Stella said, “He loved that crazy conference. He went to every session. Meanwhile, I was stuck there in Kentucky and my boyfriend decides to hook up with Lucy. One weekend away, and that’s what I get. Are guys really that desperate?”
“Lucy’s not so great.” She had a big rack and she was rich, one of the only kids at school to own a cell phone, but her voice was dog-whistle annoying and everyone called her Double- O Loosey because of how much she got around.
“Probably I should have caved in and slept with him,” Stella said.
If she was lying, her face didn’t give it away. Maybe Jay had misunderstood what his sister was out doing with guys, or maybe she was pretending to be a prude. “Well,” I said, “I’m glad you’re single.”
“You don’t really care,” she said. “Stop pretending like you want anything more than to have sex with me. I see the way you look at me. It’s gross.”
My eyes felt dried out from staring at her in shock. It wasn’t that Stella hated me, it was that she had me all wrong; she thought I was like every other asshole. Finally I got my jaw to work. “What I feel, it’s deeper than that, it’s got a history, I’ve felt this way for years, now…”
“Whatever,” Stella said. “Jay told me how you really are.”
“I’m not!” My voice squeaked. “He was just joshing. You know how Jay is. Right?” I couldn’t believe that Jay was trying to sabotage my chance with Stella. I rambled on, trying to hit on an eloquent speech about why Stella needed to come with me to New Veronia— but in the end, all I could manage was, “So we’re on for this Sunday? It’s a date?”
Her mouth tightened up in a smile; I felt ready to kiss her right then. “Hey!” Stella was shouting across the cafeteria at a girl she always hung around with. “This guy wants me to go on a date with him!” Then she burst into hysterical laughter.
One of the worst parts, besides the entire cafeteria looking at me as if I were an idiot, was that Stella hadn’t said my name; to her, I was just this guy, when I thought about her name maybe fifty times a day.
As I stood up and walked stiffly towards the bathroom, the only place I could be almost pretty much alone at school, Stella said, “Don’t be such a dork about everything.” And then she returned to eating her lunch.
Locked inside of a stall, the stench didn’t even bother me; it was like the sense of smell had been burned right out of my face from shame.
“Soppy?” some asshole said over the din of his piss splashing into the urinal. “Is that you hiding out in here? Oh Sops, that only makes us all think worse of you.”
I waited until the bathroom was empty again to scream into my cupped hands. The hot moisture of my breath collected against my palms, and a yellow glob of spittle lodged between my fingers. My body seemed made up of pus, like I was rotting from the inside, as if puberty—what a stupid word—was dissolving and then replacing me with a gooey alien.
When I’d pulled myself together enough to return to my table, I got out my history book and buried my face inside of it, trying frantically to memorize facts for the pop quiz. Studying was the perfect excuse to keep me from looking like I was about to die of misery.
“Bennet.” Jay rapped a knuckle against my head. “Are you listening? I never got what you saw in her.” Jay glanced over at his sister. “She has bacne.”
“I’ll get a girl for this weekend,” I said. “But sometimes there are more immediate concerns.”
“I don’t think so,” Jay said. “Why am I surrounded by such losers? The only reason to go to this shitty school is to be around girls. Now that I can’t do soccer.” Jay stared broodingly at the soccer team’s table. When I followed his gaze, it struck me that the kid he’d peed on in the shower, the freshman, was black. I shook my head hard: but that wasn’t the reason Jay hated him. The reason was because he’d made varsity by being someone’s little brother.
“He has a history test.” Toshi pointed to my textbook.
“What does it matter?” Jay said, and something snapped in my brain: it was like the final puzzle piece landing home so that I could see the whole picture, and I finally understood what was important.
I flipped the textbook shut. “How do they get us to care about this stuff, anyway?” I said. “When it’s true: we should care about the pussy. That’s what we should worry about.” The only reason I tried so hard in school was because I wanted to skip ahead into the smart classes with Stella, but somehow I hadn’t realized until Stella had called me a dork that all the guys she dated were practically failing out. She didn’t care if I was smart; in fact, being smart detracted from my attractiveness.
“But you’ve always gotten good grades.” Toshi nudged the history book towards me. “I mean, you kind of care about that stuff—you know?”
“He’s finally waking up,” Jay said. “Finally understanding what the world is.”
It was true that I got okay grades—B’s, mostly—and that Jay and Toshi got C’s and some D’s (except in English, where Toshi aced everything), but my grades had done nothing besides keep me from taking classes with my friends and fuel my stupid reputation as an undesirable nerd. All of a sudden, the sight of my history book made me feel devastated for all the hours lost, all the lost hours I’d spent cramming facts and completing homework and filling out flash cards; all that time had done nothing for me. I couldn’t even remember the dates and formulas I’d memorized before the summer.
“No, Toshi,” I said, “I’m not going to study anymore. Jay’s right: it doesn’t do me any good. Don’t look all disappointed. Damn. It’s not like I could ever afford to go to college.”
Toshi’s eyes flickered; they never met mine. This was the worst part about what had happened: before Stella’s room, we used to be just friends, but now there was this covert rift between us.
Next period, in theater, I had my monologue test. As Mr. Blake held a pen over a clipboard, I stood in front of the class and began.
“‘No more—and by a sleep to say we end/The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks/That flesh is heir to.’” When Stella had thrown me that look of disgust in the cafeteria, the world had started to spin a little too fast. Everything was changing, and each adjustment was a tick closer to a completely unfamiliar and frightening existence, maybe sort of like the place where Hamlet lived, a kingdom of death and madness and despair made worse by his disloyal mother. The remainder of Shakespeare’s lines fled from my tongue. I opened my mouth, but my monologue was over.
“You didn’t get very far with the words,” Mr. Blake said, “but that emotional display was brilliant. Fantastic change from last year. Real tears out of a young man like you! Can you cry on cue all of the time?”
“Bathroom,” I mumbled as I headed for the door.
I wandered the hallways and pretended that I was in a strange zoo: each classroom I passed, I would look through the narrow glass window at the humans trapped inside. When I came to the music room, I heard the band practicing the fight song. Someone—a flute, it sounded like—was a half-beat behind everyone else. Through the window, I saw Toshi puffing on his horn, his cheeks distended. Quickly, I looked away, fighting against a twinge of revulsion. The hallway stretched long and silent and empty and sterile: maybe I was the one on the wrong side of the doors; maybe I was the one trapped.
Chapter 13
That Saturday, the sky turned from cloudy to sun-filled in the middle of the afternoon. My dad slammed the door when he came in, and then he knocked against the couch, which had been in the same place forever. He’d probably been drinking for days, or weeks; we hadn’t done anything together—we’d hardly spoken—since he’d told me the news about my mother. All of a sudden, as he stepped too-precisely around the coffee table, a well of anger opened up in me over this neglect.