Shirley, who always played it cool, couldn’t prevent a slight flush from coloring her face. “Everyone was very nice.”
Lily laughed. “Yes. Everyone. But Calvin was especially nice to you.”
Shirley shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said loftily. “I noticed that Will was especially nice to you.”
“What? Will was just . . . Will.”
Shirley gave Lily an incredulous look.
Lily frowned. “He was just being nice. As usual. Why do you always see things that aren’t there?”
“Why don’t you ever see what is there? You can be so oblivious sometimes. If you don’t pay more attention, you’ll never have a boyfriend.”
Lily almost retorted, I don’t want a boyfriend, but she stopped herself just in time. Instead she said, “My parents won’t let me have one until I go to college, anyway. So it doesn’t matter.”
They saw their friend Mary Kwok coming up the street then and dropped the topic, but later that night as Lily climbed into bed, she realized Shirley had succeeded in distracting her from her original subject: Shirley’s interest in Calvin. It was strange that Shirley didn’t want to talk about it, but the whole day had been somewhat unusual. Spending it with two dozen strangers, for one thing. Lily and Shirley had had the same group of friends for as long as Lily could remember. Although there were always new immigrants from China showing up at school, they were relegated to Americanization classes and didn’t interact much with the American-born Chinese kids. And this was the first time Lily had spent so much time with college students. She couldn’t quite believe that she’d be one of them in less than a year. Their lives seemed so different from hers, both freer and more weighted with responsibilities. Lily also noticed that Shirley had inserted herself deliberately into the college students’ conversations in addition to their volleyball game. She had been charming, too, in a way that she normally wasn’t. She’d kept a lid on her bossier tendencies and instead played the part of modest, cheerful guest.
All of that had gone out the window as soon as they left Calvin and Will on Stockton Street, of course. You can be so oblivious sometimes, she had said. It had irritated Lily that afternoon, and now the feeling flared into frustration at the way Shirley saw her—or didn’t see her.
The sheets felt hot and scratchy tonight, and she threw them off, kicking her legs free. She had opened the little window in her room, but the air was still and didn’t circulate. She heard the sounds of the city floating through the window: car engines chugging up and down hills, the distant sound of someone laughing. She punched her pillow and flipped it over to the cool side, and wondered if what Shirley had said about Will was true.
She called up Will’s face in her mind’s eye, but she didn’t feel anything special for him. She tried to imagine what it would be like to kiss him, but the idea felt distinctly embarrassing and oddly repugnant. He was just Will. Ordinary, same old Will from Commodore Stockton, perfectly nice, who used to want to be a basketball player but now wanted to be a lawyer. She began to imagine Will throwing the basketball through the hoop in the Cameron House yard.
One, two, three, four.
Finally, she was sleepy.
7
On Monday at school, Shirley seemed more distracted than usual, as if she were constantly being dragged back to prosaic reality from some much more interesting place in her imagination.
On Tuesday, when Lily finally commented on it, Shirley said, “Don’t be silly. I’m just busy. The fall dance is coming up soon and my dance committee has so much work to do. I wish you’d joined it. We could really use you.”
“I have a lot of math homework this semester,” Lily replied.
“Typical,” Shirley said, but she sounded more amused than upset.
On Wednesday, Lily stayed late after school to use the library. She wanted to look up the V-2 rocket, which Arthur C. Clarke mentioned in The Exploration of Space. As she was leaving, she ran into Will by the athletic trophy cases.
“I’m surprised you’re still here,” Lily said to him. Most of the after-school rush was over by now and the hallway was largely empty.
“I had science club, but I’m glad I saw you,” he said. “I wanted to talk to you.”
“About what?”
He looked nervous then, and he shifted the strap of his book bag on his shoulder. “Well, you know the fall dance that Shirley’s working on . . .”
When he trailed off and looked past her shoulder rather than directly at her, she grew puzzled. “Yes, why? Did she send you to convince me to join her committee?”
“No, I . . .” He stepped into the shadow of the trophy case and reached for her elbow, drawing her with him. “Lily,” he said hesitantly.
She knew, in that instant, that he was going to ask her to the dance, and even before he spoke the words, a horrified heat crept up her neck.
“Lily,” he said again, “I was wondering if you would like to come with me to the dance. As my date.” And then, to make matters worse, he looked her in the eye, and she saw a startlingly poignant hope in them.
“Oh,” she said, and then words failed her. She had to look away. Over his shoulder she saw the baseball trophies lined up all in a row, each miniature bronze boy holding a bat raised and ready to strike a ball that would never come. Out of the corner of her eye she saw movement through the doorway to a classroom: the suggestion of boys’ lanky limbs folding into chairs. It was Mr. Wright’s room, she realized; he was the teacher who led the science club.
“Lily?” Will said again.
She had to answer him. A voice inside her mind that sounded an awful lot like Shirley asked, what harm will it do to go with him? But she couldn’t bring herself to say yes. The word was stuck in her throat like a tiny fish bone. It scratched.
“I’m not allowed to—” she began, but he interrupted.