“Stop saying that,” I told him.
“Why? It’s a stuck-up name for a stuck-up kid.”
I didn’t understand where this was coming from. “I’m not stuck-up!”
Keith sneered. “Oh yes you are, dear Winston. The little tennis star. Mr. Four Point Five. Do you know how much it’s costing Mom and Dad to send you to that fancy club?”
Now Anna laughed, too. I felt my cheeks redden and stalked off a few storefronts down Thoreau Street, where I dumped my ice cream into a garbage can. Then I kicked the curb so hard it felt like I’d broken half the bones in my foot. My chest heaved and my eyes stung. I didn’t understand how Keith could be so mean. He knew how homesick I was. This was definitely Charlie’s fault, it had to be, with her snotty attitude and those stupid long animal legs. I hated her.
Phoebe joined me. We stood next to each other on the street, facing traffic. I wouldn’t look at her. Wouldn’t talk. Wished she’d just go away. The butt of her shorts was all wet from her swimsuit underneath. So embarrassing.
“Come on,” she said finally, her lips ringed with so many jimmies it looked like she had bugs crawling out of her mouth. “We’re leaving.”
chapter
fifteen
matter
“So do you like girls or what?”
Jordan doesn’t answer me right away. Instead she fingers away the label on her second beer and watches the fire. She’s been doing that for a while now, the fire watching, and I don’t get what’s so interesting. We’re not close enough to see the creeping embers, and someone just threw a new log on, so there’s all this smoke and ash. But maybe it’s more exciting than looking at me.
“Why are you asking me that?” she says finally.
“I was just wondering.”
“From what I know about you, Win, that seems very out of character. Wondering. But whatever.”
“Yeah, well, you didn’t seem to like it when Lex kissed you earlier.”
Jordan lets out a laugh. It’s a loud one, like she’s buzzed already or might think I’m slow. “So that makes me a lesbian? Okay. Sure. Fine. Because there couldn’t be any other possible reason why I wouldn’t like Lex kissing me.”
I focus on keeping my nerves steady, but a shudder of wrath works its way through my bones.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have let him do that.”
She shrugs. “He’s just drunk.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“Except when it is.” Jordan tips her bottle in my direction.
I watch her drink. More.
She side-eyes me back.
“What?” she asks.
“Why were you looking at me in the chapel the other day?”
She puts her bottle down. “Is that why you want to know who I like? To find out if I like you?”
I say nothing.
Jordan’s head bobs. “Hey, maybe you’re not as different as I thought you were.”
“Different than who?”
“Everyone.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, just, sometimes you’re kind of weird, you know?”
“Mmm.” Yeah, I know. Trust me.
She leans back, elbows on rock. “Let me guess, Win. When you run out of better options tonight, you gonna try and get me naked?”
“No,” I say. “I’m not.”
This gets Jordan’s head to turn. The weight of her gaze is intense, but when I’m honest, I’m honest. I always stand by my words.
I don’t look away.
After a moment, she grins.
“So tell me,” she says, as her eyes do this twinkling thing, “do you like girls or what?”
A surprise: I laugh with her. Mirth rumbles my body like an earthquake. I’m rusty, but it feels good. And yes, I say, I do like girls. I don’t pursue them, though, and there are a lot of reasons for that. It’s gotten me in trouble before, but I also think I have ridiculously high standards because the whole dating, fooling around thing seems so complicated. And not in a good way. I hate obligations, and if you want to be with a girl, it’s like you’re expected to do certain things. And do them in a certain way. Sit with her at meals. Ask about her day. Not talk to people she doesn’t like. Someone should write a book about what a guy’s supposed to do because it’s confusing as hell. And from what I can tell, it’s not worth it. Unless … unless the girl is absolutely perfect.
Or unless you just can’t help yourself.
Case in point, the time Lex pushed me into dating at the start of our sophomore year. I only went along with it because he insisted and because he was always bragging like he was so experienced. Like he knew better than me. I mean, the way he tells it, he’s like a certified expert on dating and attraction, but I’ve never bought into it. There’s a waft of desperation in the way he goes after girls, in his compulsive need to plan things perfectly so they can’t back out. Still, the one he set me up with was decent enough. She was his girl’s best friend and a ballerina, and I did everything he told me to. Then one night after study hours he brought her to our room and left us alone, and it was like she was waiting for me to do stuff to her. I could tell by the way she got quiet and put her hand on the front of my pants and made all these breathy sounds so that her nonexistent chest moved up and down. Nothing about that was appealing, but after a few more get-togethers, she ended up kissing me. And I can’t lie, that was kind of exciting, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what she was thinking. Or why she wanted my tongue in her mouth. Or what she’d want me to do next. Lex told me to try going further, but he didn’t tell me how. And what was the point of it all? I just got so uncomfortable after kissing her that I ended up doing what I already did by myself anyway. And the ballerina wasn’t the one I thought of when I did that.
“Then who was?” Jordan asks.
“Who was what?”
“You know, who did you think about when you were fourteen and jacking off?”
I straighten up. “You’re blunt, aren’t you?”
“No. You’re coy. There’s a difference.”
“I see. And I was fifteen, by the way.”
She’s not listening. “But you’re not shy. You didn’t care that I saw you with your pants down the other day. And now you’re telling me about your sexual failures.”
“I never said I was shy.”
“But you’re not denying the failure part.”
Damn, she’s sharp. But really, “sexual failure” sounds more lurid than the truth. Like I need Cialis or a blueprint to the female body or something. But it wasn’t like that. The ballerina and I kissed one last time and she tried pulling my shirt up, getting me to do the same to her, and I didn’t want to. By that point I’d already noticed things about her that I didn’t like. Like the way she always wanted me to talk about “my feelings” and then got mad when I had the wrong ones. And she definitely wasn’t as pretty as I’d originally thought. Up close she had bad skin and dark roots, and I always got a good view of the hairs living inside her nostrils when we were kissing. Not exactly a turn-on. But the awkwardness carried over to our next date: a trip to Manchester with Lex and his girl to see some band they all liked and that I didn’t know. We rode down in a van with some other students, and I forgot my pressure-point wristbands and the motion sickness was awful. Not puking-all-over-the-place awful, but pretty close, and my head hurt so bad, I couldn’t talk. Not even when we got to the show, which was in the basement of some grungy coffee shop right off Main Street, and everyone there just spent the whole time name-dropping and showing off their band swag and indie persuasions. The ballerina assumed I didn’t like her, and well, she lost interest. Drifted off. Said some things to some people.
It’s for the best, really.
“I’m not denying anything,” I say.
Jordan nudges me. “You have your secrets, though. They must be dark ones if you’ll talk about this kind of stuff so casually.”
“I guess.”
“What did
Lex mean when he said you were crazy?”
“Ask him.”
“I don’t want to.”
I stretch my shoulders. I have to say something. “For a while, when I got angry, I used to hurt myself, okay? Punch walls. Punch myself. I don’t know why. I did other things, too. It was beyond stupid.”
Her mouth falls open. “You did? Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“And now?”
“Now I don’t get angry.”
She mulls this over. “You’re still hiding something.”
My gaze drifts to the moon. “Yeah, probably.”
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t be so pushy.”
The silence that follows is comfortable. My chest opens. It’s like I can breathe again. We’ve left the topic of Lex and secrets.
Jordan speaks first. “Hey, Win?”
“Yeah.”
“Can we talk about girls again? I bet I can figure out your type. I’m good at that.”
Uh-oh. My type? “Sure.”
She cocks her head while she inspects me, her brown eyes running all the way from tip to tail. “You’re tall. Like six feet, right?”
I nod.
“Hmm. Putting that together with the whole tennis and running thing, I’m guessing you go for sporty over that ballerina. Anna Kournikova? Is that the girl of your dreams?”
“Not even close,” I say, but a familiar shiver racks my spine. Titillating and guilt-laced.
Wrong girl. Right name.
chapter
sixteen
antimatter
I cried out when Keith grabbed my arm.
“What’s wrong with you?” he snapped, leaning over the bed where I lay. “Charlie’s waiting. Get up.”
He’d already gotten dressed and had breakfast. Me, I’d missed practice. I hadn’t been able to move that far.
Specks of July haze filtered in through the lace curtains, the day already overtired and overhot. I hated the impatience in his tone. I strained to push off the mattress, but the sharp pain in my abdomen made me whimper. I twisted my head toward the wall.
Keith’s voice lowered. “Come on, Drew. You’re okay.”
“No, I’m not!”
“What? You’re really sick or something?”
I pressed my head against the scratchy pillowcase and nodded.
“You need me to get Gram?” he asked.
No, I didn’t need that. Not at all. Our grandmother hadn’t warmed up to me since that first night. I said all the wrong things around her and she thought I was dumb. I knew she did. Keith, on the other hand, was loved, doted on. She’d even taken him into Cambridge to some famous bookstore, and when she went grocery shopping, she bought him vegetarian bacon, which tasted awful just like I knew it would. All I got were the dirty looks and chilly admonishments to stay quiet, act my age, and mind my manners. But I couldn’t help myself. I mewled again, a tortured sound. Keith scooted from the room to get her.
Two minutes later brought a flurry of footsteps and whispering in the hallway.
“What’s wrong with him?” And there it was. My grandmother’s voice, dripping with scorn.
“I think it’s his stomach. He hasn’t … I don’t think he’s gone to the bathroom since he got here.”
“He hasn’t gone in six days?”
The hallway rang with a bevy of giggles. God, was that Charlie out there? And Phoebe?
I withered beneath the blankets. Wished death on the entire world.
Keith cleared his throat. “Well, maybe, I think, maybe he should see a doctor. He’s crying.”
“He doesn’t need a doctor,” my grandmother said firmly. “I’ll be right back.”
There was more giggling in the hall and then a knock on the door.
“Go away!” I shouted. The last thing I wanted was for everyone to crowd around and laugh more. Why would they do that? Why? It wasn’t funny. It hurt.
“It’s just me, Drew,” came a soft voice.
My stomach flipped over in a way that had nothing to do with my digestive issues. It was Anna, the elder cousin. She slid through a crack in the door and sat beside me. Her pale green dress was the same color as the leaves on the willow branches outside. I breathed her in, with my nose, my eyes, my everything—that long dark hair, that earthy warmth that smelled like digging flower beds in the spring with Siobhan, that syrupy way she melted into the blankets. My heart rate slowed. Suddenly I didn’t care that I had nothing on but a pair of pajama pants. I just wanted to crawl into her lap and stay there.
She rubbed my back. “I’m sorry you don’t feel good.”
I curled closer.
My grandmother swooped in then. “Sit up, Andrew.”
I wouldn’t let any moans of pain escape me, not in Anna’s presence. I was brave. I propped myself into sitting and ignored the fire raging in my midsection. Let my skinny legs dangle over the side of the bed. My grandmother jabbed at my gut with dry hands. I stiffened and resisted the urge to bite her.
“Does anything else hurt?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“This wouldn’t happen if you ate the food I made instead of sneaking downstairs at night and gorging yourself on junk.”
Oh, great. She knew. I looked away.
Smack! Her hand came out too quickly for me to register, ringing me with a sharp slap across the face.
“Pay attention when I talk to you!”
My lip curled. I wasn’t scared. Or hurt. Something awful came alive inside of me. A million images rushed into my head. Images of bad things. Very bad things. Things I could do.
“I’ll give him that, Gram,” Anna said quickly, taking the spoon and jar of medicine out of her hand. “He’s just embarrassed to have us all looking at him.”
“Mmm.”
After she’d left, Anna touched my face but said nothing.
“She’s so mean!”
“Don’t hold it against her,” Anna said.
“Well, I don’t like her. I don’t have to like her!”
“No, you don’t. But you do have to listen to her.”
I pouted. “Why? She hates me. And she loves everyone else.”
“She loves us all.”
“Then why doesn’t she act like it?”
“Because love doesn’t always look nice.”
I folded my arms even tighter. Did Anna think I deserved to be slapped? Because I was bad? That’s what it sounded like. My chest swelled with bubbles of shame. Maybe I was bad. All those mean thoughts in my mind, wanting to hurt people. My grandmother knew about Soren, maybe she knew other things. The kinds of pictures I liked to look at on the computer. The kinds of things I liked to read.
“Take this.” Anna waved a spoonful of frothy liquid before me.
I twisted my head. “It looks gross.”
“It’s milk of magnesia. And you definitely want to take it because if you don’t, Gram’ll come back in here and do something worse.”
“Like what?”
Anna grinned wide, the happiest I’d seen her. She rubbed her nose against mine. Eskimo kissing, we called it at school, but I never let anyone do it to me because I hated being touched. But Anna was different. Her skin was very soft, like the velvety folds of Pilot’s ears. The shame bubbles popped and my heart went all tingly. Anna was better than my mom. Maybe I loved her.
“I don’t know,” she said teasingly. “She might give you an enema or something. Wouldn’t that be awful?”
The tingling stopped and black dots danced in front of my eyes. I definitely did not want that. I opened my mouth wide. Anna stuck the spoon in.
*
Later, when I felt better and lighter, a thunderstorm washed across the state. Heavy drops of rain pummeled the earth like sniper fire and the air smelled bright and raw like ozone. I stood at the window and watched one of my grandfather’s spit cans roll off a pine bench and straight into the back pond, where it bobbed around before sinking. My grandmother’s herb garden was c
ompletely underwater. Half the plants had been washed away or flattened. I smiled.
Light footsteps approached. I dove back under the covers as Anna popped her head in again. She’d called in sick to her job at the local library so that she could take care of me.
“Still not feeling well?” she asked.
I pressed my cheek against the pillow and made sad eyes.
She sat beside me, soft thighs touching my knees. The fear-anger-confusion that lived inside me subsided, like the lowering tide.
Anna rubbed my back again.
I felt happy.
chapter
seventeen
matter
“You can go if you want,” Jordan tells me. “I don’t need a babysitter.”
My heart skips a beat, not in a lovey-dovey way, please, but in a holy shit, ladies and gentlemen, mark the date and time, Winston Winters is being pushed away before he can withdraw sulkily kind of way. I feel a little sick, actually. How did this happen? I’m not dense. Being pushed away implies I’m making an effort to stick around.
Something is very wrong.
I take a steadying breath and pull out my phone. A quick check confirms what I already know, what I can already sense—it’s late.
Later than it should be.
The sick feeling intensifies. I’m too keyed up. Anxious, maybe, I guess. Although “anxiety” is one of those words people at our boarding school throw around that’s hard for me to connect with. Kind of goes hand in hand with that whole “worry” thing. I don’t get that, either. Why get worked up over the bad thing that hasn’t happened yet when there’re plenty of bad things that have?
Take Teddy, for example. He’s a day student, but he and Lex have been tight since the first day of school, so I know him pretty well. The guy worries about everything. It’s draining to see. Never mind that his family is beyond nuclear-ideal—I stay with his folks during vacations or whenever I can get away with not going back to Virginia—he’s loaded, drives a 3 Series BMW, gets perfect grades, and even if he didn’t, what would it matter? Teddy’s a three-generation legacy at Brown, and really, if grades were going to make or break his college success, he’d be better off at public school, where his über-achievement and 4.3 GPA might actually impress somebody. He can’t see that, though. Instead, the guy’s on every SSRI in the book, pops Ambien just to sleep, and practically faints anytime a girl says hi to him. At sixteen. It’s ridiculous. Literally nothing bad has ever happened to him. He just thinks it will. As if thinking will help.
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