Gemini

by Sonya Mukherjee

  “I think so. I’ve been researching and gathering stuff, but then I—”

  Clara drew her breath in sharply, and Juanita interrupted herself midsentence to ask, “What is it?”

  Clara shook her head. “Nothing, sorry. Go on. So you decided to show them?”

  “Yeah, but—seriously, Clara, what’s wrong?” Juanita asked. She started looking around the room, and I followed her gaze. It took a minute before I spotted the issue.

  Near the back wall, beside the refreshment tables, Gavin was tossing popcorn at Josh, one kernel at a time. Josh was bobbing and weaving to catch each piece in his mouth. And right next to them, watching but not smiling, was Max.

  31

  Clara

  I tried not to look toward Max, but I couldn’t help it. In his perfectly fitted black suit, white shirt, and blue tie, he looked so handsome and so fully formed, as if those last traces of boyishness had, for the moment, disappeared. Even as Juanita and Hailey resumed talking about Juanita’s college plans, and I tried haltingly to join the conversation, my eyes kept going back to him. My brain couldn’t do anything about it.

  I couldn’t tell if he was hanging out with Gavin and Josh or if he just happened to be standing near them. He had seemed so genuinely angry about the way they’d talked that night, at the Halloween party, I hadn’t thought they would be friends again so soon. Or maybe they’d never actually stopped being friends? I tried to remember if I’d seen them together recently at school, but I drew a blank.

  He looked in my direction, and I turned away immediately, reflexively. Hailey and Juanita were laughing about something; I smiled, pretending that I’d heard them.

  Then I looked back at Max.

  He was still looking at me.

  But then Lindsey walked up to him, and he turned toward her, smiling.

  I flinched.

  Lindsey leaned in close to Max, beaming up at him. She said something, and he nodded and followed her out to the dance floor, gazing down at her with the slightly dazed expression of a guy who had been drugged by his own testosterone.

  They were here together, then. I shouldn’t have been surprised. I really shouldn’t have.

  But I was.

  I forced myself to look away, not wanting anyone to see me staring. Bridget was walking toward us with her date. As tiny as ever in a pair of ballet flats, she wore a gauzy green dress that made her look like a brunette Tinker Bell. Her date—a blond, shaggy-haired guy named Dan—towered over her.

  We scuttled in their direction, and as soon as we were close enough, Hailey, Juanita, and Bridget started complimenting one another on their dresses.

  “You look beautiful too, Clara,” Bridget told me. “I bet every guy here is wishing you were his date.” She looked at Dan, and when he didn’t say anything, she whacked him in the arm.

  He laughed. “You’ve got me in a tight spot,” he pointed out. “There is no possible thing I can say to that.”

  Bridget had asked Dan to the dance only a few days earlier, and I had thought her choice seemed almost arbitrary; but as she gazed up at him, blinking her eyes and seeming to harness a smile that wanted to be a giant grin, I realized that she actually liked him.

  “Of course, I meant every guy except you,” she told him. “But you know what? You should definitely dance with Clara.”

  He looked uncertain.

  “That’s okay,” I said quickly. “I don’t want to dance.”

  Bridget looked at Hailey and Alek, who seemed to be conferring quietly together. Bridget leaned in toward me. “But what if they do?” she whispered loudly.

  Amazingly, the slow song segued into an even slower one.

  “Clara,” Hailey said, looking out at the dance floor, “I think . . . we . . .”

  I nodded. “All right.”

  Max was out there with Lindsey, his hands on her waist. Josh and Vanessa joined them, and Jasmine pulled Gavin toward the dance floor. A few other couples had begun dancing too.

  Bridget nudged Dan, tilting her chin in my direction.

  After a very noticeable pause he said to me, “I’d love to dance with you!”

  “Um . . .” I supposed I would have to go out there, one way or the other. Better to dance with a semi-willing partner than to be on the dance floor with Hailey and Alek behind me, and me just looking out at the crowd—at Max and Lindsey, really—as I swayed, with nowhere even to put my hands.

  I nodded. “All right.”

  Alek took Hailey’s hand again; Dan walked beside me and a little behind as we approached the dance floor. A handful of couples swayed together. Bright little spots of light twisted around them.

  I looked up at Dan, not sure whether I should mention that I’d never done this before. There were so many strange things about this moment. I’d never danced at all, let alone with a guy, and in front of other people. I’d never been to a school dance, even just to watch and linger on the sidelines. And then there was the question of how Dan felt about the whole thing. I didn’t even know how he felt about Bridget, let alone about dancing with her freak friend.

  He took my right hand in his left, while his right hand moved toward my waist. Hailey, of course, was just to my left, although she was turned almost completely away from me. Alek had taken her hand already, and Dan had to go under their hands to place his own hand on my waist. More awkward still, my waist was inevitably so close to Hailey’s that his hand had to wedge between us, the back of his fingers brushing against Hailey’s waist.

  There was a moment of charged awkwardness, but then he accomplished the task and smiled at me, and all four of us began to sway to the music. Or at least, theoretically to the music. I felt clumsy and deaf, with no connection to the rhythm whatsoever.

  “You used to be in my history class last year,” Dan said. “I remember you’re a real brain, right?”

  I looked up at him, trying to figure out what to say to that.

  “No, it’s okay,” he assured me. “You are. You should own it, girl.”

  I laughed. I remembered Dan from that class. Most of the time he had seemed to be either asleep or focused on drawing curvaceous female superheroes in his lined notebook, but then every once in a while he would open his eyes to make some comment like (to our fifty-year-old female teacher), “Dude, why are you still teaching that Vietnam was a draw? Was this textbook written by Henry Kissinger?”

  “Yeah,” he said now, “I always wished I had brains like you, but I can only learn stuff I care about. The rest of it just goes right by me.”

  “Well, that’s probably true for everyone,” I said. “Or at least, if we do learn the stuff we don’t care about, we just forget it the next day.”

  He had started shuffling his feet to the music, and behind me I could feel Hailey moving too. I tried to follow. And tried not to wonder whether everyone else in the room was staring at us, quietly laughing at our clumsiness, or feeling disgust at the sight of us touching these boys.

  “Nah, it’s a defect,” Dan said cheerfully. “It’s attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, otherwise known as ‘failing to give a crap.’ That’s why I’m not going to college. But you are, right? I bet you’re going to Berkeley or Oxford, or, I don’t know, the Sorbonne or something.”

  It was strange how his words created a flutter inside me, something like excitement mixed with fear, even though his guess was so far off the mark.

  My mind started its stupid slide show. There we were, me and Hailey at art school, her excited but me standing next to her easel for hours with nothing but audiobooks to occupy me. Or there was me in a wheelchair, attending physics classes in rooms full of science geeks, with nary an artist or a strand of pink hair in sight.

  “We’re going to Sutter,” I told him, and the flutter collapsed into a limp little nothing and died.

  He pulled his head back and went all bug-eyed. “Oh, no way. You’re staying here in BFE? Why would you want to do that? You and Hailey are both, like, total geniuses. You could go anywhere.
”

  I shook my head. “We’re not geniuses. We might share a house with Bridget next year, and maybe Juanita. It’s going to be fun, I think.”

  We were moving now. I did my best to follow Dan’s movements in front of me and Hailey’s behind me. I tried to focus on the music’s rhythm, tried to feel it in my body, but it wasn’t reaching me; not even close.

  I glanced around, sure that everyone around us must have been looking at us with horror, or at least amusement. But everywhere I looked, people were just dancing.

  Slowly, we all turned. Remarkable. I didn’t trip or fall. None of us did. It took a few beats, but we made it a good ninety degrees.

  And then my heel came down on something, and almost in the same moment that I felt it, I heard the wail.

  32

  Hailey

  Startled by the shriek, I took one lurching step away from it, and my foot stomped down on something. Josh’s foot, it looked like.

  At almost the same moment, Clara collided with Alek, and then Dan crashed into both of us, pushing us forward so that my face got shoved into Josh’s shoulder.

  Josh grasped my elbow and steadied me. “You all right?” he asked.

  I nodded, looking at him warily, unable to forget for a second how much I hated him.

  Beside us Lindsey kept letting out these little shrieking gasps. She seemed to be the source of the original wail, which had startled the rest of us so much that we’d caused this pileup.

  “Oh my God,” Clara said. “Lindsey, did I step on you? With my heel? I am so, so sorry.”

  “It really hurts,” Lindsey whined, her shrill voice piercing right through the music. “It hurts so bad. Oh, holy crap, we’re playing Los Pinos tomorrow, and I’m crippled. I can’t walk.”

  As if to demonstrate, she hopped up and down on one foot, while the blue and white lights circled around her and the music kept throbbing.

  “I’m so sorry,” Clara repeated. “I didn’t mean—I never thought—”

  The blue and white lights blinked off, and Clara looked up in surprise.

  Through the music Lindsey muttered something that sounded like, “Sure you are.”

  “Jesus, Lindsey, come on,” I snapped, my voice pitched loud enough to be sure she could hear me over the beat. “You’re so full of shit.”

  Unfortunately, somewhere near the middle of this statement, the music suddenly went silent. My voice rang through the whole gym, clear enough to be heard by everyone at the entire dance.

  The overhead lights came on.

  Lindsey stared at me, her face as stricken as that of a little girl who’s just been excluded from a birthday party. “Why do you hate me so much, Hailey?”

  Nobody was dancing, nobody was talking. All through the gym they all just watched us.

  “Seriously?” I asked. “You’re asking me that?”

  “Yes.” She looked at me steadily, still balanced on one foot. Her brown eyes were outlined in black, the lids covered in glittery shadow. Her pink-glossed lips trembled slightly, so that she looked both glamorous and fragile. “I’m finally asking.”

  Clara grabbed my arm. “Hailey, please,” she hiss-whispered, “just let it go.”

  I pulled my arm away and took a step toward Lindsey. “We could start with the fact that you’ve been a raving bitch to us for the past six years.”

  She shook her head, swaying slightly on her one high-heeled foot. Then she steadied herself with the toe of her other foot, but she winced in pain as she did it. “But that’s the thing,” she said. “I haven’t been. At all.”

  I squinted at her. “Really? You haven’t been a bitch to us? Then what do you call it when you bust into the bathroom stall and take pictures of us going to the bathroom to share with the whole school?”

  She shook her head again. Actually, she had never stopped shaking it the whole time I’d been talking. “There were never any pictures. I did bust into the stall, and what I call it is a very bad, very stupid, very bitchy sixth-grade prank that happened six years ago, when all of us were eleven years old.”

  Clara sucked in her breath and then exhaled, a long, slow, shaky sigh.

  “Also,” Lindsey added, “I call it a thing for which I have apologized multiple times, for which I have sincerely asked your forgiveness, though I’ve never gotten it, and for which I have been punished by the school, by my parents, and even by a few months of social ostracism back when it happened. I call it a thing for which I have done my time.”

  Clara touched my arm, but I didn’t know what she was trying to tell me. To be strong? To know that Lindsey was twisting everything to her own advantage?

  Or maybe just the opposite of that?

  Alek stood beside me, tense and wary, watching me. Was he concerned for my feelings? Or worried about what I would do? Dan had backed up a few feet, as if uncertain about whether he should stay or go.

  Max stepped forward and rested one hand on Lindsey’s smooth bare shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Why don’t we get you a chair? And then I’ll find you some ice for that foot.” He didn’t look in my direction, or in Clara’s, even once. In fact, he had his body angled away from us, like he was determined not to glance our way.

  But Lindsey didn’t take her eyes off me.

  I felt like the floor beneath my feet was tilting just a little, not enough to make me fall down or even stumble, but enough to make me feel unbalanced and strange, and like I didn’t know how to hold myself upright quite properly anymore.

  Because I was feeling like maybe Lindsey was right. Like maybe we’d been hating her for almost no reason, all this time. I mean, other than her disgusting high-pitched voice and her fakey-fake cheerleadery cheer and her vastly over-highlighted hair. Like maybe we—I—had been the actual bitch, and not her.

  Maybe.

  But then she said, glaring a little, “For the past six years I have been nothing but nice to you. I have made a huge effort to be just as friendly to you as I am to everyone else.”

  And I responded reflexively, without stopping to consider my words. “So you want an award? What’s the level of difficulty on that?”

  She held up her hands in a helpless shrug. “When you keep giving me dirty looks and whispering about me behind my back? Harder than you might think.”

  Max touched her arm. “Come on. Let’s sit down, okay? The sooner you ice that foot, the better your chances of playing tomorrow.”

  She looked up at him, and after a moment she nodded and followed him away.

  Neither one of them looked back.

  33

  Clara

  “She’s not hurt that bad,” Alek said. “She’s totally playing it up.” We stood in the middle of the dance floor. The music had come back on, bright and blaring, though no one was dancing. A blue circle of light snaked festively across the nearly empty floor.

  “God, I hope so,” I said. “Isn’t she the star of the team or something?”

  Lindsey and Max made their way over to the tables and chairs; he held something that might have been ice, wrapped in a cloth napkin. Three girls trailed her, and one of them looked our way with a bitter scowl.

  “Maybe we should get out of here,” Hailey said.

  We scurried out to the lobby; Alek came with us, looking almost as relieved as I felt. A middle-aged woman stood near the outer doors, her dark blond hair pinned up in a twist. I didn’t recognize her, but she didn’t appear surprised by the sight of us. And that, of course, was the beauty of Bear Pass.

  “Just a reminder,” she said to us, smiling, “if you decide to go outside, there’s no reentering. And it’s pretty early still, so you may want to think twice.”

  Great. I’d forgotten about this policy, which was aimed at stopping kids from going outside to drink or get high in the middle of the dance. Now Hailey would insist on going back in.

  She hesitated but then said, “Oh, what the hell. Let’s just go.”

  “I’ll get your bags.” Alek disappeared back into the gym. />
  The mom at the door eyed us. “I hope you girls aren’t planning to drink or do any drugs tonight. I hope you’re being careful.”

  I expected some sarcastic retort from Hailey, but she didn’t say a word. Lindsey’s tongue-lashing seemed to have left her strangely subdued.

  I felt a little weird myself, having heard Lindsey say those things. Hailey might be the vocal one, but in my mind I’d hated Lindsey too. And yet everything that she’d said was true. I racked my brains but couldn’t think of one unkind thing she’d done to us, large or small, since that day in the sixth-grade bathroom. Sure, maybe she looked at us in a wary, almost fearful way sometimes, but it probably wasn’t much worse than the way we looked at her.

  Finally Alek returned, and we managed to get outside. The air outside felt brisk but not really cold; the campus was empty and covered in moonlight. Hailey and I had each brought a wrap, and we pulled them around our shoulders.

  Just down the hill from us was the football field. We had been to a night game once, and I remembered being amazed at how bright the field looked beneath the stadium lights—a circle of light, almost as bright as daytime, its grass a brilliant green despite our ongoing drought.

  But tonight the stadium lights were off, and an enormous full moon glowed overhead. Beneath it the football field was clearly visible, but without the harshness of the artificial lighting, it seemed almost like a part of nature.

  “Take my jacket,” Alek said to Hailey, “and then your sister can use both of your wraps.”

  “Good idea.”

  She pulled off her soft black wrap and handed it to me; I pulled it over my shoulders. As she slipped on Alek’s jacket, I felt it against my arm for a second. It was warm and not quite soft, but subtly textured, and it had a very slight scent that reminded me of Alek. I couldn’t decide whether I liked that or not.

  “I wouldn’t worry about Lindsey,” Alek said. “She really is a bitch. Everybody knows that.”