Only Alien on the Planet (20 page)

My cheeks flushed. Caulder was sitting back in his chair, watching—half-grinning at me. “It depends,” I said. “Maybe.”

“Depends,” Michael repeated.

“On the circumstances.” I opened my math book. End of discussion.

Caulder was still grinning.

“But you don't know him,” Michael remembered.

“Could we change the subject, please?” I asked.

Michael moved restlessly. “My mother,” he said, now obviously very uncomfortable, “always wants to touch. My arm. My face.” His mouth tightened. “I don't like it.” He looked at Caulder.

Caulder said slowly. “Touching isn't always the right thing. It's perfectly all right to object, if that's the way you feel.”

“In my family,” I said, “we touch a lot. Hugging and stuff. I guess because we don't need a lot of space. Or something.” The way Michael was looking at me, I got flustered. “Some people like it, some don't. I like it, myself. When it's appropriate, I like it.” I faltered to a stop.

Michael kept his eyes on me. “Touching—itself—was not the problem,” he said. Then added, “This morning.” He picked up the magazine and started leafing through it again.

Caulder looked at me and shrugged. Then he opened his book and went about finding his place in it. “Oh,” he said suddenly— using his finger as a bookmark. “I'm supposed to ask you—Hally wants to know if it's okay with you if she comes here with us one of these afternoons. Would that be okay with you?”

There was not much reaction to that.

“She said Marti Avery wants to come with her.”

And then something very weird happened. One of Michael's eyebrows did a microscopic lift, and suddenly he and Caulder were looking at each other—exchanging some kind of energy. I'd never seen anything like it between them before. Instant bond.

“Marti Avery,” Michael repeated, “wants to come?”

“Who's Marti Avery?” I asked them.

The communication between them deepened. And then that one corner of Michael's mouth came up, and Caulder had this grin on his face. Something palpably male was passing between them, and I was shut out of it.

So okay. I might not know who this Avery person was, but I had a fairly good idea
what
she was. I felt a hard, hot flush of hurt.

“
You
tell her,” Caulder directed.

Then both corners of Michael's mouth turned up. He broke the look with Caulder, stared down at his hands—actually grinning. His first grin. For Marti Avery. “She's—” he started, darting a look at Caulder. Then he closed his eyes. His voice had gone ever
so slightly husky. “—the girl who sits under the windows in Mr. Hanson's class. The girl with the long chestnut hair.” It came out in something like a poetic burst. He said the word
chestnut
as though he were tasting it.

Yes. Okay. I knew the one.

“The one who took the Tingen Medal in math last year,” Caulder added.

“I don't really know her,” I said. My own voice had gone somewhat cold.

“Yes,” Michael said, the ghost of his grin lingering. “Neither do I. Not personally.” He looked over at Caulder again and they reestablished contact. “You lie,” Michael said, and that sounded male too.

Caulder put his hands up. “Truth,” he said. He stood up. “Anybody want a Coke?”

“No,” I said, and I went back to my math. My face was burning. I was angry.

“No caffeine,” Michael said.

“You got it,” Caulder said, dropped his book on the table and left.

Michael closed his eyes. His face was not quite back in neutral; he seemed to be working on it. He slid down off the bed and walked around to the other side of it. He leaned against the wall and looked out the window. There were only two leaves left that I could see—more brown now than scarlet. The light from the gray November sky was soft on his face.

I reached into my purse for my calculator. Actually, I had to empty most of my purse out before I could find it. While I was putting
the stuff back, I dropped my library card, which should have been in my wallet, and had to get down on my knees and reach under the bed for it. It was a horribly undignified-feeling position, me on my knees with my behind in the air—especially with visions of the shining, beautiful, nasty, and totally undeserving Marti Avery still shimmering in the electrified air of that room.

I got back up on my chair, picked up my wallet and tried to work the card back into its little plastic pocket. And then I remembered the poem.

It was there, just under my hand. Smitty's poem. Michael's.

I drew it out. I dropped the wallet back into my purse. And then I sat there, holding the poem in my two hands while he stood by the window in silence.

“I have something of yours,” I said finally. I couldn't look at him. I didn't like him very much just then. I stood up and leaned over the bed, putting the poem down on the side closest to him. Then I sat down again and resolutely opened my math book. He picked up the poem and then leaned back against the wall to read it. When he'd finished, he dropped the little paper into the trash. Then he turned back to his window.

“How can you do that?” I asked him, shocked. Somehow, this hurt me almost worse than all that talk about little Ms. Avery.

He looked at me.

“That's a beautiful poem. It doesn't belong in the trash.”

“Caulder found it there,” he said simply.

“But I don't see how you can just throw it away. Especially now.”

Another Michael silence. “I don't need it,” he said.

“I want it then,” I said.

He leaned over, fished it up out of the trash and placed it on the bed for me. He gave me one of his deep, unreadable looks, and then turned back to the window.

“Come see out my window,” he said, not bothering to look at me.

“No, thank you,” I said stiffly.

“You're angry,” he said.

I shrugged, keeping my face cold. I kept trying to make sense of the problems I still held on my lap.

He made his little sound, his neutral, considering sound. “Too bad you don't love me,” he said. He might have been teasing. I looked up and met his eyes. But not for long. I sat back into my chair and studied his box of Kleenex.

“I might have been wrong about that,” I said finally. “It's just hard to tell.”

I couldn't know what he was doing without looking at him, and I didn't want to look at him, and he didn't say anything for a long time.

“I try to understand,” he said finally, speaking almost as if to himself, “what you did at the party. I thought about it. Long time. But I don't—” he paused. He looked at me. “What passed between us?”

“I don't know,” I said, fixing my eyes on my book.

There was another silence.

“If there was not this—this place. And my—” He made a gesture of helplessness. “Another place. Another time. If I asked you for—”

“I don't know,” I said. I was cold all over and my hands were getting shaky.

Then, after a moment, and very, very carefully, he said, “What if I asked you now?”

“Are you sure,” I said coldly, “you wouldn't rather wait for Marti Avery?”

I heard him breathe out one long, quiet breath. I glanced up at him and found him still watching me, that one corner tucked up. “It is complex,” he said. He was offering me sympathy. That took me off guard.

I didn't answer. It was beginning to occur to me that he had just taken a terrible, astonishing risk. And maybe this was what I'd been afraid of all along. He had just given me so very little room to decide for myself.

“Ginny,” he suggested gently. “Come look out my window.”

My heart was pounding in my ears. “I can't,” I pleaded. “I'm scared of you.”

“Scared of me? Or of what I ask?”

“Yes.”

“Yes,” he echoed, sounding a shade mystified. He stood quiet for a moment. I could almost hear his brain processing.

“But you would kiss Pete Zabriski, depending on the circumstances.”

“Pete Zabriski,” I said, hugging myself, “isn't hooked up to a bunch of monitors.”

A moment went by, and then he said softly, “Neither am I.”

I looked up, but I still couldn't meet his eyes. He hadn't moved in all this time. And then he put one hand out. “Come,” he said. “And just look, if you like.” It was as if he drew me to my feet. I was still hugging myself.

“I don't want to get tied up with you, Michael,” I said. “I can't—I'm not responsible enough.”

“So,” he said, seeming very unsure of his verbal ground. “You think, if you do this—you might not like it. And for me, it will—” He put his hand to his heart, meaning pain. “You're afraid that I—won't breathe?” His eyes were sad. “Is that what you think?”

“It wouldn't be the first time,” I pointed out.

“Ginny,” he said patiently. “Understand. I know disappointment. It doesn't kill me. Look. Look at me.” After a moment, I did. He had on that funny little smile. “I promise. If you break my heart. You'll never, never know.”

He surprised a laugh out of me.

“You are no hostage,” he said, making it an assurance, lowering his hand and turning his face back to the outside. Releasing me.

So I went and looked out of his window. The clouds were lowering, getting darker. I saw a girl in a red sweater walking across the almost empty campus.

Michael didn't move. He just waited. And when I looked up at him, he still waited. Then he touched my lips hesitantly with one finger. It was the first time he had ever touched me.

“See?” he said. He smiled at me, a beautiful, rich smile that started in his eyes. It was a funny little kiss after that; neither of us knew quite how to go about it. And it didn't kill him. In fact, after it was done, he put his hand very lightly on my waist and fitted me gently to his side. Then we made a different kind of kiss, not hungry and frightened like that night at Hally's. Very sweet. Comforting.

“I can't
believe
it,” Caulder spat from the doorway. We drew away from each other and turned to him, both of us a little off-balance.

He was scowling down at the cans he was carrying.

“All they had was
diet
.”

C
harlie got to see Michael one more time before it all hit the fan, and that was a good thing for Michael Tibbs. Charlie tends to act on your immune system a little bit the way a good shot of B vitamins will. Just the thing if you're headed for stress.

Of course none of us knew what was going to happen. We spent those next few days in blissful innocence, doing my math and getting to know each other. I'd sit there by the hour, listening to Caulder bantering with Michael over some aspect of political science. They were both world aware and mean-witted, and when they saw things differently—which was more often than not— things could get very entertaining. Above all, Michael seemed to be a moral person. He was always interested in the right thing—which did not always mean politically correct—and in the truth. I guess, because he'd been lied to, truth was very important to him.

He was always on us about what we took for granted: two parents, a family, a house, money, love, respect, education, art. I tried to tell him it wasn't like he'd been totally deprived, himself. And then he'd smile at me and tell me, well, that was right. He wouldn't fight with me. And there was not another moment in those days when Michael and I were alone together.

Every day, we expected the doctor to tell us that Michael was going home. Every day, he seemed happier and stronger, and the shadows behind his eyes didn't seem quite so deep.

Then came this one Friday, early in December. It was one of those days we were running a little late—Caulder had a big date scheduled with Hally, and he was fussing over it, one of those drive-into-the-city-have-dinner-in-a-real-restaurant things. I, having canceled a date myself, wasn't real happy about having to cut the visit short, but Caulder had the car, so what could I do? Anyway, once again, we forgot to check in with the doctor when we got there.

I think I heard the monitor before we even got to Michael's door, but it never crossed my mind that I'd find it hooked up to Michael again.

Caulder stopped in the doorway of the room; I almost piled into him. “What
happened? “
he asked. I tried to see around him.

Michael was flat on his back in the bed with the IV bottle hanging up over his shoulder. It was like somebody had just erased the last two months. He turned his head when we came in and gave us a little wave. He looked very groggy.

Caulder dropped all his books on the table and went straight to the bedside. I took off my coat, watching. Michael made a stupid, druggy smile for Caulder.

“My
gosh
,” Caulder said, glancing up at the IV.

“Surprise,” Michael said. His voice was all muzzy and he blinked very slowly. “Said they'd call.” He sighed. “They didn't.”

“Look,” Caulder said, putting a hand on the bed. “You can tell me not to ask, but I've got to know what happened—”

Michael lifted his hand again. “Fine,” he said. “Me.” He closed his eyes. “Just tired. A little bit tired.” He made another smile for Caulder. “Go home,” he said.

Caulder glanced back over his shoulder at me. He looked sick.

“I can't leave you like this,” he said.

“Listen,” Michael said, slurring. And then he patted Caulder's hand. Caulder looked down at that hand with something like shock. I don't believe Michael had ever touched him before. “Go home,” Michael said, talking through a dream. “Fine.”

Caulder glanced up at the clock.

“Don't lie to me,” he said. “Smitty, I can't stand it.”

Michael let go of his hand. “I don't lie,” he whispered. And he closed his eyes.

Caulder came back to where I was standing. “I can't leave,” he said. “I don't know what to do.”

“I'm here,” I whispered. “You go on. I have a lot of reading to do for Monday. I'll just sit here and do it. My mom will come get me. No reason for both of us to stay.”

He looked back at Michael. Michael hadn't moved. Caulder gritted his teeth.

“Go on,” I said. “It's fine.”

Caulder looked up at the clock again and then checked his watch. “Okay,” he said. “But if you find anything out, you call me.” He picked up his books and backed out the door. He finally waved and trudged off down the corridor. I watched Michael for a moment, then I carefully moved a chair close and sat down. The whole place was very quiet. The monitor blipped
softly away in the corner. I could just hear the wind, sighing outside the window.