Cycler

by Lauren McLaughlin

  The French toast is yummy as always, but I do not linger over breakfast. I drive to school early and hide out in homeroom to avoid running into Tommy Knutson before Ramie and I can strategize damage control. It’s Friday, so I just have to get through one day before a weekend-long brainstorming session can commence.

  As Mrs. Schepisi and the other students filter in, I get nervous that Ramie’s ditching school. But just as the late bell rings, she rushes in. Let me paint a picture for you: vintage sailor’s cap, super-skinny white jeans (it’s early April, for crying out loud), her dad’s blue button-down shirt and a long ribbon of black grosgrain wound around her torso and thighs like she’s in an S and M movie.

  Eliciting the usual snide comments and chuckles from our homeroom crowd, which she ignores, Ramie slides into the seat next to me just as Mrs. Schepisi closes the homeroom door.

  “Nice look,” I tell her.

  She pulls back and gives me the up and down. “Blue cashmere sweater set again?” she says. “Nice jeans, though. Hem them shorter. Ankle length. It’s the new black.”

  “Along with Chubby Chic?” I say. “Anyway, what’s the word on the street?”

  She scoots her metal desk closer, leans over and lowers her voice. “On Tuesday he asked me where you were.”

  My stomach flips over.

  “I told him you were out sick. I didn’t want to get into the whole blood transfusion thing, but he did ask why you miss so much school.”

  “What did you say?”

  The principal’s voice crackles over the ancient PA system with pointless announcements about yearbook meetings and an upcoming pep rally for the baseball team. Like anyone cares.

  “I told him you were a woman of many mysteries,” Ramie says.

  “Good improv.”

  “He did mention calculus,” she says. “Are you tutoring him?”

  I take a few deep breaths and release the tension from my body. It looks like, fingers crossed, I have survived the J-bar incident with at least enough dignity for Tommy Knutson to risk being seen with me for tutoring.

  “You should meet him today,” Ramie says. “At lunch. I’ll make myself scarce so you can do sticky eyes over sines and cosines. Mmmm . . . sexy.”

  “That’s trig, not calculus, you math dunce,” I say. “How’s my hair?” I turn to the side so she can see.

  “Looks like it always looks.”

  “New conditioner,” I tell her. “Hey, we’re abandoning the Lexie Oswell routine, okay?”

  “About time,” Ramie says. “It’s so not you.”

  “Yeah, being an uptight snob is harder than it looks. Good for your posture, though.”

  The bell rings and we gather our bags. As we head to the door, Ramie reaches around me from behind and tries to tie my cashmere sweater at the waist.

  I push her hand away. “Stop it.”

  She holds tight and shuffles me out the door. In the hallway, I dig my thumbnail into her wrist.

  She rips her hand away. “Ow,” she says. “I’m just trying to help.”

  I make a quick scan of the hallway to make sure Tommy’s nowhere in sight. “Shut up,” I say through clenched teeth. “You’ve wrinkled it.”

  “Good. You’re too perfect.”

  We head toward the North Wing together.

  “I may be too perfect,” I say, “but at least I don’t look like Houdini. Are you planning a daring escape from that outfit?”

  She throws her head back and rolls her eyes dramatically. “You are deeply boring.”

  “And you have a ribbon up your bum.”

  “Ooh, good one.”

  Lunch.

  The cafeteria smells of spaghetti Bolognese, which is to say it smells of puke and Parmesan. I arrive early, and rather than sitting at my usual table with Ramie and Daria, I snag the table farthest from the kitchen near the big window overlooking the courtyard, with its muddy lawn and spindly cherry trees debuting the barest hint of pink bud. I take out my cheese sandwich and bottled water, then press my paper bag into a neat little mat and lay the sandwich on top of it. I want my lunch to look small and orderly. I do not want Tommy Knutson to think I am expecting him, so I resist glancing around the cafeteria. Instead, I busy myself with my sandwich and water bottle until he decides to show up. If he decides to show up, that is. I’m not overly concerned. I have lots of things to think about. In fact, I have my composition book open next to me and am writing very interesting things in it. Things like all the days of the week and possible names for the fashion zine Ramie and I will never start up, such as Styleslut, FashionX and Anti-Glam.

  “Hey.”

  I look up from my notebook, and there he is. Threadbare navy blue sweater, faded baggy jeans. He’s smiling at me and I notice for the first time a slight gap between his two front teeth. “Recovered?” he says.

  I close my notebook. “From what?”

  He slides onto the bench across from me and places his green spiral notebook and calculus text on the table next to his lunch bag. “From the J-bar,” he says.

  I toss out a lighthearted chuckle, which I practiced in the car on my way to school. “Oh, that. Pretty funny, huh? You should see me on water skis.”

  He raises his eyebrows suggestively. “I’d love to.”

  An outright flirtation? Whoa. Not prepared. Line!

  I put my hand on his calculus book to steady myself, and change the subject. “So,” I say.

  He cringes. “Yeah. I thought I was smart enough for honors calculus, but my last school kind of blew. It’s too late to drop down a level and I really don’t want an F on my record. A D, I can live with. I figure it’ll make me interesting.”

  I take a very small sip of my water. “I’m not sure college admission officers will see it that way.”

  He shrugs and pulls a foil-wrapped sandwich from his brown bag. “Not my concern.” He peels back the foil, revealing what looks like wallpaper paste and spinach on multigrain bread.

  “You’re not going to college?” I say.

  He takes a bite and shrugs. “Maybe. I’m gonna spend a year driving cross-country first.” He eyeballs my sandwich. “Aren’t you eating?”

  Truthfully, I’m terrified of eating in front of him lest I accidentally dribble or burp. “Yeah,” I say. I take a minuscule bite of my sandwich and chew as daintily as possible.

  With his eyes penetrating mine like lasers, Tommy opens his mouth wide and takes a huge bite of his sandwich.

  “What is that?” I say.

  “Baba ghanoush,” he mumbles. He holds the sandwich out to me. “Want a bite?”

  His teeth have left forensically perfect marks in the bread.

  “Try it,” he says. “I made it myself.”

  Not wanting to appear rude, I put my hand over his and guide the mushy tooth-marked thing toward my mouth. I take a very small bite.

  “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’m not infectious or anything.”

  I chew and swallow, then wave his hand away. “It’s great. I’ve never had baba ghanoush.”

  He reaches into his bag for a small plastic bottle of something green, then takes a swig. “So.” He opens his calculus book. “Talk to me about absolute convergence.”

  “Okay.”

  Our heads come together over the calculus book as I guide him through some examples. As expected, he smells heavenly, kind of musky, like pumpkins and black licorice.

  “Show me,” he says.

  In his notebook, I write out some equations and talk him through each step. Mostly, I keep my eyes on the notebook, but every once in a while I look up to see if he’s following. His eyes lock on to mine, serious and without a trace of embarrassment.

  “Nope,” he says. “Still not getting it.”

  “Watch,” I tell him. Then I take him through the steps again. When I’m too chicken to look into his eyes, I sneak glances at his chest as it rises and falls beneath the blue sweater. He’s skinny, his shoulder bones boxy beneath the baggy sweater. I never realized I
liked skinny guys.

  “What are you doing after school?” he says.

  I take in a sharp breath and open my mouth to answer when the bell slices into the cafeteria din.

  “Today?” I say. I stuff my uneaten sandwich in the brown bag and put the cap on my water bottle.

  Tommy puts his notebook and calculus text into his beat-up blue backpack. “There’s still some snow at the Bump,” he says. “Want a lesson? It’ll be too late, soon.”

  I slide out of the bench and shoulder my bag.

  “Don’t worry,” he says. “You don’t have to use the J-bar.”

  I stare at the linoleum and laugh nervously. “I’m not afraid of the J-bar.”

  “Good,” he says. “I’ve got to pick up some stuff for my mom right after school. Meet me at the cocoa shack at three-thirty?”

  I meet his eyes for about one and a half Mississippis. “Sure,” I say. “Why not?”

  “Cool.” He turns and walks out of the cafeteria, his blue backpack dangling from his weirdly sexy shoulder.

  Four tables away, Ramie stares at me, then rushes over. “So?”

  Daria catches up with us. “How’d it go?”

  I want to answer their questions, but I seem to have left part of my brain in Tommy Knutson’s notebook. Or it has wafted away on his pumpkiny scent. Wherever it went, it’s not working for me anymore. Ramie and Daria have to physically escort me from the cafeteria to my locker so I can get my books for Spanish class.

  “The Bump,” is all I manage to say. “Three-thirty. Ski lesson.”

  Daria starts jumping up and down, and Ramie has to stifle her with a firm hand to the shoulder.

  “Good work,” Ramie says. “No H Block today, so the next time he sees you—”

  “I’ll be dangling from the J-bar?”

  Ramie helps me get the Spanish books into my bag and closes the locker. “No,” she says. She takes my arm and leads me down the hall toward my Spanish class. “You’ll be decked out in my best ski gear and ready to face the Bump again.”

  Daria walks on my other side, all smiles and giggles. “He’s really cute, you know. I mean, not my type at all, kind of skinny, in fact, but he’s actually really cute.”

  I look into her deeply clueless face. “I know,” I say. “Believe me, I know.”

  I do not wear Ramie’s pale pink ski suit this time because I do not want to remind Tommy of the J-bar incident. Ramie has snuck me her mom’s blue and white ski suit, which is a hair too big but looks okay after we safety pin it in a few key places. With the big orange visor, I look like an insect, but a stylish one.

  Fully decked out, I sit on the bench outside the cocoa shack with a pair of rented skis and a heart that is beating so hard I fear starting an avalanche. It’s three-forty-five and Tommy has not arrived. I hate for him to see me waiting around, so I clip into my skis and shuffle very slowly back and forth in front of the cocoa shack. Norm watches me from his ski rental hole and gives me a sarcastic thumbs-up.

  At the foot of the hill, the J-bar taunts me.

  The cocoa shack door squeaks open and Tommy emerges in his school clothes plus ski boots. He drops his skis into the snow, steps into them, and grabs his poles. “Let’s hit the rope tow.”

  I panic.

  He skis over to me and gently pulls my visor off. “I don’t think you’ll need that.” He puts it on the bench. Then he tucks both his poles under his left arm, takes my hand and pulls me toward the rope tow. “Keep your skis parallel,” he says.

  There is a gentle dip over which we pick up speed and I start to wobble on my skis. He puts his arm around my waist to steady me, then stops us at the approach to the rope tow.

  The Bump is virtually deserted but for a group of eight-year-olds getting a lesson from a woman I think I recognize from the flower shop on Arbor Street.

  “The important thing to remember,” he says, “is that you can always let go of the rope. If you start to fall, your first instinct will be to cling harder. Resist that impulse.”

  He stands parallel to the path of the rope, lets it run over his open hands for a few seconds, then grabs it and starts moving up the hill. Only a few yards away, he starts to wobble theatrically, lets go of the rope and falls over onto his side with his skis crisscrossed.

  I try to ski toward him, but I’m not sure how to get up the hill.

  Pulling himself to his feet, he skis deftly back to me. “See?” he says. “If it gets rough, just let go.”

  I have to admit, his mastery of skiing is surprisingly sexy.

  “All right,” I say.

  He smiles and guides me to the rope tow. “Let it run through your hands first,” he says.

  I make big scoops with my hands as if I were holding a large stick, and place them under the rope. The speed surprises me as it skims my gloves.

  “Skis parallel,” he says.

  I look down and straighten them.

  “Bend your knees,” he says. “And don’t forget. You can always let go.”

  I stare at the rope rushing across my palms, bend my knees, then squeeze it tight. My body jerks forward, and a terrifying second later, my skis follow.

  “Bend your knees!” he says.

  I bend them deeply, which can’t be alluring, but I don’t know which is worse—squatting over an invisible toilet or falling into the snow.

  “You’re doing great,” he says.

  Chancing a quick look over my shoulder, I see that he’s behind me on the rope tow, smiling encouragingly.

  “Get ready to let go,” he says.

  “Okay,” I say. I don’t even try to sound casual. I am terrified and my whole body exclaims the fact.

  Within seconds I’m at the top of the hill.

  “Now!” he says.

  I release the rope and the skis carry me a few more feet, then stop. Before the full horror of slipping backward down the hill sets in, Tommy’s at my elbow, his perfect stop sending up a low crest of snow.

  “Très smooth,” he says.

  Eyes glued to mine, he skis around me and rotates my body until my skis are perpendicular to the slope. Then he looks away and surveys the view. It’s not exactly Everest up here, but it’s higher than I thought. Smoke wafts from chimneys in the little houses on Grapevine Road, and a handful of cars, filmed in salt and frost, dot the Bump parking lot.

  “Pretty,” I say.

  He sticky-eyes me for two breathtaking Mississippis, then says, “Ready to learn from the master?”

  “Sure,” I say. “When does he show up?”

  “Ooh,” he says. “You’re going to pay for that.”

  I have to admit it was a brilliant improv, but it does precious little to mitigate the gut-wrenching fear I have of tumbling gracelessly down the hill.

  For the next half hour, Tommy teaches me how to snowplow, which means zigzagging slowly down the hill with your skis pointing inward like pigeon toes. Mercifully, the lesson proceeds without incident, and after a dozen or so journeys up and down the slope, I conquer my fear of the rope tow.

  Between useful instructions like “try not to wobble” and “don’t grip the poles so hard,” Tommy finds opportunities to destabilize me with his laser-beam eyes. Nevertheless, I do manage to stay mostly on my feet.

  The last thing he teaches me is the hockey stop.

  “It’s just like skating,” he says.

  He skis a quarter of the way up the hill, then shouts down at me, “You skate, right?”

  “I used to,” I shout back. “I took figure skating lessons in third grade.”

  “Cool.”

  “It ended in tears,” I say. “And stitches.”

  He laughs. “Watch.” He skis right for me, then juts his hip out to twist his skis to the side. A small flurry of snow drifts over my legs.

  “Got it?”

  “Um.”

  He takes my hand and pulls me a quarter of the way up the slope. Then he skis down and executes another perfect hockey stop. “All right,” he says. “Hea
d straight for me.”

  I push off with my poles and aim for him. But when I jut my hip out, nothing happens. To avoid crashing into him, I make a wide and sloppy half turn followed by a slow-motion drop into the snow.

  Tommy skis over and hovers above me. “That was pathetic.” For a second, I think he’s going to plop down in the snow so we can make angels together. Instead, he offers his hand and pulls me roughly to my feet.

  It’s dusk now, the warm reds of the sky gone blue and gray. The kids are gone. The Bump is empty. Tommy clings to my gloved hand and we stare at each other for an exhilarating three Mississippis.

  Then he lets go and says, “So, Jill, there’s something I need to ask you.”

  Okay, I think. Stay calm. You’re prepared for this. Don’t look expectant. And don’t scowl.

  “Really?” I say.

  He starts to bounce nervously against the cold. “Yeah,” he says. “Um, I don’t know how to exactly . . . well, I guess I should just sort of . . .” He looks at his ski boots and exhales sharply. “This is really hard,” he says.

  He keeps his eyes on his boots, which gives me time to prepare myself for what I think is coming. I have to remember to act surprised, as if the thought never crossed my mind. Prom? What? Oh, is that coming up? Like that.

  Finally, after summoning some courage, Tommy looks at me and says, “The thing is . . . What I wanted to know was, um, well, what would you think if I told you I was into guys?”

  Huh?

  He takes both of my gloved hands and exhales a foggy breath. “I mean, I’m into girls too,” he says. “I’m way into you.

  It’s just that sometimes I like guys.”

  Hold on a second. Did those words come out in the wrong order?

  “Jill?” he says.

  Are my ears dyslexic? Did Tommy just ask me to the prom?

  “Did you hear me?” he says.

  Slowly, painfully, it begins to dawn on me that he did not just ask me to the prom.