. I’m sorry, that was just the funniest thing I’ve heard in a long time. ”
Becca couldn’t stop a smile from creeping over her lips. “Ben says that all the time, and it’s funny. I guess I can’t pull it off as well as he does, though. ” She sobered a bit. “I still can’t believe Nell actually told you I had a crush on you. ”
“In her defense, it was only to convince me to ask you out. I wasn’t going to, mainly because I had a feeling you’d react pretty much exactly the way you did. ”
“How else was I supposed to react?”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine there was much else you could do. It was a pretty odd situation. ”
Becca inched slightly closer to me, close enough that she had to stare up into my eyes. Her br**sts were brushing my chest, and I had to use every ounce of willpower to not crush her against me and kiss her.
She searched my eyes, and then I saw a decision flow over her features.
“Pick me up at the entrance to my sub at midnight,” she said, her voice sounding at once excited, worried, and determined.
“Midnight?” I frowned. “What the hell are we supposed to do at midnight in this podunk town? Everything closes at eight. ”
She glanced around us briefly, saw that the hallway was empty but for us, then lifted up on her tiptoes and kissed me on the cheek, right on the edge of my jawline. “I’m sure you can figure something out. Even if we just drive around and listen to country music again, I’m sure we’ll have fun. ”
“How are you gonna get out of your room? Please don’t fall out of your window and break something. That would for sure put a damper on our plans. ” I was trying to playing it cool, but my entire body was on fire, trembling and wired from the electric feel of her lips on my cheek.
She grinned. “You leave that to me. But it will probably involve my brother. God knows he’s had plenty of experience sneaking out. He’s half the reason my parents are so hard on me. ”
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“Call me or text me if you end up needing help. I have a ladder I could bring. ”
She snorted. “I think a ladder might be kind of noisy. The idea is to draw less attention to the fact that I’m sneaking out under my fun-Nazi father’s nose, not more. ”
I shrugged. “Just a thought. I could make you a grappling hook?”
“A grappling hook?” Becca laughed outright at that. “Where are you going to get a grappling hook?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought that far ahead. Maybe I could just steal the anchor from my dad’s fishing boat? I could toss it into your window, and you could shimmy down it. ”
Becca laughed even harder at that. “Because that’s not conspicuous at all. ”
We both pushed away from the lockers and strolled down the hallway toward the front office and the exit. Somehow, my hand ended up tangled in Becca’s, our fingers twined together. We both looked down at our joined hands and then at each other.
“Yep,” I said. “You’re my girlfriend. Don’t even try to deny it. ”
Becca slapped my bicep with her free hand but didn’t take her hand out of mine. “I agreed to no such thing. I might be, but then again, I might not be. Nothing’s official. The jury is still out. ”
“You’re just trying to play it cool, Becca. Don’t lie. ” I tugged her so she stumbled against my side, and then I wrapped my arm around her waist, careful to keep it in the kosher-zone above her waistline but beneath her bra strap.
She seemed to have stopped breathing, but she didn’t pull away. She might have burrowed a little closer, actually. “Have you met me? I’m the furthest thing from cool. ” She murmured the words as if she believed them but didn’t want me to.
I frowned down at her. She wouldn’t meet my eyes, so I pulled her to a stop and twisted her to face me. Her body was flush against mine, soft and fitting perfectly. Her chin rested on my chest, and I knew she could feel my heart crashing against my ribcage.
“I think you’re cool, Becca,” I said. “I always have. ”
She wrinkled her nose in confusion. “You have? I always kind of figured you barely knew who I was. ”
I made a face at her. “That’s not possible. You’re too beautiful to fade into the background. ”
She tilted her head to rest her cheek against my shirt, then shook her curls in denial. “I’m not, but thanks. ”
“You’re not supposed to disagree with me. I can think whatever I want about you, and it’s true because I think it. ”
She turned her face up to look at me, a comical expression of puzzlement on her features. “That is very dizzyingly circular logic. You think what you think, and it’s true because you think it?” Her arms slid up my back to grip my triceps.
“It’s kind of like ‘I think, therefore I am. ’ Wasn’t it Marcel Proust who said that?”
Becca snickered, not quite derisively. “Descartes, actually. Proust is someone totally different. ”
I laughed. “See, that’s what I get for trying to be smart. ”
“I was just impressed that you knew that phrase, and that you knew who Proust was. ”
I grunted. “Well, obviously, I don’t know either. I’ve got no clue who Proust was. And I’m not even sure I understand the phrase much better. ”
We started walking again, and our hands resumed their twined grip around each other.
“Marcel Proust was a French novelist best known for his work In Search of Lost Time. He was one of the first writers to openly discuss homosexuality, which was a really big deal when he lived, around the turn of the century. ” Becca seemed to lose herself in reciting the facts, her words coming out effortlessly, although she sounded like she was composing an essay. “The phrase cogito ergo sum, which translates from the Latin into ‘I think, therefore I am,’ was a philosophical statement proposed by the French philosopher René Descartes in the seventeenth century. And actually, the phrase was written in French, as Je pense, donc je suis. All it really means is that the process of doubting whether or not you exist is proof of your existence. ”
“Why would anyone doubt their own existence? It seems pretty self-explanatory, you know? I’m here, I see things, I feel things. I am, therefore I am. ”
Becca tilted her head and nodded slowly. “Very good. That’s a good point. And a lot of laypeople gave that exact same answer to the philosphers. To them, though—the philosophers, I mean—the idea went deeper than that. It went back to Plato, who talked about ‘the knowledge of knowledge. ’ Think about it like this: Who told you two plus two equals four?”
I answered immediately. “My kindergarten teacher. But she showed me, with blocks. Two blocks plus two blocks means I have four blocks. ”
“Right, that’s a concrete example. But apply that doubt, that ‘who told you so?’ mindset to more insubstantial, metaphysical ideas, like one’s place in life, in the universe. Like the conundrum, if a tree falls in the forest and no one’s around to hear, does it make any noise?”
I snorted. “That one is stupid. Just ask the squirrel who jumps out of the falling tree if he heard the damn thing crash to the ground. ”
Becca laughed. “You’re taking all the fun out of the argument. But you see my point, or rather, their point. That’s what Descartes was saying. The fact that he could outline physical reality as perceived by himself proved his own existence, in his perception of reality at least. ‘I must finally conclude that the proposition, I am, I exist, is necessarily true whenever it is put forward by me or conceived in my mind. ’ That was his ultimate argument. ”
I chewed on my lip and thought about it. “I guess I see his point. Like, how do I know what you see, how do I know what you’re thinking? I don’t. I only know what I know. If there’s no one around to hear a sound, the sound exists, but it doesn’t necessarily exist in the sense that it has…I don’t know…it doesn’t have any purpose if no one’s around to receive the sound waves. ”
She chuckled. “Yeah, sort of. ”
“Meaning I’ve totally missed it, but you’re too nice to say so. ” She ducked her head, and I knew I was right. “See? Trying to get into a philosophical discussion with you is an exercise in futility. My brain just don’t work that way. ”
She pushed at me with her hip. “I’m just a freak that way. I had to write a paper on Descartes for a philosophy class I took at the college last semester. ”
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I grinned down at her. “It’s scary how smart you are. You sounded like a damn professor, all lecturing me and shit. ”
She ducked her head. “S-sorry. I didn’t mean to le-lecture you. ”
I swung my backpack around to my front, ducked down into a squat in front of her, and swept her onto my back in a piggyback ride, bursting into a full-out sprint down the hallway. She squealed and wrapped
her arms around my neck, burying her face in my shoulder and laughing, demanding that I put her down. I just wanted to get her mind off being nervous so she wouldn’t stutter, not that it bothered me, but because it did her.
“Put me down, you lunatic!” She slapped my chest. “This is scary!” The fact that she didn’t stutter and said it laughing told me was having fun, so I kept running down the empty front hallway, past the main office, where Mrs. Jones, the secretary, looked up and peered at us over her glasses in disapproval.
We approached the doors that led to the parking lot, and I slowed enough to kick the crash bar and open the door, ducking through and skipping down the steps. My backpack jounced against my stomach, my books hitting my bruises painfully, but I didn’t care. I had her legs wrapped around my waist, her arms around my neck, her breath in my hair, and her sweet laughter in my ear.
I made it halfway across the parking lot before she started wiggling in my grip, so I slowed to a stop and let her down. There were no cars in the parking lot, so I looked around in confusion. “Where’s your car?”
She twisted a lock of hair around her finger. “I don’t have one. ” She said it carefully, clearly upset by the admission but determined not to show it.
“So how are you getting home?” I asked.
“Ben is probably waiting for me at the circle. He picks me up after school since Mom and Dad are both working. ”
“Well, shit, that’s on the other side of the school. Why didn’t you say something?”
She gave me an incredulous look. “I tried! You were carting me through the school like a caveman dragging his woman to his cave!”
I laughed. “So you admit it! You’re my woman. ” I grabbed her wrist and jerked her against me, and faked a deep, gruff voice. “Me Jason. You mine. ”
She seemed to melt, just a bit. Her eyes widened and wavered, dark and luminous like black coffee glinting in the rays of sunshine. “Fine. Me Becca. You mine. ” She said it barely above a whisper, as if she couldn’t believe her own words.
I felt my stomach flipping, my heart rabbiting. Her lips were parted, waiting. Shit. I was gonna kiss her, wasn’t I?
Yep.
I slowly, carefully lowered my lips to hers, giving her plenty of time to back away. She tasted like vanilla lip stuff and smelled like citrus and melons and cleanliness and an indefinable, intoxicating something else. Her lips were soft and wet against mine, still at first, but then as moments passed and the kiss continued, her lips began to move, tilting to gain a better fit. I lost my breath, lost track of everything except her body flush and soft against mine, her hands sliding slowly up my spine to rub against my close-cropped spiky blond hair.
A car horn blared from a few feet away, and we both jumped guiltily.
“Becca! Whoo-hoo! That’s how you break the rules, girl!” It was Ben, Becca’s brother, skidding his battered red Trans Am to a stop next to us. “I’ve been waiting for you for ten minutes, Beck. I guess I see why. ”
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