“Who’s this Jason character?” Drummond asked.
“He’s Lila’s boyfriend,” I replied, enjoying her face when I said it.
“Not my boyfriend,” she said. “I just spend time with him occasionally on a recreational basis.”
“ ‘Recreational,’ ” I muttered.
“Enough with the air quotes, Captain Sarcasm,” Lila said.
Drummond looked at us as we laughed. “This relationship seems fulfilling.”
“He’s very muscular,” she said.
“Why don’t I know this guy?” Drummond asked. “He sounds like an intellectual titan.” He grinned at Lila.
Lila gave him her warm, slow smile back. “He’s not in any advanced lit classes. I’m not entirely sure he can read, come to think of it.”
“He’s on the lacrosse team,” I said. “He’s one of their stars.”
“Lacrosse is a rube’s game,” Drummond said. “I prefer curling. Tactical sweeping.”
“I heard you liked swimming, actually,” Lila said. She had that tilt to her head and cock of her hip that always made me nervous.
Drummond considered her. “Where’d you hear that?”
“I have sources,” she said.
They both laughed. My pulse began to hammer.
“I bet you wear a Speedo, don’t you?” she said. “One of those bright red ones.”
I stood up and tugged on her arm.
“We’re late,” I said.
“We’re talking,” she said.
“Go,” Drummond said. “You kids already spend way too much time in my company.”
Once we were in the hall, Lila whispered, “What was that?”
“What were you doing?” I said. “You were embarrassing yourself.”
Lila stopped. “What the hell, Charlie? Embarrassing myself?”
“He looked really uncomfortable.”
“We were just talking. Jesus.” She started down the hall and I followed.
I let a moment pass, then said, “I had to pull you away. He was clearly getting a dangerously large erection.”
She glanced at me. “Bet it’d look better in a Speedo.”
“True,” I said. “Let’s hope someday we find out for sure.”
The newspaper had become my favorite part of the week. Our lit classes weren’t long enough, and Drummond was more relaxed after school; most days Truth Bomb became an excuse to chat rather than a legitimate enterprise. Even Asha seemed more tolerant of him now, though she was usually at a computer working while the rest of us talked.
That day she was taking pictures. I mostly kept my head down so she wouldn’t notice me, but eventually she came over and stood in front of me as I read one of my most recent library selections.
“You know I still exist even if you keep your head down?” she said. “I think they call that object permanence.”
I laughed despite myself. “What’s up?”
She slid onto the edge of the table. “I don’t want to interrupt when you’re clearly busy, but can I get a picture with you and Dev?”
“No pictures.”
“Come on, you have to. Otherwise how will they know who to complain to?”
I looked at Dev, who was working at a computer with Drummond.
“With Dev?” I said.
“You guys are the two opinion columnists. In theory, anyway.”
“Oh, right,” I said. I could tell she wasn’t going to leave until I agreed. Asha didn’t brook argument when she’d made up her mind. “Okay, if I have to.”
She turned around. “Dev!” she said. “Get over here.”
He looked up and so did Drummond. He said something to Drummond, and Drummond nodded. He watched as Dev came over to us.
“I need you to pose with Charlie,” Asha said.
Dev looked at me. “I take it she’s bossing you around too?”
“I’d call it decisiveness,” I said.
He huffed. “You know, I’m older by ten minutes.”
Asha ignored him. “Come on, kids,” she said. “The quicker you do this, the quicker it’s over.”
Dev sat across from me so we were on either side of the table, and we posed a few times with pencils askew in our teeth. I saw Drummond glance at us occasionally and it thrilled me, knowing he was watching. Everything I did in his presence had become a performance I hoped he would notice.
“All right,” Asha said finally. “You can get back to your little golf column.”
“What’s the golf column?” I asked.
Dev looked at me without turning from Asha. “I’m writing a column on whether golf is a sport or an activity.”
“It’s more like pin the tail on the donkey for adults, isn’t it?” I said, and Asha laughed.
“It takes skill!” he said, but he laughed too and turned toward me.
“I didn’t say it didn’t,” I said. “But you could definitely improve it with blindfolds and alcohol.”
“Since when do you like golf, anyway?” Asha said. “I thought it was Xbox sports only.”
“Dad took me a few weeks ago.”
“What, when he was home?”
“Yeah, and when he’s on leave for Christmas, he’s taking me and Frank again.”
“Hang on,” she said. “I thought the two of us were—” She glanced at me. “Never mind. I have to upload these pictures.” She passed Drummond as she left. I looked at Dev and he shrugged and rolled his eyes in a long-suffering sort of way.
“What’s this ruckus about?” Drummond said, and rapped his knuckles on the table.
Dev looked up. “Ah, good. We need you to arbitrate something for us.”
Drummond sat down on the table, between me and Dev. He’d never gotten this close to me.
“What’s up?” he said. He leaned back and put his hands out behind him so that he was nearly touching my hands, which I’d let rest on the table. He always sat like this in class, his shirt dissolving into wrinkles where he slumped, his shoulders low, as if he were chatting with a group of friends at a party. I liked that he was so comfortable with us, because I so often felt uneasy inside my skin, like I was wearing an ill-fitting coat and the seams were all irregular.
I had to angle myself to see Dev; Drummond was practically blocking him. “Dev thinks golf is a sport, because he was dropped on his head as a child,” I said.
“My dad plays,” Dev said.
“See, dad sport,” I said. “Does that not prove my point entirely?”
Dev looked so hurt that I laughed. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I do like a sport you can play in khakis.”
“All right,” Drummond said, “I’ll settle this if I have to.”
I looked up at him. His eyes were glittering.
“You have a lot of experience arbitrating this kind of thing?” I asked.
“It was basically my major in college,” he said. His dimples puckered as he smiled at me.
“Yeah, but you think curling is a sport. You can’t be trusted.”
He bumped me on the arm with his elbow. This was new. He’d never touched me before. He was casually affectionate with a lot of people in our class—he’d chuck them on the shoulder or shove them playfully—but never me. Giddiness filled my head like helium.
“Dev,” Asha called. “I need you over here for a second.”
“Sorry, guys,” Dev said. “We’ll finish this later.”
“Yep,” Drummond said. “Just remember your grade depends on whether you answer correctly.” He had moved closer to me now; I could feel the heat from his torso, he was so close. I looked down at his hands—big hands. Nice fingers as well.
Once Dev was on the other side of the room, Drummond looked down at me and said, “You guys going to do anything about that flirting?”
I pulled away from him. “Dev?” I said. “No, afraid not.” I was relieved he’d said it out of Dev’s earshot, but embarrassed that he’d considered the idea at all. I hated it when adults assumed that just because you were youn
ger than they were, you wouldn’t mind pairing off with anyone of a similar age. I’d thought he understood us better than that.
“Sorry,” he said. He bounced his arm slightly; he was still so close that his elbow touched my shoulder. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I just thought you guys…” He shrugged. “It seems like Dev likes you.”
I tried not to blush. Had he really thought of me that way? I looked around. No one was paying attention to us, at least. I was torn between wanting someone to overhear and being mortified by the thought that they might. He wasn’t supposed to say things like that, was he? Did he like me enough to say them anyway?
“I think he and Frank are a better fit,” I said finally.
“True,” he said. “And they both look better in formal wear.”
“Unlike you,” I said.
He shoved me with his elbow again, and this time I shoved him back. It was the most I’d ever touched him.
After a minute he said, “So you don’t like any of the guys here? Or girls?”
I looked at him. Did he really think I had a shot with anyone? “Nope,” I said.
“Well, Sean might be available if Katie could possibly relinquish him,” he said. He knocked me on the head and then he finally sat up. “Think about it.”
—
I thought about him instead, the entire drive home. We’d touched for less than five minutes, but I managed to replay it for twenty. I felt as if all the charge from his skin was in my body and I had to release it somehow or I’d burn up.
When I got home, I found a note on the kitchen table: my dad had taken the train into the city to meet a client and my mother was working late. I looked at Frida.
“We’re alone, huh?” I said.
She unfolded her ears into triangles, but her head stayed on her paws.
“You need to stay downstairs. Your owner has something sinful to do.” I shivered as I climbed the stairs to my bedroom. Lila and I had talked about it before, but I’d never tried it. Neither of us really understood what to do. She said she’d tried using an electric toothbrush once but it didn’t work. She couldn’t look at it after that. “My dentist is going to be so angry,” she’d said. “But what can I tell him?”
I locked the door and lay down on my bed. Then I got up, pulled the covers down, lay down again, and pulled them over me. Then I lay still, waiting for inspiration.
I closed my eyes and thought about watching him in class, looking at the inch-long vertical space between the waist of his pants and the part of his shirt that puffed outward—where it was obvious how flat his stomach was, how it didn’t slop over his belt. Sometimes when he stretched, I watched his shirt pull taut against his torso; there was something erotic about seeing the fabric straining upward, threatening to pull out of his jeans and expose his belly.
His belly, his hands, his mouth, his legs, his eyes. His eyes.
I thought about being alone with him, working on the newspaper at night, resting my head on his shoulder in frustration. He’d wrap his arm around me and rub my shoulder. I’d look down and notice he had a giant—
I laughed, thinking of Lila and Jason. Start again.
He’d put his arm around me. I’d lean into him. He’d kiss me on the forehead. “Mr. Darcy wasn’t the only one with social capital,” he’d say. “Something of mine has capitalized too.”
Oh God. Start again.
We were lying in my bed together. My mind started trying to fill in how he’d gotten there, but I made myself accept that he had and it didn’t matter how. It was a sunny afternoon and he was backlit next to me, fringed with sunlight. His hand was warm and solid on my rib cage and he was laughing at something I’d said. He lifted himself up and lowered himself onto me. His loosened tie pooled on my stomach. He was pleasantly heavy. He started kissing my shoulder, then my collarbone, then my throat. His hands slowly pulled up my shirt.
My heart was pounding hard enough to make me shudder now. Parts of me were pulsing that I’d never realized could have a pulse. My hand moved lower and lower to relieve the welcome ache, and after a few minutes of fumbling, I realized what to do.
Afterward, everything I had thought about seemed ridiculous, but that didn’t stop me from doing it again.
After she got home that night, my mother knocked on my bedroom door. By then I was reading and trying not to think about what I’d done.
“You’re home,” I said.
“We had a big project today,” she said. She sounded annoyed. “I only work this late when it’s really important.”
“I wasn’t judging you,” I said. “Calm yourself.”
She stepped inside. “Sorry,” she said. “I was just—I just came to say that dinner will be done in a minute. Your dad’s boiling the pasta.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be down in a sec. I just want to finish this chapter.”
“Oh?” she said. “What book?”
I held it up.
“Pride and Prejudice,” she said. “I loved that book when I was your age.”
“That’s a surprise,” I said. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the book. It was that I didn’t think she liked Austen the same way Drummond did—that is, the way I did—or for the same reasons. The right reasons.
She didn’t seem to know whether to laugh. “What does that mean?”
“I mean, you just—did you like Darcy or something?”
“Does anyone not like Darcy?” she said.
“I don’t,” I said.
“So you’re just reading it for the intellectual satisfaction?” she asked. She smiled like she had me.
“For class!” I said, laughing despite myself. Although I’d read enough to contribute (I always skimmed endings first; I couldn’t stand the suspense of not knowing how a story turned out), I had never finished it. It was better than I’d expected. “Darcy’s okay, I guess.”
She sat down on my desk chair. “Is this for Mr. Drummond?”
I hated how my heart kicked up a gear when she mentioned his name. “Yeah,” I said.
“You’re enjoying it, right? His class?”
“Sure,” I said. I could only skirt the subject when I talked about him.
“He’s a good teacher, then? You like him?”
“He’s okay. Better than Mr. Mickler, at least.”
“There were stories about him, weren’t there?”
“Yeah. One of my friends told me he took naps during class.”
“Oh, really? What friend?”
“You don’t know her.”
“Invite her over,” she said. “Then I will.”
I started to say something and then stopped. “Okay,” I said. “Maybe.”
She looked pleased. She sat up straighter and recrossed her legs.
“So I missed Parents’ Night,” she said, “and I know your dad went, but I thought maybe the two of us could go see Mr. Drummond together.”
“Oh,” I said. “Why?”
“So I can brag about you,” she said.
I rolled my eyes, but I laughed.
“And he might have some advice about internships. Get you out of working in the basement next summer.”
“I like the basement,” I said.
“I know,” she said. “But internships are important if you want to get into a writing program.”
“It’s a bit early, isn’t it?” I said.
“The earlier the better,” she said. “Any more objections?” She pursed her lips ironically.
I glanced at her and then out the window. I loved the thought of showing Drummond off, but I wasn’t sure I wanted him to meet her. What if she embarrassed me? What if I embarrassed myself? “Is Dad coming?”
“I was thinking it could just be the two of us,” she said. “We could go get something to eat afterward.”
“I do like free food,” I said.
She stood up. “I won’t make you, but think about it, okay?”
“Dinner!” my dad called from downstairs.
“Saved by the bell,” she said. “Let’s go.” I watched her leave, and then I looked down at the book again. I still didn’t like Mr. Darcy.
“So I have an idea,” Lila said.
“It’s great when you have an idea, because it’s usually something I really want to do.”
Lila reached over and pulled the magazine out of my hand. “I was talking to this girl from the field hockey team,” she said. “She swims at the community center three times a week.”
“Gross.”
“I know. So guess what she said? If you make a joke, I am going to slice your neck open with this copy of Cosmo. Why are you reading this filth, anyway? You don’t wear makeup, and I give you all the blow job tips you’ll ever need.”
“I think blow jobs are probably a little more complicated than ‘get out of the way when he starts to look constipated.’ ”
“Well, it’s true,” she said, flicking the pages noisily. “I don’t see that advice in here anywhere. Listen to this one. ‘Cook your man a spaghetti dinner naked, then dip your breasts in a little tomato sauce and ask him to lick it off.’ Is this satire?”
I pried it away from her. “Anyway,” I said.
“Yes, back to Drummond,” she said. “So he swims there. And he does wear a Speedo. Apparently it’s black.”
I wasn’t sure what expression to make. I thought of how Lila had been flirting with him that day in the classroom, and how he would look in a Speedo—good? or humiliatingly saggy?—and what he would think if he saw me watching him.
“So you can probably guess my idea,” Lila said.
I turned to face her. She was lying on her back, her hair cascading over the side of the bed.
“What are we, thirteen?” I said.
“It’s a social outing and it’s perfectly legal.”
“I’m not stalking him.”
“Oh come on, it’ll be fun. Apparently he doesn’t look bad.”
“Does ‘not bad’ mean six-pack or does it mean not entirely covered in moles?”
Lila snorted. I suddenly wished he were there to see me making her laugh. “I’m going to assume ‘not entirely covered in moles’ is the baseline,” she said. “Think about it, at least.”
“You know I’m going to say yes.”
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