Strangely, talking to Erin made me feel a little better. I’d done something impossible—I’d spoken words—and I hadn’t died. Maybe going to French would be good after all. At least I’d be distracted. I could stare at the back of Nick’s head for fifty minutes, loving and hating him in silence. I psyched myself up, grabbed my French book, and made my way to the languages wing.
But when I turned down the hall, I saw Nick heading to class from the opposite direction. He looked up at me and I stopped. I panicked. I spun around and headed back to the breezeway and made a beeline for the door to the parking lot. I was about to push through the doors when I saw the vice principal talking to the tennis coach on the sidewalk. There was no way I was getting past them and to my car and off campus. I turned and jogged back down the now empty breezeway and swung down the hall toward French.
But there was Nick again, standing by himself outside class. He didn’t have his backpack or his books. He must’ve gone into class and dropped them off and come back out. In classic Nick style, he had his hands pushed deeply into his pockets. He looked up, again, straight at me.
I did another 180, but this time smacked into Will Carey, who sat in the seat in front of me in French and, because I was one of the few people he talked to at school, was forever turning around in class to offer me unsolicited observations and advice. Because I’d once mentioned to him that I loved Harry Potter, he often regaled me with the impossible-to-keep-up-with amendments he’d made the night before to the pairings in his fan fiction. I felt for Will. His fan fic was more real and more precious to him than the entire rest of his life in Las Cruces. His family was hardcore Christian. His mom was always posting articles online about the “scientific proof” that some ass-backward conversion therapy cured the sin of homosexuality. Will was resigned to his world of fantasy, biding his time until the ongoing humiliation of high school in a small town was over and he could move far away from here.
“Oh!” we both cried at the same time. He was exactly as tall as I was, so when we smacked, we were staring each other directly in the face. I could see the sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of his nose.
“Oh!” I stepped out of his way, to the right, just as he stepped in the same direction. Then, of course, we did it again, to the left. This was the type of situation where my father would take pleasure in saying something dorky like Nice dancing with you.
“Oh my god, stop!” Will laughed.
“Sorry, I forgot my book.” I fought the urge to push him out the way, so strong was my desire to escape.
He looked down at the French book in the crook of my arm. “No, you didn’t,” he said helpfully. He smiled at having solved my problem for me.
“My other book.” I glanced back to see Nick still standing there. He’d witnessed the whole awkward dance. “See you in two seconds,” I said to Will, and flew past him, back to the breezeway. It was entirely empty now. The final bell would ring any second. I only had one option left. I bolted across the breezeway and down the unbearably long math wing and slipped out the back doors of the building. To the left was the agricultural complex with its rambling array of greenhouses and sheds and the constant, lingering smell of cow manure. To the right was the tall, austere theater building. Between the two buildings, a narrow footpath led to an irrigation ditch behind the school that fed water from the Rio Grande to a field of crops cultivated by the 4-H Club. The Magic Ditch marked the edge of campus. It was called the Magic Ditch because when you walked down the path and crossed a footbridge over the water and sat down on the other side facing the fields, you disappeared from view. Poof. Magic.
It was also called the Stoner’s Ditch, for obvious reasons.
I huffed down the path and wobbled over the footbridge and threw myself down against the far slope of the ditch without even taking off my backpack.
I’d never come to the ditch before. I’d never even skipped a class before. I closed my eyes and braced myself, assuming a hand would appear from behind and yank me by the ear to the principal’s office.
But no. I opened my eyes and found I was alone. I’d made it. The last bell rang. Class had started. There was no going back.
Deep breaths, I heard my father say.
I yanked my phone out of my pocket. ARE YOU OKAY? Again, I waited. Again, I got no reply. I called but got her voice mail and hung up. It occurred to me then to check her Instagram. Syd curated her Instagram like a pro. She had thousands of followers. She could be documenting her gone-ness there now in pristinely filtered detail.
But I couldn’t find her. She’d vanished. The only Syd Miller I found was a middle-aged woman from Ann Arbor, Michigan, who had a page full of #kitty photos. I checked. Every one of her accounts was gone. It was as if Syd had never existed online. She’d vanished herself. Poof. Magic.
Gone, not missing.
Deep breaths.
I put my phone down and slipped off my backpack. I looked out over the fields. The air was thick and loamy with fertilizer, even in winter. I wanted to stand, but I remembered the one rule of the ditch. Once you got there, you had to stay sitting. If you stood up, you were visible. If you were visible, you were caught. I’d learned the ditch rules from Syd, who’d maintained a 4.0 GPA even while occasionally skipping class to come here and make out with boys. Imagining her here, sucking face, made me feel more alone than I already did.
Knowing I’d have to sit for a whole class period made me feel like a caged animal. I could feel my heart racing ahead of me. It was chasing Syd. I tried to calm down. I closed my eyes and put my head between my knees and started reciting the Gettysburg Address. Four score and seven years ago … It was a relief to escape into those worn-in words. Syd would come home. The Civil War would end. The Union would be preserved. Stanford would say yes. Dreams would come true. Everything would be okay. Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty …
The Gettysburg Address was short. That was part of its charm. I could head right into the next recitation without pausing to remember how it started. I was on my third one when I felt a presence. It wasn’t a divine presence. It was a person presence. I didn’t know when they’d gotten there, but I knew when I extracted my head from between my knees, I’d have to explain to whichever stoner had joined me why I’d been reciting the Gettysburg Address to my crotch.
I opened my eyes and turned my head. And it was Nick. He was sitting next to me, looking totally horrified, as if my head was about to explode and he was going to have to be the one to deal with it.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Again, it was a shock to hear him speak to me. It simply didn’t happen, though we saw each other every day in French. I hadn’t even said merci last month when my pen fell from my desk and rolled up the aisle to his. He’d picked it up and handed it to me and I’d snatched it back and stared straight ahead.
“Yes.” I sat up and tried to look sane. I wanted to jump up and run for it, but I remembered the ditch rule.
“That was the Gettysburg Address,” he said, as if I hadn’t noticed.
“Yes, it was. So what?” I sounded so rude, it was embarrassing. I tried not to look at him, but that was impossible. A stray piece of hair fell into his face and he lifted a finger and tucked the hair behind his ear. It’d taken eight months for his hair to grow to the length it was now. I knew it’d been eight months because I knew everything about Nick. The last haircut he’d gotten had been a week before prom and he hadn’t had one since. I knew when Nick washed his car, when he got new shoes, and when he’d run out of his assortment of preferred gray, brown, or dark green T-shirts and so wore the one that read IT’S A STEM THING—YOU WOULDN’T UNDERSTAND. And I knew it was only in the last two weeks that his hair had gotten long enough to pull back into a stubby ponytail. I never thought I’d love a boy with a ponytail, but then Nick walked into French one morning with the nape of his neck exposed, and I had no choice.
“I’m m
emorizing it for a class,” I said after a monumentally long pause.
“Oh,” he said.
“I thought I was alone.”
“Oh.” He offered nothing else.
“Why are you here?” I felt awful. It was so hard loving someone and hating them at the same time. It took so much work, so much effort and precision.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Oh, about my ordeal?” I shot him a scowl.
“Yes, there’s that,” he said. “But this is about Syd.”
The look I gave him must’ve conveyed perfectly the emotion I was feeling: utter confusion and shock that could at any moment turn to disgust, violent anger, or perhaps perfect blankness, a sudden coma, brain death, etc.
“I know,” he said before I had a chance to yell/say anything else. “This is weird. But Syd came to my house last night. I think there’s something going on.”
“She went to your house? What did she say?”
“I didn’t see her. She left a note on my car. Here.” He opened his palm to reveal a tiny piece of paper folded in half. It was a sticky note in the shape of a hot dog. I’d seen the pad in Syd’s car. I could tell Nick was embarrassed by whatever it said. He held it out to me. “Here,” he said again, a little more urgently.
“Is it awful?” I looked at him. “Just tell me if it’s something awful.”
“No. I don’t know. I don’t think so.”
I reached over and took it from him. My fingertips touching his palm was enough to make me blush. I unfolded the note and read it.
Talk to Miranda.
She likes you.
Just tell her the truth.
Before thinking, I crumpled the note in my hand and held it inside my fist as if it were an insect that could get away. It took all I had not to pop the thing in my mouth and swallow it whole. She likes you. Jesus. Are you kidding me? Every instinct in my body said run. But I was stuck there. I looked at the fallow field before us. An excruciating silence descended.
“I don’t like you,” I blurted out.
“I know that,” he answered, defensive. “I just thought you’d want to see it since it’s kind of dramatic. I mean, what, is Syd going to kill herself or something?”
A pulse of alarm traveled up my spine. Was it possible Syd could kill herself?
“No.” Saying it aloud helped me know it was true. Syd would consider suicide a personal failing, like getting an F in living. She’d never do that.
A cool breeze picked up. “Wait.” I turned to him. “Did you follow me here?”
“Yeah,” he said. I saw his Adam’s apple rise when he swallowed. “I thought you’d want to see this. You looked freaked out in the hall.”
“I don’t know why Syd left you that note.” I looked away. “I don’t know what’s going on. But you don’t need to follow me around. You’ve done enough already.”
Nick exhaled sharply and looked down. I expected him to get up and walk away. I hoped he would. But he stayed where he was. He shook his head. The silence grew painful. When I began to squirm, he spoke.
“I can’t leave or I’ll get caught skipping and I can’t get caught skipping or my mom will kill me. And my parents are already mad because Syd let the air out of their tires.”
“No way.” It was such a Syd move. Revenge, served about as cold as it could get. One last achievement in advanced bitchiness, undertaken almost immediately after I told her to leave Nick alone.
“Yes way.” Nick looked serious and angry, but then he cracked a tiny smile. “I mean, I guess—it was pretty funny. I had to drive my parents to work this morning. I sort of liked seeing my dad sitting in the backseat of my car like a kid. He deserves it.”
“He deserves it?” This was something new. I didn’t know this about Nick. He didn’t get along with his dad? I filed it away.
“My dad’s sort of … Whatever. It’s complicated.” He made a vague sound, like someone with a toothache, and looked away.
I wanted to relish having made him uncomfortable, especially after what happened last night. I wanted to feel entirely uncompelled to smooth out the little wrinkle between us as soon as it’d formed. This was something Syd was forever chiding me about. God, you’re such a people pleaser! I imagined her glaring at me and I tried to keep my mouth shut. But I couldn’t do it.
“Well. My mom joined a religious cult when I was eight and I never saw her again. Like, literally, never. Not a phone call or a letter or anything. And I’m kinda pretty sure she lost her marbles—heard voices, whatever—but I can’t talk to my dad about it because he kinda refuses to acknowledge she ever existed on this earthly plane. And he’s looking for life on other planets. Which just feels a little, you know—tragic. Or something.” I’d said all this to the barren field. I turned to him. “So I get ‘complicated.’”
He turned to me. “A religious cult? Like a Jesus freak?”
“No. She was super into Jesus before. Uber Catholic. I guess Jesus stopped doing it for her.” Nick smiled. “The Garden—it’s like enlightenment slash meditation slash fake Buddhism. But it’s a real cult. If you google it. It’s got a guru. His name’s Solomon. Bad guy. My dad and my uncle tried to get her to come home. But she never did. And then the Garden made it so they couldn’t really even communicate with her. She’s been there, oh, I’m going to say ten years, three months, and four days—no, five.”
“That’s crazy.” Nick gave me a sideways glance. “I’m sorry. That’s—sucky.”
“Well. At least the lady’s committed, you know?” I thought he might laugh at my dumb joke, but when I looked, his eyes were full of empathy and I had to look away or risk falling into them headfirst. I tried to put my guard back up. “Yes. It’s sucky. I’m sure you knew. Everyone knows everything about everyone in this town.”
“I didn’t.”
“Oh.” This could be true, I guessed. By the time Nick came here at the beginning of freshman year, my mom was old news. Even the little Catholic ladies, the viejitas like the one at La Cocina, had stopped genuflecting at the mention of her name as if she were the devil incarnate. It was refreshing to think there was one person in town I could reveal this story to myself, one person who didn’t already know all the gory details. “Well, now you know.”
Nick looked suddenly pained. He shut his eyes tightly. “Okay, never mind. I knew. Tomás told me. I don’t know why I said I didn’t.”
“What?” I felt like an idiot. Here I was spilling my guts, and he was playing some stupid game. “God. Who does that? Why did you do that?”
“I don’t know.” His eyes searched the ground. “I was embarrassed.”
“You were embarrassed? For me?”
“No.” His eyes settled on his shoes.
“I’m not embarrassed,” I fired back. “Anyway, everyone’s got something a little weird about them, right? Hmm? Like how your mom looks closer to your age than she does to your dad’s. How embarrassing. I’m so embarrassed for you.”
I looked straight ahead and fumed. He was silent and still beside me. When I ventured a glance from my periphery, I was sure he’d be fuming too. I hoped, even. (Syd would be so proud. A+ bitch! That’s my girl!)
But instead his eyes were narrowed. He was thinking.
“Whoa.” He looked at me and grinned. “You’re right. I just did the math. She is closer to my age. That is actually totally embarrassing.”
Against my better judgment, I smiled. I imagined Syd shaking her head, changing my A+ to an F-.
“For the record,” Nick said, the characteristic earnestness returning to his face and voice. “I’m embarrassed all the time. That’s baseline for me. Weird and embarrassed. That’s all I meant.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I wasn’t embarrassed for you.”
“Okay. Yes. I get it.” I watched a crow hop from one greenhouse onto another, higher one, scanning the empty field with its glassy eye. “So he’s a teacher? Your dad?”
“Old-ass math professor, yeah
. He teaches calculus, stuff like that. But he’s an expert in a field called computable model theory. He’s one of the smartest dudes in the country, in his field. There are, like, seven people who get what he’s talking about when he talks about his stuff.”
“That’s depressing.”
“Nah, it’s cool actually, pure math.”
“Ew. What’s pure math? Sounds even worse than actual math.”
“It’s not even math, really. It’s, like—ideas, almost like metaphors. It’s not like algebra, doing equations. It’s not even really numbers. It’s like what’s underneath numbers. Like the ideas that numbers represent.”
“Huh. Trippy.” I hated math so much, I’d never imagined numbers represented anything but torture. But what Nick just described was beautiful. It almost sounded like praying. Going below the surface, seeking the great, holy zero I’d found as a child and then lost. Maybe there were only seven people in the world who really knew how to talk to God. Maybe the rest of us were just plodding along, working equations, unworthy of the bigger truths that lay beneath. Maybe I simply wasn’t smart enough. Maybe my whole problem was that I didn’t like math.
“Not to be rude, but if your dad’s one of the smartest people in the world, why’s he at NMSU?”
“Yeah,” Nick said. “Well. It’s complicated.” He smiled. “He started at Berkeley. Got his Ph.D. and taught there. That’s where my brother and I were born. And then we moved to Chicago. He taught at the University of Chicago.” He shrugged. “He didn’t get tenure. So we moved. Here. But he’s looking for another job now.”
“You’re moving?” I was mortified by the quake of distress in my voice.
“Oh, no. Not before graduation. But I guess. For college.” He glanced at me. “Are you moving away for college?” I thought I heard the same distress in his voice, but I knew in the same moment I’d only imagined it.
“Probably. Just to Albuquerque. UNM.”
“Cool,” Nick said.
“Yeah,” I said. “No big plans for me.”
I refused to ask where he was headed for college. Refused. The world was Nick’s freaking oyster. It sucked. I felt the air being squeezed from my lungs when I thought of no longer being able to stare at the back of his head in French or catch him smiling or laughing in the hall. The pathetic truth was, I’d miss everything, even my ongoing failed attempts at hating his guts. In college, I’d have to rely on social media to keep up with him, and he was terrible on social media. He’d never once posted a photo of himself on Instagram. He’d had his account for seven years and all he’d posted were a few exceptional sunsets. A couple majestic canyons. It was crap.
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