The Year of the Gadfly

by Jennifer Miller

  Maureen shook her head as she turned the page of her Berkshire Interiors magazine. “Amelia, we’ve told Lily again and again that she’s no different from anyone else.”

  “You’re the one who won’t let me drive, Mom! Who won’t—”

  In tandem, Maureen and Elliott put down their reading material.

  “That is in the best interest of your health,” her mother snapped.

  “Which we’ve discussed ad nauseam,” her father muttered.

  “Lily, what did you tell the guidance counselor?” Amelia asked gently.

  “I said as long as nobody had put an Albinos Only sign over the water fountains, I’d consider myself equal.”

  “That was an inappropriate thing to say!” Her father shook his head but couldn’t contain an amused smile.

  “The guidance counselor told me not to joke about the ‘trials of other minority groups.’”

  “My goodness.” Amelia licked her lips and her lipstick glistened. “Before long, the school will be calling you Melanin Challenged.”

  Her grandmother was right. And yet despite Mariana’s attention toward political correctness, Elliott had grown quite upset the year Mrs. Kaplan sent him a letter asking him to add a menorah to the Christmas display or remove the tree. “What’s next,” he’d said, “a Buddhist shrine and some Wiccan doodad?”

  Lily had always known the few Jewish families at Mariana to be different. As children, the Kaplan twins were the ones eating chalky Oreo-cookie knockoffs at lunch and refusing ham-and-cheese sandwiches on playdates. Of course, now that she was older, she understood the real implications of being Jewish at Mariana. Neither the Kaplans’ parents (both scientists) nor Hazel Greenburg’s mother (an artist) belonged to the local country club. Neither Mrs. Kaplan nor Mrs. Greenburg attended the exercise group or book club that Lily’s mother organized. When Mrs. Kaplan did make an appearance at a school event, Lily saw how coldly deferential the other mothers were toward her. She could tell the exact moment when they noticed Mrs. Kaplan’s ring finger, bedecked by a slim gold band and a noticeable lack of Mariana housewife bling. Over and over, she saw their eyes lift ever so slightly, their distaste mingled with pity.

  “Lily’s doing just fine,” Elliott told his mother and his wife. “And Lily, two years from now you’ll be off to a terrific college in a city where you won’t need a car.”

  Lily’s mother nodded her approval. “Lily, you know we’ll drive you anywhere you want to go.”

  After breakfast, Lily and her grandmother went for a walk. Amelia walked a mile every day regardless of the weather. The afternoon was frigid, but Lily would happily submit to extreme levels of discomfort for one-on-one time with Amelia. So grandmother and granddaughter bundled up in thick shearling coats and set off. There was no one else outside, and the world was gelid. Even the chimney smoke seemed frozen in place above the rooftops.

  They walked for a while without speaking. Then Amelia said, “You’ve been sighing every thirty seconds since we left the house.”

  Lily kicked a pebble on the ground.

  “So come on, honey. Spill.”

  Lily shrugged. “It’s complicated.” And it was. Her project in the art studio was progressing. Since she first started observing Veronica Mercy and the others, she’d filled half a sketchbook with notes. The pages resembled detailed mathematical proofs. If Lily could only crack the code, she’d figure out the girls’ secret. And she was getting close. Veronica was paying more attention to her these days, drifting over frequently to examine the truly ugly ducklings in her painting, or comment on her skin and eyes.

  On the other hand, the Justin situation had declined. Her non-answer policy had only encouraged him. He watched her unabashedly, his pale blue eyes shining with an intolerable mixture of anxiety and elation.

  Amelia raised her head to the frosted sky and examined the quiet street as though seeing it for the first time. “I’m seventy-three, kiddo. I’ve been around more blocks than you can imagine, and most of them weren’t half as attractive as this one.”

  Lily wished there were no Justin in the world. “Well, there’s this b—”

  “A boy!” Amelia clasped her mittened hands together, delighted.

  Lily pursed her lips against the cold and shook her head.

  “It’s one of those situations . . . Lily, if he can’t see you for who you are, he’s not worth it.”

  Amelia’s eyes were bright with cold, but stern. As elegant as her grandmother was, Lily knew her philosophy was encapsulated in the simple belief, Don’t take shit from anyone.

  “It’s not like that,” she said, and began to explain about Justin, about his longtime crush, about how he’d slammed his foot into the gym wall after losing the last Academic League tournament and fractured his foot.

  “Well, is this Justin unattractive?”

  “No.”

  “Does he treat you poorly?”

  “He treats me too well. He’s always giving me things and offering to help me with my homework. Once when I tried to thank him, he shook his head and thanked me. Like I’d done him this big favor. He’s so awkward.” They walked in silence for a moment; then Lily said, “I just want a normal boyfriend.”

  “What’s your young man interested in?”

  Lily remembered the dragonfly. “I think he collects bugs. And he reads everything.”

  “An intellectual.”

  “A loser.” And then she thought, but didn’t say, Like me.

  Amelia frowned.

  “His brother was responsible for the locker vandalism, Grandma.”

  “Your father said the vandals weren’t caught.”

  “I know, but—”

  “How would you feel if people judged you because of things your father did?”

  “Oh, they do, Grandma. You have no idea.”

  “Then you don’t need much convincing. This young man sounds like a good person. A genuine person. And popular boys are vain.”

  “Not all of them.”

  “Okay, for argument’s sake then, let’s assume the popular crowd isn’t any more superficial than the unpopular crowd.”

  “Okay. That seems fair.” Lily stopped and looked up at Amelia’s house. They’d already made it four times around the block, but neither of them wanted to finish the conversation in front of Lily’s parents.

  Amelia looked squarely into Lily’s eyes and smiled. “Well, given that assumption, everybody is exactly who they are.”

  “Real deep, Grandma.”

  “It’s actually quite simple. You meet somebody, you get to know them, and you judge them based on your own standards. Your opinion of this boy may turn out to be completely valid. But as of yet, you don’t have enough evidence.”

  “He broke his own foot, Grandma!”

  “Lillian, you don’t really know him. You haven’t had a single substantive conversation with him. And I know high school runs by different rules than the rest of the country—I was once your age, I get it. But honey, out in the real world, your attitude makes you a snob.”

  Lily’s face burned. As usual, Amelia was right.

  “You know why the world is filled with war and misery? It’s because people let their emotions lead them this way and that when they should be using their minds. Like I said, your suitor may be totally wrong for you, but you’ll never know if—”

  “If I don’t try him on? He’s not a sweater!”

  “Point taken. But you’re acting as though you must make a definitive decision about this boy and stick to that decision for eternity. One date, Lillian, isn’t the be all and end all.”

  That evening, Lily sat on her bed, staring at the phone. She picked it up and put it down half a dozen times. When she was talking to her grandmother, life seemed straightforward, like a well-organized closet. Rationality, she thought. Common sense. If only these things defined the parameters of her life.

  Lily looked around the bedroom that her mother had furnished for her: at the curtains and the carpet sh
e did not choose, at the bedspread that had appeared one day, many years ago, as though randomly deposited from the sky. She hated this room, yet she’d never complained or tried to change it. The guidance counselor was right; she wasn’t assertive. She did what was expected of her, and the expectation at Mariana was that you didn’t date from the Trench. But that wasn’t rational. And in all honesty, Justin wasn’t bad-looking. Lily dialed his number. This wasn’t the be all and end all, she thought to herself. But then why were her hands shaking?

  Lily and Justin set their date for the night of the school’s fundraiser auction, which meant Lily’s parents would be out late. That Saturday afternoon, Lily prepared for the evening. She wanted to wear a new dress, but to get underneath a dress Justin would have to go up from the bottom, and that didn’t seem right for a first date. He could reach under a T-shirt, but that seemed anticlimactic without some fancy bra waiting for him—something Lily most definitely did not own. If she wore a button-down, would he reach under it or undo the buttons? Lily considered each option. She was excited and wished she wasn’t. This date wasn’t supposed to mean anything. So why was she fussing over the details—buttons and bras?

  In spite of herself, she made a mix CD and repositioned the candles on the shelf. She deliberated over whether candles were too cliché. On television, when two people came into a bedroom, the candles were already lit. She tried out lighting combinations, draping a variety of sheer scarves over her bedside and desk lamps. She made her bed. Then she showered, shaved, and rubbed on the fancy lotion Dipthi had bought her for a birthday present. When she was dressed, she looked at the clock. It was three in the afternoon.

  Justin arrived early in a dark blue Peugeot station wagon. Lily, who had been standing by the window since seven thirty, saw him stop a couple of houses away and loiter there. His apparent anxiety irked her, even more so because she felt the same way. Maybe she should pretend to be sick. Maybe she could fabricate an emergency.

  At five to eight, Justin pulled up in front of her house and parked in front of their large oak tree. His crutches were gone, but he was still wearing the plastic boot. He walked slowly toward the door, favoring his good foot, carrying a monstrous bouquet. She couldn’t feign sickness now.

  Lily checked her hair and adjusted her necklace. She wore a dark blue V-neck with three-quarter arms and jeans that Dipthi said gave her a “tight ass.” Her boots were black suede, like Doc Martens but less austere. She smiled at herself. It was possible that at this moment she was actually pretty.

  “You look really nice,” Justin said, handing her the flowers. She didn’t know what to do with them, so she carried them back out to the car.

  At the pub in town, Lily checked for anyone she knew, but all of the young families who usually filled the restaurant had already finished their meals and headed home to put their kids to bed. They looked over the menus in silence. Lily kept thinking about the locker vandalism, and Jonah’s culpability, and what people would say if they saw her on a date with the vandal’s brother. She looked around again to make sure she didn’t recognize anyone.

  “Are you okay?” Justin said.

  “What? Yeah.”

  Justin began chatting about their Latin class, and they managed to fill the time until the waitress arrived for their orders. When she left, they circled around the Latin discussion again. It seemed to Lily they could simply keep spiraling—Caesar, Ovid, Cicero, Caesar, Ovid, Cicero—for the rest of the meal. And yet soon enough, she knew, they’d have to swim away from their small island of safety. They’d have to talk.

  The food arrived. The waitress set a grilled chicken sandwich and fries in front of Lily and a cheeseburger in front of Justin. If Justin was going to kiss her later, wouldn’t he be more concerned about his breath? But he was working on the burger the way only a boy could, and for the first time the date started to feel somewhat like regular life.

  “What’s your favorite Latin word?” she asked, and winced at her own ineptitude.

  Justin looked up from something he was examining under the table and smiled. “Amo.”

  Lily blushed. Amo, amas, amat, she thought. Amamus, amatis, amant. Their Latin teacher had made them march through the halls chanting conjugations. I love, you love, he, she, or it loves. It loves? That made no sense. We love. You (plural) love. They love. And then, of course, the perfect passive subjunctive—would that I had been loved—the saddest conjugation of them all.

  “Did you drop something?” She noticed Justin staring at his lap again. Please God, she thought, let him not have a hard-on. After an awkward pause, Lily excused herself and headed toward the bathroom. When she returned, she saw that Justin was bent over, reading something in his hand. She crept up behind him and snatched the paper away. Then, before she knew what she was doing, she’d slid into the booth next to him. She had never made such a forward physical move toward a boy. And now their arms and knees were pressed together, their first touch all night. She smelled his aftershave and freshly laundered flannel. She felt the heat rise from his body. They looked at each other, surprised. Lily inspected the scrap of paper she’d stolen. It was covered with bullet points: family, school, religion, parents’ jobs, favorite books, religious beliefs. He’d written a conversation crib sheet! Only instead of feeling annoyance or pity, she was overcome with relief.

  “I was nervous too,” she said. “I got dressed an hour early.”

  His look of humiliation deepened.

  “And I changed my clothes three times.”

  Justin refused to look at her.

  “And I made a make-out mix CD.”

  The corners of his mouth turned up just enough. He thought she was joking; now she was the pathetic one. “I changed my socks five times,” he said.

  “I can’t even see your socks.”

  “My feet get really sweaty,” he said.

  After dinner they returned to Lily’s house. She’d rented a movie days ago, because on a Saturday night they were likely to encounter other kids from school at the video store. Standing among the racks, she’d debated movie selections. A comedy seemed the obvious choice, but Justin seemed too erudite for the slapstick flicks she liked. An action movie wasn’t right—you couldn’t make out to people shooting each other. And most dramas were too serious. Finally she chose Dead Poets Society. At least they could laugh at how much worse the school in the movie was than their own.

  In the den, she motioned Justin toward the special loveseat near the TV. “I’m sorry we have to sit so close to the screen,” she apologized as she went to put in the movie. “My eyesight is terrible.” When she turned around, Justin was still standing. “You can sit down, Justin.” He sat, pressing his body into the couch arm as though trying to dissolve into it. She joined him, hugging the opposite arm. She reached for the remote, using it as a pretext to shift a few inches toward him. She didn’t get very far. Justin was sitting stark upright, staring straight ahead.

  She started the movie and edged closer to him until there was less than half a foot between them. Now they were both staring at the television, avoiding each other. Lily felt electricity vibrating between them, invisible energy shooting between their shoulders, elbows, and legs. They still weren’t touching and yet she felt fused to him, as though by magnetic force. She sensed Justin trying to look at her without turning his head.

  A flock of birds exploded across the screen and Lily thought about the ducklings outside the art studios. The last time she’d seen them another baby had disappeared. She felt inexplicably sad for those ducks, but there was nothing she could do for them.

  “What’s wrong?” Justin said.

  Lily shook her head. “Nothing.”

  “This is going to be a sad movie, isn’t it.”

  “You haven’t seen it already?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then how do you know it’s sad?”

  “Unforgiving adults and bright-eyed boys. It doesn’t bode well.”

  She paused the video.
Suddenly the house felt very quiet and still. “What are you talking about?”

  “I get these ideas in my head.” He shrugged. “They don’t always make sense to other people.”

  “Try me.”

  “There are these signs. The bells on their campus are really ominous. And those boys are so eager and naïve. I just have a bad feeling about it. But Jonah says I overinterpret everything.”

  The locker vandal, Lily thought. “Your brother—” But she stopped herself. She had nothing nice to say about Jonah. Meanwhile, Justin was looking at her.

  “So which one of these guys is going to kill himself?”

  “You’re creeping me out, Justin. Just admit you’ve seen the movie before.”

  He shook his head.

  “Then how can you possibly—”

  “Well, for one thing, it’s got death in the title.” He smiled.

  Lily did not smile back. “You said suicide. How could you know that?”

  “It’s the tone, I guess. If the movie were asking us to get angry or to grieve for these kids, then I’d put my money on an accident. A Separate Peace kind of scenario. But so far, the tone is setting us up for something else.”

  Lily waited for him to continue.

  “The movie wants us to mourn.”

  “Are you always this serious?” She didn’t understand the difference between grieving and mourning. She didn’t understand why Justin had become all philosophical with her. Had he forgotten that this was a date?

  But over the course of their discussion, they’d inadvertently shifted toward each other, and now his thigh was a mere six inches from her own. She rested her hand on the cushion halfway in between them, and electricity flowed up her arm and exploded in a starburst through her body. She did and did not want him to reach out and touch her. She focused her eyes on the hand in his lap, willing it to move, willing it to stay.

  “Are you bored?” she mumbled.

  He looked at her like he was staring off the edge of a cliff. Vertigo, she thought, wasn’t the fear of heights but the fear of jumping. Her heart pounded. She heard bells echoing, though the movie was stopped. The flapping of wings. Justin swallowed. Then his lips were against hers. His warm tongue pressed against her own. He shifted forward, murmured a low sound, cupped the back of her head with his hand. She saw herself sitting on the picnic table watching the soccer team. She was wet again. Justin made another low sound. She shivered. His tongue was strange, so much larger than her own. Her arm, attached to the palm still pressing the couch between them, was growing numb. He pulled away and looked into her eyes. Then he began to cry. What had she done wrong?