Ink Is Thicker Than Water (21 page)

Of course on Monday morning, Kaitlyn tracks me down regarding what she must have seen as an important matter. She is seriously bad at this whole not-being-friends thing that she’d been the one to initiate.

“So is Dexter’s brother actually your boyfriend?”

“No, he’s my guy prostitute, that’s why I had to start working at Mom and Russell’s shop. His rates are—”

“Stop it,” she says. “Why can’t you ever be serious?”

“Why do you care?” I spot Mitchell across the hall and make a beeline—well, a straight line and not some kind of crazy curlicue path an actual bee would take. “What’s her problem?”

“She’s not that bad,” Mitchell says, which makes me elbow him. “What? She’s not. Everyone had fun on Friday.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“Nothing. What’s with you?”

“You always make fun of Kaitlyn, too.”

Mitch shrugs one of his slow, slow shrugs.

I don’t even know why I want to pick a fight except that every sane person should hate her with the same burning passion I do. “Don’t you care that she’s mean to me?”

“She’s mean to you?” he asks, like, hello, Mitch, welcome to life! “I just thought you guys fought all the time. Girls, uh, seem to do that.”

I don’t want to call him sexist because basically it’s true.

“Well, uh, sorry about Kait.” He sort of pats my elbow, like it’s a safe area to touch as a friend. “That guy seemed cool and all. Except for shaking my hand. What was
that
?”

“Oh my God,
I know
.” We exchange grins, and I’m suddenly glad more of my friends have met Oliver now. I’ve needed people to occasionally make fun of my boyfriend with.

I wave good-bye to Mitchell and round the corner, where Paul practically runs right into me.

“Hey,” he says, like it’s some big surprise to see me and that I didn’t see him practically choreograph this collision. “Everything cool after Friday?”

“Everything’s great,” I say.

“I just got around to reading your latest article,” he says. “That’s the most I’ve ever thought about laptops.”

“Mission accomplished, then.” I sort of wave and duck into my class, where Adelaide immediately starts asking me opinions about different cover stories for next month’s Thanksgiving issue. I don’t care that much, but it’s way better than dwelling on Kaitlyn or Paul or you know, anything else stupid in my life right now.

The Ticknor Ticker

Lacking Laptops

By Kellie Brooks

W
e’re supposedly living in the 21st century at Ticknor Day School, where our library features a digital room and all classrooms feature computers that can directly display on a projection screen.
The Ticknor Voice
even has one iPad Mini for its use, though I’m still low enough on the totem pole to have never used it for anything.

So what I don’t get is that if we’re living in such a technological wonderland, why aren’t we allowed to bring laptops to school? Instead of typing up my notes confidently, I spend classes desperately scrawling down everything I think my teachers say and then spend my evenings decoding my own handwriting. And hand cramps and carpal tunnel syndrome are real things. I don’t have a serious hand condition yet, but with all of this frantic writing, could it be far away?

The administration claims we cannot use laptops in class because they could not “prevent the use of unauthorized websites and programs by students,” which we all know means they’re afraid we’ll look at pornography. I don’t understand why anyone would want to look at pornography at school when really that’s something people probably enjoy more in the privacy of their own homes.

So it seems an unduly harsh restriction not to allow any laptop use when likely only a very small percentage of Ticknor students would fall into the group of people who don’t mind looking at porn in public. Most of us just want to take better notes without any hand cramps.

Chapter Twenty

I actually get to work at the shop that night after school, because even though Sara is still at Camille’s, Mom and Russell have found someone else to watch Finn (probably Russell’s mom). Weeknights are pretty slow, but they still need someone at the front desk all the time. Luckily, no one cares if I’m on the shop computer.

Oliver McAuley: What are you doing this weekend?

Kellie Brooks: probably babysitting and working. what’s up?

Oliver McAuley: Roommate’s going on some road trip. You could come over.

“Kell-belle?”

I minimize my chat window and look up at Mom. “What?”

“Can you run down the street and pick up dinner?”

Normally, I’m thrilled for any errand that takes me away from the desk for a few minutes, especially when everyone’s too busy to babysit my half-block stroll and I can spend my walk imagining how Dad’s head would explode if he knew.

But I’m getting asked to have sex. Can I just
brb
that?

“Kellie?” Mom waves a couple bills in front of my face. “Go, we’re hungry.”

So I have no choice. I bring the window back up.

Kellie Brooks: brb. getting dinner.

I don’t even have time to grab my phone, just rush down to King & I, pay for the giant order I assume is going to function as lunch tomorrow as well, and get back to the shop as fast as I can. I help dish out the food so Mom and Russell can scarf it down during a break, and finally sit back down with a carton of pad see ew. Oliver has signed off, but at least I have an email from him.

TO: [email protected]

FROM: [email protected]

SUBJECT: (no subject)

If you’re not ready to have sex you could just say so, not invent an excuse to avoid me.

Okay, here it is, the second time I think Oliver is sort of crazy. The third? Does it count that maybe he’s done something like murder someone and I don’t even know? Should I know? I should, shouldn’t I?

I probably do look like I’m lying to get out of it, but normal guys don’t just fly to Crazy Land so quickly, do they?

“Kellie?” Mom walks over, Thai iced tea in hand. “Baby, you haven’t restocked anything up front tonight. I know it’s slow, but that’s exactly what we need to use the slow time for.”

I know I’m slacking off because I’m so distracted by Oliver, not that Mom is expecting too much out of me. So I keep myself busy for the rest of the night making sure there are enough gloves, plastic wrap, and cups for water, and don’t get back online until I’m home.

Adelaide Johansson: What do you think about a green issue?

Kellie Brooks: like green paper?

Adelaide Johansson: NO. An entire issue devoted to environmental matters. You could write the green policy humor piece we talked about.

Kellie Brooks: sounds fine to me.

Kellie Brooks: do you think oliver’s sort of weird?

Kellie Brooks: crazy i mean.

Kellie Brooks: no, i just mean weird. do you?

Adelaide Johansson: Well YES.

Adelaide Johansson: But so are you.

Adelaide Johansson: Green paper is actually not a bad idea, as far as gimmicks go.

My Friday is somehow free of both work and babysitting, but I still feel weird enough about Oliver that I don’t think it’s necessary to ask him to do something. I’m sort of hoping he’ll reach out to me first and be all charming and adorable and hilarious, the way I like him, but that doesn’t happen. Since I don’t want to give up my freedom, I stay out after school, and after working on a potential column at The Beanery, I decide just to walk around for awhile. Yeah, there are other things to do if I just drove a little, but with all the cute shops and quaint restaurants lined up in nostalgic fashion, I guess I’m not totally immune to my town’s charms.

My cell phone rings while I’m rummaging at Euclid Records to check out some old vinyl. By now I guess I’m not really that surprised to see it’s Dexter calling. “Hey.”

“Yo. Talk to Sara lately?”

“Nope,” I say. “You?”

“Negative,” he says, the Dexter quality of his voice very much dimmed. Impossibly, I think he’s falling apart more over this than I am.

“Do you want to hang out tonight?” I ask. “I’m at Euclid Records.”

“Cool, I’ll be there in a jiff,” he says and hangs up. I finish checking for sixties stuff I’ve been looking for, and by then Dexter’s walking in.

“Hey, lady.” Dexter is wearing his uniform shirt (tie askew as always) but with jeans and Converse today. “What’s the haps?”

Only Dexter can get away with saying something like that.

“Just looking for a few things,” I say.

“Yeah, Ol’s said your music taste is pretty eclectic,” Dexter says. “But like that’s a really hot thing.”

“It
is
a really hot thing,” I say instead of getting all embarrassed or melty hearing that. Okay, in addition to getting a little embarrassed and
completely
melty. Does this mean I can stop feeling weirded out by Oliver?

“Clearly,” he says. “Are you buying anything? I say we take off for some fine chow.”

“Sure,” I say. “We can get whatever fine chow you want.”

Dexter isn’t satisfied by the billions of places we could have walked to, so instead we get into his car and he drives to the City Diner, which is crazy packed on a Friday night.

“Things sound cool with you and Ol,” he says.

“Yeah, I guess they are.” It comes out a little shorter than I’d meant, but I worry if I don’t go for the brief version, I’ll blurt out that sex is coming down the pipeline and the previous almost-sex has me more than a little nervous about it.

“Dexter, if you had your place to yourself and you asked a girl to come over, and she said
brb
because she had to get Thai food, what would you think?”

It’s a regretful question the second it’s out of my mouth. First of all, Dexter isn’t stupid and will understand this is not a hypothetical and is in fact about his own brother. Secondly, he’s dating
my sister
, so this is double-TMI territory.

“I’d probably think she was trying to get out of it,” Dexter says.

“Sometimes people really do need to go get Thai food,” I say.

“Sex is usually more important than Thai food.”

“Usually.”

Dexter laughs. I laugh. And we somehow both know we’re going to stop talking about my hypothetical sex with his actual brother.

“So Sara even around much these days?” Dexter asks.

I fiddle with the corner of my menu. “Definitely not.”

He takes off his glasses and rubs his temples. I can just tell from that and him bringing it up at all that he’s worried about this, but at the same time it’s still tough thinking of someone like Dexter worrying about anything. “Think she’s gonna cut me loose?”

“I have no idea what she’s going to do about anything,” I say, which is probably no comfort at all. Still, I care way more about my family than his relationship. Priorities. “Sorry, I just—”

“Honesty’s cool.” He shoves his glasses back on. “What’s she said to you?”

“Probably less than to you.” I can’t sort out if I feel better or worse about Dexter being as left out in the cold as the rest of us are. If Sara leaves her boyfriend behind, it doesn’t exactly seem likely that everything else won’t change, too.

I mean, I don’t look down on all change; some of it brings me things like Oliver and the discovery that I don’t totally suck at everything, and some of it is just necessary to get through life and somehow emerge a grown-up. Losing Sara isn’t on either of those lists, though. Normally, I can separate stuff into different rooms in my brain, the crap to worry about locked away while I’m out having fun. Lately, the hinges have all come loose.

After we eat, Dexter wants to go to the bar upstairs from the Vietnamese place with the best spring rolls, but I’m not in possession of a fake ID, and I am a little nervous that if we somehow successfully get in anyway, I’ll never get home before one a.m. Worrying about curfew is really sucking the life out of me.

We drive back to Webster. The music’s off, but Dexter’s tapping out a rhythm on the steering wheel with his hands.

“Whoa, is that ‘Baba O’Reilly’?” I ask, because it sounds a lot like the drum part to one of The Who’s songs.

“Kells, I’m gonna blow your mind and tell you how people’re still making music in the present day, and that’s from a song that came out this year.”

“Maybe it was a time-traveling song.”

Dexter laughs and makes a time-travel-y sound effect.
Whoosh!
“You wanna go see who’s hanging out at the gazebo?”

There’s a creepy gazebo in front of the Starbucks where people, sometimes cool, sometimes terrifying, hang out at basically all times of the day and night. I myself think most towns could do without a creepy gazebo.

“I know it’s lame, but I should probably go home,” I say. “My mom’s been weird with my curfew.”

“You’re just scared of the gazebo.”

“I wish this was purely gazebophobia.”

Dexter drives to the lot where I’m parked, but before I can even touch the door handle, he sort of grabs my wrist. “If you and Sara talk, and I come up or something, you’ll let me know. Yeah?”

“Yeah, sure,” I say, even though I can’t picture myself running to the phone to keep Dexter in the loop. I’ve always liked him just fine, but he is probably the most popular guy in his school, who is perfectly matched up with my perfectly perfect sister. It is an odd thing that rules about who gets to socialize with whom seem to be disappearing.

I decide not to leave just yet. “What do you think about Sara? Is she leaving us? Do you think she at least wants to?”

Dexter shrugs. “Doesn’t everyone at least
want to
sometimes?”

I shake my head. “Not me.”

“Take it easy.” He gives me a little salute. “Give my regards to Ol, sure you see him more than I do.”

“Will do.” I open the car door and plant one Chuck Taylor on the sidewalk. “I hope things are okay for you and Sara.”

He clinks an invisible glass in the air near where I’d hypothetically be holding an invisible drink of my own. “Kells, you, too.”