Lessons in Love (18 page)

“Are you sleeping?” Chili asks, plopping herself down next to me. “I’m over there.” She points in the half-dark to one of the physics rooms. “Sophomore territory.”

“You can stay here, you don’t have to be quarantined.”

Chili shrugs. “It’s okay. So, you feeling better?”

“I am.” They’ve cranked the a/c up so high that I’m actually chilled, and I stick my legs into the sleeping bag. “Anything new to report?”

“Nothing major — just the usual break ups…” Chili bites her lip.

“What — spill it,” I command.

“It’s over. Ben and my brother.”

“Seriously?” I think back to Chris’s grin at Sunday dinner, how happy he was. “And Chris?”

“Haverford — to my surprise — was totally honest with Ben. Told him everything — about hooking up with Chris over the summer and insert break up speech here — it’s done. And our boy Chris has himself a Pomroy.”

My pulse speeds up for him. “Bet he wishes he lived in the old dorms, then he’d be here.” I look around at the disarray of sleeping bags, the makeshift beds people have thrown together from sheets and pillows, some towels.

“But he’s not,” Chili says. Then she bends down, eyeing something or someone. “But you know who is.”

I don’t have to look to know who she means. “Chilton Pomroy, I am a taken woman.” It occurs to me that Charlie has no idea I’m about to spend the night here, and that I haven’t seen his place of residence either, that long-distance kind of means not knowing everything, all the time. That I could have called him during my sick stay but called Gala instead.

She stands up. “I know. I’m just saying. Gotta go — lest I defect to seniorland.”

My sleeping bag rustles on the concrete floor. Lying there, with the foreign sounds of other people breathing around me, I feel like I’m at a Hadley party, like Crescent Beach. With my eyes closed now, I can imagine it: the start of this past summer when I woke up there, in this same sleeping bag, next to Jacob. How I thought we’d refound something there. I open my eyes and turn on my side, listening to quiet chatter, and then, softly, I think I hear strumming.

The way cartoon characters follow the scent of food cooking, all noses forward, a cloud of smell pulling them, I sit up and let my ears lead the way. Around the side of the lab, past the physics rooms, past the door to the photo labs where I first got lost as a freshman. All the way, I keep listening. The open ceilings and echo-prone rooms make it possible to find the sounds.

Sure enough, up in the solar balcony that overlooks where I was lying down, I find them.

“If it isn’t the superheros themselves,” I say to Jacob, the one strumming, and Dalton, who types furiously on a laptop. I’m not sure why I used the word superheros, but that’s what they are, a dynamic duo, able to scale enormous heights or sing or make snarky comments.

Without looking, Dalton asks, “Which heroes would we be, exactly? And don’t for a second call me Robin.”

“He has sidekick issues,” Jacob explains. Then he points to his chest and mouths, “Batman.”

“You could be Strummer Boy,” Dalton offers from his work station. I stare at the lighted screen, wondering what he’s writing. He has the luxury of knowing he’s already in the Advanced Writing class. It dawns on me how polite it is of him not to have brought that up. He hasn’t rubbed my nose in his literary talents but hasn’t shirked all mentions of it either, which is pretty cool.

Then I think since Dalton’s in Mr. Chaucer’s Comparative Lit section, he could, in theory know if my story’s been seen. “Dalton?” I ask.

“I have no idea if Chaucer’s read it.” Dalton keeps typing.

“How about you, Strummer Boy?” I ask. “You didn’t happen to bump into Mr. Chaucer —”

“And just happen to ask about your story?” Jacob picks single strings on his guitar. I’m thankful I don’t know the song he’s playing, if it even is a song. “No. Doubtful that Chaucer’d even tell us anyway.”

“I think Little Strummer Boy suits you.” Dalton sees me looking at his screen and shuts the laptop more than halfway. He looks at me. “You’re either in or not — not much else you can do now except wait.”

Wait. Great, more inaction. I feel my feet on the solid floor and wonder if they could take root. I am a potted plant, I think, for all the fervor with which I embrace life.

“How about Super Typing Kid flies out of here.” Jacob keeps playing while he says this, the usual banter between them strong and fluid enough that without questioning it, Dalton packs up leaves, gives us both a nod on the way out.

After Dalton’s gone, his footsteps echoing as he ascends the open staircase, I realize I have no plan. “I have no plan,” I say aloud, hoping this will crystallize one.

Jacob stops playing. The guitar rests in his lap and he drapes his arm over it, lovingly, familiar with every note, each fret, the hairline fracture in the thin wood of it’s body. “And you need one?” He looks at me.

He looks at me the same way he did outside Mable’s coffee shop two-plus years ago. The same way he did at Crescent Beach three months ago. The same way he did as we sat, grounded, in unmoving bumper cars on the Vineyard only one month ago. At least I think it’s the same way. One thing’s clear to me, however. I want it to be the same way. And maybe that’s the key to writing and to love and even to having sex for the first time — you have to know yourself.

“Maybe I don’t need a plan,” I say. Then I think but don’t add,
maybe I already have one.

People talk about just knowing and they talk about gut feelings, and right here, even though I questioned my ability, I unroot my legs and feet from the concrete and sprint — metaphorically speaking of course. In reality, I did move — but just over to the balcony.

“Well, I know a good plan store if you need one,” he says and goes back to the guitar.

“I still have feelings for you.” The words leak out one by one. All those months, years even, of thinking this, of writing it in the privacy of my journal, of perhaps fictionalizing it in my story, and here it is — the truth is coming out of me on the first ever Hadley sleep-in. That’s what’s lurking underneath.

I lean on the concrete balcony. It’s thick and cold, and affords a view of sleeping students. While I’m in the slow-motion moments that follow my six-word declaration, I notice something. Straight across from me, at ceiling level, are shiny orbs, all of the planets in order, each one strung from an invisible point.

“Planets,” I say softly, pointing to them. It seems big to me, somehow, meaningful, that I never noticed them before. That I was lying there on the soapstone table with Charlie and never once saw the blue-green of Earth, the murky marble of Neptune, the brightness of the sun.

Jacob starts to play, then sings. “
Satellites gone up to the skies, Thing like that drive me out of my mind.
”

“Satellite of Love,” I say. “Lou Reed.”

“Yep. The single from his 1972 album Transformer.” Jacob brackets his fingers to form chords, mumbling further lyrics.

“Bowie produced that album, you know.” My hands are clasped together, pretty please style, but the rest of me feels very calm.

“I still have feelings for you, too, Love. But I think you know that.”

Jacob keeps playing, his voice soft with the lyrics, and I don’t join in. I stay where I am. When the song ends, Jacob does that thing where he slams his hand over the strings to silence them suddenly, then gently puts the instrument down and comes over to me. He faces forward, looking out at the swinging planets and I face in, toward the quiet guitar, thinking about all the music that’s passed between us. About what happens next.

“I’m waiting for a lot of things,” I start.

Jacob leans on his forearms, not touching me, his face and eyes away like it’ll be easier to speak this way. “I heard everything.”

“I know.” I take a breath. “It’s embarrassing, okay? That’s why, in the golf cart, I couldn’t…”

“Love, I get it. Doesn’t take a genius to know that the sex thing’s kind of a touchy subject.” He pauses while I laugh a little. “I know, bad word choice.”

“I don’t care that I haven’t had sex, you know? That’s not it. It’s like, I didn’t want — I don’t want you to…” I turn around so we’re both at least facing the same way, with a view of Saturn and its rings and tiny Pluto. “So, what’d you thin k, when you heard it?”

Jacob swallows and rests his chin in one of his hands. “I thought — oh, shit.”

“Hmm, eloquent.”

“Well, that was the first thing — you know, I didn’t want to walk in on you but Chloe —”

“Right, Chloe.” I picture them hugging at the flagpole today.

Jacob stands up straight, stretching his arms like he has any hope of touching those planets, and then starts to reach for my face. His hands are nearly there, almost on my cheeks, and he pulls them back. My stomach lurches, thinking about him touching me, and I bite my lip. “Big night.” He takes a step back.

“Yeah.”

“We should probably reconvene at a later date?”

All we exchange is a look — a look that tells me he won’t make a move and neither will I until I speak to Charlie. Until, until, until. So much for action. “It is possible to like two people at the same time,” I say.

“Completely possible. Likely, even. For a little while, I guess.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “But if we do this…if we become a
we
— for real this time? It can’t be right now. Not like this.”

I can hear the songs he played in my mind as we part. He goes down the stairs first, leaving me to think about what comes next. All those galaxies we’ve yet to explore.

There is no reason in the world not to like Chloe Swain. She’s categorically fun, pretty in a non-threatening way, able to catch a ball and paint a landscape in a way that suggests if not true talent then an acceptable mediocrity, and she’s the kind of person who laughs easily — which means the times she’s been present and I’ve made a joke or comment, she’s rewarded me publicly with a true guffaw. The only possible thing I could list in my journal about her is that she is a constant fiddler. Not in the bluegrass slap your knee kind of way, but in the tiny movements all the time kind of way — tapping her pen on the tables, drumming her fingers, twirling her hair, flicking the corner of the notebook, opening and closing her lip gloss tube. These are not egregious actions on her part and yet, in the middle of leaning about peace treaties, her miniscule fiddlings are enough to make me wage an invisible war.

“I can’t sit next to her any more,” I tell Chris when the bell rings and we’re being herded down the corridor to yet another fun-filled class that will result in too much homework.

“Jealousy sucks, huh?” Chris slings his backpack over one shoulder.

“Thanks, Mr. Sensitive.” My mouth tucks into a pout and I stop for a drink of water. Chris stands by, watching me sip. “What?”

“Nothing,” his voice goes up a register, which I know is his I’m hiding something tone.

“Spit it out.” I wipe my mouth on my hand and check my watch. “I have precisely two minutes before I have to bow at the altar that is creative writing.”

“Today’s the big day — that’s right.” Chris tries to deflect my curiosity onto the well-worn subject of my prolonged courtship with the ACW class.

“More than a week I’ve had to wait.” I shake my head. “So unfair. Here I am dealing with colleges and the upcoming campus interview crazies and I still don’t know about my future.”

“None of us knows about our future,” Chris looks at me like I’m nuts.

“No — not like that. But — in August, when I decided to try and get into his class — I made up my mind. Writing. That’s what I want to do. So when you find out what you want to do you — or at least I — want to get started right away. Like you and a certain someone…” I smile as Chris smiles about his new boy.

“ASAP?” Chris asks, saying the letters as a word, which he knows will annoy me.

“Charlie does that — for real.” Pointing out such a little flaw now seems silly, especially given the fact that I’ve only spoken to him once since my intergalactic adventure with Jacob, and I’m no closer to clarity about what to do. “I have to tell him, right? Just call him and say that I like him…of course I do….but that I.” The bell rings. “What the hell am I thinking?” I grab Chris by the shoulders. “Help me. I mean, I like two guys — one’s supposedly my boyfriend, and the other one’s taken anyway. So maybe I shouldn’t say anything, just go about my —”

“He’s not taken.” Chris says it fast. “You’re not supposed to know, but now you do.”

My mouth drops open as students shuttle by me to class, jostling me this way then that. “Jacob and Chloe?”

“They broke up when you were sick,” Chris explains, his hand over his shoulder like it happened long ago instead of just a week. “And I would’ve said — especially given the circumstances with you and J — but Chloe swore me to secrecy.”

“I’m your best friend.”

Chris sighs. “We’re going to be late. The truth is, I didn’t think you could deal with one more issue — I was going to dish it out right after your meeting with Chaucer.”

My meeting. Right. “I have to go!” Then I suddenly smile. “He broke up with her?”

“By the flagpole. Total Hadley cliché.” Chris turns me in the direction of Chaucer’s room. “Maybe now you don’t care so much if she flicks her pen cap and twirls her hair?”

Up in the hall, Chris sees Haverford. They’re pretty mellow in terms of announcing their relationship to the Hadley public, but Haverford’s grin speaks loudly. “I have to go, too.”

“Did I tell you I’m glad things worked out for you two?”

Chris nods. “Not in so many words, but yeah.” He walks a few paces down the hall towards Haverford, who’s already decked out in his Hadley soccer gear, his cleats clicking on the linoleum. “And Love? It will for you, okay?”

I speed away, down the steps out the side door and over to the faculty room where I’m supposed to meet Mr. Chaucer. In less than five minutes I’ll know my writing fate. I could have my Wednesday and Sunday nights suddenly taken up with secret society meetings, feeling a part of the smallest group of the best writers on campus, the ones who go on to publish books and edit anthologies. Or I could be negged with the simplest shake of the head. I imagine Mr. Chaucer’s slow back and forth “no”, the gesture he rarely uses in class except when he thinks we’re getting way off track. He doesn’t shake his head, he sort of tilts and shakes, like he’s trying to lessen the negativity.