“Ajita, will you please stop taking everything I say so literally. Never in your life have you taken me seriously, why doth thine haben started now?” [Oh wonderful, now I’m throwing random German infinitives into my bastardized medieval sentences. Things just keep getting better and better on the intelligence front. I think my brain cells might actually be falling out of my ears in the night. Remind me to buy plugs.]
Before she can interrupt with another painfully literal interpretation of my strange answers, I add, “No, really. She was all kinds of amazing. At first she was super mad, but not at me, just at the scumbag who made the website and at all the other scumbag minions who do things like make paper airplanes out of my nudes.”
“Then?”
“Then she told me to stay calm, hold my head up, all that clichéd crap . . . and she’ll figure out what to do next. Whether that’s go to the principal, or to the police, since it’s harassment and all that, or string every guy on the basketball team up on her washing line by the nuts.”
“Hopefully a combination of all three.”
“My thoughts exactly, Ajita. My thoughts exactly.”
She smiles sympathetically. “Hey, so, um . . . guess what?”
“What?”
Her perfect little face lights up. “I made the tennis team! Turns out my hand-eye coordination is actually quite good thanks to a decade of ping-pong and video games. Who knew?”
“Oh my God! Dude!” I consider giving her a hug, but decide against it because unsolicited bodily contact gives her the willies, and even though I’m like a house cat who likes to be touching people at any given opportunity, I have to respect her wishes. “That’s awesome. I’m so fricking proud of you.”
And I mean it. I’m really happy for her. But as she skips off to meet Carlie before lunchtime practice, I can’t help feeling slightly abandoned. I know that sounds so selfish, and I hate myself for being this petty, but without her by my side, everything just feels so much more overwhelming.
Like I say, I really need to be a better friend. She deserves so much more.
6.58 p.m.
I hang out with Carson at the basketball courts again after school. I love late September. There’s all kinds of fall foliage around now, burnt oranges and dark reds and whatnot, and I can smell smoking chimneys on the crisp air. It’s almost beautiful enough to make me forget about the hellish implosion of my personal life. Almost.
We shoot some hoops together, even though I have the sporting ability of a concussed hippopotamus, as I fill him in on the latest developments. This time I manage to avoid a full-scale breakdown, which is good for maintaining the illusion that I am not certifiably unstable. Anyway, he seems genuinely concerned about my well-being, which is all new fuckboy territory. He is like a pioneer. A beautiful, beautiful pioneer whose bones I’m in mortal peril of jumping at any given moment.
“Anything I can do?” he asks. “To help y’all, I mean. You and Betty.” It’s such a small thing, but the fact he remembers my grandma’s name warms my heart.
Barely even looking where he’s aiming, he gracefully tosses the ball in the direction of the hoop. It makes a perfect arc then slides straight through the net, not even skimming the rim. Even as a nonsportsball lover, I have to admit it’s impressive.
He hands me the ball. I bounce it a couple of times, pretending to know what I’m doing, and say, “Nah. Don’t worry about us. Everybody has shit to deal with, you know? Even you, I’d imagine, despite your hot-yet-unintimidating demeanor.” He grins at this, and I grin back, before adding, “So I’m not in the habit of offloading mine. It isn’t fair.”
Clearly picking up on the fact I have no idea what I’m doing with a basketball in my hands, Carson comes up behind me and places his hands on my hips, tilting them toward the hoop. My pulse quickens as he angles my body perfectly to make a winning shot, even taking the time to rearrange my feet. I’m not sure why this feels so intimate, given that we’ve already had sex. But I like it. I really, really like it.
As he works, he says, “You know I have nine brothers and sisters?”
He’s back upright now, still behind me, a hand on each of my arms. I focus on steadying my breathing. “Wow. That’s a lot.”
“Yeah. A fertile woman, my mother.”
I consider this as he runs his hands slowly down my arms until his hands are cupping mine. “You probably know I’m an only child, and an orphan, and an all-round disaster,” I say.
He nods. “Yep.” I wait for him to continue. I get the impression he’s been thinking about this for a while, and as usual I am ruining his flow by stating obvious tragic details about myself.
Both of us holding the ball, Carson takes aim. I can feel his heart beating against my back, even through my sweater. Like he’s working a bow and arrow, he gently guides my arms back, then flicks the ball deftly up toward the hoop.
Again, it slides straight through the net.
I whoop, then turn to face him, grinning. He matches my smile. “You’re a natural.”
See? He is a good guy. Which is very different from being a Nice Guy à la Danny Wells.
Also, for some reason, I don’t feel the need to constantly crack jokes and prove how funny I am when I’m around Carson. At first I thought this was a bad thing – like, shouldn’t I be bouncing off him and being hilarious? – but it’s actually quite nice to just relax and have a normal chat like normal people. So it’s weird.
Our faces are so close together that for a moment I think [hope] he might kiss me again, but after a tantalizing moment, he skips off to retrieve the ball.
I take the opportunity to continue the conversation. “So is everything okay at home? You mentioned family issues. I mean, you don’t have to talk about it. But you can if you want.”
He grins again, bounding back over to me. He really is cute with a capital C. Huge smile, smooth brown skin, symmetrical features, striking eyes like Will Smith’s. “Thanks, Iz. It’s really okay, though. Nothing compared to what you have to deal with.”
“Well, that’s dumb,” I retort. “I don’t have the monopoly on messed-up family stuff. Just ask the Fritzls.”
Carson actually recoils a little here. “Izzy, that’s awful.”
“So is your face.”
“Really? Still making ‘your face’ jokes in this day and age?”
“Look, I don’t care what anyone says, your face and your mom jokes will always be hysterical.”
He laughs. “Whatever you say. You’re the comedian.”
But I haven’t even been trying to be funny! I want to say. Is it possible that my natural state is entertaining in itself?? What a relief that would be!
“Nah, honestly, it’s a’ight,” he says. We both watch a nearby seagull doing some sort of Macarena dance as it maneuvers its freshly caught prey into its mouth. “My mom’s partner of eight years left us a few weeks back. Left us in the shit too, financially. Eleven mouths to feed and all. So I’ve been picking up extra shifts at the pizza place downtown.”
“That is unbelievably crappy. I’m sorry.”
“Nah, don’t be. I get free pizza.”
I gasp exaggeratedly. “That is the Holy Grail of job perks. I love pizza more than most things, including oxygen.”
He lets his eyes drop to the ground. [Again, not literally. That would be deeply uncomfortable for him. Nobody wants gravel in their corneas. I mean, maybe you do. I don’t know your fetishes.]
Biting a lip, he finally says, “Then, uh, maybe we should get pizza together sometime.”
Wow, he has such long eyelashes. [Good grief, I really need to stop objectifying this poor boy – it is very unfeminist of me.]
I smile. “Yeah. Maybe we should.”