A Very Large Expanse of Sea(27)

“What do you mean?”

“I feel like everyone around me is dead,” he said, and his anger surprised me. “Like no one thinks anymore. Everyone seems satisfied with the most depressing shit. I don’t want to be like that.”

“I wouldn’t want to be like that either.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think you’re in any danger of that.”

“Oh,” I said, surprised. “Thanks.”

And then he said, “Have you ever had a boyfriend?”

—and I felt the moment freeze all around me.

I had never had a boyfriend, I said to him, no, I had not.

“Why not?”

“Um.” I laughed. “Wow, where do I even begin with this? First of all, I’m pretty sure my parents would be horrified if I ever so much as intimated that I had feelings for a boy, because I think they still think I’m five.

“Second of all, I’ve never really lived in one place long enough for something like that to play out, and um, I don’t know, Ocean”—I laughed again—“the truth is, guys don’t, uh—they don’t really ask me out.”

“Well what if a guy did ask you out?”

I didn’t like where this was going.

I didn’t want to act out this scenario. Honestly, I never thought it would get this far. I was so certain Ocean would never be interested in me that I didn’t bother to consider how bad it would be if he were.

I thought Ocean was a nice guy, but I also thought he was naive.

Maybe I could try letting go of my anger—maybe I could try being kinder for a change—but I knew that even the most optimistic attitude wouldn’t change the structure of the world we lived in. Ocean was a nice, handsome, heterosexual white guy, and the world expected great things from him. Those things did not involve falling for a highly controversial Middle Eastern girl in a headscarf. I had to save him from himself.

So I didn’t answer his question.

Instead, I said, “I mean, it’s not a frequent occurrence in my life, but it actually has happened before. When I was in middle school my brother went through a phase where he was a total and complete asshole, and he’d go through my diary and find out about these rare, brave souls and hunt them down. He’d scare the shit out of them.” I paused. “It did wonders for my love life, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

And I don’t know what I was expecting him to say, exactly, but when Ocean said, “You keep a diary?”

I realized I hadn’t been expecting him to say that.

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah.”

“That’s really cool.”

And I knew then, somehow, that I needed to end this conversation. Something was happening; something was changing and it was scaring me.

So I said, a little suddenly, “Hey, I should probably get going. It’s late and I still have a lot of homework to do.”

“Oh,” he said. And I could tell, even in that small word, that he sounded surprised, and maybe—maybe—disappointed.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Sure,” he said.

“Okay.” I tried to smile, even though he couldn’t see me. “Bye.”

After we hung up, I collapsed onto my bed and closed my eyes. This dizziness was in my marrow, in my mind.

I was being stupid.

I knew better, and I’d texted him anyway, and now I was confusing this poor kid who didn’t have a clue what he was wading into. This whole thing probably seemed simple to him: Ocean thought I was pretty and he’d told me so; I hadn’t told him to go to hell, so here we were. He was trying, maybe, to ask me out? Asking out a girl he thought was pretty probably seemed like an obvious move to him, but that just wasn’t something I wanted to happen. That was drama I didn’t want, had no interest in.

Wow, I was stupid.

I’d let my guard down. I did that thing—the thing where I allowed cute boys to get in my head and mess with my common sense—and I’d let my conversation with Jacobi distract me from the bigger picture here.

Nothing had changed.

I’d made a mistake by opening myself up like this. This was a mistake. I had to stop talking to Ocean. I had to dial this back.

Switch gears.

And fast.





14

Fourteen

I bailed on Mr. Jordan’s class four days in a row.

I’d gone to my academic counselor and told her I wanted to withdraw from my Global Perspectives class and she asked why and I said I didn’t like the class, that I didn’t like Mr. Jordan’s teaching methods, and she said it was too late to drop the class, that I’d have a W on my transcript and that colleges didn’t like that, and I shrugged and she frowned and we both stared at each other for a minute. Finally she said she’d have to notify Mr. Jordan that I’d be withdrawing from the class. She said he’d have to approve the action, was I aware of this, and I said, “Yeah, that’s fine.”

And I just stopped going to Mr. Jordan’s class. This worked well enough in the beginning, but on the fourth day—it was now Thursday—he found me at my locker.

He said, “Hey. I haven’t seen you in class in a couple of days.”

I glanced at him. Slammed my locker shut; spun the combination. “That’s because I’m not taking your class anymore.”