Then it was like someone dumped warm water on me, slowly, and it made me want to hold him tighter. I brushed my hands down his arms, then up again, across his shoulders, to his face.
I wanted to keep going.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I let go. He let go.
“Bye,” I said, and tried to keep my mouth closed because my breaths were coming heavy.
“Bye,” he said, and closed his mouth, too, like he wanted to say something else but couldn’t.
I walked back to the Canoe Club, got in the car with Mom, and pretended like everything was normal.
But I can’t stop thinking about it. I didn’t know I wanted such a feeling until it happened. I just made out with Stuart Shah. I just made out with Stuart Shah.
I feel I am a different person than I was twelve hours ago, like my hard, cracked skin is falling off to a new layer of pink raw skin, like I am making the transformation. Like Mrs. Whatsit in A Wrinkle in Time, when she left Earth through different dimensions, for a purple-gray planet with two moons. She was a bundle of rags and boots on Earth, and on the new planet, she became a brilliant creature with a powerful body and wings, almost beyond description. I’m still wearing my clogs and sweatshirt, still smelling the night on it, but I look different. I am different.
I know how love works, Future Sam, I read about it in National Geographic. It’s a firing of neurons and a release of dopamine, what neuroscientists call “attachment chemicals,” and this combined with the evolutionary imperative to reproduce creates a conditioned pattern of behavior. You seek out your love object for the same reason you seek out another piece of candy: because you want those sweet feelings again.
But no one ever told me how easy it would be, how good it would be. I mean, they did, they tried, Shakespeare tried, the Beatles tried, but I still didn’t know it would be like this.
COOPER LIND’S GUIDE TO ALTERNATIVE RESOURCES
Went over to Coop’s backyard to get his “guide to alternative resources,” which was mostly just an old legal pad from middle school full of doodles of Garfield doing slam dunks, occasionally interspersed with ideas, but there was good stuff in there. We sat on the fence between our properties like we used to. I wrote more notes and Coop pitched a football at a nearby tree, trying to hit the center.
Okay, and if this is the official record, let it be known I will only be using these as necessary. Necessary is defined as only at risk of failure. Failing grades on finals could bring Bs and Cs in overall grades, which could threaten my valedictory status. Otherwise, I will be shooting straight all the way to the end.
(List edited heavily to exclude seducing people in my classes and having them give me all the answers)
? “the printer smudged this, can’t read it,” while teacher is looking at the paper, glance at neighbor’s test; especially effective for math tests. [USE FOR CALC FINAL]
? go to the bathroom immediately before and as soon as people start turning in their tests, as to avoid suspicion, but when there, check phone for refreshers. [USE FOR AP LIT QUIZZES, esp. multiple-choice section]
? evade test dates in order to take the actual exams in “alternative situations,” aka alone after school, when textbook can be accessed. [AP EURO]
After I copied everything down worth using, I said that phrase to myself, Well, I have everything worth using, and what Maddie said the other day popped into my head, so I said, “Coop, I’m not using you, am I?”
“Like… wait, what?”
“Like taking too much from you and not giving back.”
“No! No,” he said quickly, running to get the football from in front of the tree.
When he came back, he said, “Trust me, I’ve been used before, and this is not using. You asked for what you wanted directly, and I said yes.”
“Who used you?”
Coop shrugged. “Girls.”
I hopped off the fence. “Yeah, right.”
He threw the ball again. “They flirt with me to get into parties, get booze, drugs, new friends. It’s the way it goes.”
“It’s not just that.”
“Sometimes it’s not.”
I held up the pad. “They flirt with you for your Garfield drawings.”
Coop snorted. “You used to draw those Lord of the Rings characters that looked like turds. I’m surprised you don’t have a boyfriend by now with those skills.”
I smiled, staring at my hands, thinking of Stuart’s lips on mine.
“What the hell is that look?” Coop was staring at me, eyes wide.
“I don’t have a look.”
His voice got lower. “You have a boyfriend?”
“No…”
“Who is it?”
“No one.”
Coop ran to get the ball. As he ran back, faster this time, he asked, “Who is it not?”
It was hard to resist telling him. It was also hard to keep out a tone of see, I’m not a loser, ha-ha. “It’s not Stuart Shah.”
“Oh,” Coop said, and looked away. “Cool.”
That time the football sailed beyond the tree, and the next one, too.