Kissing Ezra Holtz (and Other Things I Did for Science)

by Brianna R. Shrum

  “No it’s fine,” I say. “Like I said. I’m fine.”

  We finish our food and drive back to the school.

  I can’t focus through my last two classes, can’t get Jock Strap McLightBeer’s taunting voice out of my head. He’s an idiot, I know, and I don’t usually care about this except that sometimes I care about this.

  Sometimes, I care about it enough that when I’m flying solo thinking about a boy I don’t like for his personality, it ruins things just a little, because I don’t know how not to care at all if it’s slutty.

  I have a reputation.

  For smoking more than I do, drinking way more than I do, having straight F’s which, please. And wrapped up in that delightful little package of rumors is the rep I have for being a slut.

  She lost it in the ninth grade. To a GIRL.

  Okay, yeah, but summer between tenth and eleventh, she hooked up with a guy.

  And in the ELEVENTH grade, she cheated on that guy with another guy.

  A billion relationships in between, ended eleventh grade with some girl.

  That girl

  Is

  A Slut.

  What do you expect, she’s bi.

  Here is the thing. About this.

  When people started spreading rumors about things you very definitely did not do, it’s annoying. It can be a life-wrecker for a little while. But that stuff is easy to get past. At least, it is for me. I can say, “Well, screw you, I didn’t do anything and there’s nothing I can do to convince you so your disdain just makes you a jerk. Have a day.”

  The really complicated stuff comes when the rumors about you are true.

  And in this one instance, I guess they are.

  I’ve slept with people, more than one, and it’s only the twelfth grade. I’ve done it before, and I’ve fooled around across the gender spectrum—just kissing and a little more here and there. To me, it was never a massive, huge deal like it is to a lot of people. I don’t know how to make it a huge deal in my head, and at some point I stopped trying, so it’s just not. It’s something I want. But I know for Skylar, whenever she sleeps with someone, she’s gonna call me and talk to me about every detail all night and rehash it over and over. She’s waiting for someone she loves.

  I think I’m supposed to want to do that, too. It’s not like none of this ever meant anything, not like the fact that I’ve only ever done it with one person I loved (see: girl in the ninth grade) and it made everything else meaningless and empty or something. It’s just that . . . I don’t know. Kissing is fun. Other Stuff is fun. And when you’re queer, suddenly sex means something different definition-wise than the sex-ed classes give you so it’s a little hard to define anyway, but wow are people happy to do that for you.

  I was too young. When I was fifteen. I feel pretty sure about that, at least for myself—really, we both were, wow. But now, I don’t know. I know that I’ve had some stuff I would definitely call sex, some stuff I definitely wouldn’t, and some I’m not a hundred percent sure about, and that whoever found out about it sure played a really accurate game of Grapevine.

  And that, combined with the whole cheating thing in the eleventh grade—like we were married or something, like it was more than a guy I’d dated for three weeks—just gave everyone license to believe about me what they’d all wanted to believe about me since I came out as bisexual in the ninth grade: that I am greedy. That I am a slut. Never mind that Sky is just as bi as me and she’s waiting until who knows when.

  I don’t think I am. A slut, I mean.

  Usually.

  I’m in my head about it sometimes, though, knowing how vastly and deeply my reputation precedes me, because like I said, it’s easy to dismiss rumors based on lies.

  The ones where people had all the information. Where they were given a certain set of facts about you and drew their conclusions based on real, true evidence. God, that’s hard to shake.

  Like if they, looking at all of this, have determined as a high school collective that I, Amalia Yaabez, am a slut, I don’t know how to get rid of it completely.

  I know I’m pissed that he’s affected me like this. Some jerk I barely know.

  I am still thinking about it, still trying not to let it get under my skin, which feels like admitting defeat. Feels like he—like they—have won. I’m still clenching my teeth and trying desperately to think of anything else when school ends and I shuffle past the AP chem classroom, just trying to keep my head down. Trying to pull my shit together.

  Mr. Thompson stops me. Of course he does.

  He says, deadpan, “I’ve been missing our traditional hour of total silence, Yaabez.”

  I sigh and glance at him. For one humiliating second, I think I might cry. But I shut my eyes, and when I open them again, I am cool. I am tough. I am fine.

  I watch his face shift, the smallest bit. Watch him go from hardass jerk to wondering. He’s seen it. The total stupid vulnerability on my face, and I hate it. This teacher, especially. I lock my jaw, just daring him to ask.

  He narrows his eyes. Then he says, nonchalant, “You doing okay with this week’s material?”

  I grumble, “Yes.”

  “Yeah?”

  I am silent. Trying to decide whether or not to lie. I want to. I want to go home. I want the quiet and not to be bothered. But on the other hand, I want . . . I want to get it. I want a distraction from all of this. I want—I hate this kind of, but the last couple weeks, I’ve been interested in this class. Despite Mr. Thompson continuing to be a jerk. I am interested in what makes up the universe.

  But I just—I don’t get it.

  He’s leaning against his classroom door, arms folded over his chest, looking at me in this uncharacteristically open way. Like he actually wants to help.

  And maybe it’s because I’m sick of rehashing everything from lunch, maybe it’s because I’ve given up or something, but I say, “I guess—I guess I don’t really get some of the stuff you were saying about reactions.”

  The tiniest hint of a smile turns his lips and he stands. He says, “Come in. Put on your goggles.”

  I can’t help but smile back. The thought, suddenly, of learning. Of working on an experiment? Is exciting. I want it.

  I follow him into the classroom. A couple kids file in for detention—Thompson’s detention dance card is always full—but here I am. Voluntarily.

  I put on goggles, and I actually listen, and for the next forty-nine minutes, I can do this.

  For the next forty-nine, I am not Amalia The Slut. I am Amalia The Scientist.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  TEST GROUP PAIR E AND F

  SUBJ. LINE: Study: Ariel Cade and Carlos Acevedo

  SENDER: Ariel Cade

  CONTENT OF E-MAIL: We met up two days ago at my house. That might seem strange but it turns out that Carlos and I have kind of known each other for years, because we’ve lived a few streets down from each other and have a few overlapping friends. Not well. Hopefully this doesn’t throw off your experiment. I know him well enough to know that he’s an anarchist who I never see without a Mountain Dew in his hand, but not well enough that either of us knew what superpower the other would be most interested in obtaining. Am I supposed to give the answers to those questions in these reports? Am I supposed to tell you that I’ve picked invisibility and I thought Carlos’s answer (flying) was EXTREMELY dumb and unoriginal until he actually sat down and explained it all to me and now I almost want to change my answer? I don’t think I have to tell you all of that, because then you might fall in love with US and then, there go your unbiased study results.

  Either way. We met. We’re only kind of sort of friends but not really. We’ll see where it goes. He’s pretty cute. So we’ve got that going for us.

  Ezra says, “The correct answer to that question, by the way, is teleportation.”

  I roll my eyes. Not at the power choice, necessarily, but at Ezra’s declaration of it.

  I lean my head against the rock at my back and
say, “Yawn.”

  “What do you mean, yawn?”

  “I mean you’re wrong.”

  “And boring.”

  I sit up straighter. “Your words, not mine.”

  He groans and eyes the rock I’m leaning against. “What’s boring and wrong about teleportation?”

  “It’s uncreative.”

  “Who cares about creativity? It’s pragmatic. You’d never be late anywhere. Your internet friends who live in all the corners of the universe, you could just blink and then you’d be having coffee. You’d never miss a class because of traffic.”

  I laugh out loud and it echoes off the rock. “I ask you what superpower you want and your answer is about missing class and traffic. Seriously, how old are you?”

  “Well,” he says, “what’s your obviously superior choice?”

  He takes a few steps to the left and strips off his shirt, in that single-armed over the back of the neck move that guys do. I literally choke on my latte.

  Ezra glances at me and raises an eyebrow.

  “Uh,” I say. I want to continue with a freaking sonnet to his arm veins, oh my god. Instead, I finish with, “Telekinesis.”

  He rolls his eyes and finds a hold in the rock, then pulls himself up, muscles ticking below his skin—shifting and bunching and stretching out when he hoists himself up and reaches for the barest curve in the rock. I don’t even know how he can hold himself up on it; it looks like nothing. Looks as smooth to me as the rest of it. But his fingers find some kind of purchase because he climbs higher, miraculously. He says down to me, “How is that better than teleportation?”

  I lean back again, hair almost certainly wrecking itself on the rock in a mass of frizz. “Because it’s more fun.”

  “That sounds right.”

  I blow out an exasperated breath at the implication. “It’s also more applicable. If you can move things with your mind, then you can move yourself. You could make an argument for super-speed, flying, teleportation almost. Plus what if you could get down to the molecular level? Then you’re basically a god.”

  “Hey,” he says. “Look at you, thinking like a scientist.”

  “I could be a scientist,” I say. Something about his tone, no different than usual really, rankles. Something about his tone pretty much always rankles, I guess.

  “I’m sure you could.”

  He climbs a little higher, high enough now that I have to raise my voice to speak to him. “You sure you should be up that high? At a certain point, don’t you need a harness?”

  “Stand up,” he says.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Stand up; I look higher than I am because you’re sitting and looking straight up.”

  My nostrils flare at the command but I do stand. And yeah, he’s right, he’s not high at all, honestly. It’s like those trick celebrity rock climbing videos on Instagram where suddenly you get the right perspective and no, they are not dangling off a cliff by one hand. They’re climbing four feet above the ground. He’s higher than that but he’s not at risk of dying or something if he falls.

  “Besides,” he calls down, “since when were you so concerned about taking risks?”

  “I’m not,” I say. “I’m just not used to seeing you take them.”

  Ezra starts his descent and says, “What? You’re worried for me?” And tilts his mouth in something close to a smile. Not quite, but just hovering there at the edge of his lips. Like something I could take from him if I really wanted it.

  “No,” I say. “I thought we’d covered this: you looked way higher up than you were. And I’m not interested in being labeled a murderer if you kill yourself out here. You and I both know our rabbi would have to rat me out to the investigators for having motive.”

  He does laugh at that. A low chuckle, muffled by a warm breeze and his movements down the rock.

  “You and I have spent a strange amount of time talking about murder,” he says.

  “Maybe that should have been a question on the survey.”

  He hops down and picks his shirt up off the ground, then wipes his glasses off on it. He runs it over his face and chest to rid it of sweat and his face comes away a little dirt-streaked. It’s the slightest bit red and he’s breathing kind of hard. Sweat trickling down from behind his ear to his throat. His collarbone.

  I’m watching it trail down his skin and my throat is actually going dry.

  He watches me watching him. I can see it when his eyes darken, feel his attention shift, just the slightest bit. I blink away.

  He says after a beat, “I don’t even want to know exactly what question you mean. Don’t elaborate. What is wrong with you?”

  I laugh, harder than the joke deserves, and it’s a massive release of tension, a bubble bursting so I can think. So I can exist in his proximity like a human. Not like a prehistoric cave person whose only drives consist of “Watch: boy lift heavy thing. Heavy thing: self. Watch boy have muscles, sweat. Top qualities in boy.”

  I glance up at him after I get myself under control and he isn’t smiling—seriously when does he ever full-on smile—but his eyes are sparkling. The edges of his teeth are digging into his lip. I whisper, out loud, “Jesus.”

  “Hm?” he says.

  I manage, “Let’s get inside? I’m drowning in sweat.”

  And he follows me from my big rocky forested backyard into the house.

  The house feels . . . empty. Which is probably because it is. Ben’s out most likely finding people to hit on (most likely scoring; who are we kidding? Dude is EXTREMELY popular with the ladies—gross), Kaylee is at a friend’s for the rest of the day, and neither Mom nor Dad is back from work yet. They should be on their way any minute, but that doesn’t make it feel less like we’re behind closed doors by ourselves.

  Now I feel like Come inside should have been overlaid with some cheesy music and capped off with, Sailor. Like I’m inviting him in for something different than studying. Or like he’ll take it that way. That’s a low-risk scenario because even if he did take it that way, and even if I didn’t mean it that way—which, jury’s out—well it’s not like I couldn’t say, “Whoa, buddy, I’m talking a project for school, back off.”

  He’d listen immediately.

  I have quite literally zero doubt.

  But god, why am I sweating?

  Is it because I kind of want him to take it the wrong way?

  Maybe—maybe I do.

  Ezra says, after shutting the door behind him, “You mind if I get a glass of water?”

  “No.”

  I don’t look at him when I say it; I’m looking at the wall. I am fascinated by the paint job; by the barely noticeable texture in the drywall. The occasional fleck of peach pink you can see coming through the newer mint green, remnants from when my parents bought this place and the actual worst kitchen in the world.

  It was sponge-painted—peach and aqua. Like, a literal round kitchen sponge. Just horrific. I think about that while the ice tumbles into Ezra’s cup, when the water comes on and shuts off.

  I don’t think about what on earth has gotten into me that I am so aggressively trying not to think about what I’m trying not to think about.

  “You guys redid your kitchen.”

  “Years ago.”

  “I didn’t notice last time.”

  “Huh.”

  Ezra says, “Amalia.”

  I swallow and turn around. “Mmhmm.”

  “Are we going to talk about the other day, in class?”

  I clench my teeth and lean up against the wall. Suddenly I’m embarrassed, halfway vulnerable which I hate, and I want something familiar and solid at my back. I say, “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Sure you do.” He takes a drink. I watch his throat bob.

  “I was having a bad day.”

  “I’d be willing to believe that. Except that it seems like you’re doing it again. We’re cool outside and then the second we step inside, you’re weird and shut down.”


  “You’re sure a charmer. Anyone ever tell you that, Holtz?”

  He rolls his eyes and takes another drink.

  “Seriously,” I say, “next time you’re trying to get in good with a girl, tell her she’s weird and shut down. Works like magic.”

  He says, “I’m not trying to get in good with you.”

  “No?”

  He drains the water. Sets the glass in the sink.

  I roll my shoulders off the wall and head into the living room, then up the stairs.

  “No,” he says from just behind me. “I’m trying to get through this experiment with you.”

  “Then what does it matter if I’m weird and shut down?”

  I can hear him groan, just a little, almost a growl in his chest. He’s frustrated, and I don’t know if I feel triumphant or regretful about it.

  I open my door and Ezra follows me in.

  “It matters,” he says, “because we have to spend a lot of time together doing this and I’d rather be filling the time doing something other than having the shit annoyed out of me by you.”

  “Is that what I do?” I say. “Annoy the shit out of you?”

  “Okay, if that’s not something we’ve established by now . . .”

  “No,” I say, hands up. “That one’s fair. And mutual.”

  His lips twitches upward, then pulls back down. He’s still sweaty from outside, still dirt-streaked, and what a phenomenon. The ability to still be completely hot for a boy who’s just told you that he spends the majority of your time together trying not to actively be too irritated with your existence.

  That. That is what we should be studying.

  Thoroughly.

  He says, “Seriously, why the whole mercurial thing?”

  “I’m not mercurial.”

  “You’re mercurial.”

  “Shut up.”

  He snorts. “Fine, then, let’s work. Get out your notebook.”

  “Well. I need to find it.”

  “You lost it?” he says, pressing his fingers to his forehead. He looks like he’s in pain. I hope he is getting a migraine. I hope it just lays him out, because rarely do Ezra and I have things in common, but Other-Human-Induced-Headache is something we can bond over.