“All my paying jobs have been in restaurant kitchens,” he continued as he dumped the laundry on his bed and began sorting it into two piles. “Next year, I might just work at this place in New York where I know the owner, make some money.”
“Are you applying to schools this year? And then deferring?” I realized that in all our conversations, we’d never talked about his college plans.
“I don’t think so. It’s …” He kept his eyes on the laundry. “It’s complicated. There’s this professor I want to study with, but I’m not sure I want to go to school full-time, do all the required classes, you know. And the stuff with Pembroke won’t help me getting in.”
“What happened there?” I asked, since he’d brought it up.
“I plagiarized on a paper,” he said. “Stupid. I’d fallen really far behind because I was going home all the time. And I’d been caught before for something else, so I got booted.”
“Something else?”
“Illegal parietals,” he said, completely matter-of-fact, then looked over at me. “So, what’s the deal with this Whip guy? Has he been over to the dorm before?”
“Not that I know of.” I turned back to the spoons, trying not to wonder about the girl he’d gotten busted with. “I assume he’s just there to work on the project.”
“It was pretty obvious he wasn’t just there to work on the project.”
David was right, of course. And I understood why he’d been upset at dinner—he didn’t want his little sister’s sex life shoved in his face. But, in the end, wasn’t whatever Celeste wanted to do with Whip her own business?
“Whip’s not such a bad guy,” I said. “Unless it bothers you that he’s part of the old-boys’ club. I think every male in his family has gone to Barcroft and then Yale.” One of the spoons had some sort of dirt on it. I wiped it with my shirt.
“Celeste tends to have really bad judgment when it comes to guys,” David said.
“Most of my friends have bad judgment when it comes to guys. Except for Viv.” I looked over at David and noticed he was tossing a pair of Celeste’s lacy underwear into her pile of clean clothes. For a brief second it freaked me out, but what else was he going to do? Of course, he washed her underwear when he did her laundry.
“It’s different with Celeste,” David said. “Her decisions are … self-destructive. Look at that guy she picked this summer.” He shoved the pile of her clothes into a bag and set it on the floor. “She never listens to me about guys. But maybe … maybe you could say something.”
“About Whip? What would I say?”
“You’re the peer counselor,” he said. “I’m sure you can think of something.”
“Yeah, but in peer counseling, people come to me,” I said, feeling a little uncomfortable. “Honestly, I’d feel weird saying something without having noticed anything bad going on.”
He nodded. “Yeah. I get that.” And then, without explanation, he grabbed his jacket and keys off the desk and said, “Okay, let’s go.”
“Go?” Back to Frost House?
He held the door open and herded me with a nod of his head. I followed him to the far end of the hallway and up two flights of a dim, concrete staircase until we reached a big metal door with a sign that said EMERGENCY ONLY. ALARM WILL SOUND on it. Between WILL and SOUND someone had drawn a line leading to the scrawled word Not. And, sure enough, as David pushed the door open, no siren blared. He led me out onto the flat, expansive roof, the sky opening up above us. Dark and starry.
“Wow,” I said, stating the obvious. “It’s beautiful up here.”
He crossed over to a rectangular raised area, about the size of a small bench, then sat and patted the spot next to him. We barely fit on it together, so I had to sit with my body pressed against his. For a few minutes we were both quiet, staring up at the stars. I felt the crisp night air sneaking around my neck, and the heat off of David’s body seeping into mine, smelled the mulch of fall and his spicy scent.
Eventually, he was the one to break the silence. “I thought going to school with her was going to be great,” he said. “But … in some ways, it was easier to be apart. Because I can’t always make everything okay for her. And even though I know that, I can’t help trying.”
“You’re such a good brother,” I said, melting a little at how vulnerable he sounded. “She’s lucky.”
He gave a brief laugh. “Don’t think she’d agree.”
“She would.”
“You know …” He shifted forward, leaning his elbows on his knees, and turned his face toward me. “I’ve been feeling kind of bad about something.”
“What?”
“The other week, I didn’t mean to say your parents aren’t good parents, or anything like that. I think I was, well, being kind of protective of you.”
“Oh,” I said, remembering that he had sounded judgmental about them. “That’s okay.”
“No it’s not. I’m not your brother.”
“I wish you were,” I said.
“You do?” He didn’t attempt to hide the surprise in his voice.
“Growing up I was always happy it was just me and my parents,” I explained. “But maybe the divorce wouldn’t have felt so much like a total … destruction of the family if I had siblings.”
“Oh,” he said and, then after a pause, added, “but you don’t really want me as a brother, right? Because, no offense, I don’t really want you as a sister.”
His words sent a rush of warmth through my veins. I stared down at my feet and smiled. “No, I guess not.”
“You guess not?” He nudged me.
“Well, it’d be kind of like having a bodyguard,” I said. “Someone to save me from men in whale pants.”
“Oh, God,” David said in an amused voice. “If it makes you feel any better, she’s just as harsh about my choices.”
I reached down and scratched one of my calves, and made myself ask the question I wasn’t sure I wanted answered. “Did you, um, did you have a girlfriend at Pembroke? The one you got busted with?”
“Not really.”
“Not really?”
“I never had a girlfriend so much as, well … friends who were girls.” He gave an exaggerated cough.
“Oh. Why? Were you making self-destructive decisions?” I said, ignoring the queasy sensation in my stomach. Of course a guy as good-looking as him was a player.
David laughed. “Maybe. I didn’t give it too much thought at the time. Just did what I wanted to do.”
I could imagine Jake or Theo saying the same thing about how they’d treated me, and was considering asking David whether the girls had appreciated his selfishness when he said, “I wouldn’t be that way now, though,” in a new, more serious tone of voice.
“Oh?” I said.
“Definitely not.” He sounded so sure.
“That’s … that’s cool.”
“What about you?” he said.
“What about me?”
“Where do you stand with the whole boyfriend thing?” Was I imagining it, or had he somehow found a way to press even closer to me? Having a conversation when I was near enough to share his breath was kind of difficult. The distraction of the pulsing and fluttering in my body …
I adjusted my glasses, swallowed. “I went out with a couple different guys, freshman and sophomore year. Now, this semester at least, I kind of don’t want to deal. I have so much else to think about. I know that sounds lame, but …”
“So, that’s it? You’re just … not interested?”