“You could’ve been.”
“You mean if I’d just acted like everything was totally fine? Like you said, I don’t know how to be fake.” My raking becomes harder and more vicious. “And I learned my lesson. I’m never going to another dance again. Guest starring in one episode of The Young and the Vacant was enough for me.”
Maybe I had a sliver, like, a modicum of fun. But there’s no way I’d tell her that.
Ruth shakes her head. “You’re so angry all the time. Aren’t you tired?”
“I’m kidding. I mean, I won’t go to another dance, but I’m mostly joking.”
“That’s what’s angry, the jokes.”
I wipe the sweat off my forehead with the back of my garden glove, exasperated.
“How about you try to analyze me when you’re not completely stoned.”
“Sure, make an appointment for the twelfth of never.”
I snort. Ruth picks up expressions—what she’d call, offensively, “street”—from Ave and me that she uses wrong half the time and dead-on perfectly the other half. I’m about to respond to her when I realize she’s looking past me, smiling. A voice pipes up from behind me.
“Scarlett?”
I turn. Gideon’s standing hesitantly at the edge of the garden, holding a potted orchid.
“Oh, wow.” He blinks. “Those are some serious Jerry Seinfeld pants.”
“Hello, Newman.”
“I was wondering if you’d mind if I, like, helped you.”
The surprise and weirdness of him being there makes me docile. I nod. “Okay.”
Ruth clears her throat.
“I think I’m gonna take a nap.”
Gideon looks straight at her and says supersincerely, “I’m really sorry I did this to your garden.”
“Thank you. You’re a nice boy,” she replies without her usual saltiness—instead, like a kindly grandma. Then she goes inside. Gideon points toward the door with a perplexed smile.
“Um, was she just smoking weed?”
“Yep.”
He nods, impressed, and says mildly, “Right on.”
“Your clothes are going to get dirty,” I warn him.
“That’s cool.”
“So . . . um, yeah.” I gesture to the tools stacked up against the side of the porch. “Grab a hoe.”
“There’s nothing I’d rather do,” he jokes.
“I figured. You’re kind of a rake.”
He nods seriously. “Good for you, calling a spade a spade.”
I laugh, surprised, then narrow my eyes and fake-glare suspiciously at him. He smiles back. We’re flirting, I think. It’s sort of a dogs-circling-each-other flirt. He seems to be sizing it up the same way I am.
Then he says, “A hot Jerry Seinfeld is what I meant.”
I might pass out. Instead I say, hopefully coolly: “Right. Obviously.”
I assign him one particular square of the garden, and we work in silence for a while. He starts sweating and takes his fleece off, underneath which is a white T-shirt that fits him perfectly, and I pretend not to notice.
“Remember that time you said I didn’t have friends?” he asks, his tone light and joking but a little wounded.
“I didn’t really mean it that way.”
“I know. But, like, how would you know if I even did? Besides them, I’m, um . . . I take classes in the city at this comedy place? Upright Citizens Brigade? That’s where my best friends are, really.”
My heart twists a little at his nervous uptalk.
“Yeah, of course. Avery and I try to go every few weeks. I’ve seen a lot of shows there.”
“Really?” He’s relieved and, judging by the sudden grin, delighted. “That’s cool! And, like . . . most of your friends are on the Internet, right?”
He doesn’t sound judgmental, just curious. Ashley must’ve told him.
“Um, when you say it like that, it sounds pretty creepy. But, yeah, some of them.”
“What do you talk about with them?”
“Lycanthrope High, obviously.”
“But the show’s over. So what about now?”
I begin to feel the blood rush out of my head, the start of a small panic attack. Right now we’re discussing the speculative fiction I’m writing about you and your maybe-girlfriend.
“Nothing important,” I say.
He nods.
“And I hang out with people here, too. I have hang partners,” I add.
“Well, there’s Ashley’s sister,” he says, teasing.
“Yeah.”
“And there’s . . .” He pretends to think. “An old woman.”
I laugh again, my anxiety dissipating.
“Seriously, though, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. I mostly hang out with other kids in my improv class. We just get along really well. School isn’t really where most of my friends are.”
“Well!” I say brightly, trying not to come off too caustic. “You really seem to be spreading your wings this year, you li’l social butterfly.”
“Yeah. I know.” His response is weirdly ambivalent, and he hangs his head a little. Good! He should. Or: I like him, and he shouldn’t. Depends on what precise second you ask me.