Love and Other Foreign Words (6 page)

“I'd make a gorgeous sign for you, though.”

“I'm sure you would.”

Emmy Newall appears next to me and demands, “You coming?” She doesn't like going anywhere alone. Ever.

Sophie turns back to her friends with a promise to catch up with me later.

“Okay, so get this,” Jen says, running to join Emmy and me as far as the gym. “Today in chemistry—did you hear?”

“Stefan Kott?” Emmy asks as Jen says, “Yes,” and I ask, “What?”

“Stefan Kott,” Jen says, and stops walking and pauses for excited emphasis as we stop too. “. . . lit his hair on fire.”

“What?” I ask. “Is he okay?”

“He's absolutely fine,” Jen says. “He just got his front, but—”

“He's got thick hair,” I say, worried.

“Exactly. And it went—” She snaps her fingers. “Like that. Ohmig-d, it stank too.”

“But you're sure he's okay?” I ask.

“Yeah. I mean, he slapped it right out. Didn't get burned at all. But, you know, his hair,” she says, and pulls a sad face. “He's gotta get that fixed. Like, today.”

“Ohmig-d, he's so stupid,” Emmy says, and I turn deliberately to stare at her. “What?” she says.

“He's not stupid. He may have been clumsy, but that's not the same as stupid.”

“Whatever. Sorry,” she puffs at me. “Come on. Let's just go.”

We part from Jen and head toward the locker room, and I say, “He's actually pretty smart.”

Emmy uses a pinky to hook a captive hair stuck in her lip gloss, frowns, and says, “Whatever,” again. A couple seconds later she adds, “I'm glad he didn't get hurt.”

“Yeah,” I say, happy that she said it, so I concede, “He doesn't always focus.”

He also doesn't appreciate the value of self-possessed silence and practice it judiciously,
I want to add but don't. Our silence beyond
hi
in the halls isn't self-possessed. It's just plain awkward.

Stu says nothing for several seconds, just looks sideways at me, waiting for me to admit to exaggeration, which I do when I do, but today I speak the unadulterated truth.

“A bird on a pogo stick?” he finally asks.

“Yes. It came to me this morning. That's what Geoff looks like.”

It's Tuesday morning, and we're walking across Cap's campus. It's chilly today, and windy, which isn't bad for early April in Columbus. Last year at this time we had snow. Stu and I have had to stop twice so I could align and then realign the seam on my left sock, which drives me mad when it slips. None of Stu's socks have seams—he can't stand seams, so he understands.

“I'm not entirely sure I'm getting an unbiased report here,” he says.

“First of all, nobody presents a one hundred percent unbiased report of anything. It's impossible. But I was able, for the most part, to mentally separate Geoff from my
experience
of Geoff, and the result was that I remember him looking like a bird on a pogo stick.”

“Let me ask you this. Do you think it's possible for a person to find someone she dislikes attractive?”

“
She
dislikes?”

“Or he.”

“I'd have to say no,” I say.

“That's what I thought.”

“But then answer me this,” I say. “Is it possible for a person to find someone she loves more attractive than he actually is?”

“Yes,” he says without hesitation.

“Well, that explains Kate and
her
particular bias.”

“So this Geoff guy's appearance is somewhere between gorgeous and bird-on-a-pogo-stick,” Stu says.

“Probably. So he's a parrot in khakis walking down the street.”

Stu raises his eyebrows at me, just like Auntie Pat does when she's skeptical. “How is a parrot in khakis halfway between gorgeous and bird-on-a-pogo-stick?”

“Parrots can talk,” I say, making my hands into scales, “and so can Geoff.”

“I don't think you're embracing the spirit of halves here.”

“That's because you haven't met Geoff yet.”

“Call me the next time he's over,” Stu says. “Especially if he's molting.”

That makes me smile more than I mean to, which always amuses Stu. He grins crookedly with quiet satisfaction.

We part ways here—Intermediate Spanish II for me, Music Theory for Stu.

• • •

French for pogo stick is
baton de pogo
. I have no idea how I know this, but since I do, I think I should also know it in Spanish and will ask my professor at the end of class today. If I don't, it will plague me for life.

• • •

It's an advantage that I'm good with languages, since knowing the local language is always the first step to blending in. And at Cap or the high school, Stu and I do—no more or less than anyone else, really. It helps that we are not social misfits who are beaten up or stuffed in lockers. We have friends. We play sports. We do not carry briefcases, wear suits to class, or have hobbies involving formaldehyde or kites. Our mothers don't cut our hair along the outline of a bowl. We aren't rude to the C students. And no one—at least no one in this high school—hates us because we're smart. A bunch of people I know hate Emmy Newall but not because she got into AP Chemistry this year.

No, Stu and I learn the languages and copy the customs and get along. Though, sometimes it's hard. Living in foreign cultures and constantly translating Ohmig*d into Josie and back again gets fatiguing. It does for me more than it does for Stu, I've noticed. He's like my mother—nothing much rattles him, not even me.

I like school. I like college. I especially like having two different IDs that show I belong to both places. But usually it's a relief to be home or at my sisters' or at the Wagemakers', where I can just speak Josie without having to translate a thing.

• • •

Emmy Newall is waiting for me to gather up my track gear. She taps her heel repeatedly against Danny Shiever's locker, next to mine, and sighs when he stops in front of her and says, somewhat aggressively, “What?” Which is Omig*d for
Move
.

Unfazed, Emmy takes up post on the other side of me. I grab my backpack, shut my locker, and pause at the sight of Sophie, strolling toward me and trying not to smile overly.

“Can we talk?” she asks, darting her eyes discreetly at Emmy.

“Yeah,” I say. Emmy sighs again and moves over several locker-lengths.

“I have some good news. I think you'll think it's good. I do.”

“Is there a particular person in this news?” I ask.

“Oh yeah,” Sophie says as Emmy sighs once more and checks her watch.

“Did you tell her?” Jen Auerbach asks, rushing into us and grabbing our arms in a way that practically turns us into a Trinity knot. Sophie untangles all our hands and casually cautions Jen, “Subtle. Let's be subtle.”

“Tell me,” I practically plead—so much for subtlety—as Emmy moves closer and asks, “Wait, is this about Josie and a guy?” She confronts Jen: “And how come you know and I don't?”

Jen inhales as if she's about to dive for the answer, but before she can speak, I turn to give a friendly nod to Stefan Kott, walking past me with a couple of his buddies who are happily ribbing him about his spiky new haircut.

“Hey, Josie,” he says.

“Hey, Stefan.”

When I return my attention to my friends, their entirely too amused faces—the kind that are about to burst into laughter over how long it takes me, their idiot friend, to deduce the obvious—tell me everything I need to know. And I try to copy their enthusiasm, but all I can manage to think is . . .
oh
.

Text to Kate, 3:22 p.m.

Stefan Kott still likes me.

Text from Kate, 3:23 p.m.

Thought U liked him 2

Text to Kate, 3:23 p.m.

He likes me because I'm tall. How can I comfortably date someone who only likes me because I'm tall?

Text from Kate, 3:24 p.m.

I DOUBT thats the only reason—y dont u go out with him & find out

Text to Kate, 3:24 p.m.

Maybe.

Text from Kate, 3:25 p.m.

Call me later. Want 2 talk more. 2 busy now

Thoughts of Stefan Kott—more specifically thoughts of me projected into the future with Stefan Kott at the prom and dinner beforehand—preoccupy me throughout all of track practice. For a moment, my thoughts turn to Stefan's haircut, which I like. It seems to brighten up his whole face, especially his eyes, which now look more gold than brown. It completely suits the kind of guy who would—and did—write
playing baseball, making funny faces, and helping old ladies across the street, but never at the same time
—under
About
on his Facebook page.

Quiet contemplation is one of the things I love about running.

I don't know how couples run together and chat. Or why.

I must be more absorbed than usual because after practice Emmy grabs my arm and fairly hangs from it—a sensation I thoroughly dislike—as she asks, “Josie, what's going on? Are you ignoring me? I called your name like nine times just now.”

“Sorry. I didn't even hear you.”

“So?”

“I'm just thinking.”

“About Stefan?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Shut up,” she says, opening her mouth in a manner that alarms me. So I explain—in keeping with the day's idiocy theme—that we're just friends, and by Wednesday afternoon it is all over school that Stefan and I are a couple, and by Friday we confirm it when he asks and I agree to go to the prom with him.

He asks me at my locker.

“And it's not just because you're tall,” he says. “I'm such a jerk for saying that. And so stupid.”

“You're not a jerk. And you're not stupid.”

“Yeah,” he says, puffing out a laugh. “I heard you told Emmy that.”

“Well, it's true.”

“Still, I'm sorry about that whole homecoming thing. I know it bothered you.”

“Yeah, I guess you could tell I was a little upset.”

“A little,” he says, smiling at me. “So the prom?”

“Yeah. That'd be nice,” I say.

“Yeah? Cool,” he says. “So—maybe I'll call you this weekend. Maybe we can hang out, do something.”

“Sure,” I say, and lose myself in happy contemplation at track practice once again, and if Emmy Newall calls my name nine times, I do not hear her once.

• • •

Sophie hangs out in the art room after school this afternoon, working on an abstract oil painting for the school's art exhibit next month. After track practice, she walks several blocks with me to Thane's Discount Drug Store, where she searches for a particular shade of lipstick for me.

“I'm so glad prom's not until May tenth this year,” she says. “I want it to be warm so I don't have to wear a coat, which will look completely hideous with my dress.”

“Sophie, I doubt you could ever look hideous, even if you tried.”

“Aw, Josie, shut up,” she says, briefly smiling up at me. Then she spies her target and hands me a tube of pale pink lipstick called Candy Bliss. “This will be perfect on you no matter what color your dress is. Trust me. Stefan will appreciate it.”

I don't have my dress yet and only have about a month and counting to find one. Sophie's had hers since before she had a date, who is Adam Gibson, by the way. He's a senior. I know him the way I know everyone in school, the way everyone knows everyone in school. There are only about two hundred in each class, so we all have a kind of familiarity outside of real relationships.

Sophie has their entire night—including a warm, moonlit evening—scripted, which she describes to me on our long walk home. When I script my own prom night with Stefan, I don't see weather or moonlight. I only see myself falling off my shoes, crashing to the floor, breaking both an ankle and a wrist as I nearly take Stefan down with me. But he falls into a table, where the votive candles ignite what's left of his hair. We end up in the emergency room, I in two casts, he with his bald head bandaged. When the nurse checks on him in the next gurney over, I quickly reapply my Candy Bliss lipstick, and later, when we're alone in Bay 8 of the ER, he notices and says, “I really appreciate that color on you.” And I say, “I thought you might.”

This would be romance in what has been my dating life. I'm definitely looking forward to the prom.

• • •

The Wagemakers come for dinner tonight to meet Geoff and congratulate the happy—
shudder
—couple.

Right before they arrive, Mother cautions me, “Do consider your remarks before speaking tonight, my dear. And then reconsider your initial consideration.”

I love the warning for its succinctness and privately fume about it for the same reason.

With the Wagemakers and the Sheridans under one roof, the evening flies by in a delirium of festive and frequently loud conversation, leaving Geoffery Stephen Brill few opportunities to hold forth beyond the early getting-to-know-you questions. He is neither loud enough nor verbally flexible enough to jump into brief conversational spaces, nor is he bold enough—and this surprises me—to charge headlong into the middle of conversations as all of us except my parents do.

Instead, he remains close to Kate tonight, looking at times like a cardboard cutout of himself and smiling passively at the buzz around him.

It's self-serve tonight—Chinese takeout with enough options to suit our varied tastes and nearly enough to satisfy Stu's bottomless pit of a stomach. A third of the way through the evening, he, Sophie, and I find ourselves alone at the kitchen table buffet, where I demand of them, “Well?”

Stu shrugs and starts to load his plate with everything but the centerpiece.

“He's kind of cute,” Sophie says. “And Kate is so much in love. You can see it on her face.”

“What?” I turn to Stu. “Did you hear that?”

“You realize I'm two feet away from you and not deaf,” he answers.

“Do you agree?” I ask.

“I have no opinion on the appearance of another guy, because it's another guy,” he says, shrugging. “But, overall, he's not as bad as I thought he'd be.”

“Well, he's barely talking tonight,” I say, and Sophie lets me know with a cheerful “Hello” that someone has just entered the kitchen behind me. And it turns out to be Kate and the self-adhesive fiancé.

“So, Geoff,” Stu says in a falsely cheery tone I recognize and dread. “Josie tells me you know a lot about a lot.”

Oh, no.

“That's nice of her,” he says with a kind of bob in my direction.

“Know anything about birds?” Stu asks.

“Birds?”

“Yeah. Specifically parrots,” Stu says. “Josie was just telling me this week how interesting she finds the parrot.”

“Well, parrots are very interesting,” Geoff confirms. He looks at me when he says, “I don't know as much about them as I do about the myna, which you may know as the myna bird, but there are actually over two dozen species of mynas, and myna bird isn't, officially, among them.”

As Geoff continues, Stu pops a whole pork dumpling into his mouth and shoots me a wickedly happy grin before returning to the fun in the family room. Meanwhile, Sophie and Kate coo over Kate's ring while I listen to something about the crested myna and wonder, through my boredom, if I am remembering to blink.

• • •

“Don't make plans next Saturday,” Kate tells me at the back door, with a more vividly grinning Geoff still pressed up close behind her. The Wagemakers went home twenty minutes ago, and Mother caught me by my arm trying to leave with them.

“I'm taking you shopping,” Kate says. “We're getting your prom dress. Then plan on spending the night.”

“Just the two of us?” I ask her.

“Just the two of us,” she says, looking over her shoulder at Geoff and adding, “You don't mind, do you?”

“Not at all. If I had a sister, I'd do the same.”

“Aww. You will have a sister. You'll have two in just—”

“Okay. Next Saturday. Just the two of us,” I say, and we kiss cheeks, and I close the door and find myself thinking,
Unlike most other mynas, the crested myna's beak is off-white instead of orange.
Startled, I shake my head to dislodge the language of Geoff. I'm afraid it might spontaneously paralyze my eyelids.

• • •

Stefan doesn't call over the weekend but sends me dozens of text messages. I respond as promptly as possible. He tells me in one, “U even punctuate texts—cool.”

I receive three texts from him at Mrs. Easterday's house Sunday afternoon, but I politely ignore them, preferring Mrs. Easterday's conversation to just about anybody's text messages. I admit it: I like speaking the language of old ladies. It is surprisingly similar to Josie and, therefore, easy to speak.

The Easterdays owned their house for sixteen years before my parents moved in next door. I'm over here at least twice a week. I pop in to say hello, hang out, play cards, talk. And if Mrs. Easterday doesn't have anything sweet in the house, we'll bake it while she tells me perfectly constructed stories of growing up in the 1940s, and I tell her about classes at Cap or the high school and about the variations in Ohmig*d and Ohmig*d 2.0.

She taught fourth grade for more than twenty years and refused to allow her students to say
yeah
instead of
yes
.

Mr. Easterday died three years before I was born. Whenever Mrs. Easterday finishes a story about him, her heavy-lidded eyes become abstracted and a bit of a smile spreads across her lips. If I remain quiet, she'll hold the look for up to a minute. And I always manage to remain very quiet then.

Mrs. Easterday met Geoff Friday night, joining us for cocktail hour before dinner—she had cranberry juice—and promising Kate she would not miss the wedding, which, by the way, has been set for Saturday, November eighth. I'm working against a deadline here.

When I ask her today what she thinks of Geoff, she tells me, “I think I am very happy for Kate because she is so very happy, herself.”

“Yeah,” I concede, which causes Mrs. Easterday to lower her eyebrows disapprovingly at me. “Yes,” I correct myself through a warm-cheeked grin.
Yeah
is Ohmig*d and Ohmig*d 2.0, into which I sometimes slip.
Yes
is from a number of languages—Teacher, Grandparent, Job Interview, Marriage Proposal. I'm sure Kate didn't say
yeah
when Master Myna Bird proposed.

I do not feel like belaboring the topic of Kate's relationship with Geoff, especially since very lately the thought of
the two of them
produces an odd sensation in me. I feel as if I'm riding in a car on a newly paved country road and suddenly traverse an unforeseen bump that lifts my stomach slightly higher than it should.

Reason Number Nine Why Geoff Should Not Marry Kate, behind crested mynas, pogo stick, adolescent, intellectual,
Ren-wah,
breast-fondling, ticks, and basil: The mere thought of him induces nausea.

“I think I have a new boyfriend,” I say to Mrs. Easterday as she pulls a tray of chocolate peanut butter cookies from the oven. “Well, I'm going to the prom with him.”

“How very nice. You like this boy?”

“I do.”

“And he makes you happy?”

“He does.”

“Imagine that,” she says, and I feel that bump in the road again, and she grins ever so slightly at me, and I turn the topic to the cookies, which really are decadent and perfect. I love these. Mrs. Easterday can probably see it on my face.