In the quiet seconds that follow, the fear whips itself into anger. “Say something, you shitty lump of plastic.” The words rush out of me, sucking the breath along with them, my heart beating against its hard shell. Because I’m talking to a telescope. A goddamn telescope.
He remains silent.
But the anger is a flash. It sizzles and disappears. Or maybe it’s the Roxy slowly taking effect. Smoothing out the wrinkles inside me. And in the emptiness, the darkness, my heart slows to a thump.
“You’re not shitty,” I whisper.
He laughs. And the happy sound soaks through my skin. The minutes have added up. And with them, my thoughts drift off in another direction.
“So… who are you, really?”
“A shitty lump of plastic?” he says.
“Or… the devil,” I suggest.
“So ambitious.”
“You did make that pact with me. Remember?”
“Minnesota,” he says. “Of course I remember, Eve.”
The drug is filling me with every good feeling in the world—he is filling me with every good feeling in the world.
“What’s it like being pure evil?” I ask.
“Is the devil pure evil?”
“He made hell, didn’t he?” I say.
“Did he? I thought god was the creator.”
“Hmm. Interesting,” I murmur. “I’d think about this if I could think.”
“Yes,” he says, “the Roxy.”
“Why do you say it like that… the Roxy?” First Nancy, and now him. Everybody just thinks they can talk about my Roxy.
My mouth feels hot and I wish I had enough strength to sit up and drink the glass of water sitting next to my bed, and then I wish that not only did I have the strength to sit up and drink it, but that it had ice floating in it, a lot of ice… and that it was an orange soda.
“Eve.”
“Listen, I’m tired and want to sleep. If you are some old snake come to tempt Eve,” I say, using my fingers to air quote it, although they’re under my covers so I’m not sure why I do this, “you should forgive my lack of politeness.”
“Although if I am the Serpent, Eve, forgiveness really wouldn’t be my thing.”
I can’t hold back a sleepy smile—and once again the sound of his voice erases my anger like waves erase footprints from sand, and an overwhelming feeling of needing to touch him washes over me. I reach out, but he’s just beyond my fingertips. I close my eyes and imagine his sleek coolness, my mind stretching out flat and comfortable. Outside the wind whistles and moans.
“March.” I sigh. “In like a lion, out like a lamb.” A quote my second-grade teacher, Miss Fuller, taught us.
“It’s February, Eve.”
Miss Fuller had us team up with a partner. One of us had to draw the lion and the other the lamb. Lidia picked the lion. So I drew the lamb.
A gust of wind strikes the house, rattling the windows. But I’m warm. Very warm. And safely wrapped in my staples and plastic with my Roxy pulsing through me.
“You don’t like the cold,” I say.
“I don’t?”
“Because you’re the devil.”
“Oh, right.”
“That’s why you wanted Minnesota to disappear.”
“No, Eve, you wanted Minnesota to disappear.”
His words send a shiver through me.
“Ah, but the devil is a liar,” I point out through a large yawn.
“If the devil were truly evil, Eve, he’d tell the truth.”
Lies, Lies, Lies
Waiting for Bogdani to begin
class, I felt a tapping
on my brace. A very familiar
tapping.
Thomas Aquinas.
“I do not answer people who knock on me.”
A lie.
Next, I felt him scribbling.
“You best not be drawing on me.”
“Es
un gato,
Eve,” he said.
“Everybody loves
cats.”
Though I agreed with this,
of course, I’d
never admit it to
Thomas Aquinas.
His real name was Thomas Aquino,
though due to this being Boston, a
seriously Catholic town,
everybody called him Thomas Aquinas
after the saint.
Thomas Aquinas was no
saint,
but he was
brilliant.
He could easily be valedictorian next year,
if he ever did any work or
wasn’t murdered first, which was entirely possible
since Thomas Aquinas was also
an asshole.
No one liked him.
Not the teachers
because he was a smart-ass.
Not the students
because he was a smart-ass.
Not Lidia
because she said he was always
around.
Me?
“Eve.”
We lived two doors apart on
Wrentham Street off
Dorchester and
we were
partners in the
School Within a School system,
a program in our large
high school that
functioned like a buddy system.
“Eve.”
Four.
Years.
“Hey, Eve.”
Same.
Buddy.
Which meant I saw
an awful lot of
Thomas Aquinas
and
did an awful lot of
SWAS assignments,
since he never did
shit.
“Eve.”
The sound of
Thomas Aquinas
saying my name
a fourth time
tweaked my last nerve, and I
cursed the alphabet,
my surname, and the universe—the
trifecta of causes for this miserable
pairing—and with my
judgment clouded
by his warm breath
on my neck,
I spun to face him.
“Good morning, gorgeous.” He
smiled over the top of his gold-rimmed
professor glasses, which perfectly matched his
dark intense stare, yet
always looked out of place
framed by long,
dirty hair, colorful
sleeve tattoos,
and one of the same ratty T-shirts
he wore every single day,
which read Gophers.
“I noticed you missed the last SWAS assignment,”
he said.
“I did not.”
A lie.
“That’s unlike you, Eve. Let
me know if you need help,”
he said.
“I do not.”
A lie.
“And by help,
I don’t mean with anything
SWAS related,”
he said,
winking.
Winking!
“Stop talking to me.”
“‘Your success is my success is our success,’”
he said, reciting
the SWAS motto.
I ignored him.
“Big surgery coming up next week.
Don’t worry. I’ve got your back.”
I ignored him.
“Get it, Eve? Your back?”
I ignored him.
“I just love our morning chats.”
He sighed.
I hated them.
A lie.
Everything I Want
SIX WEEKS OUT FROM SURGERY AND I’VE MADE IT AS FAR AS the living room couch. I had my mother place the telescope in front of the big picture window before she left for work. One nice thing about having a parent not ultra-interested in y
our life is they don’t ask inane questions like Why do you need me to drag a telescope into the living room for the day?
I sip the last of my lukewarm tea while I gaze at it.
“You really like that thing,” Lidia says.
“I do,” I tell her. “He gives me everything I want.”
She laughs at my silly-sounding response, which warms me more than the tea.
Having Lidia back makes me feel like I’m ten years old. I feel so good. Although I doubt I look it. My hair is supergreasy. My face is paler than the whiteboards at school. I’m wearing the same torn red snowflake pajamas I first put on when I got home from the hospital. And except when the nurse visits, I haven’t removed my brace once. I’ve also lost a bunch of weight. Too much weight. Being skinny may be the dream of most sixteen-year-old girls, but when your bones look like a game of pick-up sticks, having them more on display is never the goal.
“Your toenails are gross, Eve. Let me paint them.”
I look down at my feet. She’s right.
“Red, they’d look really good red,” she suggests.
“Um—” I say. Something feels wrong. I’m not sure what.
“I know,” she cuts me off. “You like blue better.”
“No, Lid,” I whisper. “I don’t like blue.”
We hear the front door open, followed by a whip of cold air. Lidia stands up. “I’ll get the polish,” she says, as she slips off into my bedroom just as my mother walks into the living room followed by…
Thomas Aquinas?
My head is ripped from its Roxy haze as I scoot below the couch throw. Pain from the thoughtless movement zings through the trunk of my body.
“I bumped into your pal Thomas on the way in, Eve,” my mother says.
Thomas Aquinas grins from behind her. He’s holding a stack of work for me.
“Thomas is not my pal,” I say. “He’s my partner.”
Instantly, I hear what this sounds like and quickly add, “For SWAS. My partner for SWAS.”
And then because I know my mother will not know what SWAS is, and I don’t want her asking in front of Thomas, I throw in, “You know, the School Within a School program.”
“Well, he’s also a June Jordan fan,” my mother informs me, not at all interested in what I just said. “And is considering a double major in poetry and women’s studies in college.” She’s the head of the English Department at Franklin Community College.
“A women’s studies major?” I ask. This is just like my mother, to know more about the neighbor kid than she does about me.
“Yes, and trust me, Eve, I’ve heard all the jokes,” Thomas says. He always has to annoyingly say my name.
“I don’t know any jokes.”
I sound a bit like an asshole, though I don’t mean to. I really just don’t know any jokes.
His eyes narrow, like he can’t figure me out. The easy hatred we share at school seems to be missing with him standing in my living room.
“Anyway,” he says, “you look busy.”
He turns toward my mother. “Nice seeing you again, Dr. Abbott.”
“No, no, she’s not busy. Siéntate. Siéntate.”
“Mom.” Oh my god, I hate my mother.
She ignores me. “Eve’s a huge June Jordan fan, too.”
I am not a June Jordan fan. I barely know who June Jordan is. We had to read a book of her poetry last year in AP English and my mother noticed it in my hands one day. Since then, she regularly refers to me as a lover of June Jordan. She and Mary Fay both teach at Franklin, my mother poetry and gender and Mary Fay poetry and African American studies. My mother has been dreaming of my future as a poetry major since she saw that book under my arm. I’ve stopped trying to correct her. Once something crawls into my mother’s head, it stays locked in there forever, like a prisoner without hope of parole.
My mother takes off down the hall… leaving Mr. Women’s Studies standing in our living room. He shifts his weight from foot to foot, glancing around. I’ve never seen an uncomfortable Thomas Aquinas. He looks… softer without a smirk.
“Thanks for bringing my work.”
“Part of the job,” he says, and then adds, “partner.”
I squirm under the tiny blanket. I knew he’d caught that. Seeing through people is Thomas Aquinas’s goddamn superpower.
“You can just toss it there,” I suggest in a breezy way, jerkily using my chin to point out the dining room table, and totally knowing he probably caught this as well.
“Which is just where I found it a couple of days ago, minus any completed work,” he says. “But the joy is in the journey, right, Eve?”
I decide to cough a few times in order to let that comment pass. I figure Thomas Aquinas doesn’t know you don’t cough after spinal surgery. Anyway, I could have a cold. Or pneumonia. Lots of people get pneumonia after surgery. I hope I don’t have pneumonia.
He places the books on the table and walks back into the living room.
“So, Eve.” He clears his throat. “You like poetry?”
His hair is out of its ponytail and is falling across his shoulders, and dark stubble has grown out all over his face. He has large features—wide eyes, a big nose, a big forehead, and his hands are big, too. He just looks… bigger standing inside my house.
“Not really.”
Again, I sound like an assole, though I’m totally not trying to.
He nods and laughs a little.
“And I guess you don’t like astronomy either?” he asks, glancing at my telescope.
My breath catches at the mention of my telescope. “I just started using it,” I say, which is pretty much true.
He folds his arms across his chest and looks into my eyes. Waiting. Maybe for me to offer some sort of star information?
My mind spins like it’s in orbit, but besides this, I have nothing.
“So, what about those Rockets?” Thomas says.
I stare at him, lost. Can you see rockets through a telescope?
“The college’s hockey team,” he explains. “And I’m just teasing you, Eve. I thought talking sports might help the conversation since this is Boston. I was obviously wrong.”
The mention of hockey reminds me of Minnesota’s wiki page, which I’ve been staring at for the past few days, and before I can stop myself, I ask, “Do you like hockey?”
Thomas looks at me, trying to figure out if I’m being serious. Then he straight out asks: “Are you joking?”
“No,” I whisper.
“Really,” he mumbles, unfolding his arms and opening his jean jacket wide and pointing at his shirt. It’s the same yellow shirt he wears every day of his life, but I read it for the first time.
Gophers Hockey.
My eyes widen at what it says underneath that.
Minnesota.
“Do you follow hockey?” he asks.
“I follow Minnesota,” I say.
“The Wild?”
I guess the blank look I give him is a little frustrating.
“The Wild is Minnesota’s professional hockey team,” he says, sucking in a big breath through his obnoxiously large nose. But I can’t take my eyes off that word on his chest.
“So… pleasure, as always, Eve.” And he dips his head at me like we’re in some 1950s movie or something. “I hope you feel better. Text me if you have questions on any of the work. I did all the SWAS shit. Figured I owed you a few of these after, you know, the last two and a half years of letting you do it all. I’ll be back with more work next week, unless you need something before then.”
“I won’t,” I say, a little too fast. “Need anything,” I add, at a much more normal speed. “But thanks.”
He looks back at me, and we stare at each other until my stomach rises into my chest. My mother walks into the living room carrying files under one arm and my Roxy in the other, saving me.
“Going so soon?” she asks, handing me a Roxy, which I gulp down with a swig from one of the many glasses of water that litt
er the coffee table, though I’m pretty sure I’ve recently self-medicated. She hasn’t taken off her coat and is obviously running back to work.
“Sizable load of homework tonight,” he says, throwing me a snarky smile. Ah. There’s the Thomas Aquinas I know.
Placing my bottle down on the coffee table, she walks to the front door and Thomas Aquinas opens it for her.
“I’ll be home right after my evening class,” my mother says.
Thomas Aquinas salutes me and then shuts the door behind them.
The sound of the closing door fades, and my ears ring with the emptiness. After a few minutes, I think that maybe Thomas Aquinas and his shirt were just a dream… until Lidia mimics his voice. “‘Pleasure, as always, Eve,’” she says. “That kid is just plain strange. He thinks everyone is a fool but him.”
“Yeah,” I say. “But… I did kind of look like a fool.”
Lidia laughs. “Who cares. It’s Thomas Aquinas.”
“Right,” I say, staring out the front window and picturing him walking down Wrentham in his jean jacket.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Lidia pick up my Roxy and walk across the living room to the gold armchair. Flopping into it, she examines the orange bottle.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“I’m not doing anything,” she says, turning the bottle around and around in her hand.
She keeps studying it, her dark eyes growing darker against the natural paleness of her face.
“What’s wrong? Is there something wrong?” I ask.
“Nothing’s wrong, Eve. I was just looking at it. Are you feeling okay?”
She’s still looking at the bottle. Not at me.
“I just need my medicine.”
I say it harder than I mean to. And I’m out of breath, which I try to hide, I don’t know why.
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