Now I don’t mind it so much. I like the bulk of my coat. The way I feel buttoned into it, like getting tucked into bed.
“Fresh air will do us good,” Miney said. I agreed since I’m already off schedule—I have not practiced martial arts in three days, which is the longest break I’ve taken since I started training—and we are here, walking down the street. It looks like the rest of Mapleview has all gone in for the night. There are few cars. No one else is walking.
“I like your hair,” I say, pointing to the spot that used to be purple.
“I thought I needed a change, and then realized that’s not what I needed at all,” she says. I think about her words, weigh each one, the same way my mom squeezes fruit in the supermarket, but I don’t come out the other side. I don’t know what she means. “I’m proud of you, you know. School hasn’t been great lately, and then something happened, nothing big or anything, but I know how you feel. I’ve been where you’ve been, sort of.”
“You sat and rocked back and forth in your room reciting pi for almost seventy hours straight?” I ask.
“Okay, not exactly where you’ve been. But the public humiliation part, totally. And honestly, I realized that if you are brave enough to go back to school and face all those jerks, then I can too. So thank you for that. But that also means I’m leaving soon. Consider this your first warning,” she says.
“Okay,” I say. The old me would have cried or screamed or begged her to stay. But I’m not the old me anymore. Despite the events of the past seventy hours, I am growing up, getting stronger. I’m miles away from Normal—I will never live in the same state as Normal, nor do I necessarily want to—but I’m getting a little closer. I’m a refugee on Normal’s border. It will be okay when she goes. I will be okay. And I assume she will be too, because she’s Miney. “Just don’t dye your hair again. I like to recognize you when you come home.”
She smiles at this and nudges me with her elbow. Both of our hands are in our pockets, so it becomes a game, our nudging.
“I doubt you actually humiliated yourself,” I say.
“I sort of did.” I don’t ask how, because I know from personal experience that it’s not fun to talk about the ways we’ve embarrassed ourselves. Then you have to feel it all over again in the retelling. And if Miney wanted me to know more, she would have told me.
“How long till you leave?” I ask.
“A week, maybe? But I’ll be back for spring break. And there’s FaceTime.” I nod. “So I saw some of those texts you got. I wish I could kick all those kids’ asses.”
“I actually could,” I say, and for a moment I let myself picture it. A series of palm-heel strikes and the entire football team would be on their backs. “I could kill them if I wanted to.”
“Please don’t.” I laugh, because we both know I never would. When I was little, I used to get upset if I accidentally stepped on a bug. I may have mastered the art of self-defense, but I don’t like to hurt things. And anyhow, despite how they all feel about me, I don’t wish anyone dead. Not even Justin or Gabriel. Even if I believe the quantum theory that consciousness survives death, I don’t want their bodies to go still forever.
I wouldn’t mind if they moved away, though. That would be nice.
“What are you going to do at school tomorrow?” Miney asks.
“Same as always. Put on my headphones. Ignore them all.”
“And Kit?”
I think about Kit’s eyelashes, how the snow gathered and nestled between them, like it was a good place to rest. I think about her fingers linked with mine.
I see her back as she ran away from me as fast as her legs would take her.
I think about the contours of the word disgust, its guttural g.
“I don’t know,” I say.
After three days, David is back. He’s sitting at our table, headphones on, eyes trained downward. When he was gone, I rejoined Annie and Violet at lunch. I listened to them brainstorm a new short list of guys who would be acceptable prom dates. I told Violet I liked her high-waisted jeans. I went to all my classes and to the newspaper meeting and then went home afterward and watched Netflix with a bowl of popcorn bigger than my head. I’ve eaten turkey and hummus on rye two times a day. I should win an Academy Award for Best Actress in a movie called Normal. No doubt I’d be the first half-Indian girl to win.
In the evenings, when my mom gets home from work, I’ve blasted my music in my room, the acoustic equivalent of a DO NOT ENTER sign.
I realize how much I’ve missed talking to David.
I approach him slowly. I feel awkward, like we’re strangers again. Like this is no longer our table. Could be I don’t know how to act around the only person in the whole wide world who would describe me as the prettiest girl in school. Not even my own mother would be so charitable. Pretty doesn’t just happen, Kit, my mother likes to say. You have to try.
“Hey,” I say, and sit down across from David. “How’re you holding up?”
He looks up, pops off his headphones. How did I forget about his great haircut and cool clothes? I may not be the prettiest girl in school, but there is no doubt he’s a really cute guy. Of course, he’s also the weirdest, which can make for some cognitive dissonance.
“Not great,” he says.
“I have something for you.” I slip the notebook out of my bag and slide it over. He makes no move to take it.
“Did you read it?” I notice that his eyes are on my clavicle, which is a part of my body I’ve never had occasion to think about until I met David. I resist the temptation to put my fingers on the freckles he drew. I considered ripping that page out—keeping it as a reminder that there was once someone who thought I was beautiful—but I realized it wasn’t mine to take.
“Some. Not all. I know I shouldn’t have, but I got curious and so I sort of flipped through. I’m sorry.” I have caught David’s honesty disease. I didn’t need to tell him the truth. I should have just said not really. That would have been close enough.
Turns out, though definitely strange and random, there was nothing too disturbing. He didn’t expose me. Instead, on a fresh sheet toward the back, there was a short list under the title Kit and D’s Accident Project:
Never talk about the AP at school.
Library?
Research car specs.
Calc.
Bad idea to help? Definition of friend zone?
This last one made me laugh out loud.
“I figured.” I wish he’d put the notebook away so we could pretend it never happened. I want us to go back to the way we used to be together. Comfortable. “I didn’t know if you’d sit with me today. After everything.”
“Well, you said only nice things about me.” I mean it to sound like a joke, but it falls flat. There are, of course, a lot of people in this room he didn’t say nice things about. I can’t imagine what that must be like—knowing everyone in school has read exactly what you think of them. It’s all very Harriet the Spy, except without the guaranteed children’s book happy ending. Of course I’ve had a million mean thoughts about my classmates, but they’ve mostly stayed safely locked inside my head. I excel at keeping things to myself. Another post-accident-acquired skill. “So where have you been?”
“Home.” David’s eyes meet mine. “Did I make you run away the other day? I don’t know what I said—”
“You? No, it wasn’t you. It was…that…place,” I say, and he nods like he understands, and maybe he does, but then again maybe he doesn’t. It’s hard to tell with him. Sometimes I think he is the only person who understands how to have an actual conversation with me these days, and then I think about his notebook, how different he is, and wonder if I’ve been imagining it all. If I’ve been so desperate for a real friend that I’ve created this other David in my mind who doesn’t exist.
“You’re fast, you know,” he says, and for the first time since I sit down, he smiles. He looks even better this way: happy. I don’t think I’m making him up. I really do
n’t. “I mean, I’ve never seen anyone run that fast.”
“Yeah, well.”
“You talk to your mom?” he asks, and I shake my head. “You will eventually. When you’re ready.”
His voice is certain, and I hang on to that. Because whenever I think of talking to my mom, the tears bubble up fast and the words get clogged in my throat. I have been ignoring her knocks on my bedroom door, her text messages, her calls. I look up at David, trying not to cry. I’ve been holding everything back. Boxing these feelings up, throwing a label on the outside, organized and sorted, like I can convince myself that they take up barely any space at all. Just a corner of a closet shelf.
You know what actresses actually are? Really good liars.
Before I have a chance to say anything, the entire football team approaches our table. A block of biceps and thick thighs, standing shoulder to shoulder. And then, like we are in a bad teen movie, Joe Mangino, a beefy guy with buck teeth, steps forward. He flips David’s lunch tray. An empty milk container goes flying onto the floor.
“Are you serious?” I ask, and stand up, though now that I’m on my feet I have no idea what I can do in the face of all these muscles. These guys are big and they are not my friends. I can’t just ask them to stop, like I did with Justin and Gabriel. Well, I can ask, but they’re not going to listen.
“Stay out of this, Kit. This little shit needs to die,” Sammy Metz says, who looks like—is—a linebacker. A giant oak of a boy. He’d look good next to Willow.
“Don’t you think that’s extreme?” David asks the question like he genuinely wants to know the answer. There isn’t an ounce of fear in his voice. So calm and collected it’s borderline creepy. Suddenly he seems less alien, more robot. “You want me to die? I’ve spent almost three days thinking about it, and I still can’t figure it out.”
“Not only do I want you to die,” Joe says, “I want it to hurt. Badly. I’m just deciding: Should I shove my boot down your stupid throat or should I feed you your own nuts?”
“You know, if you shove your boot in my face it’s unlikely to fit in my mouth. And I have no intention of eating my own testicles,” David says, and then turns his head away, as if he is no longer interested in the conversation. Takes a bite of apple, then puts it back on its plate. We watch him, and when he looks up again, he seems surprised we are all still here. “What do you want? Everyone’s watching. Obviously you can’t touch me right now.”
“We’re going to get you, Drucker. When you least expect it. We’re going to get you,” Joe says, again with the horrible clichés. Is that what he does on weekends? Watches bad movies and practices the resident jock’s lines in front of a mirror? Step one: Flip lunch tray. Step two: Make scary but generic threats. Step three: Take more steroids and grow even bigger breasts.
“Move it along, gentlemen,” Mrs. Rabin says, approaching the table and ushering the football guys away. She doesn’t ask David if he is okay, though. Instead she glares at him and shakes her head.
“What’s up with Mrs. Rabin?” I ask.
“What?”
“That look. What’d you do to piss her off?” David motions to his notebook.
“Uh-oh.” I wince. “Teachers too?”
“Yup.” David shrugs, up and down, like he’s being manipulated by an amateur puppeteer. His body language, I realize now, is as stilted as everything else about him. “Hope this doesn’t hurt my college recommendations.”
—
Later, in AP World History, Ms. Martel drones on about the impact of the Industrial Revolution: blah, blah manufacturing and steam engines and terrible factory conditions blah blah. I text David. We both have our laptops open so we can iMessage and look like we’re just taking notes.
He’s sitting three rows over and one ahead—I guess he’s been sitting there since September—and I study his profile. I like his lush eyelashes, and the slope of his cheeks and the way he cocks his head to the side and stares out the window.
Me: Are you scared?
David: Of what?
Me: The whole frickin’ football team!
David: No. Do you know what I am scared of, though? Sentient artificial intelligence. And global warming. In equal measure.
Me: They could kill you.
David: I know. If we create machines that can learn to feel the whole range of human emotions, we are all dead. And I think we’ve long passed the tipping point in global warming. I expect apocalyptic weather will soon become the norm.
Me: I meant the football team! Maybe you should tell someone. Like the principal.
David: Oh. On one hand they’ve made it clear they want me dead. On the other, I doubt they actually want to do the dirty work. Not to mention they’d have to dispose of my body. And all their prior threatening texts could be used as evidence against them by the police. They’re stupid, but not that stupid.
Me: ?
David: I think it highly unlikely that they’ll kill me.
Me: I didn’t mean it literally. I meant they could mess you up.
David: Again unlikely. Also, I know various forms of self-defense, including but not limited to kung fu and krav maga. They should be scared of me.
Me: Really?
David: Yup. But you know what I don’t understand?
Me: EVERYTHING.
David: That’s a joke, right?
Me: Yes, David, that was a joke.
David: Right. So what I don’t get is why everyone is mad at me, instead of realizing I’m the one who has been wronged here. Not a single person has come up to me and said, “I’m really sorry this happened to you.” Not one person.
Me: I’m really sorry this happened to you.
David: I’m being serious.
Me: So am I.
David: Thank you.
Me: You’re welcome. You really know krav maga?
David: Would I joke about something like that?
“I thought college would be easier,” Miney says on Tuesday morning. She is sitting in our breakfast nook, digging into a pile of pancakes. My dad is manning the stove with his headphones on, the same pair I have, though instead of listening to music, he prefers audiobooks. He claims it allows for efficient multitasking, but it has the unintended perk of allowing Miney and my mom to talk without him hearing. I’m just beyond the door, eavesdropping. I realize I don’t actually have the power of invisibility, but I come pretty close. “Like it would just be an extension of high school. But then I got there, and I had to make all new friends. And no one seemed to like me.”
“Laur, of course people like you.” My mom leans forward and squeezes Miney’s hand. Miney is being ridiculous. Everyone likes her. That is one of life’s constants, like the chemical makeup of water.
“It’s not just that. As you know, rush was a disaster. My classes are seriously hard. And there was this guy….”
“And?” my mom asks.
“And nothing. Well, not quite nothing. I really liked him, Mom, and I thought he was interested too. And so I saw him out one night and I, like, basically threw myself at him in front of everyone and he made it superclear he wasn’t at all into me. It was beyond embarrassing. Plus I don’t really have any friends. Not real ones yet, anyway. It just feels like college is one rejection after another. Maybe I picked the wrong school. Or maybe I’m just a big loser.”
“Who are you and what have you done with my daughter? One guy doesn’t like you and you come running home?” my mom asks. “He’s obviously an idiot.”
“He’s actually supersmart, Mom. He was my physics tutor. I was the idiot.” Miney puts her head down on the table and my mother strokes her hair like she’s a small child. I think she might be crying, but I can’t tell from here.
“That’s why you’ve been moping all this time?”
“Little D, you scared the crap out of me. Stop lurking!” Miney screams when she notices me. Darn new clothes and their crinkly sounds. My khakis were much more inconspicuous.
“I wasn’t lurking. I wa
s eavesdropping,” I say, and step into the kitchen.
“Stop it,” Miney and my mom say at the exact same time, so I have no choice but to say, “Jinx, a Coke,” though I don’t drink caffeine.
“Maybe we should talk about this later,” my mom says, and Miney nods. I wonder what my dad will say when he finds out that Miney needed a physics tutor. Since last summer, he has been putting a lot of pressure on her about college. He’s adamant that she major in something useful, like math or biology. Before she left that’s all he could talk about: how Miney needed to understand how much school was going to cost my parents, that she better finally figure out what she was good at, that she should stop wasting time putting on makeup and instead apply herself in the sciences, like I did.
“Anyone can be prom queen, but not everyone has the opportunity or the capability to learn from Nobel Prize–winning geophysicists,” he would say, and Miney would look him straight in the eye and say: “I was homecoming queen, actually, and some parents would be proud of that.” I stayed out of it, though it’s not quite true that anyone can be homecoming queen or king. I certainly can’t. Miney might not be the best person to talk to about quantum theory, but she’s a genius in her own way.
“I just want to say I love you guys and I’m so lucky to have the two bravest kids in the world, and sure you both make mistakes, but please don’t let anyone or anything ever make you feel small, okay? Either one of you,” my mom says, and stands up and kisses both me and Miney on the tops of our heads as she makes her way to the sink. My mom likes pep talks. It’s kind of her thing.
“Statistically speaking, it’s unlikely we are the two bravest kids in the whole world,” I say.
“Just say I love you too, Mom,” my mom calls over her shoulder.
“And I have no idea how one can feel small. I assume I feel exactly proportional to my size.” Miney kicks me under the breakfast table. I look up and she’s glaring at me.
What to Say Next Page 15
