Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac(51)

James was at work, so the car wasn’t even there. I asked Raina if I could go look in his room, and she said to “be her guest.” Raina had not been particularly warm, but James said it wasn’t about me and I shouldn’t take offense.

I looked under James’s bed. Improbable as it may seem, my book was there: the mythic first place I had looked. As I was taking it out, my eyes alighted on something else.

It was a still-sealed envelope from the University of Southern California, where James had applied early. It was postmarked December 13. James had left it unopened for seven weeks. It seemed a little, for lack of a better word, crazy. I mean, I knew that he had really wanted to go to the film program there, but was he so afraid of not being accepted that he wouldn’t even open the envelope?

The right thing would have been to leave it there, but I didn’t do that. I picked it up and put it in my pocket. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it, but I couldn’t bear the thought of it lying there under his bed.

He called me after work that night. He said that Raina had mentioned my visit and that he was sorry he’d missed me.

I told him that I’d been looking for my book when I’d accidentally stumbled upon the letter.

James grew deathly quiet.

“I could open it if you want,” I said.

He didn’t say anything.

“Are you that afraid of not getting in?”

He told me to mind my own goddamn business, and then he hung up on me. You could say that that was our first fight. He had never even raised his voice to me before. I suppose he was right to yell at me.

At school the next day, I didn’t see him until lunch. I handed him the still-unopened letter and apologized if I had violated his privacy.

James took the letter. Without a word, he opened it. It was an acceptance. He set it on the ground, as if he couldn’t care less. It started to blow away, so I put my boot heel on it.

“It’s great news,” I said. “It’s what you wanted.” I hugged him, but his posture was rigid. “What is it, Jims?”—that was my nickname for him—“Why aren’t you happier?”

James explained, in an odd, low voice, “I hadn’t been afraid that I wouldn’t be accepted. I’d been afraid that I would.”

I deluded myself into thinking he was talking about me—how we’d just met and now we’d be on two separate coasts or something like that.

By the time lunch ended, the coolness between us hadn’t quite thawed.

After school, I was taking books from my locker when Ace Zuckerman came up to me. I hadn’t spoken to him for months other than an occasional nod in the hallway. As I was still preoccupied with James and the whole acceptance business, I wasn’t in the mood to talk to him now either.

Ace was captain of the tennis team that year, and he wanted to know if I was going to go out for it.

I said that I hadn’t planned on it.

Ace was outraged. In addition to hair, the guy was incredibly passionate about tennis. “Well, you’re a great player, and it would be a real shame for you not to play because of me.”

“You?” I laughed. “Don’t flatter yourself. I just don’t want to play tennis anymore.”

“You love tennis, Naomi. How can you not remember that?” Ace was standing really close to my face when, suddenly, something pulled him away. It was James, his eyes wild and blazing.

“Get the hell off of her!”

I tried to tell James that Ace and I had only been discussing tennis, but it was too late. These things tend to take on a momentum of their own.

Although James was wiry, he was not weak. He pulled Ace off of me and threw him against a locker. He punched him.

Ace hit him back, but mainly just to get James to stop attacking him. “You tool,” Ace said. “We were only talking about tennis.”

As I was trying to pull James off of Ace, James accidentally elbowed me in the eye. I knew without even seeing it that there was going to be a bruise.

Out of nowhere, Will Landsman got between Ace and James. I didn’t even know he was in the hallway. “Everybody calm down,” Will yelled. “You’ve just elbowed Naomi, you jerks!” Will shoved James with both his palms.

At this point, the assistant headmaster came out of her office to break it up.

James got a five-day suspension, and Ace, because he hadn’t started it, three. Will and I both got one day of detention each, even though we’d only been bystanders. When I got home, my dad was pissed. He worried that my head couldn’t take any more trauma.

“Who started it?” Dad demanded.

“I don’t know.” Of course it had been James, but I didn’t want to tell him that. I repeated what I had thought at the time, “These things take on a momentum of their own.”

Will and I served our detention together the next afternoon. We had to go pick up trash around the football field.

“This sucks. I was trying to break it up. I shouldn’t even be here,” he said.

“Who asked you to get involved? I was handling it.”

“Nice shiner,” Will muttered. “I have a million things to do. I’ve got to lock all the club pages. I have to decide who I’m sending to Philadelphia for Nationals. And, as you know, we are understaffed.”

“We all have things to do,” I said.