The Most Dangerous Place on Earth(44)

After, they lay together on the couch with their legs hanging over the edge, and he wanted nothing in the world but sleep. But she was restless.

“Wait, I’ve got an idea.” She jumped up and ran naked to the bathroom, flesh bare and trembling. Seconds later she returned in white panties, hands up, dental floss stretched thumb to thumb.

It was weird, but he lay back and let her do it—rested his head on the arm of the couch and opened his mouth.

Sarah stood over him, frowning in concentration. Her hair waved over her shoulders and chest. “Close your eyes.”

The glossy ribbon, laced with mint, slid between his teeth and wiggled into his gums. It felt good. It tingled. It hurt.

“Oh!” she said. “You’re bleeding.”

He ran his tongue over his teeth, tasted liquid metal. “Keep going,” he said. He heard her steady breathing as she worked the floss between his teeth, pressing into the tissue.

After all those boring hours at her church, this was when he felt it: love was all around him. It was here, it was in this room. But only if he let it in.

He waved at her to stop, swallowed the traces of blood that had seeped from his gums. “Sit down,” he said. “I have to tell you something.”

“What is it? Are you okay?” She came and sat beside him on the couch.

“I’m, yeah, I’m amazing. I just have to tell you—I don’t want any secrets—”

“You can tell me anything.”

“I know.” He hesitated. Her pupils were wide in the low light. “There’s something you should know about me.”

“What?”

“I want you to know me.”

She smiled. “I do. What are you talking about?”

“No—I mean, you do, but not really. Not everything—”

“What are you trying to say?”

He’d come this far, so he let it all go, telling her everything, rambling, clumsy. “I don’t go to City College. I don’t live in the Tenderloin and I don’t have roommates. I mean, I don’t live in the city, period.” He went on. It took just a minute to unravel it all.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

He had made a mistake. The moment of grace had passed, seemed suddenly stupid, and he heard the door close in her voice. Felt her turning against him. She took her sweater from the arm of the couch and covered herself.

He said, “I live in Mill Valley. I go to high school.”

“High school?”

He nodded. “I come to the city to do the SAT—I take it for people, they pay me and I—”

“Who does? Wait. How old are you?”

“To get the right scores, so they can get into Stanford or whatever—”

“So, you cheat.”

“No. I take it legit. I’m just, like, really good at it. It’s easy for me, and—”

“Easy? To take some rich kid’s allowance so he can cheat his way into college? And you’re, what, sixteen? Oh my God.” Clutching the sweater to her chest, she stood and backed away from him. “Where are my clothes?”

Her skirt was balled up at his feet. He handed it to her. “Sarah, listen, I’m still me.”

“You’re a liar, Nick.” She stepped into the skirt, yanked the sweater over her head. “Of everything you’ve told me in the last three months, how much was true?”

Not much, he realized. “That I care about you, Sarah—that I had a, I don’t know, fuck, like a breakthrough, now, tonight, and it’s all because of you—”

“So none of it. Basically.”

He’d have to play the last card he had left. “That I love you, Sarah, okay? I think I love you. And I think you maybe love me too.”

She hugged her ribs. “I don’t even know you. I don’t have any idea who you are. Do you?”

There was nothing he could say.

“Get out,” she told him.

He put on his jeans and hoodie. Slipped his iPhone into his pocket and looped the earbuds around his neck. She didn’t move. He could feel her shivering, watching.

He opened the front door. Turned back to tell her…he didn’t know what.

Sarah’s eyes were red and wet. She shook her head. “What a fucking waste.”

Then she shut the door behind him; from outside, he heard the bolt slide over and click into the jamb.

Hunching against the cold, he walked to the bus stop two blocks down. He understood that he had lost her. And yet, there was still the Nick that he’d invented—older, freer, living on his own terms. This version of himself, he knew, was not real now, but could be. And that was something to believe in.

—

At lunch on Monday, he found Elisabeth Avarine in the courtyard at school.

“Here,” he told her, holding out three hundred dollars in cash. “Your cut.” She looked confused, so he added, “Thanks for, you know, helping me out. Keeping this between us.”

She cocked her head and stared up at him, like she was running through and vetoing ideas of what to say. Or judging him. Which was why most people had decided she was a stuck-up bitch years ago. “What am I supposed to do with this?” she asked finally.

“Whatever you want.”

She furrowed her brow like this was a brand-new, strange idea. “What would you do?”