Then they both cracked up. “Do you even listen to yourself?” Kit said.
“Been trying not to, lately.”
The light changed. Kit reached out and took her hand, and they crossed Fifth together a little awkwardly. You’d think crossing the street while holding someone’s hand would be easier, Nita thought. Not the other way around . . .
“With Penn, though . . .” Nita said after a moment, jumping back a subject as they headed on down Forty-second and past the side of the library. “Who needs any more of that? With all the crap at school—”
“Yeah.” Occasionally it seemed as if sometime during the last year or so in school, somebody had thrown a switch, and suddenly talk about sex was everywhere (though as far as Nita could tell, there was a lot more talk going on about it than action). And not talking about it was as fraught with trouble as talking about it was. If you got into such discussions even as protective coloration, there could be an ugly backlash. Nita had learned the hard way that some people took her refusal to talk about it either as proof she and Kit weren’t doing it, or proof that they were. Being hit with both insinuations at once had recently caused Nita to completely forget for several minutes about years of being committed to not increasing entropy. She’d been within a breath of increasing it (generally) all over the athletics field in back of the school, and (specifically) all over Michaela whose-last-name-she-could-never-remember-and-now-didn’t-want-to.
“You didn’t kill her,” Kit said. “That was a good thing.”
Nita stared at him, then flapped her free hand helplessly in the air. “See that?” she said. “You don’t even have to know what I’m thinking to know what I’m thinking.”
Kit started laughing again. “Kind of hard to miss what your face is doing.”
“God, am I that transparent? How am I any possible use if everybody can tell what I’m thinking all the time?”
“I don’t know. Might have saved Michaela deVera’s life that you were that transparent. Because word has it that nobody’s heard a peep out of her about you since she saw the look on your face while you were standing over her on the track.”
DeVera. Okay. But it’ll probably be ten minutes before I forget her name again, because God I can’t stand her. “Oh great, thank me for that by all means,” Nita muttered. “Just don’t blame me if now she lives long enough to reproduce.”
Kit started whooping with laughter, laughing so hard that he had to stop walking and pull Nita over with him to one side, so he could lean on one of the big, sloping, squared pillars of the building they were passing and regain control of himself. “Oh God, oh God,” was all he could say for nearly a minute. And then finally, when he had the strength to push himself upright and wipe his eyes, Kit gasped, “Who would—who would even be a part of that? Seriously!”
Nita had to admit that Kit had a point. Michaela had left Nita (and various others) utterly astonished by bragging about Doing It with Mike Kavanagh, when it was well known around school that (a) Mike was totally out of play due to being deep in a Skype-fueled Internet affair with some girl in the south of England, to the point where he wasn’t even interested in putting up the usual playing-the-local-field smokescreen, and (b) Michaela’s cruel, foul mouth was so well known and disliked that nobody wanted to take the chance of hooking up with her for fear of what would be said about it, by everyone, afterward—starting with Michaela.
It took another minute for Kit to fully recover enough breath to say, “Has she ever even done it with anybody?”
Nita shook her head. “Maybe not . . .” But Michaela desperately wanted people to think she had. Nita had come into the girls’ room one afternoon unnoticed and heard one long brag session spinning itself out in excruciating, too-much-information detail, while the group surrounding Michaela down by the sinks at the far end of the room made encouraging (though not necessarily impressed) noises at the graphic stuff. But when they’d noticed Nita coming out of a stall, Michaela had turned their attention to her, and the jeering started. And then in gym class when they were outside . . .
She sighed. It hadn’t been her proudest moment, but at least Michaela hadn’t gotten hurt when she “tripped” in the middle of a hundred-yard dash—just got the wind knocked out of her so hard that she had nothing left to call anybody names with for a while. Nita had been very careful about the placement of the shock-absorbing barrier that cushioned Michaela’s spill on the track; it was a variation of what she used to use to protect herself from bullies. “But that’s why it’s so stupid for her to be in everybody’s face about whether they’ve done it,” Nita said. “Or haven’t.” It was amazing the way the taunts still rang in her ears. He can’t be worth much as a boyfriend if you won’t even talk about him. Maybe he can’t do it, huh? Or else he won’t, he’s never going to. Maybe you’re making it all up so people will think you’re normal. Good luck with that. Nita concentrated on rhythmic breathing and not getting herself riled up again. Maybe I need to grow a thicker skin.
“Your skin is fine,” Kit muttered.
She looked at him sidewise.
“Okay, that one I heard,” he said. He looked vaguely guilty, which was all wrong.
“It’s been coming and going for me too lately,” Nita said. And somehow, never at times when I want it to. “Sorry.”
Kit shook his head. “Don’t be. Same here.”
They did another half block or so in silence. It was odd, Nita thought, that it seemed easier to talk here, out among all these hundreds of people who were passing them by. But they don’t know us. Even though the people standing or walking nearest to them might hear what they were saying, it didn’t matter; they’d never see any of these people again. And it was also, oddly, more comfortable to talk about this stuff out here than someplace more quiet and private, where things might change suddenly.
“You’re irritated again,” Kit said.
“I’m not.”
There was a short silence, but somehow it wasn’t uncomfortable. “You know,” he said, “if ‘boyfriend’ is the wrong word . . .”
“It’s not! It’s just . . .”
She laughed. Kit looked confused. “What?”
“Got a really stupid idea . . .”
“It’s probably not.”
“Is it possible that, sometimes, with a word . . . you might need a while to break it in? Like new shoes.”
Kit gave her a look that suggested he was waiting for more of an explanation.
Nita shrugged. “Just think what we’ve been through the last few years. The dangerous stuff. We’ve saved each other’s lives how many times now? As friends. And now this . . . it’s different. But it’s there.”
She held her breath again. Not that there’s any real doubt, come on, you know there’s not . . .
“Yeah,” Kit said after a moment. “It does take some extra getting used to. Because normally it comes with all these expectations.”
Nita nodded, letting that breath out. “How you should look. What you should sound like when you’re around each other.”
“Or when you’re not.”