Here So Far Away(3)

Which is when I began to worry that he’d heard about my slutty period in eleventh grade. Nothing serious, a bit with the whooring, as Lisa put it: three guys at East Riverview, our rival high school. I’d wanted to lose my virginity with minimal fuss. Not that I wouldn’t have preferred it to be with a special someone who could make it beautiful and meaningful and full of harps and fireworks, but since there was no special someone, and not much chance of one appearing out of the fog, I wanted to get it over with. That led to crashing some parties on the other side of the county line and meeting Leon, whose most winning quality was that he was someone I didn’t have to see every day. And that led to a couple of bonus boys to confirm that the problem with sex wasn’t Leon’s undescended testicle but that sex was overrated. At least, sex with guys from East Riverview.

The new moon was bright in the sky as Joshua pulled me close. I’d made out with lots of boys, but hadn’t felt anything like real love, not since Han Solo. I’d convinced myself I wasn’t built for it, that I’d never understand a ballad. Now it was like every line of our story had been writing us to this moment by the sea, the formerly heartless girl in the arms of the perfect guy, who had been in front of her the whole time.

Soft at first, it was a whisper of a kiss, like a strawberry secret.

And then: like getting rammed with a deli-sized bologna.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, after audibly desuctioning my very wet mouth from his and dabbing it with my jacket sleeve. “I’m still hung up on Leon.”

The name just slipped out.

“Leon.”

“You don’t know him.”

“The guy from East Riverview?”

“Um . . .”

“The guy who used to go to basketball games dressed like a woodchuck?”

I’d forgotten about that. Leon had been East Riverview’s mascot in junior high. Or was it that East Riverview didn’t have an official mascot but he came to the games dressed as a woodchuck anyway? Even after they asked him to stop.

“Different Leon,” I said. “I’m sorry, I think you got the wrong idea.”

He was swallowing a lot. Oh, he was going to cry. Oh, he was crying, tears running down his cheeks, ragged breaths. He sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. I started casting around for a piece of driftwood so I could do the humane thing.

“Joshua—”

He was up and running, his giant footprints a good six, seven feet apart in the sand. After I smothered the fire, I found him in his car, face buried in his arms against the steering wheel. He mumbled something that sounded like “Just get in.”

We sped down into the valley much too fast, gravel pummeling the car like bullets. “I love this car,” Joshua said. “I love this car. I’m going to frickin’ die in this car.”

“We’re in this car!”

He swerved severely and I screamed. “Rabbit,” he said.

We didn’t speak again until he pulled up in front of my house. “Joshua . . .” The light in my parents’ bedroom snapped off. “Let’s pretend this never happened. I promise not to tell anyone if you don’t, okay?”

He tried to smile, eyes glistening with a fresh tide of woe that he was barely holding back.

“Okay, good. We’re going to have the best year. You’ll see.”

I made the mistake of deciding the phlegmy sound was Joshua Spring agreeing with me.





Two


“Leon,” Lisa said. “Of the thin lips. And one ball. Really.”

We were having tea with Bill and Natalie in our usual booth at the Grunt, an old-school diner with blueberry-colored walls and mismatched dishes from every decade but the one we were in. Nat was leaning on Lisa, still fragile after her bout of food poisoning, which hadn’t stopped Bill from ordering a jumbo root beer float and hoovering it down in front of her. Not that Nat ever looked sturdy. She was skinny, white blond, and tree-limbed, all long bones and sharp corners.

Lisa eased her off and scooted out from behind the table to come around to my side. She began sniffing me like a police dog searching for clues: down my hairline, along my cheekbone, around my ear, up again. She always knew when I was holding out on her, and she loved inventing new ways to make me crack. I did not flinch, I did not flinch, I did not flinch—until her tongue darted out and flicked my nose.

“Ugch,” I said, palming her face away. “Alright.”

“Alright?”

“Alright.”

“Say it.”

“I’m not hung up on Leon.”

Bill pawed a paper napkin out of the dispenser and passed it to me. “Keep licking. See what else she says.”

Lisa slid back into the booth beside Nat. “First of all, I can’t believe you thought anyone would buy that. And second—me and you, Keith and Joshua, two best friends dating two best friends? Don’t you get how perfect that would be?”

“You could date us,” Bill said, indicating himself and Nat.

I didn’t like it when Lisa called us best friends in front of the others, though it was true. You might think of your friends in tiers, but you don’t have to remind them of it.

“You’re my fourth–best friend at best,” Nat said to Bill, lowering her head to the table.

He wagged his straw at her like he was erasing what she’d said. “On the bright side, George has just become the big fish that every guy in school wants to haul into his boat, if you know what I mean. If you don’t know what I mean, I mean this bitch, right here, is now so ungettable that everyone wants to get her. And if you don’t know what I mean by get—”