Weird Girl and What's His Name (16 page)

Then there was the night he came over, a complete wreck. He said he'd been fighting with his mother, but there was no way. He fought with Patty all the time; he was used to it. This time, the kid was a mess. Was he on drugs? I didn't ask. He got into bed with me and we held each other for the longest time. It was so perfect, and we didn't even do anything but just lie there together. He was warm and strong and when he fell asleep, he looked so sweet. Like a lion cub. Like a hibernating bear.

But all of that was just the tip of the Weirdness Iceberg, compared with the day we were studying for our Chemistry midterm. All of a sudden, out of the blue, he asked me if I'd consider being a surrogate mother for him. He assured me that we wouldn't actually have to have sex. (Gee, thanks, Rory.) No, I'd just be the carrier for his offspring, which he would raise with his Boyfriend To Be Named Later. I tried to play it off, like I'm totally cool with being asked to bear the non-love-child of my best friend and possibly the love of my life. But what I really felt, for the first time ever with Rory right there beside me, was alone.

Fast-forward to the night I left town. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary that night. I biked over to Rory's to study for Mrs. Lidell's infamously insurmountable midterm exam. The house was dark—his mother was either gone or passed out. But Rory's car sat in the driveway. Hmm, odd. I was parking my bike in the garage when, through the small, grimy back window, something caught my eye. Something moving. Even from far away, I knew what I was looking at. A three hundred-pound kid running across a lawn doesn't really look like anything else.

I stepped out of the garage just in time to see Rory disappear into the woods. I don't know why I didn't call out to him. There was something strange going on here; I felt it. I looked around. Was he running after some animal? No one was following him. Patty the Pickle wasn't chasing after him with a butcher knife. So what's going on?

I hurried to catch up. When I did, I followed at a safe distance. We came to a clearing by the stream that ended up being a backyard. I crouched behind a rhododendron bush and watched Rory walk right up to the house, an A-frame with a kayak tipped on its side on the patio, and a big sliding glass door. Rory knocked on the glass and waited. He knocked again. Maybe he really was doing drugs, and this was his dealer. My heart raced. Maybe that was the reason for all the weirdness, all the excuses. Maybe it was the football team. Maybe he was already high on steroids. Finally I saw a skinny figure on the other side of the glass—it was his boss, Andy. Huh, that's strange. Why wouldn't Rory just drive over to his house? Why cut this crazy path in the dark when we were supposed to be studying, anyw—

Oh.
Oh.
I watched them kissing. I mean really kissing. And then.

So much for that father-figure theory.

Now I knew. This wasn't a phase Rory was going through. He was sure. And it didn't matter what color I dyed my hair. Rory and I had been alone in the dark plenty of times. But we had never done that.

Okay,
I whispered to myself.
Okay.
Now I understood. And understanding felt like an instrument, a vehicle, a machine, some metal bulldozer or something was inside my throat, and then my chest, burrowing a hot hole down to my stomach. Understanding was raking me out, turning me hollow and machinelike. I don't know why I kept standing there, except that I was suddenly too heavy to move. It was as if hot liquid metal had been poured into my newly hollow, understanding self. And I would be stationed there for all eternity, watching the boy I loved love someone else. I wanted him to love me, but it was too late now. There was no “me” anymore, just this statue. This leaded metal thing. Hollowed and bronze. Real feelings bounced right off. I was Han Solo, frozen in carbonite. My mouth twisting out “No, stop” for the rest of my days.

I don't know how I found my way back. It was so dark outside. I ran through the woods, not caring how much noise I made. I got my bike out of Rory's garage. Everything seemed smudged out of focus. Was I crying? It had been forever since I'd cried over anything. I wasn't a crier. Hey, where was I going, anyway? Not home. Not back to Janet and Leo's, to my bedroom without him. Where else could I go? Everything had closed. Jenny Walsh was away at a special school for girls with eating disorders. Maybe her parents would be home.
Hi, I don't know if you remember me, but I used to be friends with your daughter. I know it's been a while and I look different now. It's because I'm a statue.

A car almost hit me twice. I mean, two different cars. Before I finally remembered where to go. By then, I wasn't crying anymore. It was almost like I was outside myself, acting out some script. I couldn't believe the things I was doing, but there I was. Doing them.

“Lula?” Samantha Lidell opened her front door. She was wearing scrub pants, the kind doctors wear, and a faded T-shirt that said P
RETENDERS
E
UROPEAN
T
OUR.
Even her pajamas were cool. “Are you all right?”

I shook my head no, and I was crying again, harder than before. Sam pulled me inside, pulled me into her, hugging me, patting my back, not seeming to care at all that I was getting tears and snot all over her Pretenders T-shirt. I held on to her.

“Hey. Hey, you're okay now,” she whispered. “What's going on? Lula? Are you hurt? What happened?” She pulled back, looking hard at me. She picked a stray leaf out of my hair. “You're a mess.”

“Nothing. I'm fine. I just needed—” I gulped, trying out my voice. Broken, but not bad for a statue. “I needed to see you.”

“Why? What's going on? Is it your grandparents? Did something happen between you and Rory? Kiddo, hey. Tell me what's the matter.”

Where could I start? With Rory and Andy, Rory and me, me and no one, me and my mother, gone, me, alone, just me. Me and her. Mrs. Lidell. Sam.

“Here, sit down.” She led me into the burgundy living room, to a mod-looking Ikea couch. “Chill for a second. Let me get you a glass of water.”

She walked off to the kitchen. I sat there, pulling myself together, surveying the scene. Wow, there were all these guitars. And books, too, but that was less of a surprise. The walls were decorated with movie posters, all the titles in French. The TV was paused on an image of George Clooney making one of his “I'm sexy, yet concerned” faces. A pile of our last in-class essays covered half the coffee table, next to a half-full glass of red wine. I couldn't believe I was here.

“Drink this.” Mrs. Lidell reappeared, handed me a glass of water and a handful of Kleenex. I sipped the water and blew my nose.

“Sorry to interrupt your evening. I was, um. In the neighborhood.”

“Don't worry about it. I was just waiting up for Mark.” She clicked the TV off. Oh yeah. Mark, her husband, was a Doctor Without Borders. She told me about him once, when I asked her about living in Paris. She met him there, when he was on a layover from helping child amputees in war-torn Iraq. They moved back because he was born here, and he'd always dreamed of coming back to help the poor kids of the rural South. In the meantime, she didn't even seem to care that I'd looked up her address and shown up here like a total stalker. In fact, she was sitting next to me, rubbing my back in little circles.

“We can talk about it, if you want to. Or we can not talk about it,” she said.

“I want to,” I said, my voice cracking. “I wish I could tell you . . .”

“Tell me what?”

“Everything.” I looked up at her. I really wanted to tell her everything. I'd already told her a lot. But I wanted to stay right there on her weird pointy sofa and tell her everything in my hollowed-out heart. I wanted to hold on to her and breathe her in and be like her and have her tell me how to do that, how to become some entirely other person, some Not-Lula, someone who had a real life and went to Paris and had mysterious Southern doctors fall in love with her on their way home from Iraq.

But I knew that was impossible. I was stuck in myself. That was always the problem. Even back in Drama Camp. I could memorize the lines, I could put on a costume and some silly wig. But at the end of the day, underneath it all, I was still Lula. The surplus baby. The kid who got left behind. I wanted to ask her if it would always be this way. If I would spend my life waking up disappointed. Never smart enough, never delivering the punch line on time. Was I always going to be Weird Girl? Why is it that I don't feel so weird with you, Sam? Would she tell me that? Would she call me kiddo again? Would she explain to me why Rory would rather make out with his creepy old boss than with me? Would anybody ever hold me the way his creepy boss held him? Would anybody ever want me like that? Would she?

So, I don't know. I kissed her.

I'd only ever been kissed on the mouth once before. Daniel Casey, right after the eighth grade dance. It was gross. He had lips like a snake. This was not like that. This was not like that at all.

“Lula!” She laughed. “What are you doing?”

I opened my eyes. We weren't kissing anymore. Instead, this woman that I adored was, well, recoiled in horror. Looking at me like I was nuts. Worse than nuts. Looking at me like I was the creepy lightning kid in that episode of
The X-Files.
Looking at me like she was Scully and I was the tail-baby guy who shapeshifted into Mulder in order to seduce her. Except I forgot to shapeshift into somebody handsome first. I was just some girl from the back row of Advanced English 11.
Some girl.
Wow, does this mean I'm gay now?

“I'm sorry,” she shook her head, touching the back of her hand to her mouth. Wiping my spit off her lips. “I didn't mean to laugh at you.”

“No, I shouldn't have—”

“Lula—”

“I should go—” I stood up and accidentally knocked the glass of water all over the in-class essays.

“Shit,” Mrs. Lidell swiped the papers out of the way. I righted the glass.

“Here,” I gave her the Kleenex I hadn't used. “I'm sorry—”

“Wait, wait a second.” She slopped the papers down on the far end of the table. I waited. I don't know why.

“Is this why you came here tonight? To put the moves on me?” When she put it like that, it sounded awful.

“No—not exactly. I didn't know where to go. Rory and I were supposed to be studying. But he . . . was with somebody else.”

“Somebody else?”

“He had a date.”

“I see.” Sam sighed, her hands on her hips. “So this is revenge or something?”

“No.” It was weird how calm I felt all of a sudden. I was already getting this feeling. It was kind of like that script feeling I had before. A feeling like I already knew what was coming next.

“I wasn't using you to get back at him, if that's what you mean,” I explained. “I keep thinking about you. I don't know why I like you so much. It's weird. Because I like him, too.”

“Rory?”

I nodded. “I mean, I think I love him. I even slept with him. I mean, we didn't have sex. But we slept in the same bed. I thought, maybe, that was even better somehow. But . . .”

“But he's dating someone else?”

“Dating.” I kind of laughed. “Something like that. Rory is fucking his boss.”

“What?” Now Sam looked really incredulous. “Doesn't he work for Andy Barnett? Andy's Books and Coffee?”

“Yeah. He does.”

“Lula. I know Andy Barnett. He's divorced with two kids; one of them is almost Rory's age.”

“I saw them. I saw them . . .
together.”

“Maybe you misunderstood a friendly gesture—”

“Sure, if you call sticking your hand down somebody's pants a friendly gesture.”

“Lula.”

“You think I'm lying.” I said quietly. It struck me suddenly how quiet the house was. In that quiet moment, I wanted to memorize every detail I could about Sam Lidell. The way she stood, with one hand on the curve of her hip. Her dark hair curling behind her ears. Her almost Scully-esque look of skepticism. I wanted to file it all away for later. I was overwhelmed by this certain feeling that I was never going to see her again.

“Actually, I don't,” she said. “I don't think you're lying. That's the problem.” She rubbed her forehead, closing her eyes. “Jesus, kiddo. You're kinda blowing my mind, here.” She laughed softly. “I should call Rory's mother.”

“Good luck. Maybe if she sobers up, she'll remember she even has a son.”

“Then I'll call Andy Barnett. This isn't right. Rory's underage.”

“So am I,” I said for no good reason. I looked up at her.

“Oh, Lula, don't. Please don't do this.”

“Don't do what?”

“Fall in love with me.”

The dark corners of her living room felt like they were squeezing in on me. I wished I could be swallowed into the Persian rug, into the hardwood floor. It occurred to me that I still had to take her midterm. I had to sit there in class with her in front of me and Rory beside me and pretend I'd never kissed her and I'd never seen him kissing Andy Barnett and lying about it. Pretend I still believed him. Pretend I still looked at her and felt . . . what did I feel? I didn't even recognize myself anymore. I didn't recognize any of us. Rory and I weren't the people I thought we were. We weren't Mulder and Scully, bonded in trust, telling each other everything. And Sam and I weren't—well, we weren't anything. Not even friends.

“What if we just pretend this whole night never happened?” I asked. “What if I agree to, like . . . evaporate?” I wished I really could. Just vanish into a puddle of goo, like one of those shapeshifting aliens. Those damn shapeshifters again. Lucky jerks.

“That's not what I mean,” she insisted. “Don't be melodramatic. It's just that—Lula, I'm straight. I'm married. And, above all, you're my student. My seventeen-year-old student. What did you expect?”