Tease(27)

“Hey!” she yells. She pounds on the roof of the car, making me jump. “It’s the effing tundra out here! Let’s go!”

I yank my keys out of the ignition and jump out of the car, feeling the wind again. It stings my eyes and clears everything away with one violent whoosh, leaving nothing but two regular girls, running across a gray parking lot, puffy coats flapping behind us, laughing at how stupid we probably look, but not caring. Not a care in the world.





August


CARMICHAEL SLIDES INTO the desk next to mine on Friday, waving his copy of Hamlet at me like he’s saying hello with it.

“Did you finish?” I ask him.

“Yeah, of course,” he says. “Why, you?”

I shake my head. I finally got the hang of the language, even got into the story a little bit, thanks to the internet’s help. But Hamlet is so depressed all the time, and everyone keeps dying in these awful ways. And then Ophelia drowns in the river, and Hamlet says he loved her the whole time, even though he treated her like crap when she was alive, and I just . . . it was just too freaking awful.

I don’t say all that to Carmichael—for once I seem able to actually choose what comes out of my mouth around him. I just shake my head again and say, “It’s too sad.”

He raises his eyebrows at me. Then he holds his copy up again and points to the word tragedy on the cover.

“Shut up,” I say, and I reach out to slap his arm. It’s playful—maybe even flirty—and to my shock he jumps back, like I’ve actually hurt him. But he’s just playing along. Maybe even flirting.

“I could help you study,” he says. “If you want.”

Just then Mr. Rodriguez walks in, right as Carmichael accidentally knocks his book off his desk, onto the floor between us. The slap it makes on the linoleum isn’t even that noticeable amid all the paper-shuffling and bag-zipping in the room, but Mr. Rodriguez shouts, “Everyone please get your books off the floor and start taking notes!” I roll my eyes at Carmichael, but he’s facing the front of the room, all model-student mode. I don’t get him at all.

I try to concentrate on the Hamlet review, because I actually am worried about the test on Monday, but I keep thinking about what Carmichael said. Does he mean it? I really am starved for male attention, I guess, or just a friend. Or just something to do besides going to Natalie’s or Teresa’s.

It isn’t a lab day in Chem and we only have one other section, foreign language; I’m in French while Carmichael’s in Spanish. By the end of the day I figure I should get in my car and leave before I do or say anything else idiotic, but just when I’ve made it to the trunk of my Honda, there he is again, standing on his bike pedals and coasting over slowly.

“So I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” he says.

“That’s gonna be quite a trick, since tomorrow is Saturday,” I say.

He just nods, acknowledging my stupid joke without laughing at it. “Right, that’s why I’ll meet you at your house. You live on Grandview, right?”

I have no idea how he knows this, but I nod.

“So, seven?”

“Are you sure?” I say, and quickly add, “Because I really suck at Shakespeare. Really. I keep getting Polonius and Claudius mixed up.”

Carmichael has been riding his bike in a circle this whole time, looking down at the pavement, his face mostly hidden by his hair. But when I finish talking, he stops and sets his feet on the ground, looking up at me.

“Well, then you really do need my help. You have something we can stream one of the movies on? Or Netflix?”

I nod.

“Great. We’ll watch it, and we’ll figure out how you can keep two totally different characters straight, okay?”

“Okay,” I say, embarrassed but inexplicably happy. It’s a strange kind of relief to have someone be bossy with me—someone who isn’t a lawyer, I mean.

He nods again and then pedals away, and I stand there, watching him go, wondering why the hell he’s bothering with all this. But then I shake off the thought and get in my car. I can’t worry about that. I have to just enjoy having someone to talk to. While it lasts.

“Alex! Where are you?” I shout when I walk in the door. Mom’s not home yet, I can tell—no other car in the garage—but there are boy socks all over the first floor. Seriously, I think my brothers have some kind of sock-generating machine in their rooms. And another machine that makes them all dirty and throws them all over the house. Two boys could not possibly produce that many dirty socks and distribute them so widely in the course of just a few days. I’m not as good at math as I used to be, but I know that doesn’t add up.

“Tommy?” I call, less certainly. Tommy’s been over at his friends’ houses a lot lately. I think. He’s just never around, as if he’s the world’s first twelve-year-old emancipated minor. On the one hand, it’s good—only one brother to feed and yell at about socks. On the other, I kind of miss him. Because whenever I do see him, Tommy’s always really quiet. Like he’s not there, even when he is.

I pause for a second, throwing my bag on the floor next to the stairs, and consider my middle sibling. He’s been quiet since . . . since he got back from that last camp. Maybe he didn’t like it?

I hear laughter from the kitchen, so I kick off my flip-flops next to my bag and make my way back there. There’s no actual kitchen door, but you can’t see the little nook table from the front hall, so when I get to the kitchen I’m completely unprepared for what I find. Or who I find, more accurately.