“You looked crazy up there,” he said. “You only blinked, like, maybe two times in the last three minutes.”
“You came all this way….”
He shrugged. “I thought I could manufacture that third option,” he said. He exerted a slight pressure with his fingers, pulling me closer.
“Umm, you want to go home?” I said.
He nodded. “The bus’ll come right to the gates. There’s one in fifteen minutes.”
“Oh. I have a return flight.”
His hand dropped off me like the last bit of eggshell off a newborn chick. “You better get going.”
“You want me to wait with you?”
“Well…” He looked around. “Actually, yeah.”
So we walked over to the bus stop and waited. His hand brushed against mine for a second. My fingers reached for his, but he didn’t take them. He said he’d had the weekend free, and he’d thought I could use his presence: it’d be an unexpected element that I could work into the novel.
I looked up at him. “Oh yeah?”
Then he cleared his throat and tried a few times to say something that eventually turned out to be: “I knew you were going to freak out again.”
“I’m not the one who assaulted someone.”
“Spitting on someone is definitely assault.”
“No, it’s not. If I’d wanted to assault her, she’d be assaulted.”
He laughed. And when the bus took him away, I sat there and watched after it. No one had run out of the studio to bring me back. A car was supposed to return me to my hotel, but it never came. And even though I told myself that I’d go home and keep calling lawyers and fighting this thing out, I think I knew at that moment that it was over. I’d been given my chance. I could’ve done it, and it would’ve been so easy. Just turn away from the camera, make some sobbing sounds, and collapse into Ratcliffe’s arms. So simple. But I didn’t. And now everyone hated me more than ever.
When I got home, my mom didn’t give me a word of thanks for how I’d defended her. In fact, she didn’t give me any words at all. Maybe she thinks gratitude is unnecessary, since all I did was tell the truth. She’s not media-savvy, so I’m not sure she even understands what I gave up for her sake.
A few calls came in from lawyers. Most of them hemmed and hawed, and when they learned I had no money they retracted their offers to represent me. One even admitted he’d have been willing to represent me on contingency, but now that I’d gone on TV and alienated the entire country, it seemed pretty unlikely that I’d win this case.
In the end, only one lawyer was receptive: Everett Kilming is a tall lanky man with skeletal fingers who has spent years at a famous criminal defense firm, even though he doesn’t seem, according to my due diligence, to have ever won a case.
I waffled back and forth about retaining him, but in the end I decided there was no point. Before I went on TV, the case was decent. Now, though, I’d need a pretty good lawyer in order to have a shot. And instead all I have is Mr. Kilming.
Maybe it’s for the best. If I’d really wanted to win, then I’d have gone along with Ms. Ratcliffe when she slandered my mother. I still wonder, sometimes, why I didn’t do it.
A bit disappointed that Aakash and I didn’t stay together long enough for me to get a real Valentine’s Day. Instead, I spent it lounging on Alex’s patio while she smoked a blunt. Her mother leaned out, rolled her eyes, and said, “At least close the door,” then did a double take when she saw me. She’d obviously watched my interview.
Alex held a tiny box of Cheez-Its: “This is all I can eat,” she said. “Don’t let me go and get another box.”
She sank into a circular wicker chair and used the blunt to weave a thread of smoke around us. After a while, she asked me about my lawsuit. When I told her that my old lawyer had withdrawn and I hadn’t really been able to find a new one, she scoffed at me. “Good,” she said. “The suit was ridiculous. You’re so much better than that sort of thing, Resh.”
Four months ago, Alex would’ve taunted me about the lawsuit. Now it was just another quirk. Something she didn’t agree with, maybe, but not a reason to hate me. I couldn’t believe how far we’d come.
“So you ended it with Aakash?” Alex said.
“Yeah,” I said. “We haven’t spoken since the party.”
“Tchyeah, no wonder. Everyone saw you pull that little stunt with George. Is no Indian guy safe from you?”
“I was only trying to torment Aakash. George is not a real option.”
“What? Why not? He seemed into it.”
George was…I mean, it was fine to tease him out as a romantic interest for the sake of my novel, but the reality was simple: George had seen me, pale and sweaty and running up and down the stairs trying to calm down. He’d seen me typing furiously and screaming murder. He’d seen me in the hospital. And no one who’d seen those things would ever want to be with me.
“Just, no.”
But she wouldn’t stop speculating.
“We’re practically cousins,” I said. “I mean, not really. But our families are that close. He just doesn’t see me like that and, umm, he sort of lives with us…”
Alex’s eyes went very wide. “Are you kidding?”
I grimaced.
“George? My copresident? The George that I thought I had introduced you to? That George?” She repeated the phrase “That George? My George?” for so long that I wondered if she’d somehow done permanent damage to her marijuana-laden brain, and then said, “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. This is the most amazing news I’ve ever heard in my life.”
“So you see…it’s…it’s pretty impossible, right?”
Her eyebrows went up and she broke into a huge smile. “You’ve loved him this whole time! And you concocted this ‘I’m writing a book’ nonsense as a way of turning yourself into someone who could be with him. Which is why you weren’t mad at me when I outed you to Stanford. That was never the point. You…you’re not a robot. You’re…you’re just an awkward, lovesick…I…this is amazing.” She was looking straight up, not even talking to me anymore. “I am so happy right now.”
“That’s a bit of a stretch,” I said. And I really think it is. I’m almost 99% positive that my true aim, all along, has been to get into Stanford. I mean, you’ve read the whole thing, right? Doesn’t it seem that way to you?
Alex raised an eyebrow and adopted a very arch tone. “Hmm…” She stared off into the distance for so long that her blunt fell from between her limp fingers.
“Hey, Alex,” I said, tugging her on her arm.
Then she gave an exasperated sigh, stood up, and beat out the burning embers with her twelve-hundred-dollar handbag.
This morning, I was forwarded an e-mail that had a link to a squib on an online gossip site:
THE SPITTER IS DATING HER “BROTHER”
Sources say our favorite rageaholic ex-valedictorian has been seen swapping spit with a member of the track team. Another perfect high school love story? Not quite. We’re told that her new squeeze is actually registered—by the school district—as her brother! Yes, folks, the lovebirds live under the same roof and, according to official documentation, the spitter’s parents are also the legal guardians of her new squeeze.
Fortunately, this isn’t a case of incest. The truth is that, for years, the Kapoors have allowed a friend’s kid to use their address to gain access to their school district without paying the hefty surcharge—Las Vacas is one of the most expensive towns in the United States—required to live in it. Apparently, fraud is a way of life for the spitter’s family.
I called Alex.
“What the hell is this?” I said.
“It’s a tiny computer you’re holding in your hand,” she said. “And it also makes phone calls.”
“You told some reporter that something was going on between George and me? What’s wrong with you?”
There was a pause. “Wait, that’s not exactly what happened.”
“Yo
u betrayed me.” Tears were coming to my eyes.
“Let me explain. Yes, I told a few people that you and George were living together and maybe I encouraged them to spread the word, but I’m trying to help you here, I mean, come on—this is part of my plan to get you guys together.”
“My life is not a game. It’s not a joke. It’s not—”
Sobs choked off my voice. I threw the phone into my closet without ending the call and lay on my bed for God knows how long, sobbing extravagantly into my pillow. I don’t know, maybe I overreacted. It’s just…you can’t cry for something like your phony trumped-up lawsuit being dropped or your plagiarism being discovered or your boyfriend dumping you because you’re a cheater. No. The only way to bear those things is if you don’t cry about them. But when you work all year to make a friend, and then realize she doesn’t think of you as anything more than an item of gossip? That feels like something you’re allowed to cry over.
Eventually, I realized someone was knocking on my door. Sure that it was my parents, I told them to go away, but the knocking kept coming, and I finally heard George’s voice saying, “Hey, can I come in?”
But when I opened the door, he just stood in front of me, looming in my doorway. My arms and back felt hot, and I was starting to sweat. I was sure he was there to yell at me. And not just for this, but for all the craziness and stress I’d put him through this year. George didn’t deserve this. He deserved to graduate high school in peace.
“I’m…I’m sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I think it might be okay. It’s a stupid gossip site. And it doesn’t mention me by name. I bet no one in the school’s administration will put it together.”
“But it does happen sometimes, I mean…” I felt so guilty. I never should’ve mentioned him to anyone.
“Actually,” he said, “I’m more worried about the part that says we’re hooking up.”
A thrill went through me. I’d been trying not to think about that. My whole body was rigid. Our toes were just a few inches apart, but his were on one side of the threshold and mine were on the other.
“Yeah,” he said. “I hate the kind of guys who spread false rumors, you know, that they’ve been with this or that girl. That’s not me.”
“Oh.” My mind was blank. He was wearing a Bell High T-shirt, and I was focusing at a black spot—maybe it was ink?—near his left shoulder.
“Which makes me think,” he said, “that perhaps we ought to kiss.”
“What?”
“Ever since New Year’s I’ve been wanting to kiss you again,” he said. “Can I?”
I wiped my eyes. “R-really?”
He put one foot inside my bedroom and then leaned down a few inches. His hair smelled like soap. I tugged on his varsity jacket.
I’d expected a replay of our last kiss: mouths coming together instinctively, knowing exactly what to do. But I guess it’s different when you’re not fuelled by rage. Our lips met awkwardly. I tried to push my tongue into his mouth, but he resisted a little bit, so our lips just sort of lay there, pressed against each other. This weird awkwardness bubbled up in my stomach. What was supposed to happen now? It was enough to make me wish for the precise, machinelike movements of Aakash’s tongue.
My face got hot, and my hand shook. I put it on his waist, just to settle it, and he put a hand on my back, pulling me closer, and I thought, Wow, this is a person. This is a real person who wants to be with me.
My hand started stroking his waist, working its way under his shirt, until I was probing at a thin valley of skin right around his hipbone, and I couldn’t get over the sheer personyness of George. It sounds stupid to say, I suppose, but in that moment he felt very real to me.
I broke away from him. “Wait,” I said. “You know I’m only doing this as research for my novel, right?”
“Hmm, I don’t know if I buy that,” he said. “Does your book really need a love interest?”
“There’s always a love interest! I mean, that’s a really basic part of pretty much every YA novel.”
“What is this, a Disney movie? I don’t see you as the star of an ‘and then she got the guy’ sort of story.”
He smiled. His two front teeth were caved in a bit and angled backward. I suddenly realized that his parents had probably never been able to afford a visit to the orthodontist.
“Well, tough,” I said. “Because I’m under a lot of deadline pressure here, and there’s no way I’m doing this if it’s gonna be purely extracurricular.”
“Fine. Have it your way. But do you think you could give me long hair? Coach makes me keep it short, but I’ve always felt like I could really rock that Prince Charming look.”
“Are you kidding? That’d look absurd.”
“Hey, you’re talented. I know you can make it sound good. Now get to work.”
I laughed, and then let his lips fall onto mine.
I don’t think we’ve been apart since my last entry. It’s nothing like Aakash. That was so sedate and well-ordered. This is awkward and intoxicating and new.
Yesterday, I crept out to see George compete at a track meet and sat in the stands next to the girlfriend of another runner, and she kept trying to remember who I was. I said, “Uhh, I was the valedictorian. I was in the news.” And she was totally uncomprehending. Eventually, she got excited because they thought I was the chick who’d stabbed a teacher, and I had to tell her no, that was one of the chess kids, way back in September.
During his race, I wasn’t sure what to do. Everybody was standing up and cheering and the girl next to me pulled on my arm, dragging me upright, and said, “He’s gaining, and gaining!”
I couldn’t see what was happening: George already looked like he was running as fast as a person possibly could. I could see every muscle in his legs as they sprang forward. But then something happened—he was like a machine that’d been wound up—and everything started moving faster. He sprang past the guys from Menlo-Atherton and then he was way ahead. My throat was hoarse and I was jumping up and down like a crazy person, arm in arm with this girl I didn’t know, and it felt like we were at the Olympics even though there were maybe only a few dozen people in the stands.
At the end, George suddenly collapsed on himself and limped off to the side, shaking and winded. He bent over, hugging his knees and huffing, and he seemed so totally self-contained. I wanted to cheer even louder, to force him to hear me, but when he got up, I saw his eyes scanning through the bleachers looking at each person, and for some reason I got shy at the last moment and sat down before he saw me.
But that night he called me up and asked if I wanted to come to a party, and when I asked him what the party was for, he said, “Oh, it’s just a party.”
“A victory party?” I asked
He didn’t say anything, but I could hear him smiling over the phone.
Halfway through the party, we retreated to an upstairs room, and, as much as I enjoyed kissing him and feeling his body press against mine, I spent the whole night in a state of high anxiety over whether he was ever going to let his hands creep down my hip. If he’d tried for it, then I would have had sex with him. I mean, I kind of had to let him, right? When I started this book, I made a list of five things that I needed to do in order to write it, and that’s the only one that’s left.
But, even though we lay there for hours, George never made the move.
With Aakash, I’d known how it would go. We were on a very orderly progression. Each date he’d try to get a little further with me. Sometimes I’d shut him down, and sometimes I’d let him keep going. By extrapolating outward from our rate of progress, a person could’ve run a regression and calculated, to within maybe a week or two, exactly when Aakash and I would’ve had sex.
George, though, is on a much weirder timeline.
Today, we drove to Ocean Beach and sat on the hood of my car until the sun had boiled away the fog, and it was only blue skies all the way to the horizon line. At some point, Geo
rge mentioned that he was anxious about the workload at Berkeley, so I explained exactly how to find the easy classes and the easy majors. I windmilled my hands, spinning out a plan for his life, until he laughed and grabbed at them, and I had a weird vertigolike moment where I wondered whether he expected to do it right there on my car. I mean, he was an athlete. That’s how they do it, right?
But he leaned forward, never breaking eye contact, and gave me a long kiss, and then asked me to wait a minute so he could get his phone—he wanted to take a few notes on what I was telling him.
Every day, we wait for consequences. Some Silicon Valley police departments have arrested the parents of kids who’ve used fake addresses to attend their towns’ schools, but so far there’s been nothing. Maybe Bell has decided, for once in its institutional life, to show some compassion.
Earlier today, I printed out all two hundred and fifty double-spaced pages of this book and gave them to George, with the admonition, “Aside from my psychologist, no one else has read this far into it.”
We were downstairs, in his room. I sat on one of the twin beds and he sat on the other one. George wet his index finger with the tip of his tongue so he could flip the pages faster. The sun sank down and puddled through the slice of window at eye level, and still he was turning pages.
I got up and got out of the house. I pulled my sweater tighter around my shoulders and walked through our neighborhood. I decided that I was only going to follow the left-side curb. I’d follow it wherever it took me. So I traced the contours of each cul-de-sac, following the edge of the semicircle, before finally finding myself back on the main street. I did this again and again and again until I ended up at the exit out onto El Camino, where I crossed, and followed the curb to my house.
When I got back to the basement, I asked what he thought, but he said, “Come on, I’m still reading.”
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