On the lips.
Stewart saw it, too.
My dad smiled, turned—and spotted me, Stewart, and Lauren. His smile vanished.
Lauren tucked the Kleenex into her pocket. “Gone?” she asked me.
“Gone.”
She turned around just as Dad climbed out of the car, carrying an overnight bag. “Who’s the guy with your father?”
“A guy he works with. He just came back from a business trip,” I lied.
“Hey, guys,” my dad said, looking super-uncomfortable, which was only appropriate. The MINI Cooper pulled away.
“Hi, Phil,” Stewart said.
“Hi, Mr. Anderson,” said Lauren.
I, on the other hand, didn’t say a word. I just marched back into the house and slammed the door.
—
MOM WAS IN HER bedroom, doing a yoga routine to a podcast. She was in warrior two when I told her what I’d seen. I thought she’d be upset. Instead she said, “He told me a few weeks ago that there was someone he was interested in. He met him in his cycling club, I think.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“Honestly? It brought up a lot of mixed emotions. But I keep reminding myself that I’ve moved on—why shouldn’t he?”
“But what if one of my friends sees him in public?” Then another, more horrifying thought occurred to me. “What if he starts bringing this guy home??”
Mom stopped doing her yoga routine. She smoothed a piece of hair from my face. “Ashley, I’m truly sorry this is so hard for you. But try to put yourself in your dad’s shoes for a moment. Why shouldn’t he bring this person home? I brought Leonard home, didn’t I?”
“This is different. You know this is different!”
“Why? Because he’s gay? You’re sounding remarkably homophobic, which is not how we raised you.”
“I’m not. But some of my friends might be.”
“If your friends have a problem with it, then they’re clearly not your friends.”
“Oh my God. You don’t understand anything. Why is everyone in this family so determined to ruin my life?”
Mom sighed. She went back to her yoga, moving into downward dog. “You’re right. There’s no use pretending anymore. We actually hold secret meetings once a week, just to figure out new ways to torment you and make your life a living hell.”
“I knew it!”
“That was my attempt at sarcasm, sweetheart. Contrary to what you believe at this stage in your life, we aren’t all out to get you. So please stop being so melodramatic.”
This made no sense whatsoever. How can you be mellow and dramatic at the same time?
TODAY WAS WHAT I like to call an Alexander Fleming kind of day.
Fleming was a scientist, and notoriously messy. One day he went on vacation, leaving some bacterial cultures sitting on his desk. When he came back, he found a weird fungus growing on some of his cultures, and the bacteria weren’t thriving around the fungus. He thought his experiments were ruined—till he figured out he had just made a little discovery called penicillin. What he thought was going to be a very bad day turned out to be one of his best.
I didn’t make any revolutionary scientific discovery, but my day also went much, much better than originally expected.
Phys ed wasn’t till last period, so I had a lot of hours to get through first. My stomach was twisted in knots all day. All I could think about were the communal showers, and the possibly sociopathic Jared.
In English, we got back our essays on To Kill a Mockingbird, and I got an A+. I don’t know what mark Ashley got, but her face turned beet red when she saw her grade, and she quickly flipped her paper over, so I’m guessing it wasn’t good.
Then, when I stopped by my locker at the beginning of lunch, I overheard Violet asking Phoebe if she wanted to go to her house for lunch.
“I can’t. I have Mathletes.”
“Mathletes?” I asked. I knew I was butting into their private conversation, but I couldn’t help it. “This school has Mathletes?”
“Yeah,” Phoebe said, shoving her books into her locker.
“I love Mathletes! I was team captain at Little Genius Academy!”
“You should really stop saying your old school’s name out loud,” Violet said. She and Phoebe started walking down the hall. I followed.
“One of my goals is to join at least one club,” I told Phoebe as I kept pace with her. “Do you think I could come?”
Phoebe shrugged. “I don’t know. I guess.”
So I followed her up the stairs to Room 222. I was surprised that only five kids were there, not including Phoebe and me. Their team was a third the size of the one at Little Genius. The teacher who runs the club, Mr. Fernlund, seemed more than happy to let me sit in. “Please,” he said. “We could use another member.”
It was fantastic, because (1) I didn’t have to eat lunch under the stairwell, and (2) I love math. We got to work on problems like There are seven people at a party. Each person shakes hands once with every other person there. How many handshakes occurred? I live for this stuff. And when Mr. Fernlund saw how good I was, he formally asked me to join the team.
Near the end of the lunch hour I even told a joke. “What do you get if you divide the circumference of a jack-o’-lantern by its diameter? Pumpkin pi.” And guess what—they all laughed! Then I had science, and because there is now an odd number of kids in the class, thanks to my arrival, the teacher paired me with Phoebe and Violet indefinitely. Violet didn’t look too happy, but Phoebe reminded her that I was excellent at science and therefore my involvement might boost their marks. That seemed to perk Violet up a bit.
For two whole hours I actually forgot all about phys ed and Jared.
—
BUT BEFORE I KNEW it, last period was upon me. My feet felt like blocks of lead as I headed into the change room. I didn’t see Jared, and for a moment I was filled with relief; maybe he was sick, or maybe he’d transferred to another school, or, better still, maybe he was in the hospital in a body cast and wouldn’t get out for months. I changed in a bathroom stall, and nobody tried to stop me.
But just as I was pulling up my shorts, I heard him. He has a loud, confident voice, and it boomed through the change room. “Hey, Chong, you coming to basketball tryouts after school?”
“You bet.”
I waited in the stall for a long time, my feet up on the toilet seat, until I was sure the other guys had gone to the gym. Only then did I unlock the door and head out to join them.
We played soccer outside and Mr. Stellar put me in goal. Miracle of miracles, I only let one ball in, and our team won. Jared was on the other team. He never even glanced in my direction. This got my hopes up; maybe he’d forgotten all about me.
Wishful thinking.
As the rest of the boys stripped down, I stalled for time, pretending I had a really bad knot in my sneaker. When I glanced up, the change area was almost empty. I could hear the showers running and the boys shouting and laughing.
I grabbed my clothes and headed toward the bathroom stalls, which were on the opposite side of the wall, away from the showers.
Jared leaned against the bathroom sinks, still in his gym uniform, like he was waiting for me. His friend was with him.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“Just needed to pee.”
“Bullcrap,” he said. Except he didn’t say crap. “You were trying to avoid the showers again.”
“Truth be told, I don’t perspire as much as some of you yet, because I am a year younger. Plus, I was a preemie, so physiologically, my glands aren’t yet working overtime like yours are—”
“Hey, Paulo, help me out.”
Paulo grabbed my arms and held them behind my back. The clothes I’d been carrying fell to the ground. Jared yanked my shorts down, revealing my underwear. I’d skipped the cat boxers today, opting for basic blue ones instead.
I was terrified. Nothing in my thirteen years had prepared me for a
situation like this. Yes, I’d been teased in second grade, but that was peanuts compared to this. And speaking of peanuts, I was pretty sure that what little I had down there had probably shriveled to the size of one.
Jared yanked down my underwear, too.
There was a pause. Then he said, “What the heck is that?” Except he didn’t say heck.
“It’s a wrestling uniform.”
To my relief, Jared stopped what he was doing to stare at the outfit Alistair had found for me at the thrift shop. It looked kind of like an old-fashioned one-piece men’s bathing suit. It scooped all the way down to just below my belly button, leaving my pasty-white chest and stomach exposed beneath my T-shirt. But the shoulder straps held it securely in place, so it couldn’t simply be yanked down. Personally, I felt Alistair’s mind had been in top form when he’d suggested it, and it had only cost me two dollars.
“Do you wrestle?” Jared asked.
“No.”
“So where’d you get it?”
“A thrift shop.”
“Hope you washed it first. What if the previous owner had crotch lice?”
I confess I had not thought of that. It was probably just a coincidence that I suddenly felt an itch down below.
“You are one strange little elf,” he stated.
Then he yanked my T-shirt up over my head. I couldn’t see a thing. I felt his hand grab one of the straps of my wrestling uniform and pull it down. He grabbed the other strap. I tried my hardest to wriggle out of his grasp, but he was much, much stronger than me, and also I couldn’t see, which was very disorienting. I would say it was one of the worst moments of my life, but that wouldn’t be true, because after you’ve watched your mom slowly dying over the course of a year, you have had a lot of “worst moments.”
Still, I was in full-on panic mode. I knew I was way beyond any UN-style negotiations or stall tactics. Then—just before he pulled down the other strap—I had a brainwave.
Jared had said he thought Ashley was hot.
And even though I knew she’d hate me forever, I figured it was better than having the entire gym class see my teeny weenie, not to mention the hilarity that would ensue when that rumor spread throughout the school. So I played the only card I had left.
“I’m Ashley Anderson’s brother!”
Jared let go of my strap. I still couldn’t see anything.
“Let him go,” he said. Paulo released my arms. I pulled my T-shirt back down. Jared was studying me.
“I didn’t know Ashley had a brother.”
“I’m not her biological brother. Technically speaking, she doesn’t even want me to say stepbrother, but I guess that’s more or less what I am.”
“I’d heard rumors that some weirdo had moved in with her.”
“Yes, well. That would be me.” He just kept staring at me, like he was thinking something through. It made me uncomfortable. “Um. Can I get changed now?”
“What? Oh, yeah, of course. I was just messing with you. You know, a little initiation ritual.”
“Oh. Is that what it was.” I bent down to pick up my clothes. I was about to head into a stall when he spoke again.
“What’s your name?”
“Stewart.”
“You like basketball?”
“On a theoretical level, yes. On a practical level, i.e., actually playing, no. My hand-eye coordination is well below average.”
“I have something in mind for you. Meet me tomorrow after school. Outside the gym.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.” Then he turned and walked out of the bathroom. I ducked into one of the stalls and locked myself in. I let out a huge sigh of relief.
Suddenly his feet reappeared. They stopped right outside my stall. “One last thing,” he said through the door.
“What?”
“Tell your sister Jared says hi.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Then he really, truly walked away.
My bowels loosened and I did what I never do in a public toilet.
I pooped.
I WAS IN A super-crabby mood after school. First of all, Lauren showed up that morning wearing my skirt. Seriously, she was wearing the exact skirt I’d shown her on Saturday when we were in H&M.
“When did you get that?” I asked her at our lockers. Amira, Yoko, and Lindsay were there, too.
“What?” she asked, trying to sound innocent.
“You know what. The skirt.”
“Oh. My mom took me shopping yesterday.”
“So you bought it even though you knew it was the skirt I wanted.”
“Was this the one you wanted? I thought it was the brown one.”
I just crossed my arms over my chest and glared at her.
“Well, I was going to get the pants I’d tried on, but you told me they made my butt look big, remember? So then I tried on the skirt, and my mom said it looked great on me.”
“And you believed her? She’s your mom.”
Lauren pursed her lips. “I like it. I think it looks good on me.”
“So do I,” Amira said.
“You could still get the brown one,” Yoko said to me. She doesn’t like it when we fight.
“And have people think I copied her? No, thanks.”
Claudia walked past. “Hey, Lauren. Nice skirt.”
“Thanks.” Lauren threw me a defiant look. I wanted to throttle her.
Then, in English class, Mrs. Donnelly gave us back our essays on To Kill a Mockingbird. She’d asked us to write about something of “thematic importance” in the book, and, if I am one hundred percent totally honest, I never got past page fifty. So I’d cut and pasted parts of my essay from Wikipedia, and Mrs. Donnelly figured that out. I got an F. She took me aside after class and told me I had to redo the assignment or risk failing the class.
When I got home, I decided to pamper myself. I made some Red Velvet Cake tea from David’s Tea, and I curled up on the couch to watch Maury. Shoo-Fly poked his head around the corner and meowed, but he didn’t come over even after I called him. Stupid cat.
It was a good episode. It was about a guy who found out, right there on the show, that DNA testing had proved he wasn’t the father of his girlfriend’s baby, and that the real father was the guy’s own brother. I was starting to feel a bit better when he entered the room.
“Hello,” he said.
I turned up the volume on the TV.
“Why are they all screaming at each other?” he asked.
I turned up the volume a little more.
He picked up Shoo-Fly. “I’m supposed to pass on a message,” he yelled. “From Jared.”
Even though the brothers were now throwing chairs at each other, I muted the TV.
THERE ARE MANY SCIENTIFIC mysteries that are still waiting to be solved. For example, is light a wave or a particle? What causes gravity? Does alien life exist? How did the universe begin? And why is Ashley’s behavior so baffling?
One moment she acted like I was invisible; the next she was inviting me to sit down and have a cup of tea. She even got the mug herself, and put in lots of milk and sugar when I asked, because Red Velvet Cake tea is still tea.
“Sit,” she said, patting the cushion on the other end of the couch. So I sat. Schrödinger curled up in my lap. I try not to anthropomorphize animals, but I swear he eyed Ashley with suspicion.
“How do you know Jared?” she asked.
“We’re in phys ed together.”
“And how did you get to talking about me?”
“Well,” I began. I tried to figure out how much I should tell her. My mom always said that honesty is the best policy, but then again, she also told her share of white lies. Things like telling our neighbor Mrs. Janowski that, no, she didn’t notice she’d gained any weight, when, in fact, Mrs. Janowski had ballooned two dress sizes in six months. Or when she scratched the side of the car when we went shopping and told Dad, “Someone scratched the car in the parking lot.” It wasn’t a lie, exactly; she j
ust didn’t tell him that the “someone” was her.
“It’s kind of a funny story,” I began. “See, I thought Jared was about to do something really mean to me, so—and I know you’re not going to like this part—I told him you were my sister because last week I’d heard him say you were hot—”
Ashley put her hand up for me to stop. I waited for her to launch into a tirade, something like I’m not your sister, you freakazoid. But, scientific mystery that she is, she surprised me. “Jared said I was hot?”
“Yes. So I thought he’d stop picking on me if I—”
“How, exactly, did he say it?”
The question stumped me. “I don’t know. He said, ‘Ashley Anderson is hot.’ ”
“But did he say it as kind of a throwaway comment, or did he say it kind of dreamily?”
I had no idea what she was talking about, so I picked one. “Dreamily?”
That seemed to be the right answer, because she grinned from ear to ear. “Did he say anything else about me?”
“Not that I remember. It was a week ago.”
“So why are you only telling me now?”
I felt so confused. “I don’t know. I didn’t know it was significant—”
“Okay, fine,” she interrupted. “Tell me about today.”
“Well, when he found out we lived together, he became really nice. And then he said, ‘Tell your sister Jared said hi.’ ”
Again, I waited for her to freak out at the word sister. But she didn’t. She just beamed. It dawned on me that this was the first time I’d seen her genuinely happy since we moved in.
“I guess I should leave you to your show,” I said, taking one last sip of my tea.
“You can stay and watch it with me if you want,” she replied.
Like I said: scientific mystery.
But I peeled off my socks and stayed.
AFTER DINNER I WENT to my room to read To Kill a Mockingbird. Only I couldn’t concentrate. So I went online instead, this time checking out all the photos Jared had posted on Instagram. I think he has a lot of money because he always seems to be posed beside a pool or in a sailboat or in front of the pyramids.
We Are All Made of Molecules Page 7