Here So Far Away(23)

“Bill? Sweetie?” Lisa was saying. “Enough with the plaid.”

“Jeremy’s wearing a plaid shirt today. And Doug.”

“Grunge and new-wave Cat Stevensy. You’re doing late-wave Bryan Adamsy.”

“What’s grunge?” I said.

Nat sighed. “How are you cool?”

Our table was the long one at the center of the room. From that vantage point I could keep half an eye on Matty and his friend Tim, tucked into the corner as far away from the Elevens as possible, while also watching Keith in the other corner acting out an elaborate pantomime to Lisa of: Your best friend and my best friend can’t sit at a table together, so I’m going to sit over here with Joshua and Christina, but meet you on the steps after school, and do you have my calculator? Subtle. Meanwhile, Joshua was acting super interested in setting his digital watch.

“I could go,” I said.

“Why?” Lisa said. “I’ll see him later.”

“Could you go?” Nat said to Bill. “Find Tracy? Girl talk. Thanks.”

“But—”

She turned to Lisa. “Keep facing this way. I need George to check something for me.”

Bill picked up his tray. “Since I’m invisible, I’m going to go look down some shirts.”

“That was harsh,” I said as he left. “He’s actually pretty good at girl talk.”

Nat reached over and squeezed my arm. “I need you to check out Doug. In the milk line. Does he seem okay?”

“You mean sober? How can you tell? Bill said he smoked a sack of pot before gym class last week and was the last man standing in dodgeball.”

“Can you keep a secret?”

“Always.”

“I know you can. You might be a liar, but you’re also a fucking fortress. I meant Lisa.”

Pink blotches appeared on Lisa’s cheeks. “Of course.”

“We hooked up,” Nat said. “Doug and me. Went back to his house after the shack party. His parents were away.”

“Oh my god!” Lisa and I exclaimed at once. We swiveled around and gave Doug a good, hard gander as he crossed the room to the table next to ours. He had a loping walk, longish hair that curled under his earlobes, somehow avoiding Prince Valiant territory, and an ever-present multicolored woven hat that clashed with everything else he put on. His parents were Come From Aways, city hippies who’d bought a vegetable farm to get back to the land, and he was the wiry you get when you eat a lot of salads and carob and weed.

“He’s cute,” Lisa said. “I don’t even mind the hat.”

“There’s something very . . . amiable about him,” I said. Also pained. He winced when he sat down, gave us a weak smile as he struggled to open his milk carton.

Nat shoved a huge wad of sandwich into her mouth, like nothing in the world were more interesting than her tuna on white. “I bruised him. All over. He’s covered in bruises.” She sounded as though she were talking through a pillow.

“Didn’t know you were such a wildcat,” I said.

“We were only fooling around, but I’m so bony that I, like, jabbed him nearly to death.”

“Do you like him?” Lisa said.

Nat swallowed. “I don’t not like him. It’s more like, you’ve got Keith. And George has—everyone else, apparently. I wanted to be with someone, even for one night.”

“Oh, Nat. That’s a Very Special Degrassi episode,” I said.

“It’s true. And what bugs me is, I think I like sex, and you don’t.”

I wasn’t sure what that had to do with it, but couldn’t argue with her. I liked sex in theory. I liked it well enough, you know, on my own. But my track record with guys. There was the buff jock who looked like an Adonis but whose firm, freakishly smooth muscles were about as cozy to curl up with as a pencil eraser. The scraggy guy who had a tattoo of the cross that took up the whole of his back and prayed under his breath the whole time. And Leon. Who said he had “enchanted fingers” then prodded me like he was trying to find an elevator button in the dark. Meanwhile, poor Nat. Lisa and I always thought she had an unrequited crush on Sid that kept her from finding someone else, but it was the one thing she was never honest about.

“You and me, we’re not going to find the right boys here.” I pushed my untouched bagged lunch aside so I could climb on my giant soapbox. “Who cares? You get good grades and will probably get into whatever university you want. Isn’t that what’s important?”

“Are you high?” Nat said. “I want a boyfriend.”

“Guess I must be,” I said. “Because I thought what mattered was getting out of the valley and starting our real lives. But that must be the drugs talking. Yup, that must be because I’m so, so high.”

Lisa was frantically gesturing, and I turned to see Mr. Humphreys standing behind me. “Kidding, sir.”

He took out a penlight that he apparently kept in his pocket for such occasions and shone it directly into my eyes. He snapped it off. “How many fingers?” he said, holding up his hand.

I was trying to blink away the spots from the light.

“How many?!”

“Uh, three?”

That seemed to satisfy him. He went over to Doug, sniffed the milk carton on his tray, and dragged him out of the cafeteria by the ear.