Rikki

by Abigail Strom

  Then I had an inspiration. “I’ll do it on one condition.”

  “Anything! Just name it.”

  “You guys can’t smoke in our room anymore. Ever. Not pot, not cigarettes, not anything.”

  “Deal.”

  “You swear?”

  “On my mother’s grave.”

  “Your mother’s still alive, and you hate her. Swear on the grave of someone you like who’s actually dead.”

  “I swear on the graves of Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee and Tommy Ramone.”

  “Fine.”

  Tamsin threw her arms around me. “Thank you thank you thank you.”

  “Uh huh. I’ll go up and get my stuff.”

  Chapter Seven

  Ten minutes later I was knocking on Sam’s door in my pajamas. They were white cotton with pink hearts, which was a little too cutesy for my taste, but they were the only real pajamas I owned since I usually slept in a T-shirt or camisole.

  I’d decided to put them on before I came down so there wouldn’t be any awkwardness about changing. This way, Sam wouldn’t have to leave the room.

  “Hey,” he said, opening the door. He was ready for bed, too, in the sweats and T-shirt he’d worn the other night I’d stayed here.

  “Hey,” I said. “I’m really sorry about Tamsin. I mean, her putting me on the spot is one thing—kind of part of the whole roommate dynamic. But there’s no reason for you to be roped into her deal. Are you sure this is—”

  “I’m sure.” He stepped back so I could come in.

  I glanced around his room, wondering if I’d see signs of Mena. She’d said she preferred her own space, so if she’d started spending nights here it probably meant she and Sam were getting serious.

  I didn’t find any visible evidence but that didn’t mean much. Sam was organized by nature—maybe he’d set aside a drawer for her or something.

  “I thought you and Mena might have plans tonight,” I said as I sat down on the extra bed, already made this time. “Are you guys at the sleepover stage yet?”

  On the way down here I’d thought about how to phrase the question, and that was what I’d come up with. I was pleased with the word choice, which seemed fairly innocuous, and I credited myself with bonus points when the question came out sounding casual.

  Sam sat down on his own bed. “I don’t think sleepovers are in our future,” he said. “We’re more like friends who fool around.”

  His body language said to leave it alone, so of course I didn’t.

  “Have you talked to her about—”

  “You’re in your pajamas,” he said abruptly, interrupting me before I could finish. “Does that mean you want to go to sleep now?”

  It was only ten o’clock. “I still have about an hour’s worth of reading to do. Will it keep you up if I leave the bedside lamp on?”

  Sam shook his head. “No, I still have some work to do, too. But if you wanted to go to sleep I could go downstairs to study.”

  I stared at him. “You’d do that?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “Because this is your room. Tamsin basically forced you to let me stay here, and on top of that you were going to leave your own room and go somewhere else to work? That’s nuts.”

  “I’m not nuts. I’m just nice.”

  “I guess you are.”

  One corner of his mouth quirked up. “I know that probably comes as a shock to you, considering you spent years hating my guts, but—”

  “I didn’t hate your guts.”

  “Sure you did.”

  “Well, you hated mine, too.”

  “I only hated you because you hated me.”

  “I only hated you because you hated me.”

  He shook his head slowly. “Apparently we had a strange loop going.”

  “A strange loop?”

  “An ontological paradox. A chicken-and-egg situation. A Mobius strip. The further we thought we were getting from our point of origin, the more we were going back where we came from. And all along we cancelled each other out.”

  “You’re such a science geek.”

  “I’m just saying that maybe we never hated each other at all. Maybe it was just an illusion.”

  “It’ll take me a while to wrap my mind around that.”

  “Take your time. We already called a truce. How about we go further and declare an actual friendship?”

  I’d been sitting on the edge of the bed with my feet on the floor. Now I pulled my legs up and sat cross-legged, setting my backpack down beside me.

  “I think I could be down with that.”

  “Okay, then. I’d like to inaugurate this new friendship by asking you a favor.”

  “I already owe you, so you’ll probably get it.”

  He shook his head. “This is a really big favor.”

  I was intrigued. Sam wasn’t the kind of person who ever asked anyone for anything, and I couldn’t imagine what the favor might be.

  “What is it?”

  He hesitated, looking away from me.

  And then I noticed that the tips of his ears were red.

  Now I was even more intrigued. Also, his looking away gave me a chance to study him without being studied in return, and I took full advantage of the opportunity.

  He’d had his hair cut recently—maybe even that day. When guys get their hair cut it looks raw for a little while, like a woman who’s just had a facial. Once you’ve had a shower and some time goes by your skin settles back down to normal, and the same is true for a guy with that just-got-a-haircut look.

  His body was really well-proportioned. Some guys have muscled arms and skinny legs, as if they spend all their time doing bench presses and forget about anything below the hips. But Sam’s body was perfectly balanced.

  His face was balanced, too. His eyebrows cut across his forehead at just the right angle. His jaw was firm and strong but not too heavy, and the planes of his nose and cheekbones were equally pleasing. He even had nice ears.

  But my favorite part of his face was his mouth. It was mobile and sensitive, able to express emotions with a single twitch. Now that we sat across from each other in English class I had a lot of opportunities to see that mouth in action. One of our fellow students liked to make really obvious statements in a really loud voice, and I’d gotten in the habit of glancing at Sam whenever that happened so I could watch his mouth quirk up at one corner. It was only a small movement—maybe half an inch—and I liked knowing that I could spot it when no one else did.

  His eyes should have been expressive, too… but it was actually hard to read what he was thinking. You got the impression he was thinking something—maybe a lot of things—but you were never sure exactly what. It could be frustrating, because I knew that whatever he was thinking was intelligent and interesting but I couldn’t go up to him after class or after dinner and say, “So, Sam, I noticed that you were thinking something when we were all talking and I was wondering what it was.”

  Whatever he was thinking now was making him nervous. And since Sam was hardly ever nervous I was getting more and more curious about what he was going to ask me.

  Finally he looked back at me again. “So, I’m taking a sculpture class,” he said.

  I was still getting used to the idea that Sam Payne had a creative side I’d never known anything about.

  “That sounds cool.”

  “It is. It’s a great class. But now we’re supposed to start working on our big semester project, and… I’m kind of stuck.”

  I couldn’t imagine where this was going.

  “You know I can’t draw or sculpt or anything, right?”

  “No, I know. It’s not that.”

  He raised a hand and scratched the back of his neck.

  “Okay, Sam, the suspense is killing me. How can I possibly help with this class?”

  He stopped scratching his neck and took a deep breath. “We’re supposed to do a figure-sculpting project from life.”

  “Uh huh,” I said, since he’
d stopped talking and seemed to require some encouragement to start again.

  “I’m having trouble finding the right subject. I was hoping that you… that you might consider… modeling for me.”

  I think my jaw dropped. “You mean naked?”

  “No,” he said quickly. “Absolutely not. You could wear a bathing suit or a leotard or something.”

  “But… what about Mena? Wouldn’t she model for you?”

  He shook his head. “That would add a whole layer of crap I don’t want to deal with.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He hesitated. “Asking her might affect… well, whatever the hell is going on between us. We’re not exactly on the same page. Mena isn’t looking for a relationship or anything serious, but I’m not great with the casual thing. That’s enough complication without making her feel obligated to help me with a project.”

  A wave of melancholy made my sternum ache. It couldn’t be jealousy, because I didn’t like Sam that way. Maybe it was just that I felt left out, or something.

  All around me people were navigating relationships. Hooking up and having sex, flirting and getting together… and I was on the outside looking in.

  “So… you want something more serious with Mena?”

  He dragged a hand through his hair. “Honestly? I’m not sure. But I’d like the chance to find out.” He paused. “If I ask Mena to model for me all that stuff will come into play. But if you do it…”

  “Yes?”

  “Then it’ll just be about the sculpture. I won’t be distracted by anything else.”

  That was, possibly, the most depressing thing I’d ever heard.

  Of course I knew he hadn’t meant to insult me. But the idea that Sam was asking me to model for him because nothing about me or my half-naked body could possibly distract him from the pursuit of art…

  Yeah, not great for my ego.

  He searched my face for a moment, and then he shrugged.

  “It’s okay. Forget it. I’ll figure something out.”

  We sat there awkwardly for a long moment, which gave me time to wonder what “figuring something out” would look like. Who would he ask after me?

  Maybe he’d ask another female friend, like Tamsin or Claire or—oh God, Dyshell. Dyshell was so beautiful it hurt. Maybe he’d ask her, and she’d model for him in a bikini and—

  “I’ll do it.”

  Sam was starting to get to his feet. He froze for a second, halfway up, and then sat back down again.

  “You will?”

  “Sure.”

  I had a feeling I’d regret this decision any second now, but my mouth had decided to lead its own life.

  “Well… thanks. There’s a studio right here in the dorm, so you won’t have to go to the art building or anything.”

  “Great.”

  There was a pause.

  “So… are you free tomorrow afternoon? Like at four o’clock?”

  That soon?

  “Um, yes. Sure. Yes. My last class gets out at three, so… yes.”

  “Okay, then. Great.”

  “Great.”

  There was another silence. This time I was the one who broke it, reaching into my backpack as I spoke.

  “I guess I’ll get started on my reading.”

  Sam nodded. “I should get to work, too.”

  He went over to his desk and sat down with his back to me, which meant I could look up and stare at the back of his head every few minutes. And during the hour that followed that’s exactly what I did.

  It reminded me of math class last year, when I’d sat at the desk behind his. Whenever I got stuck on a calculus problem I’d look up and stare at the back of Sam’s head. It had usually been a source of irritation, which in turn had motivated me to get back to work and had probably helped me maintain my math grade.

  But now, looking at Sam’s freshly-cut hair and the way his neck muscles rose up from his shoulders, I wasn’t annoyed at all.

  An hour later I finished my reading, put my book in my backpack, and set the backpack on the floor. Sam was still working at his laptop.

  I remembered what he’d said about strange loops, which wasn’t a concept I’d heard of before. I pulled out my phone and Googled it, and one of the first images that came up in the search results was a print by M.C. Escher called Drawing Hands.

  The print showed two hands drawing each other into existence. The hands started out as flat, unshaded, two-dimensional wrists, but then they became shaded, real-looking, three-dimensional hands, each holding a pencil and beginning to sketch the two-dimensional sleeve covering the others’ two-dimensional wrist.

  The image was familiar. I looked up from my phone, turned my head to the right, and there it was: a reproduction of Drawing Hands.

  I stared at the picture for a long time. “You know, this could drive a person crazy,” I said after a while.

  Sam swiveled his chair around to face me. “What? Oh, the Escher. Yeah, I love that picture. I love paradoxes.”

  “I hate paradoxes. They drive me nuts. Don’t they drive everyone nuts?”

  He shook his head. “Only if you try to look at them linearly. You know, force them to make sense on a finite plane.”

  “A finite plane?”

  “Sure. What makes that drawing a paradox is the fact that it’s describing infinity, right? The hands drawing each other, forever, with no way to determine which came first. There’s no end to it, and that’s infinity. But the means used to illustrate that concept is finite. A finite drawing made by a finite human being.”

  I started to say I didn’t get it, but then, all of a sudden, I did. Just for a moment, but I did.

  I remembered something Charlotte had said once. “One of my moms told me that human beings are finite and infinite at the same time, and that’s why we’re never completely at home in this mortal life.”

  A smile spread across Sam’s face. “That’s great. That’s exactly what I was talking about.”

  “I never really got what she meant,” I confessed.

  “Yeah, you did. Or at least you got it just now. Didn’t you? I could see it in your face.”

  “You could? What do you mean?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve seen you look like that before. You get this flash of illumination.”

  “I do?”

  “Yeah.”

  I felt more complimented than if he’d said I had beautiful hair or gorgeous eyes. Maybe that was because Sam and I were meant to have an intellectual connection, not a physical one.

  “I did feel like I got it for a second—but only for a second. So you actually seek out paradoxes?”

  He nodded. “That’s why I like math so much.”

  “Wow. Really?”

  He closed his laptop, left his desk, and sat down on his bed. “You sound surprised.”

  “Not that you like math. I mean, of course I knew that. But I guess I thought people who like math like things to be… I don’t know, black and white. With math there’s a right answer and a wrong answer and nothing in between. So I always figured that people who like math like things to be, you know, unambiguous.”

  Sam shook his head. “Nope. Well, maybe some people do. But the deeper you get into math and physics, the more you find out that nothing is certain.”

  “And you like that?”

  “You sound surprised again.”

  “Well, sure. I mean, most people don’t actually seek out uncertainty. Most people are looking for answers, not more questions.”

  “I know.”

  “But you’re not?”

  “No. If life was really a closed loop it would get pretty boring.”

  “So you prefer strange loops?”

  He grinned at me. “Yeah. Like you.”

  “I’m a strange loop?”

  “Well, if you grant my premise at all, then every human being is a strange loop. But you’re stranger than most. You’re a paradox.”

  For some reason that characterization made
me uncomfortable. “I’m not a paradox. I’m totally straightforward.”

  “Unambiguous?”

  “Yes.”

  “What you see is what you get?”

  I folded my arms. “Yes.”

  He shrugged. “Okay, then. My mistake.”

  His mouth was doing that thing where it lifted up at one corner, and I glared at him. “You don’t mean that. You really do think I’m a paradox. But why? How am I paradoxical?”

  He shook his head. “If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you.”

  “That’s infuriating.”

  The quirk became a grin. “Are you done with your reading? Should we turn out the light and go to sleep?”

  “Fine. But someday you’re going to tell me what, exactly, is so paradoxical about me.”

  “Okay,” he agreed, getting under his covers. “Someday.”

  I got under my covers, too, and then Sam turned out the light.

  “Good night, Rikki.”

  “Good night, Sam.”

  This time I had a plan to deal with the whole shifting in bed issue. The last time I hadn’t moved for the first couple of minutes, which made me feel like I couldn’t move at all until I was sure Sam was asleep. This time, I shifted a little bit right after the light went out, and again a minute later.

  Now, having established that some shifting around was normal for me, I could let nature take its course. If I felt like shifting, I would; if I didn’t, I wouldn’t.

  But of course, now that I knew I could move, I didn’t need to. This, I had found, was often the case in life. It’s only when we can’t eat that cookie that eating the cookie becomes a life or death proposition.

  Having the option made me much more relaxed. I was curled up on my right side, facing Sam, who was on his back.

  My eyes had adjusted to the darkness, but I couldn’t tell if he was asleep yet. His eyes were closed and he hadn’t shifted in the last couple of minutes, so—

  His head turned, his eyes opened, and he looked straight at me. “Rikki?”

  I felt caught in the act, as exposed as if he’d walked in on me in the shower. My breath stuck in my throat and I couldn’t speak.

  “Are you awake?”