Where the Staircase Ends (8 page)

“I know, right? And speaking of, it’s almost time for pervy Mr. Thomas to come back outside.” She scooped up more water and splashed some under each armpit. “You usually sweat more than I do, so make sure your shirt is wetter than mine. I don’t want the perv to get suspicious.”

We started a slow jog around the track right as Mr. Thomas came out and blew his whistle, motioning for us to come back inside.

“It’s hot out here today, huh?” he said, eyeing our faux-sweat-covered T-shirts. Sunny made a gagging face when his eyes lingered on my chest a few seconds longer than they should have, and I bit my lip to keep from laughing.

“Yes, Mr. Thomas,” I said in a saccharin voice. “That run really kicked my butt.”

“Well maybe next time you two chatterboxes will hold the conversation until after class so you don’t get stuck running laps all period,” he offered, giving us both a smug, self-satisfied glare. We fell in step behind him so he couldn’t see our faces, which were red from trying not to laugh.

Sunny slung her arm over my shoulder as we walked inside the gym.

“Love you, bitch,” she said, knocking her hip against mine. I gave her a tight smile, trying not to think about her earlier confession and the pile of rocks it left in my stomach.

“Love you back.” I shrugged off her arm so I could pick at my nail polish and avoid eye contact.

“Obviously.” She laughed. “But not as much as pervy Mr. Thomas loves staring at your boobs.”

THE INTERPOSING FLY

I heard a Fly buzz (No. 465)

By Emily Dickinson

I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –

The Stillness in the Room

Was like the Stillness in the Air –

Between the Heaves of Storm –

The Eyes around – had wrung them dry –

And Breaths were gathering firm

For that last Onset – when the King

Be witnessed – in the Room –

I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away

What portions of me be

Assignable – and then it was

There interposed a Fly –

With Blue – uncertain stumbling Buzz –

Between the light – and me –

And then the Windows failed – and then

I could not see to see –

That’s the poem I had to analyze in honors English. Right there in front of the entire class, with Justin Cobb and everyone watching me. I hated poetry with a passion. I got that it was supposed to be deep and meaningful, but I never could understand it, and the fly poem was no exception. Don’t get me wrong—I tried. I had to. That was the whole assignment. We were assigned a poem, and we had to explain to the class what we thought it meant. Everyone got the chance to ask questions and come up with their own interpretations if they disagreed. It was supposed to be this big thought-provoking project, but really it was a huge, nerve-wracking pain in my ass.

My hands were shaking when Mrs. Johnson finished reading the poem to the class and called on me for my analysis. Eyes followed me as I made my way to the front of the room, and I imagined them picking me apart the way my mother always did.

Don’t slouch like that, Taylor, or you’ll end up hunched over like your grandmother.

Stop mumbling, Taylor. You sound like you have a speech impediment.

Don’t frown like that, Taylor. It makes you look ugly.

I cleared my throat. “Maybe she’s dying emotionally,” I said, the words shaking on their way out of my mouth. I heard a chuckle from the front row and fought to keep my eyes away from Brandon Blakes, who was the most likely source of the laughter. Instead, I stared at the place where the wall met the ceiling. “Like maybe this big thing happened—maybe her boyfriend broke up with her and she’s really upset about it—and she’s thinking about him and this big life-changing thing that happened to her when a fly buzzes in and interrupts her thoughts.”

I fought to say it confidently so people wouldn’t know how nervous I was, and tried to think of my father’s advice for overcoming my fear—picture everyone naked. The only problem was that Justin was one of the people I had to picture naked, and that was almost as terrifying as everyone watching me. I was glad I had the foresight to wear a black shirt that day so people couldn’t see my pit stains.

“Interesting. Tell us more about that, Taylor,” said Mrs. Johnson. Her glasses slipped down slightly on her nose, making it look like she was actually interested in what I had to say.

I cleared my throat again, trying to dislodge my tongue from the roof of my mouth. Most of all I tried to keep my eyes away from Justin’s face, because if I looked at him, what little resolve I had left would slip through the cracks.

“The fly is like this normal everyday thing, and it’s juxtaposed by this big event.” I said, moistening my lips. “She’s commenting on how during the most dramatic personal events, when it feels like you’re going to die because it’s such a major deal, the world around you has to, like, keep going. And normal everyday things like flies just go on about their business because life has to, you know, go on.”

I shouldn’t have been surprised when Brandon Blakes started chargrilling me when it came time for questions. The guy loved to hear the sound of his own voice and was gunning for valedictorian, so he would say or do just about anything to get a few extra participation points in class.

“So let me get this straight,” he started, not even trying to hide his sarcastic tone. “You think
Emily Dickinson
wrote a poem about her boyfriend
dumping
her?” His forehead looked like it might fold in on itself from frowning when he said the word “dumping
.
”
You would’ve thought I’d dropped the f-bomb or told Mrs. Johnson to sit on her thumb and spin.

“Well maybe not her boyfriend. But something big and emotional happened, and there’s this fly—”

He held up his hand like he was a crossing guard and I was some unruly child who’d tried to run across the street into oncoming traffic. “You said she was ‘dying emotionally’ because her boyfriend broke up with her.”

Of course he had to go and use air quotes when he said “dying emotionally.”

“I said
maybe
she’s dying emotionally—”

He held up his traffic-cop hand again and opened his mouth to say something else, but Justin cut him off before he could start squawking.

“Actually, I found your analysis to be pretty spot-on.” Justin laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back in his chair, like he was relaxing beside a pool rather than saving my ass from Brandon’s onslaught. “Technically I think she’s supposed to be physically dying in the poem, but I think it has more application like you said. I think it can pertain to any big event that happens in life—a break-up as well as a physical death. And I think you’re completely right about her juxtaposing an everyday housefly with a major event like death. It’s absurd really, that someone is on their death bed about to take their last breath and something as common as a housefly interrupts. It’s a pairing of the momentous and the mundane.” He paused and gave me a little wink, and if I wasn’t already completely in love with him then I totally fell in that moment, with that wink.

For good measure, he added, “It’s like that John Lennon phrase, ‘life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.
’
She’s making plans to die—be it physically or emotionally—and life just happens. This fly just happens. Like you said, life goes on regardless of the big stuff that happens to us personally.”

Like I said, he was
smart
smart. Not to mention a knight in shining armor. He articulated it way better than I did, and he saved me. Right there in front of douche-kabob Brandon, who hated being shown up in class. But of course the difference between people like Brandon and people like Justin was that the Brandons of the world had to work hard to outshine other people while Justin just
did
it. It’s like he couldn’t help it.

Justin gave me another wink (and I said a silent prayer for the black shirt again because I was definitely sweating), and then he gave Brandon the best go-to-hell look I’ve ever seen. Man, I wished I had a picture of Brandon’s expression. His face was scrunched up so tightly it looked like he’d eaten a raw lemon, and his fingers gripped the desk with so much force that he would have cracked the plastic molding if it weren’t for the fact that he had the upper body strength of a six-year-old girl.

Mrs. Johnson was pretty impressed with Justin’s delivery. She turned to me and said, “Great job, Taylor. Very thoughtful analysis.” I had to wonder if she would have felt the same way if Justin hadn’t stood up for me.

I slid back into my desk, relief flooding over me now that my afternoon of public humiliation was finally over. My hands were still shaking, so I slid them under my desk before anyone could see and shot one tiny sideways glance in Justin’s direction.

He was staring at me again.

It was moments like those, when Justin’s eyes burned into me like he was searching for something, that I wished I could be more like Sunny. She would have held his gaze. She would have offered him one of her seductive smiles. She wouldn’t have looked away or blushed the way I did.

But Sunny wasn’t the one he was staring at. I was.

When the bell rang, I gathered my books slowly, trying to draw out my proximity to Justin as long as I could.

“Hey,” he said, reaching down next to my desk to pick up a pen I’d dropped on the floor.

“Hey,” I said, letting a small grin escape despite my best effort to hide it.

“I hope you didn’t mind me chiming in on your analysis. I just didn’t want Brandon to rip into you.”

He sat down on the desk next to mine and ran a hand through his hair, his mouth doing the half-smile thing it always did so I couldn’t tell if he was really smiling or just looking at me.

“No, it was great. You saved me. Thank you.”

“You didn’t really need saving,” he said, and this time I was sure he was smiling at me. “You were doing fine.”

“How are you so good at this stuff?” I asked, wrinkling my nose at him. “Do you secretly study a lot, or do the answers just come to you?”

He laughed really hard, like I said something extremely funny, only I was serious. I wanted to know the answer. He shrugged, shaking his head at me with a smirk. Whatever the secret to his genius was, he wasn’t going to share it with me.

“Hey, listen,” he said. “Would you want to hang out sometime? Outside of school?”

I was so surprised by the question that I needed time to process. My brain wasn’t registering the words coming out of his mouth because it sounded like he was asking me out. It sounded like he
finally
asked me to do something with him other than talk about school and the music I pretended to like for him.

I blinked at him several times, not sure whether I should laugh, cry, or yell at him for waiting so long to ask me. He must have known he knocked the wind out of me because he smiled and took his time responding to my dumbfounded look, like he wanted to make sure I didn’t faint before he spoke again.

“Are you going out to The Fields this weekend?” he finally asked. “Maybe we could meet up there.”

The Fields were exactly as the name suggested: a bunch of empty fields. During the day, the area was under development for a new housing complex, but at night the whole place was deserted with the exception of a few half-finished houses peppered around the newly paved streets. It was the perfect place for parties—plenty of space to hide empty keg shells and far from the watchful eyes of parents.

“That would be cool,” I said, trying to act like it wasn’t a big deal. “I think Sunny said something about going out there on Saturday night.”

He nodded and stood, motioning with his head for me to walk with him. We walked out of the classroom with our shoulders almost touching, Justin looking like everything was the way it always was, and me with a grin the size of Texas stretched across my face.

“So then I’ll meet you there Saturday.” He waved before turning toward his next class, which unfortunately was not with me.

“Yeah, Saturday,” I said, but I was pretty sure he didn’t hear me because I’d barely whispered it. I could barely breathe, let alone speak.

“What’s Saturday?” asked Logan, sliding up beside me like a stealth bomber. “And why are you meeting Justin there?”

My mouth went completely dry. My lips stuck to my teeth, and my throat filled with a fist full of cotton balls as I weighed the pros and cons of telling Logan the truth. He narrowed his eyes in the direction Justin had walked and mumbled something under his breath. He never explicitly said anything to me, but I wondered if deep down he knew about Justin, or at least suspected more was going on between us. There was something about the way his eyes always landed on Justin when they would pass each other in the hallways, like he wanted to shove him into a wall.

“The Fields. A bunch of people are going out there on Saturday. He wanted to know if I was going.” I tried to sound nonchalant. Logan frowned.

“Well, are you?”

“Am I what?” I shifted my bag to the other shoulder so I wouldn’t have to stand so close to him. I tried to make it sound like I’d already forgotten about The Fields, like they were the most boring thing on the planet and I could give a rat’s ass about them.

He rolled his eyes and exhaled hard, not buying my innocent act one bit. “Are you going to The Fields on Saturday?” he asked again, this time saying his words all slow and robotic, the way my mom did when she spoke to our Ukrainian cleaning lady.

I shrugged and stopped in front of my classroom, peering in the doorway to see if Sunny was already there. It was one of two classes we had together, and any other day I would’ve been excited to see her and start our normal note-passing session, but I didn’t want her to know about Justin and The Fields, and I certainly didn’t want her to overhear Logan grilling me like a cheese sandwich about it. She would immediately know something was up, and I’d be forced to listen to her stupid cake analogy again. I really wasn’t in the mood.