When the World was Flat (and we were in love) (4 page)

But while Sylv had been on my case about the photos, in the two weeks since school started there had been no close encounters of any kind between me and Tom. World History was the one class we had together, but he sat up front with Melissa. He had French with Sylv, but she said he sat on his own and had spoken once in his first week when the teacher called on him to answer a question.

“He got it wrong.”

“He seems smart in physics,” Jo offered.

His background had remained the subject of speculation and walking down the corridors was like downloading a podcast that broadcast news about him 24/7. Names of English boarding schools were thrown around like confetti and rumors ran rampant of someone knowing someone, who knew someone else, who may or may not have bumped into him pre-Green Grove.

There was a lot of giggling and fluttering of eyelashes from the freshman and sophomore girls whenever he was within a mile radius. A few of the senior girls had plucked up the courage to ask him out, but were turned down. I heard a few college girls had as well. But we juniors knew that Melissa had dibs on Tom. She hung onto his arm like a leech with a fake tan.

He sat with her at lunch on her table near the noticeboard, but while others would have kissed the bottom of their this-season pumps to sit with Melissa and the Mutts, Tom continued to look bored by them, and by Green Grove in general. He seemed to spend a lot of time staring at his lunch tray or at the ground. I heard a rumor he had not spoken more than a few words to Melissa.

I tried not to look at him, because when I did I remembered my dream and my hand went to my stomach. But it was like trying not to look at a brilliantly cut diamond.

I know what it sounds like: like Sylv had been pushed down my to-do list because I was otherwise occupied with Tom. But you can blame the man in the balaclava. I was jumping at shadows, as if my killer was going to pop out from behind the vault horse in the gymnasium or climb out from under a table in the cafeteria. A few of my dreams had been set in the darkroom too, which had turned this former heaven into a kind of hell and made me avoid it.

Deb had come within an inch of a black eye when she had woken me at the crack of dawn on Sunday. I had decided not to apologize when I heard her reason.

“OK! OK!” she had yelped, rubbing her jaw where my swing had connected. “Fawn and I will watch the sunrise on our own then.”

It made me wonder if my mother knew me at all. I mean, in what universe would I want to sit on the damp lawn in my pajamas and watch the sunrise with a guy who plays the pan pipe?

 

The next day I decided to bite the bullet and develop the film for Sylv. I walked down to the art block, which was buried at the back of the school, about a hundred yards from the main building.

“Like a fish in a barrel,” I whispered, closing the door on the outside world.

I told myself I was being silly as I placed the film into the developer, but my heart continued to thud as I rocked the tray, letting the soup slosh across the negatives. I tried not to think about how much the liquid looked like blood under the red light.

 

My silliness increased tenfold when I came back at lunch to do the prints. As I focused on the negative, I thought I could hear breathing other than my own. I froze, as rigid as an ice sculpture, and the sound stopped.

My ears were like antennae searching for a signal. I could hear a faucet dripping in the basin behind me and the light above my head hummed like an old refrigerator. I let out my own breath with a sudden whoosh, before returning to my print. Of course, that was when the sound started again.

It was about five or six minutes later, after I had checked under the tables and in the cupboard, that I put two and two together and realized the noise was the sound of the bellows on the antique enlarger as I turned the focus knob.

I switched to the second enlarger, in case the first was leaking light.

By the end of lunch, Sylv was hanging from every peg in the room and I could see her cleavage from every angle. I came back before sixth period and took down a few that had dried to show the girls.

I was running about five minutes late to class thanks to Sylv and her goal to be the next Gisele Bündchen, so I took a shortcut across the quad, which backed onto the cafeteria. It was littered with the remnants of lunch: wrappers, soda cans and half-eaten apples. A potato-chip bag blew across the concrete like a tumbleweed.

I pulled out my camera and connected the macro lens, deciding Mrs Baker and her moustache could wait a few more minutes in the name of photography.

I was crouching down, snapping some shots of a carpenter ant carrying a crumb and whispering to him, “Go right. No. Right. Fine. Left,” when a shadow made me jump out of my skin. The photos tucked under my arm dropped to the ground, fanning out on the concrete.

It was Tom.

I would have hit him over the head with my camera for giving me a cardiac arrest, but he was crouching down to pick up my photos.

“You should get your hand-eye coordination checked,” he said, as he straightened up.

“Excuse me?”

His accent was British, no doubt about it, with a hint of South African or maybe Australian. It was like hearing my favorite song on the radio, but again there were no memories to explain when, where, why and how I knew Tom.

“You took these?” he asked, flicking through the photos as if they were part of a public portfolio instead of my personal property. He paused on a photo I had taken of the lime-green cushion in my bedroom and made a “huh” sound, as if he had spotted a long lost friend in the frame. Maybe I was reading too much into it, but I watched as he traced the cushion with his finger as if reminding himself of its pattern. He finally shook his head and then flicked to the next photo, which was of Sylv.

“There you are Tom!” a voice called out. Melissa. Great. “I thought you were going to make me sit alone in pre-calc,” she huffed. I know. Like Melissa would sit on her own when she had ninety-nine point nine per cent of the student body at her beck and call.

I smiled smugly, as Tom looked at Melissa like she was bubblegum on the bottom of his shoe.

He handed back the photos and, maybe it was all in my head, but he seemed to linger when our fingers touched. “Good, but over-exposed.”

“The photos or Sylv?” I joked automatically.

“Both.”

My smile was ironed out by his response, but then I saw the corners of his lips curve upwards. The transformation to his features was like throwing gasoline onto a bonfire, and I stood and stared until he allowed Melissa to pull him across the quad and through the doors of the cafeteria, like a parent being pulled into a toy store. He threw me one last look over his shoulder as he went and it could not have been further from his dead-behind-the-eyes look. I suddenly wondered whether our connection was one-sided after all.

 

“He liked the photos though, right?” Jo asked later when I recounted his words at the Duck-In Diner. “He said they were good.”

“Damn straight,” Sylv said loudly. She was showing off, seeking the attention of a booth of college guys. They were ogling her thighs, which were bare under another micro miniskirt, which she continued to wear day in and day out, even though it was now fall.

“He also said they were over-exposed,” I pointed out, still stinging about my over-the-top reaction to his smile and final look. I would not even rate a passing thought with Tom. Meanwhile, I was dreaming about having his baby. It was ridiculous. I was ridiculous. “I mean, who the hell does he think he is? Helmut Newton?” I continued.

“Helmut!” Sylv exclaimed, and slapped her thigh as she laughed. I heard the college guys guffaw, like it had been for their benefit. It had been, of course.

“I think you like him,” Jo said with a smirk.

“Who?”

“Tom. Who else?”

I flushed. “No way.”

“Yes way,” Jo teased. “You love him.”

“I hate him.”

“How can you hate him? You've spoken to him once.”

“Twice,” I corrected. “But he was too rude to respond the first time.”

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks,” Sylv crowed.

We stared at her.

“What?”

“You just quoted Shakespeare,” Jo said.

“So?”

“So, those flashcards we made you are working.”

Jo and I had quizzed Sylv for two and a half hours at the weekend, because Mrs Baker was planning a pop quiz about Shakespearean lovers on Wednesday.

“Was Juliet the sun or the moon?”

“Who said, ‘The course of true love never runs smooth?'”

“Does love look with the eyes or the mind?”

Yadda. Yadda. Yadda.

“If you paid attention to Mrs Baker like you do Paul Gosling and Simon Caster we could be at the movies,” I had complained as we studied.

Instead, Sylv had spent the past two weeks flirting like a dime-store hooker with that pair of acne-covered sleazeballs. She played it up because Taylor “Greaseball” Blackwood sat next to them, not that he ever looked up from scribbling on his desk with a sharpie.

But Sylv was giving it away for free at the Duck-In Diner this afternoon, making rude gestures involving her tongue. The college guys returned the signals threefold.

Sylv withdrew her consent when the sexual sign language got too hot and heavy. “Home time,” she declared, standing up from the booth.

“Hey! Where are you going?” the college guys called out.

Sylv ignored them.

“I said, ‘Where are you going?'”

“You mean you ‘asked' where are you going,” Jo threw over her shoulder as we walked through the doors, leaving them scratching their heads. She was a stickler when it came to grammar. Sylv said it was because she was in love with Mr Bailey, not with the language, but I think it was because she had her head stuck in a book all the time. She literally corrected the text as she went with a red pen, even library books. She had been banned from Green Grove Public Library for editing
War and Peace
.

Jo and I split from Sylv at the end of the block as usual, but as we walked down the street I felt the hairs on the back of my neck rise, as if we were being watched. My mind went to the man in the balaclava.

I looked around and saw a man hosing his dead lawn a couple of houses back – nope, not him – and a woman pushing a pram towards Main Street – nuh-uh. A green car with a dent in its fender drove by, its engine groaning like a wounded beast. It was followed by a sleek black SUV that looked like it cost ten times the average wage in Green Grove.

“What a jerk,” Jo commented. “That has to be Mr Hodges.”

I wrinkled my nose as I watched the Mercedes-Benz disappear around the corner, taking with it the adrenaline that had coursed through my body at the thought of the man in the balaclava. “An out-of-towner, I would say.”

“Speaking of out-of-towners. Tell me how you hate Tom again.”

I snorted. “You mean speaking of jerks.”

Jo guffawed. “Told you so.”

“What?”

“You like him. You want to have his babies.” She put her fingers in her ears and sang, “Lillie and Tom, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” childishly until we reached my front gate. “See you tomorrow,” she called out, before walking down the street with her ears still blocked.

I shook my head. Of course I thought Tom was good-looking. To say otherwise would be like saying summer in Green Grove was cold or Sylv was frigid, but I also thought he was an ass.

And I would have to be an ass to like him, I thought, thinking of those intense blue irises. The blood began to throb in my ears, as I remembered my dream where I was pregnant with his baby. Thud. Thud. Thud. Ass. Ass. Ass.

 

5

 

I was on the path that led to the courtyard. My clothes were damp with sweat and I knew without looking that you-know-who was hot on my heels.

I sped up, navigating the uneven flagstones in the dimming daylight until I suddenly tripped and fell forward. I heard a crunch as my cheek struck a rock.

The cold was like a wall of water and I woke in my bed, gasping for breath. I sat up and put a hand to my cheek, expecting to find a broken cheekbone. I was relieved when I realized it had been another dream, but then my tongue touched a chipped tooth.

I rolled out of bed and turned on my bedroom light. I lifted up my lip and surveyed my molars in the mirror. It was a small chip, but it was a chip nonetheless.

I dropped my lip and stared at myself in the mirror, realizing I had finally crossed the line between dreams and reality.

 

I thought about my chipped tooth all morning, touching it with my finger or tongue and checking it in the bathroom mirror. It was at the forefront of my mind until I saw Tom at his locker after third period, and then my mind was filled with thoughts about him instead.

He was wearing another pair of torn designer jeans, which I guessed were worth upwards of a few hundred bucks.

“And I get sent home for having my skirt too short,” Sylv complained, suddenly a cheerleader for the dress code and its clause on torn jeans.

“You could see your underwear,” Jo pointed out.

“Turnip should have been thankful I was wearing underwear at all.”

We laughed and Tom turned. I stopped laughing when he said my name.

“Lillie.”

I was surprised he knew it, but at the same time it was as if the word had passed his lips a thousand times, his rounded accent rolling over the syllables with an ease that comes with familiarity. He was hardly at ease though, as he looked at the girls.

“See you at lunch,” Jo said meaningfully, before dragging Sylv off stage left.

I turned to my locker, busying myself with the combination. I could feel his eyes on me and I let my hair fall forward like a curtain to hide my flushed face. It seemed like an hour before I found my textbook. Luckily, my tampons were safe and sound in their new hiding place on the top shelf. There would be no earplug jokes today, thank you. In fact, the comedy routine had also been shelved.