“Thank you.” I smile at Brooke. She may be the most uncouth person I know, but she’s loyal. And right now her back is up.
“What a penis hole,” she says, drawing the attention of some nearby freshmen. “You’re completely frigid, dude. And I say that with affection.”
“That’s lovely.” I decide not to tell her about the food stuck in her teeth. Lilly does though, and Brooke scrapes it off and spends a solid forty seconds inspecting her find.
“Seriously,” Lilly says, turning to me. “Sorry about Charity. She doesn’t exactly live up to her name.”
Brooke flicks the orange skin off her fingernail into the hair of one of the freshmen girls without her noticing. “Not your fault, Lil. You can’t pick your family.”
“No, you can’t,” I agree, my hand slipping back into my pocket where the ultrasound lies folded, warm from my body heat.
“Hey.”
Even if I didn’t know Heath’s voice I would sense it’s him standing behind me because of my friends’ reactions. Lilly’s face goes into the frozen tundra mask she’s perfected on underclassmen who try to correct her when she pronounces words like flautist and pianist the right way, and Brooke scowls like he’s a hard grounder about to take a bad hop. Also she says, “Hey, man, you’re a penis hole.”
But I do know his voice, thoroughly. It’s come to me through five different models of phones and over Skype, my country wireless slowing his face down so that he looks like a badly dubbed film. I’ve listened to his soft inflections, soldiered through puberty octave cracks, and heard the first guttural moans of satisfied desire that didn’t happen in private. And it’s those accumulations that erase some of my irritation, an acknowledgment that even if I’m not happy with him in this moment, I’ve got enough time invested in him to allow for an apology.
“Excuse us, girls,” I say to Brooke and Lilly. My hand slides neatly into Heath’s, and I lead him away from our table without looking at his face yet, a thistle buried in the olive branch. I take him to the back hall, somewhere we’re not supposed to be during lunch hour. When I finally meet his eyes it’s clear he knows exactly how much doo-doo he’s in, that I’m willing to break rules for us to talk.
“So . . . ,” he starts.
“One”—I lift a finger—“not pregnant.”
His hand goes up to his scalp, disturbing the stillness of hair gelled into place this morning. “Sasha . . .”
“Two”—my middle finger pops up to join the pointer, making an audible tendon creak that we both ignore—“couldn’t possibly be pregnant.”
“I know that, okay? I know,” he argues back, little spiked edges of irritation that would hit red on a soundboard, making my fingers want to curl back down into a fist.
“And three . . .” But I lose three as a familiar smell fills the hallway, and my ring finger can’t quite make the upward journey to join the others because my hand is shaking so badly.
“Sasha?” Heath is different now, his defensiveness evaporated along with the sharpness of my voice, which is stuck in my throat, unable to burrow its way out. His hands find my shoulders, and I squirm under them, not wanting any hair product on my new shirt.
“Is it your heart? Sasha? You’re pale as a sheet.”
“Except her sheets ain’t white, man.”
Isaac’s voice sends another ripple through my system, this one a warm flush that takes over the cold anger that had been directed at Heath. He’s right beside us, eyeing Heath’s hands on my shoulders as if he wants to strike them off. An exhale of cigarette smoke tints his words, and I know it’s this scent that derailed my brain from the invective-laced diatribe that I’d been launching at my boyfriend, the smell of an unfiltered Pall Mall capturing my attention as easily as a John Williams score.
“This isn’t your business, Harver,” Heath says, ignoring the fact that Isaac knows what color my sheets are, in the same way I choose to dismiss the fact that I know exactly what kind of cigarettes Isaac smokes.
“Maybe not,” Isaac says, eyes still on Heath’s hands. “But I don’t like the way you’re handling the lady.”
“I’m fine,” I snap at him, sliding out from under my boyfriend’s grip. “That’s directed at you too,” I say to Heath as I stalk away from both boys. Away from the concern in Heath’s face and the smirk on Isaac’s.
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” I shout back over my shoulder as I turn the corner.
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” I say again to myself as I find my locker, willing my traitorous heart to return to a normal rhythm and ignoring the feeling that it beat more loudly when Isaac was nearby.
I feel like my sheets are screaming their non-whiteness when I walk into my bedroom. I toss my phone and it hits the mattress one second before I do. I spent the rest of the day at school trying so hard to prove that there is, in fact, nothing wrong with me, that I’m exhausted. Usually this is my cram session, a time to crank open the cranium and insert whatever information I’ll need for tomorrow’s quizzes, tests, or in-depth analysis. But my eyes are slipping closed, my legs barely able to draw the twin weights of my feet up to the bed before I’m out.
Isaac Harver follows me even there, into a dream where he knows the color of my sheets because he’s in my bedroom. He’s leaning against the door—which is closed, something I never allow when Heath is over—and his eyes are moving over me as I pull my shirt off flagrantly, even tossing it into the air like a stripper. Which it turns out is not so smart because it hits my whirling fan blades and turns into a projectile headed straight for Isaac’s face.
“Shit,” he yells, diving to get out of the way and knocking into me at the same time. We land on the bed, him on top, the lace of my bra pressed against him as my heart beats wildly. I’m ready for whatever he wants to do next. Anything. I lick my lips and wait for him to come at me, but instead he does something unexpected.
“You okay?” he asks, hands on either side of my face even though I thought he’d go right for my chest.
“Yeah,” I say, my voice thin and breathless as I look up at him. His thumb rubs over my check, onto my lower lip.
“Nice sheets,” he says, rolling off me. “I didn’t know they came in pink.”
I prop up on one elbow next to him, repeating his movements, learning as we go. I trace my finger over his lips. “Your other girls don’t have pink sheets?”
He grabs my hand and entwines our fingers, a knot I can’t break. He rolls to his side to face me, our eyes as connected as our hands. “I don’t have other girls.”
My heart accelerates, breath stills in my chest, skin explodes as a million nerve endings scream to be pressed against him. It’s so good it’s painful and I jerk awake, fingers splayed open on the pillow where his head rested in my dream, where I see an indent on the pillow I never use, and hair that isn’t mine.