“He's just...he's very self-assured, you know. I like that in a man.”
“He's not a man, though. He's a teenage boy. They're all the same.”
“Ha. You would definitely know, Ms. Grave-robber.”
“Hey! That is very over, by the way, and you're not allowed to ever mention the Mahoney thing ever again. Even in jest.”
Claudia pops her hip.
“Maybe tell that to your locker,” she says, squinting. She points and I follow her gaze. Sure enough, there's something on my locker. A big something.
A dozen red roses, kind of something.
I'm worried my face will betray shock, so I run for the flowers, as if to catch them before other students can see—but there's already a small crowd of freshmen girls gathered around my little bundle. The roses look fresh. They smell amazing. Amazing like that untraceable cologne. Amazing like... my foster brother.
“Jeez, Jo! At least pretend to be surprised. There's a card, you know.” And just as quickly, all the blood runs out of my face. Has Claudia already read the card? She's my best friend in the universe. I never meant to hurt her, but Trace and I, we're bigger than whatever it was she thought she had with him. I have to believe she'll understand. If he's left me flowers, he's clearly in this for keeps. Sheepishly, I pull the thin, pretty piece of cardstock from its envelope in the bouquet, and open it without looking up at my friend:
Hey, beautiful -
Just wanted you to know that I'm so, so sorry for the other day. You're an incredible woman, Joanna, and I'm a better man for every moment I've spent with you. I know I don't deserve your forgiveness, but what can a man do but hope? It's impossible to resist your light. I truly believe you're going to be a leader of men someday.
Let me know about Dartmouth, sweetheart.
Xoxo,
E.
I raise my eyes again. The gaggle of freshman girls is now tittering in full swing, and Claudia's leading the parade. Her face contains the oddest ingredient: pride. She's proud of me. She's all puffed up with glee about her straight-edge friend, who's schtupping a counselor.
As if on cue, the door to the teacher's lounge swings open down the hall, and there's Eric. His hair is tousled, just the way I like it, and he's wearing my favorite shirt of his—a blue and white checked button-down, with a dorky little silver bow-tie. He smiles at me, crooked. I wait to feel something.
It's at this same moment that Trace makes his first, brilliant appearance of the day. I catch him out of the corner of my eye, swaggering through the front doors like a demi-god. He's wearing the knock-off Aviators, and a raggedy wife-beater. His sticks are poking out of a pocket in his basketball shorts, but the moment it occurs to me, Joanna, pick a direction to walk in, I'm caught: Eric is scurrying towards me, and Trace is loping in the opposite direction. I'd like to say that I can detect some sadness or dejection in the demon's shoulders, but the truth is, I'm not even sure he saw me—or the flowers, or the counselor who gave them to me.
“Looks like it's go time for both of us, chica,” Claudia says under her breath. She puffs up her shirt, smacks her lips together, and makes off in what I think must be Trace's direction. Now I'm face to face with Eric. Completely frickin' unsure of how I'm supposed to feel.
“Can we meet later?” he whispers to me, through gritted teeth. His ruse is shuffling through a pile of papers in a manila folder. I spy some familiar names flip by in the top corners of his papers: Gilmore, Hedgerow, Richards—a bunch of dudes from the basketball team, I think.
“Eric, I don't know. I've got a lot of—”
“Jo, there will always be a lot of excuses. To do anything. Just hear me out.” His eyes look sincere. Those glassy, frosted blues. “You don't want it to end like this. You want to be an adult.”
But peripherally, I'm still scanning the area for Trace. Maybe he left something in the parking lot, or in someone's car, and that's why he zipped out so fast. It wouldn't have been fair of him to assume anything, right? No matter what he thought he saw? Just because a guy sends you flowers doesn't mean that you’ve reconciled with him. If Trace shows up in the next ten seconds and looks at me, I tell myself, then I won't go. Ten...
“I've been doing a lot of thinking, Jo,” Eric continues. Nine. His breath is laced faintly with coffee smell. He lightly grips my elbow, guiding me towards the nook below a stairwell, out of the way from passerby. Eight. Seven...
“And?”
“And I've decided to stop being so coy with you. I know this might be too much for you to hear, but the thing is: I love you.”
Six.
Five.
Four.
Shit.
“You don't love me. You love your wife.”
“Please don't tell me how I feel.”
“We shouldn't talk about this here.”
“You're exactly right. Later? My office?” He moves his hand sharply, snapping the manila folder shut. I notice, in the harsh school light, that he's not wearing his wedding band today.
Three, two...The bell rings. The hallways begin to empty. Still no Trace, and still no Claudia. I don't know quite what this means, but I know I have to make a choice.
One. Zero.
“I'll meet you at three thirty, okay? Art room. Just to talk.” Eric nods without registering my response. He's like a businessman, sealing a deal. Flummoxed, I search his back for a sign of the 'sex haze.' Or the 'Mean Reds.' Or any emotion at all.
But when the late bell comes, I scoop up my big beautiful bouquet and hover with it for a second in the hallway.
Where the fuck do I go from here?
* * *
I'm on another planet during Krenshaw's lecture. We're still thwacking through Dickens, but my eyes are glued to the clock. If I can just get to Trace before I meet with Eric, I can talk to him about last night. I have to know if everything that happened was only in my head.
“Let's try to categorize the social and economic pressures in the text,” my teacher bleats. I listen for footsteps in the hall. It's usually around now that some of the jock kids go for a break/stroll around the senior corridor. Like that time a few weeks ago, when Trace smooshed his face up into the glass door and cracked everybody up.
A small piece of paper, balled up, sails across the humid room and hits me right between the eyes, mid-reverie. I snap back to reality to find Claudia, brows furrowed in my direction, swiveled fully round in her chair. “Is everything okay?” she mouths.
I raise my sore fingers to flash a quick, dorky thumbs-up. But the truth is, I have no idea.
I tear a sheet of paper out of my notebook, and start to scribble:
PROS
CONS (re: getting back together w/ Eric)
1) Sex?
1) Eric's a guidance counselor. I could still get him into trouble.
2) Eric is married. (I am a home-wrecking wildebeest.)
3)
Ugh—I ball up the list. Sometimes I feel like living inside my own head is the worst case scenario.
Krenshaw turns her big head at the sound of paper crumpling, but before she can sink her talons into me, about three cell-phones go off simultaneously: there's the oft-truant Leslie May's, from the back row, and then these two interchangeable jock guys in the front. After a beat, I hear Claudia's phone. She's got a super dweeby ringtone—“Party in the USA,” by Miley Cyrus.
Krenshaw does not look pleased. “Boys and girls, I don't know how many times I must tell you: cell phones are not allowed in my classroom. Everyone please silence their noisemaking devices.”
True to form, no one pays any attention to this mandate. I scan Leslie and the jocks' faces, trying to get a read on what the hubbub could be. It's rare that someone sends a mass text in the middle of class—such things usually portend a really good piece of gossip. Involuntarily, I find myself swiveling back towards the hallway. But the demon's not there, today.
The three popular kids laugh quickly at the messages in their laps, then look around at one another sneakily,
as if to confirm something.
“Returning to the Industrial Revolution –”
I look to Claudia, whose head is hunched over her iPhone. Her hair obscures her expression, so now it's my turn to launch crap at my friend's turned back.
“Who was that?” I mouth to Claudia, as she turns to me. Leslie and the jock kids are still giggling, though Krenshaw has apparently made an executive decision to not engage.
Claudia just wiggles her eyebrows in my direction, then turns back to her phone. After a second, my clunky iPhone vibrates in my pocket, with a text from C:
THE BASKETBALL KIDS ARE APPARENTLY THROWING SOME BIG HALLOWEEN PARTY THIS WEEKND, AND UR FOSTER BROTHER JUST ASKED ME TO BE HIS DATE WOOOOOOOOOOOO
There's another line of 'OOOOOOOOs' but I just turn the phone off, before Claudia can see that I've read her message. So, there's your answer, Jo. I come back to English class, and the beautiful roses in my bag, and everything I already know to be true. What happened in the hallway last night—that was my imagination? Okay. That's peachy. Trace wants beautiful, crazy Claudia to be his girlfriend, and he just wants to play music and be friends with his fake sister.
Great.
Chapter Eight
October 29th
All week long, the basketball party is all anyone talks about. Even Eric knows about it. We're lying on the rug in his office, and he's tracing patterns lightly around my bared midriff. We're not back to having sex or anything, but after two excruciatingly long talks, I've taken him back on a trial basis. So he's gushing to me, as is his habit these past few days, about college brochures or his soon-to-be-ex-wife. From what I gather, Miranda figured out he was having an affair, but couldn't get him to give her the details. The fact that there's a possibility that she might burst through the door some afternoon, livid with discovery and possibly carrying a gun, has become another horrible kind of turn-on.
“So, are you going?” my counselor murmurs into my hair. His breath smells like coffee again. “To this bacchanalia of your Cro Magnum peers?”
“You sound very scornful. What, you never went to keggers when you were in high-school?”
Eric sits up and fumbles for his glasses. Sliding the frames back up his nose, he looks for a moment incredibly haughty.
“I like to hold tight to my remaining brain cells, thank you very much. Besides. Once you get to Dartmouth, you'll have forgotten all about this rinky-dink high-school nonsense. You'll be talking shop with philosophy majors, bio kids, writers—I swear, Jo. I'm so excited for you.”
I don't tell Eric that I haven't confirmed the interview yet. I've been too busy avoiding Claudia, Trace, and my family members, via the violin. Though I haven't felt great about my practicing lately—it's like I'm on the fence about everything. That, and my blisters still haven't fully healed from the other night.
Why didn't Trace want to be with me? Am I such an idiot to think there was something crackling between us? The demon's voice gurgles, in my memory:
“He must have hurt you, bad.”
“Eric, look. I've got to go.”
“So soon?” He rubs my belly, burrowing his skinny fingers into the flesh around my hips. I swat him away, and reach for my shirt. It's not the way it used to be yet. I guess we'll get back there.
“Yes, so soon. It's 5:30! I have homework.”
“Are you going to the party, or aren't you?”
“What's the big deal if I am? Claudia will be there. And Trace.”
Another memory, sharp and brutal as a knife, floats back to me from this morning: Claudia and Trace, lip-locked against a deck of freshmen lockers. The same crew of gangly freshmen girls who'd encircled me and my roses had been gathered around those two, everyone watching their hot, perfectly matched bodies roam around one another. I couldn't help it: I stared at them until I walked into a pillar. His long lashes, closed, made his face look so sweet and intense. His strong hands, fastened tight around the round parts of her body, making him seem so strong and capable. I would probably never be held like that, it occurred to me. Shortly thereafter, it occurred to me that I was possibly being dramatic. I was possibly still holding on to my Mean Reds.
Eric sits upright. “So, all the jocks and the jockettes? Come on, Jo. Let's just meet here, instead. The school will be empty! We can go over your applications together.” He nuzzles my neck. “Break into the AV Room, for a movie. Or the cafeteria, for dinner...”
“How is that any less 'high-school-nonsense' than my going to a single party?” And now, I'm annoyed. Eric's blue eyes register hurt, but I look away as I pull my sweater over my head, gathering my things.
“Listen, Eric. If you really want to take us seriously, I'd like it, if you got an apartment. At least pretend like you're really going to leave your wife.”
“Joanna! Where is this coming from?”
The answer is: I don't know. It's some frail power-grab, I suppose—but for the very first time, asserting myself over Eric makes me feel no better. I manage to clear the door, so he can’t see me break. It's the stress, I tell myself, swatting a tear or two away. As my good friend and future sister-in-law Claudia likes to say, the only thing for stress is a big, crazy party.
* * *
We're standing on the cement steps in an actual line outside Hank Gilmore's house. Two girls teetering in front of us wear knock-off Louboutin’s maroon soles, and one is in a curly blonde wig.
When Claudia asks them who they're supposed to be, the wigged chick rolls her eyes and tells us, “We're both Carrie Bradshaw. Duh.”
“Carrie Bradshaw actually wore Manolo Blahnik’s,” Claudia says, tossing her tousled hair. Tonight she's gone for the ever-classic, “sexy cat” costume—a.k.a., cat ears, a dollop of paint on her nose, and a skintight pleather body-suit. I have decided to communicate to the world that I've fully thrown the towel in—via a hand-made toga, courtesy of my mother's white sheets. Call me Aphrodite, or more accurately, whoever the sad, loser God is. Hermes. Pan.
“I heard the whole basketball team is like this den of sin,” one Carrie says to the other. “Hank's been dealing cocaine since the eighth grade.”
“To who, Jane? Where did you even hear that?”
“I dunno. Around.”
“We've never even met anyone who does cocaine. You should keep your mouth shut.”
“But just look at this house! This house is such a shithole, compared to the way he dresses. He's definitely getting money from some other weird place.”
“This is so gossipy and declassee. Very un-Carrie.”
Claudia takes a firm step forward, blocking my view of the two rubes in front of us. She's got a goofy expression on her face, though.
“Don't eavesdrop, Jo. It's rude.”
We're finally advancing in line. It's like we're at a New York City nightclub, instead of loitering outside of someone's mom's house in suburban Baltimore. My phone pings in my pocket, and I dive for it. My heart sinks strangely, when I see it's just Eric, telling me to “be a good gurl :-)”
“I don't know why I thought this was such a good idea,” I murmur, tugging at the fabric of my faux toga. Claudia barely acknowledges me—her eyes are clamped on her own iPhone.
“Trace says he's inside. He says he'll meet us by the beer pong table.”
“Peachy.”
“Well you could try to sound a bit more enthusiastic. You're technically my back-up date for the evening, in case things go horribly wrong with me and your bro.”
I smile for a second, broadly, into the night. Claudia catches the tail end of this and gives me a weird look.
“Hey, we're going in. Look alive, Prine.” She tugs my arm, giddy. I swallow hard and totter up the steps, trying to banish visions of Trace in a gladiator or knightly get-up. I know now that he's not some fictional hero, come to save me.
* * *
Once we thwack through fifty or more of our nearest and dearest classmates, I'm forced to admit the obvious: Eric was right. This high-school Halloween party was a hug
e mistake—unfamiliar odors and idiots abound, and many are wearing pleather. Before I can turn to Claudia and make a stab at some halfway decent escape excuse, my best friend has run from my side into the Gilmore family living room. I don't quite get a glimpse of Trace under the mountain of blow-dried hair that Claudia smothers him in, but I sense he's there.
That's when the host comes up behind me, his voice a bad Batman impression. I actually jump when he growls 'hey.'
Some important things to know about Hank Gilmore: he's just one of those guys who comes off as super creepy in every scenario. I've never had a face to face conversation with the guy, but if his deliberately rumpled hair and haughty sneer (to say nothing of all the terrible rumors about his alleged drug habit(s) are anything to go by—I'm no worse off. So when he talks to me, sure—I'm surprised.
“You're Trace's fake sister, right?” he croaks. His hair is pale and lank, and his mouth sneers at me over the lip of a Natty Ice. If he's wearing a costume at all, it's either “villain in an eighties teen movie” or...subtle. Gross on all levels.
“He's my—well my parents have taken him in. So, yeah.”
“He's a pretty cool guy, your fake brother.” Hank takes a slow, creepy sip of his drink. I cast around for other people to talk to, but out of the corner of my eye, I gather that Claudia and Trace have scampered off somewhere.
“We really dig him, on the team. He's been a real asset. He's lousy with hook ups. Very good businessman.”
“Swell,” I say, still half paying attention. “I don't really know a lot about basketball, so.”
“Do you need a drink, or something? Seem kinda edgy.” The host lowers his drink, and shows all of his teeth as he smiles at me. I've never dealt with a person on drugs, so I wouldn't know for sure—but he's either hitting on me or totally zonked.
“Big cooler in the basement. Past the skeleton,” Hank says. I try to smile in return. (No reason to not be polite.) But as I nod assent, the ballplayer grains toward me. He's definitely coming in for a landing on my face.
A Family Affair: My Bad Boy Foster Brother Page 8
