I could tell she noticed my tone. She narrowed her eyes at me the way she did when she knew I was keeping something from her. “Did anything happen last night?”
“No,” I said. “Other than you insulting me.”
Her face softened. “I really am sorry about that. I don’t remember saying it, but if I did, I was out of line.”
“It’s fine,” I said. I was too distracted—excited and confused and looping back to the night before over and over—to be angry anymore anyway. “Were you really thinking of having sex with Jason last night?”
“Oh God,” she said. “That happened? I thought I dreamed it.”
“More of a nightmare, I think.”
“Ugh,” she said. She peered at the TV again, as if she’d forgotten I was there. She looked guilty for a second, and then amused, and then pleased. “I really was going to.”
“I don’t blame you, actually,” I said. “You know how you said it felt like a straitjacket you wanted to take off? I feel like that too.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s not that bad.”
“It is that bad.”
She looked back at me. Her eyes were serious. “Yeah, it is.”
We laughed.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said. “I just had a weird— Yesterday was weird.”
I hated that I couldn’t tell her about Drummond. When it didn’t mean anything, when you knew nothing was going to happen anyway, it was easy to talk about crushes or kisses—to use the guy as a shared secret. But to say something now meant it would become a secret between me and Lila, and the one between me and Drummond would slip away. The fact that it was wrong for it to have happened—that he wasn’t supposed to have said any of that to me—made it seem more special.
“God, I’m horny,” Lila said. “I mean, like, in general. Not at this exact moment.”
“Why don’t you get it over with?” I said. “Jason is as good as any.”
“If it’s with him, I might have to get drunk,” she said. “What about you?”
“I figured out how to…um…” I made a vague gesture like I was priming a pump.
“Lift weights?”
“No! The…thing that makes God sad.”
“Holy shit! You didn’t tell me!”
“It’s never really the right time to announce I learned how to abuse myself, is it?”
“Depends on the company,” Lila said. “Was it good?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ll leave it at that, because I’m a lady.”
“Who was your material?”
“Who do you think?”
“Ha! Was it weird seeing him the next day?”
“Yes.”
“Have you done it since?”
“I’m doing it right now.” I waggled my eyebrows at her.
“Stealthy,” Lila said. “Man, I’ve got to get on that. I’ve fallen behind.”
“Too bad it didn’t work out between you and that toothbrush.”
“I threw it away,” she said. “I couldn’t take it staring me in the face every day, judging me.”
“I fear for Jason.”
She laughed. “That toothbrush cared way more about my health than he ever has. And it was much more skilled orally.”
“I wish I could use it to scrub out my ears.”
—
After Lila left to check if they were still serving breakfast, I decided that I should take my chance to see him alone one last time. We’d left on an uncertain note the night before—he’d said we should both probably get some sleep—and I was excited to see him again, to have a whispered conversation where we alluded to all the secret things we’d said in private.
I snuck to his floor, to his room, making sure that no one saw me. I had prepared what I would say if I ran into anyone: I was just going to ask what time the bus leaves. I’d deal with the rest later.
I knocked on his door. There was a pause, and then he opened it, looking back into the room and saying laughingly, “Just put it in the suitcase!” He turned to me, looked slightly startled, and said, “Oh, hey, Chuck.”
I paused. “Hi,” I said. I suddenly felt small and stupid and like I’d misunderstood everything.
He smiled like he wasn’t sure what I wanted. “What can I do for you?”
“I just…,” I said. “Who is—”
“Oh,” he said. “Tr—Ms. Anders and I were just getting ready for the trip back.”
She appeared behind him. She was in high-waisted jeans and a sweatshirt with a dog on it. My heart seized up. Oh God, had they had sex? Had she been wearing that shirt?
“She just came over a few minutes ago,” he said, as if he knew what I was thinking.
“Ah,” I said, “how nice.”
“What can we do for you, Charlotte?” she asked.
We. “It’s…nothing,” I said. “Not important.” I felt even dumber with her looking at me while she was ensconced in his room, touching his clothes, putting things into his suitcase.
“You sure?” he said. Was he trying to signal something to me? Could he not say anything in front of her? Or had he completely forgotten the night before?
“I just wanted to ask when the—when the bus was coming.”
“Oh,” he said. He turned away. “Trace, do you know? The bus?”
“One,” she said.
He turned back to me. “One, apparently.”
“Great,” I said. “Thanks. See you then, I guess.”
“All right,” he said. He smiled again. I tried to see if there was anything behind it, but I couldn’t tell for sure.
He waited until I turned to leave before he shut the door.
“I can’t believe I let you drag me to a game,” I said. We were outside, at the edge of the bleachers, waiting for Jason’s lacrosse team to play.
“What did we say?” Lila asked.
I sighed.
“Come on.”
“I don’t complain about games and you don’t complain about books.”
“Exactly,” she said. “And I think the fact that I accompanied you to the library again without shooting myself should count for something.” She rummaged in her bag and extracted a pack of red licorice. She pulled one out with her teeth and offered me the rest.
I grimaced and shook my head. “That’s a complaint.”
“That’s an expression of restraint.”
“You have no idea what it’s like to feel joy, do you?”
“Look,” she said, “I know we both make fun of Jason—”
“And rightly so.”
She wrapped the licorice around her finger and ripped off a bite. “But I want my best friend to get to know my…”
“Boyfriend?”
“Let’s say…guy friend.”
I snorted. “You can’t like him that much if you won’t even call him your boyfriend.”
“Fine, boyfriend. I just want you to get to know him a little.”
“I told you I like him,” I said. “Why isn’t that good enough? Anyway, you don’t talk to Drummond anymore.” I hadn’t talked to him much lately either, but that was beside the point.
Her head snapped toward mine. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Why should I make an effort if you—”
“You’re not seriously comparing the two, are you?”
I felt my skin blotching with humiliation. I looked down at the field. “I guess you haven’t told Jason about the, uh, incident.”
“No, I haven’t,” she said sharply. “It’s not his business. And it’s not yours either.”
I looked at her; her lips were set in a line like a closed slot.
I sighed. “I’m here, aren’t I? After it’s over we can talk about ‘rad’ bands together.”
“God, you’re such a dork,” she said quietly, as if she didn’t intend for me to hear it.
“Thanks,” I said. We sat in silence for a few minutes. What she’d said vibrat
ed through my head like a bell being struck.
Lila could put up with angry silences much longer than I could. I knew she would be able to stay pissed off at me as we waited for the game to start, through the game itself (pretending the whole time that she was enjoying it), and all the way back home. The thought of that much uncomfortable silence made my forehead bead up in anxious sweat.
“I’m sorry,” I said finally. “Sincerely.”
“Me too,” she said. “This is stupid. What are we even fighting over?”
“Hey, guys.” I turned around and saw Asha standing behind us, her camera slung over her shoulder.
“Hey,” I said. I smiled at her, into the sun.
“What are you doing here?” Lila asked.
“Lila,” I said.
Asha laughed. “My brother’s on the team.”
“Oh yeah,” Lila said. “Come sit down, then.” She moved over so Asha could sit between us.
Asha looked at me. I shrugged. She sat down.
“So,” Lila said, “what position does he play?”
“What’s the one where they don’t let you onto the field until they’re winning?” Asha said. “Whatever that one is.”
Lila hesitated for a moment, and then she smiled. “Jason’s told me he thinks he has potential.”
“Don’t let him hear that,” Asha said. “You heard about that goal he scored at the game last week?”
“I was there,” Lila said.
“He hasn’t shut up about it since. I’m surprised it didn’t make the local news.”
Lila laughed. “It was a good goal. He should be proud.” She held out the licorice. “Want?”
Asha pulled one from the pack. “Thanks,” she said.
She took pictures all through the game, and let me look at them during a break.
“These are amazing,” I said. “You’re really talented, lady.”
She grinned and looked away. “The camera does most of the work.”
“Come on,” I said. “You made Jason look good. That’s some kind of miracle work.”
“I heard that,” Lila said. “And I reluctantly agree.”
“You want me to take a picture of you?” Asha asked. I looked up and realized she was talking to me.
“Oh God,” I said. “No, that’s okay.”
“For the yearbook,” she said.
“That sounds like a threat.”
“Okay, just for you.”
“How about one of you and me?” I said.
“I can try that,” she said. She leaned in next to me and we grinned at the lens. The sun was warm and bright and the wind whipped our hair around our faces. Asha pressed the button for the shutter and it blinked, closed and open, like an enormous black eye.
She turned it around to look at the view screen. “Oops,” she said. “Just got me.” She showed me. It was an arresting picture: the camera was looking up at her as she gazed into the distance, a slice of blue sky behind her, her hair flying out like a flag.
I passed it back to her. “You should keep that one. Put it in the yearbook.”
She looked down at the picture for a long time. “Yeah,” she said. “Maybe I will.”
“I’m organizing a party for your birthday this year,” Lila said as we waited for the bell to ring. “Don’t protest.”
“Fine,” I said. “As long as it doesn’t involve other people.”
“You’re turning eighteen,” she said. “It’s time we got you a hooker.”
“I’d prefer a cake,” I said.
“Guys, let’s get started, shall we?” Drummond said.
Things were sometimes different and sometimes the same with him now. At night I would replay the conversation we’d had in the hotel—more than any other conversation I’d had with him, which was not an easy accomplishment—going over each word and gesture with the thoroughness and precision of a surgeon rooting out infected cells, probing each syllable for some hidden meaning. He had admitted that he had feelings for me, hadn’t he? I’d been sure I hadn’t misunderstood him—it had seemed very clear at the time—but the longer we went on without mentioning it, acting as if nothing had happened, the more I felt I must have been wrong. I had always imagined that when—if—he did, it would be under duress, when we were both tormented by longing, in the middle of a violent argument, and he would finally confess while standing outside in the rain, crying and bearded and broken. Then we would kiss, repressedly. I hadn’t expected that he would just say it, quietly, freely, that it wouldn’t seem like a surprise to either of us, and that I wouldn’t even get a hug out of it.
That it had happened so easily made me doubt my memory of it; he had been drunk, after all, and while he had seemed lucid, he had also been tired and we’d argued and maybe it was all a misunderstanding. Hadn’t he been telling me how ordinary he thought I was, how little I mattered to him, how he only liked me because he was lonely? Or had he been saying the opposite—that I was so special he couldn’t admit it to himself and had to pretend I wasn’t? Or maybe he had been talking about himself, or Lila, or Ms. Anders, or Rachel. I worried it over and over again and never hit on an answer that would allow me to bury the question for good.
I thought about Rachel sometimes, and what she looked like, and how she acted, and whether he still thought about her. I wished I could know how he felt about her, dig around inside his brain and scoop out his memories and squeeze them for information until they popped. I felt sure that this somehow held the key to how he felt about me. Maybe I had read too many books.
Usually he treated me like he always had, with a mixture of affection and distance, and he was still careful not to touch me. I felt like I was always trying to get more from him than he wanted to give me, like I was looking at him underwater and constantly misjudged the distance; he was always farther away than I’d thought he was. Sometimes I would catch his eye in class, or he would catch mine, and I’d try to see if there was anything more behind his look. But he would always turn away first, so I could never quite tell.
I never knew how to act or feel on any given day, or even from moment to moment; I careened from giddiness to terror to anger to lust to frustration. At night I’d decide I was going to confront him, to tell him how I hated that he pretended that evening had never happened, to tell him how angry I was, and then in the morning I would see him and he would smile at me and the words would drop out of my head. It seemed ridiculous, being so angry at him when anyone would think we were just teacher and student. The beige halls of our school didn’t allow for it; the context seemed to push out any interpretation other than benign friendliness.
I couldn’t talk about it to anyone, and while sometimes I liked having a secret, and imagined enjoying clandestine trysts in a back stairwell while people thundered over us, oblivious; or having whispered urgent arguments with him; or getting coded messages that confided his unbearable lust, none of that ever actually happened. Instead there was silence, and in that silence I could fill in any story I wanted, and did.
—
“Charlie,” he said, “your thoughts?”
“What?” I said. I’d been staring out the window.
“Your thoughts about Mr. Rochester?”
“Oh,” I said. “I think he’s creepy.”
The class laughed. I liked that.
“Really?” he said. “Why?”
“He hides his wife—his foreign wife, from Jamaica—in his attic and then acts like this poor tortured soul about it, like he’s the one with the horrible life. Jane only finds him interesting because she thinks he’s so dark and troubled.”
“True,” he said, “but there were very few other options for the mentally ill at the time.”
“Maybe she was fine before he locked her up—maybe she just cheated on him or something because she couldn’t stand him—but he got sick of her and she had a mental break after he stuffed her in an attic by herself. As most people probably would.”
“Fair enough,” he said as the c
lass laughed again. He smiled in deference to their laughter, but the arc of worry lines between his eyebrows furrowed. “That’s certainly a valid line of interpretation. But let’s not forget that Jane calls him on that. And on everything else. It’s only when he’s humbled and she’s independent that they come together as equals.”
“Yeah, but the whole relationship reads like fan fiction,” I said. “She’s this ordinary girl who gets a handsome, loaded guy to love her for who she really is. It’s bull—BS.”
“Okay,” he said. “But we could read it as a critique of the trope. It’s only after he’s terribly injured and his house burns down that she forgives him. And it’s her forgiveness alone that gives him absolution.”
“Why does he even deserve to be forgiven? He’s a dick.”
“Good question,” he said. “Anyone want to take a crack at it?” No one said anything. “Great. Okay. Well, what if the forgiveness is less about him and more about Jane not allowing him that control over her anymore? Forgiving someone is a powerful act.”
“Or it’s letting the person who has power over you off the hook for what they did.”
“Do you not think that he genuinely loves her? Or that, at least, we’re meant to believe he does?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I just don’t get why you’re defending him.”
That stopped him for a minute. “Right,” he said eventually. “So you think the book can be read as a female fantasy of male desire.”
“Yeah,” I said, “sure. I guess I don’t see why you thi—you all think it’s such a great love story. It’s just Brontë’s wet dream of getting some hot guy to go through hell just to marry her.”
The bell rang.
“Okay,” Drummond said, “I guess that will have to stand as the last word on the subject until tomorrow.”
I got up to leave with the others, but he said, “Hang on a sec, would you, Chuck?”
He waited until everyone had left and then shut the door softly. I shivered as he sat down on the table near me.
“Is everything okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
“Hmm,” he said. “Well, I try not to make assumptions where you’re concerned, but you don’t often use the words wet dream in class discussions.”
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