by Liz Miles
I wasn’t the only conflicted leftist. The Liberation League convened an emergency meeting. Some students called for picketing the British embassy; others threatened to quit if we sided with Argentina.
As General Galtieri and Prime Minister Thatcher traded ultimatums, I finally issued one to myself: I must talk to Pat by the beginning of the month.
I waited until the final hour, the night of May first. I locked myself in the guest room in our basement. I took my noteboook so I could jot down anything important Pat said, and a Rubik’s Cube for nervous fidgeting. As I worked up the guts to lift the phone, I twisted the cube, trying to match reds with reds, blues with blues. The manufacturer boasted of forty-three quintillion configurations, but only one, of course, was correct.
In a blind, breathless rush I dialed Pat’s number.
Yes, he said, he was alone; he could talk.
Alone, I scribbled in my notebook, then added, TALK!
“Crazy stuff in the Falklands, huh?” I started.
“Las Malvinas,” Pat corrected. “¡Por favor!”
I noted that his accent had improved. “You’re right,” I said. “Don’t report me to Señora.”
The line was staticky. Breath. Trepidation. I had two languages, but neither one was helping.
“So, um, Pat?” I finally asked.
“Yeah.”
“What I was wondering was … well, you know how when I slept over that time, you mentioned a special school?”
“Um,” he hedged. “What exactly did I say?”
I wrote special, then added a question mark. “A special school. For people like us?”
“I guess I’m not sure I know what ‘people like us’ means.”
“Right,” I said. “I mean, me neither. That’s what I wanted to ask about. I wondered how you think we’re similar.”
I could picture him in his derelict loft, his brow creased in sexy puzzlement. I cranked the Rubik’s Cube; three yellows locked in line.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Don’t you think we’re similar?”
“Yeah,” I said, brightening. “But I feel different from other people. People besides you.”
“What about those hippie protest freaks?”
“They’re not really freaks,” I said.
“Nah, it’s cool. But you’ve got to admit, they’re kind of freaky.”
“Okay, so am I freaky, then? Because I do these things. Well, I don’t do them. They’re more like feelings I have? And I’m wondering if maybe you have them, too.”
“What kind of feelings?” he asked.
Here was the line: if I crossed, I’d always be across.
I wanted to, but didn’t, say love. I said like. “I like you a lot … you know, in that way.”
Silence.
I doodled in the notebook, my palms greased with sweat.
Pat finally coughed and started talking, and the music I heard, the sweet resurrecting song, was: “Come on, Carl, of course you’re not a freak.”
How long did that harmony ring—a split second? Two seconds? Three? I would’ve sworn it was time enough for a room full of monkeys, typing randomly on as many keyboards, to compose all of Shakespeare’s love sonnets.
Then Pat said, “I’m flattered, I really am. I like you a lot as a friend. But I don’t, you know … not like that. Not at all.”
I lost my wind. I almost wished he’d screamed “fag” and slammed the phone. I wished he’d never speak to me again. Then I could hate him back for how he hated.
I spun the Rubik’s Cube, careless of pattern, letting entropy do its dirty work. Eventually Pat said bye, he’d see me Monday. I stared down at the notebook, which trembled in my hands, my words as illegible as monkey scrawl.
• • •
The next day, Sunday, a British sub sank the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano. News reports showed the ship engulfed in flames. Because of the oil that slicked from the wreckage, even the sea appeared to burn. Three hundred and sixty-eight Argentines drowned.
In school on Monday, kids gossiped about Keith Rosen’s having felt up Lisa Kelly. They traded crib notes for afternoon tests. Didn’t they know the world was on fire?
I stumbled through the halls, stupefied. At lunch someone asked what was wrong. What could I say? I’d seen my future; it crushed me. I shrugged and blamed my tears on allergies.
I considered skipping Spanish, but why bother? I couldn’t skip the rest of my life. I claimed a chair at the very back of the room.
I had promised myself I wouldn’t look, but I did. Pat was in his usual spot. He wore a Sex Wax shirt, his surfer shorts and Pumas with no socks. When he turned to me, I yanked my gaze away.
Señora Fuentes was slumped over her desk. Hair had pulled free from her bun, and skewed like a defunct engine’s wires. Wet mascara blotched around her eyes.
“I’m sure you’ve heard,” she began, barely audible. She rested a wobbly hand on her heart. “Forgive me,” she said, “today I can’t—” and sobs consumed the rest.
I had never seen a teacher cry. She wept and wept, beyond the point of shame. “My brothers!” she cried. “Perdidos—everyone lost.”
I looked then at stoic Patricio, who stared out the window, away. Backlit by the sun, he was centered in a force field, golden-red as the highlights in his hair. He tapped a rhythm on the desk with his pencil—maybe the drumbeat of The Knack’s newest song? I could hear it, but I couldn’t guess the tune.
Confessions and Chocolate Brains
BY JENNIFER R. HUBBARD
MY FRIENDS WONDERED how I could fall in love with a guy who gave me chocolate brains for my birthday. The brains had peanut-butter filling, and Connor ordered them from a medical-supply company that also sold life-size skeleton models, eye charts, and T-shirts with the digestive system outlined on them. I liked the candy brains not only because I loved chocolate, but also because they symbolized the dream Connor and I had, that we were going to become doctors someday.
“It’s disgusting,” Annie said, eyeing the box when I offered her some. “You mean you bite into those things and stuff leaks out?”
“Not ‘stuff,’” I said. “Peanut butter.” I held out the box to Monica, who shook her head.
“More for me,” I shrugged, and by the time Connor came over that night to study calculus, I had eaten a third of the box.
• • •
Connor and I started our open-book calculus final by sitting on the couch with the TV on. We liked to ease into our homework, calculus being like a cold pool that you could just dive into if you wanted to flash-freeze your nervous system, but if you had any sense you would lower yourself into it an inch at a time.
Of course, when I sat next to Connor, the only calculation I was doing was measuring the space between us in heat and electricity. When he first sat down and Mom looked in on us, that space was the width of my hand (with fingers spread). Gradually we edged closer, until there was maybe half an inch between his blue-jeaned leg and mine. His arm rested on my shoulders, his skin hot against the back of my neck.
My grandfather stalked into the room. “Shove over,” he said to Connor.
We moved over. Connor took his arm from around me, and Gramps dropped on to the sofa cushion next to him.
We all stared at the screen. I was so close to Connor that I could feel his heart beating, hear how his breath had shallowed and sped up. My grandfather glowered at the end of the couch.
“Sarah! What’s this crap you’re watching?” Gramps said.
I honestly had no idea. I’d been paying attention only to Connor, calculating the narrowness of the gap between us, breathing the scent of his soap. But on the TV screen in front of us, a guy dressed in camo fired off a machine gun.
“He’d never be able to hold that weapon,” Gramps said. “Firing over and over like that. It’d be too hot to hold!”Which was as much as I’d ever heard about Gramps’s experience in the war.
Connor’s eyes slid sideways, toward me.
&nbs
p; “Why are you watching this, anyway?” Gramps went on.
“I don’t know,” I said, thinking, Because Connor’s thigh was about one centimeter away from mine, and I wasn’t actually watching the screen, thank you very much.
“Where’s the remote?” Gramps leaned forward and saw my birthday present on the coffee table. “What the hell are those?” He stabbed a finger at them.
“Brains, sir,” Connor said. The only time I ever heard Connor say “sir” was when he spoke to my grandfather.
“What? Speak up.”
“Brains, sir! I got them for Sarah.”
“Brains?” Gramps raised his eyebrows at me, and I nodded.“Well.” He hooked one out of the package with a long, white-bristled finger and popped it into his mouth. We watched him chew and swallow.
“You’re a very strange young man,” he said to Connor, and licked peanut butter off his teeth.
“Yes, sir.”
“Is that some kind of fad now? Chocolate brains?”
“No, sir.”
“I didn’t think so.” Gramps grabbed the remote.
“It’s because we’re going to be doctors.”
I poked Connor’s thigh. The rule about dealing with Gramps was, Never volunteer information. The less Gramps knew about my dreams, the less material he would have for hollering questions at me about why the hell was I doing this or why the hell was I planning that.
“We really need to get going on that homework!” I said, jumping up. Connor jumped up, too, and we left Gramps on the couch, popping another brain into his mouth.
* * *
“I don’t get it,” I groaned, rolling over on the bed onto the papers full of Connor’s diagrams and explanations.
I hated not getting calculus. I’d always been good at school. In chemistry, I knew the reactions backwards and forwards. In bio, I’d been the one who drilled the parts of the cell into Connor’s head and helped him remember all the steps of protein synthesis. Now, with calculus, he was the one whose brain made all the connections while I floundered in the dust.
Numbers used to be sure and definite and straightforward. They didn’t change; 4 was 4 and 77 was 77. But the further we went in school, the stranger things got. I suppose my first hint of trouble came when they threw “imaginary” numbers at us. I mean, seriously, imaginary numbers? And now I was drowning in a pool of derivatives and integrals. Now I could hardly find numbers at all in the homework: it was all ds, xs, ys, and squiggly symbols.
“Take it step by step,” Connor said. “Like, in problem fourteen …”
“Forget problem fourteen.” I threw an arm around his neck.
“Fine with me,” he said and kissed me. “You’re the one whose exam isn’t done.”
“I can’t think about it any more.” I’d just begun to kiss him again when my phone trilled.
“Don’t answer it,” Connor whispered.
“That’s Annie’s ring. If I don’t pick up, she’ll just keep calling.”
Connor groaned while I scooped the phone off my nightstand. “Yeah?” I said.
“Bridesmaid Emergency,” Annie said.
“What do you mean?”
“We got the dresses, and they are repulsive.”
“What? No. Emily said she knows how bad the dresses usually are, and she promised …”
Annie cackled. “Just wait till you see them. We’re all going to look ridiculous.”
“But Emily has such nice clothes, and she promised …”
“Apparently there’s something that gets turned on in the brain when you become a bride. Some kind of filter that makes you inflict horrible dresses on your friends and delude yourself that they look good.” Someone screamed in the background. “You hear that? Monica just tried hers on.”
“Where are you?”
“At the bridal shop on Vega. Come on over and get fitted, and see the horror that is your dress.”
We hung up. “Change of plans,” I said to Connor. “The bridesmaid dresses are in. You want to bike over to the store with me?”
“No,” he said, reaching for me again.
“Later.” I kissed him once more and hopped off the bed. “Annie says they’re awful, but you know how dramatic she is. Let’s go see.”
“Sarah,” Connor said, “I don’t give a crap what the dresses look like.”
“Don’t you want to see how I’m gonna look?”
“You could wear trash bags and you’d look great.”
“Keep saying stuff like that, and I’ll let you be my boyfriend.”
“I heard your current boyfriend is a great guy—bought you chocolate brains and everything.” He tried to pull me back down on to the bed. “So exactly how humiliating is it that you’d rather look at these dresses than make out with me?”
“These are bridesmaid dresses,” I said, yanking a comb through my hair. “Almost nothing comes out ahead of that. And hey, you beat calculus hands down.”
I felt only a small pang about leaving my exam half done. I still had a day and a half until Monday morning, right? Plenty of time.
• • •
Connor biked over to the bridal shop with me, but he left without even coming inside. The store was a flurry of lace and measuring tape, veils and mirrors. Monica stood in front of a triple mirror while a woman with pins in her mouth knelt at the hem.
“Whaaaaat?” I said.
“Told you,” Annie piped up from a nearby chair where she had collapsed in a bundle of fabric.
“What’s with the color? Is it supposed to be that color?”
“It’s called pineapple,” Annie said.
“Who picks out pineapple as their wedding color? And what’s with that thing on the shoulder?”
“It’s a bow,” Monica said.
“It’s too big to be a bow. It’s like a giant cabbage landed on your shoulder.”
“It’s not the bow that’s the problem.” Monica brushed a bit of it away from her cheek. “What I don’t like is the asymmetrical neckline. I’m too lumpy for a dress like this. It looks like half of it’s missing or something.”
“You’re not lumpy,” Annie and I said together, automatically.
Both Monica and Annie looked sallow, even jaundiced, in the mustardy color. I could only imagine how my olive skin would look. We’d all look like candidates for the hepatitis ward.
“What about Emily’s sister?” I said.
“With her posture, she can carry off almost anything, including the lopsided neckline and the weirdo bow, but the color looks muddy on her.” Annie scrolled through a menu on her phone. “Mon, let me take a picture and send it to Emily. Just in case the sight of us actually in these dresses can bring her to her senses.”
The woman on the floor finished pinning Monica’s hem and stood up. “Oh, I think they’re very flattering,” she said.
“We know you mean well,” Annie said, waving the woman away. To us, she muttered, “She’s paid to say that.”
• • •
The dress did look as bad on me as I thought it would, the bow resembling a second, less-defined head sitting on my shoulder, the color giving my skin a reptilian hue. I collapsed into the chair next to Annie.
“What did Emily say about the pictures?”
“That she’s all tied up with wedding stuff; she’ll get back to us later.”
“I can’t believe she’s actually getting married.” Emily was only a year older than Monica and I; she was the same age as Annie.
“When I tell people she’s getting married at eighteen, they all ask if she’s pregnant. And I say, ‘No, just stupid.’”
I snorted. “Don’t you think she and Brian are good together, though?”
“Oh, Brian’s fine. But he’s only nineteen. They’re talking about the rest of their lives. I don’t even know what color sheets to get for my room next year, and they’re making lifetime decisions.”
“I know.” I thought about pairing up with Connor for the rest of my life, and something squirm
ed inside me. Not about Connor himself—because right now, I loved being with him. But it was bad enough to think of the commitment it would take to become a doctor: the years ahead of me, laid out in a planned track. I didn’t want to lock up too much of my life too soon.
• • •
I took another stab at calculus that night, but didn’t get very far. Monica and Annie said that the exam should be easy since it was open book, but I told them what Connor and I had always said: These exams are worse because what open book means is that the book can’t save you.
I couldn’t work on it anyway, because I had to answer a Frantic Bride call from Emily. I didn’t have the heart to complain about the pineapple monstrosities while she freaked out about the fact that forty of Brian’s relatives still hadn’t RSVPed and the caterer was demanding the final count, and Brian’s uncles were too busy arguing about who was going to drive whom to the ceremony and whether Brian’s cousins could afford to miss their karate class, and nobody wanted to sit in a car with Great Aunt Sophie for three hours. And then I had to soothe Emily’s worries that her hair wasn’t going to look right because she’d just cut it, and what on earth had made her cut her hair so soon before the wedding? She just knew she was going to look totally ugly and weird. Her older sister had had a terrible hairdo on her wedding day.
“It looked like a giant toadstool on her head,” Emily moaned.
“I promise you, your hair will not look like a toadstool,” I said. And I promise you, I will never ever get married if this is what it’s like, I added silently. “You’re going to look beautiful. Everything will go fine. Everyone who needs to be there will be there.”
And she believed me for about three minutes, before she started agonizing all over again.
By the time I got off the phone, exhausted from surfing the giant wave of Emily’s emotions, I glanced at the calculus book and couldn’t even bring myself to pick it up. Tomorrow, I promised myself, and popped a chocolate brain in my mouth. Maybe the peanut butter would be good for my neurons.
• • •
On Sunday afternoon we met at Connor’s house, and shuffled through the pages of our calculus books. Then he started rubbing his foot against my calf, and I stroked his shoulder blade, and then the books were on the floor and his tongue was in my mouth. Emily interrupted us with another Wedding Freak-out Call, and we revisited the exciting world of calculus where Connor tried to explain why I should care about a bathtub being filled at one rate and simultaneously emptied at a different rate.
