“Good move.” And I don’t mean her imaginary parents sending her to an imaginary Southern high school.
“This poem,” she says, “it was about how much she hated her father. Which was a lot. The girls were all having fits about how good it was. The guys were all puking.”
“What were you doing while all this puking was going on?”
“Remember me? Educated in a tin can. I’m borderline illiterate.” She looks as thoughtful as a person can when lighting into a quart of ice cream. “If she’d have just gotten herself out of Dodge and hung with people who were nice to her and shoved her dad out of her mind . . . That’s what you have to do sometimes . . . Instead of writing poems about it . . .”
“You do know she killed herself?”
“That’s the stuff I pay attention to, are you kidding me? Did you know she married a guy who, after she killed herself, married another poet who killed herself? So the question is, did he constantly marry suicidal women, or did he marry regular women and drive them over the edge?”
“Is this a quiz?”
“Seriously? Who goes to a party looking for suicidal poets?” She grins. “Unless that’s your type. Ladies who cry a lot?”
Apart from the sick, intrusive flashes of me with my hands circling her neck just above the collarbone, it’s possible that she’s my type.
Scarlett, for all her put-downs, for all the times she came on to Dan Barrons whenever she was pissed at me, at least didn’t kill people. But after spending three hours with this girl, I like her better than Scarlett. I like that she doesn’t take her imaginary self that seriously. I want to off-road with her and Calvin and Monica—despite my reservations about introducing my friends to a girl who could be hazardous to their health. I want to steer into hairpin turns with her thrown against me, riding shotgun. I’m betting she likes to go fast over rocky terrain.
While I’m wondering if I’m genetically impaired in a different way than I’ve thought all along—if the genes I should worry about aren’t my father’s, but my mother’s (the woman who spent two decades with my father, knowing what he was, but loved him anyway)—Nicolette AKA Cat is polishing off the whole mixing bowl of sundae, and smiling at me between bites. It’s that lopsided, endearing, unbearably sexy smile.
I want to rip her clothes off.
32
Cat
Cat is so trampy! She goes to his apartment and starts talking about condoms? Makes fun of abstinence. Plus, factoids about dead poets. Really? Like she didn’t notice they were dead and it was tragic?
At least I got out of there without unbuttoning anything.
But it was as if one of those tiny red Disney cartoon devils—the ones that hover over your shoulder encouraging you to do the wrong thing—was going, Kiss him, kiss him, kiss him. Until it was so loud I had to do it.
Fast, no tongue, antiseptic. Then I’m out the door so fast, it’s like the bad-kiss cops are chasing me.
J’s the one who’s chasing me, going, “Hey!”
I go faster. So does he.
“Hey!” This guy needs to learn one or two things about picking up girls. But not from me.
“Hey! There are rules against kissing and running.”
He’s caught up, and he’s touching my arm for good measure.
“Says who? The sleazy guys’ handbook?”
He breaks out laughing. “Right under the section about aftershave.”
“I hate aftershave!” Something Cat and I agree on. “Please stop following me.”
“You’re not supposed to flirt with guys you’re trying to ditch,” he says. “Didn’t one of your many older sisters tell you that?”
I want to slap myself. Then him.
Acting like I act in real life when buzzed, only worse! Real life being my old life. The one where guys following me wasn’t cause for alarm. Possibly should have been, but wasn’t. (Definitely should have been. But wasn’t.) What am I doing?
It’s not that hard to break it down. I could make a diagram of how my heart is divided into empty sections labeled with things I can’t have anymore.
The address of the home I can never go back to.
An aerial view of the trail where I run through the woods and along the lakeshore with (what used to be) home right at the end of it.
A schedule of cheer practice.
A road map from Cotter’s Mill, Ohio, to Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Then there’s the place right in the middle, full of loneliness and longing, where I’m not allowed to put anyone. There are rules of survival for runners like me. Human entanglements aren’t exactly encouraged. Desire for a normal friend, for a normal conversation with a normal boy, for a kiss, has to be squashed.
But how normal is it that the scared-out-of-her-mind girl who spends all her time with an elderly demented person would entertain one or two thoughts about the hot, not-demented boy who was thrown into her path by Fate?
And then removed his shirt.
33
Jack
We’re standing on the sidewalk, both of us trying to look inconspicuous.