I’m not sure why I didn’t tell him I’m visiting Cricket. I honestly don’t think Andy would mind. Maybe I’m afraid my parents would mention it to Max. I mean, I will tell Max eventually, when it’s really, really, really clear that Cricket and I are just friends.
When we’re comfortable around each other.
I exit at the Downtown Berkeley station and head toward campus. Thanks to conversations with St. Clair, I know what dormitory Cricket lives in. I’ve printed out a map online. It shouldn’t be too difficult to find, even though it’s been a while. I used to drag Lindsey here sometimes on weekends to go shopping on Telegraph Avenue, but since last summer—and since Max—we haven’t left the city together.
The buildings in this town look more California, less San Francisco. They’re pretty, but they’re newer and squarer. Instead of gingerbread Victorians with stained glass and peeling paint, they’re made from stable brick. And there are beautiful trees everywhere, lining streets that are wider and cleaner and quieter. It’s busy enough, though, and everyone walking or bicycling around me is college-aged.
I push back my shoulders to appear more confident.
It’s weird to think about Cricket living here. My memories of him are so connected to the lavender house in the Castro that it’s difficult to picture him anywhere else. But that might be his drugstore. And that might be his taqueria. And that might be where he buys his Cal Golden Bears memorabilia!
No. It’s impossible to picture Cricket in a T-shirt with a school mascot on it.
Which is why we are friends.
It takes another fifteen minutes to walk the long, sloping road to the Foothill Student Housing, and my mind can’t help but add the time to St. Clair and Anna’s tally. It’s obscene how much time they spend getting to each other every day. And I’ve never heard them complain, not once. I can’t even believe how often Cricket returns home. Lugging his laundry, no less!
An unsettling thought occurs to me.
His laundry bag. It’s never full. Cricket has a large wardrobe for a guy; there’s no way he’s bringing all of his dirty clothes home. Which means he’s doing some of his laundry here. Which means . . . what? The laundry is an excuse to come home? But he doesn’t need an excuse to hang out with Calliope. She wants him there. So the excuse must have been crafted to strengthen a different reason for coming home.
Calliope’s voice rings inside my head: The special trips home to see you.
An uncomfortable question lodges itself in the pit of my stomach. And what am I doing right now? Making a special trip to see him.
Oh, no—
I stop dead in my tracks. The Foothill Student Housing is TWO dormitories, on opposite sides of the street. I’d been expecting a high-rise. And I thought I’d be able to waltz in to some kind of . . . help desk. But I don’t see anything resembling a help desk, and not only are there TWO dormitories, but each is made up of a series of labyrinth-like buildings shaped like Swiss chalets. Evil, evil Swiss chalets surrounded by tall gates.
WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?
Okay, calm down, Dolores.There’s probably an easy solution. You can figure this out. No biggie.You’ve made it this far.
I try one of the gates. Locked.
ARRRRGHHHHHH.
Wait. Someone’s coming! I pull out my cell and start chatting like crazy. “Ohmygod, I know. Did you see those spurs that urban cowboy was wearing at the gas station?” I pretend to reach for the gate just as the girl on the other side exits. She holds it open, and I give her a wave of thanks as I keep walking and chatting to no one.
I’m inside. I’M INSIDE.
Lindsey would be so proud! Okay, what would she do next? I examine the courtyard, and I’m dismayed to find the situation looks even worse from in here—endless buildings, floors, and hallways. Locks everywhere. On everything. It’s a freaking fortress.
This was such a stupid idea. This was the stupidest idea of all of the stupid ideas I have ever had in my entire stupid life. I should go home. I’m still not even sure what I’d say to Cricket when I saw him. But I hate that I’ve already come this far. I crumple onto a bench and call Lindsey. “I need help.”
“What kind of help?” She’s suspicious.
“How do I find Cricket’s building and room number?”
“And you need that information why?”
My voice grows tiny. “Because I’m in Berkeley?”
A long pause. “Oh, Lola.” And then a sigh. “You want me to call him?”
“No!”
“So you’re just gonna show up? What if he’s not there?”
Crud. I hadn’t thought about that.
“Forget it,” Lindsey says. “Okay, call what’s-his-name. St. Clair.”
“Too embarrassing. Don’t you have access to school records or something?”
“If I had access to something like that, don’t you think I would have used it by now? No, you have to use a source. Your source is St. Clair.”
“It’s not you?”
“Bye, Lola.”
“Wait! If my parents call, tell them I’m in the bathroom. We’re eating pizza and watching Pushing Daisies.”
“I hate you.”
“I love you.”
She hangs up.
“All right,” an English accent says to me. “(A) You’re not in the toilets, (B) You’re not eating pizza, and (C) Whom do you love?”
I jump up and throw my arms around him. “I don’t believe it!”
St. Clair hugs me back before prying me off. “What are you doing at my dormitory?”
“I chose the right one?You live here? Which building?” I look around wildly as if it were about to light up.
“I don’t know. Should I trust a lying girl wearing a yellow raincoat on a sunny day?”
I smile. “Why are you always in the right place at the right time?”
“It’s a particular talent of mine.” He shrugs. “Are you looking for Cricket?”
“Will you show me where he lives?”
“Does he know you’re coming?” he asks.
I don’t answer.
“Ah,” he says.
“Do you think he’ll mind?”
St. Clair shakes his head. “You’re right. I sincerely doubt it. Come along, then.” He leads me across the courtyard to a brown-shingled building in the back. We climb a set of stairs, and he unlocks another door, which puts us inside the building’s second floor, in an ugly, battered hallway. He struts ahead of me, but his scuffed boots make heavy clomping noises on the carpet. Cricket doesn’t make any noise when he moves.
Does Max make noise?
“Here’s my room.” St. Clair nods to a cheap-looking wooden door, and I laugh when I see the worn drawing taped to it. It’s him wearing a Napoleon hat. “And here . . .” We walk down four more doors. “. . . is Monsieur Bell’s room.” There’s also something taped to his door. It’s an illustrated miniposter of a woman thrusting a battle-ax toward the heavens and straddling a white tiger. Naked.
St. Clair grins.
“Are you . . . sure this is his room?”
“Oh, I’m quite sure.”
I stare at the naked tiger lady. She’s skinny and blond and doesn’t look anything like me. Not that it matters. Not that I should care for the opinion of someone who’d hang that on his door. But still. “And now I have a train to catch,” St. Clair says. “Best of luck.” He darts out the building.
If he’s screwing with me, I’ll kill him.
I take a deep breath. And then another.
And then I knock.
chapter twenty
Lola?” Cricket looks astonished. “What are you doing here?”
“I—” Now that I’m standing before his door, my excuses sound ludicrous. Hey, I was in the neighborhood, so I thought I’d drop by to hang out. Oh! And I wanted to get back that embarrassing binder, which I only lent to you because you were nice enough to offer to make something that would enable me to attend a dance with another guy. “I
came to see if you had any ideas for the panniers. I’m . . . in a bit of a time crunch.”
Time crunch? I have never used the phrase time crunch before.
Cricket is still in shock.
“I mean, I came to see you, too. Of course.”
“Well. You found me. Hi.”
“Everything okay?” A girl pops out her head behind him. She’s taller than me, and she’s slender. And she has golden hair in natural waves and a glowing tan that says surfer girl rather than fake-and-bake.
And she looks totally pissed to see me here.
She places a hand possessively on his arm. His sleeve is pushed up so her bare skin is touching his. My stomach plummets. “S-sorry. It was rude of me to show up like this. I’ll see you later, okay?” And then I’m speed-walking down the hall.
“LOLA!”
I stop. I slowly turn around.
He looks bewildered. “Where are you going?”
“I didn’t mean to interrupt. I was in the neighborhood, um, shopping and . . . and of course you’re busy.” Stop freaking out. He can date or make out with or—oh God—sleep with whomever he wants.
“Is it raining?” The girl frowns at my raincoat and rain boots.
“Oh. No. They matched my dress.” I unsnap the coat to expose a pretty dress in the same shade of yellow. Cricket startles like he’s just noticed the girl’s hand. He slides from her grasp and into the hall.
“This is my friend Jessica. We were working on our physics homework. Jess, this is Lola. The one . . . the one I told you about.”
Jessica does not look pleased by this information.
HE TOLD HER ABOUT ME.
“So you came to work on the dress?” he asks.
“It’s not a big deal.” I move toward him. “We can do it later.”
“No! You’re here. You’re never here.” He glances at Jessica. “We’ll finish tomorrow, okay?”
“Right.” She fires me a death glare before storming away.
Cricket doesn’t notice. He opens his door wide. “Come in. How did you find me?”
“St. Cla—OH.”
“What? What is it?”
Two beds. Beside one, a constellation chart, a periodic table, and a desk crowded with papers and wires and small metal objects. Beside the other, more naked fantasy women, a gigantic television, and several gaming consoles.
“You have a roommate.”
“Yeah.” He sounds confused.
“The, um, picture on your door surprised me.”
“NO. No. I prefer my women with . . . fewer carnivorous beasts and less weaponry.” He pauses and smiles. “Naked is okay. What she needs are a golden retriever and a telescope. Maybe then it would do it for me.”
I laugh.
“A squirrel and a laboratory beaker?”
“A bunny rabbit and a flip chart,” I say.
“Only if the flip chart has mathematical equations on it.”
I fake-swoon onto his bed. “Too much, too much!” He’s laughing, but it fades as he watches me toss and turn. He looks pained. I sit up on my elbows. “What’s the matter?”
“You’re in my room,” he says quietly. “You weren’t in my room five minutes ago and now you are.”
I pull myself up the rest of the way, suddenly conscious of both the bed and its lingering scent of bar soap and sweet mechanical oil. I glance at a space close to his head but not quite at it. “I shouldn’t have barged in on you like this. I’m sorry.”
“No. I’m glad you’re here.”
I find the courage to meet his eyes, but he’s not looking at me anymore. He reaches for something on his desk. It’s overflowing with towers of graphing paper and partially completed projects, but there’s one area that’s been cleared of everything. Everything except for my binder. “I did some sketches this weekend in Pennsylvania—”
“Oh, yeah.” I looked up Skate America, and it was held in Reading this year. I ask the polite question. “How did Calliope do?”
“Good, good. First.”
“She broke her second-place streak?”
He looks up. “What? Oh. No. She always gets first in these early seasonal competitions. Not to take anything away from her,” he adds distractedly. Since he’s not bothered by the mention, I gather that he doesn’t know we spoke. Best to keep it that way. “Okay,” he says. “Here’s what I was working on.”
Cricket sits beside me on his bed. He’s in scientist inventor professional mode, so he’s forgotten his self-imposed distance rule. He pulls out a few illustrations that he’d tucked inside, and he’s rambling about materials and circumferences and other things I’m not thinking about, because all I see is how carefully he’s cradling my binder in his lap.
Like it’s fragile. Like it’s important.
“So what do you think?”
“It looks wonderful,” I say. “Thank you.”
“It’ll be big. I mean, you wanted big, right? Will you have enough fabric?”
Oops. I should have been paying closer attention. I study the dimensions. He hands me a calculator so I can punch in my numbers, and I’m surprised at how perfect it is. “Yeah. Wow, I’ll even have the right amount of spare fabric, just in case.”
“I’ll collect the materials tomorrow so I can start it this weekend at my parents’ house. I’ll need . . .” His cheeks turn pink.
I smile. “My measurements?”
“Not all of them.” Now red.
I write down what he needs. “I’m not one of those girls. I don’t mind.”
“You shouldn’t. You’re perfect, you look beautiful.”
The words are out. He’s been so careful.
“I shouldn’t have said that.” Cricket sets aside my binder and jolts up. He moves as far away from me as possible without stepping on his roommate’s side. “I’m sorry.” He rubs the back of his head and stares out his window.
“It’s okay. Thank you.”
We’re quiet. It’s grown dark outside.
“You know.” I snap and unsnap my raincoat. “We spend a lot of time apologizing to each other. Maybe we should stop. Maybe we need to try harder to be friends. It’s okay for friends to say things like that without it getting weird.”
Cricket turns back around and looks at me. “Or to show up unannounced.”
“Though if you gave me your number, I wouldn’t have to.”
He smiles, and I pull out my cell and toss it to him. He tosses his to me. We enter our digits into each other’s phone. The act feels official. Cricket throws mine back and says, “I’m listed under ‘Naked Tiger Woman.’”
I laugh. “Are you serious? Because I entered myself as ‘Naked Tiger Lady.’”
“Really?”
I laugh harder. “No. I’m Lola.”
“The one and only.”
I walk his phone to him and place it in his open palm. “That’s a mighty fine compliment coming from you, Cricket Bell.”
His eyebrows rise slowly in a question.
And then the bedroom light flicks on.
“Whoops.” A guy half the height of Cricket and twice as wide tosses a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos onto the other bed. “Sorry, man.”
Cricket springs backward. “This is my roommate, Dustin. Dustin, this is Lola.”
“Huh,” Dustin says. “I thought you were gay.”
“Um,” Cricket says.
“You’re always in the city, and you ignore Heather whenever she comes by.”
Heather? There’s another one?
“Guess I was wrong.” Dustin shakes his head and flops down beside his chips. “Good. Now I don’t have to worry about you looking at my junk anymore.”
I tense. “How do you know he’d be interested in your junk? It’s not like you’re attracted to every girl in the world. Why would he be attracted to every boy?”
“Whoa.” Dustin looks at Cricket. “What’s the deal?”
Cricket throws on a coat. “We should go, Lola.You probably need to catch the train.”
<
br /> “You don’t go here?” Dustin asks me.
“I attend school in the city.” I slide my binder into my bag.
He looks me up and down. “One of those art students, huh?”
“No. I go to Harvey Milk Memorial.”
“What’s that?”
“A high school,” I say.
Dustin’s eyebrows shoot up. He turns to Cricket. “Is she legal?” His voice is tinged with appreciation and respect.
“Bye, Dustin.” Cricket holds the door open for me.
“IS SHE LEGAL?” he says as Cricket slams the door shut behind us.
Cricket closes his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“Hey. No apologizing. Especially not for him.” We head outside, and I shudder. No wonder Cricket comes home most weekends. “Besides,” I continue, “I’m used to it. I get stuff like that alllll the—”
Cricket has stopped moving.
“—time.” Crud.
“Right. Of course you do.” With excruciating effort, he pushes through Max’s ghost. Always present. Always haunting us. “So what’s the boyfriend doing tonight?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to him today.”
“Do you usually talk to him? Every day?”
“Yeah,” I say uncomfortably. I’m losing Cricket. His body is moving physically farther from mine as his mind rebuilds the barrier he built to protect us. “Do you want to get dinner or something?” I blurt. He doesn’t answer. “Forget it, I’m sure you have things to do. Or whatever.”
“No!” And then, with control, “Dinner would be good. Any particular craving?”
“Well . . . Andy gave me money for pizza.”
Cricket tours me through his campus, pointing out the various buildings—all grand and immense and named Something-or-Other Hall—where he takes classes. He tells me about his teachers and the other students, and once again, I’m struck by how strange it is that he has this other life. This life I’m not a part of.
Lola and the Boy Next Door Page 15