The Myth of You and Me (14 page)

At the top of the escalator, I stepped off and and got on the one going down. I took the steps two at a time, running down the left side, halting in impatience when there was someone in my way.

I reached the bottom in time to see Will push through the turnstile. I had to wait in line to buy a token, and while I stood there, almost frantic, I remembered senior prom, dancing with him, his warm hand flat against the small of my back. The woman in the booth slid a token into the metal dish, and I nearly fumbled it away trying to pick it up, but then I was through the turnstile and running, dodging people who reared away in exaggerated alarm. I saw him again just as the train pulled into the station. I shouted his name, but he didn’t turn, didn’t hear me over the hissing of the brakes, and then I was close enough to touch him. I reached out my hand toward his shoulder, and then the doors opened, and he moved.

He got on the train. As the doors closed, I saw him clearly through the window, choosing to stand, as I had, even though there were available seats. It was definitely him. Same height, same proud nose, same deep brown eyes, so dark they were almost black.

Same air of remove, as though, even on a crowded train, he was completely alone.

I stood there and watched the train pull away.

When I finally turned to leave, I found an old man behind me, leaning on a cane and watching me with curiosity. “Why didn’t you get on?” he asked.

“What?” I was still rattled.

“The train? You were running and running. I was thinking, ‘I wish I could run like her.’ But then you didn’t get on.” He cocked his head, waiting for an explanation.

“Wrong train,” I said.

“My dear, this is the Red Line,” he said. “Only one train comes through here.”

The phrase
my dear
, the cane, the white hair, the light glinting off his glasses—I was seeing ghosts. Grief, memory—they were hallucinogens.

“Are you all right?” the man asked.

“Claustrophobia,” I said. At that moment it was true. I ran back up the escalator, through the glass doors, to the welcome light outside. Will Barrett, I thought, with some amazement. I was standing on a street corner, people darting around me, my heart still beating out the rhythm of his name.

I met
Will Barrett for the first time late in Christmas break my sophomore year, the night my parents dragged me to a party at his parents’ house. His father, like mine, was in the air force, and they’d been transferred to Clovis from Virginia, just as we had been more than a year before. Will’s father was a big man, as tall as my father and wider through the shoulders, and when Colonel Barrett greeted us, his expression suggested a smile without being one.

“I see you brought your daughter,” Colonel Barrett said, speaking to my father but looking at me. He pointed into the living room. “My son’s over there, standing in the corner as usual.” He looked me up and down, pursing his lips in a silent whistle. “You’re almost his height. Do you play basketball, too? Will was the star of the varsity team last year, even though he was only a freshman.” He didn’t wait for me to say anything; he just took me by the arm. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll introduce you.”

I’d never been a fan of meeting new people, especially not boys, and I didn’t appreciate the man’s grip on my arm, or the way he marched me toward the crowd of people in the living room. Colonel Barrett pointed again at Will, who I could see now, leaning against the wall with his hands in the pockets of his jeans. He was watching the partygoers as though he were at a much greater remove from them, like someone at a play. He didn’t seem to notice our approach. His black T-shirt—it said
THE REPLACEMENTS
on it—looked like it had been bought before a growth spurt. Worn thin, it clung to the muscles of his stomach and chest. Over that he was wearing an unbuttoned white oxford, no doubt a concession to his parents’ urging him to dress up for the party.

As we got closer, dread blossomed in my stomach. This boy was so beautiful he could have posed for one of the posters I hung on the walls of my bedroom. When we were two feet away, he looked up, and I saw him wince, before he assumed an expression of resolute politeness.

“Well, Will,” his father said. “Here’s someone for you to talk to. Cameron, tell him all about Clovis. Do you play basketball?”

I shook my head.

“Why not?”

I had no interest in basketball or any other sport, or any activity that would cause large numbers of people to look at me. I didn’t think Colonel Barrett would sympathize with that. “I can’t dribble,” I said.

“It’s easy,” he said. “You just . . .” He demonstrated with an imaginary ball, then looked at me expectantly. Will was watching me, too.

“I can’t,” I said.

Colonel Barrett shook his head like this was tragic. He jerked his thumb at his son. “He dominates the court. You’ll see.” With that, he strode away.

I did my best to smile at Will, and he nodded in response. I turned and surveyed the adults. I saw my father on the other side of the room struggling to focus on what someone was telling him, and knew he didn’t want to be at the party any more than I did. At a safe distance from Will, I leaned against the wall.

After a moment, he said, “I guess somebody should talk.”

I glanced at him, but he was still looking out at the room. Even up close he seemed like a photograph. It was strange to hear him speak. “How about you?” I said.

“I just did.”

“Me, too.”

“Okay,” he said. He paused as though searching for a subject. “I bet you get tired of being asked if you play basketball.”

“You’re right,” I said.

“If you play basketball,” he said, “then you never have to explain why not. That’s an advantage.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” I looked at his T-shirt. “So, who are The Replacements?”

“A band.” His expression suggested that he was trying to suppress disappointment. “You never heard of them?”

“No,” I said. “Sorry.”

We lapsed into silence again. Out in the room, the laughter swelled. A woman in a low-cut red dress, fancier than anything anyone else was wearing, put her hand on the arm of the man she was talking to, and leaned in like he was so funny she couldn’t stand up straight. Her breast brushed against his arm. Wine sloshed dangerously near the rim of her glass. The man, who wore a wedding ring, watched her with detached amusement. “Stop it,” I wanted to say to her. “You’re making a fool of yourself.”

When Will spoke again, I jumped. “So what’s this town like?” he said.

I thought of what I could tell him about Clovis—that the fundamentalists signed yearbooks “In His Name” and considered Mormonism a cult, that the kids who wore Megadeth T-shirts and smoked on the edge of school property were called thrashers, that people of Mexican descent were called Spanish, that Spanish kids hung out with white kids or black kids, but usually not with both, that when the fire alarm went off at school early one morning all the girls you otherwise never saw came out of the nursery, cradling their babies close. That after you suffered through the unbearable heat of summer days, you got as a reward a warm and crisp night, that the flatness of the land, the way nothing blocked your view of the sky, made you feel open and expansive, like a deep breath. “It’s okay,” I said.

“Somebody told me they tip cows here.”

“Well, not everybody,” I said. “Not me.”

“That’s good,” he said. “You shouldn’t. When you tip a cow over, it can’t get up. It just lies on its back with its legs wriggling, like a beetle.”

“Really?”

“Really,” he said.

I stared at him, trying to decide whether to believe him. Finally he grinned. “I knew you were kidding,” I said.

“Cows have a lot in common with beetles,” he said. “The Beatles almost called themselves The Cows.”

I laughed. Then we were silent again. Every comment I could think of had something to do with cows.

“So cow-tipping is out,” Will said. “What else can I do to fit in here?”

“Let’s see,” I said. “Cruise Main. Join the Southern Baptist church. Change your name to Cody.”

“Cody Barrett.”

“That’s a pretty good cowboy name.”

“I like it,” he said. “Let’s do it. You can call me that at school, and everybody will follow your lead.”

I started to say, “Really?” then stopped myself. “That’s not going to work again.”

He sighed in mock regret. “So,” he said, “you don’t tip cows and you don’t play basketball. What do you do?”

“Nothing exciting,” I said. “I don’t play anything.”

“Not even Monopoly? Or a musical instrument?”

I shook my head. “Do you play a musical instrument?”

He looked at me a long moment, like he was gauging my trustworthiness. “I play guitar,” he said. “But I’m no good.”

He was so intimidating, with his good looks, his self-assurance, that it was a relief to hear the uncertainty in his voice. “My father plays,” I said. “I bet he could teach you.” I imagined Will coming over every Saturday afternoon.

“I don’t want anybody to teach me,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t want anybody to monitor my progress,” he said.

“How are you going to learn?”

“I’m teaching myself.”

“But if you had lessons, you’d learn faster.”

He frowned. “I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t want anybody to hear me.”

“But how will you get any better?”

“You don’t get it,” he said, in a tone that suggested my ignorance extended far beyond the topic at hand. “Just forget it.”

“Fine,” I said, as angry with myself as I was with him. “It’s forgotten.”

He stood there another moment, and then he said, “I’ll see you, okay?” He left without waiting for my reply. I focused on the woman in the red dress, resisting the urge to watch him walk away, and then, when I couldn’t stand it any longer, I looked. He was already gone.

Several awkward conversations later, I slipped away from the party, looking for the bathroom, mostly so I could have a few minutes alone. I heard music coming from the end of the hall and followed the sound to stand outside Will’s room. He hadn’t closed the door all the way, and through the gap I could see him sitting on the edge of his bed, guitar in his lap. He didn’t see me. “Won’t you let me . . . ,” he sang, and then he stopped, tuned his guitar, and started again. “Won’t you let me walk you home from school.”

I didn’t recognize the song, which I later learned, after much searching, was “Thirteen” by Big Star. The lyrics were about wanting to meet a girl at the pool, take her to a dance—they were about how he’d leave her alone if she told him to. I wouldn’t have guessed this boy, with his long silences and jokes, would choose a song in which love was laid out with such bare simplicity. He played the song in a key that was too high for him, but the way his voice strained after certain notes gave the performance that much more emotion—he sang it like he meant every word. I wondered if he was thinking of a girl he’d left in Virginia. No matter what he’d said, he was really, really good. Watching him sing was like catching a glimpse of him naked.

I stood there in the hall, my heart racing, afraid that at any moment he would look up to see me spying on him, unable to walk away. I’d found him attractive before, but as his voice cracked over the word
you,
I felt a longing so big it threatened to swallow me. I was fifteen, I was familiar with longing, but at that moment I seemed to understand for the first time exactly what I wanted out of everything in the world. I wanted Will Barrett to be singing that song to me.

And then he looked up, and at the sight of me he stopped singing in the middle of a word. He jerked to his feet like I’d caught him doing something shameful, and a flush spread up his neck and brightened his ears. “I told you I’m no good,” he said.

I couldn’t think of anything to say that was remotely adequate to what I felt, and even if I could have I wouldn’t have been able to say it. I shook my head. “I’m sorry,” I said, and I pulled the door shut and walked away.

Monday morning
I walked into my first-period government class, and there was Will Barrett, sitting in a desk next to Glenn, the class president, a boy with spiky hair and an easy smile who had practically climbed over his own desk in his eagerness to talk to Will. He was always trying to persuade somebody of something. When I walked in, Will was leaning back in his chair, his long legs stretched out in front of him, but when he glanced up and saw me, the muscles in his jaw tightened and he sat up straight. Glenn looked up at me and nodded, not pausing in what he was saying, which I now heard was something about school spirit and the basketball team.

I took a seat two rows back from Glenn, behind Michelle Martinez. Will’s hair was a little long on top, but in the back it was razored into straight lines. I wondered if this was some kind of compromise with his father, who, if he was anything like my father, believed every man in America should have a military haircut. I wondered if Will was always going to hate me. He had a smattering of freckles on the back of his neck. He reached up to rub his neck, as though he could feel my gaze, and I looked away. As the bell rang I decided I didn’t care if he hated me. I would hate him, too.