Finding Dell (28 page)

Around the bend of the lake, I could see the glare from the basketball court, a thudding basketball blending into the dull background croaks of bullfrogs. A distant twinkle of lights announced the outline of Sweet Bay Beach and its accompanying boat dock.

A light breeze shook the lazy leaves of the willow tree overhanging the picnic table, smattering us with a gentle shower of raindrops. I giggled and Will groaned.

“I should have brought an umbrella,” he said, shaking his wet hair. “At least the storm tonight wasn’t so bad. Did you hear about the derecho in Missouri two years ago?”

“What’s that?” I murmured.

I loved leaning against Will while he talked; his lazy baritone drawl vibrated through his body.

“An inland hurricane. Winds can get up to over a hundred miles an hour, and trees and power lines are downed immediately. We talked about it in my design complexity class. The town is still trying to rebuild, and we discussed ways they could build their structures to withstand freak storms like that. At least Kentucky hasn’t been hit by any inland hurricanes while we’ve been here.”

“No, only me,” I laughed. Sensing Will’s pause, I hurried to explain. “I guess you didn’t hear about my nickname. Dean started calling me Hurricane Dell. I hate it. He says I leave a destructive path in my wake.”

Will laughed and squeezed my shoulder. “I wouldn’t call it destruction, but you definitely leave something behind after you’ve left.”

I was silent as I leaned into Will’s arm and stared out at the lake. A breeze started to pick up and the water lapped noisily at the shore. Voices carried over the open lake, and muffled laughter behind Palomino Hall caught my attention. The subtle glow of a lighter taken to a marijuana bowl passed between the shadowy outlines of three people. I wondered if they could see us at the picnic table from where they stood under the tall oaks.

“Can you believe it’s been a year, Dell?” Will said into my ear. “A whole year and we’re back where we started.”

Will turned to kiss my temple and I felt my heart start beating faster.
Should I tell him I love him?
I wondered. We had just gotten back together, but it felt like no time had passed.

I turned to meet his lips and we started kissing. We kissed like it was the first time and the last time at once—his lips were tentative but greedy with longing, like we had known each other
forever but we were still exploring.

The breeze brought goose bumps to my bare arms and Will’s wet hair dripped into my eyes, but I kissed him harder and he tightened his grip around me. A breathless mantra filled my head:
I love you, I love you
. . .

In my head, I repeated it, screamed it, and kissed him harder. The wind knocked another drizzle of rain from the willow tree’s branches and Will pulled away just far enough to look into my eyes. He looked at me so hard I felt like he was looking through me.

“Dell, I. . .”

His voice was so tender I felt myself drifting further from reality, my breath caught in my throat.

He stared at me for a moment longer and pulled my lips back to his for a fevered kiss. My heart beat wildly in my chest and I wondered if he had been about to say he loved me . . . if he would still say it.

When he pulled away, he gave me a small squeeze and tucked my hair behind my ear.

“I have an idea. Let’s go up to the roof.” Will nodded toward Paso Fino. He slid off the picnic table and hit his head on a low-hanging branch, sending a flutter of raindrops down from the leaves.

“It’s probably locked,” I called after him. He was already standing on the path in a misty cloud of steam from the laundry room vents. I gathered my shoes and let my toes sink into the grass as I followed him.

He held my hand as we climbed the back staircase of Paso Fino, and I was reminded of when we’d stood in the stairwell of Sugarbush and he kissed me while we moved out. I wondered if the draining fluorescent lights and skidded tiles in the stairwell reminded him of the same memory.

When we rounded the corner, Dean whooped and jumped from his wooden chair at the table in the hallway. Will and Dean clasped hands and clapped each other on the back. I saw my door crack open and Natalie poke her head out. With a hesitant smile, she left the room, even though she was already wearing her nighttime glasses and still in her yoga clothes.

I realized it wasn’t just me who was captivated by Will, it was everyone. His magnetic energy woke up the hallway. Down the hall I could see Ben set down his trumpet he’d been tuning to peer down the hall, and Eric, who slept on the unwashed red silk sheets, waved, although I knew he and Will had never even met. For a moment I wondered if that made what I had with Will more or less special. Was I just another caught under his spell?

Will pulled away from Dean and pointed an index finger to the ceiling.

“Up, my friend,” he said in his lazy drawl. “Tonight we’re going up.”

Dean tossed his arm around Will’s shoulders casually as they walked down the hall to the entrance to the roof. As I watched them, a sense washed over me—it wasn’t quite déjà vu, but a sense of what could have been. It was how I imagined sophomore year would have been all along, and the night started to feel hazy, surreal.

My shoes were still dangling from my hand when Natalie reached over to take them and toss them behind our open door. She closed the door with a clatter and pulled me down the hall by the wrist. Before we turned the corner I saw the halo of Helen’s blond hair as she tugged her pink comforter, as fluffy as a marshmallow, out her doorway, her petite frame overwhelmed by the expanse of fabric.

By the time Natalie and I reached the half-flight of stairs to the roof, Dean had jimmied open the lock and the metal door
hung open. The boys pushed past us to collect chairs and Natalie gestured that she needed to get a sweater from our room. I walked the six steps to the roof and let out my breath. When Will and I sat at the picnic table, the willow tree had blocked the full view, but now I could see the silver lake and the inky sky with pinpricks of iridescent light shining through.

Dry, leftover leaves from the fall rattled in the gutter. I could hear the soft sound of the water hitting the shore of the lake three stories below.

There was a metallic clang as Dean and Will tilted the armchairs to get them through the narrow door. Helen followed the boys. She spread two towels on the roof and gingerly placed her bedspread on top. Natalie returned with a cardigan around her shoulders and took one of the armchairs while Will took another. He gestured to me to sit on his lap, so I cuddled in closely.

Ruby appeared in the doorway, cradling her backpack. She set it down next to Helen’s bedspread with a huff and unzipped it, pulling out a large jug.

“We went to the liquor store earlier in the week and bought this,” she said. “I’ve been scared Levi will find out I have it in my room all week, so we need to finish it tonight.”

She unscrewed the cap and took a long drink, then handed the bottle to Helen.

“What is this?” she asked cautiously.

“It’s a mixed drink. Sex on the Beach. It’s delicious.”

Helen giggled and blushed. She brought the bottle to her lips but sputtered at the taste, leaving a trail of honeysuckle-colored drips on her bedspread. She moaned and tried to rub at them with her good hand.

Dean chided her to loosen up as he took a seat next to her and hugged Ruby’s small shoulders tightly. Helen passed the bottle to Natalie.

Natalie shivered and pulled her cardigan tighter. When she wore her glasses, she didn’t look as artificial as usual. Her hair waved in the breeze when it wasn’t weighed down by clumps of voluminous fake hair. The moonlight softened her sharp features and lit her makeup-bare face until she looked like the natural beauty she was when she stopped overthinking her appearance.

Over drinks, we huddled closer. Natalie pointed out constellations and told their stories. She knew about the Dipper, of course, but also Ursa Minor and Ursa Major, Orion, and even where Cassiopeia and Andromeda might be if the Earth rotated just right.

Will tilted his head back to watch the sky and I studied the angles of his neck. When he glanced back at me, he gave me one of his knowing looks and my heart surged when I realized that look wasn’t simply that he knew me, it was my own certainty about him, too.

When I leaned in to kiss him, his lips tasted like the sticky sweet alcohol, warm and sugary.

“When it gets warmer, can we rent a canoe and go out on the lake?” I whispered into his ear, not wanting the others to hear.

Will nodded into my hair. His fingers trailed down my bare arm to smooth the goose bumps dotting my skin as the breeze got chillier. His touch electrified my skin and the goose bumps became more prominent. The chatter of the others dimmed in my mind and the only thing I heard was the sound of Will’s breath in my air and the soft waves lapping at the shore of Magnolia Banks Lake below. Time felt suspended and the urge to tell Will I loved him bubbled up inside me again.

Helen’s hand touched my ankle and I started, awakened from my daze and surprised to feel her use her malformed hand
to touch me when she usually hid it from view.

“We’re going to play a game, Dell,” Helen said. “You have to name two things about you, only one of which is true. Natalie, you start.”

Natalie leaned back in her chair and stared at the sky. Her voice sounded far away when she spoke. “I’ve never smoked and I never will. That’s one. I don’t want to move back to San Diego. That’s two.”

“The second is the lie,” Dean said. “You’re a health freak and you do yoga. You’d never smoke.”

I shook my head. “Natalie smokes menthols when she drinks.”

“I could use one right now,” she confirmed.

“Helen, your turn.”

Helen leaned forward, took a greedy sip of her drink, and giggled. “I’m a virgin. Or, I’m not a virgin.”

Ruby’s eyes widened and she lifted her head from Dean’s shoulder in surprise.

“There’s no way you’re a virgin,” Will drawled.

“Why do you say that?” Natalie asked, snapping her head in Will’s direction.

“Because I saw the way she and Tennessee were acting when they thought they were alone in the laundry room. There’s no way you two haven’t slept together.”

“You’re sleeping with Tennessee?” Dean cried in surprise.

“Have you been keeping it a secret?” Ruby asked. “I didn’t even know you were seeing each other!”

Helen giggled again. “Cat’s out of the bag,” she said with a loud hiccup.

Everyone laughed and the game was all but forgotten. The girls continued to pepper Helen with questions about her relationship, but I tilted my head to the veil of stars.
If Will was
so sure that Helen and Tennessee slept together, then how does he explain the fact that we haven’t slept together yet?

The drinks were gone quickly, more quickly than it took for us to tire of sitting on the roof. The sky was touched with its first watercolor streaks of pink when the metal door creaked open and the red spike of Levi’s mohawk appeared before he did.

His dark gaze flowed from our sleepy eyes to the mess of blankets to the empty bottle of liquor.

“It’s five in the morning and I don’t have the energy to write violations for four residents and two strangers,” he said, gesturing to Will and Dean. “Clean this up, go downstairs, and if you tell anyone I let you off with a warning, it won’t be just a warning anymore.”

He turned to leave but stopped himself with a hand on the doorframe.

“This is a killer view. But don’t let me find any of you up here again.”

CHAPTER 31

WILL SPREAD A
large sheet of drafting paper on the table in the hallway and walked around the table tapping a compass in his hand.

I sat with my art history book open to a chapter on realism in the pre-modern period. Every time Will circled near me, he’d stoop to give me a kiss on the forehead. He shuffled around the table wearing cozy sweatpants and new glasses for reading, and I could almost believe nothing had changed since last year.

Down the hall, Ben blasted away on his trumpet. Helen sat with one arm cradled in her lap as she tapped at her laptop with her good hand, while Natalie sat across from her, studying samples of feed for her equine nutrition class. Her insistence on keeping feed samples in our room sometimes made it smell like a distillery.

It struck me that there was a void in Paso Fino, an empty space that Bernie left when she moved to Brazil. Sometimes it felt like I was the only person who noticed it. I glanced at Will as he leaned over the drafting paper, the stubby pencil on the compass scratching across the paper. His reading glasses slipped
down and he scrunched his nose to keep them up while his hands were full. I wondered if Will felt a void when we were apart in the fall, or if he ignored it like the others ignored Bernie’s absence.

I reached across the table and tapped the eraser on my pencil to Will’s hand. He looked up at me.

“Let’s call it a night and go to bed.”

He glanced down the hall and pointed to Natalie with his compass.

“Do you want to go back to my apartment?” he asked. “Natalie’s here tonight and she might not want us to sleep in your room together.”

“We’re five steps away from my room and an entire campus separates us from yours. We’re sleeping here,” I said firmly. “Besides, it’s not like we have sex, so what does it matter?”

Will pushed his hair back and wiggled his eyebrows.

“Good things take time,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, closing my art history textbook. Secretly, I was thrilled that he wanted to wait. I didn’t want to be disappointed again, like I was with Cam.

Will rolled up his drafting paper, and when I passed he whacked me on the butt. I yelped and turned around with wide eyes. He winked and followed me into the room.

The thin lavender rug stretched out below me and I winced as my spine settled on the unforgiving floor.

After a few sweat-inducing moments struggling with the sheets on the cramped twin bed, we decided to migrate to the floor, where it might be cooler and we had more room.