Girl Wonder (12 page)

When no one was looking, I slipped out a side door.

It was a strange evening. Though it was cold outside, the ground looked like it was steaming. The trees smelled sweet and earthy and made me miss being a kid. I used to love making forts, piling leaves high in a circular wall, hunching down low in the middle, spying on the neighborhood. Back then I liked being on the fringes. From a distance you could tell what was
really
going on. Now I just felt left out and confused.

One thing was all too clear to me: no amount of desire or effort was going to make me a better debater. All I could hope for was a miracle.

Hugging my arms to my chest, I watched my breath smoke the air. A few students drifted in and out of the dorms and cafeteria. No one gave me a second glance. I hoped they thought I was one of them. At the same time, the thought that in less than a year I was supposed to be heading off to college froze me more than the weather. I was so screwed.

I sat down beneath a cedar tree and closed my eyes, hoping I would just melt into the earth.

“You look like a wood sprite,” a voice said—a voice that melted the chill away. Neal crouched down beside me and tapped out a cigarette from a pack of Dunhills.

“That's the kind Amanda smokes,” I observed.

“I know. She gave them to me.” He laughed. “She told me to quit wasting my time with the plebeian brands.”

His face was just inches away from mine and almost too beautiful to take. Something about his expression made me ache. I was probably too plebeian for him as well. I peeled off a string of bark from the tree and started demolishing it with one hand. Silent tears dripped down my face.

I was glad he didn't ask me what was wrong. What would I have said? Nothing? Everything? Me?

He stubbed out his cigarette and held out his hand. “Let's get you out of here.”

We walked across the commons, past the academic buildings and dorms, into a neighborhood of fraternity houses and Victorian fixer-uppers. When we turned up the walkway of one of these, Neal let go of my hand. I wiped my eyes on my sweater. Some guys were sitting on the porch, drinking hunch punch from Mason jars. One of them lifted his glass when he saw us.

“Neal,” he said.

Shit. It was Jesus the judge. Praying that he wouldn't remember me, I tugged my hair out of its ponytail and shook it around my face. After handing us each a glass of punch, Jesus led us inside the house. Neal looked back at me as we clambered up the rickety stairs. “Michael was a senior at Shady Grove when I was a freshman,” he explained. “Now he relives the glory days by judging high school debate tournaments. How pathetic is that?”

Michael/Jesus grinned at him from the top of the landing. “Does your girlfriend know what a fuck-face you are?”

Girlfriend? He thought I was Neal's girlfriend?

I held my breath waiting for Neal to correct him.

He didn't. Did that mean—?

Michael led us to his room. A purple lava lamp illuminated an enormous terrarium. Piled high like a stack of pancakes was the largest snake I'd ever seen. “Her name is Baby,” Michael informed us. He was studying me in a way that told me that although he recognized me, he wasn't sure from where.

“A snake?” Neal shook his head. “You're demented, dude.”

He flipped through Michael's CDs and popped in a Bob Marley disk. Michael retrieved a bong from under his bed. When he passed it to me, I inhaled like I'd done this a thousand times. I'd watched Amanda enough to know what to do.

Neal seemed taken aback when I coughed and coughed, like he'd expected better of me. “Pot always does this to me,” I said. “I think I might have asthma.”

Sometime later, maybe half an hour and two hits later, Michael took Baby out of her tank. She coiled around his arm and seemed to like it when he stroked her head. I watched with widened eyes. The pot was really starting to work. I felt numb and happy, dreamy and alert.

“You can hold her,” he said, handing her over to me. “She's a python. They're not poisonous.”

The width of her surprised me, as did the cool, silky texture of her skin. This was crazy. I was high as a kite and holding a snake. I couldn't stop laughing when she pooped on my wrist. I excused myself to the bathroom to wash it off.

Practice speaking in front of a mirror.

“You're very high, Charlotte Locke,” I announced.

It can't be easy…well, you know.

“Feel yourself forming words,” I said, drawling out the words.

You'll get better in time.

There was a knock on the door. It was Neal. “Everything okay in there?”

“Peachy keen,” I said, opening the door and stumbling out.

Baby was now draped around Michael's neck. Her tongue flickered at his ear.

“She has a nice aura,” I said. “Snakes are the bomb.”

“She's really messed up,” Michael said to Neal.

I wasn't sure whether he meant the snake or me. I didn't care. Time had lost all sense of meaning. Nothing mattered. Everything was A-okay. I wrapped my arms around my middle. My organs hurt from laughing so much.

Baby was back in her terrarium. It was just Neal and me in the room. I had no idea how long we'd been there. Had I fallen asleep? Was it time for another hit off the bong?

“Where'd Michael go?” I asked.

“He went to a party.”

“So are we in deep dog shit with Mr. Peterson?” I asked.

He patted his cell phone. “Diego's covering for us. No worries.”

He was lying on top of Michael's platform bed, fiddling with a Magic 8 Ball.

“What are you asking it?” I asked.

“If you should come up here.”

“What does it say?” I tried to keep my tone casual.

The water sloshed as he shook it. “‘Ask again later.' I guess that's that.”

“Oh.” I bit my lip.

He patted the bed. “It's a stupid piece of plastic. What are you waiting for?”

Climbing up, I banged my shin. The pot had made me clumsy. “That was dumb,” I muttered.

Neal traced his fingers over the scrape. “Is this dumb?” he asked. I couldn't breathe. I couldn't blink. Every molecule in my body was on high alert. “You're a funny girl,” he said. Then he was kissing me.

Within minutes we were both panting. I couldn't get enough of him. With my tongue I explored ever inch of his mouth, as he did with mine. We were sealed together as tightly as two stickers. When we finally broke apart and I tried to tell him how much I liked him, he put a finger to my lips.

Slowly, assuredly, he lifted off my shirt and unfastened the hooks of my bra. I didn't protest. Who knew it would feel so good to be naked before a boy? When I helped Neal remove his sweater I was surprised to discover that he smelled a little of BO. I didn't mind, though. It was such a human thing.

And then…

“Hold on a sec,” Neal said. He leapt down from the bed and started riffling through drawers. “Michael's gotta have a condom here somewhere.”

A condom?

Shit. We
were
moving kind of fast, but it hadn't occurred to me that we might actually have
sex
. Was this what I wanted? Now? I rubbed my brow, trying to think.

Not that I wasn't enjoying…
this
. But had I led Neal on?

Was I a tease? Would Neal be pissed if I said no?

“Found one!” he exclaimed triumphantly just as I was on the verge of saying something coy about saving some stuff for later.

I bit back my words as he climbed up.

Roaming each other's torsos with our hands, we kissed some more. Though Neal's build wasn't the stocky kind, his muscles were well developed from playing lacrosse. He gasped when I rubbed my hand over the rise at his crotch, which at once gave me this sense of power and made me ache even more for him. Off came our jeans. Our socks. Our underwear. Neal touched me in a slow deliberate way that made me spin.

How had he gotten so experienced? Were these things he'd learned from those prissy private school girls?

We'd moved past the point where sex was a rational decision. It was something we were hurtling toward. I didn't plan to tell Neal this was my first time. But when he entered me, I let out a cry of pain.

He pulled back. “You're a virgin?”

“It's totally no big deal,” I stammered.

He studied me with red-rimmed eyes.

“It's a technicality,” I whispered, pulling him close.

And then he was all the way inside me.

Luckily, his eyes were closed so he couldn't see how hard I was clenching my teeth. It hurt a ton more than I was expecting, though there was a good feeling behind it too that left me wanting more. I ground my hips against his like I'd seen actors do in movies. Neal moaned, which I took to be a sign that I was better at sex than debate.

Oddly, though we were literally joined, I'd felt closer to him when we were just making out. I sensed that he was off in some other world now, somewhere beyond my grasp.

Afterward, while he slept, I cradled his head in my arms. His hair curled around his ears like vines. He looked like some fairy-tale prince. Though a part of me wanted to get dressed—I felt hollowed-out, sore, and self-conscious about my nakedness—I wanted to savor every second with him. Waking him up, I sensed, would spoil things.

Staring at the ceiling—dotted with a tiny array of fake glow-in-the-dark stars—I contemplated what had just happened. My thoughts whirled round and round.

I sucked at debate.

Neal liked me.

Amanda was pissed at me.

Neal
liked
me.

A snake had pooped on my wrist.

Neal LIKED me.

I was no longer a virgin.

NEAL! NEAL! NEAL!

It was dark still, but you could tell it was morning now. The birds were starting to chirp. Someone struggled to start a car. The ignition failed to catch. There was another sound too, a strange rhythmic thumping. It took me a minute to realize that it was Baby, tapping her nose against the glass terrarium.

“Let's just keep this between us,” Neal whispered when he finally woke up.

I studied his fingernails, massaging them with my hands. They were so smooth and pink, like tiny babies. “Even from Amanda?”

“Especially from Amanda.” He rolled toward the wall.

Trying to guess what he was thinking, I said, “You're probably right. We wouldn't want her to feel left out.”

“Yeah. Poor Amanda,” he laughed. “If you're really worried, we could include her next time.”

Next time
. NEXT TIME!

I mussed up his hair. “Think again, buster. Best friends don't share
everything
.”

“Too bad. I guess you'll have to be good enough for two.”

Michael/Jesus knocked on the door. “Good morning, kids. Are you decent?”

We got dressed quickly and hustled back to the hotel.

Amanda sat next to me on the bus ride home. I guessed she was no longer mad about my debate performance yesterday. “I don't know why I choked like that,” I said, apologizing again. “I talked to Peterson. Told him you should probably have a different partner. Told him how much I suck.”

“I'm so over it, Char,” she said, resting her head on my shoulder. “You know how much I adore you. Now let me sleep. I'm exhausted.”

She didn't ask where I'd been the night before—which made me think that she too had been out all night. I knew that she and her boyfriend Boone had an
understanding
. But I couldn't ask her about her evening without incriminating myself—though secretly I was
dying
to incriminate myself.

C
oach Peterson gave us the next week off for “mental rejuvenation.” Though I was delighted to forget my public-speaking debut/debacle, the forced break squeezed me out of Neal's GATE-wing orbit. And since “we” were keeping “us” a secret, there was no one I could ask about what was going on with “him.”

Especially not “him.”

On Tuesday night I stayed up late studying. It was the end of the first quarter and I had a Chemistry final the next day. Because of all the time I'd been putting into debate and my new friends, I was nowhere near prepared.

Around midnight, my bedroom door swung open.

“I was out in the hall,” my brother said, his hair all messed up from sleeping. “I saw your light. How's it going?”

“Ever hear of a thing called knocking?” I asked, trying to hide the all-too babyish-looking chemistry flash cards that I'd had to make for myself.

He scooped up the cat—sleeping by a heat vent on the floor—and sat down at the end of my bed. “Do you want some help? I could quiz you.”

“Got it covered,” I said, trying to ignore the fact that he was frowning at me, and trying
really
hard to ignore the fact that my twelve-year-old brother had a better grasp of chemistry than I did.

“You haven't told me anything about your debate tournament. Was it cool?”

“Yeah,” I said, dryly. “It was
cool
.”

Now that I'd officially hurt his feelings, James Henry got up to leave. He paused at the door. “What's your problem, anyhow? I was just trying to be nice.”

“Go back to sleep,” I said with a lump in my throat.

Wednesday afternoon, on my way to Chemistry, I spotted Neal down in the regular kids' hall. “Hey, Neal!” I called, waving to get his attention, my heart racing full throttle.

He brushed past me without acknowledging my existence. But—he'd pressed a note into my hand.
The Back Forty. Now.

The Back Forty was the lot where the regular students were supposed to park. It was unpaved and at least half a mile from the school—well out of range of Shady Grove's fat security guards. I glanced in the direction of my class and bit my lip. Not that my teacher would care or even notice if I didn't show. This was one of the perks of being in the regular classes. Our teachers bought whatever lame excuses we dished out for skipping. It was easier for them to do this than to fill out the convoluted discipline form. Hadn't Miss Gordon told us that she believed in experiential education? What was going on with Neal and me was definitely
experiential
and
educational
.

“Adios, suckers,” I said to no one in particular as I walked out the double back doors. My body buzzing with excitement and nerves, I tried to think of what Amanda would tell me to do.

Just act like you've got someplace to be and a legitimate reason to be there.

Neal was waiting for me at an old Buick, leaning against the hood with his arms crossed. I could hear Amanda again.
Keep him guessing. Act a little bored.

Though I wanted to ask him whose car this was, I studied the ends of my hair. “This better be good. I'm missing my Chemistry final.”

He opened the back door, ushered me inside, and pulled off my shirt. “Consider this a bonus experiment,” he breathed into my ear.

How could I argue with that?

Helium. Neon. Argon. Krypton. Xenon. Radon.

It hurt even worse the second time around.

Third time was the charm.

Oh, baby!

We always met at a different car.

Sometimes Neal would hide and make me guess his location, sending clues via text messages. If it was raining, he'd direct me to certain closets or locker rooms.
If you dare
, he always added.

I dared.

I double-dared.

I double/triple/quadruple-dared.

I never asked how he knew about these places. All that mattered was that I was the one who was with him now.

ME!

Not some prissy prep school girl.

College applications?

They could wait.

Parental drama?

Wasn't any of my business, now, was it?

Extracurricular activities?

Got it covered, Dad.

I doodled his name inside my notebooks, where no one could see.

Charlotte and Neal
.

Neal and Charlotte
.

Neal. Neal. Neal.

We did it in the bathroom in the library.

Amanda was shelving books just outside the thin door. I could hear her popping her bubble gum and singing along to some song by the Violent Femmes.
I take, 1, 1, 1 for my sorrow…

“What if she hears?” I whispered.

“Even better!” he whispered back, driving me delirious by kissing my neck.

The secrecy
was
a thrill. But I wanted the whole world to know about us. Or at least all of Shady Grove.

“What are we?” I asked.

“We're great,” he said. “Don't you think?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “We're great.”

I hope you know this will go down on your permanent record.…

Neal. Neal. Neal.

He was like a drug.

He was better than a drug.

Just say yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Hello. My name is Charlotte Locke, and I'm addicted to Neal Fitzpatrick.

So what if I wasn't in GATE? So what if my grades were slipping?

I was getting an A in life. An A-plus-plus, thank you very much.

One plus one equaled us.

Neal and me.