Touch

by Francine Prose

  I’m so busy fishing around in my backpack, trying to find my highlighting pen, that it takes me a while to hear a voice and realize that someone is talking to me.

  The voice says, “Can I sit down?”

  It can’t be talking to me. I don’t even bother to look up, but the voice repeats the same question again until I have no choice.

  I look up. It’s Shakes. He’s looking at me. All sorts of twisty, Shakes-like expressions are working their way across his face. If it were anyone else, I’d think he was trying to figure out whether it was okay to smile or not, but with Shakes, it’s hard to be sure.

  First I think I’m going to faint. Then I think, You can’t faint when you’re sitting down. Then I think, How do they know you can’t? In the history of the world, it’s probably happened at least once that a sitting person fainted. Then I stop thinking, and just try to deal with the blood rushing back and forth between my ears and the fact that my stomach is flipping over and over.

  No, I think. You can’t sit down. Not after what you did.

  The bus starts up, and Shakes grins at me. Without either of us having to say so, we both know that the other’s thinking about that morning when Shakes went flying all over the school bus so the seniors would let him sit in back. It seems like it happened a million years ago.

  “Sure,” I say. And now I actually smile and move over. I can’t believe I’m smiling! After what he did! I mean, who is this guy? Who was he? Who did I think he was?

  It doesn’t help to remember those mornings on the bus when it was just Shakes and me. That’s the part I can’t stand to think about, the part of my other life. What did I think we were doing? And what could he have thought?

  “Might as well sit down,” I say. “You’re going to hurt yourself, standing like that.”

  In our old lives, I would never have said that. No one was allowed to mention the fact that Shakes has physical problems unless he himself used his disability to get his way, like with the seniors. But now it’s almost as if I want to hurt his feelings. After what he did…but what makes it harder is that I can tell Shakes understands all that, he understands why I said it. That’s how well we know each other. How well we still know each other.

  He sits, and I slide over even more so I’m as far from him as possible, and we’re not touching.

  “How are you?” asks Shakes.

  “Just great,” I say. “Thanks for asking. And you?” When I was really little, I used to be so scared of talking in class, it practically made me throw up. And this is worse. Just getting the words out leaves me winded and weak in the knees. Maybe you can faint sitting down—

  “Not so great,” Shakes says.

  I wonder if he’s been sick, missing school. For a moment, I’m so concerned that I forget how mad I am at him, and I look at him, like I used to, to see how he is. He looks pale, and tired. He’s got dark circles under his eyes.

  “Have you been sick?” I say, looking hard at him.

  He stares back at me. We were never supposed to talk about this. But then again, he was never supposed to tell the other guys that I let him touch me.

  “No more than usual,” he says.

  “Then what’s your problem?”

  “What makes you think I have a problem?”

  “You look like crap,” I say.

  The silence that falls is long enough to give me plenty of time to feel sorry for having said that. But why should I feel sorry after what he did to me?

  “I miss you,” Shakes says.

  I’m sure I must have heard him wrong. But I can’t exactly ask him to say it again. I try to think of all the things he could have been saying, and probably was saying, all the phrases that might sound like “I miss you.” But when I can’t think of anything, I wind up feeling pretty sure that’s what he said.

  Suddenly, he twitches so violently that his hand flies out and pokes me in the ribs.

  “Hey, watch it!” I say.

  If I hadn’t been wearing my puffy jacket, he could actually have hurt me. It’s the worst spasm I’ve ever seen him have, and I wonder if he’s nervous around me, and if that’s making his twitching worse. For a moment I’m almost glad. It serves him right. Then I stop being glad. I don’t want him to get any worse. It makes me realize I’m really not as mad at him as I’d thought, or maybe I just like him more than I’d let myself remember.

  “I’m sorry, Maisie,” he says.

  I can’t tell if he means sorry for accidentally hitting me, or sorry for telling people that I’d let him touch me, or both.

  He says, “I liked it better when we were friends.”

  I say, “You should have thought of that. You should have thought of that before you told Kevin and Chris what we were doing, those mornings, in the back of the bus. You should have thought of that before you let them ask me if they could do it, too. You should have thought of that before you didn’t stick up for me. You should have thought of that before you just rolled over when Daria told the principal. You should have thought of that—” I don’t know whether I’m actually going to be able to say this part. I take a deep breath and say, “You should have thought of that before you told everybody that I asked you if there were guys who would pay to touch my boobs.”

  “I didn’t,” says Shakes. “I never did. I don’t know what came over me. I was freaked out, I wasn’t thinking when I let them do it, and I didn’t protect you. But I promise, I never did.”

  “Never did what?” I say.

  “I never said that part about the money. That was all Kevin and Chris’s idea. I don’t even know where they got that from. They just decided to say that, if someone told, and from the look on Daria’s face that morning, that seemed like a done deal. If we got in trouble, they decided we would say that, and that we would make it seem like the whole thing was your idea. I was against it from the start. I couldn’t believe they’d actually go through with it. I knew how terrible you would feel if you ever found out.”

  “Found out? I found out the next day! Were you around—were you alive—when all those kids were jingling coins in their pockets and they drew that…thing on the girls’ bathroom wall?”

  “I don’t go in the girl’s bathroom,” says Shakes.

  “But you knew I was going to find out.”

  “I guess so. But I didn’t say it. I never said that thing about the money.”

  “You swear?”

  “I swear. You’ve got to believe me. I never said it.”

  I look at Shakes even harder now. And the weird thing is, I do believe him. I’ve known him since preschool, I know him almost as well as I know myself. I can tell when he’s lying and telling the truth. But there’s this: If I can’t be sure about what really happened to me, how can Shakes be so sure? Maybe he thinks he’s telling the truth. For all I know, he was the one who came up with the idea to add the part about the money. But somehow I doubt it. I doubt it.

  I say, “Did you tell anyone it wasn’t true?”

  “No,” he says. “I’m sorry. I already told you I was sorry.”

  “If you didn’t deny it, if you didn’t stick up for me, you might as well have said it was true.”

  “It wasn’t like that,” he says. “Everything was happening so fast, and all these faces and voices and weirdness were all sort of swirling around, and everybody got very panicky and crazy even though the principal was trying to be all reasonable and supercalm. I could see him sweating under his tie.”

  “I know,” I say. “He does that.”

  “I didn’t really get a chance to say what was true and what wasn’t. Everyone was sort of rushing from one thing to the next. It was like they were skipping from rock to rock in a stream.”

  I remember when we did that. He wants me to remember. I want to say, Bringing that up isn’t fair! But how would I answer if he asked me why?

  I say, “Not saying it’s a lie is pretty much the same as saying something’s true.”

  “It isn’t. Not exactly. Don
’t be so harsh, Maisie.”

  “I’m not,” I say. “And you know I’m right.”

  “Then what about the lie you told about how I held your hands down while it was happening and wouldn’t let you move? I heard about that from my mom. You know that isn’t true. You know that never happened.”

  “It is true,” I say. But I’m thinking, It isn’t? Is it?

  It’s so confusing—and painful, I guess—that, all at once, we both simultaneously run out of energy. We run out of things to say. After that we just sit there side by side on the bus seat, staring at each other. We’re both a little winded, as if we’ve run a long race—a marathon. Then we slump back against the seat, and our heads drift together until we’re leaning against each other.

  It feels nice. Really nice. At the same time I can feel the whole bus looking at us. Behind us, everyone’s eyes are drilling into the backs of our skulls. I wonder where Kevin and Chris are, but I don’t care, it feels so good. It’s almost as if we’ve magically time-traveled back to that other time, that period of grace when I didn’t even know enough to appreciate what we had. We’re back where we belong. Beside each other. Together.

  I think about all the time I’ve spent in the bad world of thinking that Shakes didn’t care about me or that he hated me or that he’d told all those lies about me. And now I feel that I’ve come back from a long, hard journey. I’ve returned to the good world where it’s just me and Shakes.

  Sitting there with our eyes closed and our heads pressed together, I’m half blissing out on the moment and half trying to figure out—just in case a moment like this doesn’t ever come again—what Shakes and I had. Or what we have, what we mean to each other. Were we in love? Did we have crushes on each other? Did we find each other exactly when we needed someone? We were friends, there was that. What do I know? Maybe it had nothing, or hardly anything, to do with the fact that I have breasts.

  The truth is, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive Shakes for not defending me. For not realizing that you just can’t say certain things, or allow certain things to be said about people. Especially your friends. I guess I’ll never forgive him for not being braver and more independent. Those are qualities you care about in a person—maybe even more than that person’s ability to get over his physical problems. Shakes was pretty brave, but not brave enough, when the going got really tough. And the truth was, I guess I hadn’t been all that brave or independent, either.

  I don’t want to think about that now. For the moment, I’m comfortable, and almost happy. I feel relaxed and sleepy—for the first time in a long while. But I know better than to doze off. We’re not alone on the bus. Everything we do or don’t do is a statement. It has meaning. We can’t pretend that the rest of the world doesn’t exist. It’s right there with us in all those rows behind us.

  It makes me sad to realize that by the time I get home, I’ll have decided that no matter how much I like Shakes, no matter how good it feels to be leaning against him, the closeness between us can’t go on. It’s too late for us to be friends. I’ll never trust him the way I used to. We’ll be nice to each other when we see each other in school, but we’re no longer the same people we used to be. And it’s sad, because, whatever happened, he was my oldest friend.

  I remember something Doctor Atwood said. “It’s unfortunate,” she said, “and no one likes it. But friendships die all the time. And other friendships are born.”

  Shakes’s sigh rattles his scarecrow body. He says, “I meant it about being sorry. But you can do whatever you want. Get us expelled. We probably deserve it. I don’t care. I just wanted to sit next to you one more time.”

  I say, “I appreciate that. I mean it, Shakes. I really do.”

  “Well, good,” says Shakes. “I always really liked you.”

  “I liked you, too. I still do. Just not the same way.”

  “I understand that,” says Shakes. “I don’t blame you.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  “No,” Shakes says. “I’m the one who’s sorry.”

  “I accept your apology,” I say.

  But I don’t. I can’t. Not yet.

  Meanwhile, I can’t help wondering if Shakes, like me, couldn’t really remember if he’d done it or not. Because the part that’s a lie—that I’d said no and that Shakes held down my hands—had begun to seem more like the truth every time I told it.

  I’m crying a little when Shakes gets off the bus, so I pretend to be looking out the window as I mumble, “Okay. See you later.” I’m thinking that I’ve got another ten minutes till I get to my house, so by then I’ll have a little time to think things through and decide how I feel about what’s just happened between me and Shakes. But in fact I spend those minutes trying not to think. I’m not ready to deal with it yet. Or at all. And I need more time. After everything that’s happened, ten minutes seems like nothing.

  Outside, the snow has shrunk to dirty white patches. The lawns are a muddy brown. Here and there, a greenish fuzz is sprouting after all those months of waiting under the snow. I feel as if I’m trying to memorize every spot we pass, every turn in the road, because soon this minute will be gone, replaced by other minutes. And by the next time I come back this way, everything will be different. It will never again look the way it did on the day Shakes told me he was sorry and that he still liked me, and I told him that wasn’t good enough. It all seems too sad for words, especially since I can’t believe that my life will ever get any better than it is at this moment.

  I tiptoe into my house, shutting the door so softly that you’d need superhuman powers to hear. Which Joan has, obviously.

  “Maisie,” she calls from the kitchen. “Come in here for a minute. I’ve made something special I want to show you.”

  I walk in as slowly as I can, putting off the moment of seeing whatever gourmet gross-out Sitcom Mom has prepared for my delight. It turns out to be a chocolate cake.

  “Get it?” asks Joan.

  Ten minutes ago I was sitting with my head against Shakes’s head. And now I’m in the kitchen with Joan trying to figure out what I’m supposed to “get” about a cake.

  “Get what?” I say. “It’s a cake.”

  “No,” says Joan. “It’s a law book. Like the kind Cynthia has in her office.”

  It hits me that, in Joan’s insane misguided mind, the cake is supposed to be some kind of celebration-in-advance, for when I give my deposition in Cynthia’s office, surrounded by books that look pretty much like giant chocolate blobs and are no less fake than a book made of cake. By this time tomorrow, my hour at Cynthia’s will be over, and the case will be ready for the hearing. And Joan’s sure we’ll win! Hooray! Let’s celebrate! Law-book cake for everybody!

  “Cool,” I say. “Can I go now?”

  “Maisie! Maisie! What’s wrong? What happened to you at school today? You look like you’ve seen a ghost! Was the bus ride home sheer hell for you? I can’t tell you how sorry I am. Short of dragging that darn piece-of-garbage SUV to the dealership myself, there’s no way I could have gotten there in time. And of course your dad insisted on buying me something so fancy and foreign that the nearest dealership is forty miles away. I had to wait for them to get here and bring me a loaner. It ruined my entire day.”

  “Did you get the car fixed?” I ask. Joan smiles. Even thought it’s broken, she’d still rather talk about her car than about whatever problems I might have been having at school.

  “They think there’s some computer glitch, which isn’t supposed to happen. But no one can be sure, I mean, no carmaker can play God, right? They can do what they can do, but there’s a limit!”

  “I guess,” I say.

  “And no matter what kind of fortune you pay—”

  “Stuff happens,” I say.

  “Exactly,” says Joan. “So how was the bus ride? Traumatic? Tell me it wasn’t so bad. Oh, you poor sweetheart!”“

  “It was okay, I guess.” I’m never going to tell her how it really wa
s. Even if I wanted to—which I don’t—I couldn’t explain.

  “Good,” says Joan. “But believe me, after tomorrow, you’ll never have to do anything like that again. Of course, we’ll have to be patient—these court cases drag on and on like Bleak House. But eventually, and I mean starting tomorrow, this will be settled. It will, I promise. There was just a case, down in South Carolina somewhere. Cynthia was telling me last night. There was a fairly considerable settlement awarded to some poor girl. Boarding school, then college. Medical school, if you want.”

  “I don’t want to go to medical school,” I say. “I don’t want to be a doctor.” Then I say, “Speaking of doctors, do you think I could go see Doctor Atwood this afternoon?”

  “It’s unusual,” says Doctor Joan Marbury, Therapist, snapping to attention and instantly emerging out of Sitcom Mom’s head.

  “She said I could,” I tell Joan. “She said she’d be willing to schedule an emergency appointment.”

  “Emergency! I knew it! I knew something was wrong. What happened? Something. I know it. It’s my fault, because of the car and the bus ride and…to say nothing of the fact that the deposition’s coming up, and I know it’s worrying you, though I’ve told you a thousand times there’s nothing to worry about—”

  I say, “It has nothing to do with you.” Which is true, but only sort of. If Joan’s car hadn’t broken down, I wouldn’t have taken the bus, I wouldn’t have had that talk with Shakes. “I really think I’d like to see Doctor Atwood. Now.”

  “Why, that’s wonderful. Not wonderful that something happened to you that’s made you want to see Doctor Atwood on an emergency basis. But wonderful that you feel you can trust her, that you want to talk to her and work your feelings out with her in a crisis situation.”

  “It’s not a crisis. Can I go see her or not?”

  “Why don’t you call?” Joan hands the phone to me. Doctor Joan Marbury knows that a kid who sounds like a wreck will have an easier time of persuading a busy shrink to stay late in the office.