A few of them tell me their life stories, which are oddly interesting. Many of them have lived through the period of time when things advanced dramatically. Television and telephones were something they couldn’t have dreamed of, let alone things like the Internet and cell phones. They lived through World War II—many of them serving there—sent their sons to Korea or later Vietnam, and now have grandkids and great-grandkids in the Middle East. They’ve lived through the Depression, and survived the loss of family members, spouses, and even children—many times due to tragic circumstances.
I think of my own piddly little life story, which seems unimportant in the face of their lives’ challenges. My story is the thing that has helped me sustain my anger, helped me to justify so many things, and I’m a little upset that their stories have dimmed my excuses.
Trevor is goofing around on the piano, as usual, singing songs that make these oldies happy. Then he stops and begins playing a slow song while I’m helping an old lady to readjust her afghan—crocheted by her mother who is long since dead, she tells me. I’m surprised by the melody, slow and sappy. I glance up at Trevor, and he watches me while playing. The ballad is everything I profess to hate, with its flowing romanticism pouring out.
I kind of like it.
He only plays it for a minute or two and then pounds into a rousing “Great Balls of Fire” rendition with lots of over-the-top theatrics that please the prunes. I shake my head at his complete lack of inhibition.
We head to the Pizza Palace afterward, and I’m glad it’s not another night of snobby Italian waitresses. Everyone goes to the Pizza Palace, so a geek and freak showing up together creates only a small stir.
A group of my friends sit in the back corner, waiting for a place to party. They wave me over, and I look at Trevor. He shakes his head.
“Go ahead,” he says, ever polite. “I’ll go sit over there.” He indicates the opposite corner, where a group of his friends sit, including the mouse Mary Ellen.
“We came together, right?” I ask. He nods. “Then we’ll stay together. I’ll just go say hi, and you can go say hi, and then we’ll find our own corner to sit in.”
“Okay . . .” He seems convinced I’ll abandon him to eat the large pizza alone. “I’ll go grab the pizza when they call our number.”
“Trev, I promise, I’m only going to say hi. I’ll be right back.” He still looks skeptical. “But if you bring Mary to our table, I swear . . .” I let the growled threat hang, and he smiles.
He leans close. “It’s Mary Ellen.” I don’t know whether to be amused or angry at his defense of her name, but he walks away before I have the chance to be either. I turn back toward my own friends.
“So, that him?” a girl named Gina asks. I don’t know her well since she skips school most days. I’m not even sure why she stays enrolled. My only contact with her is usually at parties and is limited at best.
“Him, who?” I ask, shooting a look at Beth and Ella.
“The one you’re fooling . . . you know, the guy—the bet you made.”
“I’m not fooling him,” I say, “just trying to bring him over to the dark side.” This strikes them all as funny, and they laugh loudly.
“Maybe you should stop wasting your time and come sit with someone who is firmly on the dark side already.” This is Kyle. He’s no longer in high school, though that’s more of an age thing and not so much a graduation thing. He waggles his eyebrows in comic suggestion.
“Where’s the fun in that?” I laugh.
“Is that what this is all about? Fun?” Seth is the only one who’s definitely not amused.
I finger my lip meaningfully while looking at Beth.
“Not just fun.”
“Oh yeah,” he sounds bitter, “I forgot. A lip piercing is involved. That makes it worth it.”
I drop my hand. He stands up angrily and gets right up in my face, eyes glassy and livid. I can smell the pot on him and unconsciously mentally compare him to Trevor, who always smells so good, so clean.
“If I take you right now and get your lip pierced, will you drop this stupidity and start acting like yourself again?”
“She can’t,” Ella comes to my rescue. “It’s not quite time for her to blow it with her fosters yet, right, Jen?”
“Besides that,” Kyle interjects, “I’m interested to see how this plays out, see if she can do it. It’s an intriguing game.”
This is met by agreement from the others.
“Why are you doing this?” Seth asks, whining a little but still standing in his threatening pose.
“Jen?” I look over, and Trevor is standing there, watching me. For a second my heart drops. How much did he hear?
“Are you okay?” He cuts his eyes toward Seth meaningfully. Seth huffs out a sound that is both disgusted and amused that a geek would think to protect me from him, and then he stalks away.
“Introduce us,” Kyle calls out, pretending there’s nothing odd going on. Trevor and I both watch Seth slam out through the front door. I turn back to Kyle.
“This is Trevor,” I say, residual guilt in my voice. “Trevor, this is everyone.”
“I’m Kyle,” Kyle says, sticking out his hand. Trevor the Polite doesn’t even hesitate to shake it, and I’m miserable knowing they are mocking him while he is unaware. “You been hanging out with our girl for a while now. You should come hang out with us sometime.”
“Sure, maybe some time.” Trevor is stiff, sensing that something is wrong. He turns to me. “Our pizza is over there if you’re ready.”
“I am,” I say, walking away without a backward glance. Trevor doesn’t have it in him to do so, so he acknowledges them.
“Nice to meet you,” he says, looking at me oddly when they all break out in laughter.
“Ignore them—they’re jerks,” I say as we sit at our own table.
“You think your friends are jerks?” He’s perplexed.
“They can be.”
“Was Seth bothering you?”
“You know who Seth is?”
“I do go to school every day, you know. I don’t know him personally, but I know who he is.”
“Oh.”
“Is he, like, an old boyfriend or something?”
I laugh. “Hardly. He’s sort of like your Mary. I might have wanted him at one time, but not so much anymore. He’s pretty much a freak.”
“Mary Ellen’s not a freak,” he denies automatically. Then, digesting the rest of my words, he leans forward. “You think I wanted Mary Ellen?”
“I’m not completely unobservant myself.”
“Huh.” He suddenly grins at me and leans closer. “What makes you think that maybe I don’t want her anymore, then?”
His teasing doesn’t work because I’m in misery at certain truths that are trying to surface in me.
“You should be with her. She’d be a perfect girlfriend for you.”
“Not looking for a girlfriend.”
“You’re not?”
“Nope.”
I narrow my eyes at him. Is he saying that because he doesn’t want a girlfriend or because he thinks he has one? Then I grin. He’s turned my little game of half answers back on me.
The boy is learning. I might just succeed yet.
⊕⊗⊕
Trevor takes me home and as usual walks me to the door. A new experience for me, having a guy do that every time he brings me home and not just the first time when he’s trying to make an impression. I’m used to being dropped off at the curb.
“You wanna come in for a little bit?” I ask suddenly before I can chicken out.
“Sure.” I have never asked him in before, and his voice carries his surprise.
We go in, and the fosters are sitting in the family room, curled up together watching some dumb old movie. They sit up when we come in, standing when they see Trevor behind me.
“Trevor! Nice to see you again.” The mom sounds excited, as if he’s a long lost relative that has suddenly appeared.<
br />
“Nice to see you as well, Mr. and Mrs. Grant.”
“Did you kids have fun tonight?”
I really don’t want to play this we’re-a-real-family game, so I say, “We’re going up to my room.”
“Okay, sweetie,” the mom says, failing her unspoken test. If it were any boy from my usual circle, there would not be an “okay” following my statement. I turn to head up the stairs, and Trevor follows.
“Leave your door open,” the dad calls, and I smile, just a little. He knows—boys are boys.
We go into my room, and Trevor looks around with interest. The room is frilly and girly, all white lace and cutesy pictures of landscapes and butterflies hanging on the walls—a room from a magazine.
“This isn’t what I imagined your room to look like at all.”
“Yeah, well, this is how it was when I came here. Nothing here is mine, obviously.”
He looks at me oddly.
“How long have you lived here?”
“Almost a year.”
“And you haven’t personalized it yet?”
“Why would I?” I ask curiously.
He lifts his hands as if it should be obvious.
“Because you live here.”
“Temporarily.” My answer shocks him, I can tell.
“How many places have you lived?” he asks.
“A lot.”
“Why’s that?”
“People can’t really take me for too long at a time, Trev.”
“I don’t believe that. I don’t get sick of being around you.”
“Yeah, well, give it some time. You haven’t been around that long.”
“You don’t give yourself enough credit.”
“You give me too much. Can we talk about something different?” This particular conversation agitates me.
He looks at me for a minute, as if deciding something. Then he sits on my bed, and I have to bite down to avoid bursting out laughing. His mom would choke if she knew where her baby was at this very moment.
“What should we talk about?” he asks.
I walk over and plop down on the bed next to him, flopping back so that I’m lying down, curious about what he’ll do. He only turns a little so that I’m not talking to his back but makes no other move. Huh.
“Hey, what was the deal with that sappy song you were playing tonight?” I ask.
He turns away from me.
“You thought it was sappy?” He sounds a little upset. I sit up and scoot to the edge of the bed so I can see his face.
“Yeah, I guess I did. But good sappy.”
He looks at me sardonically. “What, exactly, is good sappy?”
I shrug. “Well, you know, really romantic. That kind of thing.”
“You don’t like romantic?”
“Do I strike you as someone who likes romantic?”
Now he shrugs. “I think you have a lot of layers that you hide.”
“Trev, you really have to stop thinking there’s more to me than meets the eye.”
“There is.” I groan at his words, and he laughs. “To tell you the truth, that song was something I’ve been working on.”
I reach out and grab his hand with a gasp.
“That’s a song you’re writing?” He nods. “And I bashed it.” My tone indicates my distress.
“It’s okay. Not a big deal.”
“It is a big deal. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Even as I say the words that are the truth, I know they’re also a lie because everything I do now will eventually hurt him, or at least hurt who he is.
He gives me a wry smile and shrugs, self-conscious. “I wrote it for you.”
“For me?” I refuse to acknowledge the feelings that try to push their way to the surface at this.
“Yeah, you know, inspired by you. Dumb, huh?”
I lean my head on his shoulder and place my hand over his, but instead of going stiff as I have come to expect whenever I touch him, he relaxes into me and leans his head against mine.
“Not dumb,” I say. “Incredibly sweet. No one has ever done anything like that for me before.”
He doesn’t say anything, just turns his hand over and threads his fingers with mine.
“Will you finish it? For me?”
“Thought it was sappy,” he says.
I lift my head and look into his great eyes.
“A little sap never hurt anyone.”
So he’s writing a song for me, I think later.
Geek.
I’m pretty happy about that.
8. More Time
The end of the year rolls around, and Beth and Ella corner me.
“You have summer school?” Beth asks.
“No, I barely squeaked by. You guys?”
“No, we’re okay,” Ella answers.
“So Trevor hasn’t been to a party yet, and I’ll bet he got a four-point-oh,” Beth says.
“He’s coming along,” I tell them. “I just need a little more time. He’s stronger than I thought. But I had him in my bed.”
They both gasp in shock, and I laugh.
“Kidding! Relax. He was only sitting on the edge of my bed, but that’s probably more than he’s ever done before.”
“You’re on a schedule, you know,” Beth says.
“Yeah, I know. Truth be told, these fosters aren’t the worst yet, so I might take most of the summer with them.”
“You’re going soft!” Beth accuses.
“Bite your tongue, milady. I’m as hard as ever. Feel.” I hold out my arm, tightening my biceps.
Ella steps forward and squeezes.
“Yep, definitely softer.”
I drop my arm. “Maybe a little softer, but not what you’re thinking.” I point to my lip. “I’m not letting you off the hook that easily. All plans are still a go. Before the summer is done, you will see a new Trevor. And you’ll probably have to take him over for me next year since chances of me getting another family in this school are nil.”
“Which one of us?” they ask together.
“Maybe it’ll require both of you,” I say, my stomach clenching at the thought of Trevor at the mercy of either one of them, let alone both.
⊕⊗⊕
“Wanna go swimming?” Trevor asks about three weeks later, and I figure this is a good opportunity for me to really swing him my way. My body is one of my strong points.
He picks me up and lets me drive his cool car, which I’m revved about. I do like cars. I’m not wearing makeup because water on the kind of makeup I wear makes for some ridiculously large black streaks down the face. I have on a T-shirt and skirt over my swimsuit because I plan to make the most of the unveiling.
Trevor carries our stuff and finds us a spot on the grass in the sun.
“This okay?” he asks.
“Great.”
Once he has the blanket spread out and sits down, I stand casually in front of him and slowly peel my T-shirt off. He is leaning back on his hands, sunglasses on, but he is very still. I have his full attention now, though he pretends otherwise. It’s not good manners to stare, after all. I deliberately untie the wrap-around skirt and let it drop to the ground. He still hasn’t moved. I bite back my smile.
“You gonna sit there all day or are we gonna swim?” I ask, hands on hips.
“Uh, sw . . . swim. I . . . I think swim.”
I smile and hold out my hand. He looks at it for a minute, then places his hand in mine, and I pull him up. He throws his sunglasses back on the blanket, and I’m pleased to see his eyes are a little unfocused. Trevor takes his own T-shirt off; now it’s my turn to be stunned.
Trevor actually has muscle, tight pecs and abs, and nicely rounded biceps—a pretty nice physique. Not at all the skinny, pale, shapeless wonder I expected him to be.
His bright yellow trunks are just what I would have expected. All they need is a Spiderman print to be complete.
We walk to the pool, and I slice in neatly with a dive. I come up and l
ook back at Trevor, who then cannonballs next to me, dousing me.
“Nice,” I tell him when he comes up for air.
“One of those talents I was telling you about,” he says. “Race you to the other side.”
He lets me win. He is a strong, clean swimmer. I tell him I’m on to him.
“Swimming lessons from age three to thirteen,” he confesses.
“Self-taught.” I’m smug. He looks impressed.
After swimming for a while and having a water fight that he easily wins, we climb out and walk back to our blanket. I’m unused to the lack of attention I’m getting from the other swimmers. Though my swimsuit is covered with black skulls, without my outrageous clothes and makeup, I don’t particularly stand out. The anonymity is somewhat nice because I can relax and not worry about keeping the act up.
Trevor walks over to the snack bar and buys us water bottles and Popsicles, the official foods for swimming geeks everywhere. When he comes back, he pulls the sunscreen from his pack and offers it to me.
I start rubbing it on my arms and legs, but when I get to my belly I happen to glance over and see that Trevor has put his sunglasses back on, frozen in the act of watching me, not even noticing his Popsicle melting in streaks down his arm. So I slow it down, make a show of it.
“Can you rub some on my back?” I ask. He doesn’t answer, just throws his Popsicle onto the grass.
“Be right back,” he says, then jumps up and runs into the locker room. He’s back out almost immediately, and his arm is dripping, but with water now instead of Popsicle juice, though his arm is still streaked with red stains. He hurries over and sits behind me. He squeezes the lotion onto his hands, rubbing them together to warm the lotion up before putting it on me, taking longer than necessary to rub it around. He is most definitely affected by touching me.
So am I.
“There you go.” His voice is unsteady.
“Okay. Here, I’ll do you.”
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