Extraordinary Means (16 page)

“What are the teams?” Nick called.

“Does boys against girls seem fair?” Finnegan asked.

We said it did. And then we spent the rest of class trying to pronounce
les virelangues
like “
Ces cerises sont si sûres qu’on ne sait pas si c’en sont
” without messing up.

The girls won, and they triumphantly descended on the candy bowl.

“Homework,” Finnegan said while we were packing up.

Everyone paused, and Nick actually snorted, thinking it was a joke.

“Your homework,” Finnegan continued, “is to come up with your own
virelangue
. If you want to borrow a French-to-English dictionary, they’re on the bookshelf in the back.”

We all stared at him, confused.

“Well,” he said, shrugging. “If you’re going back to high school next semester, you should get used to doing homework. Class dismissed.”

CHARLIE HADN
’
T BEEN
in class, and he didn’t come to lunch, either, so the four of us ate quickly, then drifted over toward the cottages to check on him.

I didn’t blame him for sulking, since a lot of the guys in our dorm still hadn’t let it go. Nick said that if the video clip had been girl on girl, Charlie would have been a hero, and I
hated that he was probably right.

A frantic ukulele solo spilled through Charlie’s window, and we took turns throwing stones through it until the music stopped.

Charlie came to the window. His hair was a mess, and his face was flushed, his eyes glittering feverishly. He stared down at us like he couldn’t figure out what we were doing, or even what day it was.

“You alive in there?” Sadie called.

“I’m working,” he said, peering down at us. “I need to get this song out before the emotion is gone completely.”

He walked away from the window, and we could hear him coughing. A moment later, the music started again.

“Perfect,” Marina muttered.

She and Nick went to see if a library computer was free, and I was going to follow them, but Sadie grabbed my hand.

“Everything okay?” I asked.

She’d seemed worried lately, like there was something on her mind that she didn’t want to tell me. And I hoped it was just the enormity of going home with tuberculosis-free futures.

“Of course,” Sadie said, and I wondered if I was imagining it. “I have a proposition for you.”

“I’m listening.”

“Wanna sneak a girl into your room?” she asked, grinning.

“Do I ever.”

Sadie and I crept up the stairs and onto the third-floor hallway. When I opened the door to my room, you could still hear Charlie’s music, the sad, high croon of his voice, and the wild strumming of his ukulele. I couldn’t tell if it was any good, but it was certainly heartfelt.

“Sorry,” I said. “His room’s almost directly below mine.”

“It’s fine. Just put something on and we’ll drown it out,” Sadie said, so I started a Belle and Sebastian playlist on my computer.

Sadie surveyed my room with a smirk.

“Were you planning on moving in?” she teased.

“I unpacked!” I said, although it did look pretty temporary.

My room wasn’t like Nick’s, with all his electronics and action figures, or Charlie’s, with his records and weird assortment of musical instruments. I had clothes in the closet and notebooks on my desk, and the picture Sadie had taken of us in the gym printed out and propped against my desk lamp.

She picked it up, smiling.

“Our fake-dance photo,” she said.

“That was a pretty good night.”

“I almost didn’t make it back in time for lights-out,” Sadie said.

“Me neither. I had to climb into bed still wearing my tie.”

My room was so narrow, and she was standing so close
to me in those tight, dark jeans of hers that I could barely concentrate on anything else.

“Well, if we’d had more time . . . ,” I said, and then I kissed her.

Her lips were soft and warm and tasted like coconut, and her leg wrapped around the back of mine, and it was so sexy that I couldn’t take it, I just wanted to press her against me until there wasn’t any space between where I began and where she ended.

“You’re going to set off my med sensor,” I teased.

“Well, lying down lowers your heart rate,” Sadie suggested innocently.

She smiled up at me, all mischief through her eyelashes. God, I wanted to throw her on the bed. I wanted to do everything I thought about when I was alone in my room with my evil little med sensor, going slow.

“So?” she said. “What do you think?”

What did I think?

“Yeah, that would be cool,” I said, and Sadie laughed at me for pretending I wasn’t completely freaking out.

She sat down on the edge of my bed, and I was like, “It’s bigger at home.”

I don’t know why I said it, because it made Sadie almost die laughing.

“Um, I don’t think that’s how anatomy works?”

“I meant my
bed
,” I said, humiliated. “And my room,
which actually has posters up, and a view of—”

And then I didn’t say anything else because she was kissing me, and it was all I could do to take terrified yoga breaths through the whole amazing thing.

AS THE DAYS
went on, I began to accept that Latham wouldn’t last forever. And I wondered if maybe I could be something of my Latham self after I went home. I didn’t have to go back to my old high school. I could always transfer to another one, or to an arts high school, or get my GED and be done with it.

Part of it was Lane, with his unflagging optimism about the future, and his determination not to miss out on anything. And part of it was having an answer to the question of how much sand was left in my hourglass, and how many plans I could realistically make.

I tried to picture all of us in a few years, sitting in some late-night diner over winter break and catching up on each other’s lives. Charlie with his music, and Marina with her fashion, Nick already building his business empire, and Lane, all collegiate, and still looking at me like I was the person he wanted to see most in the world. Maybe it was
possible, and I’d study photography at some art school in San Francisco, near Stanford. Maybe Lane and I would drive to the diner together.

There was another collection on Friday, and Nick came with me, I suppose because he knew I’d “accidentally” forget his alcohol if he didn’t. It was cold that night, and dark, with almost no moon. The woods didn’t feel dark so much as thick, and finding a path through them was a challenge.

Nick didn’t say anything until we were halfway there, and then he sighed, loudly.

“What?” I asked.

“So you and Lane,” he said.

“That’s not a sentence, an opinion, or a question,” I told him.

He snorted, clearly not amused.

“Well, good luck with that,” he said.

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re not actually thinking you’ll stay together after Latham, are you?” He said it with this wide-eyed concern, but I could see right through him to his trembling, jealous little soul.

“Maybe. What’s it to you?”

“I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“Wow, thanks for the concern,” I said. “You’re such a good friend.”

I hadn’t meant it to come out as sarcastically as it did, but it was too late now. Nick scowled at me in the moonlight.

“I never wanted to be friends,” Nick muttered.

“Well, haven’t you heard?” I said. “Life is full of disappointments. I’m sorry you didn’t get the chance to check my name off your fuck-it list.”

“Is that what you think I wanted?” Nick asked, shocked. “I thought you knew.”

Knew what? I wondered as his expression softened. And then he pulled me toward him, going for a kiss.

“Get off!” I said, pushing him away. “I can’t believe you!”

“Sorry,” Nick said, embarrassed. “I’m really sorry.”

“Nick Patel, you can be a real buttpocket,” I told him.

“Just forget it happened,” he said. “Please.”

“Fine,” I said. “Whatever.”

We’d reached the place where we usually met Michael, but he hadn’t arrived yet. So I stood around seething at Nick and wishing he’d get over himself. Or, I guessed, over me.

After a minute, I heard leaves crunching in the distance, and then the beam of a flashlight passed across a nearby tree trunk. It was Michael, carrying our stuff.

“Sorry,” he said, doing this combination cough and sniffle thing. “Not feeling that great. You have the money?”

Nick handed over the envelope, and Michael counted it out. He charged us triple, and while paying thirty dollars for a ten-dollar bottle of vodka wasn’t a bargain, it was the only option. I guess Nick and I were supposed to mark things up even more and take a commission, but we never did. Well,
except for the people we couldn’t stand. Genevieve’s Milk Duds had cost her five bucks a box.

“Looks good,” Michael said, stashing the envelope in his jacket. “I’ll see you in two weeks.”

“Yep,” I said.

“You kids stay out of trouble now.” He stared straight at me while he said that last part, like it was a warning.

MARINA
’
S BIRTHDAY WAS
on Saturday. She was turning seventeen, the youngest of our group, and we’d always joked with her about it when we watched R-rated movies or smuggled Nick’s booze, even though none of us were old enough for that.

I always hated having my birthdays at Latham House, because I wondered if anyone actually cared that it was my birthday, or if they were just so relieved that I’d made it another year. This was Marina’s first birthday at Latham House, and she’d missed the awkwardness of what it had been like for Nick and Charlie and me. But we gave her our tradition anyway.

We stuck an unlit candle in a plate of pancakes and sang to her at breakfast.

“Happy birthday, dear Marina, happy birthday to you!” we finished.

“And many morrrre, since there’s a cureeeee,” Charlie added, before coughing into his handkerchief. His notebook was out, and his eyes were glittering like he’d been up
all night slamming contraband energy drinks.

“How’s the music?” I asked.

“It’s good,” Charlie said. “Yeah, I’ll let you guys hear it soon.”

“We can already hear it,” Lane reminded him. “Open windows, remember?”

“That’s just the bare bones,” Charlie said. “I’m doing the whole thing on the computer, adding in different layers with virtual instruments and stuff. You’ll see.”

“Oh really,
that’s
what you’re doing on the computer?” Nick said, and we all laughed.

“Shut up,” Charlie muttered. “I’m trying to create a legacy here. There’s a specific energy to different moments, and once you lose it, it can’t be recaptured. You’ve got to record it, or you’ve got nothing.”

He stood up to bus his tray.

“Where are you going?” Nick asked.

“To keep working,” Charlie said.

And then he stalked off.

MARINA INSISTED ON
having a birthday party that night, and the plan was to sneak out of the dorms and rendezvous in the woods for some late-night revelry. We’d meet at the dried-up creek bed a little bit west of the rock. It was far enough from Latham that flashlights wouldn’t be visible, but not too deep in. The theme was a toga party, and the plan was to bring our bedsheets. We could just stick them in
the contaminated laundry chute, for bloodstained sheets, so it didn’t matter if we ruined them.

Marina and I spent the afternoon with craft glue and leaves, attempting to make laurel crowns for the party. Mostly, we just wound up ruining our manicures, since the craft glue got everywhere and refused to dry. In the end, we had to staple the leaves together, which took about thirty seconds and made us feel like idiots for not thinking of it in the first place.

That night, Marina and I went through the routine of putting on our pajamas, just to make it feel even more illicit, and then we went back to our rooms and waited for the hall nurse to come check.

Lane called, which he usually did.

“So, what are you wearing?” he asked.

“Lane!”

“I mean under your toga.”

“Mm-hmm, sure,” I teased.

“Although, come to think of it, what are you wearing?”

I giggled, and then I heard footsteps in the hall.

“It’s the nurse,” I said. “Wear jeans and a hoodie. I’ll see you later.”

And then I hung up and tried to look innocent.

“You’re running a bit of a fever, hon,” Nurse Heather said. “I’m gonna give you this.”

She handed me an aspirin, and I rolled my eyes and gulped it down.

“You’re a champ,” she said, reaching for the light switch. “Sleep well now.”

Which, obviously, I didn’t.

Marina knocked on my door an hour later, wearing her backpack.

“Ready to go?” she whispered.

I grabbed mine and flipped up my hood, and we snuck down the dark hallway together. The dorm echoed with coughing, and I wondered if I coughed in my sleep, too, and if it sounded that bad.

It wasn’t hard to get out of the dorms after lights-out, just a little inconvenient. The doors locked, but the windows didn’t. So all you had to do was slip out the window that led onto the back porch, and then jump down onto the grass. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d properly snuck out. The real thing, not just snuck into the boys’ dorm before lights-out.

Marina and I wiggled out the window and jumped off the porch, and then, in the thin light of the moon, we crept across the grass and into the woods.

I switched on my flashlight as soon as I dared, illuminating the tree trunks and the thick, moldering leaves that covered the ground. I loved the woods best in the summer. They felt warm and welcoming, with golden shafts of light filtering through the trees. But the woods were changing now that it was November. They felt cold and
bleak, almost like they were dying.

It was farther than I’d remembered to the clearing, and somehow the woods were darker that night, wet and thick with the scent of decay.

Marina and I were the first ones to arrive. We took our sheets out of our backpacks and tried to fasten them into togas, which we probably should have practiced. Lane arrived just after we finished pinning them. Relief washed over him when he saw us.

“I thought I was lost,” he said.

“First star to the right, and then straight on till morning,” I said.

“Not a lost boy, lost in the woods.” Lane shook his head, grinning. “Happy birthday, Marina.”

“Thank you,” she said, giving her toga a twirl. “Welcome to Toga Night. We’re going to party like Jay Gatsby.”

Lane snorted.

“What?” I asked.

“Well, no one wants to party like Jay Gatsby,” he explained. “Because he doesn’t even attend his own parties. When he does, he just stands there, sober and unhappy and waiting for a girl who never arrives.”

Marina made a face.

“He’s right,” I said apologetically.

“Fine,” Marina said. “We’re going to party like guests at one of Jay Gatsby’s parties, but not like Jay Gatsby himself.”

“Yes, we’ll party like nameless minor characters in a novel about someone else,” I agreed.

“Perfect,” Marina said. “The theme for my party is both togas and forgettable literary characters from misunderstood classics.”

Lane shook his head over the two of us.

“Mind helping me get this thing on?” he asked, holding up his bedsheet with a pleading look.

I’d never realized how intimate it was to wrap a sheet around a boy, how my hands would hover in all the wrong places, and how he’d smile at me the whole time, like we were both enjoying a private joke too dirty to say out loud.

“Toga! Toga!” Nick chanted.

I was still pinning Lane’s, and Nick was like, “Look at you two, between the sheets.”

“Hilarious,” I said. “Want Marina to help with yours?”

“I can do it myself,” Nick said, and then draped the sheet around his neck like a cape.

“You look ridiculous,” Marina told him.

“Who has a toga party in the woods?
That’s
ridiculous,” Nick shot back.

“Well, next year, you can have one at your lame engineering frat,” Marina teased.

Small, casual comments about the future weren’t usual at Latham, and it still felt weird to hear people making them. To hear my friends joking not just about going home
but also about growing up.

“I will,” Nick said. “And it’ll be awesome!”

He opened his backpack and took out a bottle of rum, presenting it to Marina with a flourish.

“Happy birthday,” he said.

“Thank you, Captain Boozypants.”

It was actually sweet of him. Although we only had lemonade as a mixer, so the drinks were going to taste interesting.

“Should we wait for Charlie?” Marina asked, twisting the top off the Captain Morgan like she really didn’t want to.

“Hell no, he oversleeps, it’s his loss,” Nick said.

We put on the laurel crowns, which actually came out pretty great. The boys fetched rocks and sticks, and we had Nick build up a campfire, since he’d been a wilderness scout.

Marina had brought a bongo drum she’d borrowed off one of the hippie boys, and we swilled the rum, and took turns drumming the bongo, and danced around the fire in our togas. At first it felt stupid, but after more rum, and more drumming, the woods seemed to spin like we were about to rocket off the planet and launch our tiny, contained world straight into outer space.

“Hey, come here,” Lane said, pulling me away from the fire.

We ducked behind a tree, and the not-too-distant firelight made the woods seem to flicker. Lane looked
so handsome in his toga that I wished I’d brought my camera to capture it. Then he cupped my face in his hands, and instead of taking a picture, I settled for stealing a kiss.

Our lips were sweet and sticky from the rum, and I could taste a faint hint of his toothpaste, and something about that melted me. I kissed him like there was no tomorrow, like all we had was this moment in the woods, even though that wasn’t true. We were seventeen, and we’d graduate high school and go off to college and grow old and boring and tell stories about when we were young and sick and falling in love. Being at Latham didn’t mean what it used to. The rules, the treatment system, all of it was just a ceremony now, just a way to waste time until the first batch of protocillin was ready. And maybe we could be
Pride and Prejudice
, with a happy ending, with neither of us burying, or forgetting, the other.

“You know how much I adore you, right?” Lane said.

“I’m crazy about you, too,” I said, leaning my forehead against his chest.

I wished that we were brave enough to use the real word, instead of deliberately choosing the wrong one. But we had time to gather our nerves. We had so much time.

We went back to the group and joined the dancing again. The four of us spun and twirled in our togas, and the fire crackled, and we laughed, getting more than a little drunk. And even though the woods were dark, we were
this tiny, perfect circle of light.

“I’m going to miss you guys,” Marina said, stopping to catch her breath.

“Don’t say that,” I told her. “You’re not allowed to mourn the future.”

Lane, who was drumming on the bongo, stopped.

“Isn’t that all we do, though?” he asked.