Too high for common selfishness, he could
At times resign his own for others’ good,
But not in pity, not because he ought,
But in some strange perversity of thought,
That sway’d him onward with a secret pride
To do what few or none would do beside;
And this same impulse would, in tempting time,
Mislead his spirit equally to crime.
— Lord Byron, from Lara
After the initial excitement of starting school had died down, Valentin settled into a routine of people-watching, occasional writing of poetry that his teachers called “superb” and “exceptional,” and frequent toying with the lives of his classmates. In the afternoons he managed to avoid every class, every obligation, and every family member by finding strings of flawless ten-minute increments and playing them over and over again so that he could just lounge, observing from all the various angles. Or he wandered around Marlowe, adding his signature here and there, sometimes undetected, writing the scene without appearing in it, sometimes placing himself at the center of it all, in the lead role.
One day, Valentin was slumped next to a row of lockers, legs extended into the busy hall, head back against a heavy metal door, as if he were so bored he could barely contain the urge to give up and fling his body in all directions, limb by limb succumbing to gravity. He didn’t seem to care when people looked at him as if he were strange, or when girls giggled as he tapped his head against the locker and hummed tunes that may or may not have yet been written. To be fair, not all the girls thought he was weird. In fact, none of them did. In groups, they giggled and rolled their eyes, but each one, individually, found his indifference intoxicating. Each one thought she was the only one who saw how cool it was to be different, that she was the only visionary in the history of womankind to be attracted to the boy who simply didn’t care. And so Valentin had plenty of friends, not in the mob-scene, competitive way that Belle had friends, or the tightly packed, five-on-five way that boys like Connor Wirth had friends. He was friends with everyone privately, individually — secretly. When he was alone, he wasn’t truly, completely alone like Bicé. He was every girl’s secret boyfriend. And a good number of guys gave him a nod and a slap on the back when the halls were empty enough. And for him, this was the ideal way to live. People didn’t run from him, as they did from Victoria. Their giggles didn’t come from deep down, as they did with Bicé. Secretly, everyone was in love with Valentin.
Valentin rolled his head lazily to the side. His eyes settled on a lanky stranger fumbling with a nearby locker. He was uncomfortably tall and skinny, like a boy on stilts. He wore a large pair of old brown loafers — the kind with the giant tassels and protruding outer rim that goes all the way around, making big feet look like boats. Above the shoes were two inches of scrunched-up athletic socks, another inch of dry, patchy skin, and then the shockingly tapered cuffs of a pair of worn-out jeans. He looked stretched. Like the recipe for a normal person that’s been poured into the wrong mold, without enough mass to fill it completely. Valentin recognized him. He was a sophomore: Dustin McGuiness. Better known as Douchey McGee. You couldn’t go five minutes in Marlowe without hearing the name Douchey McGee followed by fits of laughter.
Just then, something made Dustin go white in the face. He dropped all his books and scampered to pick them up. When Valentin saw what had caught Dustin’s attention, his eyes lit up with all the possibilities — a nice long scene that could go on for hours.
Standing two lockers down from Dustin and Valentin was Missy Patterson, the head of the Pom Squad. Missy Patterson was the best-looking of them all. She wasn’t classic like Belle. She was average height, perfectly proportioned, with long, thick brown hair, full lips, big blue eyes, and creamy, pale porcelain skin. Missy Patterson walked as if she was on a runway, her clothes always a little tight. A fantasy in an ill-fitting uniform.
Valentin got up and walked over to Dustin. “So you have a thing for Missy, huh? Well, you’d make a good pair. Neither one of you fits in your clothes.”
“I gotta go,” Dustin said, and turned to leave. But Valentin grabbed his arm and pulled him back.
“Now, now, Dusty, don’t run off. Go and talk to her!”
“Are you nuts?” Dustin looked down at Valentin. “If I get within ten feet of her, that whole dance team will make sure I never hear the end of it.”
But there was no stopping Valentin now. The gears in his head were going full speed, and he had no intention of missing out on this much fun. He slapped Dustin on the shoulder (which was a strange upward motion because of their height difference) and started pulling him toward Missy.
“I give you my personal guarantee that she will never bug you about this. I promise. Now come with me.”
“Hey, let me go. I’m not talking to her.” Dustin kept trying to pull free of Valentin’s grip on his arm. But he was too bony and frail to pull it off. And his height was working against him, all that momentum making him stumble forward, right into Missy’s locker.
“Hey!” she yelled as a pile of pencils fell out of their case. “What do you want?”
“Hi, Missy. I’m Valentin. And this is Dustin. Dustin McGuiness of the Belfast McGuinesses.”
“Whatever.” Missy rolled her eyes and pursed her lips, so that Dustin gave an involuntary sigh, which made Missy snicker disdainfully.
“Well.” Valentin jumped right to the point. “We just want to know one little thing, Missy. What would it take for you to go on one date with our friend Dustin here?”
“Cute,” Missy said, slamming her locker shut. “But I would never go out with him.”
Dustin started to sweat and turned to walk away, whispering, “I’m sorry,” almost to himself. Valentin grabbed his arm again.
“Your skirt is torn,” Valentin said, catching Missy off guard.
“What?”
“Your skirt. The hem is coming loose.”
Valentin was looking down at the lower half of Missy’s Pom Squad uniform, a tiny, pleated skirt that hung well above her knees and bounced even higher with every step. Around the edge, half an inch of hemline was coming loose, as though her skirt was mortified of its current position around her upper thighs and was desperately reaching for lower ground. “It came undone in morning practice,” Missy shot back. “Who knew there were so many freaking helpful people in this school?”
“OK, so tell me what it would take. Hypothetically . . .” Valentin kept pushing, putting on his most charming face. “Come on now, Missy. There must be some secret thing you’d want . . . a little fetish?”
Missy gave an involuntary “Hah!” and blushed. Dustin turned to go again. Val didn’t even look back, just grabbed his arm.
“Look, even if he didn’t look like a giant earthworm,” said Missy, “I still don’t go for the twitchy weakling type.”
“Ouch,” Valentin said, rubbing his chin, deep in thought. “OK, so the lady likes confidence. Let’s see . . .”
Before Missy had a chance to say “Huh?” Valentin had grabbed her around the waist and kissed her right on the mouth.
She pulled away and slapped him across the face.
“OK, not that — something else. Take notes, Dusty.”
“What?” At this point, Dustin was covered in sweat and clearly panicking.
“Never mind,” Valentin said. He thrust his hands into his pockets and rewound, shaking his head at the confused, pathetic look that was frozen on Dustin’s face. He stopped right before the kiss, when Missy was looking at him expectantly.
He reached over and caressed her on the cheek.
She pushed him away.
And so he rewound.
He grabbed her butt.
She kneed him in the stomach.
He rewound.
He read her a poem.
She yawned and walked away.
He rewound yet again.
Finally, after about a dozen tries, Valentin noticed the three
Advanced Calculus books in her locker.
“Aren’t you only a junior?” he asked her, eyeing the college-level books.
“Yeah, so?” she asked. He glanced at the books.
“Oh, right,” she said. “I’m pretty, so I have to be stupid, right? And a total witch too. You know what I’d like? If someone for once assumed that I was nice!”
“OK.” Valentin chuckled, because she was yelling about how nice she was, and then he caught her eye and picked a tiny piece of lint off her sweater. And then another.
She smiled and said, “Thanks.”
Valentin pulled Dustin in the other direction.
“We have all we need, Dusty-boy. All we need.”
“What are you talking about? She didn’t even notice me there. Can I just go? It’s time for class.”
“Hey! It’ll be time for class when I say it’s time for class!” Valentin said, and threw his hands into his pockets yet again. This time, he went all the way back to when he was sitting by the locker, just before he had spotted Dustin.
He sat by the locker waiting, waiting. Maybe he had gone back a bit too far. Over his shoulder, a few moths hovered and waited. He slapped them away, but they somehow found their way again — just above his shoulder. Before long, he saw Madame Vileroy gliding down the hall in his direction. What was she doing here? Had he gone back too far? But then again, the governess had a way of appearing in the scenes that he replayed, even if she had never been in any of their previous permutations. She sometimes just showed up in one version or another. No warning. Nothing.
Valentin leaned on his elbow and sat up. But when he looked down the hall again, she was gone. The moths too had vanished from their perch above his shoulder. The hall filled with students rushing this way and that, and no matter how hard he looked, he couldn’t find the governess.
To the kids loitering in the hall, the next moment was like a worn-out piece of the fabric of time, as if that particular second had been mutilated beyond recognition, ground down to a few wisps of itself, like a piece of an old movie reel that had been badly damaged, thinned out from overuse. Valentin must have replayed it a hundred times, trying to get things to work out just right with Dustin — to get him to do something so big, so antithetical to his nature. Something that, to someone like him, would seem drastic. Each time, Valentin refined his words to Dustin, his demeanor and tone, a little more. Finally, the poor, pathetic kid would do anything he wanted — because Valentin knew his psyche better than his parents, his psychologist, better than even he knew himself.
Valentin approached carefully.
“Hi, Dustin,” he said, not tapping him on the back (since that had startled him once), not putting his hands behind his back (since that had made him suspicious), not slipping in front of him (since that had caused a near-collision). Instead, Valentin said the greeting in a low, soft tone and waited for Dustin to turn.
“Yeah.”
“Dustin, you remember in that episode of Stargate where they go into some parallel universe and they can’t explain how things work and so they just have to trust people sometimes?”
“They’re all like that,” Dustin said, laughing. “Who are you?”
“I’m Val,” Valentin said with a smile, but not too big a smile (because that had made Dustin think this was a prank). “And you just have to trust me when I ask you to do something.”
“Right.” Dustin chuckled and started to leave when Valentin put something in his hand.
“What’s that?”
“That’s my wallet. With all my IDs and money and everything.”
“Why’re you giving it to me?”
“If this is a prank, you can keep it or burn it or whatever. But if it works out for you, you’ll give it back to me later on.”
Dustin just stared blankly at Valentin.
“OK, see Missy over there?”
“Yeah.”
“I want you to go and talk to her.”
“Uhh . . . right. OK, I’ll just do that right after my lunch with Thomas Goodman-Brown and his chick brigade.”
But Valentin went on. “I’ll go over first, OK? Right after I talk to her, you go over, and do exactly as I say.”
Valentin explained to Dustin what to do, sprinkling in all the positive triggers he had picked up from talking to Missy over and over again. He patted him on the back reassuringly. He made molecular biology jokes. He even threw in a couple of inspirational lines from Isaac Asimov. Finally Valentin presented Dustin with some random objects from his backpack: a calculus book (“I don’t need that. I took that class last year.”), a few safety pins (“Those are not as safe as they look!”), and a graphing calculator. After another round of encouragement and some more rousing speeches about “pressing on” and “keeping courage” from Star Trek, I, Robot, and other classics he’d never heard of, Valentin walked toward Missy’s locker just as she was about to leave.
“Nice skirt,” he said as he walked past. He reached over and flipped the loose hem of her skirt. “The Salvation Army run out of hand-me-downs?”
Missy was raging. But before she could respond, Valentin was out of sight. She dropped her book to try to fix her skirt, her face red, looking around to see if anyone heard. She fumbled with the hem, frustrated, as if that extra half an inch of covered thigh would be her social undoing. At that moment, she certainly didn’t expect to look up to see Dustin McGuiness standing over her.
“Hi,” he said, his voice a bit shaky but keeping a smile on his face. “Let me help you with that,” he said, and bent to pick up her book.
Then he stood there, waiting.
There was a long, awkward pause as she accepted the book and waited for him to go away. But he didn’t.
“Well, what do you want?” she said.
“Um . . . oh, right. I came over because my calculator broke.” He showed her the graphing calculator Valentin had given him. “And I know you’re in the advanced class, so I thought yours would definitely be programmed with all the . . . um . . . formulas and stuff . . .”
She kept staring at him.
“I know it’s too much to ask . . . um . . . but, my friend said you were really nice . . . and . . . smart . . . um . . . and, I’ll bring it back after class . . .”
Missy, who was still preoccupied with her skirt, just rolled her eyes and said, “OK.” She handed him the calculator. “Don’t program anything new.”
“OK,” Dustin said, a bit too loudly and excitedly, so that Missy almost jumped.
He started to walk away. Then he stopped and turned.
“Um . . . Missy?”
“Yeah, what is it?”
“Why don’t you try these?” He took four safety pins out of his pocket and held them out for her. “These could hold the hem in place until you have a chance to . . . you know . . . Go to the tailor or whatever . . .”
Missy, who was still bent over her skirt, looked up into Dustin’s nervous, smiling face.
“It happened in practice,” she blurted out.
“Yeah, you guys are really good,” he said. “All that twirling and stuff . . . Wardrobe malfunction . . . happens all the time on TV . . . sometimes even on purpose. . . .”
Missy let out a tiny laugh just then, and then she stopped herself and fixed her face into a frown again, taking the pins out of Dustin’s hand. She pinned the hem in the front half of her tiny skirt, casually flipping the edges inside out, so that almost all of her legs were visible. Dustin grew more nervous.
“Um . . . I wish that sort of thing would happen to me,” he said, drying the back of his neck with his hand. “Everything I have is always too short.”
Missy who, in her bent position, had a perfect view of the inch of skin below Dustin’s cuff, laughed again and tried putting in the last pin.
“OK, well, I should go. Thanks for the calculator,” Dustin said. Then, feeling braver, he leaned over and picked the lint off Missy’s shoulder. “Bye.” He turned and walked away.
But before h
e had taken half a dozen steps, he heard Missy call his name. “Dustin, is it?”
“Yeah.”
“Would you mind helping me with this last pin?”
It was unfathomable.
It was a true spectacle.
It was a good thing Valentin had a camera phone.
Because right there, in front of the entire school, Douchey McGee was down on one knee, pinning into place the skirt of the sexiest girl in school, his hands fumbling around under her skirt, flipping the hem back and forth, with Missy just standing there, looking over her shoulder, waiting for him to finish.
It was a moment for the yearbook. The very last day anyone called him anything but “Dustin.”
As he gathered his books and said good-bye to Missy, Dustin turned around and spotted Valentin. It was hard to be inconspicuous at that moment, with the tall, geeky giant waving and pointing to the calculator, then tossing Valentin his wallet so clumsily that all the coins scattered on the floor.
Valentin was having so much fun watching Dustin walk away (a bit taller still), half the Pom Squad whisper in disbelief, and a few guys from the swim team look on with absolute confusion, that he barely noticed that the moths were back, hovering over his shoulder. He tapped the buttons on his phone to zoom in on the photo. A picture of Dustin kneeling beside Missy’s skirt. “Perfect.”
He scrolled through a dozen other photos, pictures from other versions of the same event, when Missy had slapped Dustin, or laughed at him until he’d run off. They’d disappear soon, these alternate versions of the past. They’d get lost or the images would scramble. They would all go away somehow. All except the one of Dustin kneeling next to Missy, fixing her skirt. The one picture that told the truth. Because those other versions never happened, and pictures never lie.
Then Valentin spotted Madame Vileroy walking toward him once more. The moths, invisible over Valentin’s shoulder only a moment before, were now flying loosely around the governess, as if energized by her presence.
Another Faust Page 13
