Out of Order (14 page)

I see Grace the next day.

I'm sure it's her. I'm heading to fifth period from my locker, and down the hall, among all the other heads bobbing along, I see a blond one, one I'd know anywhere.

Something inside slips out of gear—I've got to make everything right, that's all, just make everything back the way it was.

I tell myself it's going to be okay. Even though with each step a little more panic overtakes me.

“Hey,” I call. She doesn't hear me, doesn't stop, and as I shoulder other people aside to catch up to her, my heartbeat revs up so much, I think my voice is going to come out as a high-speed stutter. Inside I'm shouting at myself: Moron, don't you crawl!

“Grace, I want to talk.” She glances at me—and just
keeps walking. I have to hustle to keep up. “I just wanted to tell you I'm sorry about everything.” Now that I've started, I'm going to keep going till she says she missed me and she's not mad anymore. “I guess it
was
my idea to put the cat in the freezer. But I was just joking, so when Gutterson really did it, I went back and got it out. It's not dead—it's alive. It's still around somewhere. I've seen it. Do you believe me?”

“I don't know,” she says offhand, not even slowing down. “It doesn't matter.”

“Yes, it does.” My voice sounds faraway to me, even though I'm right there.

“There's nothing I can do about it one way or the other,” she says, shrugging. “All I know is something good came out of it. My eyes have been opened.”

“The cat is
fine
, Grace.”

She looks annoyed. “Come over here, Colt. Let's get this over with.” I follow her over out of traffic, closer to a wall where there's no lockers. When she gets there, when she turns to face me, I get a chill.

She's looking up at me the way the kid in the movie looked at Old Yeller right before he shot him.

Or maybe not. The kid who shot Old Yeller at least was sad about it.

“I'm never going to go out with you again, Colt,” Grace says. “I don't even want to see you. We have
absolutely no rapport.”

Rapport?
“Jesus.” I can't be bothered trying to keep things clean now. “Will you quit throwing
words
at everything?”

“I'm not even going to try to discuss this with you if you use that kind of language.”

Deep breath. I nod: Agreed. No bad words, not even if those are the only words that are in my head.

“Let me see if I can put this a way you'll understand: We have no…
connection
.”

“You got to
make
a connection, Grace. You can't just
talk
.” She frowns, which gives me a chance to jump right in. “We
do
have a—a—we belong together, okay? I told the truth that time when you let me touch—that time in the car. About how I feel—I love you, Grace. Even though I'm not anywhere near the kind of guy I should be, at least I'm trying. It's all right if you don't believe me. I don't blame you. But I want to work things out. And I don't know about connections, but I do know one thing.” I take a deep breath. “There isn't anybody but you. For me, I mean. I don't ever want to be with anybody but you.”

“It just doesn't work.”

“It does. It will. I'm going to try harder.”

“It doesn't matter how hard you try.”

“Don't say that. It
does
matter.” I say it firmly, to show
her how right I am. “Look, do you think it's easy, telling you this? You think it's easy to tell you I love you? The last time you didn't speak to me for two days.” On the word
days
my voice cracks, just a little. “I'm not asking you to say you love me back. I'm not asking you to do anything at all. All I'm asking is for us go back to the way we were and let me try again.”

“I'm sorry, Colt. I'm with someone else now.”

All my insides start slithering down into the pit of my gut. My Grace, with her soft hair and her soft lips and her green eyes.

“You can't go out with Jordan Palmer,” I say desperately. “He's a jerk. He's screwed about a million different girls. He cheated on his girlfriend with her best friend. He even videotaped—”

“That's a lie!”

“It's true. And he talks about whoever he's screwed. He doesn't always name names, but he always tells the de—”

“Like you don't?”

“—tails. What?”

“Jordan told me how you slept with that girl in the Bahamas this summer. Someone you didn't even know.”

Okay, now, sometimes I'm not too bright. Sometimes I don't hear things too clearly the first time.

“What?” I say again.

“I see it on your face; don't even bother trying to deny it. I made myself believe you about a lot of stuff—I was stupid enough to give you the benefit of the doubt. So don't go telling me how we have to work at a connection. Or a bunch of garbage about how you've always loved me. Jordan”—she pauses over his name like it's a drop of honey—“doesn't have to lie. He doesn't have to pretend. The connection is
there
. We didn't force it. It's not something we had to
work
at. It just happened. It was meant to be. Which is not something I could explain to you, Colton Trammel. How everything about two people can just…just…
click
”

“You do not click with Palmer. He just makes you think you do. No, don't say anything. Will you stop talking for just one second and listen to me? Just listen to me, will you?”

She crosses her arms and glares up at me. Okay, Colt, let's hear your words of wisdom.

Of course my brain goes completely blank.

She's standing there and I'm standing there, and all I can think is that she believes Palmer is like one of those guys in those stupid films she likes, Boy meets Girl, click click click, and the very next moment they're naked and—

“Oh my God,” I burst out. “Please tell me you didn't let him fuck you!”

Grace's mouth is an open
O
of shock. Then her face closes up. “I should have known you'd put it that way. You're disgusting.”

“Jesus, you just went out with me a
week
ago!”

She's looking at me like I've turned into a maggot. “There is a world of difference between…what you said, and making love. What you said—it's demeaning. It's nasty. You're so shallow, Colt. You're a shallow little boy. You'll never understand that two people can have things in common; deep, beautiful things. Yes, like the human body—but you'll never understand that there's more to it than that. Books and poetry and wondering about—well, about life. About ideas. Like whether there's order in the universe, or what people are really like on the inside, or the true meaning behind a piece of art.”

She let him fuck her! My head feels like it's going to explode. I'm a lot bigger than she is. I could hurt her if I wanted. I could scare her, too, scare her into crying and make her say she lied and she didn't mean it.

I'd almost like to see her cry, right now.

“Face it, Colt. You aren't capable of a relationship that has any kind of depth to it.”

She whirls around and walks off. The bell rings, but all I hear is this tremendous sucking sound as Grace Garcetti removes herself from my life.

 

Down at the end of the hall I shove the heavy bathroom door open. I wish I could stay in here until the school empties out. The room stinks of bleach and cleanser and old urine. It's brighter in here than the hallway, because of the lights and the windows. A whole row of windows, up above the sinks and the mirrors.

I don't really need to go. I figure I'll wash my hands, just to prove I belong in here. I step over to a sink and turn on the water.

I take a good look at myself in the mirror while I'm washing my hands. Hair looks good, like always. Face looks okay, not upset, not mad. It's a little pale, maybe, but nothing that advertises the whole story: This is a guy whose life has cracked open beneath his feet.

“Trammel, you stupid bastard,” I tell the guy in the mirror.

The guy in the mirror doesn't say anything.

“Look,” I tell him, “I just, you know.” I want to explain something, but I'm not sure what it is. Something about myself, I guess. But I can't, because like I said I don't know what it is.

I take my time scrubbing my hands. Then I bend over, splash some water on my face. But when I shut my eyes to keep the water out, pictures rise up on the back of my eyelids.

Where were they when they did it? Did she go home with him? Did she touch him? Did she like it?

Did she make any sounds?

God—the sounds Grace used to make with me! The soft sounds; her lips touching my lips, the way her breath got deeper when I touched her—most of the time through her shirt.

Through
her shirt. Jesus.

I brace my palms on the cold, hard rim for a second. I stare down into the sink. In that bright bathroom that stinks of bleach and urine, I think how I gave my heart away to somebody who never wanted it.

And not just once—I gave it to her over and over again, every day, every time I saw her, every time I thought of her, like a dog panting and begging and hoping for just one tiny pat on the head, I gave my whole heart every single day.

There's no paper towels in here, just blow dryers. So I pull my shirttail up and dry my face on that. When I look up again at the guy in the mirror, his eyes are a little red rimmed.

It's so unfair. I've wanted her since seventh grade. Four years I worked to get her. I tried so fucking hard to be whatever it was she wanted.

And all Palmer had to do was just
be
.

I brace my palms on the edge of the sink again and
bow my head, like I'm praying. Only instead I squeeze my eyes shut and tell myself what an asshole I've been.

You're an asshole, Colt Trammel
. I tell myself that over and over, hoping the edge will wear off the idea.

Big surprise: It never does. And when I walk out of the bathroom and head toward fifth period, there's a big black hole where my heart used to be.

 

I want to go home, to creep out of the building, into my car, speed home to go to my room and be alone.

But the only thing that's ever between a guy and total humiliation is
pride
. I've got to act like it doesn't matter.

Hell, it
doesn't
matter. It's just some chick. Who cares?

That's what I tell myself.

I get into assistant somehow and I don't have my English book—maybe it's in my locker, maybe it's on the floor in the hall somewhere—and Chlo's already there, but I don't look at her or say anything. She doesn't say anything either.

I sit down and I keep my head turned, like I'm looking out the window. I don't figure she's stupid enough to try to talk to me. Chlo will see that I'm not in the mood to hear anything today.

She doesn't say a word, but after a few moments she gets her stuff out and goes into the same routine she had
before the Romantic poets turned up. Reading. Marking stuff with her pencil.

I put my head down, like I used to do back before my heart got broken.

We sit like that for a while. Her reading and marking. Me trying not to think. Especially not about how I'm supposed to go to sixth period, how I'm supposed to get all the way through that last class in the same weight room as old Pepe LePew Palmer in all his stupid handsome seniorness and his poems and his discussing who won't put out and who will.

The door that leads to Miss. A.'s classroom opens, and I hear Miss. A. come in. “Would you two collate and staple these pages into packets? The pages are numbered, one through seven.”

I don't even bother to lift my head.

“Sure,” says Chlo. I hear Miss. A.'s heels
pock-pock-pock
back into the other room while Chlo shuts her books and piles them up. Then for a long time, all I hear is the
swish, swish, swish
of paper as Chlo arranges the papers into packets.

“So, Trammel,” Chlo asks after a long time. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” I'm hidden inside the circle of my arms. And then, I don't know why, I ask, “You?”

“I'm
fine.”

Swish, swish, swish.

“Chin up, Trammel,” she says. “Whatever it is, this day is almost over.”

“
Almost
. God.” I groan and raise my head. My brain feels like it's eating itself from the inside out.

Chlo's got about half the packets done, crisscrossed in a stack.

Aw, fuck it. Working—anything—is better than sitting here
thinking
. “Gimme the stapler and I'll help,” I mutter.

“It's not in here. You'll have to get it from Miss. A.”

So I get up and trudge into Miss. A.'s classroom to get the stapler.

“Alicia's got it out in the hall,” Miss. A. says. “Go check; she's probably done with it.”

I go out in the hall, and old Doghead is standing on a chair in front of an open display case, one of those flat ones for posting announcements and lists and that kind of shit. When I walk over, I see my reflection in the glass, and my face has this half smile, half smirk on it, which is weird because I don't feel like I'm smirking. What I feel like is I'm standing on the beach, and the tide is coming in, washing the sand out from under my feet, and no matter how much it knocks me off balance, I've got to look like I'm still standing straight.

Doghead is still using the stapler; she's fastening a
sheet of paper to the cork board inside the case.

“I need the stapler,” I tell Alicia. She staples another corner, and I wait for her to finish.

But after the last corner is stapled, Alicia just places the stapler sideways and starts going around the edges of the paper, as if she's got all the time in the world and nobody's waiting.