While I’m thinking, he mutters to himself. He rubs out a letter with his fingertip and writes another. I hear the scratching of pencils all around.
That’s when it hits me.
Why lie? This old guy isn’t going to notice if I’m here or not.
The window’s partly open. Beyond lie the baseball fields of R. A. Pleasence High School.
It’ll be great. It’ll be funny. It’ll add to the Trammel mystique.
I shove my book and folder onto the wire shelf under my chair. I stand up and step to the window, nice and casual. I open it all the way, like I’m feeling a little stuffy, too.
Nobody says anything.
I check Haley, behind me, in case she’s going to complain how it’s too windy now.
Haley’s frowning down at her paper.
I check the front. The Fossil’s still got his back to me.
I turn, still casual, like I’m just leaning against the sill. Now I can see the whole class. My heart’s beating a mile a minute.
Michael McMillan raises his head and sees me standing there. He starts to say something.
I give him a warning look. A keep-your-mouth-shut look.
McMillan knows something’s up. He leans back in his chair, grinning, ready for the show.
Haley looks up as I turn to lift one leg onto the sill. She gasps and darts a glance over at the Fossil. But she doesn’t say a word.
I lift the other leg onto the sill.
Taptaptap. I freeze. It’s Chlorophyll, tapping her pencil against the tabletop.
I forgot about her.
She hasn’t seen me yet. She’s just thinking. She scribbles a word on her crossword puzzle without looking up.
I ease both legs outside. Almost there. But I can’t resist—one last look around, legs hanging out the window—to savor the moment.
Half the class is watching me now. Across the room Alicia Doghead is outright gaping. McMillan’s nodding in approval. Haley looks scared.
Chlorophyll notices all the heads turning. She looks over and sees me, too. Her pencil freezes over her crossword puzzle.
We’re looking right into each other’s eyes. Hers are light brown, under dark lashes. Her mouth is kind of small without even a hint of gloss or color—but it’s not tattling on me yet. There’s no telling what she’s thinking. No telling what she’s going to do.
I can’t help it—I smile at her. A real smile, a genuine Colt Trammel smile. It’s the adrenaline, it’s the rush from not knowing what’s going to happen next.
Her eyes widen, like I just popped a flashbulb in her face.
I couldn’t surprise her by almost exposing myself. But a smile—that surprises her.
Which gives me the most satisfaction yet today.
The Fossil drops the chalk back into the chalk tray. “All right,” he says, dusting off his hands as he starts to turn around.
A little kick, a little push—and I’m already gone.
It occurs to me on the way to my car that my book and folder are probably going to get stolen out from under my biology chair. Along with my only pencil.
Oh, well. I can borrow today. And buy new stuff tomorrow.
Nobody catches me getting my equipment bag out of my trunk. Nobody catches me going down to the field. And it looks like nobody from my class has pointed me out to the Fossil, even though the field is in full sight of every window.
Palmer just laughs when I tell him I jumped out the window. “Bet old Fozzeltini didn’t even notice” is the only thing he says. He and Gutterson let me take a couple of turns hitting. God, it always feels good to get my hands on a bat! When I send one sailing over the fence, I turn and wave at McMillan and Haley, in case they’re watching. I even give an extra little wave for Chlorophyll—who might or might not tell.
I don’t get called down to the office at all the next period. By lunchtime, I know I’m safe.
Fifth-period assistant, I’ve already got my head down when I hear the door open and the sound of Chlorophyll’s squeaking shoes. Her chair screeches back. Every day it’s the same thing—I can tell exactly what she’s doing, without even raising my head.
But this time there’s something different. A swish and a thud—something lands on the table right by my ear.
I look up. It’s my biology stuff.
Chlorophyll sits down without a word.
I pick up the folder. I can see the lump my pencil makes, down in the pocket.
“Thanks,” I tell her, sliding the book and folder to one side.
“You’re welcome,” she says.
I put my head back down. I’m not sleeping, just resting my eyes. Although I could sleep if I wanted. Because now I know the score—she’s a loserette, but she knows when to keep her mouth shut.
For some reason it makes me think about Grace. How it’s a good thing that she didn’t see me going out the window.
The truth is, Grace and I are not all that much alike. She’s bored by baseball, she doesn’t drink, doesn’t party. I don’t understand half of what she says, and I’m pretty sure that if she knew how little I understood, she’d dump me like a used TV-dinner tray. No “emotional connection” and all that.
But it’s still going to work. Us, I mean. No matter how unalike we are. I can make it work. That’s how bad I want her.
And really, there’s good things about us being so different. For one thing, I can really appreciate her. All the bad stuff about me means that I’m the one guy who can appreciate how smart, how deep she is.
And hey, only for a girl like Grace would a guy like me try to be a better person than I really am.
What they say about how opposites attract is absolutely true. Grace and I are opposite, but we’re perfect for each other.
I raise my head up, rest my chin on my arms. Chlorophyll’s taking out a book like she always does. And those glasses. I’m not saying anything, she’s not saying anything. Just like always. But I guess I do appreciate the pencil thing, and I’d like to say something to let her know that was pretty cool.
“Opposites attract,” I blurt. I don’t know why. It’s what I happened to be thinking, so that’s what came out.
Chlorophyll opens her book without looking up.
Then I get this dim idea that maybe it sounded like I was saying something about her and me, which I wasn’t—Jesus, no way! But of course it came out all wrong. As usual.
But then I realize it doesn’t matter that I screwed up. Chlorophyll didn’t hear a word I said. She’s got her nose in her book.
I guess the vaccination’s already working.
I relax and put my head back down.
And from then till the end of the period, all I hear is the sound of a page being turned every once in a while.
After school I bug Grace to call her dad at work and get him to give us the okay to go out for ice cream. I promise to have her home before he gets off work. It’s so all-American, he can’t refuse. And he doesn’t.
So I take Grace to the Marble Slab. Me personally, I don’t like having my ice cream slapped around by some technical-school dropout with zits and glasses like the big end of a telescope. But I do like to watch Grace standing there almost breathing on the glass while she watches the guy mix Hershey’s Kisses into her double Dutch chocolate fudge. She gets so happy over little things. I could buy her a Porsche, and she wouldn’t be as excited as she gets about a crummy little dip of ice cream.
She’s standing there, and I’m standing right next to her, and suddenly it’s the best afternoon of my life.
I get a Dr Pepper and we sit down. I’m sipping my drink, but mainly I’m busy not saying much because Grace and I get along a lot better when I keep my mouth shut.
“Did you see that new guy at school today?” Grace asks between bites. “The one who’s visually challenged?”
“No,” I tell her. I watch her take another dainty little bite off her spoon. She’ll eventually polish off the whole thing, I know, but you would never guess it to look at h
er.
“Have you ever wondered what it would be like?”
“What?”
“Being visually challenged.”
I think fast. I don’t know what visually challenged is. So I’ve got to decide, quick—which answer is better, yes or no? “Yes” will sound more sensitive, but “no” is the truth and I won’t have to back it up with facts.
“Yes,” I try. Going for sensitive.
“Really?” She sounds surprised. “What do you think it would be like?”
Shit. “I dunno.” Jesus, what should I say? “Bad,” I finally guess. And then, when she just takes another bite of ice cream, I give my slow wise nod—twice—and add, “I think it would be really bad.”
“I think the whole world would seem different.” Grace’s drifting into analyze mode. “I think you’d perceive things as three-dimensional, as existing in space rather than as something you just look at. I mean, just sitting here, the world out there”—she gestures toward the other tables, the counter, the pimply-faced guy—“could be two-dimensional, as far as we know, until we touch it. It could be a picture, or a film.”
I stir my straw in my Dr Pepper. I nod my head, but I’m thinking about how today Jordan Palmer was telling Gutterson that he and this girl videotaped themselves doing it.
“How can you be sure that something really exists unless you touch it?”
But then, I’m figuring, if I were Palmer, I’d have brought the tape in to show Gutterson. Only Palmer said he’d promised the girl he wouldn’t. Which means maybe he was lying about the tape in the first place.
Strange thought, that Palmer could lie the way I do. Probably not as much, though. Nobody could lie as much as I do.
“It could be that blind people actually have greater perception than the rest of us.”
I focus on Grace again. Blind people—that’s what this was all about. Good thing I said “bad.” Jesus, can you imagine if I’d said “good”?
And it’s a good thing Grace doesn’t have a clue what all goes on inside my brain. Nobody has a clue. I’m not even sure most of the time. It’s like the Indy 500 with bumper cars in there.
Grace’s face is still and stern right now, but not because of me—it’s because she’s still trying to figure out this idea about blind people. She’s so intense all the time, always, about everything.
Her left eyebrow’s drawn in a little, the way it gets when she’s chasing down some thought. I can see that tiny little line next to the inside part of her eyebrow. I call it her thinking line.
“God, you’re beautiful,” I burst out.
The thinking line disappears. Grace looks startled for a second, almost like she’d forgotten I was here. Then her face softens, and suddenly nobody’s smart and nobody’s stupid. It’s Colt and Grace, on the same playing field.
For once she doesn’t gripe about me saying “God” like that. Instead she smiles, like I’ve given her a present. And then, when I don’t say anything else, she asks, “Want a taste?”
I’m not really into ice cream, but she’s holding the spoon out across the table—she’s offering to feed me herself. So I nod, and she does it, she leans forward and lifts the spoon to my mouth. I take it between my lips and my teeth, and then she pulls it out slowly while I’m sucking off the ice cream. Her little thinking line is definitely gone. And she’s watching my mouth the whole time.
“Colt.” Grace says my name like nobody else can. It sounds like something that tastes good when she says it. “You’re really a sweet person.” She says it softly, looking at me very intent, the way I guess an artist might, if she was trying to draw the lines of my face. “You’ve just got this bad-boy façade.”
I’m not sure whether to do my wise nod. I’m not sure if “façade” is something I ought to be nodding about.
“Sometimes it’s hard to tell who you really are. You’re such an enigma.”
“Think so?” I ask, like I know what she just said. Forget Word of the Day. Her brain’s deep into let’s-analyze-Colt mode, so deep that she’s forgotten to worry as her body gets totally hot for me.
We’re gazing into each other’s eyes just like in one of those movies she likes, until Grace realizes that her body’s hot for me—you can see the moment it hits her, because her cheeks suddenly turn pink and she ducks her head again and won’t look at me for a few minutes.
I think then what I’ve thought many, many times since Grace and I started going out. She’s innocent. And I love her, so I’ve got to take it slow.
But someday soon, the heat from me and Grace Garcetti is going to melt every drop of ice cream within ten miles.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Suckometer Bottoms Out
So I’m feeling okay again, my life is good, I’ve got Grace again, and I’m one happy guy…until a few nights later, when the shit hits the fan, and suddenly my whole life sucks again.
“No way,” I yell. “No way I’m going to let a eighth-grader help me with my homework.”
Mom’s in my bedroom doorway. Cass is behind her.
“Did you think I sign your progress cards without reading them?” Mom starts counting off on her fingers. “Biology—seventy-five. Geometry—seventy-two. English—sixty-eight.” Her voice goes up on the “sixty-eight.” “And now you’re asking me how to find the area of a rectangle? Colt, at this point you need any help you can get.”
“No, I don’t.” I shoot Cass a “piss off” look. “That last English test was hard. Nobody did good. He said he was going to curve it.” Which might be true, Hammond might have said that, I just might not have heard him. “And then he didn’t. And this…” I bend over my geometry book again. “I can figure it out myself. I just didn’t want to take the time.”
I don’t look up. A couple of seconds tick by. Will Mom buy it?
“What about a tutor?” she asks.
“Don’t need one,” I tell her. “I can handle it.” No way I’m going to sit around with somebody who gets paid to find out how ignorant I am. And who—God!—reports on me to my mom every day!
No fucking way.
“All right,” I hear her say. I can breathe again. “But there’s a pattern developing here. Every year you put less and less time into your schoolwork. Every semester your grades slide just a little bit lower. A sixty-eight’s not going to cut it, Colt. You’re perfectly capable of passing. Tell me what I can do to help you. What do you need?”
“I need peace and quiet,” I tell her. “So go away.”
“Fine. Then I’ll tell you what I’m going to do to help you. I’m going make you a promise.”
A promise?
“I promise you that if you fail even one class this six weeks, you won’t be playing baseball in the spring.”
It takes a moment for her words to sink in. “What?” I can’t even yell—I’m so mad, it takes another moment for my voice to get up to full volume. “What’s that going to do? How’s that going to help?”
“Don’t yell at me,” Mom warns. Cass just stands there, acting like she’s real interested in the wall while she soaks all this in, the little leech.
“What’s it supposed to do?” I yell anyway. I don’t have the words to tell Mom how awful, how more than awful it would make my life, to take away the only thing I’m really good at.
“It’ll give you a wake-up call, Colt,” she tells me. “There’s more to life than sports.”
“I almost failed English last spring, too—remember? And I passed, didn’t I? I pulled it out. You just don’t trust me,” I tell her.
“You barely passed. When I had that little discussion with Coach Kline, you managed to summon the energy to pass. You’re just going to apply that energy a little earlier this time, that’s all.”
I cheat better under pressure, I want to tell her. But of course I don’t say that. “The state of Texas says I get to play if I pass the three weeks before the season. I’ve got till the end of December—and that’s just to attend practice. To actually play, the state
of Texas gives me till the middle of February.” Don’t ask me how come I can’t remember how to find the area of a rectangle, but I remember state law like I’m a lawyer.
“The state of Texas isn’t your mother.”
“I have no reason to pass if I don’t get to play. That’s the law, isn’t it? No pass, no play. See, I know my history.”
“Colt.” Mom’s got that…Mom look. No way Dad would ever say what comes out of her mouth next. “Baseball is a game. I know you like it. I know you do well. I’m very proud of how talented you are. But it’s just a game.”
I’ll go live with Dad then, I want to say. But I know Dad won’t take me. Not that we don’t get along, it’s just that he travels a lot. He loves me and all—he’s just not much of a family guy, Dad isn’t.
“Baseball is what’s going to get me into college,” I remind her.
“What if you get injured?”
“I won’t.”
“But what if…” Mom sighs. “I refuse to get sucked into this discussion. I’m telling you—balance your interests. Balance baseball with your schoolwork. If you can’t manage to keep it all under control, then I’ll balance it for you. That’s the way it’s going to be. Not another word,” she adds, as I open my mouth. “Not. One. More. Word.”
I can tell she means it because she’s talking through her teeth.
I slam my book shut. I wait till she leaves the room, and that little vulture Cass goes with her.
Then I throw the stupid book against the wall.
I’m not going to bother to tell Coach what my mom said—I don’t need somebody else on my ass. I know I can work this out. Geometry’s not really that hard, it’s just the word problems. And there’s not all that many of those. I’m pretty sure I can pull a C if I don’t even do the word problems. And a C is what I need to pass in the state of Texas. Even Mom can’t change that.
Biology—well, I’ve got somebody at my table, now. Somebody smart. I ought to be able to get enough off Chlorophyll to pass biology. If not, Stu’s got biology second period. He’s not an A+ student or anything, but he’ll share his homework for me to copy, and his notes for me to make cheat sheets.
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