Tease(12)

I’m sitting in summer school Chem class and wishing Irish O’Irish was here. And I wish I was still good at this class—or that I still cared enough to try to be good again. Ms. Enman isn’t here; a guy from the university, Mr. Rodriguez, is our teacher for the summer version of almost all our classes. He’s really young, like just out of college, and always kind of sweaty, like this job is already wearing him out.

Today we’re doing a titration experiment—basically just pouring stuff into beakers. Less boring than taking notes, but still pretty freaking boring. My lab partner isn’t here half the time—little-known fact: it’s just as easy to skip summer school as it is the fall-winter-spring kind—but today he shows up. Carmichael. That’s his last name, but no one calls him by his first name, ever. He’s like a character from a TV show or a book or something: tattoos even though he’s underage, crazy hair, the whole one-name thing. He’d be good-looking if he wasn’t trying so hard to look terrifying. He’s tall and under his black T-shirt you can see he has decent biceps and probably really flat abs. But the T-shirt itself is black and ripped and says DISCO KILLS ART, whatever that means, and the whole look just screams I’m too cool to talk to you.

It’s not a look that goes well with safety goggles. But they probably look just as ridiculous on me, so I try to concentrate on the acid and base beakers on the table in front of us. I can see a blurry Carmichael out of the corner of my eye, silently staring at the instructions.

Once I’ve got the burette set up, Carmichael wordlessly hands over the funnel and waits while I start pouring the acid. Then I turn the knob on the burette, letting the liquids mix, waiting for it to turn pink like it’s supposed to. I close the stopper and watch as the acid slows to a drip and the base goes clear again.

“Lot of weird words in this thing,” Carmichael says, almost under his breath. I’m surprised by his voice but I keep my hand steady as I open the stopper again. The mixture turns pink and stays that way. I turn to make sure he’s writing down the volume on the assignment sheet.

Then without thinking I say, “What words?”

He puts his goggles up on his head, pushing his hair back, even though we’re not done with the experiment. Then he puts a finger on the instruction page. “Titration,” he says, like it’s obvious what he means. “And meniscus. And that thing”—he lightly taps the knob on the burette—“is called a stopcock.”

His voice is totally matter-of-fact, but I feel my cheeks go red. I can’t tell if he’s trying to make me uncomfortable, but I am.

During the school year I wouldn’t have talked to Carmichael under any circumstances. Back in junior high I actually had kind of a crush on him—I thought his wild hair was the sign of an artistic soul, and back then I wanted to be an artistic soul too. But Brielle saved me from all that. Turns out when you actually have fun things to do on the weekends, moping around reading poetry and listening to indie rock totally loses its appeal.

I figure I should probably go back to ignoring Carmichael now. And then at the front of the room Mr. Rodriguez says, “Five minutes,” and there’s too much noise to say anything else anyway. Carmichael takes our whole beaker set to the sinks, leaving me at our table to put my book back in my bag.

When he comes back he looks at me and says, “Good job.”

His eyes are really green. I never notice that kind of thing, but they are, and they’re actually really pretty. And I’m so surprised by how serious he is that I say, “Thanks,” forgetting all about my decision to not talk to him. He shrugs and smiles. “I like that shirt,” I add. I’m completely lying to him, and I don’t even know why. Two seconds ago I thought he was a freak. Maybe I still do. But it feels good to talk to someone. If this counts as talking.

We switch rooms for our next class, but we still have Mr. Rodriguez. We just don’t need to be in the lab for English. Some of the courses, like Chem, just cover the same stuff from the school year, or mostly the same. And others, like this one, do different stuff, I guess so we can’t cheat. So instead of reading Macbeth we’re doing Hamlet. I can barely follow it—I didn’t understand a word of Macbeth, either, and Mrs. Thale was a way better teacher. Mr. Rodriguez says we’ll watch the movie when we’re done, but I have a hard enough time with Shakespeare when I have the book and a dictionary and SparkNotes in front of me. Watching the movie will be either torture or a good chance to nap.

Carmichael sits next to me again, and for a second I wonder if I’ve made a mistake talking to him. I know what Brielle would say—he’s a loser, a slacker. She wouldn’t be impressed with the tattoos or almost-bad-boy vibe. She’d call him a Carless, her term for guys who don’t have cars and thus are not worth a second look. Or a first one.

But I’m a loser too.

Mr. Rodriguez starts talking about how Hamlet is too introspective to get revenge right away, how he has to think about everything before he takes action. I sneak a glance at Carmichael, at the infinity symbol inked on the inside of his right wrist. There’s another tattoo just visible under the left sleeve of his T-shirt; looks like a curled snake or something. He’s nodding a little, his book open, like he’s good at Shakespeare. And he’s not actually that bad at Chem. I wonder why he’s here—I mean, I know he skips class a lot, even now, but he seems kind of smart.