Boy Toy (18 page)

Her eyebrow lifted and I thought some light came back into her eyes. "No, Josh. It was a lot of fun, but I don't think—" Someone knocked on the door. "That's my next class. Here." She scribbled out a hall pass and handed it to me. "Don't be late."

I wanted to stay and argue, but I knew I couldn't. I raced to my next class and spent the day in a whirl of confusion. What had I done wrong? I wasn't the one who put the movie in the Xbox, so why should I be punished for it? Why should I lose out on something?

The flickers came back at the end of school; one hit me while I was getting my books from my locker. I staggered away from the locker, aware that I was being watched by the kids around me, who no doubt thought I was about to collapse. Instead, I marshaled my guts and managed to walk out the door into the cold December afternoon.

The bus driver looked at me suspiciously. It had been a while since I'd ridden the bus on the way home.

It was like being on an alien planet. No one sat with me, and why should they? I was a stranger now. It was loud and obnoxious and annoying, not like driving home with Eve, where she'd play some soft music or NPR and we'd talk about how my day was and how her day was ...

The bus was just a big, stupid chaos of noise and idiocy. God, no wonder Eve didn't want to spend more time with me—I was one of
them!
I was one of these stupid
kids.

At home, I wanted to call her, but I couldn't. It's not that I didn't know her phone number—I did, and her cell, too. It's just that I couldn't bring myself to do it. I couldn't bring myself to hear her voice telling me, again, that I wasn't wanted.

I puttered around the house, miserable, until Dad got home many hours later.

"You not going to Mrs. Sherman's anymore?" he asked. I'd been home before him two days in a row now.

"She dropped me off early." I don't know why I lied. I didn't intend to—it just happened. And now I couldn't take it back.

"Have you eaten?"

I didn't feel like eating, but two days without dinner in a row would have really raised his suspicions, so I made myself eat when I really felt like throwing up.

When Mom came home, Dad told her how I'd been home alone "for two days now, for God knows how long" and asked "Weren't you supposed to be home earlier?" while Mom kept trying to explain, over and over, that she'd gotten caught up in things, couldn't he just understand that she'd—

I went to the family room and turned up the TV loud enough to drown them out.

I woke up the following morning with only one emotion running through me: fear. Fear that Mom would have to quit her job. That my parents would never stop arguing. Hell, fear that I'd have to give up the Xbox.

But most of all, fear of Eve.

Fear that she knew about my dreams. Fear that she'd seen me looking down her blouse or up her skirt. Fear of what happened to me when I was around her—I didn't understand the rising welter of guilt, shame, and terror that somehow, in some twisted way, made me feel
good
... for a little while, at least.

As soon as the bus dropped me off, I headed straight for Eve's room. All I knew was that I had to get my friend back.

Eve jerked like someone had stabbed her when she saw me come into her room that early. Maybe it was the determination in my eyes. The fear. She glanced at the kids in her homeroom, who weren't paying the least bit of attention. But they would snap to attention
real
fast if something interesting started to happen at the front of the room.

I only had a minute or two before the homeroom bell rang. I leaned over her desk. "Mrs. Sherman, I
really
need to talk to you."

I can't describe the look on her face. I think at that age I lacked the emotional vocabulary—it was an utterly
adult
expression, one I'd never seen or made before. I have no idea what she was thinking in that moment.

"Josh, I think you took a wrong turn somewhere. You need to be in homeroom." She was trying to sound lighthearted, but it wasn't working.

"
Please.
" I was all but down on my knees.

She sighed. "There's no time now. Come see me at the end of the day."

It wasn't the victory I hoped for, but it was
hope
for victory. I made it to homeroom right before the bell and somehow got through the rest of the day with a raw thrill of hope vibrating in me like an aluminum bat that's just smacked a homer.

She would talk to me. At the end of the day. But she would
talk
to me.

History was tough, of course. I had trouble paying attention because I was too distracted by Eve, wondering what she would say to me. She looked past me or through me the entire time, never calling on me to answer a question, even if I had my hand up. One time, when we were supposed to be writing something down, I looked up suddenly and caught her at her desk, staring at me. She didn't flinch or turn away—she just took a breath, nodded, and then started working on her computer.

As soon as bus dismissal was called, I raced from homeroom to Eve's room. Kids were streaming out, babbling and chattering as they headed for the buses. I fought against the tide and made my way inside; Eve was packing up a bag at her desk, loading it with the papers she usually took home for grading. She didn't see me there.

"You said—you said I should talk to you at the end—" The room was almost empty, but I wanted to be careful.

"Shh!" She massaged her temples as she looked down at the desk. Her lips moved in silence. I'd seen this before; she was talking to herself, making sure she'd packed up everything she needed. I shut up.

Soon, she muttered, "OK." I heard them call my bus number, but I didn't move.

"Come on," she said. "We can't talk here."

We drove in silence back to her apartment. Six steps up. Half-turn on the landing. Six steps. Inside, she told me to sit on the sofa and wait for her. She went into the kitchen for her wine.

"Do you want a Coke?" she asked.

I fidgeted on the sofa. It felt like I was being punished. Usually
I
got the drinks. "OK." I tried not to look at the Xbox.

She came back with our drinks, gave me my Coke, and sat down next to me on the sofa. I smelled strawberries.

"OK, Josh. You said you had to talk to me. Talk."

I fumbled with the Coke can. What was I going to say? It had all flown out of my brain somehow. I couldn't even form words. Managing to get the can open without spraying Coke all over was a major achievement.

I waited for her to say something instead, but she didn't. She just sat there, sipping her wine, watching me.

"I don't want to go," I blurted out.

She raised an eyebrow.

"I like being here. I like spending time with you."

"Yes, Josh, and I..." She sighed. "I like spending time with you, too. We have good conversations. We've become friends."

Friends! That was it! That was how to—"Right! We're friends. I mean, you let me play with the Xbox..." Mistake! I shouldn't have mentioned the Xbox! That conjured the moaning ghosts of the Happy Trio.

But instead she laughed, like she used to, before I saw the movie. "Is that what this is all about? Playing video games because your parents won't buy them for you?"

"No! I just..." I cast about, looking for answers in the furniture, the air, the paint on the walls and ceiling. "I just like being here. It's..."

What
was
it? Yes, the Xbox was part of it. And Eve's beauty. And being—

And being treated like a grownup.

Like I wasn't a little kid.

I poured the wine. I got the drinks. When Eve cooked dinner, I helped, and she didn't boss me around like Mom did, ordering me to do this or that.

I looked at the artwork and I noticed things and Eve appreciated it.

"You don't treat me like a kid," I told her. "You act like you respect me."

"It's not an act." She sat up suddenly and leaned toward me. "I think you're an amazing young man, Josh. Your mind ... The way you think, the way you express yourself ... You're years ahead of your classmates."

"I know."

"It's tough, isn't it?" She stared at me with those blazing green eyes, eyes like an explosion of tropical leaves. "It's tough being different."

"Yeah."

"I know. When I was a kid..." She stopped and took a big gulp of the wine, almost draining the glass.

"What? What happened when you were a kid?"

She smiled at me and held out her glass. "Nothing. Will you refill this?"

My cheeks hurt from the broad grin plastered across my face. Things were coming back to normal. I hustled to the kitchen and came back with her glass of wine in record time. Back on the sofa.

"We still need to talk, though."

"Can I keep coming here after school?"

"Yes, Josh. But we need to talk. Seriously."

"OK."

"You have to understand that I could get in—"

"—a lot of trouble. I know. I get it. But it was an accident. And if anyone ever found out, I would tell them that—"

"No one can ever find out!" She practically screamed it, her eyes wide, veins standing out from her neck. I jumped back.

"I'm sorry, Josh." She put down her wineglass and leaned over, very close to me. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to scare you." She took my face in her hands and made me gaze into her eyes. "I'm sorry. I was just worried. I'm sorry."

"It's OK," I whispered, as if speaking at a normal volume would somehow break us or cause the fragile, tense quiet in the inches between us to shatter. "It's OK," I said again, hyperaware of how close we were.

"Sorry..." she murmured, still holding my face, then leaned forward and pressed her lips to my forehead, as if checking for a fever. She lingered there and it was like I
did
have a fever, a fever confined to the space of her lips, where my forehead burned hot.

"I don't want you to be afraid of me." She pulled away, her voice soft.

"I'm not. No one will ever know. No one will ever find out," I swore.

She said nothing. She just nodded once, slowly, and that was it.

I wondered: Would it be cool to play Xbox now? But she still looked out of sorts, so I didn't want to move.

"Josh..." She hesitated, and then: "Look, we still need to talk about what you saw." She held up a hand when I started to protest. "I know that you're much more mature than most people your age, but I'm still the adult and I have a responsibility to make sure that you're not..." She gestured like she was trying to make a rabbit appear from a hat—only there was no hat. "Scarred—"

I laughed. "Scarred? From what?"

"Don't laugh! This is serious!" She nudged me with a foot. "I'm trying to find out how it made you feel."

The truth ... God, the truth was tough! It made me horny in the way that Zik's near-endless supply of
Playboys
did. But it was different because Zik wasn't around. Because there was motion and sound. Because it was in Eve's apartment, with Eve sleeping down the hall, on her stomach on the bed, one leg cocked—

I shook my head. I couldn't tell her
that.

"I was just surprised," I told her, and my voice ... my voice
fucking cracked! Very
convincing. "I was surprised." And angry, I remembered. Angry that she watched it with George.

She regarded me for so long that I got nervous and drank some Coke just as an excuse to do something. I had to pee all of a sudden.

"Anything else?" she asked.

"Like what?"

"Anything. There are a whole range of reactions that would make sense."

"Like what?" I wasn't going to answer the question until I had some idea of where this was going.

"Well ... Did it make you think of anything? Or anyone?"

God! "No." Lying through my teeth and anything else I could lie through.

"Josh..." She grinned at me, her dimple forming in her left cheek. She knew I was lying. Hell, the paintings on the wall knew and they weren't even alive.

"It made me think of you." I said it quickly, hoping that it would come out so fast that she wouldn't even realize it, like a split-fingered fastball that moves so quickly that you're struck out before you knew it was pitched.

"That's perfectly natural, Josh. You saw it in my house, after all." She didn't seem upset. "What did it make you think about me?"

I swallowed. No. I would not. I wouldn't say it.

She sipped wine and her eyes flicked to the TV. "They were touching and hugging, weren't they?"

If you want to call it that, sure. But I think the Happy Trio had other words for it.

"They were kissing..."

Yes, they were definitely doing that.

"Do you want to kiss me, Josh? Is that it?"

"I can't—I can't—you're my
teacher.
" I wanted to kill myself right then and there. After all this talk of me being so grown up and so not a kid!

"I'm your friend, too. And friends tell each other things."