I laughed. “Well, good, then, because let’s not go to the student center. I didn’t want to go there.” I had had the wildest idea in class when I realized I wanted to go find Aileen, and now I took a deep breath and hoped for the best. “Actually, I wanted to show you something. Mind a walk?”
She nodded. “The fries suck anyway.” She hiked her bag up onto her shoulder as she came down the rest of the steps.
I led her up the walkway, back toward the admin building, and asked her about class. She was working on her series of superimposed photos, images of tools in the shadows layered over more tools in the shadows. I didn’t get it at all, but I really did love the way she spoke about it. She spoke more quickly. The timbre of her voice sang.
“It’s like a prism, or like a kaleidoscope, you know, but in all black and white. And the thing is, when you spin it or turn it the patterns change, the crystals shift, and some patterns are just more pleasing than others and you don’t know why, and I don’t think I want to know why, I just want to find the ones I like.”
I nodded along, unable to hide my smile.
“What?” she asked.
“Just go on,” I said. “Listening to you is awesome.”
We walked all the way to Old Main and I turned us right, down the sidewalk. She stopped. “Are we going off campus?”
“Just down the road. It’s not far. I promise.”
“Really?” She hesitated. “Oh God, are you taking us someplace to smoke out?”
I laughed. “Jesus, no. I have practice later. Plus, I don’t do that shit.”
Aileen smiled. “Yeah, right.” She took a step forward. “Let’s not get lost.”
“It’s on the road. We’re good.” I shook my head. “ ‘Smoke out.’ That’s hilarious. I haven’t heard anyone use that phrase since I was back home.”
She nodded. “Maybe it’s an ‘I’m bored in suburbia’ kind of phrase.”
“I’m not from suburbia.”
“Where the heck are you from, Buckeye?” She bumped me with her shoulder and I felt the thrill of it ripple through me.
“That’s exactly what I want to show you.”
What I’d figured out about the farm stand when I’d been down there with them before, taking off for Wendell, was where it sat just off the campus map, and since it was already November and the sun was lower in the sky, and the farm stand was angled southwest, I figured we’d get the image I’d been looking for. I hadn’t been back there yet since the night of the party, because I wanted to share it with Aileen. I didn’t want it all for myself.
I asked her a little more about photography as we walked down Old Main Street. In the day, the trees didn’t seem as thickly packed together as they had at night. Sunlight swallowed the feathery branches that had already lost their leaves. “So I looked up that photo of Dorothea Lange and Paul Taylor you mentioned. They’re out on some dusty outcrop in California, right?”
“Yeah. And she’s looking up at him, but the camera is between them. Like no matter what happens, she can document it.”
“What’s going to happen, though? It looks friendly. Like they’re going over directions.”
“Maybe they’re lost,” Aileen said. “I could imagine that. Middle-of-nowhere kind of thing.” She said it just as we came around the last stand of trees and stepped into the empty parking lot of the shuttered up farm stand, closed for the season. A chalkboard sign leaned against the side of the little house, attached to a banister by a chain. I loved the simplicity of it, the trust. I wondered how many years the owners had left the chalkboard out there, knowing no one would take it. Beyond the little house, to the right, the expanse of fields was pale with littered husks and broken stalks.
“Like out there,” Aileen said, pointing to the fields.
I chuckled. “That’s home for me.”
I walked us to the edge of the parking lot, so the house wouldn’t block our view. The land undulated in the smallest, barely bubbling hills. Even though it was cold, I could still smell the field dust, the ghosts of corn and pumpkins. A hint of woodsmoke cut through it, invisible, too far away to be seen, but still present.
“Seriously,” I said. “This is what I wanted to show you. I’m from a place just like this, or part of me is. I went to school at the edge of Cleveland. Cuyahoga County. But a fifteen-minute drive west and I was here—or something just like it. I miss it. My uncle Earl, he has these twisted gnarled hands, and I help him sometimes, and there’s no better place in the whole world.”
Aileen smiled. I loved the way she smiled at me. It felt like walking outside and feeling the sunlight on your face for the first time all day. I knew right then that I wanted to send a little warmth her way too. I couldn’t believe I wasn’t nervous.
“And,” I said.
“Yeah?”
“And I was hoping I might share something else with you too.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m not so good with words, as you probably know.”
“Yeah?”
I couldn’t believe how loose I felt. I reached for her hand, and she closed her fingers around mine. “Well, truthfully, I have this crazy crush on you and I just wanted you to know.”
She stepped in front of me and put her free arm around me, still holding my hand, like we were about to waltz, but in a lazy way. And that’s how I felt as she looked up at me, blue eyes glittering with the tiniest flecks of gold. I felt a sway.
“Can I kiss you?”
“Yeah,” she said slowly, so softly, almost a whisper.
She popped up onto the balls of her feet and I held her closer and when we kissed I felt the sun warm and yellow in my hair, softening my neck and shoulders—or maybe that was just her breathing into me.
When I pulled back, she pressed closer. “Let’s do that again,” she said. And we did.
I debated skipping practice—there was nothing I wanted to do more—but Coach would make my life hell if I did, and hell would make it harder to hang out with Aileen again. We walked back up Old Main Street, holding hands for a while, walking in that awkward way you do when you become a sort of three-legged creature, bodies scrunched close, a comfortable, wobbling stumble-forward. When we didn’t speak, Aileen hummed so softly and warmly, I thought of the cicadas and the crickets singing at dusk in the dust and hayseed of Uncle Earl’s farm.
When we got to campus, we kissed each other good-bye. Aileen turned up the street toward the dorms, and I watched her go for a minute, kind of stunned by what had just happened, but knowing I’d been wishing for it since she stood on the steps of Mary Lyon looking down at me, telling me that hanging out more would be cool. She was right.
CHAPTER 26
* * *
JULES DEVEREUX
It had been a week of stepping and not finding the ground beneath my foot. That was what it felt like. “Unstable” wasn’t the word. I was so jittery and anxious it felt like the entire world—the chair I sat in, my desk, the couch in the library, my tray in the lunch line, my computer in my lap, the brick wall I leaned against to catch my breath, everything—vibrated just as uneasily as I did. I couldn’t name it. It was like when you lift a rock or a log in the forest and see the ground alive with a writhing mess of bugs and worms. That was me. That was the inside of me. I couldn’t hold a glass of water without worrying I’d drop it.
I needed to speak to someone, but every time I tried, something happened. Or, rather, nothing did. Days passed.
“Jules.”
Javi stood in the doorway, blocking me. Ethan was the first out the door, but half my Modern Chinese History class lingered in the classroom behind me. Mr. Dyer still fiddled with his laptop and the SMART Board.
“Jules,” Javi repeated.
“Excuse us,” someone said behind me. Javi wasn’t letting anyone out. “Excuse us.” Louder. “We’re trying to get to lunch.”
Mr. Dyer’s chair squeaked as he stood. “Everything good, guys?”
Javi stepped to the side, but when
I walked out into the hall, he cornered me against the wall. “You’re avoiding me,” he said. “It hurts.”
“No I’m not.” I didn’t say anything else as my classmates streamed past us. I didn’t say what was creeping up around me—a feeling of claustrophobia. I didn’t like having my back against the wall. I didn’t like Javi so close to me, looking down at me. I didn’t like the heat of the humanities building, always too hot when it was cold outside.
Mr. Dyer was the last to leave the room, and he eyed me and Javi in the hall. “You guys going to lunch? Let’s head over together.” He hovered too. Also too close. Everyone, just back off, I wanted to bark. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I really liked these guys. But I also really needed space.
“Right behind you,” Javi told him.
Mr. Dyer nodded, but I could see the skepticism in his eyes. “All right. See you there.”
When he left, Javi pulled me back into the classroom. He didn’t shut the door, but he led me around the corner to the back nook, the alcove with built-in bookshelves and the standing podium with a giant dictionary that Mr. Dyer sent one of us to every time we came across a word that stumped the class.
“Seriously,” Javi said. “I’m not trying to be weird, but I really need to talk to you.” I nodded and he continued. “Where the hell have you been, Jules?”
He paused, and I almost collapsed. The clouds spun in my mind, pushing, pressing against the back of my eyes. I was light-headed.
“Javi,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry—”
“No.” He cut me off. I wasn’t finished. I was just getting started and I needed time. I needed his silence, but he went on. “I don’t care you hooked up with Ethan again. We all make mistakes. Whatever. No one’s really even talking about it, except Gillian. Even Shriya’s like, whatever. Who cares about that guy?”
“I shouldn’t have let myself be alone with him,” I said.
“Well, that’s true.” Javi leaned back against a bookshelf and looked up at the ceiling. “I can never understand what you see in that guy. Just tell me you won’t fall for him all over again. Tell me it was a mistake in judgment, and we’re good. You don’t have to go crawling back to him.”
I was so still, my hands at my side, my bag weighing on my shoulder. “I didn’t want it to happen.”
“Yeah, well, shit happens,” Javi said. He crossed his arms and stared at me. “And then, really terrible shit happens. And this is why I need you to stop avoiding me and just listen. I figured something out. Max doesn’t want to talk to me anymore, but I got him to hear me out on this, and he agrees. I’m not crazy. The video of me and Max, it’s not some silly thing we can all blow off. Remember how long it took Gillian to get over it when it happened to her?”
“Yes,” I said. Then something in me cracked and I snapped at him. “That’s like an assault. Someone ripping into your personal space, taking it away from you. It’s assault. That video is an assault on you and Max.”
Javi let out a long breath. “God damn. Right? It is assault.” He had a tear in one eye, and he rubbed it away with a knuckle.
The tears welled up in my eyes too, against my will. I tried to stop them. No, no, no, I thought. Not now. Try to listen to Javi. The bag dropped from my shoulder and I rested my elbows on the giant dictionary. I couldn’t help it—I stared at the seat Ethan had been in all class.
I looked at my hands because they were shaking, but I couldn’t feel them, like they’d gone numb, or I was numb. I just nodded. I knew he was looking at me, but I couldn’t find a word to say.
“Jules?”
He peeled himself off the shelf and came over to me. A soft hand on my shoulder. I sucked in a breath, and he stepped around, lifting me toward him with one arm. “I know,” he said quietly.
“No,” I finally said. “I wanted to tell you. I tried.” I leaned into him. I needed him, another person, the heat of him listening. “I didn’t want it to happen.” He remained quiet, squeezing me, holding me. “I didn’t want him. He forced it. He forced it on me.” I’d said it out loud about Javi; now it didn’t feel so foreign. I could use it, say it. “He assaulted me. I didn’t want to do anything, but he just pressed me against the tree and did whatever he wanted. I said no. I said no so many times.”
I’d finally said it, but it didn’t feel like a rush, I didn’t feel lighter. I felt paler and sicker and exhausted, like I’d pushed something out of me, and now all I wanted to do was sleep. Damp and sweaty. Throat drier than dust.
We stayed like that for a long while, apologizing to each other for not being there when we’d promised we would. “I could kill him,” Javi said.
“Don’t do that.”
“Don’t protect him, Jules.”
“I’m not protecting him. If you kill him, I’ll lose you. I need you.”
Javi pressed his forehead to mine gently. “You’re not alone, Jules,” he whispered.
We skipped lunch and stayed in Mr. Dyer’s room, but moved from the mini-library alcove to a corner of one of the big tables in the room and sat there, mostly holding hands, but going over the play-by-play from the party, like we always went over things, but this time differently, talking about how great things were until they weren’t. It felt good to talk about it all, but I also felt like I’d lost something. A part of me wished it wasn’t all out in the open, because now that I’d told Javi, it was really real. Still. I didn’t have another choice. I had to recognize that this had happened to me, but that feeling I’d once had of possibility, of endless possibility stretching out in front of me was gone.
Everything that had once felt so alive now suddenly felt so dead. That was what I wanted the world to know. Ethan stole something from me. Not my precious virginity—that stupid word you worry so much about until it no longer applies to you, and then you wonder why the word held so much power in the first place. It wasn’t that. He stole something else. Something deeper—like the voice inside my head, the thought before my word, the rest before the beat of my heart. He took it, and everywhere I went, I walked as a person with something missing.
I wanted it back.
CHAPTER 27
* * *
JAMES BAXTER
Every time Aileen and I were alone, I felt like my stomach was a basket of eggs, and I dropped it every time we were close enough to kiss. We had made out a few more times, hiding in the shade of a tree, or up against the back wall of the science building. Once we even ducked into the darkened theater and hid ourselves behind the latticework of ropes at the fly rail. The one afternoon I had off from hockey practice, Sunday, I asked Aileen to meet me by the ball fields, and when we got there, we made a break down the dirt road toward the beach and the boathouse, to watch the sun set on the river.
It was the only place on campus I knew about where we could get away from everyone else. Fullbrook was so damn claustrophobic, nowhere to go, ever, without the feeling that someone was watching you. Back home it had been so easy. Heather’s mom would be at work. Or my parents, both of them would be out, or Mom would be home, but she wouldn’t see us as we crept in through the basement door and were silent as we could be in the rec room. But at Fullbrook, everything had to be more elaborate.
I guess that’s part of what made it so exciting. It was broad daylight, and it wasn’t until we were on the path down close by the boathouse that we slowed and caught our breath—which was pretty hard to do since we were laughing, too. I took her hand, twirled her toward me, and kissed her. I ended up kissing her teeth, she was smiling so wide.
I pulled her around the corner of the boathouse and we sat with our backs against the far wall, facing the woods. Even if someone came, we were well hidden. She sank into my arms and I held her, kissing the top of her head as we watched the light play and shift in the ripples on the river.
After a while, she rolled over in my arms, leaned up, and kissed me, softly at first, then more fully, until we were making out with real abandon. It had been over a year since I’d really
been with someone like that, and a crackling chain of micro-explosions fired through me. We were all over each other, chasing after breath and fumbling with our hands and peeling back some of our clothes while the sun sank behind the low rolling Berkshires in the distance.
I was so nervous, I almost forgot I had a condom with me. I pulled it from the key pocket in my jeans and asked her if we should use it. She hesitated. Her mouth was closed, but she moved her lips like there were words in there trying to get out. I waited.
“Yes,” she said.
“Okay.”
I pushed my pants down a little further, and even though I was still in my underwear, I bit the edge of the foil and opened it. I was about to continue, when Aileen pulled back and climbed off me. She was still wearing a zip-up hoodie, but we’d managed to get other clothes off underneath, and she scooped them all up and clutched them to her chest. She tucked into a ball and stared at her feet.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“No. No. I’m sorry.”
“No,” she said. “No, I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I mean, we don’t have to. Oh Jesus. I’m so sorry. I wasn’t trying to be too fast or . . . I don’t know.”
“No. I want to, but . . .” She let that hang in the air for a while, and I began to worry she wanted me to finish her sentence, but I didn’t. I waited. I put my hand down on the ground between us, palm up. She didn’t take it.
“It’s too weird,” she said.
“Okay. I mean, no, you’re right.”
“Are you sure it’s okay not to?”
“What? Of course.”
“You didn’t just do all this because you thought I was easy, did you?”
“No. Aileen. Seriously. No.”
She was quiet, and I wasn’t sure if she was mad or sad or both.
“I mean, have you had sex before?” I asked her.
She laughed bitterly. “Are you serious?”
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