Charm & Strange (7 page)

“Absolutely none,” I say.

Her smile grows wider and less wry.

“You want to sit?” She points, and I shouldn’t. I should go. I should be alone. I should stop thinking and just
be
.

But I’m doing it.

I’m following her toward the bonfire.

I’m sitting beside her on a smooth, wide rock.

Jordan’s got her motorcycle boots tucked beneath her butt and I’ve got my feet flat on the ground and I’m trying not to let my leg touch hers because that would be weird. It’s also a challenge, seeing as we’re squeezed so close together, right between these tight clusters of students who haven’t given us a second look because we’re nobody and they don’t want to share their weed. Thank God.

“You don’t drink?” she asks.

“Not if I can help it.”

“Meaning there are times you can’t?”

“You’d be surprised,” I say, and she sort of smirks, but in a way that makes me think she’s confused. That’s good. It’s a sign I’m in control again.

“God, that Lex guy was such an ass,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”

Well, in truth,
she’s
part of the reason he was such an ass just now. I know that. I once fooled around with a girl Lex liked and he’s never forgiven me. But I’m not explaining all that to Jordan, and besides, the fact Lex wants to talk to me is what’s really out of the range of ordinary.

I don’t like it.

Not tonight.

I glance at Jordan. “Don’t worry about it.”

She sighs. “Well, I’m also sorry I made you come all this way.”

“It’s fine.”

“Wow, Win. I almost believe you when you say that.”

I respond to her sarcasm with a listless roll of my shoulders.

“You got low self-esteem or something?” she asks.

“What are you talking about?”

“I just mean, you let that guy crap all over you—tonight, the other day by the river. And if you actually—”

“Jordan, don’t,” I say.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t think you know me.”

“I don’t think that! It’s just, I’m
trying
to get to know you. And I’m not being judgmental, I swear. Lord knows I’m not in a position to judge anyone—”

“Oh, yeah? Why’s that?”

She grimaces, pointing to her beer before taking another swig. It’s already two-thirds empty. “Let’s change the subject, okay?”

“Are you asking my
permission
?”

“So,” Jordan says, her voice rising in pitch and decibels, “I didn’t know you played tennis.”

The crawling on my skin is like that involuntary response you get when coming across a pile of maggots or a nest of hatching spiders. Purely visceral. Like my body just wants to give up and die.

“I don’t play anymore,” I tell her through clenched teeth. “Never again.”

chapter

fourteen

antimatter

Simplify, simplify.

Later, the five of us found bikes in our grandfather’s shed and rode out to Walden Pond. I pedaled as fast as I could to outrun the deerflies, but once there, I just stood, frozen, on the shore in my swim trunks. Kids screamed and splashed all around me. Apparently ponds
could
be big. Like really big. I frowned. Technically, this was a lake. I was sure of it.

My toes curled around the pebbles that lined the beach. Maybe I shouldn’t go in. There were no lifeguards anywhere, just a couple of adults sitting at picnic tables, looking at their phones.

A yellow blur whizzed past me, launching into the water like a rocket. Then it called my name.

Phoebe.

I took a step closer.

“What are you doing?” she shouted. “Are your legs broken?”

“I don’t know if I feel like swimming,” I called back.

“But you’re the one who asked to come here!”

No, I hadn’t.

“Come on!” Phoebe waved her hands so wildly, it looked like she was having a seizure. The bald spot on the side of her head glistened with water and sun. I hurried toward her just to make her stop.

She grinned and splashed water on the crotch of my trunks as I waded in, which made me mad. Then she turned and swam away. Afraid of what people would think if I didn’t, I followed her out to the raft, where I sat while the other kids jostled me, taking turns doing cannonballs and baby spankers. My head began to throb. Too much sun. Too much motion. I didn’t see Keith anywhere, but when I asked Phoebe, she pointed, and I spied him and Charlie on the other side of the pond. They sat together on a boulder half-submerged in water. Their knees were touching. My head kept throbbing.

Two hours of swimming did nothing to reduce the humidity. Or bugs. On our way back from the pond we stopped for ice cream in an area the girls referred to as “uptown Concord.” The place itself was called Winston’s. We didn’t go inside, just ordered from the sidewalk at the walk-up window. I wanted a plain strawberry cone, but Phoebe insisted I get it with something called “jimmies.” A Boston thing, apparently. My southern instincts told me there were probably racial undertones to the term, but I ordered them anyway. Jimmies turned out to be chocolate sprinkles. They looked like ants and fell all over my shirt when I tried to lick the ice cream. Phoebe and Charlie laughed, but Keith made me the maddest. He kept calling
me
Winston, which was my middle name, and I didn’t like it.

“Stop saying that,” I told him.

“Why? It’s a stuck-up name for a stuck-up kid.”

I didn’t understand where this was coming from. “I’m not stuck-up!”

Keith sneered. “Oh yes you are, dear
Winston
. The little tennis star. Mr. Four Point Five. Do you know how much it’s costing Mom and Dad to send you to that fancy club?”

Now Anna laughed, too. I felt my cheeks redden and stalked off a few storefronts down Thoreau Street, where I dumped my ice cream into a garbage can. Then I kicked the curb so hard it felt like I’d broken half the bones in my foot. My chest heaved and my eyes stung. I didn’t understand how Keith could be so mean. He knew how homesick I was. This was definitely Charlie’s fault, it had to be, with her snotty attitude and those stupid long animal legs. I hated her.

Phoebe joined me. We stood next to each other on the street, facing traffic. I wouldn’t look at her. Wouldn’t talk. Wished she’d just go away. The butt of her shorts was all wet from her swimsuit underneath. So embarrassing.

“Come on,” she said finally, her lips ringed with so many jimmies it looked like she had bugs crawling out of her mouth. “We’re leaving.”

chapter

fifteen

matter

“So do you like girls or what?”

Jordan doesn’t answer me right away. Instead she fingers away the label on her second beer and watches the fire. She’s been doing that for a while now, the fire watching, and I don’t get what’s so interesting. We’re not close enough to see the creeping embers, and someone just threw a new log on, so there’s all this smoke and ash. But maybe it’s more exciting than looking at me.

“Why are you asking me that?” she says finally.

“I was just wondering.”

“From what I know about you, Win, that seems very out of character. Wondering. But whatever.”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t seem to like it when Lex kissed you earlier.”

Jordan lets out a laugh. It’s a loud one, like she’s buzzed already or might think I’m slow. “So
that
makes me a lesbian? Okay. Sure. Fine. Because there couldn’t be any other possible reason why I wouldn’t like Lex kissing me.”

I focus on keeping my nerves steady, but a shudder of wrath works its way through my bones.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have let him do that.”

She shrugs. “He’s just drunk.”

“That’s no excuse.”

“Except when it is.” Jordan tips her bottle in my direction.

I watch her drink. More.

She side-eyes me back.

“What?” she asks.

“Why were you looking at me in the chapel the other day?”

She puts her bottle down. “Is
that
why you want to know who I like? To find out if I like
you
?”

I say nothing.

Jordan’s head bobs. “Hey, maybe you’re not as different as I thought you were.”

“Different than who?”

“Everyone.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, just, sometimes you’re kind of weird, you know?”

“Mmm.” Yeah, I know. Trust me.

She leans back, elbows on rock. “Let me guess, Win. When you run out of better options tonight, you gonna try and get me naked?”

“No,” I say. “I’m not.”

This gets Jordan’s head to turn. The weight of her gaze is intense, but when I’m honest, I’m honest. I always stand by my words.

I don’t look away.

After a moment, she grins.

“So tell me,” she says, as her eyes do this twinkling thing, “do you like girls or what?”

A surprise: I laugh with her. Mirth rumbles my body like an earthquake. I’m rusty, but it feels good. And yes, I say, I do like girls. I don’t pursue them, though, and there are a lot of reasons for that. It’s gotten me in trouble before, but I also think I have ridiculously high standards because the whole dating, fooling around thing seems so complicated. And not in a good way. I hate obligations, and if you want to be with a girl, it’s like you’re expected to
do
certain things. And do them in a certain way. Sit with her at meals. Ask about her day. Not talk to people she doesn’t like. Someone should write a book about what a guy’s supposed to do because it’s confusing as hell. And from what I can tell, it’s not worth it. Unless … unless the girl is absolutely perfect.

Or unless you just can’t help yourself.

Case in point, the time Lex pushed me into dating at the start of our sophomore year. I only went along with it because he insisted and because he was always bragging like he was so experienced. Like he knew better than me. I mean, the way he tells it, he’s like a certified expert on dating and attraction, but I’ve never bought into it. There’s a waft of desperation in the way he goes after girls, in his compulsive need to plan things perfectly so they can’t back out. Still, the one he set me up with was decent enough. She was his girl’s best friend and a ballerina, and I did everything he told me to. Then one night after study hours he brought her to our room and left us alone, and it was like she was waiting for me to do stuff to her. I could tell by the way she got quiet and put her hand on the front of my pants and made all these breathy sounds so that her nonexistent chest moved up and down. Nothing about that was appealing, but after a few more get-togethers,
she
ended up kissing me. And I can’t lie, that was kind of exciting, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what she was thinking. Or why she wanted my tongue in her mouth. Or what she’d want me to do next. Lex told me to try going further, but he didn’t tell me
how
. And what was the point of it all? I just got so uncomfortable after kissing her that I ended up doing what I already did by myself anyway. And the ballerina wasn’t the one I thought of when I did
that
.

“Then who was?” Jordan asks.

“Who was what?”

“You know, who did you think about when you were fourteen and jacking off?”

I straighten up. “You’re blunt, aren’t you?”

“No. You’re coy. There’s a difference.”

“I see. And I was fifteen, by the way.”

She’s not listening. “But you’re not shy. You didn’t care that I saw you with your pants down the other day. And now you’re telling me about your sexual failures.”

“I never said I was shy.”

“But you’re not denying the failure part.”

Damn, she’s sharp. But really, “sexual failure” sounds more lurid than the truth. Like I need Cialis or a blueprint to the female body or something. But it wasn’t like that. The ballerina and I kissed one last time and she tried pulling my shirt up, getting me to do the same to her, and I didn’t want to. By that point I’d already noticed things about her that I didn’t like. Like the way she always wanted me to talk about “my feelings” and then got mad when I had the wrong ones. And she definitely wasn’t as pretty as I’d originally thought. Up close she had bad skin and dark roots, and I always got a good view of the hairs living inside her nostrils when we were kissing. Not exactly a turn-on. But the awkwardness carried over to our next date: a trip to Manchester with Lex and his girl to see some band they all liked and that I didn’t know. We rode down in a van with some other students, and I forgot my pressure-point wristbands and the motion sickness was awful. Not puking-all-over-the-place awful, but pretty close, and my head hurt so bad, I couldn’t talk. Not even when we got to the show, which was in the basement of some grungy coffee shop right off Main Street, and everyone there just spent the whole time name-dropping and showing off their band swag and indie persuasions. The ballerina assumed I didn’t like her, and well, she lost interest. Drifted off. Said some things to some people.

It’s for the best, really.

“I’m not denying anything,” I say.

Jordan nudges me. “You have your secrets, though. They must be dark ones if you’ll talk about this kind of stuff so casually.”

“I guess.”

“What did Lex mean when he said you were crazy?”

“Ask him.”

“I don’t want to.”

I stretch my shoulders. I have to say something. “For a while, when I got angry, I used to hurt myself, okay? Punch walls. Punch myself. I don’t know why. I did other things, too. It was beyond stupid.”

Her mouth falls open. “You did? Seriously?”

“Yeah.”

“And now?”

“Now I don’t get angry.”

She mulls this over. “You’re still hiding something.”

My gaze drifts to the moon. “Yeah, probably.”

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I shouldn’t be so pushy.”

The silence that follows is comfortable. My chest opens. It’s like I can breathe again. We’ve left the topic of Lex and secrets.

Jordan speaks first. “Hey, Win?”

“Yeah.”

“Can we talk about girls again? I bet I can figure out your type. I’m good at that.”

Uh-oh. My type? “Sure.”

She cocks her head while she inspects me, her brown eyes running all the way from tip to tail. “You’re tall. Like six feet, right?”