"Good. He's in big trouble!" Jacob says as he tastes a spoonful of his borscht. "Hey, this is pretty good!"
MALLORY'S HOUSE
Mallory doesn't come back to classes all afternoon. I peek out the window and see that he and Brian are sitting on the ground under the pink tree, which has only a few last blooms clinging to it. Brian leans against the tree trunk, one elbow on his knee, and he's listening intently. Mallory is talking animatedly, running his fingers through his hair, shaking his head. I can't tell for sure, but it seems like he might be crying. At one point Brian takes hold of Mallory's shoulder and gives him an encouraging little shake.
After school I wait on the front steps for Mallory, holding his white leather jacket that he left in the Bistro. Students file past me, including Gusty, who nudges me gently and whispers, "I'll call you," before he slaps his skateboard onto the sidewalk and speeds away. I watch him until he disappears around the corner of the school building.
Mallory and Brian finally get up off the ground, dust themselves off, and walk creakily back to the school. Mallory towers over Brian, and he keeps his head hung low. He seems to be thinking hard about something. I am absolutely dying to know what they talked about for so long.
"Hello, Kristi," Brian says to me, one eye on me and the other on the wall behind me. "I'll see you next week, Mallory," he says with a warm smile before going back into the school building.
"Are you in trouble?" I ask as I hand Mallory his jacket.
"Not like I should be," he says quietly. I read in his mind a feeling of real regret about what he did to Katya.
I was starting to have my doubts about Mallory, but this helps me like him more. He messed up, just like I did with the jogger, and now he feels as bad as I do. It's nice to have someone in my life as twisted up as I am.
We start walking toward Industrial Park. The leaves under our feet sound like crunchy corn flakes. "What's going to happen?"
"I have to make a huge pot of borscht next week for everyone, all by myself. I have to write an apology note to Katya and read it to her at Morning Meeting on Monday in front of everyone, and I can't do any more practical jokes. At all." He speaks thoughtfully, as though he's puzzled by something and grateful at the same time.
"What did Bri-bri say to you?"
Mallory holds his flaky, crusty face to the sun and breathes in as if he just woke up. "You know, he's actually a pretty cool guy."
"Cool like borscht."
"No, I mean it. He's a good person."
"What makes you think so?"
"He asked me why I thought I did destructive things sometimes and wouldn't let up until I finally told him the truth." He looks at his white sneakers as they kick through the dried autumn leaves in the gutter.
My eyes trace the outline of the hill that sits right by our town. It has only a few pine trees on it. Mostly it's just dry scrub. "And what did you tell him?"
"I don't know. I just started talking. About my skin, about my dad and how he died right after I was born, about how I keep moving from school to school, about how I'm not sure my mom is such a great parent and that sometimes she seems really paranoid to me. I just talked and talked."
"And what did Brian say that was so earthshattering?"
"Nothing. He just listened."
What would I say to someone who just listened? I don't really know what I'd talk about. Maybe I'd find out I'm just as frustrated about life as Mallory is.
Maybe that's why I'm so mean.
Mallory shakes his head to wake himself out of his stupor. "Want to come over?"
Dad is supposed to call me today to make dinner plans, but I'd rather get a message off the machine than talk to him. I don't even really want to see him tonight. I need some time to think. "Okay," I tell Mallory, and I follow him as he turns down a street I've never been on.
We walk to the older neighborhood in town, where the houses are small but the yards are huge. Mallory lives in a tiny house, a lot smaller than the houses of most people who go to Journeys. It's white and kind of hunched down, so I know it's very old, and the yard is spotty and dry. Once we get through the front door, though, I see the inside is beautiful. The living room is huge, with pale hardwood floors and a stately fireplace made of some kind of stone. The mantel is a deep brown, and at first I think it's made of a wooden log cut in half, but when I get closer I realize it can't be. It's cold and hard like rock.
"Petrified wood," Mallory explains to me, and shows me the top of the mantelpiece, which has been cut off to make a smooth shelf and polished to show the ancient wood grain. "Mom got it in India."
"Cool. What was she doing there?"
"She imports stuff. She works for a furniture company as their buyer."
"Wow."
The floors are covered with beautiful red carpets woven with flowers and elephants and women carrying firewood and jugs on their heads. The couch is a shapeless mound of soft purple velvet, and I notice there is no television. Mallory sees me looking around for it and shrugs. "Mom says TV saps people's minds."
"Probably it does," I agree.
He leads me to the kitchen, which kind of reminds me of ours, only it's really small. It has nice granite countertops, white cupboards, and stainless-steel appliances. Mallory opens the refrigerator and pulls out a decanter full of an amber liquid. "Immuno-defense herbal iced tea?"
"How could I resist?"
He pours two tall glasses with ice cubes and then roots through a cupboard. "Hmm. The closest thing I have to cookies are these weird arrowroot biscuits."
"Sounds just weird enough to satisfy a girl like me," I say, wondering if his mom and mine are long-lost twins.
"Come see my room." Carrying our glasses, we walk down some stairs. Mallory's room is the entire basement, and it's even bigger than the living room. The floor is covered with white stone tile, and more exotic rugs are plopped down at odd angles on the floor. His bed is in the corner and is sloppily covered with a tapestry that pictures an old-looking building, like a mosque or a temple of some kind. The windows—really deep and wide for a basement—are covered with gauzy yellow curtains, letting in lots of light, and three beanbag chairs are arranged around a low table meant for playing backgammon. The back wall is covered with a huge bookcase so stuffed with books, it looks like it could collapse at any moment. The funkiest thing is a woven striped hammock that hangs from the ceiling.
"This is the coolest room I've ever been in."
Mallory smiles and points a remote control at the ceiling. Trippy music starts playing. "Do you like Incubus?"
"Sure."
"Come sit down," he says. For a second I'm worried that he's headed for the bed, but instead he plops into one of the beanbags.
I take the orange one. It's hard to sit in it and keep my head up, and after a few minutes of trying I give up and just let my head rest there.
"So what's your story, Carmichael?" he asks me.
"My story," I say before taking a sip of my iced tea. It tastes like crap. "What I want to know is why Eva Kearns-Tate is missing three weeks of school."
"Sorry, top secret." I try to probe his mind to see what the big secret is, but before I can get a read on him he blind-sides me with: "Are you and Gusty going out?"
The question startles me so much that I spill on myself. "What?"
"Eva wants to know if you guys are going out, but I'm not supposed to let you know she asked."
"It's none of her business."
"I want to know, too. Are you dating him?"
It would make me sad to say no, so I avoid the question. "If he wants to date her he can."
"Okay, good," he says, and adds quickly, "Because Eva wants to go out with him."
"I don't know what's stopping her," I say, thinking of her glossy black hair and her perfectly smooth ivory skin and the way her long, lean body rested against his before Morning Meeting. Of course Gusty will go out with her—who wouldn't? She's super skinny and tall and gorgeous. Hell, I'd probably go out with
her if I were even a little gay and she weren't such a bitch.
"As long as you're not interested in him," he says very casually, and takes a small sip of his tea. He is so carefully not watching me that I know watching me is precisely what he is doing. The moment of truth is what he's thinking.
I look at him, trying to see what's underneath his acne. In the harsh sunlight streaming through his yellow curtains, he is so red and irritated that the thought of kissing him grosses me out deeply. "How long do you have to take those pills?"
"Eight more weeks."
"That's a long time."
"But I think it's starting to work," he says hopefully, but he doesn't look at me.
"That's good."
"My mom suspects. I heard her looking through my bathroom cabinet, but I've got her beat." He pulls a small mints container from his hip pocket. "I keep them on me all day. She'll never prove a thing."
The room gets dim suddenly. A cloud must be moving over the sun outside. I look at him, trying not to be obvious about it. Now that the light isn't so bright, he looks better. The redness is diminished, and the flakes aren't as apparent. I realize that his skin is definitely less bumpy than it was. I squint my eyes and peer at him through my eyelashes. I can half imagine him as cute. I really can. But only half.
He is suddenly looking at me, all misty, and I freeze. I hear him wondering, Does she want me to kiss her? and I think, Do I?
Mallory is so much easier than Gusty. With Mallory I am in complete command of my feelings, and it feels so much safer. Shouldn't I feel safe with a boyfriend, instead of scared?
Suddenly Mallory jerks himself up to lean on his elbow, and our faces are very near each other. His lips are cracked, and there's even a little blood in the corner of his mouth, so I close my eyes.
His lips feel like cardboard as his tongue winds its way between my teeth. I feel him licking the inside of my upper lip, and then his tongue flicks along my gums and deeper into my mouth to touch my tongue. I know this is what people are supposed to do, but it feels alien to me. He kisses me for a long time and I try to like it, but mostly I just observe: his hands as they wander along my back, the way his breath feels warm against my cheek, the little purring noises he makes, as though he were a starving man and I were a filet mignon. When he pulls away from me he pants, and I can tell that he is very turned on, not just because of the wild, erotic images that are flying through his mind, but because he seems helpless. He closes his eyes as though he is in pain, but it isn't pain. He lets out a tiny groan and flops back down onto the bean-bag.
"Sorry," he says, breathless.
"That's okay," I say.
This makes him pause in his panting, and he looks at me quizzically. "Why did I apologize?"
"I don't know."
"And why did you accept my apology?"
"I don't know that, either." I laugh nervously, and I hate how it sounds.
"Do you want to go out with me tomorrow night?"
I open my mouth to speak, but everything about me freezes. What are you doing? I ask myself viciously. You don't like Mallory that way! End this now! Don't lead him on!
Do I listen to this voice of reason? Do I look into his hopeful eyes and his acne-scarred face and say, "No, Mallory, I think we should just be friends"?
Or do I say to myself that at least he's in my league, and that he's probably getting better-looking by the second, and that I'm no match for Evil Incarnate anyway? If she wants Gusty she'll get Gusty. As if I ever had a chance with him! He's just my character education partner, nothing more. And no matter how nice and sensitive he has turned out to be, and no matter how much he acts like he likes me, every so often I catch him thinking about how sick I am. Mallory doesn't think I'm sick. He finds me sexy. And Mallory is a perfectly nice, smart guy who actually wants me. And he won't always be crusty and infected. Right?
"Sure, I'll go out with you," I tell him.
"Okay, good," he says through all the breath he's been holding. "Can I come by your house tomorrow at like six and we'll go to dinner?"
"Okay," I say. This reminds me about Dad and how we're supposed to be having dinner in like twenty minutes. But I'm sunk into this beanbag and I don't want to move. I waited for two years for Dad to come back. He can wait one more night to see me. I'll just hang out with Mallory until it's way too late for dinner, and then I'll pretend I forgot all about it. Maybe that will get Dad's attention.
Mallory presses some buttons on the remote control and we listen to a very weird song about a sophisticated woman.
It's good-enough music—it's just not my taste, really.
THE ARCADE
Because I blew off our dinner date, Dad came to the bizarre conclusion that a good way for us to reconnect would be to play hyperexpensive video games in a crowded arcade that smells of preteen-boy sweat. Their thoughts swarm at me like bees: Don't look at that girl's boobs or it might happen again! It's always getting big like that—is that normal? Jason said that his made something the other night. Mine hasn't made anything—is that normal? I wish I could pick that booger out of my nose but that older girl is looking at me and I almost have the high score. Someday I'm going to be the best snowboarder in the country and then girls with big boobs will want me and those guys will have to find someone else to beat up.
The inner life of the preteen boy is particularly pathetic.
Dad popped by the house this morning in Aunt Ann's little car and honked the horn until I came outside. I suppose this was his idea of a grand gesture. Mom was in the back trimming her rosebushes and pretended not to hear. My hair was still wet from my morning bath and I hadn't worked my way through my first mug of coffee, so I wasn't exactly in a great mood. He wasn't at all fazed when I glared at him. "What?" I asked.
"Let's go. I have a surprise." He winked at me the way he used to when I was twelve.
"What is it?"
"A day of raucous mad fun at the arcade!"
He barely gave me enough time to tell Mom where I'd be before he whisked me off to the mall. And now we're sitting thigh to thigh in a miniature submarine, doing combat with a cheesy-looking giant squid. Dad mans the torpedoes while I steer the vessel.
Video games were invented by demons riding dragons through the depths of a computer-generated hell rendered with excellent graphics so that I can see every drop of my blood on their three-pronged spears. I hate video games because I suck at them. When the bad guys in video games shoot at me, I actually get scared for real—I cringe and try to hide behind the control panel even though I know I am in no physical danger whatsoever. I can never hit a single target no matter how hard I try, and the stupid digital music they play grates on my opera-loving nerves. Worst of all are the thoughts bouncing around in video arcades. Violence, death, destruction, sex. Arcades bring out everyone's worst drives. Video games are agents of evil, and they should all be burned in a giant slag pit.
Dad's thoughts: She probably never thought the old man could be so hip!
At least I don't hear the thoughts that used to scare me so much, about how worthless he was, about how Mom and I would be better off without him. Losing that patient really brought him low, but he seems to be much better. Maybe soon he'll start talking about moving back home.
"Fun, huh?" Dad asks just as our submarine sinks to the bottom of the Indian Ocean to be consumed by a metal-eating giant squid and its young.
"It's great." I try not to sound sarcastic, but the harder I try, the more sarcastic I sound. "Really," I add, so now I sound sarcastic and bitter. "What time is it?"
"Three-thirty."
"I'll be right back."
I go to the bathroom to check my face. I didn't even have time to put on any makeup this morning, not that I care what anyone in here thinks of me. Without eyeliner my eyes look super huge and buggy. I don't even have lip-gloss on me, so my lips look dry and cracked. My hair dried naturally, and it's all super curly and too big. I'm wearing my smiley face T-shirt and the first crinkly skirt I ever
sewed, made from the set of Bambi sheets I had when I was a little girl. I look like a hippie chick from Woodstock who wandered through a time warp without her toiletry kit.
I weave my way through a group of little boys fighting over the boxing game and find the pay phone in the back of the room.
The phone rings once before Hildie picks up. "Hi," I say. "Is Gusty there?"
"Who is this?" she asks suspiciously.
"Hildie, I just need to talk to Gusty about our character education assignment."
Someone in the background asks, "Who is it?" I know that voice. Evil Incarnate is at their house. She's probably already worked her claws into his tender young flesh.
"Gusty is busy right now," Hildie tells me.
"This will only take a second, Hildie," I tell her.
"A second is a long time to waste on some people," she spits.
"Witty. Superbly executed. Now please go get Gusty."
"Okay." She laughs. I hear the phone being set down, and then a conversation ensues, loudly. "Did you know Kristi has had a crush on my brother for like forever?"
"No! I did not know that!" says Evil innocently.
"She actually thinks she has a chance with him. Isn't that sad?"
"It is sad. It's so sad."
"Gusty told me he thinks Kristi has real problems." Hildie giggles. "She practically had a breakdown at Pluribus."
"I heard. Everyone's talking about it."
"So are you and Gusty hanging out tomorrow?"
"Yeah, he's helping me train my dog, but I know it's just an excuse to be with me," Eva purrs.
I barely hear them because my heart is thumping too loudly. I knew this would happen, but I can't help how I feel about being passed over for a beautiful person.
I drop the pay phone to let it hang by the cord and walk away aimlessly. I feel so cut down that I forget why I'm standing in a room full of little boys with painfully swollen sex organs. It even comes as a surprise when Dad taps my shoulder.
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