“Lani, a word?”
My teacher steps away from the other murmuring voices as I finish my stretching. Wiping my face with a hand towel I nod and approach her.
“Do you have summer plans?”
For a moment my hopes teeter on the edge of a knife: I want to dance; I don’t want to perform. I want to be noticed; I want to disappear. What do I really want?
“Yes, but I could…”
Ms. Biwani-Jones interrupts me. “Oh good! That takes care of you then. I was worried about finding you a placement.”
If I want to disappear, it’s working.
I murmur something and move away to pull on leg warmers over my tights, then cover both with the heaviest skirt I have, even though I’ll still freeze my butt off out there.
I wasn’t sure about going to college in New York. My first winter was a literal shock to the system. I still feel like five months a year it’s hard to get warm enough. Since coming to Carlyle College two and a half years ago I’ve perfected the art of winter layering. It’s a survival tactic. And I guess, to be honest, it’s camouflage. It helps me look like everyone else. I’ve spent three years here without attracting much attention.
For some reason that thought reminds me of the guy in that Extra Credit class yesterday. Kyle. Guys usually don’t pay much attention to me at all, but every time I looked up there he was, taking up way too much room and watching me. Stretched out at full length, he was too long, too broad for the chair he had tipped against the wall. For a moment I saw him as if in a yoga balance pose, and his muscular body seemed suddenly light. For the whole first class I struggled with this strange magnetic pull my eyes had toward him. Why him? There were other attractive guys in the room. Matt had that preppy frat boy thing going and Noah was adorably mussed and lanky. It couldn’t be his personality either because Kyle seemed like a pain in the ass. He fidgeted and snorted and rolled his eyes in an exaggerated performance of impatience and annoyance. Still, I liked the snarky sentences he wrote. I find it hard to believe he’s failing college comp, but I guess I find it hard to believe I’m there either.
On Wednesday I’m the first to class at 7:45, leaving me enough time to sip my chai tea while I review what I wrote in my notebook. Marjorie had given us homework: think about how and why we got in trouble and what might help. We were told not to obsess about the writing. It could be notes to ourselves, lists, even doodles. But the writing was the fun part.
Pushover. That’s my problem. It’s not even that I can’t make waves, but I won’t. So here I go rolling downhill instead of standing my ground. Wait, there’s some metaphor going here: nature, motion, levels. Brains are amazing!
Why not stand up for myself? What could happen? Friends would get in trouble—I won’t like myself. I wouldn’t BE myself.
I described a dream I had about diving into the ocean at Hanalei and getting tumbled in a rough wave. I hit the sandy floor hard and ended up gasping for air.
What To Do? 1. Decide whether it’s worth changing or not. Change is hard. 2. Evaluate how I choose my friends and why. 3. Work harder to make up for missteps. 4. Raise my head, my hand…. Wow, metaphors are everywhere!
“You’ll need a partner to work with. I want you to choose your own.” Marjorie’s voice startles me.
I look up and the room has filled, with Kyle reclaiming the seat next to me. Our eyes meet, his blue blue blue like that ocean. His presence hits me like the wave in my dream. He’s crazy hot—with sharp features set off by those intensely blue eyes and an expressive mouth that seems to default to sulking or scowling. His hair could be dark blond, but it’s so short it’s hard to tell. And his expression is hard to read—it’s like wariness and confusion and tension and uncertainty and interest and anger all mixed up.
“You,” he says, pointing at me. I blink and nod slowly. I can handle this. There’s a pause and then he adds, “I need to work with a writer.” Whether he’s explaining this to himself, to me, or to Marjorie I don’t know, but I just nod again as conversations ebb and flow around me.
“I want you to swap notebooks with your partner and annotate the pages—underline things you think are important, add notes or questions. You want to focus on reflecting back to your partner what patterns you see in what may be otherwise disconnected writing. Think of yourselves as doctors diagnosing a patient. What can you make of the symptoms in front of you?”
“Again with the fucking patterns!” Kyle grumbles, handing me a piece of paper covered in an oversized scrawl. I suppress a smile and hand over my notebook.
I hate writing.
I hate writing because.
I don’t like writing things down. It’s frustrating. Goddammit, what am I supposed to say? How long is this supposed to be? Is this enough yet?
The assignment: 5-7 pp on an ethical controversy in the news. With 3 sources.
To Do: choose a stupid controversy (google controversies), find 3 sources (google sources), write 5 fucking pages (13 pt font, 1.5” margins!), hand it in, graduate and get the hell out of dodge (and into the army).
I can’t help but feel for him as I make some notes. We swap and I see he’s written in all caps in the margins on mine: DREAMS ABOUT WATER REFLECT YOUR ATTITUDE TOWARD SEX. If he thinks to make me blush, he can hold his breath. One good thing about my dark coloring and perma-tan is that I don’t redden.
“Says who? Freud?” I’m sarcastic.
He shrugs and grins, leaning back in his chair to study me. He stretches his arms out so he takes up the whole space. Kyle’s not huge like football players, who always look a little grotesque to me—like cartoon figures. He’s just…solid.
“You’re from Hawai’i?”
“Yes. Please spell it correctly even in your head. There’s an apostrophe between the i’s.”
“That’s hot.”
“Tropical.”
He glances over me. “You always wear fifty layers of clothing?”
“I’m cold! Were you born and bred in the freezer section?”
“Yep. Southern Illinois. Could be worse. Could be twenty below. Could be gale winds. Could be ice storms….”
I give an exaggerated shiver and raise a palm to stop him. For some reason, his attention is giving me confidence. He eyes me steadily for another over-long moment.
“You dance.” This is a statement, not a question.
“Yes,” I frown, looking back at what I’ve written. “How did you know?”
He waves a hand over my words. “All that motion? And the hair.” He waves a hand around my face now and I remember that today I’ve scraped my long hair into a tight bun for class later. He’s looking at my neck and it feels naked.
“Oh.” I shift uncomfortably. “I dance hip hop and ballet. I also take yoga classes and teach basics on Saturdays at the rec center. I’m thinking about training to become a certified yoga teacher.”
Kyle frowns. “What about dancing?”
I shake my head. “I can’t dance professionally.”
“Why not?”
I avoid his eyes. “I don’t really like performing,” I admit reluctantly. That’s not the half of it but it’s all I need to tell him.
“Why not?” He’s like a bulldog. I make a face at him but he ignores it, waiting.
I sigh. “I have pretty bad stage fright. I love dancing, but it’s hard to perform.” I need a redirect. “You’re obsessed with numbers,” I blurt out.
Now he frowns, looking at his page.
“5,7,3,3,5,13,1.5” I read. “Why so worried about quantity?”
“Easy for you to say when you can just write.” He sounds glum. “I’m going to fail freshman comp--again--if I can’t hand in those five fucking pages. And I need it to graduate.”
That sucks, and I think it may have been hard for him to admit. “You curse a lot.” I point to more words on his page.
“You offended?” His eyebrows rise. I realize I enjoy watching him fidget and shift. He’s big but graceful in his constant motion. Somethi
ng occurs to me.
“Do you have dyslexia or ADD or something? Maybe Tourette’s?” I tilt my head, assessing him.
He laughs and his eyes crinkle at the corners. “Now I’m offended!”
“Hmm. So it’s not that you can’t write, but that you don’t want to,” I muse, thinking.
“Like you,” he says, eyeing me. “You said it’s not that you can’t make waves, but you won’t. How’s that working out for you?”
I sigh, slumping into my chair. “Not so well. What about you? Don’t you want to graduate?”
He barks out another laugh. “Well, duh! Of course I want to be done with school already. Just a few more months—“
I’m watching him closely. “Then what? The army, right?” That last parenthetical comment he wrote just hung there.
He shrugs again. I have to say I’ve got a soft spot for people who communicate through their bodies—though somehow that thought feels wrong.
“If you don’t pass comp, though, you’ll fail and you won’t graduate.”
“I won’t fail,” he says confidently. The big grin is back and I’m glad that flash of uncertainty I glimpsed is gone.
“How do you know?”
“Because you’re going to help me.”
3
Kyle
I should be a wreck. My overnight shift as an EMT kept me running around all night. First I picked splinters off the dumbass who tried to walk on his hands across the back deck of Psi House. Drunk, of course, so we checked out the egg on his hard head too. Fucking frats! Then there was the call from the freshman who thought she was having arrhythmia but was just off her anxiety meds. Usually I get some sleep on the overnight shifts but last night was a beaut.
So it doesn’t make sense that I have a little bounce in my step later that day when I head out to meet Lani at the coffee shop to work on our “strategy.” We’re supposed to come up with plans to help our partners with their problem. I kind of grudgingly get it. I mean, this does seem a little more practical than some remedial course where we work on study skills or some crap like that.
Lani still won’t tell me what trouble she’s in, but I can’t believe this good girl did anything that bad—and that pisses me off on her behalf. I’m just the guy to help her stand up for herself—wherever or whenever. And she’s just the person to help me get some words on the page.
“You know you can’t Google ethical controversies for your paper, right?” Lani says when I drop into the seat across from her. She sips at her tea and hunches her shoulders, clinging to her mug like it’s her Precious.
“Why not?” I kind of know but I like to needle her. She’s cute when she’s flustered. It’s five o’clock and the coffee shop on campus is full of students getting their caffeine fixes. Lani’s hair is down today, which I like, but she’s still wearing her layers of hippie skirts and ratty cardigans, which I don’t like.
She sighs like she knows I’m just humoring her. “Okay. How are you going to choose a topic?”
“You mind if I get some food?” I slide back out of my seat to start toward the counter. “You want something?” She shakes her head, her hair sliding around her shoulders.
“Kyle.” She sighs again. I like it.
“Be right back.” I grin at her and I don’t think I’ve smiled this much with anyone. I order food and carry it back to the table, but now some dickhead is sitting in my spot talking to Lani.
“Who’s he?” I ask her, but I keep my eyes on the dickhead leaning forward over the table and talking nonstop at her. He’s wearing a flannel shirt and he’s got a leather thong around his neck. I want to roll my eyes, but instead I put my food down in my spot and fold my arms to clearly communicate Get The Hell Out of Here.
“Jamie. Kyle.” Lani says, pointing at each of us. Sometimes she’s too damned calm.
“Hey dude,” Dickhead says, looking surprised.
“Do you mind, dude? Lani and I have work to do.” I’m so done with this guy.
“Sure, sure,” he says, standing up finally and getting out of my damned chair. “Lani, I’ll catch you later. I’ll swing by your room.”
I raise my eyebrows at her, but she just waves at him as I sit back down.
“Who’s he?” I repeat, starting on my french fries. “Don’t tell me he’s your boyfriend.” I pin her with a stare.
“None of your business.” She shoots me a warning look. And I realize one of the things I like about Lani is that she doesn’t back down from me. That reminds me of her journal entry, but she doesn’t seem like a pushover to me.
“Is he one of those friends you’re evaluating how you chose and why?” I’m still watching her so I catch her surprise. She doesn’t answer so I know he is. Anger wells up in me.
“Lani, for fuck’s sake! He better not be taking advantage of you because if he’s giving you shit I’m going to kick his ass….” I stop because she’s laughing so hard it derails me.
“You’re… you’re….” She’s gasping and it would be kind of cute if I weren’t so annoyed. She covers her mouth with her hand and her eyes are actually fucking sparkling. I just want to sit here looking at her face lit up like that and feeling so warm and cuddly. Jesus, we’re just partners.
“I’m sorry!” she huffs. “It’s just you’re acting like a caricature of the jealous jock. It’s too ridiculous!” She’s still giggling while I glare at her. “I know you mean well—“
“Shut it, Lani!”
She laughs harder and I can’t help cracking another smile. “We’re partners, remember? That means I have to take care of you.” Holy crap! That came out so wrong.
“Right. Partners.” She clears her throat and straightens back up. “But I don’t need to be taken care of.” The last part is delivered with a glare.
Cute.
“Now, we were talking about your paper,” she says primly after an awkward stare-off.
“Yeah,” I straighten and study my food. “That.”
There’s a pause when I can tell she’s studying me and I wonder what she thinks about this angry asshole she’s stuck working with. She probably feels like Matt does—howling at the unfairness of it all. When I glance at her, though, she’s got her calm back and that golden gaze is soft.
“Tell me about some controversies that interest you. I’ll take notes.” She pulls out that inevitable notebook and a pen. But I got nothing. So she prompts and prods, needling me with questions, except I like it and half an hour later she has a list of topics.
“So,” she says, chewing on the end of her pen. I wish she would stop making me look at her mouth. It’s, like, perfect.
“No. Your turn.” I give her my fiercest look but she just smiles at me. She’s more than pretty, I realize. Her face is arresting. I feel like I’ve never seen anyone who looks anything like her before.
“What’s your…ethnicity?” I ask awkwardly, then immediately want to kick myself.
“I don’t like labels,” she says evenly, stealing one of my french fries. I push them over to her. “But I’m kind of a mutt. Japanese, Polynesian, Scottish, Filipino. Which makes me all Hawaiian, I guess.” Those golden eyes meet mine, like she’s waiting for a reaction. But what do I know about her identities? I’m a white boy from Springfield, Illinois. So I ask.
“What’s that like?”
She tilts her head in that way I’m starting to recognize. Like she’s curious about me. “It’s complicated, you know? Did you read Their Eyes Were Watching God in high school?”
I shake my head. I have no clue what she’s talking about.
“Zora Neale Hurston?”
I shake my head again, feeling like a dumbass. What was I not reading when she was reading that?
Lani’s face brightens and I’m drawn in. “I love that book. In it there’s a scene where little Janie, who grows up as the granddaughter of the help for a white family in Florida, sees a photograph of a group of children and asks ‘who’s the dark girl?’”
She starts traci
ng one finger in a pattern on the table between us, as if she’s following a complicated story line.
“And everyone laughs because it was her. Janie was the dark girl. And she didn’t know it. I’m not African American and I didn’t grow up in 1910 but that’s kind of what it was like for me. When I was in middle school I had a crush on a white boy who said he would never date someone brown.”
She blinks. “I didn’t even know I was ‘brown.’ Then I came here, where at restaurants and hotels I’m often taken for the help. Sometimes white men tell me I could make a lot of money as an exotic dancer.” She shrugs, still holding my gaze. “It’s hard to tell the racism from the sexism. Or the just-plain-dumb-ism.”
I try to swallow my anger. She doesn’t need to be taken care of. We’re just partners.
But it must not be working because her hand moves towards me on the table, then hovers awkwardly. I grab her hand and squeeze it.
“That sucks.” I take a deep breath and start smoothing my thumb over her palm. She sucks in a breath and we both freeze. I should stop but her skin is smooth and soft and this is calming me as much as her.
“Maybe you can’t keep people from misjudging you, but you can fight back when it happens. Why don’t you fight back?” I’ve lowered my voice in an effort to relax.
“You know why—I don’t want to make waves.” She looks at our entwined hands before pulling hers away. “And I like them,” she adds miserably.
“They’re your friends.” I conclude, my heart sinking.
“They’re my friends.”
“I want to kick their asses,” I mutter, and her mouth quirks.
“That won’t help me, Kyle.”
“It will help me, goddammit!” Then there’s more tinkling laughter and I’m just glad I said something to cheer her up.
Again her head tilts as she studies me. “You’re kind of sweet, aren’t you?”
The Partnership (Extra Credit Book 1) Page 2