by Anna Breslaw
“Sure, make an appointment for the twelfth of never.”
I snort. Ruth picks up expressions—what she’d call, offensively, “street”—from Ave and me that she uses wrong half the time and dead-on perfectly the other half. I’m about to respond to her when I realize she’s looking past me, smiling. A voice pipes up from behind me.
“Scarlett?”
I turn. Gideon’s standing hesitantly at the edge of the garden, holding a potted orchid.
“Oh, wow.” He blinks. “Those are some serious Jerry Seinfeld pants.”
“Hello, Newman.”
“I was wondering if you’d mind if I, like, helped you.”
The surprise and weirdness of him being there makes me docile. I nod. “Okay.”
Ruth clears her throat.
“I think I’m gonna take a nap.”
Gideon looks straight at her and says supersincerely, “I’m really sorry I did this to your garden.”
“Thank you. You’re a nice boy,” she replies without her usual saltiness—instead, like a kindly grandma. Then she goes inside. Gideon points toward the door with a perplexed smile.
“Um, was she just smoking weed?”
“Yep.”
He nods, impressed, and says mildly, “Right on.”
“Your clothes are going to get dirty,” I warn him.
“That’s cool.”
“So . . . um, yeah.” I gesture to the tools stacked up against the side of the porch. “Grab a hoe.”
“There’s nothing I’d rather do,” he jokes.
“I figured. You’re kind of a rake.”
He nods seriously. “Good for you, calling a spade a spade.”
I laugh, surprised, then narrow my eyes and fake-glare suspiciously at him. He smiles back. We’re flirting, I think. It’s sort of a dogs-circling-each-other flirt. He seems to be sizing it up the same way I am.
Then he says, “A hot Jerry Seinfeld is what I meant.”
I might pass out. Instead I say, hopefully coolly: “Right. Obviously.”
I assign him one particular square of the garden, and we work in silence for a while. He starts sweating and takes his fleece off, underneath which is a white T-shirt that fits him perfectly, and I pretend not to notice.
“Remember that time you said I didn’t have friends?” he asks, his tone light and joking but a little wounded.
“I didn’t really mean it that way.”
“I know. But, like, how would you know if I even did? Besides them, I’m, um . . . I take classes in the city at this comedy place? Upright Citizens Brigade? That’s where my best friends are, really.”
My heart twists a little at his nervous uptalk.
“Yeah, of course. Avery and I try to go every few weeks. I’ve seen a lot of shows there.”
“Really?” He’s relieved and, judging by the sudden grin, delighted. “That’s cool! And, like . . . most of your friends are on the Internet, right?”
He doesn’t sound judgmental, just curious. Ashley must’ve told him.
“Um, when you say it like that, it sounds pretty creepy. But, yeah, some of them.”
“What do you talk about with them?”
“Lycanthrope High, obviously.”
“But the show’s over. So what about now?”
I begin to feel the blood rush out of my head, the start of a small panic attack. Right now we’re discussing the speculative fiction I’m writing about you and your maybe-girlfriend.
“Nothing important,” I say.
He nods.
“And I hang out with people here, too. I have hang partners,” I add.
“Well, there’s Ashley’s sister,” he says, teasing.
“Yeah.”
“And there’s . . .” He pretends to think. “An old woman.”
I laugh again, my anxiety dissipating.
“Seriously, though, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. I mostly hang out with other kids in my improv class. We just get along really well. School isn’t really where most of my friends are.”
“Well!” I say brightly, trying not to come off too caustic. “You really seem to be spreading your wings this year, you li’l social butterfly.”
“Yeah. I know.” His response is weirdly ambivalent, and he hangs his head a little. Good! He should. Or: I like him, and he shouldn’t. Depends on what precise second you ask me.
“You’re like the boy She’s All That,” I say. “The glasses come off, and bam.”
“Yeah, I’ve got that little red dress, too.” He shovels dirt over a bulb, then goes: “Wait, no, that’s you.”
I blush. Then I surprise myself by asking, with pure curiosity: “How does it feel?”
“How does what feel?”
“To be popular.”
He scoffs. “I’m not p—”
“Shut up. Don’t do that bullshit; we’ll all be dead someday, and you’ll have wasted time.”
He stands, thoughtful, for a moment.
“Weird,” he says. Then admits, “Good.”
I nod and wait for him to elaborate. Mostly for him to admit to aiding Jason and co. in their reign of terror. He doesn’t.
Instead, he asks, “How does it feel to be smart?”
“Um, hello. Thirty-seven. A score not found in nature. You’re asking the wrong person.”
He shakes his head.
“I don’t mean good in school. You’re the smartest person I know.”
“Not really,” I mumble, uncomfortable.
“I’ve always thought . . .” He blushes. “Like, there’s one thing you’re really, really good at, but you don’t talk about it or tell anybody. I’ve always thought you were hiding some giant thing.”
Always thought. My face burns. He thinks about me. For some reason, I feel exposed and immediately want to shock him or put him off as much as possible.
So I say, “It’s my giant cock.”
“Very funny.”
“My huge, veiny monster cock. It’s incredibly unwieldy.”
“Scarlett,” he says, sort of chastising, looking straight at me.
My face burns like I’m divulging some enormous shameful secret. “I like writing.”
“Like poetry?”
“God no.”
“Then what?”
“I don’t know. Stories, I guess. Maybe . . . novels? I hate how that sounds, though. I don’t know. Let’s not talk about it.”
“Okay.”
We dig in silence some more, until he says: “So are we going to plant this Georgia O’Keeffe steez, or, like . . .”
“Totally, bring that vagina flower over here.”
His turn to blush. He brings it over, and we plant it together, like some weird on-the-nose sex metaphor. I wonder if he’s slept with Ashley. As if he can tell what I’m thinking, he gives me a frustratingly inconclusive nonanswer.
“We’re not official. Ashley and me, I mean.”
“Like, not BF-GF.”
“Definitively. No. Not.”
“What do you want me to do with that information, exactly?”
He shrugs. Guys are so unfair. One shrug, and I’m lying in bed that night replaying the whole scene, every look he shot me, feeling a weird and very real glow I’ve never really felt before.
So I do what I always do when I have two feelings that are pulling me in opposite directions: I write it for the BNFs. Basically the exact conversation Gideon and I had in the garden, albeit continuing the Ordinaria metaphor I’ve built into the previous installments.
As I hit Post, I felt weirdly exposed, like all my sentences were stripped of their woolen layers and stood there naked, unprepared for the elements.
But the BNFs had asked for it. Instead of lofty fights about morals or ideals, they seemed to want me
to write . . . what happened, and how I felt about it. That is, how Scarlett felt about it. I mean, that Scarlett. Or—you know what I mean.
xLoupxGaroux: Good stuff.
DavidaTheDeadly: all right, i’m coming around on this pairing. there’s def some meaty stuff here.
WillianShipper2000: idk i don’t really see sideon . . .
DavidaTheDeadly: it’s all about the character-building now! ashbot still has the furthest to go . . . but that’s by design, clearly. i mean it’s all there on her twitter
Scarface: wait what twitter?
DavidaTheDeadly: Ashbot’s twitter, isn’t it you?
Scarface: no . . .
DavidaTheDeadly: whoa i guess it’s a stan. it has like 50 followers.
MorwennaWraith: Here’s the problem: People keep asking for Sideon fanart, but Scarlett doesn’t sound that pretty
Scarface: WTF
DavidaTheDeadly: dude OTPs aren’t determined by “who’s the hottest person”—just look at greg and becca. john, like scarface, is a feminist. he very well would want gideon to end up with whoever was the best on the *inside.*
Scarface: haha guys, she’s not like
Scarface: an absolute gnarled crone who lives in a hole but manages to get by because of her amazing personality
Scarface: she’s like . . . okay-looking and has a pretty good personality
Scarface: i think
xNorthStarx: Hi! Longtime lurker, first-time poster here. Really into this chapter. But . . . does Ashbot know about any of this? She may not have female intuition, but she has a built-in GPS, which is sort of the same thing. If Ashbot and Gideon have been hooking up and he hasn’t mentioned this, he’s kind of being a dick.
Werehead66: Hi, same, never posted here before. Sideon OBVIOUSLY makes more sense. They obviously have a connection, plus a pretty epic backstory. Besides, I don’t know if Gideon’s really beholden to Ashbot! I think he’s just going with the flow.
Scarface: I mean maybe he hasn’t hooked up with her though
WillianShipper2000: yea, who’s to say? ppl wait to have sex for all kinds of reasons
xLoupxGaroux: Willian, babygirl, we know your deal. But what most teenagers do at afterprom isn’t getting a hamburger with your dad after the Purity Ball.
Willian goes to one of those schools where “sex ed” is when the health teacher passes an unwrapped Peppermint Pattie around the classroom, finally grosses out a student by asking him to eat it, and compares it to a girl who won’t wait until marriage.
xNorthStarx: I’ve been sending my friends Ordinaria chapters and one of them was pretty indignant about the emotional cheating.
xLoupxGaroux: “Emotional cheating??” God, that is such a hetero conceit I want to vom.
xNorthStarx: Anyway, my friends want more! And they’re not even Lycanthrope fans.
Werehead66: I just want Gideon to be HONEST with both of them. No more of this ambiguity. You know?? The longer he drags this out, the easier he is to dislike. You can’t have your cake and eat it too, you know?
Scarface: What a weird idiom though because what else can you do with cake? But I get what you mean. Believe me.
Werehead66: John St. Clair only waited two seasons to hook William and Gillian up. Enough with the will-they-or-won’t-they, I want a true love scene.
xLoupxGaroux: OK, fine. If I have to live vicariously through the shipping of a straight couple, I’ll do it. Just consummate one of them already.
WillianShipper2000: maybe he’ll realize ashbot is the ONE (and also prettier but I know i know it doesn’t matter because #feminism)
Werehead66: No way! #Sideon-shipper for life!
xNorthStarx: IDK, guys, I’m kind of still #Gidbot.
WillianShipper2000: hell yeeeeeaaaa
xLoupxGaroux: I’m gonna need more chapters
DavidaTheDeadly: Same.
xNorthStarx: SAME.
Chapter 17
USUALLY I’D RATHER BE BURIED ALIVE AS THE SACRIFICIAL virgin in an Aztec tomb than wake up for school on Monday. This morning, though, I wake up feeling almost happy to head to homeroom with damp hair at seven forty-five A.M. sharp, like I’ve just emerged from Dawn’s Pinterest board of inspirational quotes.
Gideon and I were up late, texting back and forth about Lycanthrope High graphic novels. He’s supposed to lend me the last couple of Sam Kieth installments, which were sold out at the comic book store. I ended up picking up some other stuff of his. (Side note: His other stuff is the shit too.)
As I’m toasting an English muffin in the kitchen, Dawn trudges out of her bedroom, picking leftover crusty mascara off her lashes. She walks by me to get a plate; her pores smell like a whiskey distillery.
“Shut up and sit down, young lady,” she croaks. “I’ll finish breakfast.”
After a rough night out, she always feels guilty and goes all Attack of the Mom on me. (See: the only time she ever says things like “young lady.”)
“Already done.” I toss a piping hot muffin onto my plate. I butter it as she hollows out hers with a fork. Her carb-calories fear makes her turn everything into a bread bowl.
“Don’t forget, we’re having dinner with Brian tonight.”
I slump forward onto the table. “Nooooo.”
“I know it’ll be hellish for you,” she says faux-sympathetically, “but at least you have Friday to look forward to.”
“Friday? What’s Friday?”
“Your dad’s book party.”
I brighten instantly—an already awesome week has improved exponentially. I was so wrapped up in the Gideon drama that I’d totally forgotten that his launch was this week.
“We discussed it, and he said you should spend the weekend with them in Brooklyn and come back Sunday night.”
“Okay!”
I carry my plate over to the sink, musing, “I didn’t even know you still talked.”
“Well, we do.”
“What could you possibly have to say to each other?”
“We were married for twelve years, Scar.” I wait. She shrugs. “And he sometimes calls me when he’s not sure how to take care of the baby.”
“The blind leading the blind, huh?”
She jokingly glares at me, then says, “I don’t know. I think I did okay.”
“Give me time! Soon I can be charged as an adult.”
She checks her iPhone. “It’s eight ten. Go get an education.”
I’m shoving books in my locker hastily before the bell rings when Avery rushes up to me, uncharacteristically late. I suddenly understand where the phrase “a spring in her step” comes from. She’s practically Riverdancing.
“Hiii,” she chirps.
“Who put meth in your Cheerios?”
“Not funny, meth is a serious problem, Mike and I almost did it last night,” she says in one breath.
“Whoa. What? Really?”
She nods about fifty times.
“How was it?”
She beams and raises her eyebrows a few times, like a small overachieving Groucho Marx.
“Almost, though? Okay, like, what base, exactly?”
“Well, I did some research on this—”
“God, of course you did; go on.”
“And there’s actually not a standardized definition of bases. It’s actually a really inefficient nonunified language of sexual activity. Like, some people think first base is holding hands, and some people think first-base is kissing, and some people think it’s tongue kissing—”
“See also: the chase, cut to.”
“I mean, he, like, you know.”
She makes a brisk series of hand gestures that culminate in one large TMI. (I’m sparing you.)
“Okay. I see. Wow. Visuals. Got it.”
“It was good, though. I was really scared at
first. But he was really nice. I think he’s done it before!” she says gleefully, then looks a little bit annoyed, then looks gleeful again.
“Probably not, like, five minutes before,” I reassure her. “So, like . . . how do you feel?”
“I think . . . different, sort of. Not in any specific way. Just overall,” she sighs, then she gives me this look. It’s new and I don’t like it. Sort of, Two roads diverged in a wood, mine is normal, but I hope you can be happy for me even though you are Miss Havisham.
“Anyway, what’s going on with me is,” I say, like she just asked me, “Gideon and I were talking last night about comics.”
“Cool.”
I can tell that she thinks I’m still playing in the minor leagues. Which I guess I am, but I’m still pretty psyched about it. To be honest, thinking about the mechanics of actually hooking up with somebody, even Gideon, makes me next-level anxious.
“So . . . what else?”
“What else? He’s gonna lend me some comics.”
She nods and waits like there’s more. I shrug.
“And then he’s going to make passionate love to me on Mr. Radford’s desk. What do you want?”
“I just think you should do something.”
“I am doing things!”
“Not really. You’re, like, being receptive to the things he’s doing. I think Lycanthrope High brainwashed you.”
I laugh in disbelief. “What?”
“One, like . . . cryptic, brooding look, or ambiguous sentence, and you’re set for, like, six months. You’re like a squirrel, and tiny little signals are the nut, and you go store it away forever.”
“As opposed to . . .?”
“Eating the nut!” she yells just a little too loud.
“I didn’t want to have to go here, but I really don’t need to play Six Degrees of Gideon’s Bacon with your sister.” I slam my locker shut for emphasis. She holds her hands up in surrender.
“Dude. Scar, I swear, I don’t know what’s even happening with them.”
“Really? ’Cause you take more than enough notes in health, so I think you do.”
“The thing is, you just”—she stops, then rolls her eyes—“you always just assume the worst.”
“Well, usually I’m right. So.”
I start off down the hall, then turn around and yell: “Mazel on becoming a woman, sort of!”