The Opposite of Geek (8 page)

I call Dean from my room. Since I’m already going down, might as well go all the way. I’ll set my good-girl ways adrift for tonight. The tide’s brought in another version of me.

I tell him to wait on the street — I can get to the back door without going past the kitchen.

Low voices float, knives and forks scrape plates. I take a step — and put my toe into mashed potatoes. Someone’s left a plate of food in front of my door.

My phone vibrates in my pocket and makes me jump. It’s Dean. His name glows, teasing me.

I push the plate out of the way, smear food into the carpet, sneak down the hall,

step out of my life.

“James has his own ride,” he says even before I ask.

“Does he not want to drive with us?” I say, buckling up.

Dean leans over and kisses my cheek,

turns me into a puddle on the floor.

“He got to borrow his mum’s car, which never happens.

He’s pretty stoked.” He puts a hand on my leg.

My skin tingles. I squeeze his long, strong fingers.

It feels so good to be a girlfriend, riding alone

with Dean. James’s absence is actually a relief.

We laugh and ride, holding hands,

feeling what it feels like to be a couple, just us.

I find myself wishing we weren’t

going bowling with James and a ton of other people.

We pass Mosquito Creek Park and I think about us

pulling in there, taking off layers of clothes.

My skin tingles.

Suddenly Dean’s turning left, reading my mind,

which is racing.

I don’t even get my seat belt off and he’s kissing me, pulling me toward him, and I have to laugh and unclip the belt, and we kiss again. His tongue is warm and tastes like toothpaste, and I never knew that could be sexy. He runs his hand under my shirt and over my skin, not going for the bra clips, which makes me wish he would.

“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers. And I want to run away forever with him, just leave this place and be together, alone.

I kiss him hard and reach under his shirt — his skin is so soft and it makes me want to feel the rest of him.

But then his phone sings the Star Wars theme.

“Oh, god,” Dean groans. “He can wait.”

James goes to voicemail and Dean pulls me from my seat, into his lap. My leg is pinned against the door but I don’t care — his hands are under my waistband, feeling my butt, his warm hands, his minty breath on my —

The Empire strikes back. We both groan, our mouths still together.

Thirty seconds later, the Jedi returns. He must be pissed.

Dean adjusts himself as I pull my shirt back down and grab his phone.

“Hey, James,” I say in a cheery voice. “We’re just leaving my place. Sorry we’re late.”

“Yeah,” he says, in a galaxy far, far away. “Whatever, face-munchers.”

I’m not one for the nostalgic fifties bowling thing, but it is amazing how many people like it. We descend into the weird time-warped, neon-lit basement and search for James in the bowling-shoed, shirt-collared crowd — this is teen night; everyone plays for five bucks.

We spot James, wearing his
Geeks Rule the World
shirt, by the jukebox. He flips through the song book and we sneak up behind him, ready to pounce. That’s when I notice the guys by the shoe bar (that’s what I call it) staring at us.

No — they’re staring at James.

They’re S&E — I recognize a few from the lacrosse team. Their faces are stone.

I say a loud
hi
to James — and then remember what he told me at the bus stop. I touch his shoulder. “James, did you —”

“You guys want to hear some Elvis?” he interrupts me.

“Of course we don’t,” Dean laughs. “Play something from this century.”

James won’t look at me.

I’m not sure how to broach the subject because everyone’s acting so weird. The lacrosse guys move to the other end of the bowling alley and we wait in awkward silence for our lane to open up.

The bowling doesn’t go well. James is quiet and I’m bowling like a granny — literally.

Dean makes fun of my technique and I have to punch him in the stomach — and end up feeling his abs. So firm.

He squeezes my waist. James goes for a Coke.

“He seems kind of zoned out,” Dean says. “Maybe we should hang out somewhere else.” I put my head on his shoulder.

“I hate high school,” I mutter. “People suck.”

Just then, speak of the devil, in saunters the swim team — really, the WHOLE swim team. Shay’s at the helm and Nemiah’s in the middle, literally mediocre, and they all do a lap of the place before settling at the snack tables with their tiny skirts and perky ponytails. The swim guys lean on their ripped forearms and try not to topple over from the weight of their massive shoulders.

“See that?” I point to Nemiah in her solid pink velour tracksuit. “That’s the opposite of class.”

She’s become a stick of bubble gum. How apt.

We play another game

and James bowls gutters every time,

which makes him even more pissed off.

He seems to be taking offense to me and Dean

sharing the same chair.

“You know there are empty seats right here,”

he says. “There’s no need to conserve.”

“She’s my lap-warmer,” Dean says,

and James looks away.

I’ve never seen him like this

and I start to think it’s my fault — our fault —

for being so together in from of him

when something happens that

makes it all seem like

nothing.

It only takes one look —

James walking to the washroom

past a posse of reclining lacrosse guys,

glancing over at them

for a nanosecond —

I see it because I’m so on edge

I can’t help watching him —

and just one guy

gives a flick of the hand,

some signal to strike,

and they all launch as one hulking mass

onto James’s back.

they are on the floor,

a storm of flailing limbs, and then

the swim team is hurtling into the fray,

their fists like maces. They grab indiscriminately —

a fight’s a fight.

Dean is gone from beside me,

swallowed by the brawl.

I realize I am screaming

like everyone else.

The alley manager,

a brawny guy

in head-to-toe denim,

wades into the fight

and fishes James out. Dean

is still somewhere inside.

Denim Man bellows one

long roar, and the fighters

cease like a pack of dogs

sprayed with a hose.

I rush up to James

and look past him

as Dean extricates himself

from a swim boy’s clutches.

“Who started this?” Denim Man asks.

“WHO STARTED THIS?!”

Five fingers point to James.

Dean starts to protest

but Denim Man yells,

“Get out now — all of you

or I’ll call the cops.”

and I follow them outside,

across the street and up the road

to James’s car.

He doesn’t get in, just stands

on the frosty cement

and gulps frozen air.

His left eye is swelling up.

I pace to try and stop my body

trembling. My fingertips

are ice cold.

Dean tries to touch James’s shoulder,

tries to say calming things

in a low voice,

but James is wound tight, can’t hear him,

shoves his hand away.

“I can’t believe,” he says.

“I can’t believe those freaking —”

“How come they can —”

He shakes his head.

“Let’s go,” Dean says.

“My place. We’ll get cleaned up.”

James looks at him, then at me.

“No,” he says. “I need to drive.

This is my thing. I need to think.

You guys go ahead.”

“You shouldn’t go alone,” I say

but it feels flimsy —

I’m with Dean and it’s obvious

James doesn’t want to be reminded of that.

“You can’t help,” he says

as I open my mouth to protest again.

We watch him get into the car and drive away.

It feels like the wrong choice, but

we also have no choice — he doesn’t want us.

What can we do?
I think.
What can we do?

“We can go home,” Dean says beside me,

taking my hand, answering the question

I didn’t think I’d said out loud.

I’m not ready to go home yet, and anyway,

I’m worried about James, alone in his car.

Dean murmurs to me like someone

calming a horse. My stomach flutters

at the low sound.

“I told my parents about wanting to be a writer,”

I say quietly.

“Right on. I’m proud of you,” he says in

such a gentle way I don’t want to say

anything else, to ruin it with how badly

the conversation went.

We drive to the end of a cul-de-sac with big,

expensive houses. A playground emerges on the right.

“Come on the slide with me.” Dean says,

and it seems like the best idea in the world.

My brain goes blank as I close the cold door, my skin

tingly, warmed from the car.

It’s the chaos, the shock of everything

that makes him so irresistible, makes me

follow him

anywhere.

The playground

has never been a more fascinating place,

full of kid things that are transformed

in the dark,

places to hide and kiss

and touch.

Frost covers everything like velvet.

We brush it away

with our sleeved hands

he lays his jacket down,

we sit at the top of the slide

and feel each other’s skin.

Dean’s breath is hot

on my mouth,

his fingers travelling

under my bra strap,

burning my skin,

making my heart crash in my chest.

A dog barks from across the street,

startles us, giggling, down the slide.

The stars are so still and white

from my position

in Dean’s lap.

We laugh

as a distant siren makes the dog

howl.

We get pretty close to something

in that park,

but I’m not going to go there

here.

Let’s just say

!!

Once we’re back in the car, my phone tells me someone’s left a message. My gut twists: my parents must be freaking. Until this moment I’ve forced myself to forget the shackles, possible electric chair awaiting me.

We sit in Lucy, talking and kissing with the heat blasted. My hormones have started to drain out of invisible holes in my skin.

I just feel tired and stupid.

Dean’s phone rings. I jump out of my seat, wondering how my parents got a hold of his number.

It’s not them. Someone’s yelling on the other end. Dean holds the phone from his ear, trying to decipher the voice.

“He what?” he finally says.

There’s a pause on the line and then I hear the reply from across the car.

is full of nothing-noise: the shudder of Lucy’s old-car body, the whine of her tired engine, the rumble of other cars on the street. Dean pops his jaw over and over.

I try to ask questions and he won’t stop talking, the words jumble up in his mouth.

He tells me what he knows: James was driving his mum’s car on the highway and there was a collision, we don’t know with what yet. The car is totalled.

He’s in the ICU, unconscious and unstable and who knows what else. His mother’s been there since they brought him in. She’s the one who called Dean.

And, oh god, it’s his fault, his stupid fault, Dean says, then clamps his mouth shut. Our make-out session at the park seems idiotic now. I can’t clear my throat.

Dean signals to turn into the parking lot but turns on the windshield wipers by accident.

I realize I’ve never been

in a hospital like this before.

Once I went to see my aunt,

dying of cancer, but I was ten

and we didn’t stay long.

Will he be all wrapped up,

with wires and IVs everywhere?

Will there be blood?

My heart rams into my ribs

and I grip Dean’s hand

which is sweaty and cold.

My first look at him,

I know.

Unstable

is scarier than it sounds.

James’s unconscious face is swollen huge

on one side, bandaged and gruesome.

Ugly bruises deform him into a troll.

He isn’t even breathing on his own —

a machine does it for him,

through a tube down his throat.

It all looks fake.

How could this have happened?

Two hours ago he was fine.

His mother is a small woman

with dark brown hair

and a face hidden in the green

hospital sheet on her son’s

bed. She looks up with puffy

red eyes and a small, quivering

mouth.

out through snaking tubes

what are they putting back in?

Put his LIFE back in!

is a tall, thin woman with frizzy blond hair

in old-fashioned clips. She stands to shake our hands.

She holds a clipboard, a pen, the answers

to all our questions.

She is the social worker.

The sympathetic ear assigned to James’s family

because his injuries are so traumatic

they don’t want us to keel over from shock

or get violent. She is a walking, talking

pacifier.

Dean ignores her.

straight-faced to the bed,

amid the beeping of machines

the hard breathing

of James’s mother,

the screaming

in my head.

This is

so unnatural, unfair, unbelievable,

un-everything.

My hands make fists.

Bad dream bad dream bad dream
.

Wake up.

Wake up, James.

is dire, we learn from Dr. Ziola, a warm-eyed,

pretty doctor who seems out of place in this terrible world.

James has serious head trauma. There is

some internal bleeding,

they don’t know how much yet.

They are trying to get his hemoglobin up

so he can make it through surgery.

He can make it. Dean latches onto this idea,

turns the
can
into a
will
. The doctor

tries to offer reality, but Dean isn’t listening.

I look around

at all the life-saving equipment,

the things that exist for the purpose

of helping people not die.

A nurse comes in to take some readings.

We all stare at her, at the machines telling her things

we want to know, even if we can’t understand them.

Constance speaks to us in low tones,

comforting, like a hostage negotiator.

I want to smack her and hug her at the same time.

James’s mum paces, holds her head in her hands,

like a grieving parent in a movie.

The nurse looks at the machines,

does something to the IV bag.

She leaves, rustling in her green scrubs.

I put a hand on Dean’s. I know what he’s thinking,

and I tell him it’s not his fault. Not our fault. For letting

James leave the bowling alley, for not doing something

different. But I know my words aren’t getting through.

He’s torturing himself already:

I, I, I could have stopped this.

I want to echo: no, no, no, you couldn’t

but could we have?

A machine drones. Little lights blink.

The nurse returns.

I come back from the grey place where I was drifting.

We are in Sickland. James is not dead.

His
Geeks Rule the World
t-shirt is gone

who knows where,

ripped off in efforts to discover his injuries,

but suddenly it means so much more.

It means everything.

The beeping beeps.

The machines hold James’s life, and they are only machines.

I finally check my messages.

There are five.

Halfway through

the third one,

as my mum’s voice falters,

my eyes fill up.

I make myself listen

to them all.

They have called everyone they know,

everyone in the school,

even Ms Long.

I can’t

I can’t call when everything’s uncertain

everyone’s rushing,

questioning, waiting.

But the empty-belly feeling

of not calling them

eats me until I am a shell,

full of nothing.

Just when I thought

it was so great to not listen for once,

I replay

the messages,

listen

to hear how much they want me home.

Dr. Ziola tells us they have to take James for surgery.

He’s as stable as he’s going to get

and they can’t wait any longer.

This isn’t reassuring.

Dean wants to know that he’s going to make it.

He prods and prods to get this answer

and finally

Constance has to take him out into the hall.

I can hear him hyperventilating.

I stay for James’s mother,

who looks like her life is being taken

away on that hospital bed.

There is nothing I can do that is of use.

I back up to the door, equidistant

between the grieving mother and cousin,

and act as a doorstop.

in the hall: down, turn,

back again, down.

His face is like

stretched canvas

over sharp bones.

He doesn’t see anything —

not me, not the passing

nurses or doctors,

not the old man on a gurney

watching him with sad eyes.

Then they wheel James out,

carefully, quickly, no more

explanation,

ignoring Dean’s frantic questions,

and even after they’re gone,

he asks more,

like a lost, demented parrot.

And I am chasing him down the hall,

into the stairwell,

down two flights, three flights,

knees buckling, going so fast.

I yell for him to slow down. He screams wordlessly.

We run down, down — how much down is there?

We run into the basement

and I remember from TV and movies

this is where the morgue must be.

I catch up to Dean,

or he slows down for me,

and we stop, breathing hard, our knees

jittery. He doesn’t push

the door open. He knows

what’s in there.

This is the underworld.

into a ball on the shiny

stairwell floor.

No crying, just silence, his eyes

staring empty, chin on knees. I sit beside him,

shoulder touching his.

He whispers,

“He has to be okay.

This is crazy, right?

He can’t — no, he can’t.

It’s okay.”

He doesn’t know I’m here.

I grope for something to say

that will make it okay, but nothing will.

I can’t even give him

a piece of hope —

I can’t give myself that.

After a while the silence is too strong.

“I’m going up,” I say, touching his cold hand. “I want to know what’s happening. They might have an update from the surgery.”

Dean looks at me slowly. He is past words.

If I push him over, he’ll shatter.

But I can’t stay down here, not breathing.

I backtrack up the stairwell, my hands numb, my mind blinking like a traffic light in a power outage.

have gone by since I got back?

One? Five? A hundred?

I sit in the ICU waiting room

with a family from Bolivia

waiting to find out about their grandfather.

James’s mother is phoning relatives from the hall —

I focus on the wallpaper so as not to hear

her repeated sobs.

I pull out

my cellphone and dial home,

hang up, then repeat this three times.

Not the real one —

a metaphorical one.

The one where I realize,

as I’m about to press call,

that maybe they won’t understand.

Maybe they will yell and scream

and not be sad for me,

for James, for this night

of terrible things.

I’m sorry for sneaking out,

I’m sorry for stepping in the mashed potatoes

and smearing them into the carpet,

I’m sorry for leaving James

when he obviously needed me,

I’m sorry for not calling them

when they most want me to.

I think

of paging Constance

to tell her my skin

can’t get warm —

could that be

a health concern

or just a symptom

of the night’s events —

when Dr. Ziola walks in.

Her forehead

is wrinkled with concern.

She asks for James’s mother.

She is found.

The last thing I wonder

before the doctor gives us the news

is if she has concern lines

like the rest of us have

laugh-lines.

doubles over, punched in the gut.

Her face is pulled tight.

I am frozen to the spot

and she reaches out,

clenches me. Her shirt,

her skin, smell like

cinnamon.

My face is buried in it.

Finally she looks up,

touches my wet face,

says words

only she can hear.

Lukewarm sun hovers

on frosted tulips in the

hospital courtyard

Someone leaves a worn

blue teddy bear on James’s

silent, still machines
.