by Robin Roe
“This is weird,” Adam says, picking it up. “Who mixes their weapons with their china?”
“I don’t know. He doesn’t like people touching them. He doesn’t like people in the house at all.” When Adam puts it back and carefully closes the glass door, I exhale in relief.
But I get nervous all over again when he bounces into the kitchen and tears open the refrigerator. “Is this all you have?” he asks.
I nod.
Adam frowns as he studies the jar. “Now if this was a halfway-decent brand of jelly it would be one thing, but it’s all processed.” He says it like it’s a curse word. “Full of sugar and preservatives.” Those are curse words too.
“I’m feeling a lot better. I’ll probably be back at school tomorrow.”
“Want me to hang out?”
“No,” I say quickly, listening for Russell’s car. “My uncle really doesn’t like people to be over.”
“But you’re sick. He wouldn’t want you to be by yourself when you’re sick.”
“He won’t care what the reason is.”
Now Adam looks at me so intensely that for a second he reminds me of Dr. Whitlock and Mr. Pearce and everyone else who tries to read my thoughts.
“Okay,” he says, still looking uncertain. “I guess I’ll go.”
WHEN I GET to first period on Thursday, the door is locked. It takes me a second to notice the sign that reads CLASS IN LAB ROOM 202. By the time I get there I’m late, but it looks like almost everyone else is too.
“I told the class yesterday where to go,” Miss West says when she sees me. “Is that so hard to remember?”
“I’m sorry. I was absent yesterday.”
“It’s always something with you, isn’t it?”
I sit at the empty table in the back and drop my head onto my arms. A minute later, a throat clears behind me. I open my eyes to find Kristin, Alex, and Violet standing over me. “Would you mind if we took this table, since it’s big enough for three people?” Violet asks. Her eyes are round and black and kind.
“Okay.”
I’m grabbing my backpack when Kristin adds, “Unless you’re waiting for all your friends.”
“No…I’m not waiting for anyone.”
The three of them exchange a look, then Kristin smirks. “Yes, Julian. We know.”
“Julian!” I hear Adam call out from inside a classroom. I halt and find him grinning at me from his desk. “Come here!” His class is noisy chaos, so I continue to hover in the hallway. “Come on.”
Cautiously, I make my way inside.
Allison and another girl—I can’t remember her name—are standing in the front on a raised platform. Some kids are sitting in their desks, ones that are scattered instead of in rows, and the rest of the kids are standing or walking around.
Adam taps the empty desk beside him. I sit down and ask, “What class is this?”
“Theater. Where were you going?”
I shrug.
“Skipping?”
I shrug again.
“You’re going to get caught eventually.”
He’s right and it scares me, but I had to. When I got to Child Development, Miss Carlisle said we’d be doing group work. “I told my teacher I was going to the nurse.”
“Are you still sick?”
“No.”
“So you were faking?”
“Well…”
“You’re the reason Grumpy Nurse is so suspicious!” He points an accusing finger at me.
“I should leave. Before your teacher gets back.”
“She’s not here. She’s running lines with some kids for the show.”
“Oh. So who’s in charge?”
“Me.” Then he pitches his voice louder. “All right, everybody, listen up.” Everyone stops talking and watches Adam pull a slip of paper from the small metal box on top of his desk. “Hypochondriac at the doctor’s office. Go!”
Allison and the other girl on the platform whisper into each other’s ears, then the girl clutches her knee and wails. The classroom fills with laughter as the scene continues.
When Adam’s phone beeps, he yells, “Time!” Then it’s someone else’s turn. After several performances, he looks at me. “You want a turn?”
I quickly shake my head. “No, thank you.”
“How ’bout you, Stef?” he says to a girl I didn’t notice until then.
Stef looks embarrassed and pulls at her wild, frizzy hair. “I’m not sure….”
“Come on,” Adam says, hopping out of his seat. “I’ll be your partner.”
I know he’s just being nice. All of Adam’s friends are so pretty, but she’s like me, one of those people you aren’t supposed to talk to if other people are around to see.
Stef blushes as they walk to the front of the class.
“Julian,” Adam says, “read one of the prompts.”
Everyone looks while I pull a strip of paper from the box. “H-hiring a…private de-detective.”
Adam grins and whispers in Stef’s ear. She blushes again and keeps trying to control her hair. Their performance is really funny, and I find myself laughing along with the rest of the class. If this is what school is like for him, I can see why he likes it.
When the timer goes off, Adam grabs Stef’s hand and pulls her into a bow. He looks happy. Not acting nice or feeling sorry, but genuinely happy, as if he likes her as much as he likes everyone else.
IT’S FRIDAY NIGHT and we’re all piled into Jesse’s living room. Suggesting The Game was totally strategic on my part—any excuse to turn off that music no one can dance to.
“Okay…Jesse,” Charlie says, looking at him in a way that makes him fidget. “I want you to lick Camila’s…” He pauses, and Jesse grins nervously. “…purse.”
Disappointment falls over his face. “Seriously?” We all watched the documentary in Ms. Fry’s class this week claiming purses are dirtier than toilets. “But I might get sick.”
Charlie smirks. “Do it anyway.”
After a lot of harassment from everyone, Jesse gives in, revolted, then chugs his beer as if the alcohol will sanitize his tongue.
“My turn,” Camila says, sticking out her chest and tossing back her dark hair.
“How’s it your turn?” Jesse protests. “I’m the one who had to—”
“I just had to sit back and watch someone rub their disgusting mouth all over my purse.” Jesse looks hurt. “Definitely my turn.”
She points a sharp red fingernail at me. “Question.” Seeing my naked ass must be losing its appeal, because lately, instead of giving me dares, my friends’ve been making me answer questions. I think they’re hoping that eventually something will embarrass me, but it hasn’t happened yet. “Describe the first time you got naked with a girl. In detail.”
“Okay,” I say. “I was in kindergarten.”
“No. Doesn’t count if your mom put you in the bathtub together.”
“No, this counts. It was in a sexual context.”
“You’re disgusting.”
“But it counts. So, okay, her name was Charlotte.”
“Charlotte King?” Allison asks.
“Yeah.”
“We were in Brownies together,” Natalie adds.
“Can we get back on track?” Camila’s glare silences the room.
“Okay,” I say. “Charlotte and I were the only two kids who took the van from school to our day care. We’d sit in the very back row where the driver couldn’t see us, and play this game where basically you could ask to see any body part you wanted. I’d ask to see her vagina. She’d ask to see my feet.”
Everyone bursts out laughing, so I have to explain that this was an actual problem. I wasn’t great at tying my shoelaces—I used to have coordination issues—so getting my shoes and socks on and off was freakin exhausting. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if seeing her vagina was worth all the trouble.
“Oh my god.” Charlie cackles. “I bet she’s totally still into feet. She’s probably one of
those girls who likes to suck toes.”
“That doesn’t count,” Camila says, and I’d say she’s pouting, only I don’t usually find pouty faces intimidating.
“There was the time I got a massage,” I say. Charlie shoots me a dark look that means shut up, and then pretty much everyone says that definitely doesn’t count. “Well, that’s all I’ve got.” There’s a moment of silence after I’ve basically announced my virginity to the entire room.
“But what about Kelly?” Emerald asks, blue eyes really intense all of a sudden.
Kelly’s another girl who left town shortly after being intimate with me. “It never got that far.”
“But she took off her purity ring.”
During sophomore year Kelly and I got as far as no shirts, but me touching her bra-covered boob filled her with so much shame that she tore off her ring and said she wasn’t fit to wear it. Guilt-fueled nausea is not the expression you want to see on a girl after you inquisitively squeeze her nipple.
“I’ve answered the question,” I say, because it’s not really my secret to tell. “Now my turn.” I aim a devious smile at Charlie, and he cringes.
“Oh God.”
It’s two in the morning when I head out to my van. “Can I get a ride?” Camila calls out. I turn around. Her eyes are gleaming in the dark like a panther’s.
“Where’s Matt?”
Her four-inch heels clack down the long driveway. Everything’s curvy and bouncing.
“He left me behind.” She makes another one of those scary pouts, and I feel sorry for her brother.
“Okay, sure.” We hop in the van, then I glance in the rearview mirror. “Damn, we’re blocked in. Let me see if Sean can move his car.”
“Wait.” She grabs my arm.
“What’s wrong?” Suddenly her lips are smashing against mine, while she tangles her hand into my hair and tugs. “Ow.”
For some reason she takes this as a sign to pull my hair again and kiss me even harder. It’s not exactly surprising that she kisses with as much aggression as she does everything else, but it’s more painful than hot—at first, anyway. After a few minutes of fingernails and biting mouths, we’re both panting.
“Adam?” She lowers her sharp fingernails to my zipper. “I don’t want to look at your feet.”
AT SCHOOL ON Monday, the girls are acting weird. Even sweet, motherly Allison, who normally stays out of conflicts, is on edge. Camila and Emerald won’t look at me, and the other girls keep glaring at me like I’m evil. What the hell?
“So how long’s this fight gonna go on, ladies?” I ask, and the entire lunch table goes silent. “It’d be better if we just got it out in the open. Full transparency. Right?”
Camila is studying the same sharp nails that left scratches down my neck.
Emerald flushes, pink blotches high on her cheekbones. “Camila knows what she did,” she finally says, and the look she gives the other girl is chilling.
“Oh my God,” Camila hisses. “I’ve apologized like a thousand times. I was drunk! And besides, he’s not your property.”
Everyone holds their breath, waiting for Emerald’s response like she’s the star witness who’s finally taken the stand.
At least I get it now. “So this is about Brett.” I sigh. “You can’t let some guy come between your friendship. Girl power, right?” That must’ve come off more insulting than encouraging, because now everyone’s looking at me like I’ve lost my mind.
“That’s not…” Emerald starts, and everyone leans forward in tense anticipation. “It’s nothing.” With perfect poise, she gathers her things and leaves the table.
“Julian, let me explain something to you,” I say as we head up the stairs on our convoluted route to Dr. Whitlock’s. “Girls are crazy.”
He looks at me doubtfully.
“It’s true. I was raised by a woman, okay? I was raised to be a feminist. But then I realized this fact: they’re insane.”
“Did something happen?”
“None of them are speaking to me! Half of them aren’t speaking to each other, and Emerald isn’t speaking to anyone. We have a field trip to an art museum on Thursday, so that should make for a fun bus ride.”
“The girls in your grade don’t like you?” He looks at me with so much sympathy that I want to laugh. “The girls in my grade like you,” he adds quickly, obviously trying to cheer me up. “They always talk about you.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, they talk about your, um…” He looks down, embarrassed.
“My what?”
“Well…”
“Jesus, what, Julian?”
“Your lips.”
“Oh, I thought we were going in a totally different direction for a minute there.”
“I didn’t even know boys could have pretty lips. You don’t wear lipstick.”
I have no idea how to respond to that. “They’re just crazy,” I find myself repeating.
“Crazier than Charlie?”
He has a point. “Okay, a different sort of crazy. Charlie’s just a pissed-off person, so you get it, but with the girls I have no freakin clue. I mean, we should all be happy today. A bunch of us got our letters, but instead everyone’s just…I don’t even know.”
“Your letters?”
“Yeah. College acceptance letters. It’s not a huge deal. We all knew we were getting in, but still.”
“Which college?”
“Risley. About an hour from here.” He doesn’t look particularly impressed. “Yeah, I know, but I never really wanted to go somewhere far away. My mom’s here, and all my friends are going there, so yeah.”
“Will you live at home?”
“No, the dorms. Part of the college experience, you know? What about you?”
“Me?”
“Do you have any idea where you want to go?”
“I’m not going to college.”
“Why not?”
“My grades aren’t good.”
“Not everyone who goes to college has amazing grades.”
“You do.”
“But do you want to go?”
“Does that really matter?”
His question startles me for a minute. “Does what you want matter? Of course it matters.”
We head back down the stairs and out into the courtyard. It’s cold, so I hop up and down for a minute to warm up while Julian leans against the brick wall.
“Leaving,” he says, “does sound fun. When I was younger I always wanted…”
I wait for him to finish his thought, but the thing with Julian is sometimes you can wait, but sometimes you have to push. “What?”
“Adventure?” He looks wary, like he thinks I’m about to make fun of him.
“Yeah, I can totally see that.” I nod enthusiastically enough to keep him talking.
“I really liked movies and books about people exploring new places. When I was little, I never wondered how I’d do it. I just knew one day I would go everywhere. But when you get older, you realize wanting isn’t the same as having. There are all those places you want to go, but it doesn’t mean you can actually get there.” He takes a breath. “When I was little…in our backyard…”
“Yeah?”
“We had a forest, a bamboo forest, and I’d pretend…I’d pretend to be an explorer.” He grabs his skinny bicep in that broken arm stance. “I miss my house.”
Sometimes Julian says things that are like a sucker punch to the chest. I wish I could buy his house and give it to him, but it would still be sad because it would be empty, so I wish I could change that too—that I had time-travel-world-spinning superpowers and could undo everything.
“We should go there,” I suggest impulsively. It’s something I think I’d want if I were him, but then again maybe it’d be too painful, like walking through a cemetery.
“I do.”
“You do? You know the people who live there now?”
“No. I mean…I don’t go inside or anything.”
And now I’m picturing Julian standing outside the house where he lived with his parents, watching, but never going in, and…Jesus.
“Well, we should go introduce ourselves. I bet they’d let you inside.”
“I don’t know….”
“Is this Julian-shyness, or do you really not want to go in? Because if you really don’t, I’ll shut up.”
He looks at the ground.
“Well?”
“Shyness.”
“So you want to go inside?”
“Yes.”
“Then we will.”
“TURN HERE,” I tell Adam.
“Okay.”
I feel sort of empty and absent as I touch the vent on the dashboard. “This looks like a robot face.”
He chuckles. “I know.”
“Turn right at the stop sign. It’s the third house on the left.”
“The green one?”
“Yes.”
Adam hops out, and slowly I follow.
This is my house, my real house. For the most part it looks the same as it always did, but there are small differences. A mailbox that isn’t ours. A wreath on the door. Red curtains in the window.
We’re halfway down the path that leads to the front door when I halt. “Maybe we should…”
“What?”
“Leave.”
“Do you really want to? We can if you want.”
I don’t know what I want.
Adam stands there fidgeting until a girl with a blond ponytail opens the door. “Can I help you?” she asks.
Adam wheels around. “Brittany!” He knows her, of course. They hug, and she tells him she’s taking a year off from college and she’d love to hang out sometime. She looks curiously at me. “Oh, this is my friend,” Adam says. “He used to live here. Can we come inside?”
She says, “Sure,” as if it isn’t an odd request at all.
Adam looks back at me and waits until I cross the threshold.
Right here in the entryway there should be flowers. The scent should be strong, almost overpowering. Instead it’s spicy, peppery, the smell of food that burns your eyes. Below my feet there should be flat green carpet. But it’s gone, replaced by red-brown tile. Just two steps farther into the entryway is where my mother’s piano should be, and above it one of my father’s paintings. But they’re gone. Everything is gone.
