The sex was never the same. Kip would turn me on my stomach, on my side, up against a wall, bent over a chair, on the floor on my knees. I was his to shape and bend, and the greatest thrill for him was to discover what would make me come. “This is so fun,” he’d say. “You like everything!” He declared that I was experiencing a Sexual Renaissance. I said that made him my Renaissance Man. He stroked his chest hair and said, “Man, huh?,” and I corrected myself—he was only a Renaissance Boy—and he pinned me to his bed and nuzzled his nose into my armpits until I was shaking with silent laughter and begging him to stop.
We kept as quiet as we could. We kissed sloppily and moaned into each other’s open mouths. I bit down on his pillows to keep from yelping. When his bedsprings squeaked, I laughed and he shushed me and we slowed our thrusting and I wondered sometimes, secretly, if maybe I wanted to be heard.
And afterwards, we always talked. He held me to his chest and told me stories about sailing, about Park and Skeat, about his mom and dad and brother. I encouraged him; I wanted to know everything about him. I was reluctant to leave, and he clung to me tightly and said, “You can’t leave! You’re mine!,” but I always returned to my room before the sun rose for the next day. No matter how many times it happened, no matter how little time passed between leaving his bedroom and waking in my own, those first few moments of consciousness were always muddled with uncertainty, with wondering if perhaps I had imagined it all.
I’m thinking about you, he’d text me during the day. I never stop thinking about you, I’d want to reply.
As I prepared to leave for Kip’s room that Saturday night, the day after my strange interaction with Dale, I received a text message from Raj. I wasn’t even sure how he had gotten my number or when exactly I had obtained his. I meant what I said about us hanging soon, he said. I closed the message without answering, something for me to deal with later. I couldn’t imagine spending time with anyone but Kip. All my energy, all my wit—it was invested entirely in Kip.
* * *
I woke on Monday morning to the sound of a note slipping beneath my door. It was a sheet of loose-leaf paper, folded into the shape of origami lips. From my bed I watched the note materialize under the door and listened for the soft pad of footsteps down the stairs. Then I slipped from my bed and retrieved the message.
Within its elaborate folds, Chapin had only written a single sentence: Is he 18?
I stared at it a moment, then refolded the folds, restoring the paper lips to their original shape. Then I tore it all to shreds.
TWELVE
As was becoming custom, I began the next week running late, and I slipped into my seat for the first assembly after midterms right before the great oak doors of Morris Chapel were shut. ReeAnn offered me a smile, and Raj glanced at me uncertainly. I felt a twinge of guilt, remembering I had yet to answer his text. I glanced down the row of apprentices to Chapin, who sat on the opposite end. She sat staring forward, head resting up against the wall, seemingly unaware that I had even arrived.
Dean Harvey ascended the pulpit and leaned into the microphone, jowls jiggling. “Good morning, pupils of Vandenberg, and congratulations on the completion of your midterms.”
A cheer rose from the boys, but a tepid one, polite; even the most rambunctious among them felt the inviolability of Chapel. I looked, as always, for Kip. It didn’t take me long to spot him; he was repeatedly spanking Park on the butt while Park adamantly ignored him, all of it subtle enough to avoid the detection of anyone not already watching. I wondered how Kip had done on his exams; I hadn’t even thought to ask him. It was as easy to forget why he was at Vandenberg as it was to forget why I was.
Dean Harvey segued into the usual announcements: coat-and-glove drive for a local homeless shelter, Drama Club bake sale (“Fags!” I heard a guy hiss to his friend), and the approaching lacrosse team state finals. Dean Harvey even had Duggar Robinson and Coach Larry come to the front of the chapel to give a little wave and encourage the boys to sign up for the school shuttle going upstate for the game. I was relieved to have not been called up, too, in front of all those people, in front of Kip, but after the moment had passed, the lack of acknowledgement left a sting.
“Lastly, the announcement you’ve all been waiting for.” Dean Harvey’s lips curled into a grin as he paused, milking the crowd. “The date of the All Hallows’ Eve Ball with the ladies of Baylor Academy.”
With that, the boys dared a more disruptive response. Two first years from my history class clasped a hand over their mouths and smashed their faces together, pretending to make out. Kip began whacking both Park and Skeat on their butts, alternating between the two in balanced rhythm. I’d always assumed an all-boys boarding school would foster an environment of hypermasculinity and intensely performed manhood, but instead I found something almost homoerotic about the boys’ interactions, all the touching and fondling they did in play. The irony of their celebration for the coed dance amused me; perhaps they feared for themselves in this male-only domain, seizing any opportunity they could to assert their unquestionable heterosexuality.
Whispers about the All Hallows’ Eve Ball began soon after the first of October, referred to among the boys only as the Ball. At lacrosse practice, I overheard Duggar tell the other boys about how the captain from the year before had snuck onto the snack table a bowl of sour worms soaked in vodka. In study hall, I watched two boys pore over a photo list of Baylor first years they had printed out from online, ranking them from hottest to least hot. The Ball committee appointed a specific theme each year—Carnaval or Victorian or Monte Carlo—but from the pictures I’d seen archived in the library, each theme translated to masquerade masks and costumes as scandalous as the students could get away with without appearing overtly sexual. Rumor had it the Ball was almost cancelled because of the Drama Club scandal earlier in the year, but to everyone’s delight, the administration appeared to have turned a blind eye.
“Gentlemen, please.” Dean Harvey made a settle-down motion with his hands. When this did not suffice, he rang the bell kept on the pulpit, and like Pavlov’s dogs, the boys were instantly silenced. “More details are to follow in the coming week, but let it be known now that proper decorum will be expected of each and every one of you.” He gave the room a stern glance. “Understand?”
The boys responded in typical chapel fashion: “Oh yes, oh yes we do.”
* * *
Chapin fell into step with me as we filed out of chapel towards the dining hall. “So?” she asked as way of greeting.
I turned to her. She looked even skinnier than usual, her eyes and cheekbones and jawline jutting from her face cartoonishly. I felt irrationally envious. “So what?”
“So is he?”
Chapin knew I had read her note, and she knew she didn’t have to reference it for me to understand the question. I looked around to see if the other apprentices were listening; Raj appeared to be telling a story, his hands gesticulating wildly, and none of the girls were paying Chapin and me any mind. “What does it matter?”
She smirked. “I’ll take that as a no.”
I felt a sudden pinch of irritation, a band tightened around my head. “No, no, that’s not a no. It’s a it doesn’t matter.”
“Do you even know?”
I didn’t answer. I turned away.
“Do you?” Her voice was shrill now; a few boys walking ahead of us turned around to look.
“Chapin,” I hissed.
“Well.” She lowered her voice again, leaned in. “Either way, you’re in the clear. The age of consent in New York is seventeen. I looked it up.”
The invisible band squeezed tight around my temples, and I felt dizzy, unable to think. I began to hurry forward, hoping to leave her behind, to catch up with the other apprentices and make this conversation end, but I stopped instead. She stopped as well, and the people behind continued around us in a steady stream.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked.
“Doing what?�
�
“This.” I threw my hands up, searching for the right words. “Making me feel like I’m doing something wrong.”
She shrugged. “Just trying to help. Isn’t that why you told me in the first place?”
I didn’t answer, and she started to walk away. But I couldn’t let her leave.
“Chapin!”
She turned around, raised a brow.
“I—” I wanted her to tell me it was okay. I wanted approval. But I didn’t know how to say that, so I just stared at her, hoping she’d understand.
She walked back over to me. “Why do you like him, Imogene?”
I continued to stare. I imagined, briefly, the three of us hanging out—Chapin, Kip, and me. Other than the night we met, Kip and I had never interacted around anyone else. I thought about the times when I’d see Zeke Maloney out at parties in college, how he’d dodge away when I approached and not appear again until later that night in my bed. “Why do you like him?” Darby would ask me. “He treats you like shit.” Kip wouldn’t do that, I knew. He’d put his arm around me. He wouldn’t be afraid to stand close, to let others see. Maybe, seeing us together, Chapin could see what I saw, too.
But that would never happen. Not there, not in that world.
“Just think about it,” Chapin said. With that, she continued on to the dining hall, leaving me behind.
* * *
Dale had emailed me the night before to let me know he wasn’t feeling well and that I should spend class going over the exam questions. The message was curt, simply signed “D.” I was relieved not to see him. I’d decided he was unmarried; I’d never seen a ring. I pictured his apartment—a dirty ring around the tub, crusty dishes in the sink, an unmade bed with dingy sheets. Dale eating out of a plastic container in front of the TV, potato salad or tuna fish, something prepackaged he’d picked up at the grocery store on his way home. Barefoot in sweatpants, openly picking his nose, no one around to impress. Before I’d thought his touch might interest me, but all it had done was scare me—not so much in a threatening way, but because of what getting involved with a man his age would mean. I didn’t want any part of that apartment, of the man living in it.
At lacrosse practice that afternoon, Coach Larry was in a particularly bad mood. He growled at every missed pass, incessantly reminding the team about the upcoming finals. I’d always considered him unlike Dale in that way, not caring whether the boys liked him or not, but perhaps he cared more than I thought; perhaps the realization that the boys would never like him—that good humor or funny jokes could never compensate for his chipped front tooth and sallow skin and swollen belly, for all the cruel ways in which time had separated him from them—is what made him so bitter.
“Hey, Squeak!” Duggar called out to me at one point, his newfound respect for me having long ago faded. “Did you get Larry synced up on your cycle or something?”
I was glad, I realized, that they regarded me as a girl rather than a teacher, someone they didn’t need or care to respect. I wasn’t grouped with Larry and Dale, those who had gone over the hill and were too far gone to relate to anymore. I was, if not a friend, an equal. They still considered me to possess the puerility, the incapability, the free pass that was youth.
“Where’s Clarence?” I asked Duggar after practice, not realizing until then that he’d been missing.
He laughed. “You serious? He got kicked off the team a week ago. Didn’t you know?”
“Oh,” I said. I felt my stomach twist, not so much because of his disgraceful removal from the team, but because I hadn’t even noticed it. “Right.”
Duggar threw his bag over his shoulder and laughed again; he knew I was lying. “Think you’d know when your own boyfriend gets the boot.” He headed towards the locker rooms.
“That’s inappropriate!” I shouted at his retreating back.
Duggar looked back over his shoulder, confused at my sudden anger. “Relax, Squeak,” he said. “It’s a joke.”
* * *
After showering, I had a text message waiting for me from Raj. You get my text this weekend? he’d asked.
No, I didn’t, I replied. My phone’s been weird lately. Lying, I’d found, was becoming easier and easier for me, an almost instinctive reaction.
That’s okay. I just said that we need to hang out soon.
Yeah, definitely.
So when should we?
I hesitated, caught off guard by his persistence. I don’t know. Maybe this weekend?
Okay, cool. I’ll hold you to it.
I didn’t answer. My phone vibrated again a moment later and I looked at the screen, expecting another message from Raj. But it was Kip.
Listen to this song, it said. He included a link to a webpage.
I followed the link and turned up the volume. The song, called “For Luna,” was strange and beautiful, filled with unidentifiable percussion sounds and nonsensical vocal wails all while a synthesizer moaned in the background.
What is this?
Rabbit Foot. Just discovered them. Do you like it?
I love it.
Cool. Listen to this one. He sent another link.
I listened. And while it played, I thought of Chapin’s question, as I had been all day. Why did I like Adam Kipling? I thought of the face he made when he came, his eyes bugging out and mouth in a perfect round “O” like a fish on land gasping for air, the way he let it take over his whole body without ever holding back. The way he kissed with his eyes open, and how they’d stare back at me, unblinking, unashamed, whenever I opened my own. The way he pretended my nipples were buttons and would poke them with his finger and go, “Boop-boop!” I thought how serious he’d become when he told stories about being on The Orion, about the jeans hanging, neat and crisp, in his closet, about the way he stuck his face into my armpits and sneakers and inhaled deeply like it was the loveliest smell in the world. Over the weekend, he’d asked me when my last period was, and he marked it on his calendar with a red dot—so he could keep track, he said. He’d also made up a dance—after he came, he’d jumped to his feet, put his hands on his hips, and shook back and forth to make his penis swing. He called me sweetheart. He never once made a comment about my skin. He never wanted me to leave. He’d sent me this song just because he thought I would like it.
But it was more than all that, I knew. It was what Kip represented, what being in a relationship with someone like Kip meant. He was elite. He was smart and sure and special. And of all the girls he could have made laugh, all the girls he could have thought about throughout the day and slept next to at night, all the girls he could take sailing and call his sweetheart—he had picked me. He felt something for me. He felt, I was sure, the same thing I did, that yet-unnamable feeling that was so precious and tenuous and frightening.
There was never a simple answer to attraction, I decided. It was a series of looks and touches, of small, strange exchanges. It was private and inexplicable, something an outsider could never try to understand, something you rarely even understood yourself.
* * *
Apprentices were part of the Ball committee, and we met for the first time in the library conference room on Wednesday to determine that year’s theme. Dean Harvey hadn’t been able to make it, as he had a meeting with the Board of Trustees, and the two other faculty members on the committee—the French professor and the drama director—both made excuses to leave a few minutes in, so the planning was left to the seven of us. Chapin had grinned and waved at me the moment she entered the room, and as soon as she sat down next to me she asked about my day.
“It was fine,” I said.
“I’m glad,” she said.
Chapin, I decided, was someone whom I’d never understand, and I had a feeling she liked it that way.
Meggy and Maggie had already created a list of themes in advance—“We love coming up with theme party ideas,” Meggy had explained.
Maggie started at the top of the list. “Moulin Rouge.”
“Boring
,” Chapin said.
Everyone turned to her. No one had ever heard her express an opinion before, negative or otherwise.
“Okay.” Maggie moved on to the next item. “Arabian Nights?”
“Unoriginal.”
Babs and ReeAnn exchanged glances. Meggy looked confused, while Maggie just looked pissed. “Okay, then,” said Maggie. “Do you have any ideas?”
“Zombies.”
“For a Halloween dance? Yeah, that’s real original.”
“Hey.” Raj, sitting next to me, poked my shoulder.
“What’s up?” I whispered back.
He gestured to Maggie and Chapin, who were still arguing. “Shit’s getting tense.”
“That’s why I never get involved in this stuff.”
“Me neither.”
We sat in silence for a minute, listening to them fight.
“So,” said Raj finally. “What are we going to do this weekend when we hang out?”
I wished he’d stop bringing that up. It was as though he knew I had no intention of hanging out with him and wanted me to admit it. “I don’t know. What did you have in mind?”
“I don’t know. What do you usually do when you hang out with people?”
He was staring at me. I laughed nervously. “Just … hang out, I guess.”
“We could go out to dinner and to the movies. Or order in food and watch a movie.”
He was so close I could see his pores. “Raj…” I started.
“We broke up.”
“What?”
“Me and my girlfriend. We’re not dating anymore. If that’s what you’re thinking.”
“These aren’t dumb themes!” Maggie was screeching behind him. “We spent a long time coming up with these!”
“So think about what you want to do this weekend,” Raj said.
I nodded dumbly. I didn’t know what could be said.
“Star Wars!” Chapin volunteered.
Maggie groaned.
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