You, Maybe (2 page)

Three

AFTER SIXTH, HE
was at my locker. He asked where I wanted to go. I suggested my house, and he said okay. My parents are never home. I showed him around the main floor and then in my living room we started kissing.

He was gentle and tentative at first. We were standing near the TV. He is much taller than I am so he had to lean way down and I had to stretch. After a minute, I pulled away and asked if he wanted to sit down on the couch. He nodded. We sat next to each other there for a moment, staring forward at the blank TV screen, but then he put his arm around me and started kissing me again, softly. My left arm was kind of stuck between us so I picked it up and touched his hair with my fingers. His hair was thick and really soft. I tangled my fingers into it as I leaned back against the couch pillows. His right hand traced the bottom of my jaw as we kissed and kissed.

Whoa
, I suddenly thought.
What am I doing?
I’m not a prude but I am also not interested in going much beyond kissing with anybody. My parents are not home and this is a guy who punched a dent in his own gorgeous car when he was denied something for maybe the first time in his life. So what should I do? Because he’s a senior, seventeen or maybe eighteen, maybe he will expect me to go a lot farther. I don’t even know how old he is! What have I started here?

I tried to think of something not completely babyish to say. I pulled my head slightly back from his, to get more oxygen to my minimally functioning brain. He tapered off his kisses slowly, adding one light, lingering final peck on my lips. I opened my eyes. He was smiling sweetly, almost apologetically at me. “What?” I asked him. My voice came out sort of hoarse.

“I have to get back to school for basketball practice,” he whispered.

“Oh,” I said.

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s okay,” I assured him. Phew.

“I gotta go,” he said, standing up and smoothing his hair back into place. His long legs took about four strides to get to the front door. “I’ll call you.”

I was still kind of foggy, indented into the couch. The door closed as I was answering, “Yeah, okay.”

Everybody knows what “I’ll call you” means. It means good-bye. Nothing more, nothing less. I sat there smiling at the neatness of the whole encounter. Phew.

I was still half-lying on the couch in a daze when Zandra called me, the minute she stepped out of school. “So?”

“What?”

“Did you fool around with him?”

“Yeah.” My face was smiling all on its own.

“And?”

“Even better than he looks,” I said.

“Wow,” Zandra said. “How far did you go?”

“How far do you think?”

“Made out.”

“Yup.”

“That’s good,” she assured me. “That’s my new leaf I’m turning over: the take-it-slow leaf.”

“Sounds good,” I told her. She turns over new leaves weekly.

“Was he a good kisser?”

“Really good.”

“I knew it!” she screamed. “Did you ask him about Emelina?”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“Well,” I started. “One, it’s none of my business. Two, it would be a little awkward to ask about his ex while his tongue is in my mouth, right?”

“True,” she agreed. “That’s a good point.”

“Three, obviously he’s still hot for her, everybody knows that. So why ask?”

“You’re jealous!”

“Jealous?” I snorted. “Of course not. I’m not his girlfriend or anything. We hooked up. It was fun. The end. What’s the big deal?”

“It’s Carson Gold! You can’t tell me you’re not in love with him.”

“I’m totally not in love with him,” I said.

“Then you are the only girl in the whole tenth grade who’s not.”

“Okay.”

“Maybe tomorrow he’ll ask me,” she said dreamily. “I’d do him in a heartbeat.”

“You should,” I recommended.

As expected, he didn’t call that night. Zandra and Tru were watching me the next morning for signs of trauma but there weren’t any.

“Why would there be?” I asked them. They shook their heads knowingly and headed out to the courtyard for their morning people-watching time. I slumped down next to Michael to listen to the new song he had composed. He’s a really talented musician, especially on keyboards. I love watching him play. “Souvenirs,” he called the new song. When it was done I took a deep breath. “The music is beautiful. . . .”

“Yeah. The lyrics. I know. I just mumbled in some filler until you have time,” he said. He’s not great on lyrics but that’s where I come in. We’re a good team. Someday we may be legends. “But you like the sound of it?”

“It’s really good,” I told him honestly. “Kind of, haunting.”

He grinned. The gap between his front teeth is so cute. “Good.”

“So I have to think . . . souvenirs, huh?”

“Just seemed like . . .”

“Uh-huh,” I agreed. “Definitely. Yeah. Let me hear it again. I want to get that bridge melody in my head.”

He gave me one ear thingy and took the other, and we sat there listening to the song over and over until the bell rang for first period. We hauled ourselves off the cold floor.

“Seventh period, back of the library?” I asked him. Michael has seventh period free, too.

He nodded, on his way down the hall.

I went to class thinking I am such a slut, two different boys in two days—because usually if Michael and I get going on a song, we end up making out a little. I decided not to think about that. The circumstances were totally different; the Carson Gold thing was just a weird, fun aberration. All through my morning classes I wrote and crumpled up song lyrics:
indentation on my couch pillow, a souvenir of you. . . .
No.
It wasn’t meant to last, but at least I have my souvenirs. . . .
No.
Postcards fading on the wall, the summer dimming into fall, we didn’t know we had it all . . .

I got to lunch humming the bridge part, still not satisfied. Zandra and Tru were already at our table. “Michael was just in here, looking for you,” Zandra told me. “I told him he could hang with me but he took off. Does he hate me?”

“You know he doesn’t.” I unwrapped my lunch.

“What is it then?” she asked. “Do I have boy-repellent on?”

Tru said, “They sell that?” and picked up her book. She’s determined to read every book on the American Library Association’s Top 100 Books before she graduates high school, without missing a single week of
People
magazine. It’s like a double major.

“I think my mother secretly mixes it into my shampoo,” Zandra said, and continued scoping. “I haven’t hooked up with anybody in two weeks. I may have to dye my hair again, to overcompensate for my unfulfilled horniness.”

Zandra is planning to dye her hair every color of the rainbow during her high school career. She’s done red and orange already and is currently on yellow, a very pale yellow that was almost white, which I think is her best so far. “Your mother is freaking out now,” I said. “I can’t wait to hear her reaction to the green.”

“It will be a thing of beauty,” Zandra predicted. “I think she secretly loves me, though, despite how she acts.”

Without looking up from her book, Tru put her hand on Zandra’s shoulder.

Michael slipped into the seat across from me. “Looking for you. How’s it going?”

“Not there yet,” I said.

“I had a different idea for the beginning,” he said. “So don’t—it’s more of dee-da-da, dum-dee-dee-da-da . . .”

“Okay.”

He shook his head and put his ear things back in. He closed his eyes and his face relaxed completely. I smiled at him and started to eat.

Zandra gave me a hard elbow in my side.

“Hey,” I complained, but then I looked up and saw Carson Gold looming above us.

“Hey,” Carson said back.

I chewed and swallowed. How does he always catch me with my mouth full?

“What are you doing seventh?” he asked, with that killer smile.

“A friend,” I answered, with my mouth still slightly full. I swallowed again. “A favor for a friend.”

He looked shocked. “Really?” he asked.

“Really,” I said, and wiped my mouth on my napkin.

“You’re mad I didn’t call last night. I just . . .”

I gave him a look. “No.” As if I would
ever
be that fool girl chasing him around screaming
Call me! Don’t you love me? I love you!

“So then why don’t you want . . .”

“I just have other plans today.” I took a sip of my water and noticed Zandra, beaming up at him. “Do you know Zandra? And this is Tru.” Tru looked up from her book, surprised. “This is Carson.”

“Hi!” Zandra said. Tru didn’t make a sound, just kept staring at him.

Carson didn’t look away from me for a second. “You sure?”

“Maybe tomorrow,” I said. Luckily Michael still had his eyes closed and his music on. Not that he would’ve cared, really—we have no commitment to each other or anything, of course—but still. Even though we always tell each other who we hook up with, because it truly has nothing to do with our friendship, I don’t know. We don’t shove it in each other’s faces. And I hadn’t told him yet about Carson Gold. “Okay?”

“Yeah, tomorrow.” Carson smiled. “Maybe,” he added, and walked away. So he had the last word. Well, hooray for him, he got to end it.

“Are you crazy?” Zandra asked.

“I had plans,” I said, continuing to eat.

“Why not, you know, rain-check the old standby?” Zandra whispered.

“What,” I whispered back. “
Sorry, Mikey—I got a better offer?
I don’t think so,” I said.

“I told you,” Tru whispered. “Love.”

“I have standards, that’s all.” Both my friends made dubious faces, so I added, “Well, okay, they’re low standards, but I have them.”

“I say you are definitely either in love or nuts,” Zandra said. “Or maybe both.”

“Maybe I’m just a good person,” I suggested.

Zandra and Tru considered that; they shook their heads and both said, “Nah.”

“Either way,” Zandra said. “If you’re done with Carson, can I get him next?”

“There’s a sign-up sheet in the gym,” Tru told her dryly, then turned to me. “I can’t believe you just turned away Carson Gold.”

I shrugged. “Easy come, easy go.”

“You are definitely the coolest person I know,” Zandra said. “I would’ve done him right here in the cafeteria.”

“Why do you think he wants Josie?” Tru said, going back to her book. “If you want a boy to like you, you have to feign disinterest, like Josie’s doing.”

“What do you mean,
feign
?” I asked. “I
am
disinterested.”

“In what?” Michael asked, opening his eyes.

Zandra and Tru turned to me, too, daring me to answer.

“In . . .” I started. “In, in, in being ordinary.”

“No worries,” Michael said, and closed his eyes again.

Four

THE NEXT MORNING
when I got to school, Carson was leaning against my locker with his arms crossed over his broad chest and an irresistible smirk on his lips. Just as I had wished and not expected him to be. “Hello, again,” I said.

“Today,” he said.

“Okay.” I smiled back.

“Really?”

“Meet you by the back exit after sixth,” I said, and zipped over to Zandra and Tru’s lockers to tell them Carson Gold was coming over again. Their mouths dropped open in shock, and they did some bowing and chanting of “we are not worthy.”

“You must have done something really awesome in a past life,” Zandra said on the way to lunch, which got us all into a whole argument about reincarnation. When he got bored of past lives, Michael passed me one of his ear buds and I tried to concentrate on the revision we’d done of his song. It was a challenge. We had worked on it really hard all afternoon, and then made out for about half an hour. I still hadn’t told him about Carson—I had kind of figured it had been a once-in-a-lifetime weird thing, and tried to convince myself it was irrelevant, anyway. But here I was, about to hook up with Carson again: Carson, Michael, Carson. Yikes. I had never done anything like that before. Part of me felt like no big deal, it doesn’t hurt anybody for me to kiss two different guys, very different guys, who are both great, and anyway there’s nothing wrong with kissing. But part of me (my stomach, mainly) felt like maybe this is not so cool. But what could I do?

As promised, Carson was waiting for me by the back exit. I had walked there telling myself maybe he wouldn’t show, maybe he’d stand me up, to punish me for blowing him off the day before, and maybe that would be the end of it and really, I’d been stressed for nothing. But no, there he was, waiting for me, watching me with his laser beam eyes. It felt like a spotlight. I couldn’t tamp down my grin at all. He bent down and kissed me, lightly, right there in the hall. I followed him out to the parking lot.

On the way to my house I put down the windows of Carson’s car, turned the radio all the way up, and sang along. He touched my leg and smiled. I was in a seriously great mood. It was warmer out than it had been in weeks, the sky was crisp January blue, the music was rocking, and I was about to do some good fooling around with the hottest guy I’d ever laid eyes, never mind hands, on. He parked in my driveway, and as I got out of his car I touched the dent on the roof with my fingers. We walked up to my house not talking. I unlocked the door. Instead of going straight to the living room, though, I dropped my jacket, sweater, and bag in the hall and went to the kitchen. He followed me.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m hungry.” I love anticipation. I wanted to hold off the moment of colliding with him for another minute.

“I have basketball practice at 3:30.”

“Ugh.” I knelt down beside the pot cabinet, to keep from looking at him. “Just thinking about basketball practice exhausts me so much I think I might have to go lie down on the couch and watch TV to avoid getting a cramp.”

“I like your couch.”

“It likes you, too. But first I need a snack. You want some egg salad?”

He laughed. “You’re really turned on, huh?”

He should only know. “I make the best egg salad you’ve ever had. Secret ingredient and everything.”

“Mmm,” he said. “My favorite food.”

“Egg salad? Really?”

“No. Secret Ingredient.”

While I filled my mother’s heavy red pot with water, he stood right behind me and touched my waist with his fingers. Giving in a little, I leaned back and rested my head against his chest, dancing a little to the music still in my head. “I love these pots,” I told him.

“You love . . . what?”

“Seriously. They’re so beautiful and heavy. My mother bought a set of three of them last year. She has never cooked anything in them, of course, but they are the best, hard to get; you had to be on a wait list to get the set of three pots in red, so of course she had to have them. She was on the phone with the store manager all week, cutting in line.”

Carson started kissing my neck. I set the pot with six eggs in it over a medium-high flame on the stove. I couldn’t hold off anymore. I turned around. We made out for a while, until Carson asked, “What were you doing yesterday?”

“Yesterday?”

“Seventh period.”

“I’ll never tell,” I said, kissing him some more. Yesterday? I didn’t want to think about Michael right then. It felt like a betrayal on too many levels.

“You like to torture me,” Carson said.

“It’s my hobby,” I said. “Beats performing at birthday parties.”

“You perform at . . .”

“Don’t get any kinky ideas,” I said, unbuttoning a button of his shirt. “Children’s birthday parties. I’m a clown. You know, magic, games, the whole thing.”

“Okay.” He shook his head. “You want to go into the living room?”

“Let’s go upstairs,” I said. I walked ahead of him, skipping the squeaky step. We got to my room and didn’t bother with the light. When we heard the first noise we were on my bed and not all my buttons were buttoned anymore, either.

“What was that?” I asked.

We listened, still as statues, him up on an elbow, his face right above mine. Nothing. I shrugged and he did, too, and we went back to each other until we heard two more clonks, one after the other. Now we knew it wasn’t our imagination.

“Somebody here?” he whispered.

I shrugged again, only one shoulder. My parents never come home during the day. My mother works in the city, in advertising, and my father sees his sore-footed patients until six.

The next clonk was a loudie. Carson and I dove off the bed and hid behind it. He crouched, buttoning his shirt fast. That made me smile because it was like, uh-oh, what if bad guys have broken into the house and see me with my shirt unbuttoned? Though I have to admit I rearranged myself, too.

“Do you think we’re being robbed?” I whispered.

He nodded gravely, then crawled over to my closet and opened it.

“Did you want to borrow something more formal to wear for the robbery? I’m not sure I have anything in your size.”

“Shh,” he whispered. “Don’t you at least have a tennis racket or anything?”

“You think they came here looking for a doubles partner?”

He turned around quickly and gave me a look, then whipped a Wiffle bat out of the mess.

“Wow,” I said. “You jock-type people really are single-minded, aren’t you? Uh-oh, we’re being robbed. Let’s play ball!”

Clonk-ka-junk-ka-jzzz
, from downstairs.

“It’s for a weapon,” Carson whispered.

“You’re gonna hit them with a Wiffle bat?”

“What else you got?”

“Um . . .” I looked around my room. I’d never particularly noticed before how weapon-free it was, though I do consider myself strongly anti-violence. “A pillow?”

“Exactly,” he said.

“Maybe we should call 911,” I suggested.

“Where’s your phone?”

“Oh,” I said. “Downstairs.”

There was some very aggressive clattering. It sounded like they were coming closer. Carson stood up, with the bat cocked back. He looked very studly, it must be said, despite the misbuttoned shirt. “Stay behind me,” he whispered.

“Can I just say that I never knew this about myself before, but weirdly enough this whole protective he-man thing actually turns me on.”

“Josie.”

“What?” I asked.

“Shut up.”

I grabbed my pillow, just in case, so to speak, and tiptoed behind him around my mussed-up bed. “Maybe we should just hide in the closet.”

He turned around, rolled his eyes, and kissed me. “Shh,” he repeated.

I was going to press my point, because I was truthfully starting to get a little scared and hiding seemed like a much better plan to me than confronting real live burglars with a hollow yellow bat and a Minnie Mouse pillow, but then I decided maybe he was right and it would be a good time to shut up, actually.

Carson opened my door and slipped out. No way was I staying in my room alone, so I leaped out after him and grabbed the back of his shirt with the hand that wasn’t already clutching my Minnie Mouse pillow, mourning all the things I would never get to do in my tragically shortened life.

By the time we got to the kitchen my heart was pounding and my nose was scrunching. It stunk. It was a mess. No bad guys, just eggshell shrapnel everywhere, and bits of egg, and a burned red pot. It smelled like somebody had died.

“Oh,” I said, turning off the stove. “Oops. The egg salad.”

Carson lowered the bat. He turned around and gave me a goofy grin. “That’s some secret ingredient, Josie.”

“I’m full of surprises.”

“Yeah,” he said. “I see that.”

“Help me clean up?”

“Sure.”

I grabbed some potholders and brought the pot to the sink. When the water hit it, it hissed. I jumped back. Carson kind of caught me. I spun around.

“Were you scared?” I asked. “When we thought, you know . . .”

“No.”

“Me, too,” I said.

He blinked slowly, and smiling just a little, reached toward me. “Your shirt is buttoned wrong.” He unbuttoned my shirt.

“Yours, too,” I said, and unbuttoned his, too. Our shirts hung like that and we looked into each other’s eyes. When he finally pulled me close, I could feel the pounding of his heart through his soft skin.