“Where’s our bus?” someone asked, tapping on the windows, watching the parking lot.
“There’s like five buildings to this fancy-ass school,” someone else said. “Eight parking lots. Dude is lost.”
I turned from boy to boy, following a sweet grassy smell.
“Somebody here has marijuana,” I said, then pointed. “Somebody standing over here.”
Silence. Funny looks.
“One of you two,” I said, pretending to have a very vague sense when in fact I knew exactly who had how much dope and where it was stashed. “I can smell it.”
“Damn, son,” said a mellow kid named Danny. “You got a hell of a nose. I’m carrying. Why? You want some? I didn’t know you smoked.”
“I don’t,” I said. “I want to go put it in that guy’s locker, and then call the cops.”
Silence, then someone whistled. “Hardcore.”
“Badass.”
Danny grinned, dug deep into his back pocket. “Hell, I’ll happily sacrifice to that noble cause.”
“How are you going to find his locker?”
“His name is Wilson Horn,” Tariq said. “We’ve played them before.”
“The lockers have names on them,” I lied, since how could I explain to them that I’d know it by smell? “And they’re alphabetical. That’s how fancy this school is.”
“Matt and I’ll be right back,” Tariq said.
“It’s always the quiet ones who are evil geniuses,” Danny said, clapping me on the back as he handed over the three joints.
We sped off into the maze of darkened hallways. I let my nose lead me.
“You’re devious,” Tariq said, grabbing my hand. We slowed down and walked like that, holding hands, through the dark halls of a strange school, and I felt invincible.
“They don’t have names,” Tariq said. “How will you—”
I kissed him, hard and abrupt, pushing him back against the lockers. I tapped one of them. “It’s this one. I can smell him all over it.”
Tariq turned, sniffed, shrugged. “Really? That’s some supernatural nose shit, man. You sure you’re not a werewolf?”
“I’m only sure of one thing,” I said, and kissed him some more.
He spun us around, so my back instead of his was against the metal locker doors. He pressed his whole body close to mine.
Alone, in bed or at my computer, I indulged in the most obscene and elaborate fantasies. Savage brutal couplings to make Nicki Minaj blush. But with Tariq I was scared and timid, frightened of the thing I wanted so badly.
“You’re too sexy, you know that?” he said.
“Stop your lies,” I mumbled into his neck, and tried to break free. “We have work to do.” His body held me tight. He took the joints from my outstretched fingers and slipped them, one after the other, through the vents at the top of Wilson Horn’s locker. Pressed his other hand to the seat of my pants.
“Want to?” he whispered.
More than anything, I thought, but said, “Not now.”
“Come on,” he said, and began to unbuckle his belt with one hand while the other tightened around my wrist.
“No,” I said, harder.
“Fine,” he said, stepping back, his face tight with sudden anger.
And then, out of nowhere, he punched the locker beside me. I yelped. He winced, held his fist in his other hand, cursed several times.
“What are you doing?” I asked, my voice light but my heart dark and frightened. “Was that supposed to scare me?”
“No,” he said, his face a stranger’s. “Sorry. You’re not what I’m mad at.”
“Then don’t ever do that again,” I whispered.
Tariq nodded, but didn’t look at me. He turned his head back in the direction we had come. Where his friends waited. By the bus that would take us back to our lives. Light from that direction lit him up in profile: his long lashes, his proud nose, his parted hungry lips. I breathed him in, and I smelled:
He wants everyone to find out. More than anything else, he wants this charade to be over.
But he’s terrified of it.
We walked back slow, holding hands until just before we turned the corner and were greeted with the cheers of our team.
“It’s a Friday,” Bastien said as we walked out of that horrible building. “We’ll call the cops on Sunday, so it won’t point back to us so much.”
The air was bitter cold and glorious. We stood there joking, laughing, watching our breath billow in the air, waiting for the bus. They were all terrible people, all monsters.
My powers could help me be one of them. And it felt so so good to be one of them.
RULE #34
Happiness is the most treacherous emotion. When you’re happy, all you want to do is stay happy.
DAY: 26
TOTAL CALORIES, APPROX.: 1300
“You would like Gimli best,” Bastien said, and Tariq said “Ooooh” like it was a witty insult, and maybe it was, except my knowledge of Lord of the Rings characters was woefully limited.
We sat in the bed of Tariq’s pickup truck. Bastien’s car was parked beside us, engine running, headlights casting two long bright trails across the ragged lines of pine trees. His stereo thumped out classic rock, dumb empty songs, but the rhythm was nice and the mood was mellow and I didn’t hate it half as much as I would have hated it a week before.
Bastien took a long hit and then offered me the joint.
“Matt gets high on life,” Ott said.
“No shit,” Bastien said, handing it to him instead. “How’s that working out for you?”
“Pretty great,” I said and pointed up at the sky. “Did you guys know about stars? A bunch of bright dots in the sky for no reason? That shit is totally trippy.”
Everybody laughed.
“Legolas is where it’s at,” Bastien said. “Legolas kicks just as much ass as Gimli, but he does it with class and wit.”
“Trav says Legolas is a fairy,” Ott muttered.
“My brother’s an idiot,” Bastien said. “Everybody knows Legolas is an elf.”
“That’s not what he means.”
“Oh.”
Silence. Bastien had no comeback to that, bested again by his absent brother. “Then who does he like? Galadriel?”
Ott whispered, “Aragorn,” reverently, and Bastien nodded.
“Who’s Aragorn?” I asked.
“The King,” Bastien said. And I remembered from the movie: tall, handsome, brave, strong, perfect, tiresome. Mighty warrior, wise commander, total bore.
Tariq groaned and stood up. “You’re all a bunch of ugly little hobbits, and we need to stop talking about that wack-ass movie right now.”
I tuned out their halfhearted objections. I focused on my secret boyfriend, his dark hair and mighty scowl in the late twilight and the back-glare of Bastien’s headlights. His charcoal-gray hoodie, the softest object in the known universe. His huge hands, thumbs hooked into his belt loops.