Out of Order (12 page)

She finishes while I'm still copying down the title. It's hard because I'm having to look at it upside down. “Okay,” Chlo says. “What do you think this might be about?”

I glance over at her. Is she kidding? “I can't even pronounce it.”

She's looking at me through her glasses, not over them. “
Ozy
, like in Ozzy Osborne.
Man
, like in guy.
Dias
, like in…” She can't think of anything. “Mandias, like in candy ass,” she says triumphantly. “Got it?”

I try to read it off my piece of paper. “Ozzy…mandyass.”

“Mandyus,” she says, which is not the same thing.

Whatever. I don't need to know how to say it, anyway.

She taps her pen on the edge of the table. She's getting that spacey look. “Where do you think this poem takes place?”

I wish she'd stop asking questions. “I'm paying
you
to tell
me
.”

She stops tapping. “It takes place in the desert. There's this statue, in the desert.”

I write that down, about the desert.

“It's fallen down, so there's just these two legs sticking up. You can't see anything else but the broken-off face, lying half buried in the sand. And nothing else is around for miles and miles.”

I write down the part about a broken face, buried.

“And on the pedestal, under what's left of the legs, it says, ‘Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.'”

I write, “Look on my work,” but then I forget what else she said.

“Pretty ironic, huh?”

“Oh yeah,” I agree. “Ironic as hell. What came after ‘look on my work'?”

“It's in the poem. You don't have to write it down.”

I give her a disgusted you-stupid-bitch look. I
do
have to write it down. It'll be like I never heard of it if I don't write it down.

Chlo shuts the book. When she pushes it away from her, I wish to God I could take that look back. I've pissed her off.

“Hey,” I tell her, “Chlo. I tend to get a little uptight—”

“What,” she interrupts, “do you think
this
place will look like in a thousand years?”

Silence. “I don't know,” I say, pretty nicely for me, because I don't want to piss her off any more than I already have.

“You ever been to any place that's fallen down? Or been torn down?”

“Yeah,” I say, nice and easy, although a glance at my watch tells me we've only got fifteen more minutes in here.

“What did it make you think of?”

“Look.” I'm starting to lose it. “I'm not paying you to fucking converse with me. I'm paying you to get me ready for a test.”

“I'm trying to.” She's glaring at me. “If you have a problem with my methods, say so now. Don't waste my time.”

“Okay, okay. Don't get your panties in a wad.”

“And considering what an…uptight person you are, I think I'm going to require payment in advance.”

“I thought you wanted to figure out the terms later.”

“I just figured them out. I want my money.”

“Fine,” I spit at her. “How much?”

“Fifteen an hour.”

“Fifteen? Jesus, I'm not
that
stupid.”

“Thirty's the going rate for a private tutor.”

“No way!”

“Then take your book back and leave me alone.” She shoves the book at me. It slides across the table and hits me in the chest.

I don't know why people helping me makes me such a beast. I'm even worse when Mom tries. And my sister, Cass, God—one time back in fifth grade she was supposed to help me, only I shoved her off the chair next to me, and she jumped up and started pounding me, and we ended up rolling around on the floor. Of course, she
was only in third grade, so I won. But at the end I still couldn't do the homework and Mom was mad at me, and Cass sneaked into my room and scratched one of my CDs. Although she denies it to this day.

Chlo's flipping through
her
book now, looking for her place. She's going to zone out if I don't do something.

I reach into my back pocket, pull out my wallet. There's two twenties and a five; I haven't spent much of my allowance yet.

I peel off a twenty and flick it toward her. “Now you
owe
me some time.”

She looks at the money like it's dirty. “What about the stuff I told you about Byron and Wordsworth?”

“You didn't talk about those guys for an
hour
. More like five minutes.”

“More like
thirty
, you homophobic neanderthal.”

I'm getting pretty pissed now. But I'd rather swing by my nuts than ask her what that meant, and I've
got
to pass this test. And I can get more money from my dad anytime.

I pull out the five and send it sliding across the table. Five more—that's all. If she doesn't take it, fuck her.

She doesn't pick it up. Our eyes are locked together. We're like gunfighters, waiting to see who'll draw first.

The bills sit there. And sit there.

And sit there.

“How about,” she says, “if I do things my way, and when the bell rings you tell me if today, plus Byron and Wordsworth, is worth twenty-five bucks.”

I'm still pissed, but also kind of relieved. There's a way out of this.

I nod.

“So.” She settles back in her chair. “This place you went to, that had been torn down. What kind of place was it?”

“I didn't really
go
there, but it's a vacant lot that used to be a baseball field.” I can't help it if there's a nasty edge to my voice. “Or not even a field, really. But it was there when I was little.”

“Has it changed?”

Duh.
“Yeah.”

“So I'm guessing there were a lot of kids who played on that field over the years, right?”

“How would I know?”

“Just listen. You used to watch them play on it, right? So picture a kid, a boy like you, playing on this field.”

I want to ask why, but I'm trying to be careful. “Okay,” I say.

“All right. Let's say this kid was really into baseball for a while, and he was out there every day with his friends. He just loved throwing and catching the ball, and hitting it with the bat—”

As opposed to what? Hitting it with a shovel? Chlo obviously isn't a sports fan.

“But let's say he was just an average player—”

“No, say he was really good,” I tell her. “Say he turned out to be great at it.”

“Okay, he was really great, he was the athletic type. But he got interested in other things, like maybe skateboarding or—”

“No, I just moved up to kid pitch,” I put in.

“Terrell—”

“Trammel.”

“Trammel, everyone is
not
like you. People are different. Another kid, he might not have been good at baseball. He might have been unathletic and bookish. He might have been scrawny and ugly—”

“Definitely not like me,” I point out.

“But let's say you're right, this kid was good, maybe he moved on to bigger and better things, baseball-wise.”

“And he was so good at it that he got a scholarship and then went straight to the major leagues.”

“Okay, maybe he got into the NFL, or ALA, or whatever it's called—no, let me finish—and at the same time other kids grew up, gradually stopped using the field too, and eventually it got sold for a parking lot or something. Now, here's the point: For whatever reason, the
kid grew older, and the field is gone. And now you're out there looking at where he used to play, where he used to feel the joy of being really good at something, at the place that made him see that he wanted to go and do this baseball thing for the rest of his life.” Chlo's getting herself worked up. “But now nobody who drove by would ever know that this kid had found his lifetime desire right there on that spot.”

It flashes through my head, then. The vacant lot, the old field.

“What the
fuck,
” I blurt, “does this have to do with a desert with a face sticking out of it?”

Chlo's face was starting to get that intense far-off look that Grace's sometimes gets when she's off somewhere in her own mind. But the look fades pretty quick when I say that.

“This poem's about a king, Terr—Trammel. A king who built huge statues of himself. He thought he was such hot shit—rich, very powerful. And thousands of years later, all that's left of him is two broken-off legs and a shattered face, in the middle of a desert.”

Why couldn't she just say that in the first place?

“What was it like for the kid, when he was on that field feeling happy and feeling like he'd found his place in the world?” she asks, and she's looking at me in a way Grace never has—angry, and a little sad. “Who knows?
Who cares? And what's left of the place that got him started on his life's path?”

Nothing, I realize. Not a goddamn thing.

“All those feelings, and nothing left behind. What are
you
leaving behind, Trammel? What'll people see, in a thousand years, that you cared about?”

The bell rings. She doesn't get up. She's just looking at me, still angry. Still sad.

And I'm looking at her.

This is too intense. I push my chair back and stand up.

“So,” Chlo says, almost lightly. “That's today's session. What's it worth?”

I don't know. I can't think. I didn't write down anything. But I think I might remember the poem. And its title. And I don't want to piss her off.

I lean across the table, and put my hand over the five. “That was worth twenty,” I tell her. “And I'm being kind here.”

Then I remember I've got one more Romantic poet to go.

“Aw, hell,” I say. I let go of the five, and step back. “Take it. Just take it.” I grab my book and turn away. After all, I can get money from my dad anytime.

I glance back over my shoulder as I walk out the door.

She's already forgotten me.

She's gathering her stuff together.

 

I'm walking down the hall to my locker, and everything looks strange. Distant, like I'm standing above, looking down. How many years' worth of students have walked down this hall? Everyone's smiling, talking, yelling, laughing—but it's all just a low buzz, like it's already fading into echoes. Already we're all a few steps closer to the end of our lives.

I'm seeing things like an old man. Who are all these young people with the short, short lives? It's creepy, it's sad. It could almost make a guy panic, to see things this way.

“Hey, Trammel.” It's Patrick, beside me. “You hear some of the juniors are having a kegger this weekend?”

“Yeah,” I say, and as soon as I speak, everything shifts one degree back toward normal. “You guys going?”

“Yeah.”

The weird feeling's starting to leave me. “You know that chick that used to have half-green hair?” I ask Patrick.

“No. I mean, I've seen her, but I don't know her.”

“Stay away from her,” I warn him. “She's weird. She's got these weird ideas.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know.” The faraway feeling is gone, and now I'm starting to lose even the sense of what Chlo said.
She makes you feel old,” I tell Patrick, but I can't explain why.

Patrick disappears into the crowd. I'm starting to feel better.

That Chlo. She really can mix people up.

The next day I'm walking out of biology when I see Grace in front of some lockers not too far from Ms. Keller's room.

She's never in this hall at this time of the morning. What a great picture she makes. She's wearing jeans and a rich brown shirt that buttons up the front. She's got on these boots that make her look long and leggy; she looks like a model, standing there talking to some other girl who is squatting down, getting something out of the bottom of her locker.

I slow down. I don't care if I'm late and my tech ed teacher gets pissed. I'm just happy I'm going to get to talk to Grace for a moment. Even just watching her perks me up. She's the only girl I've ever seen who's really truly beautiful. Everything about her is soft and natural—she's like a butterfly you'd better not close
your hand around or you'd crush it.

“He wouldn't do that,” I hear Grace saying to the other girl, as I get closer.

“He
did
do that,” the girl says, and stands up, holding her books.

It's Silver Stanton.

She sees me, over Grace's shoulder, and gives a nervous little whinny, which makes Grace turn around.

She doesn't look happy. “Colt,” she says. “Come here. There's something I want to ask you.”

Oh God, I think. Silver told Grace how I felt her up.

Okay. I'm going to play this totally cool.

I force a smile up on my face—my brain's clicking like a machine, trying to line up some way out of this. Grace wasn't even speaking to me when I was all over Silver. It didn't mean anything to me, anyway. It was Silver's idea in the first place.

I stroll right up to them, like I'm not walking onto a minefield.

“Morning, ladies,” I say, super gallant. Let
them
feel uncomfortable, not me.

“Hi,” Silver says, tossing her hair.

Grace's got her head down. I know that look. She's thinking.

But when she raises her head, she's got this expression I've never seen before. Like she's able to look
inside my head. And I'm pretty sure I don't want her in there right now.

“Is it true?” she asks me. “Did you tell Max Gutterson to lock a cat in a freezer?”

It doesn't register for a second. I was expecting the word
Silver
, not
cat
, and it doesn't make any sense.

For just a second, and then I understand.

Oh, God.

The cat. I'd forgotten about the cat. How'd Silver find out about the cat?

“Who told you that?” I don't ask Grace, I ask Silver. Trying to buy some time.

“Alex Simmons,” says Silver. “And he got it straight from Max Gutterson.”

The hamster/toilet thing doesn't even scratch the surface of how Grace feels about animals. She always insists I carry an old blanket in my trunk, in case we come across a roadkill that's not quite killed yet.

“Alex Simmons,” I burst out, “is a fucking idiot.”

As soon as it's out, I know I shouldn't have said it. Now I've got two strikes. One for saying the F word in front of Grace. And two because Silver might tell Alex Simmons that I called him an idiot.

“All I want to know,” Grace says, and now she looks a little the way I remember the cat did when I opened the freezer door, “is if you did it or not.”

My brain's stuck in glue. If I admit I did tell Gutterson that, she's going to hate me. If I say I let the cat
out
of the freezer, Silver'll hunt up Gutterson and tattle—and then I'll really be in deep shit.

For a split second I think,
Just tell the truth.

But Jesus, it was a while back. And it was a long, complicated truth even when I could remember it.

“Did what?” I ask.

“Tell Max Gutterson to lock a cat in a freezer,” Grace says, and her face is getting so stiff, it looks like it's going to crack.

Silver doesn't even bother pretending she's not listening. She's just standing there with her ears pricked up.

Who said I owe anybody any explanations anyway?

“
Colt
,” Grace says.

It occurs to me I'm really looking whipped here. Called on the carpet by my girlfriend. “Okay,” I say. I'm getting mad, too, now. “Whatever. I did
not
lock the cat in the freezer.”

Grace puts one hand on her hip. “But it was your idea, Colt. Wasn't it?”

Her eyes are starting to tear up—it's Death of a Hamster, Part Two. I can't believe this. The stupid cat thing took less than ten minutes. It happened weeks ago. The cat wasn't even hurt.

“No,” I tell her.

“You are
lying
.” The wetness in her eyes is almost to spillover point. She really is about to cry, right here in the hall. Big neon tears, flashing:
My boyfriend's such an asshole!

“Grace, listen. Forget it—the cat is
fine
. Just trust me on this one, okay?” I say.

“No,” Grace says, in this angry, teary voice. “
You
forget it. Forget
everything
.

“Murderer,” she adds as she turns away, and gives me this one last look, like I just stepped on something delicate and crushed it.

“Gosh, I didn't mean to get you in trouble,” Silver neighs, but I don't even look in her direction.

I just stand there with my arms dangling at my side, watching Grace disappear down the hall, leaving the company of this filthy cat molester.

 

Okay, so here we go again. If she'd just slow down and let me explain—but no, she's got to jump all over me, not give me time to think.

At lunch I tell Eric and Patrick and Stu that I want to hit some balls. If any of them see that I'm working not to get into a mood, they either don't notice or don't care. They're cool with going down to the field, and that's all that matters.

I toss the ball up, and…
Whap!

Deep right field, over Eric's head. He chugs along after it, tosses it back to me.

I catch it in my bare left hand. It stings, it feels good, it's good to have pain you can put your fingers around.

I toss it up again.
Whap!

Patrick misses, has to root around for it in the grass by the fence.

It goes like that for what's left of lunch. I don't say where I'm going to hit it, and if any of the guys complain, I don't notice. They're probably panting too much anyway. And when the bell rings, I cram everything in my bag and walk off. I don't wait to see if anybody follows.

It's okay. I'll just let Grace hang for a while. Let her figure out things for once, that she can't keep getting in a wad over some stupid dumb thing. Let her learn that real life isn't a book or a movie, that regular guys don't get their lines written for them.

That just because your boyfriend comes up with the bright idea of freezing a cat doesn't mean he loves you any less.

 

In assistant, I know I ought to work on English. But I don't feel like it.

I'm tired of being knocked back to square one with Grace.

When Chlo comes in, I'm sitting with my head down, cheek on the table, hands in my lap. I'm looking toward the window. The wood feels cool and hard on my face.

“You look like shit,” she says as her backpack
thunk!
s into place.

“So do you,” I mumble from the tabletop.

She sits down. I don't look up.

“Anything wrong?”

I don't answer, just turn my face to the tabletop, bang my forehead a couple of times.

When I stop, she asks, “Want to talk about it?”

“No,” I say to the table.

Chlo unzips her backpack.

“There was this thing with a cat,” I tell her. “My girlfriend's mad at me again.”

I hear her taking some stuff out. “Have you tried to talk to her about it?”

“I'm not too quick when it comes to thinking up the right thing to say. You know that.”

“Actually, I think you're a little too quick for your own good.”

I lay my cheek back on the cool wood.

“So go talk to her,” Chlo suggests.

“I can't.”

“Write her a note.”

“I can't.”

“
Oh
-kay.” I hear her pull my book over to her. “You ready to take on Keats?”

“No.”

“When's your test?”

“I dunno.”

I hear her sigh. “Look, if you want to talk to her, talk to her. If you don't, don't. But quit sulking around.”

“Look who's talking,” I say.
“Peter Pan.”

“All right. Fine. I'm not saying anything else.”

“Good.”

“Except this: friendly advice, Trammel. Just tell her how you feel. That's all. If she knows you at all, she'll understand whatever it is you're trying to say.”

The sound of a book opening. I'm thinking about how mad Grace gets over nothing. And the way Grace looks at me sometimes, when she forgets to be uptight.

Chlo's about to sail off to la-la land. Even though her body'll still be here.

I lift my head. “Hey Chlo. Can I ask you something?”

She shrugs, leafing through the pages like she's looking for something.

“Was Brian the first guy you ever did it with?”

Chlo actually looks up—from a book! “What business is it of yours?” She sounds like a twenty-foot brick wall.

“None,” I say.

“That's right,” she says, and goes back to her reading.

I'm still thinking. I know the way Chlo operates. I know I can ask her anything. She may not answer, but she won't spread it around, either. The problem is, I don't know how to ask her what I want to ask her.

I slide down in my chair a little. I pick up one of Chlo's pencils. I start to camouflage the old “Colt” I wrote on the table by making the
C
into a
G
. “They say your first time is pretty important,” I comment.

As soon as it's out of my mouth, I'm sorry I said it.

“Oh, yeah? Who was your first?”

“None of your business.”

She stares at me for a moment. “You've never done it.”

I give a little snort of laughter. “I've done it ways you can't even imagine,” I tell her, without looking up.

“Like what?”

“Scuba diving.”

I can feel Chlo looking at me. She doesn't ask about scuba diving. Doesn't say anything at all.

Just keeps…looking.

I lift my chin and look back. Across the table, right in her face, so I don't appear shifty-eyed.

“It's okay if you've never done it,” she says, almost gently. “There's nothing wrong with that.”

“Hey,” I say, dead serious, but suddenly I'm looking here, there, anywhere but at her. “I've done it. It's great.” I focus on the table and start scratching again.
I'm going to make the L into a very large, lopsided A.

“I know you, Trammel. You are
lying
. I can tell. There's nothing wrong with admitting the facts.”

“What facts?” If I put a curve on the side of the t, it'll say
GoAd.
Only I'm not sure if that's a word.

“That you,” she says, “are one horny lying virgin.”

“Yeah?” I leave it at
GoAt
, and lean back in my chair. If I can make Jordan Palmer believe I did the dirty at forty feet, I can make Chlo believe it, too.

“And spare me any details about water depth and oxygen requirements.”

Took the words right out of my mouth.

I act like I'm examining my artwork.

“And for your future information, Trammel,
where
isn't as important as
how
,” she says, so I know she's decided to let the scuba thing go for the moment. “What matters to the girl is that you take your time and do it right.”

“No argument there,” I agree. I act like I'm brushing off eraser flecks, though I haven't erased anything.

“Most guys…” Chlo pauses—but then she goes on. “Most of the guys I went out with before Bri didn't have a clue. No finesse. I always felt like a melon or something.”

“A melon?”

“You know. Like your breasts? Just squeeze, squeeze, squeeze.”

I'm wondering what else there is to do to breasts. I'm wondering if the girls I've been out with thought I was some kind of spaz, because all I did was squeeze.

I don't say anything, though, because I don't want to lose my credibility with Chlo. If I have any left.

I just get a firm hold on my pencil and add the word
me
. It'll say “GoAt me,” and everybody'll think there's a new obscene saying they never heard of.

Chlo bends her head over her book again. We work in silence for a while.

“You know,” she says suddenly, “when you were asking about the picture in my head?”

“Huh?”

“The picture. Remember, we were talking about Byron and ‘She Walks in Beauty'?”

Oh. “Yeah.”

“The picture I get is of the first time Brian and I made love.”

I drop my pencil.

Chlo doesn't notice. The look on her face is a little frightening. Not dreamy. Her eyes are narrowed a little. She looks…
hungry
. “It was in his room. The lights were out, and the moonlight came in the window. He was all silver and shadows. I wrote a poem about it.”

“A poem,” I echo. The news is flashing, all through my body—This Girl Loves Sex.

“It was like the tide coming in and going out.”

Across the table from me I can't see any body parts that I don't normally see. But with her hair cut short, I can see the line of her neck, I can see tiny earrings I never noticed before, made of the same milky stone as her ring.

“What kind of earrings are those?” I ask, to get her talking about something else.