You Know Me Well(42)

Violet gives the woman fifteen bucks and Mark stands up, but it takes me a moment longer to gather myself. Finally, I do. I try to call back my skepticism, but I can’t muster it. Whatever this just was, it feels real, and when I turn around I can see that it’s real for Violet as well.

She’s staring at me, her sadness intensified.

“It sounds like you have some things to figure out,” she says. “I don’t want to get in the way of them.”

I should tell her she has it wrong. I should lie and claim I don’t believe in any of it. I should say, Even if I did believe it, you could never be in my way. I want to go back to her studio, to the moment when she said she thought something was waiting for her here. I was, I should be telling her. I still am.

But I take too long to say anything, and she gives my silence meaning. She nods. She forces the saddest smile.

“Let me know when you’ve figured it out,” she says, and then she turns from us and walks back toward home.





WEDNESDAY





15





MARK


“Do you think it’s him?” I ask, for the eleventh time in five minutes.

It’s before school the next morning. We’re sitting on the hood of Katie’s car, sipping coffee and watching the boys head into school.

“Mackenzie Whittaker?”

“I’ll bet behind that rough-and-tumble science-fair exterior, he’s a kitten. Not at all who I think he is.”

“What would the two of you talk about?”

“Science. We’d talk about science. Hot and heavy science. Earth science.”

“How about him?”

She’s nodding toward Ted Lee, a guy on my baseball team.

“Straight.”

“You sure?”

“Straight.”

“You’ve given this some thought, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” I admit. “I’ve given this some thought. Some of the thoughts were pretty detailed. But the answer remains the same. He’s straight.”

“I hate that word. Straight. At the very least, those of us who are nonstraight should get to be called curvy. Or scenic. Actually, I like that: ‘Do you think she’s straight?’ ‘Oh no. She’s scenic.’”

“You know what I hate?”

“What?”

I glance at Ted, who’s looking really good. “I hate that we start everything with this qualifying round. Is he or isn’t he? If I was into girls, I wouldn’t have that. I’d just be able to go for it, since the odds would be in my favor. And if the girl happened to be scenic, it would just be, like, oops.”

“But what if the guy you think is straight is not who you think he is.” Katie says this as if she’s in fortune-teller-training school.

“You know,” I say, leaning back on her front windshield and taking a sip of coffee, “we need to have our own morning show. Just you and me on the hood of a car, talking about everyone who passes by. It could be massive.”

“How about Diego? He’s scenic.”

Even though I know who she’s talking about, I raise my eyes in his direction. Then I regret it, because he sees, and an awkward moment passes before he looks away.

“Oh,” Katie says. “Interesting.”

“He had a crush on me,” I explain. “Like, for a while. Most of this year. He asked me out. Three times.”

“And why did you say no? He’s awesome.”

“Because I was seeing someone else. Only, I couldn’t tell Diego I was seeing someone else. So I didn’t have a choice. I assholed him.”

“You what?”

“I put up a total asshole front. I blew him off. I pretended he wasn’t asking what he was asking. I made it seem like I was a conceited jerk, so he wouldn’t think there was anything wrong with him. I tried so hard to keep him in the friendzone. You have no idea.”

I don’t tell her he cried. That wouldn’t be fair. But he did. The third time was the worst. I don’t understand, he kept saying. And what could I do? I just want you as a friend, over and over until even I was having a hard time understanding it. Say anything enough times and it’s only words.

“I’m sorry,” Katie says.

“Not your fault.”

“Not your fault, either.”

“But it is, isn’t it?”

“And Ryan’s. Indirectly Ryan’s.”

“But he never asked me to do that, you know? I think he would have been happy if I’d gone out with Diego. He would’ve been thrilled. And it would have killed me, to see him that happy for that reason.”

Katie does some math in her head. “So the whole time you’ve been with Ryan, there hasn’t been anybody else?”

“There hasn’t been anybody else ever. He’s it. My only. How about you?”

“You know that stereotype that lesbians get married after the first date?”

“Is that a stereotype?”

“Committed to commitment—that’s us. Only I seem to be the control to that experiment with my placebo heart. I rarely make it through the first date. The first half hour, maybe. Then … I just don’t like them much. And I don’t like me very much when I’m trying to impress them. So I stop. Escape when I can. And, of course, long painfully for the one girl I can’t have.”