Giraffe People

by Jill Malone

“Points for usage,” Bangs says.

  “Thank you. Yesterday, I thought it had something to do with snot.”

  “No, that’s loogies.”

  Kelly glances between us. “Geeks of the world,” she says, “unite!”

  “Do either of you have your Biology book?” I ask.

  We quiz each other using Bangs’ study sheets. The margins of his papers have pencil drawings of superheroes and skateboards and lightning-shaped words.

  I think one chick in this class might actually be doing something appropriate to the study of photography, but everybody else is doing homework for some other class. Mr. Pang is talking movies with a couple of guys up front. The droopy-eyed senior fell asleep before the bell rang; in fact, it’s possible that he slept in here all weekend.

  “Your friend called me,” Bangs says.

  Kelly looks up.

  “Which friend?” I say.

  “Stacy,” he says. On his sketchpad he has drawn a werewolf in surf trunks.

  “Oh yeah?” I say. We’re studying him, like Biology notes. “How’d that go?”

  “She’s funny.”

  Kelly makes an encouraging grunt of affirmation.

  “I told her,” Bangs says, “that we should hang out.”

  “You should,” I say.

  “All of us,” Bangs says. “At your show. We should all hang out.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Oh, totally. That’d be fun.”

  “Cool,” he says.

  “You’re going to be a virgin until you’re like thirty, aren’t you?” Kelly says.

  Bangs and I both stare at her. I can actually feel the red burn from my ears down my face to my neck. “Dude,” I whisper.

  “What?” Bangs asks her. His expression is curious more than offended or embarrassed.

  “She likes you,” Kelly says. “What do you need all the padding for?”

  “I don’t know her,” he says.

  “So?”

  “So, I’d like to get to know her, and that’ll be easier if she’s comfortable. And she’ll be more comfortable around her friends, right? And you guys are her friends.”

  Kelly taps her fingernails on the desk. “And then what?” she says, finally.

  “Then what what?”

  “What happens after you get to know her?”

  “I have no idea. That’s the whole point.”

  “Not to have any idea is the point?”

  “No,” he says. “Not to have any expectations. We have the rest of our lives, you know? We don’t have to experience everything right now, right this minute.”

  Oh god, I have totally heard this speech already. This is the savor speech. It’s like they’ve all been going to the same meetings or something.

  “I get it,” Kelly says. “Get to know her. Take your time. And in the end, when Stacy goes back to her old boyfriend too, you won’t actually have risked anything, and it’ll be just fine.”

  “I’m not in a hurry,” Bangs tells her. “That doesn’t mean I’m a coward.” His voice is as soft and even as always.

  “I haven’t called you a coward.”

  Bangs chews his thumb, then asks me, “What do you think?”

  “About which part?”

  “Any of it.”

  I think of the glow of Meghan’s hair, and the walk up those stairs to the attic alone. Of Jeremy loving my room, and Bangs skating through the winter night, and Joe perched on a stool, listening. “Isn’t all of it risk?” I say. Nate crying in the kitchen, afraid he’d hurt her. Stacy with her birth control.

  Obloquy. Censure, blame, or abusive language intended to discredit. Ill repute. Noun. How does this word work? Sir, I would like an opportunity to respond to your obloquies.

  After soccer practice, Jeremy picks me up to drive me to band practice. Paused at a stoplight, he kisses me again, and says, “Why do I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages?”

  “Because you’re a sap.”

  “Nigel says your parents are out of town.”

  Nigel. “I promised them,” I say. “No overnight guests.”

  “How about just half the night?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want Meghan to get in trouble.”

  “Why would she?”

  “She’s watching us.”

  “You’re not serious.”

  “Totally. They left Meghan in charge. It’s crazy.”

  “Your parents have no faith.”

  “None at all.”

  We’re the last to arrive, and the boys are dinking around with some Jane’s Addiction. They’ve left the garage door up, and have four opened bags of chips on the table with their sodas.

  I’ve plugged in and turned on my amp before I notice Trevor. “What the hell happened to you?” I say. Trevor’s hair is shorn—above his ears—and his sideburns and chin have been tidied as well.

  “He’s got a girlfriend.” Ernie smirks.

  “Are you wearing a rugby shirt?” I ask Trevor.

  He nails the high hat a couple of times. “All right, get it all out.”

  “Are you dating a hypnotist or a witch or something? How’d she get you to cut your hair and lay off the leather vests?”

  “Peters,” Trevor says, “when you see her, you’ll understand.”

  “Oh, she has super-huge tits?” I ask.

  “Peters.” He shakes his head. “That’s no way to talk about women. And, yes,” he holds his hands out for emphasis, “she’s gifted.”

  “Well, she has some kind of gift. Prep school looks good on you.”

  Trevor blushes. “Yeah, yeah,” he says.

  I tell them about Ms. Ruhl’s proposal for the school assembly.

  “Just the chorus?” Joe asks.

  “Yeah, just us and the chorus.”

  “Full kit?” Trevor asks.

  “I guess so.”

  Joe asks Ernie. “What do you think?”

  “I think we should play Love Song.”

  Trevor groans. “Dude, no sentimental crap. If we’re gonna play The Cure, let’s play something rugged.”

  “Not The Cure’s Love Song; I’m talking about Cole’s. Just imagine it, with all those sopranos.”

  We do. We imagine.

  In Jeremy’s car after practice, he and I eat hot wings. With our windows down, the street noise of honks and shouts plays along with his Phish tape. The night smells of rain and garbage.

  “I thought you didn’t want to play with the chorus,” he says.

  “It seemed cooler, somehow, once the boys started talking about it. It’d be a completely different kind of sound for us, you know?”

  “I’ve been reading about giraffes,” he says.

  This comes from absolutely nowhere. “Why?” I ask.

  “You’re into them, right? You told me you’re a giraffe person.” He has barbeque sauce on his mouth. I can feel it between us, the thing I’ve pushed him away with. What I know, in this car, watching this black-haired boy gesture with grubby fingers, is how tender my ache is.

  “You’ve been reading about giraffes?” I say.

  “Yeah, I thought I could find an origin myth or something. I wanted to be able to tell you a story about them. But, mostly I’ve just found kids’ books with random facts.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like baby giraffes join nurseries called crèches, and are left pretty much unsupervised. And giraffes sleep standing up—never for more than a few minutes at a time. They get half an hour of sleep a day. And they’re the only mammals born with horns, the males and the females.”

  “I didn’t know any of that.”

  “And nobody really understands how they evolved. The animal they’re descended from had a short neck.”

  “What else?” I say.

  “The males eat a different part of the tree from the females, so they don’t have to compete with females for food. And the herds can be spread over a large distance, because they’re tall and easil
y spotted by one another.”

  It is a story, after all. His hands are sticky, and his mouth. And there is no impediment between us. None at all.

  Meghan opens the front door before I get my key in the lock. Dressed in pajamas, with her hair frazzled and her face flushed, she looks kind of wild. “Where have you been?” she demands.

  “At practice,” I say.

  “It’s midnight,” she says. “You don’t really expect me to believe you’ve been practicing with the band until midnight on a school night.”

  “Well.” I take a step back, bewildered by her intensity. I’m still on the front porch as she’s blocked my way inside. “We were at practice, and then we stopped on the way back to get some dinner.”

  “Dinner. I see.”

  “If I’d known you were going to freak out, I would have called.”

  “That’s what I love about you, Cole, you’re so considerate.”

  “Why are you mad?” I say.

  “Because it’s midnight, and I had no idea where you were—in pieces in somebody’s trunk for all I knew. You’ve taken advantage of my being here. You’d never have pulled this shit with your parents.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Meghan.” I stretch my arm out to touch her, but she slaps it away.

  “Fuck you.” She turns, and without another word, or a backward look, disappears into the house.

  Have you ever wanted to throw a piano? Lift it right up over your head and hurl it through the living-room wall, right into the dining table in the next room, or, better yet, through the living-room wall, and the dining table, and on through the next wall, and the exterior brick, to crush the grill and the clothesline in the backyard? Spectacular destruction. A burst water main, a gouged-out building.

  Honestly, I’m too tired for a tantrum. Too tired, at midnight, to turn around and stomp back into the dark. Anyway, where would I go?

  We should open Love Song with the piano, guitar, and bass. The sopranos will kill. The song’s kind of high for me, and I can’t wait to hear the sopranos hit those notes. I haven’t done any homework. I’m not even certain what’s due. I could sleep on my feet. Like a giraffe.

  The next morning, I wake at 6. Though I only have twelve Geometry problems to solve, they take a whole freaking hour. I finish one of my two assigned History chapters. During homeroom, I inadvertently stab myself in the palm with my mechanical pencil, and immediately worry about lead poisoning. Overhead gives us a pop quiz on some William Blake poem. She has written it on the board with her instructions: YOU HAVE THE ENTIRE PERIOD TO EXPLICATE ME. Blake is such a clown. For Speech, I get to deliver an impromptu speech on trade. Two minutes. On trade.

  At soccer practice, Coach Robins thinks we’re fucking about and has us run sprints.

  “This a game to you?” he hollers at us. “This a big joke? You like losing so much you just want to keep at it? Murphy, pick up the pace, or I’ll bench you for the rest of the season.”

  Afterward, in the locker room, nobody speaks. Locker doors slam. Somebody keeps sniffling. Sprawled on the floor, Kelly has her eyes closed, and her arm thrown across her face.

  “God,” she whispers, “even my hair hurts.”

  She and I wait for the boys in the hallway outside the gym. Today they’re lifting weights. We’ve finished our lab summary for Biology, and I’m midway through Spanish translations when Nigel peeks his head into the hallway and grins at us. “We’ll be out in ten minutes.”

  “I think,” I tell Kelly, “that’s the highlight of my entire day. We only have to be here another ten minutes.”

  “Yeah, and then you get to spend the rest of the day with the prison matron. How is it possible Meghan is more of a rag than your parents?”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Nate said she yelled at him a bunch of times last night. He didn’t tell you?”

  “No.”

  “She freaked because he was playing Sega too much, and on the phone too long, and up too late. He said she even yelled at Nigel. Can you imagine anyone yelling at Nigel? Like, for what, being too quiet and diligent?”

  “Why’d she yell at Nigel?”

  “Apparently he was reading too late.”

  “Well, this is the last night she’ll have to put up with us.”

  “And vice versa.”

  Instead of going home, we hit Salsa, and order three nacho platters with the works, and chicken quesadillas. Long after the toppings are decimated, and only soggy chips left, the four of us stall. Nate was so reluctant to go home that he offered to treat us to dinner.

  “We better go,” Nigel says at last. “She’s probably mad we aren’t home already.”

  We drop Kelly first, and make it home by seven. The house dark, Pepper a launching maniac. While I feed the dog, Nigel does recon.

  “She isn’t here,” he calls from the sunroom.

  Nate checks around. “She hasn’t left a note.” He punches Nigel. “Quick, let’s play Sega.”

  I leash Pepper, and am dragged down the back steps and straight into Stacy Masteller.

  “Hey,” she says, holding her lit cigarette over her head like Pepper might try to sneak a drag, “What are you doing?”

  “Hey.” I gesture at Pepper. We fall into step without further comment, and then Stacy holds out her pack of cigarettes. I take one, and we let Pepper pull us toward the parade ground.

  “Today was the weirdest day,” Stacy says, “ever.”

  “Way weird,” I agree.

  “Mr. Green told me I’d forfeited the privilege of bathroom breaks for the rest of the school year. I mean, what? Has he ever been to the girls’ room? The place is radioactive. And my mother is wigging out about Metal again. How can I prove I’m not worshipping Satan? Listen to Country? Take a urine sample and leave me the fuck alone already, Jesus.”

  At the memorial, we sit on the slabs of cement everyone says mark the crypts of dead Civil War soldiers. We smoke another cigarette while Pepper investigates the bushes.

  Stacy digs through her purse. “I’m out of gum, but I know I’ve got some orange Tic Tacs.”

  As my Tic Tac dissolves, I hop discreetly, chilled now by the cryptic cement and the night air.

  “Christian called.” Stacy cocks her head back like a Pez mid-extraction. “He told me all about the comic book he’s writing. Like I actually got excited just hearing about it. A comic book. Weirdest day ever.”

  Stacy and I stall outside for ages, talking about how Tic Tacs are disappointing. Like for a second you’re hopeful, but it comes to nothing.

  Later, I let Pepper into the kitchen, give her a treat, then climb to my bedroom. By ten, I’ve finished my homework, abandoned As I Lay Dying, and put on a Cure tape—Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me—to strum along.

  The knock at the door is loud enough to rule out Jeremy. I fling it open, and return to bed without a word.

  Meghan has let herself in, and closed the door, before she observes, “Aren’t you speaking to me either?”

  “What do you want me to say?” I keep my arms around the guitar.

  “Nothing. I’m the one to apologize.” She sits at the foot of my bed. “I’m sorry, Cole, about last night. I was awful. Awful to you, and Nate and Nigel, and I have no excuse, none at all, but I hope you’ll forgive me.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you want me to forgive you?”

  She stares at me; her expressions flutter across her face. Flattened by the cap she wore earlier, her hair appears listless. Robert Smith sings, How beautiful. How beautiful you are. “Because I’m sorry.”

  “This time, yes. And last time you were sorry, and next time you’ll be sorry, but Jesus, how about if you just stop? How about if you stop being an ass, and needing forgiveness?”

  She stands, walks toward my desk, the angle of the ceiling cutting down upon her, as though she’d suddenly grown. Boxing Alice. She puts her hands in her hair
. “Because this is easy?”

  “What’s that got to do with it? You chose this, didn’t you? You make all the rules. You draw every line. I’m just a kid, right? And so you can kiss me, but that’s as far as it’ll go. Until you fuck me, but just the once. OK, twice, but then you can vanish and treat me like shit and atone for all of it, right? As long as you’re sorry, that’s all that matters. Never mind how many times it happens, or how much you want it. And more than that: never mind what I want. Never mind asking me, or taking it into account. What I want has never mattered. You want forgiveness? I forgive you. I forgive you for all of it. Now get the fuck out of my room.”

  “Cole?” Her voice punctures the wail of Robert Smith, and the raging bass, and the raging child.

  In stop motion, I set my guitar in its stand, and step toward her. “Get the fuck out of my room. I mean it. Get out.”

  She stares at me. And the worst part is how much I want to comfort her. I want to apologize. To hold her. To take her hands from her hair, and put them around my waist, and lean against her, hold on. I want to hold on despite everything.

  “Come closer,” she says.

  “No.”

  “Do as you’re told.”

  I cross to her. Her hand comes up so slowly I think it stuns me, like hypnosis or something. “I want you more than West Point.”

  “Liar.” Fuck. God.

  “I want you.” She draws her hands in a “v” up my belly and drags her thumb across my nipple. I help her lift my shirt over my head. “I smell you on my clothes. On my fingers. I think of you in my bed, soft as a mouth, begging me. Lie down.”

  I fall against the bed and she straddles me, pins my arms. “Say you want me to break you open.”

  “Please. Break me. Please.”

  “Say you want me.”

  “I want you, you selfish fuck. Stop teasing.”

  Laconic. Using few words; terse. Adjective. I speak laconic Spanish.

  The turf of the stadium field looks different, the green more green, denser and softer. Our first game in the stadium—the overhead lights; the huge, cheering crowd; the flare of cameras—and we’re intoxicated. Drunk on the idea that we might be athletes. This is where the boys play, but they’re out now, booted in regular season, so we don’t have to play on the upper field, by the teachers’ parking lot, in the afternoon. The stadium lights and the huge, cheering crowd make us feel like gods.