The Boy Next Story

by Tiffany Schmidt

  “Tobias!” We both jumped. My silverware clattered against the table, leaving a splotch of olive oil on the cloth. “Don’t you dare take another morsel off her plate. You were not raised like a zoo animal to steal food from others.”

  “Dad, she doesn’t eat cheese or spicy peppers.” Toby looked at me, and I hated that he now wore uncertainty in the crease between his brows. “You didn’t mind, did you?”

  “Of course she minded.”

  “I don’t,” I interrupted. “Seriously. Not even a little. I’m glad you ate them, otherwise they’d go to waste.”

  “Now you’re just being polite,” Mr. May said, and I didn’t know how to respond. Did I deny politeness? I stared at my plate, but there was no answer among the red peppers and artichokes. I prodded a piece of asparagus to the side, batted an olive with my fork, then glanced sideways at Mr. May. Was I going to get a lecture on playing with my food? But he was looking at his son. “Toby, why are you wearing your glasses? Did you run out of contacts again?”

  “I had a headache earlier, so I took them out.” I tilted my head and studied him—he caught me. “I took some Advil. I’m fine now.”

  His father nodded and took a sip of water. “Those glasses make you look like Clark Kent.”

  Was that a compliment because Superman was not unattractive? Or an attempt at bonding because Toby liked comics? Or an insult because Toby was a Batman fan? Or . . . was I reading way too much into this because Major May probably had no knowledge of his son’s fandoms? Maybe he was just saying he looked nerdy?

  Toby nudged my foot under the table. When I met his eyes, he rolled them toward his dad. I turned to see him eating his pizza with a fork and a knife. Every bite a perfect geometric specimen. I bit my lip to keep from laughing and looked away from where Toby was doing the same. Because if he broke, I would too.

  “So, Aurora, besides yoga and math tutoring, what are you up to these days?”

  “Um.” I cleared my throat. “Quite a bit of drawing, actually.”

  “Drawing?” He frowned like he didn’t understand the word.

  “Dad, she’s amazing. You should see her stuff. Here—hang on a second.” Toby slid out of his seat, leaving his napkin in a crumpled ball on the table beside his plate. He crossed to the kitchen where his books were piled on the counter and dug through them. He returned with a piece of folded paper in his hands, and I wasn’t sure which of us was craning their neck more, because Mr. May might be curious, but I had no idea what sort of drawing Toby had or where he’d gotten it. More important, was he in it and did it broadcast all my feelings?

  Toby unfolded the paper to reveal a problem he’d had me solve last week. Just a practice one, a warm-up before I started my homework. I’d kept the paper beside me on the table, doodling while he went over new explanations. Apparently, I’d left behind a drawing of an igloo and a polar bear. I glanced over my shoulder at the arctic white kitchen—geez, what had inspired that?

  “Isn’t she good?” Toby prompted.

  “The arts, huh?” Mr. May aimed a condescending smile in my direction and I could practically hear the words he was itching to say about needing a backup plan or hoping I liked ramen noodles. I’d heard them all before. I’d heard him aim them all at his son.

  No wonder Toby never talked about his musical ambitions. I poked holes in a slice of zucchini and searched for a topic to bring up. When I was anxious in the store, Mom always said, “People want to talk about themselves. Give them an invitation.” “Toby says you’ve been busy lately.”

  Mr. May had been wearing a permanent grin since he walked in—but not like always-smiling Curtis, who seemed genuinely happy. Mr. May’s was a mask. It slipped for a second as he narrowed his eyes at his son. “Have you been complaining? Is something wrong? Why didn’t you say something?” His voice had started sharp but slid into concerned.

  Toby’s shoulders lifted in a silent sigh before he explained. “No, Dad. I’m not complaining. Nothing’s wrong. Rory had just asked why she hadn’t seen you during tutoring.”

  “Oh.” He turned to me, charm back in place. “In that case, Aurora, I’m delighted that you were over when I came home tonight. It’s been so long, I hadn’t realized what a beautiful young lady you’d grown up to be. Isn’t she, son?”

  I didn’t want any compliment from Toby that came from that prompting, so I cut him off. “Thank you. But can you tell me a little bit more about your work? I know nothing about finance.”

  This time his smile seemed genuine. “Should I let you field this one, Toby?” His son froze with a slice of pizza halfway to his mouth, but Mr. May waved a hand. “No, you go ahead and eat. I’ve got it.”

  And for the next ten minutes he reconfirmed what I already knew—that I wanted a career that kept me as far from Wall Street as possible. Though anyone with a Wall Street wallet who wanted to buy one of my paintings was welcome to.

  Toby still had his foot pressed against mine. In any other setting, I’d be thinking about the way that felt, but now my focus was stolen by the way his heel was jiggling like a piston and the blank expression and empty eyes that faced me across a tablecloth I’d stained but he’d kept meticulously clean. At the end of the meal when we carried our plates to the kitchen, it would be like he hadn’t been here at all. And despite the fact that his father talked about him, for how little Mr. May talked to him, he might not have been.

  “So, school’s going well, physical therapy’s going well—” these were statements, not questions, like any other answer wasn’t acceptable. “The house is passably clean and it looks like you reminded the landscaper about that shrub. Anything else I need to know? Anything new?”

  Need to know? I wanted to scream. I wanted to shout out that there were a million things he should want to know about his son, and none of them fit on a checklist of one-word answers. I might be a champion at social awkwardness, but the dynamics between these two won medals. And worst of all, I got the sense that this was his dad actually trying.

  But Toby was saying, “No, Dad,” and maybe that signaled the end of the meal and our escape from a prison of flatware and politeness.

  I set my fork and knife across the corner of my plate. “It was very good to see you, Mr. May, and thank you for dinner, but I should be getting home.” There was guilt in my statement and I couldn’t look across the table. Was I abandoning Toby or giving us all an excuse to move on to the separate portions of our night?

  But it was nine thirty, and if I didn’t show up soon, my parents were going to worry. I still had homework to do; though, this was a convenient reason to put off Little Women for another night.

  Toby stood and picked up both our plates. Like I suspected, my spot looked like an olive-oil spatter zone, while his was pristine. “G’nite, Roar. I’ll pick you up tomorrow.”

  “It was lovely to see you, Aurora.” Mr. May reached over and patted my hand with his cold one. “And what my son means to say is, he’ll walk you home.”

  “I—I live next door?” I pointed in case he forgot. “It’s right there.”

  Mr. May pursed his lips. “I raised my son to be a gentleman. Tobias, go get your shoes.”

  I shot Toby an apologetic look, but he’d already put our plates down and headed into the mudroom.

  “Really, he should’ve been doing this all along. What sort of man doesn’t walk a lady to the door?”

  “The kind that’s confident she’s capable of finding it by herself?” I said softly, but that wasn’t enough to quell the fire in my stomach, and now that I’d started, I couldn’t stop. I clenched my hands into fists beneath the tablecloth. “Toby is the best of guys. And if you don’t know that, wake up! He’s kind and he’s intelligent and he has the biggest heart. And—and I think he looks hot in his glasses!”

  “Roar.”

  I shut my mouth and turned my flaming cheeks toward where Toby was standing in the doorway, holding my shoes and the schoolbag we’d never opened.

  Mr. May sounded amu
sed when he said, “Good night, Aurora, and I agree with you. You’re a good influence. Son, see if you can hold on to this one.”

  I didn’t know if it was meant to be a jab at him and Merri—but Toby stiffened. He didn’t move until I took my shoes and opened the kitchen door.

  It was a thirty-second walk across our lawns, but it was the longest thirty-second silence I’d ever endured. My feelings were too big and wild; I couldn’t wrestle them into coherent thoughts or words. At my door, he slid my bag off his shoulder and gave me a small smile. It was a totally different species from the grin we’d been sharing before his dad arrived—hollow and brittle, like the robin’s eggshells I’d collected as a kid to try to match their color.

  My arms were around him before I even recognized the impulse. It was a little kid hug—not forearms on his shoulders, hands in his hair, like when Merri embraced Fielding, but my arms wrapped around his middle, squeezing tight so that my face was pressed against his chest. It was the only comfort I could think to offer, and after a torturous two breaths where he stood rigid, he melted. His arms came up to rest on my back, his cheek nuzzled against the top of my head, his breath stirring my hair in quick pants like he’d finished a run.

  My emotions exploded like this art exhibition I’d seen where darts were thrown at paint-filled balloons. Pulse soaring, skin tingling, muscles tightening like I was never letting him go. He had gripped the back of my sweatshirt like I was a life preserver, and he held on until his breathing finally slowed. His fingers loosened, then dropped; he straightened, and we both took a step backward, eyes on our shuffling feet.

  “I, uh.” Toby cleared his throat, but his voice still sounded hoarse when he finished. “I’ll pick you up in the morning.”

  “Sounds good.” I slid in the door, aware we weren’t going to be talking about tonight soon or ever. But when I went to turn off the outside lights, he was still standing on the stoop, both hands gripping his hair as he stared out into the sky.

  37

  I worried about what would happen once the cross-country season ended, but Merri ran her last race in early December and Toby and I stood by the trail in scarfs and hats. We clapped gloved hands and cheered—using the approved non-yelling words from Merri’s list: “You look great!” “I’m happy to see you!” “Yay, runners!”

  In the days that followed, Merri traded runs and trails for time at Eliza’s or Fielding’s and hours in front of her laptop—writing super-secret things that turned her pink whenever I asked about it. She didn’t intrude, and since she and Toby were finally tiptoeing back to being normal with each other, I didn’t try too hard to include her. I had Merri time at the store and Toby time all the days I wasn’t working. I was fine with this arrangement, but it didn’t stop me from being anxious about how long it would last, how long I could possibly be his substitute Campbell.

  These were fears I inserted into sketches constantly. The stack of Toby drawings I’d ripped up was rapidly being replaced by a new creeper sketch pile. One I justified because I’d started drawing him in scenes with other people. Toby at lacrosse with Curtis, Lance, and Huck. Toby with Gatsby. Toby in the car with Merri and Eliza. If no one looked too closely, they might not notice the overlap, but if there were a Venn diagram of my sketches, Toby would be the center.

  I was organizing these, rationalizing that friends could draw friends—I’d drawn Clara . . . sitting at a Knight Light meeting where, shockingly, I was next to Toby. And I’d drawn Huck onstage at Saturday detention . . . but at the moment Toby had crashed our cleaning party.

  The doorbell rang, making me jump and then scrape the drawings into a pile I shoved under the bed before heading down to answer it.

  My favorite smile was waiting on the other side of the door. Toby had changed out of his uniform into a pair of jeans and a faded green Henley. He had a gray hoodie on top and fiddled with the zipper as he asked, “What are you up to?”

  It wasn’t even five. Normally, we didn’t do tutoring or not-tutoring for another hour. The only difference was, Merri was home. I’d seen her room light on when I went to answer the door, which meant he would’ve seen it from his room. “Are you that bored without . . .” I bit down on my tongue in time to amend my answer from Merri to “lacrosse?”

  It was a weak change, because the season was over, but he answered, “Desperately.” I waited for his eyes to flicker up the stairs, but they never wavered from my face. “Entertain me? What were you doing?”

  I was too stunned to answer with anything but the truth. “Drawing.”

  “Teach me?” He stepped forward and I moved out of the way, letting him in and shutting out the cold and dark of December twilight. “You be the tutor this time, I’ll be the student.”

  I led the way up the stairs, past the hallway gallery of Mom’s humiliating photos: braces, home-cut bangs, matching sister outfits. His gaze may have lingered on my sister’s bedroom, but he followed me into mine and shut the door, blocking our view of all things Merri.

  Toby didn’t hesitate to flop on my bed. He arranged the pillows behind his head so he was in a semi-sprawl and stared up at me. “On a scale from now to never, how long is it going to take me to master Aurora Campbell–level skills?”

  I—I couldn’t speak. My eyes kept flickering from where he was lounging—on my bed—to where I’d shoved that pile of drawings underneath it. His was the only spot in the room where he couldn’t see the white paper peeking out, and if he had no qualms about sitting there, then I shouldn’t either. Because we were friends. I’d sat on Clara’s bed and painted her nails. On Huck’s and done homework.

  Toby was glancing around my room, studying the art tacked to my walls. He waved to my fishbowl. “Hey, Klee Five and Ariel Four.”

  “It’s Ariel Eight now . . . It was a rough summer to be a snail.”

  He snorted. “I guess so. Maybe Klee Five is a bit of a bully.”

  “Yeah. Um, I’ll get you set up.” I clipped a paper to a drawing board and grabbed him a set of pencils and erasers. I gave him a quick run-through of pencil type—hardness versus darkness, graphite versus charcoal—and made him do shading spectrums down the margin of his page to get a feel for each and how they changed with pressure.

  “Got it,” he said, lining them up on my comforter. “You draw me and I’ll draw you.”

  The way he glanced at my footboard made me think he expected me to settle over there, so our feet would overlap and we’d have a little artist colony on my mattress. The idea was almost comically impossible. Instead I tossed him the kneaded eraser I’d been twisting between my fingers and crossed the room to the tower. Once I was behind my easel, I picked up a pencil and said, “Sounds like a plan.”

  I’d drawn him more times than I counted stars, but never here, live. And here, live, was better than photographs or memory. Especially with the way he was looking at me too. It felt like performance art, because I was aware of my body in ways I normally tuned out. The way I drew my bottom lip into my mouth when I focused. The tightness in my shoulders from standing. The partial hiding place my easel provided and how its ledge was the perfect height to rest my trembling hands when the sensation of his eyes on me got to be too much. The weight of my pencils, the scritch of their lines. The balls of my feet and the way I shifted pressure between them. The tickle of a strand of hair against my cheek. The way my skin flushed under his gaze.

  Which of these would Toby capture?

  Though that was expecting too much, because while he was the most remarkable person I knew, his artistic genius began and ended with music. I’d seen his childhood crayon drawings. We’d done the whole Play-Doh thing and his had mostly ended up in Merri’s hair. I’d been on his team for Pictionary. The fact that he was attempting more than a stick figure proved how bored he was.

  But the expression on his face wasn’t bored at all. He tucked one pencil behind his ear as he picked up the next, squinting at his page and tilting his head. The best thing about this situation was it gave
me full permission to stare as much as I wanted. Or maybe that was the worst thing, because, heart, we weren’t going there again. We couldn’t.

  His mouth was slightly open, the tip of his tongue resting to the side of his full bottom lip, like when he was really into a piece of music or driving in traffic. His eyebrows were lowered and his eyes bright as he looked from me to the board in his lap. His shoulders were relaxed against my pillows and his long legs were sprawled across my gray duvet. I didn’t need a drawing to remember this scene, but I wanted to document it anyway. My lines grew in fast strokes, capturing the curves of his muscles, the tease of his eyelashes, that pencil behind his ear, peeking out from between his dark waves. The only part of him that wasn’t relaxed was my favorite part—his hands. One gripped the side of the drawing board. The other drew a line, hesitated, drew again, then tinkered with his row of pencils.

  We’d set a timer. It was the only way I let myself sketch on school nights. Otherwise I’d pause to sharpen a pencil and notice it had suddenly become two o’clock in the morning. I wanted to glance at it but resisted. I didn’t want to know how many minutes remained of this spell, this place where I had permission to engage in open admiration and Toby’s dark eyes grew darker.

  The tinny, repetitive beeping made us both jump. I put down my pencil and picked up the timer, pressing the stop button.

  “I don’t remember what you said about shading.”