We Are the Goldens (8 page)

“Because she has a huge butt?”

“That, and because it would be inappropriate.”

“Okay, just to play devil’s advocate … what if there was, like, an exhibit at the Academy of Sciences about chemistry and she asked you if you wanted to go see it because you’re her star chemistry student?”

“First of all, I’m terrible at chemistry. Second of all, it would be weird if she just asked me to go and not the rest of my class. And third of all, why does the devil always need an advocate? Don’t you think he can argue things for himself?”

Weird
. That’s the word I’d used too.
Weird
that you were the only student who went with Mr. Barr to the Impressionist show at the de Young.

My phone buzzed.

Fine
.

I know texting is limited in what you’re able to communicate, but I found this response baffling. Did you not know people were talking? Did you know and not care? Had you managed to shut it down by offering an alibi? And why on earth were you smiling?

I showed Felix my phone.

“See?” he said. “Everything is fine. She’s smiling. Crisis averted.”

I took a sip of my latte, now cold. “So tell me about your weekend. How was the baseball game?”

“We left after the sixth inning.”

“A blowout?”

“No, my dad got tired. He gets tired a lot. I, on the other hand, have boundless energy. I stayed up until three in the morning. Look.” He pulled his sketchbook out and opened it up to a beautiful, intricate ink drawing of a girl. Hazel Porter. “What do you think?”

“Another buffalo?”

“Bite your tongue!”

“It’s awesome, Felix.”

“What’ll she think?”

“That you’re a major talent. And a total creeper.”

He laughed. “Chicks dig this shit. Remember Bethany?”

“You went out with her for like five minutes in eighth grade.”

“Yes, but I believe she still has the drawing I did of her hanging in her room. This is why there are always rumors about Mr. B.: we artists have a way with the ladies.”

I got home before you. On days we don’t have soccer practice you sometimes stay and work in the library or go out with friends, and nobody asks about it unless you’re a no-show at the dinner hour, which at Mom’s is seven o’clock.

When I came home at five-thirty, the house was empty and Mom had left some twenties and a note:
Order dinner. Choose wisely. I’ll be home by 7 to eat my fair share
.

I flipped through our folder of takeout menus. I was sick of every one of the restaurants, so I went through the pantry and the fridge and I managed to put together a halfway decent lentil stew. I poached an egg for the top because I believe an egg on top of anything makes it better.

You beat Mom home by only a few minutes.

“OhmygodLaylawhatsgoingon?”

You hadn’t even put down your book bag.

“Whoa,” you said. “Chill.”

“Seriously, Layla. What the frack?”

“Are you talking about how Mr. B. and I rented the presidential suite at the W Hotel and went at it all weekend long like a couple of rabbits?”

“Something like that.”

“Everyone at school must be seriously bored.”

“How can you stay so calm?”

“Because I don’t give a crap.”

People usually say they don’t give a crap when they mean
the opposite. I looked for your signs—a flushed neck, a clenched jaw, an inability to sit still. Nothing. You really didn’t care.

You grabbed the lemonade, took a big swig right out of the carton, and watched as I put the finishing touches on my stew.

“So you weren’t downtown with Mr. Barr?”

I practiced this three times in my head before I said it, trying to rid it of any trace of judgment.

You sighed. “No, Nell. I wasn’t downtown
with
Mr. Barr.”

I tried to ignore your tone and let the relief wash over me. But … there was something about the way you’d said
with
.

I wanted to, I really, really wanted to, but I just couldn’t let it go.

“So you weren’t downtown?”

“No, actually, I
was
downtown.”

“Was Mr. Barr downtown?”

“Yes, he was. And I ran into him. I’d gone to SFMOMA to look at the Rothko for my essay that was due today. He was at SFMOMA too, no great surprise considering he’s an art teacher. We ran into each other. Chatted on the sidewalk. Big deal. Why are you interrogating me? Maybe you should join Sonia’s law firm.”

“I’m just trying to figure out how the rumor started.”

“Who cares?”

“I do. Why don’t you?”

“Guess what, Nell? This has absolutely nothing to do with you, so why don’t you just back off.”

The floor beneath us rumbled with the sound of Mom opening the automatic garage door.

You looked at me. Pleading. “Will you please shut up about this around Mom? We do not need to make this the topic of tonight’s dinner conversation.”

“God, Layla. I wouldn’t say anything to Mom.”

Of course I wouldn’t say anything to Mom. You know how I hate when things get tense with the two of you. Like when she wouldn’t let you go to that boy/girl sleepover party in Sonoma at the end of eighth grade and you muttered
bitch
under your breath, and she totally freaked and I swore to her that she was hearing things. I try to ease friction. That’s my job.

“Okay, then don’t.”

Over dinner Mom asked you to tell her more about your weekend and you told her it was relaxing and a little too quiet. You never once made eye contact with me. We talked about Mom’s new project at work, how the play was coming along, the soccer team.

I knocked on your door after helping Mom with the dishes, but you were at your desk with your headphones on, and you waved me away.

I went to my room and called Felix and told him that you ran into Mr. B. and that was it. A chance meeting on the street.

“So can you, like, set the record straight?”

“I’ll do my best,” he said, “but I don’t know why anyone would bother listening to me.”

“Because you’re persuasive. You’re smarter than the devil. You don’t need an advocate.”

“Well, when you put it that way.”

“And, Felix?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t give that picture to Hazel Porter. It’s too much.”

“Don’t worry. I wasn’t going to show it to anybody but you.”

Sam Fitzpayne noticed that I’d missed play practice.

Till that point I hadn’t even been sure Sam knew my first name.

“Hey, Nell,” he said when I walked into Friday’s rehearsal. “Where you been?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry. Some stuff came up.”

He stepped closer. “Everything okay with you?”

I could have died right then and there. The way he looked at me, I almost wished I’d had some grave illness or tragedy, anything to draw him nearer, to bring out more of that … what was it? Sam-ness? It was empathy, I guess, and if empathy means feeling what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes, then I wondered if Sam could feel how fast my heart was beating.

“Yeah, I’m okay. It’s just been a crappy week.”

“Come here,” he said, and he led me over to an aisle seat in the auditorium. He sat in the seat behind me. This I didn’t understand until I felt his hands on my shoulders. He started to squeeze.

He leaned forward and whispered in my ear, “How does that feel?”

How did he think it felt? As Shakespeare might put it:
so hallowed and so gracious … and so totally awesome
.

“Nice.” I closed my eyes. He dug his thumbs into the space between my shoulder blades and then marched them up the back of my neck to the base of my scalp.

“Hamlet! Ophelia!” Ms. Eisenstein bellowed. “Front and center.”

“Gotta go.” He jumped up and ran to the stage. Felix slid into the seat next to me.

“Holy shiteth!” he mumbled. “Thou hast been fondled most foully by his cunning mitts.”

“Shut up,” I said. “You’re kinda ruining the moment.”

I sat still, trying to make my skin remember Sam’s fingers.

“I’d give you a high five or something,” Felix whispered, “but that might look a bit obvious.”

“Ya think?”

“Nell. Take it from a guy. We don’t touch girls like that unless we want to touch them in other places too.”

I swatted him on the leg. “Don’t be gross.”

“Desire isn’t gross, my friend, it’s beautiful.”

“What greeting card did you get that from?”

He laughed and gave me a congratulatory punch on the arm. We sat and watched Ms. Eisenstein directing Sam and Isabella. I thought about Sam touching me in other places. It thrilled and terrified me.

You know that I haven’t had a ton of experience with fooling around or sex. I’m okay with that, I really am, because I feel like it’s been my choice. I know you’ve had more experience, and boyfriends, and I probably could have had
more experience too if I’d wanted, but I’d chosen to, you know, keep it pretty clean for the most part. Maybe if I hadn’t had Felix around I’d have had a boyfriend in middle school. Other girls did, but from what I could tell it just meant they texted all the time and wrote each other declarations of love on Facebook and sometimes fooled around and then whispered about it later like they were embarrassed. I was pretty sure I got more out of my friendship with Felix than they got out of those boys they’d roped into their romantic plotlines.

Since there’s no point in not being totally honest with you, I have to tell you something. Remember when I went to that party last summer with Hannah, that girl from camp? I see her sometimes, mostly in the summer, and I’m happy to hang out with her, but when long stretches of time go by when I don’t see her, it’s fine in a way it would never be with Felix. Anyway, I went to spend the night at Hannah’s and we went to a party with her older sister, who is nothing like you. She’s mean and she barely tolerates Hannah, although she did let us tag along with her, which I guess was pretty cool.

I met a guy there who was in town visiting his cousin. He’d tagged along to the party too. Anyway, before I knew it, we were out on an upstairs porch, in side-by-side reclining chairs, totally making out. His name was Kevin. He was cute and he smelled nice and we kissed for what seemed like forever.

You’re probably wondering why I’m telling you all this when I already told you on the Sunday morning I came back
from Hannah’s. Why am I telling you something you already know?

Because here’s what really happened. Here’s what I didn’t tell you:

Kevin and I squeezed onto one of those two reclining chairs and we kissed and our hands wandered and snaps and buttons and zippers were undone all over the place and we didn’t keep it clean, far from it, and I guess I was sort of embarrassed by the whole thing. I’m not totally sure why. Maybe because we didn’t even say good-bye to each other that night. Maybe because I had absolutely no idea what I was doing and I left with the feeling that I’d let him down. That there were things I should have done that I didn’t. Or that I should have done what I did do better.

I just felt so confused and, honestly, a little sickened by the whole thing. That evening when I’d gotten ready in Hannah’s bedroom I had no idea that by the end of the night I’d be readjusting most of my clothing, packaging myself up again to look like my life hadn’t taken this unexpected detour.

I told Hannah, who’d spent most of the party looking for me, exactly what I told you. I told her that we kissed and that it was nice, that he was sweet, because that was the version of events I wanted to believe, that I wanted to remember, and it’s funny because it pretty much worked out that way until right about now.

Listen: we didn’t have actual sex. I was nowhere near ready for that, certainly not with someone’s random cousin, and he didn’t try or anything, but still, lines were crossed,
and anyway, if I had had sex, I totally would have told you even if I’d been super embarrassed, because I could never imagine something so major happening in my life without telling you about it.

Can you say the same thing? Can you imagine something major in your life, a rite of passage, a game changer—can you imagine something happening that’s bigger than big and
not
telling me about it?

Can you?

I think you can.

Actually, Layla, I know you can.

LET IT BE KNOWN TO
the world that a small miracle occurred on Saturday, the twelfth of November.

I, N. Golden, professional benchwarmer and freshman mascot, played in eight whole minutes of our semifinal game against Brick-Moreland.

When Coach Jarvis shouted at me to take the field, I sat there, stunned, convinced she was mistaking me for you. Even though she told me to go in and replace you, I thought there must be some mistake.

“Move it, N. Golden. Now.”

I jumped up and pulled off my sweats and my beanie. It was freezing and the fog was thick as cotton and my legs felt slow and stiff and I shouted, “Layla!” across the field and you looked up and saw me running toward you, and you could have been angry—this was the semifinals—but you grinned
and you ran toward me and you gave me a squeeze and said, “Make me proud,” and you took my seat on the bench.