None of the Above(42)

“Nice. I don’t do college drama.” Someone crowded in to buy a drink and he moved away from the bar, still facing me. “What’s your name?”

“Lara,” I said, giving him the name of a foreign exchange student from a couple of years back. “What about you?”

“I’m Josh,” he said, holding out his hand. He didn’t give a last name. I didn’t need one.

“Nice to meet you, Josh.” I shook his hand, but lingered an extra second. Long enough to see the spark light up in his eyes.

I put back my drink so he couldn’t see my smile, and when I set it down he nodded his head toward an empty table.

“Let me buy you another drink,” he said.

Vee would have been proud.

An hour later, I was deliciously buzzed and Josh had his hand under my shirt as we made out in a back hallway.

“You are so hot,” he murmured, and it should’ve been a turn-on but instead I just thought about how he was only saying that because he wanted to get laid. Because he was drunk. Because he didn’t know about my f*cking chromosomes.

It was just what I had wanted. But as Josh’s thick fingers roamed down my back and up my miniskirt, the panic at what he would find cut through my Absolut haze. I blurted out the least sexy thing I could think of.

“Shit, I’ve gotta pee so bad. I’m so sorry.” I untangled myself from his arms and ran to the bathroom. All the stalls were full, and there was a pair of girls smoking by the hand dryer. They stared at me with heavily lined eyes as I leaned against the side wall, suddenly overcome with shudders. I could still feel Josh’s fingers sliding into the dimple in my tailbone, and the sickening fear that he’d discover what I was.

When I went back out, I half expected Josh to be gone. Instead, he sat slumped on the ground by a free-travel-brochure rack.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he said, looking like he was about to enter the sad drunk phase. I had wanted to break the mood, but I felt guilty about it, so when he asked me for my number I gave it to him.

After I left, I took a couple of circuits around the block to clear my head before driving, and to process what a near miss it had been. I passed huddles of giggling girls, a trio of guys smoking and telling jokes outside a club. Everyone seemed to understand that strength came in numbers and identity came as part of a group.

I wouldn’t make the same mistake again.





CHAPTER 23


Monday morning I didn’t bother setting an alarm. My dad poked his head in before he left for work.

“I don’t feel up to school today,” I mumbled into my pillow. “I think I have a fever.” I’d had another bad night, and my sheets were on the floor from where I’d tossed them.

“Honey, you need to see someone.” My dad’s eyebrows tilted with anxiety.

“Tomorrow,” I promised. “If things aren’t any better.”

“I’ll call for an appointment right now, just in case.”

“Fine.” At least Aunt Carla worked at Boscov’s on Mondays and I wouldn’t have to worry about her bugging me to rise and shine.

At around ten, my cell phone chirped. Faith, of course.

U feeling any better?

No mention of Facebook, or of what she did the rest of the weekend—had she gone out with Vee on Saturday? I knew I could never answer her text the way she wanted, with a cheery “Oh, everything’s fine, don’t worry about me.” The last thing in the world I wanted to do was burden her with something else to worry about.

Faith’s brother had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder the summer he turned cute, which was right before his senior year and our freshman year. He was on medicine now, and was at a local college, living just fine on his own, but in the bad years Faith had become a total Pollyanna. She still went through each day as if she wanted to supply the whole world with happy juice. No sad faces allowed.

I lay down on my bed with my head nestled in my pillow, mind racing, wondering how I could ever be in a relationship, how I would ever be able to go back to school, and if I would run competitively again.

I stared at my phone, and deleted Faith’s text without responding.

Underneath it, there was one more text that I’d ignored: Josh had messaged me late Sunday night, but I hadn’t had the guts to answer him, either.

Hey, Lara. Wanna hang this Fri?

I couldn’t imagine what a date would look like now. Before every big track meet, at the point where everyone’s nerves were beginning to fray, Coach Auerbach always made us lie down and visualize our races. “‘What the mind of man can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve,’” she told us. Some of the other girls rolled their eyes whenever it was time to do our psychosomatics drill, but I always ran smoother and lighter after running the cadences of a race in my head.

So I closed my eyes and pictured a date with Josh. A movie, maybe, was his style. Some superhero movie with a convenient romance. I saw us making out in the back row of the theater, saw his hands move downward. . . .

I shuddered.

The best thing to do was ignore him; if I messaged him back it would only encourage him. But then I thought of his dejected look when I came back from the bathroom, and threw him a bone.

Things R crazy busy this weekend. Will call you when things R less insane.