Tats 1: “Which is fifty percent nerdy.”
Tats 2: “So, two hundred percent into you, fifty percent nerdy, I guess that equals one hundred and fifty percent worthy.”
Me: “Please, I had a super-fail experience with my math exam. Please cut the math. Please.”
Tats 1: “Okay, basically, we need to figure out how to keep him into you. Which is hard because you can’t do anything to keep him into you. Like date. Or kiss the guy.”
Tats 2: “But, you can play hard to get. Like the hardest to get in the world. That could be your thing.”
Tats 1: “But too hard to get can turn him totally off. I mean, the truth is, Janna, is he even going to get you at the end of it all?”
We’re silent, pondering this profound question. I mean, I don’t know if Tats is silent because she’s pondering it, but she does stop the monologue to stare intensely at me. Like I have the answer to the purpose of life or something.
So I add my own soliloquy to throw her off my back. “To be got or not to be got? That is the question.”
Tats: “No, I’m serious; where does this all go? You are going to go out with him, right? If he asks you out for real?”
I sit up, pick up my backpack, and say, “Yeah, yeah, whatever, time for English.”
“This is serious, Janna. A guy’s life is at stake.”
I look at her. Is this the way I looked at things before? Just this past weekend, in fact? It’s almost crazy.
“A guy’s life?” I say. “Really?”
“Love life,” she says. “Really.”
I open the door and descend the secret stairwell. Pausing to put my ear to the door on the odd chance a teacher has come up to look for a textbook from the 1970s, I whisper, “Tats, relax. I’m into saving lives. If it really matters to him that much, I will not hesitate to lend a hand to keep him alive.”
Tats claps her hands at my benevolence, as I open the door. To five guys.
Who begin to furtively put away their stashes of illegal substances until they see that it’s us nobodies.
“Hey, guys,” Tats says breezily. “Keep it clean up there, will ya?”
She holds the door open for them. They go up wordlessly.
This is why I love the girl. She knows how to stay calm and carry on.
It almost makes me tell her about Farooq.
Almost. The 60 percent reason that I hold back has to do with something I’m 100 percent sure of: I can’t handle people thinking I come from a messed-up community. I’d rather close the hamper lid on that one.
Tats walks me to English, which is not good, because she gets to see how there is no English.
“Oops, I forgot. Ms. Keaton said it was a study period,” I say, feigning a look of dawning remembrance. “So let’s study. In the library.”
“No, change of plans, because guess who’s coming this way? Looking bored? Looking to hang with us?” Tats says, waving at someone behind me.
I turn, adjusting my hijab instinctively into what I think is the most flattering shape for my face: a flop-to-the-side look. (It’s a science, making the exact folds and lay of the hijab cloth to suit your type of face.) Jeremy is walking, no, striding toward us. I lean against a row of lockers, smiling.
“Hey,” Tats says, motioning him over. “What’s up?”
He waves and walks by, turning around to move away from us, backward.
“Nothing,” he says. “Just gotta help Coach with some equipment inventory.”
He’s gone. Without even one glance at me.
“Huh?” Tats says. “What was that about?” She turns to peer at me. “Is there something you’re not telling me about Sunday?”
“No!” I say, this time not feigning confusion, but exuding it authentically.
“He acted like you didn’t exist,” Tats says. “Let’s go to the equipment room.”
“No,” I say again. “I’m going to study.”
“Don’t be such a nerd,” Tats says. “Come on!”
She pulls me forward, and for some reason we find ourselves almost running after Jeremy. Who isn’t in the equipment room but on the stairwell landing, with two other guys, just sitting there. Tats, the brash thing, starts running down the stairs toward him, apparently unaware that she’s huffing. I hang back, realizing how crazed we must look.
“Jeremy, what’s going on?” Tats puffs, right in front of his friends.
He gets up and comes up the stairs a bit to draw her away from humiliation. Because she doesn’t notice, but his friends are laughing and not even hiding it. I back out through the doors, letting them shut heavily and move to lean my head against the side windows from where I can watch the drama without anyone seeing me.
Jeremy looks tight, his arms stiff against the sides of his body, but he’s doing most of the talking. Tats has her arms crossed, listening intently to him, and as I watch her, my embarrassment at her behavior slowly dissipates.
She’s really into this. Trying to make what she thinks of as happiness for me. But is it happiness for me? Am I going to go through with letting Jeremy and me be together in the end? I haven’t really thought that far. But now, watching his lips move and his body tighten up further as time ticks by, the mother of all rhetorical questions whams me with such force that I almost bang my forehead on the glass. Why is everything neater in my head than in real life? What is real life anyway?
I pivot abruptly and walk to the library, because I know for sure my English exam is real Real Life.
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Tats joins me at a study carrel as I’m reviewing arguments against humanizing Caliban. Although I see Mr. Ram’s point that Shakespeare wrote him with the specter of an almost racist form of Otherness in mind, he reminds me too much of Farooq, so I’m all for caging the dude up.
“Are you sitting down for this?” Tats asks my seated form. Her face is livid.
I slump down.
“Apparently, there’s this guy, Farooq, who says you and him are together,” Tats says, carefully watching my face. “This guy is good friends with Jeremy, so now he says he doesn’t feel right. . . . Okay, who is Farooq?”
I stare at her, willing her to stop.
“So, there is something you’re not telling me!” Tats says. “Jan, I thought we didn’t do that? Keep stuff from each other?”
“Tats, can you just shut up? I need to study. I can’t fail another exam.”
“But who is he?” she says, leaning forward, really expecting me to launch into an essay explaining who the Caliban in my life is.
I close my books, slam them into my backpack, and drag it with me out of the library. Tats doesn’t follow, and I wonder how real she is in my life because I don’t care that she sits there, shooting me a steady, evil glare.
At the rate I’m going, I’ll have no friends left by Friday.
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