by Sarah Miller
Liam? That's bad. Liam shouldn't be allowed near girls that you want or, in this case, must sleep with to win a bet. Even Ms. San Video's mere mention of his name and the girls in the class are perked up, smiling, preening in his direction.
Gid sits down with Molly and Liam. Liam's smile is giant and lascivious. He's seen Molly and Gid talking. Gid's instinct, and one I think he's probably right on, is that Liam wants anything anyone else wants. He better not screw this up for me, Gid thinks, his eyes narrowing unconsciously.
"Hey," Liam says, breaking in, "why are you giving me a dirty look?"
"Sorry." Gideon blinks a few times. "I, uh, was just thinking about something else." And then he forces himself to look at Molly, right at her, for three full seconds. This is a campaign, he reminds himself as he wants to break his gaze. You show up every day and work until you win, and now, especially that you have that note from Pilar, you have to make it your number one priority, every day. Molly reddens slightly. It's almost embarrassing, Gideon thinks, how well it works, just pouring on the intensity a little.
Intensity! Gid, you are sixteen. But the thing is that he is intense. It's just that he's only recently learning what to do with it.
"I think," Liam says, looking from Molly to Gid with a smug smile, as if in the entire history of class projects, no one has ever thought of such a thing, "that the three of us should put on a play."
"A play?" Gid says slowly. "That seems kind of hard." What he doesn't say is, You don't have to be a genius to know what generally happens in a play. One guy gets the girl. And the other guy dies. Plus, God...Gid must be a terrible actor. He can barely even lie.
"Not a long play," Liam says. "Just a one-act."
"A one-act?" Molly says. She lets the cardigan sweater she's been wearing fall off her shoulders. Liam immediately registers the presence of her bare skin. His eyes take on a predatory glaze. "That sounds doable." Molly nods.
"Doable," Liam repeats, still staring at Molly. "Definitely." He raises an eyebrow at Gideon, trying to share this joke with him. Gid won't share. "Ms. San Video suggested it."
"Whatever," Molly says. "It's all bullshit. Meredith and Yvonne are repainting Guernica with finger paints. And Richard Mass and Dan Drury are building a diorama of a prison cell in the Inquisition."
"Ms. San Video told them their idea was brilliant," Liam says. Let's take a moment to feel sorry for Ms. San Video. A beautiful cosmopolitan South American woman stuck in a staid suburb, surrounded by giggling sixteen-year-olds just counting the minutes until they can smoke pot again.
"So I guess the famous Midvale rigor doesn't apply here," Molly says. "Let's just get it over with and get A's and go to the colleges of our choice."
"I'm glad we're on the same page," Liam says, looking at Molly longer than necessary, letting his eyes not so casually linger on her chest. Which is small. But is still a chest. For guys, there is always something to see.
There is no doubt in Gid's mind that Liam wants Molly now. Not really. But preemptively. Yep. He's still looking at her, with those crazy almond-shaped blue eyes, those sparkling incisors. Oh, this is not fair.
"Okay," Ms. San Video is saying. "If you want to go to the library and get started, I will let you out a few minutes early."
"Well." Liam stands up. "i guess if no one has any objections, I'll go look into some drama en espanoll Do you want to come?" he asks, turning in such a way that the question is clearly directed at Molly.
This is when Gid sees evidence of what he was worried about that night outside the dining hall. Molly's brown eyes actually get kind of starry. They get kind of moist. She looks down to hide the blush seeping across her face.
"Sorry," Molly mutters, still unable to meet Liam's eyes. "I always have lunch with Edie after this class."
Thank fucking God for that little weirdo! Gid wants to scream.
But Molly watches Liam walk away. Not the way a guy would watch a girl walk away. Not the way a dog looks at a wet bowl of Alpo. But almost.
As soon as he's gone, she puts her sweater back on. Gid's paranoid now. Did she have it off for Liam? His mind races for a compliment. He's got to take advantage of every moment.
"You have nice arms," Gid says, as he realizes he has been looking at them, admiring the firm, small muscle of her bicep, the shadow of her tricep. Then he looks at the floor. Why did he say that? She's going to think he's some
kind of arm freak.
But instead she says, "You have nice arms too."
"Really?" He holds his arms out and looks at them.
"Too bad you're wearing a long-sleeved shirt," Molly says. "You can look at them later."
Gid blushes. He actually held out his arms and looked at them. I would be embarrassed too.
"Anyway," Molly says, "should we go help Liam? I have a lot of other work to do and am more than happy to let him run the show, but if you by any chance have some pre-1945 Spanish one-act you've always been dying to stage, now is your chance." She smiles.
"The only thing I've ever seen in Spanish was Selena" Gid says.
"You are so hopelessly suburban," Molly says. "You know that, don't you?"
"I guess I do," he says. "I guess that's my whole problem."
That's part of your problem. Your other problem, for the moment, is Liam.
That night, Gideon's finishing his dinner when Liam struts up to him, a paperback curled in one hand.
Why do guys who think they're cool always have to hold books that way?
After sharing his little handshake with everyone, he sets the book down on the table. It's actually a play. "El Perro que Comparf/mos/'Cullen reads aloud. "The Pear in the Compartment?"
"Okay, douche, it's called another language." Liam swats Cullen on the head. "It's The Dog That We Shared. It's a play about a couple breaking up, and their dog is in the room."
"Oh, silly me." Cullen stands up. "Here I thought it was a high-stakes caper about produce packaging. I'm out of here. Nicholas, you coming?"
Nicholas, deeply ensconced in an organic chemistry textbook, shakes his head.
"So, dude," Liam says to Gid, "I really want you to read this. It's awesome! Ms. San Video is going to love it."
Liam makes a beeline for the cranberry juice machine, and Gid flips through the play for a minute.
"Hey," he whispers to Nicholas, "I'm only skimming, but I gotta say...this play seems kind of perverse...or perverted. And you know that we're in it with..." He lowers his whisper to a mere breath, "Molly."
Nicholas puts down his textbook. "I feel bad for you," he says, sounding truly sincere. Gid lets his gaze settle for a moment in Nicholas's blue eyes, seeking out and finding what he thinks is some real softness. However, all Nicholas has to add is "Perverse and perverted are the same thing." Then he goes back to his book.
Gid begins to read in earnest. By the time Liam returns, standing over Gid, grinning broadly and crunching on an apple, Gid's perspiring a bit. I don't blame him. This play's not just about a couple breaking up with their dog in the
room, it's about a couple alternately breaking up and making out, with their dog in the room.
The stage directions read Lucia y Oscar se besan con fuerte pasion, or "Lucia and Oscar kiss with fierce passion," more times than Gid cares to count. The dog does not have any lines. In most circumstances, Gideon would lobby hard for the part of the dog. This is not most circumstances.
When Gid finishes, to the never-ending tune of [Jam's self-satisfied apple crunching over his shoulder, he has no idea what to say. Nicholas flips through some photos in the back pages of the text, taken at the Teatro Experimental in Barcelona in 1967 and depicting the original cast of three. A petite, serious-looking woman with a dark bun at the nape of her neck embraces a short, bearded man around his waist. At her feet, another man lies on his side, his hands and feet bare, his knees curled into his chest. He's dressed, like the man in the couple, in a dark three-piece suit, but he's wearing a plastic dog snout
"So," Nich
olas says to Liam, "how are you going to decide who plays who?"
Liam crosses his arms over his chest and sits back with practiced casualness. "Good question, bro. Got any preference? How should we handle this?"
Gid hesitates. This is a risky move. It could, very easily, blow up in his face. But if things go in his favor, it could prove to have been his best move yet.
"Molly McGarry," Gid says. "She's the one who's in the play. So let her pick her leading man."
Liam reassumes his arms-crossed, casual, it's-all-good stance. "Lady's choice," he says. "Sounds like a plan, i brought Molly a copy of the play earlier. She suggested we meet tomorrow night."
"Tomorrow night?" Gideon thinks this can't be great news.
"Guess she's eager to get to it," Liam says. "And you know, we are on a bit of a deadline. It's the end of the first week of October. And we're doing the play right after Halloween."
Gideon has a paranoid fantasy that Cullen's having an affair with Ms. San Video, and he told her about the bet and she arranged to put him together with Molly. He knows deep down it's ridiculous. Not the Cullen sleeping with Ms. San Video part. That's totally possible. But he would never tell her about the bet. Cullen's sense of decency is warped, but it does exist.
image rose
Cullen's giving a presentation in American History on the Battle of Bunker Hill. He's going to make a model of the barrier the American army made across the beach in North Charleston that ultimately led the British to defeat.
He and Gideon have in front of them one thousand plastic toy soldiers and several bottles of black and red nail polish. "We need to paint a black B for 'British' on half, and then a red A for 'Americans' on the other half."
Some of the soldiers stand at attention. Some stand and fire. Some are crouched and firing. Gid picks up one of the shooting soldiers and looks hard at its face. Whoever makes these, he thinks, does a good job of fitting that expression of determination and courage on such a small area. "We should do a black A and a red e," he says. "I think that with the whole redcoat thing, people will get confused."
Cullen claps him on the back. "You're a genius," he says.
They get to work, Gid on the /s, Cullen on the 6s. "You have to stop thinking about Pilar so much," Cullen says.
"But I just can't help it," Gid says. "She gave me a note, you know. I really think she might like me."
I think she really might like him too. And while it's easy for me to see why I like him, I don't know if I get why she would.
Gid says, "I don't think I could feel this strongly for her if she didn't feel something for me."
Poor Gideon. Cullen has it so easy with girls. He doesn't understand Gideon's fear that if he doesn't immediately capture whatever scrap of attention Pilar might throw his way, he will lose her forever.
Cullen hangs his head back and groans. "I want you to be single-minded, determined. Look, in order to get a girl...I mean, for you...for the time that you're trying to get her, you have to be a little bit in love with her."
Wait a minute. Maybe Cullen does understand Gid's problem. That makes me like him a little more.
"Is Nicholas a little bit in love with Erica every time he has sex with her?" Gid asks.
Good question. I think that if I understand Nicholas at all, when he has sex with Erica, it's in that small window of time where his generally repressed capacity for tenderness and generally repressed horniness converge.
Cullen makes a guttural noise of frustration and annoyance. "Look," he says, "it seems to me that you're more upset about that than Nicholas is."
"Hmm." Gid wonders if this is true. "I guess it just fascinates me a little."
And he's been noticing that when he sees Erica, she looks a little damaged. Maybe he's just projecting. Imagining causing the same kind of damage.
No...she definitely looks damaged. But there's something to be said, as a girl, for that heartbroken look. I guess I'm a little sick. Even with sunken cheeks and eyes, Erica, with absolutely no baby fat, well, she's kind of working it.
Cullen ignores him and says, "I've been thinking a lot lately about Pilar and you."
"You have?" says Gid, flattered and almost as thrilled as if he actually were with her.
"I feel like Molly McGarry is the good starter girl for you," Cullen says. "I used to think that she was the kind of girl for you, you know? But I see you with Pilar now, and I think, why not? And I don't mean this in a mean way about Pilar, but she's very vulnerable. Someone like you...well...she could use you."
"Wow," says Gid.
Uh, yeah, wow. This is nice and all, but Cullen must be having some kind of serotonin overload in his brain right now, because this kind of optimism, well, it sure smells chemical to me.
"At the same time, I feel like you need to just pick something, one goal, in your mind, or you create real problems for yourself. Some people can be thinking of a lot of shit at once," Cullen says. "But it's usually because they're not really thinking of anything. I can do that. You can't."
This is the closest thing to a tender moment Gid and Cullen have ever had.
Gid's nail polish letters are a lot neater than Cullen's. "Cullen," he says, gently, "you need to watch what you're
doing."
On the window ledge, Cullen arranges a standing British soldier so it is being shot at by a crouching American soldier. "Don't you just feel like you're actually at the Battle of North Charleston?" He rolls his eyes. "Some girl in my class is writing a fucking diary of Betsy Ross, when she was making the flag. Isn't that stupid?"
I think Cullen's project is stupider, actually.
"If my parents had any idea how incredibly art-faggy this school was, they would shit," Cullen says. "Hey, how did you end up coming to school here, anyway?"
"My dad was building a house for this rich guy, Charlie Otterman. And right before he finishes the house, Otterman gets a DWI coming home from a Northern Virginia Lawyers' club meeting. So he gets disbarred. Can't pay my dad all he owes him. But he went to school here, and he told my dad he could get me in."
Cullen laughs out loud. "No shit! Dude, you could have gotten in here anyway, I bet. You should make that guy give your dad his money."
Gid smiles. "I think I should just let my dad continue thinking he got a good deal.17
And really, the skills Gid's developing—pot smoking, manipulation of innocent (possible) virgins—how can you put a price on that?
"Shit," Cullen says, "we're out of red. Hey. I have a good idea. Go find Pilar, and get more from her. It's a great excuse."
"Pilar? You want me to talk to Pilar?"
"If you can bring back a bottle of red nail polish and solid proof that Pilar likes you—not just 'Oh, she told me she had a dorm room she could sneak out of,' or 'Oh, she gave me her phone number,' but something that proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that she likes you, then I will talk to Nicholas about changing the bet around. It's my little thank-you to you for helping me...and also, that story about your dad kind of made me sad. I don't know why."
Gid knows why. Because it was white-trashy. No one with as charmed a life as Cullen wants to be reminded of the dark side. Nice that Cullen said he would have gotten in on his own. He thinks he would have too. C-plus notwithstanding.
Gid starts with the library periodicals room, where Pilar is known to go, generally under the influence of a Xanax or two, and maybe some vodka slipped into her watermelon Vitaminwater, to read foreign fashion magazines.
The library is shaped like a concrete egg. Madison and Mija sit in the two orange vinyl chairs by the entrance. Madison's reading Italian Vogue, and Mija, who is in Gid's English class, is reading Moby-Dick.
Mija holds up Moby-Dick. "This book is super boring."
"Tell me about it," Gid agrees, pacing to the edge of the room and peering through the door into the periodicals room. No Pilar. "I feel bad saying that, but I really can't read it."
Madison imitates a model's pout on the page she's open to. Mija and
Gid exchange amused glances.
"I saw that," Madison says.
The sun sets early now, and the darkening room is snug. Gid stretches and then lies down on the floor under the table. "I forget sometimes," he says, "that we're supposed to be in prep school to learn."
Mija lies down on the floor perpendicular to him. "Me too. You know, I think sometimes that I would just like to be back in my village in Holland, you know, riding my bike around with my friends, playing broom hockey in the street.
Every year my parents would have their Het Nationaal Dictee party." Her cute little canary face is soft and wistful. "My mother would make spekulatius, these Dutch cookies."
"What's Het Nationaal Dictee?"
"It's a Dutch TV special. It only happens once a year. Famous Dutch people and some people selected from a competition compete at live dictation."
Gid nods politely and looks toward the door again for a sign of his beloved. He looks the other way. Madison's eyes flutter. Even Italian Vogue can't hold her attention for very long.
Mija frowns, very grave. "Het Nationaal Dictee is hard, you know."
"Oh, I can imagine," Gid says quickly. "Dictation. I wouldn't even know where to start."
"The winner gets a golden pencil," Mija says. "I mean, real gold."
"Well," Gid says, "it certainly must be an honor to have something so beautiful bestowed on you by fellow Dutch people."
Now Gid's afraid he's going to laugh. But he doesn't want Mija to know he's making fun of her. So he turns his head to the side. A pair of high-heeled boots advances over the low-pile blue carpet. He'd know those feet anywhere.
Mija sees her too, pokes her head out from under the desk and smiles. "Don't you think so, Pilar?"
Heart beating, expectant, he thinks he was right to come here. And now all he needs is some red nail polish and an admission that she is in love with him.
She is always like an apparition to him. He never imagined until he met her that such beauty could exist. Pilar's wearing a jean skirt with her black boots. She really is always dressed perfectly—it's just what the young, on-the-go international student should wear to the library on a Thursday night. Even though it's freezing outside, her legs are bare. There's a patch of hair above the boot, below her hem, that she missed shaving. It's kind of dark. Gideon marvels at the power of Pilar's sexual allure, that this mistake—this remnant of what I know is a serious hirsuteness kept at bay with gallons of wax and jarfuls of razors—only enhances her appeal. I bet for a graduation present she's getting laser hair removal.
