Turtles All the Way Down(36)

I pulled away.

“You okay?” he asked.

I nodded. “I just, just need a little air.” I sat up, turned away from him, pulled out my phone, and searched, “do bacteria of people you kiss stay inside your body,” and quickly scrolled through a couple pseudoscience results before getting to the one actual study done on the subject. Around eighty million microbes are exchanged on average per kiss, and “after six-month follow-up, human gut microbiomes appear to be modestly but consistently altered.”

His bacteria would be in me forever, eighty million of them, breeding and growing and joining my bacteria and producing God knows what.

I felt his hand on my shoulder. I spun around and squirmed away from him. My breath running away from me. Dots in my vision. You’re fine he’s not even the first boy you’ve kissed eighty million organisms in me forever calm down permanently altering the microbiome this is not rational you need to do something please there is a fix here please get to a bathroom. “What’s wrong?”

“Uh, nothing,” I said. “I, um, just need to use the restroom.”

I pulled my phone back out to reread the study but resisted the urge, clicked it shut and slid it back into my pocket. But no, I had to check to see if it had said modestly altered or moderately altered. I pulled out my phone again, and brought up the study. Modestly. Okay. Modestly is better than moderately. But consistently. Shit.

I felt nauseated and disgusting, but also pathetic; I knew how I looked to him. I knew that my crazy was no longer a quirk, a simple matter of a cracked finger pad. Now, it was an irritation, like it was to Daisy, like it was to anyone who got close to me.

I was cold, but started to sweat anyway. I zipped my jacket up to my chin as I walked toward the house. I didn’t want to run, but every second counted. Needed to get to a bathroom. Davis opened the back door for me and pointed me down a hallway toward a guest bathroom. I closed the door and locked it, shutting myself inside, and leaned against the countertop. I unzipped my jacket and stared at myself in the mirror. I took off the Band-Aid, opened up the cut with my thumbnail, then washed my hands and put on a new Band-Aid. I looked in the drawers beneath the sink for some mouthwash, but they didn’t have any, so in the end, I just swished cold water around in my mouth and spit it out.

There, are we good? I asked myself, and I responded, One more time to make sure, and so I swished and gargled more water, spit it out. I patted my sweaty face dry with some toilet paper and walked back into the golden light of Davis’s mansion.

He motioned for me to sit down, and put his arm around me. I didn’t want his microbiota near me, but I let him keep his arm there, because I didn’t want to seem like a freak. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah. Just, like, a little panicky.”

“Was it something that I did? Should I do—”

“No, it’s not about you.”

“You can tell me.”

“It’s really not. I . . . just, kissing freaked me out a little, I guess.”

“Okay, so no kissing yet. That’s no problem.”

“It will be,” I said. “I have these . . . thought spirals, and I can’t get out of them.”

“Turning and turning in the tightening gyre,” he said.

“I’m . . . this, like . . . this doesn’t get better. You should know that.”

“I’m not in a rush.”

I leaned forward, looking at the hardwood floor. “I’m not gonna un-have this is what I mean. I’ve had it since I can remember and it’s not getting better and I can’t have a normal life if I can’t kiss someone without freaking out.”

“It’s okay, Aza. Really.”

“You might think that now, but you won’t think that forever.”

“But it’s not forever,” he said. “It’s now. Can I get you anything? Glass of water or something?”

“Can we . . . can we just watch a movie or something?”

“Yes,” he said. “Absolutely.” He offered me his hand, but I got up on my own. As we walked toward the basement steps, Davis said, “Here at the Pickett residence, we have both kinds of movies—Star Wars and Star Trek. What would you prefer?”

“I’m not really a fan of space movies,” I said.

“Great, then we’ll watch Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, forty percent of which is set right here on earth.” I looked up at him and smiled, but I could not cinch the lasso on my thoughts, which were galloping all around my brain.

—

We walked down to the basement, where I tapped the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel to make the bookcase open. I sat down in one of the overstuffed leather recliners, grateful for the armrests between the seats. Davis appeared after a while with a Dr Pepper, placed it in the cup holder by my armrest, and sat down next to me. “How do you manage to be best friends with Daisy without liking space operas?”

“I’ll watch them with her; I just don’t love them,” I said. He’s trying to treat you like you’re normal and you’re trying to respond like you’re normal but everyone involved knows you are definitely not normal. Normal people can kiss if they want to kiss. Normal people don’t sweat like you. Normal people choose their thoughts like they choose what to watch on TV. Everyone in this conversation knows you’re a freak.