The Truth About You & Me (3 page)

“Okay, guys, before we start let's go over a few ground rules for safety in the lab. Rule number one,” you said with an amused sort of lilt to your voice, “absolutely no food or drink.”

Katie and I shared a look, and she shoved the still-wrapped candy she was clenching in her hand into her backpack.

I used my tongue to push the Starburst to the side of my mouth, and I'm not even sure why because you'd already seen it.

Why did you watch me eat that candy and not stop me, Bennett? Were you letting me get away with it, or were you being playful with me?

“Rule number two: there are no make-up labs. Missed labs are simply going to show up as zeros, and that's going to hurt your grade. If you miss a lecture day, you can read the textbook. If you miss a lab day, you miss the lab. Period.”

You walked around the room, passing out little packets of stapled paper. You wore nice shoes that day: pretty brown leather ones, not quite boots, not quite loafers, but something between. I liked the way those steel-gray slacks brushed the soles.

You dressed so differently than the boys at my high school, boys who wore nothing but ripped jeans and faded T-shirts. You cared about the way you looked, and it showed.

Katie shuffled our packet in front of me, and I trained my eye on the paper as she leaned toward me. “Teachers should not be allowed to look that good,” she said.

I giggled. “
Seriously,
” I whispered.

Y
ou returned to the front of the room, and your shaggy hair slid into your eyes as I looked up at you. “Today's lab is really quite simple, but it will provide you with the tools for future labs. We're working on the basics of any goo
d experiment: maintaining an adequate control group, creating reasonable hypotheses, and so forth. Please read over the material and then get to work. If you have any questions, please do see me, either during the lab today or during my office hours, which are outlined on the class syllabus. Today they're noon to two,” you said.

Katie and I leaned together so closely our heads nearly touched and she read the instructions out loud, quietly. “I can grab the beakers,” I said when she was finished.

“Great. I'll get the food coloring.”

We shoved our chairs back and walked to opposite ends of the room, me to a bay of drawers right next to that closet housing your coat.

In high school, boys wear letterman's jackets, or fleece pullovers, or North Face snow jackets if it's super cold. I wondered, as I fished out a cylinder and two beakers, what your coat looked like.

When I walked back to our table, you were standing there, asking Katie what our hypothesis was. She was stammering something about a rainbow, and when I approached, her eyes looked up at me, pleading.

“We're hypothesizing that each of the colors, combined with water, will boil at the same temperature,” I said, brushing past you to take my seat. It was a silly lab. A high school lab. But it accomplished what you wanted from us.

“Good. Very good,” you said, your eyes meeting mine in a way that made it feel like a spark zipped between us. “I'll leave you to it,” you said, going to the next table.

It went like that for the rest of the morning, with you floating around the room, me always aware of precisely where you stood, who you talked to.

Although Katie didn't know a dang thing about science, she was a good partner. She did exactly what I told her to, and her handwriting was perfect. I trusted her with our log book and I explained the experiment as we went along, and when you caught me talking about the difference between the control group and the experimental group, comparing them to drug trials and sugar pills, you paused, smiling in that special way of yours.

I wish I could see that smile now.

I wonder if you even smile anymore.

Saturday morning, you
changed your routine, and for that reason, our paths crossed.

Do you think it was fate, Bennett? Do you believe in fate?

I do. The same way I believe in soul mates and love at first sight. I don't think you can believe in just one of those things. Seems to me you have to believe in all three.

I was leaning on the trunk of a gnarly, drooping cedar tree, trying to catch my breath. I was only halfway up Mt. Peak. You always called it Pinnacle Peak, remember? Because that's what it's called on the maps. But nobody from Enumclaw calls it that.

To the locals, it's just Mt. Peak. I guess that's a weird name, like a river named water.

In any case, I was looking down at my battered hiking boots, trying to calm my burning lungs, when I heard a dog barking. I glanced up as a gorgeous golden retriever bounded up the trail, his reddish-yellow fur waving in the wind, his long tongue lolling out the side of his mouth.

I'm not afraid of dogs or anything—you know how much I love that dog of yours—but when he jogged right over and put his paws up on my chest, nearly knocking me down, I was less than thrilled.

“No! Down!” you said, and when I glanced up, my heart stopped. Doesn't seem like a heart can beat when it's way down in your knees, anyway.

Your face was flushed and your long-sleeved T-shirt clung to your muscled frame, the faintest outline of sweat shadowing your shoulders. When you looked up and met my eyes, you'd been about to say sorry. But instead you smiled and said, “
Oh,
hey, Madelyn.”

Like we knew each other, like we were friends. You stepped up close to me so you could snap a bright red leash onto your dog's collar as he danced around at my feet. I no longer cared that he'd left two muddy paw prints on my T-shirt, that he was stomping on my feet.

“Hi, Mr. Cartwright,” I said, wondering if my ponytail was jacked up, if my face looked as good as yours when flushed with exertion or if I just looked sweaty and ugly.

“I think we can dispense with the formalities outside of class,” you said, reaching out like we were just meeting for the first time. “It's Bennett.”

You have a nice handshake, you know. A solid, firm grip.

In that moment, an intense desire washed over me. I wanted our hands to be clasped in a different way. I wanted to casually hold yours, our fingers interlaced, and I wanted you to want that too.

That's what I was thinking, anyway. I don't know what you thought as our skin touched, palm to palm. All the time we spent together, all those talks, and I never did ask you how you felt about the first time we'd really touched. Voluntarily, that is. The crash into each other in the lab hardly counted.

Your dog chose that moment to take off, yanking you away from me, and you sort of pulled me with you for a moment before releasing my hand.

That's how we came to be hiking together on that quiet, foggy morning.
They
might think it was something you planned, that you asked to see me outside of class, but it was pure serendipity.

Normally, Mt. Peak is busy, but maybe people didn't want to climb the mountain knowing that the town was shrouded in fog and the view would be obscured. We only passed two hikers that morning, and neither of them paid much attention to us.

I liked that, too. That neither of those hikers thought it was odd that we'd be together.

“So, come here often?” you asked in a cheesy voice, as you cracked a smile.

You have a great sense of humor. Maybe that's past tense. I don't know at this point.

“Yeah. Most Saturdays,” I said. “I like the quiet of it. Before the rest of the world wakes up.”

You looked at me then.
Really
looked. Your blue eyes have this way of seeming kind of intense, you know. Not in class, but when it was just me and you and you let your guard down, let me see who you really are. You're more flippant in public, but that quiet sincerity of yours took over when it was just me and you.

“I know what you mean,” you said. “It's relaxing.”

“Exactly.” We'd been hiking a few minutes, and our breathing had grown labored. We were only halfway up the mountain, but I made up my mind I would keep up with your long strides. You're at least six inches taller than me, so it was no small feat (feet? Ha ha, get it?), but I couldn't stand the idea of falling behind like some silly kid left in the dust. “How about you? You come up here a lot?” I asked.

“I've been hiking it every weekend, but on the other side,” you said, jutting your thumb over your shoulder.

“The road?”

“Yep. I didn't even know there was a trail on this side, until I was standing at the top last week and someone appeared on the opposite side, where the trail emerges.”

“It's prettier,” I said. “I've always preferred this way.”

You nodded. “Yeah. I like this side better.”

You were talking about the trail, but I imagined you meant something about me, too, like you enjoyed hiking together.

“Can I ask you a question?” you said.

“Sure.”

You glanced over at me, still breathing hard. “My class seems easy for you. You were the first one done with that pop quiz. How'd you get to be so smart?”

I smiled and looked down at the trail, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. “I don't know. My dad's a PE teacher at Enumclaw High School. He's really driven, wants me to succeed. He's always been there if I needed help, and I knew what the expectations were. If that makes sense.”

You blinked. “Wow, did that suck? That you went to school with your dad there?”

Two things occurred to me in that moment:

(1) I wanted nothing less than to talk about my father with you.

(2) You'd asked that question in past tense, because you assumed I had graduated. But it
was
past tense, Bennett. It still is. I was never going back to high school because I was in college. Maybe I didn't have a diploma yet—I won't for two more years—but I was in college, and that's what mattered.

That's why, when I answered, you have to know I wasn't lying to you. I know it was still a deception in every way that matters, but I liked the way you were talking to me. Like we were equals, just a boy and a girl on a hike.

They
say we weren't just a boy and a girl but a man and a girl, and so they should know that when I responded, I led you to believe I'd graduated. It was the first of so many half-truths. Just remember, Bennett, that at this point I still never dreamed you'd come to care about me, that we'd really become something. I just wanted someone to talk to me like you did. Someone who didn't see me as the same old bookworm, too studious, the wet-blanket sort of girl, but instead could build a whole new picture of me based on what I told him.

That's what I wanted. To paint my own picture for once, instead of taking over the one my parents had so carefully outlined.

“It was kind of unfortunate,” I said, laughing like it was no big deal. “I'm just glad that part of my life is over.”

“I bet,” you said.

“What's your dog's name?” I asked, desperate to change the subject as I watched him walk right into the trickling creek bordering that part of the trail, his paws squishing in the mud.

“Voldemort,” you said, grinning at me in that special way of yours, the one that was crooked and perfect in the same instant.

I laughed, and you joined in, and the moment held a certain kind of glow.

“He chewed up my favorite pair of shoes the first day I brought him home, so I couldn't help it,” you said. “I usually just call him Mort because, you know, I'm probably too old to have a dog named Voldemort.”

“And how old is that, exactly?” I asked casually. My legs were burning by then, but I couldn't bear the idea that you'd think I was out of shape, unable to keep up.

“Older than you,” you said.

Maybe in that moment you were trying to put that wall up between us, erase the easy camaraderie. Your tone hadn't been sharp, but your meaning was clear.

You were telling me you were too old for
me,
that if I saw you that way, I shouldn't, that I should reel it all back in now, stamp down any childish ideas I had.

But it was too late for that. I'd started falling for you the moment I'd lain eyes on you, even if I didn't know it that day on the mountain.

“Oh come on,” I said, my legs burning with the exertion of our hike. “Give me a hint.”

Your eyes sparkled as you looked over at me, like you were enjoying the easy back-and-forth of our conversation.

“Let's see. I'm told the most popular song the year I was born was ‘La Bamba.'” You reached out and snapped off a twig as we passed a little bush, then you started stripping off the leaves, leaving them behind us like a trail of bread crumbs.

“You really are ancient,” I said. “Isn't that song from, like, the Middle Ages?”

Your laughter was infectious. I hope I haven't taken that from you. I couldn't bear to know you don't laugh like that anymore.