Freefall (12 page)

I started cracking up.

Just then some middle-age dude came rolling up behind us in a golf cart and about scared the hell out of me. He was eyeing me in a way no one would call friendly. “Rosetta,” he said in this voice that sounded so polite he
had
to be putting on an act. “I’m here to remind you that your guests need to follow the dress policy when they’re with you, and that includes on the driving range. If he needs a change of clothes, we have plenty of choices available for purchase in the pro shop.”

Rosetta had turned to look at him, then me, then back at him. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. We’ll leave now.”

He gave a quick nod. “Have a nice afternoon,” he said, shooting me another dirty look as he turned to drive away.

After he was out of earshot, I asked, “Is that guy the country club fashion police?”

“Kind of. He’s one of the pros here, so I guess he thought he needed to talk to me before one of the other members complained and turned your dress-code violation into a thing.”

“I hate it when people turn stuff into ‘things.’”

“Me too,” she said, giggling. “The big rule is that you can’t wear denim. You’re also supposed to wear a shirt with a collar and golf shoes. So your jeans, hoodie, and Chucks look is every kind of rule breaking.”

“That’s what I’m good at.” I stuck the club I was holding back in her golf bag. “You know, you don’t have to quit because of me. I was only stopping in to make sure you hadn’t run away from home.”

She shook her head and knelt to put the rest of the golf balls back in the bucket. “It’s okay. I’ve been here for hours and my wrists are sore.”

I bent to help her. We weren’t much closer than we’d been before, but the wind was blowing around a few strands that had come loose from her ponytail, and everything felt different somehow. I breathed in her flowery shampoo until we’d dropped all the balls in. Then I reluctantly stood and helped her up.

“You’ll
have to come here again sometime,” she said, grabbing her bulky bag of clubs. “I’ll teach you how to play. I think you’re going to be great.”

I doubted it, but it was cool that she’d asked, that she seemed to be kind of into me maybe? “I might be up for that. But only if we can make a
real
statement and do it on a Wednesday.”

“Ha!”

We got to the parking lot, and I was struck by how run-down the Mustang looked. I can safely say it was the biggest—and only—piece of junk in the lot. “Three guesses which one’s mine.”

She nudged my arm. “I know your car very well since you almost ran me over with it.”

“How could I have forgotten?”

I leaned on the driver’s-side door while Rosetta propped her bag up. “It was sweet of you to come here for me,” she said. “It means a lot.”

The look on her face—a mix of shy and adoring—made me feel unworthy. Especially since she didn’t know I’d seen her crying at school. “I’m sure most people would have done the same,” I said, shrugging. “You need a ride home?”

As soon as the words were out, I felt like an asshole. But Rosetta smiled. “I’d love that, but I didn’t manage to cure myself of my wacky phobia yet. Rain check?”

“For sure. Is it a short walk to your house at least?”

She gestured back toward the golf course. “I live up by
the tenth hole, and it isn’t far at all. But, you know, I
like
walking. I get in anywhere between three and ten miles a day. And—bonus!—I don’t contribute to air pollution.”

I made a face and opened my door. “Okay, that’s enough sexy talk.”

She laughed. “Are you sure? Because if you want we can take it back to self-disclosure level three and discuss our thoughts about global warming. Or ‘climate change’ as the cool kids are calling it these days.”

I covered my ears like I couldn’t take any more, but she
was
kind of hot when she was nerdy. “See you tomorrow. Unless you’re going to flunk more tests and skip out again?”

“I’ll definitely be there, Dick.”

I don’t know why, but I didn’t want her to call me Dick anymore. It was feeling kind of fake. “Maybe we should use our real names outside class. Yours is Rosetta, right?”

“Yes. Rosetta Vaughn.”

“All right,” I said. “Well, mine is—”

“Seth McCoy. I know.” She kind of wrapped her arms around herself like she was getting cold. “I’ve known since February fourteenth, actually.”

She’d memorized the date she found out my name? What the hell?

She laughed. “Don’t freak out! I only remember because it was Valentine’s Day.”

As if that explained it. “And
why
do you remember learning my name on Valentine’s Day?”

“Kendall
Eckman was running after you in the hall screaming, ‘Seth McCoy, if you don’t buy a rose from me, I’ll kill you!’ She was doing that Valentine’s drama club fund-raiser. Remember?”

“Actually, yes.”

What I was remembering was getting stoned with Isaac before school, and Kendall harshing my mellow the minute we walked in the door.

Rosetta was looking at me like there was more to this story. “And after she kept asking, you bought a red one?”

“Right. And I passed it off to—” I’d been about to say “some chick,” but with how intently she was watching me, I was getting a different idea. “—
you
, right?”

She extended her arm to pass me an imaginary rose in the same way I must have handed her the real one. Then she imitated the corny voice I must have used. “Here, beautiful. Have a wonderful Valentine’s Day.”

Oh, Christ. The stupid shit I said sometimes. “No wonder you thought I was such a loser.”

“I didn’t think that at all.”

She was smiling and looking like maybe she had more to add. My heart started knocking around again while I waited. But she didn’t say whatever it was, and after too many seconds of silence, I couldn’t take it anymore. “All right, I’m out of here for real now.”

“Me too,” she said.

She grabbed her bag and moved to the sidewalk while
I got in the car and started it up. I kind of fiddled around with the radio and pretended to adjust my mirrors so I could hang around and watch her leave. She didn’t go anywhere, though; she just stood in that same spot redoing her hair and digging through a pocket in her bag.

Finally it got too weird and I had to drive away.

2:28
P.M.

Three days later. Mrs. Dalloway was in the hall, blocking the classroom door. “Hi there, Dick. Are you prone to seizures?”

“Uh, no.”

Thirty minutes later I was wishing I’d said “Uh, yes,” because then she’d have had to turn off the strobe light. Then again, it might not have made a difference; the loud electronic music and Mrs. D.’s yelling probably would have been enough to do me in anyway.

The classroom theme was “rave party,” and Mrs. Dalloway had gone all out covering the windows for maximum darkness, setting up black lights along with the strobe, passing out multicolored neon glow bracelets and necklaces, and arranging the tables to make a nine-by-nine dance floor where we all had to stand because there was “No sitting allowed!”
for the whole period. The only detail she’d missed was the hallucinogens, but what can you do, right?

From what I could figure out, the point of this torture was to show that you can’t learn to communicate properly at a party. I think most of us could have figured it out on our own—and if not, a five-minute demonstration would have done the trick—but Mrs. D. was getting a kick out of driving her point home. Three people had asked her to turn the music down, but she’d just smiled and pretended she couldn’t hear them.

The twelve of us students were standing together in a close, uncomfortable bunch. With all the noise going on, I’d managed to make out only about half the lecture—which, come to think of it, was probably more than I heard on a regular day, when I was able to sit and zone out.

“I have a new project for you all!” Mrs. D. shouted over the music after wrapping up her talk. “Your homework for tonight is to make a list in your journal of things that are outside your comfort zone. I’d really like to see you dig deep. This is going to be an ongoing project where you’ll be challenging yourselves to try things you never thought you could or would want to do. Have fun, but remember none of it should be easy for you. If you don’t feel
un
comfortable about putting something on your list, it doesn’t belong there!”

I couldn’t help glancing toward Rosetta—who was standing about five feet away from me, the yellow and orange
necklaces she was wearing on top of her head glowing like a halo—and I wasn’t surprised to see that she was looking right back at me. We were probably both thinking about the thing she’d be putting on her list.

Rosetta had been on my mind pretty much nonstop since our conversation at the golf course. Every time I’d have myself convinced that I was a dumbass for thinking this could lead to something, she’d show up smiling or saying hi or whatever, and I’d get even more distracted.

Mrs. D. went on. “Just to be clear: I’m not advocating anything illegal, dangerous, or damaging for this project. Do
not
rob a bank and say that it was a homework assignment. Understood? Now please mingle for the rest of the period! This is a party or something, right?”

Or something. Right.

I was closest to Jezebel/Tara and Jade/Brittany. They’d been swaying the whole class, so now that Mrs. D. had given the go-ahead, they started twirling around and laughing in that obvious way girls do when they know—or at least
think—
everyone’s watching them. The strobe effect made it so that I couldn’t predict where their glow bracelets were going to be from one flash of light to the next.

Brittany scooted close to me and started doing these weird dance moves while I stood totally still. “Hey,
Dick
,” she said, moving in and tugging on my name tag. “You got any E on you?”

“Sorry, fresh out.”

“That’s too bad.”
She flashed this huge smile, and the black light made her teeth look purply white and freaky.

I’d only done ecstasy twice, and, embarrassingly enough, the first time was at a party freshman year where Brittany and I had fooled around and then pretty much never spoke again. The second was a week after that and the trip was so bad it had turned me off uppers for good.

Tara and Brittany started dancing together right beside me, and, I have to say, I probably would have thought it was super-hot if I couldn’t see Rosetta a few feet away, talking to Xander. Compared with her, they were only mildly hot.

“You know what I heard?” Brittany asked, leaning toward me again. “Cat pee glows when you shine a strobe light on it.”

Okay. Not hot at all now.

“You mean a black light!” Tara yelled. “Black lights make cat pee glow, not strobe lights!”

Then they started arguing about it. About
piss
, for Christ’s sake.

At an actual party I’d have been looking for an escape, so I decided to head for an empty spot on our little dance floor. Rosetta and Xander followed me over. Together.

“This has been an interesting class,” Xander called out to me.

“I must have missed the part where she went over what the point of it was,” I said.

I was talking to him, but I was looking at Rosetta—the IC class rave-party angel—
who was smiling at me with glowing purplish teeth that, of course, looked anything but freaky.

“I couldn’t quite hear everything either!” Rosetta yelled. “But I got the idea that it was an extreme demonstration of the communication-as-a-simultaneous-transaction concept to show how noise—whether it’s literal or psychological—keeps people from having a perfect understanding of one another.”

“Yeah, that’s what Mrs. Dalloway was saying.” Xander nodded his head slowly. “I kind of thought she’d go into that thing about spaces themselves affecting the conversations that take place in them. The crazy stuff that goes on at parties is all wrong in the classroom. And vice versa.”

I looked back and forth between them. “Huh. You don’t say.”

They glanced at each other and then burst out laughing at the same time. I knew it was stupid, but I was kind of jealous. Not because they were both school smart in a way that I never would be—even though that was true too—but because geeking out was one of the probably many things Xander had in common with Rosetta. And, well, I didn’t have
any
thing.

Rosetta kept smiling at me. “I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. Alex and I are complete dorks.”

“I, personally, think the correct term in this case is ‘nerds,’” Xander said.

Rosetta laughed again. “You’re right. Nerds it is.”

She was killing me here.

Luckily, Mrs. D. ended the music and strobe light crap and turned the lights back on, which was nice and jarring in its own way. “You can keep the glowing jewelry,” she said as she collected our name tags. “I’ll see you all tomorrow with your lists!”

Everyone grabbed their stuff and started shuffling out. But I was taking my time, hoping Rosetta would walk with me to the parking lot like she had the past two days. Instead, she gave Xander a thumbs-up and said, “Good luck!” before rushing out.

Strange. And disappointing. I started for the door too.

“Hey, Seth. Dick. Whatever,” Xander said, still planted in his same spot. “You aren’t playing with the Real McCoys anymore, right?”

I stopped. “Right.”

Did he think I’d changed my mind about quitting during the past three days? Well, he wouldn’t be the only one. Jared and Mikey were already scrambling and making phone calls to find my replacement, but Daniel was in all kinds of denial, thinking if he harassed me enough I’d give in and decide to tour.

“My band doesn’t have a bass player,” Xander said, looking at the floor and talking in a rush. “So I was wondering if you’d be interested in playing with us. We’re doing a pop-punk sound—heavier on the punk—but if you’re looking for a change, maybe you’d be into jamming with us sometime?”

Oh, yeah, this would go over
great
with Jared, Daniel, and Mikey. Still, it wasn’t the worst idea in the world. I’d wanted to try something new for a while. And now, for the first time, there wasn’t anything holding me back. You know,
except
Jared, Daniel, and Mikey.