Breakfast Served Anytime (17 page)

“I don’t want to be swept off my feet,” I said.
I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow than a man swear he loves me.

“Whatever, Glo.” Jessica yawned, drifting. “Dude, I will give you a million dollars if you get up and shut the blinds. Get that crazy moon out of my eyes.”

I climbed out of bed and shut the blinds against the light of the moon, but not before my mind took a picture of it,
click
. In seconds or minutes, it would be July, but in those final moments of the last day of June, I knew for sure I had been handed one of those days — an ordinary, extraordinary Favorite Day. I had cried but outdone my crying with laughing, and although the day was shot through the middle with pain, it was lit, in the end, with grace. The kind of day when you say to yourself,
That was it, that’s when it happened, that’s when I understood
. The kind of day to play on repeat behind your eyes at night.

Here’s the thing about writing letters: You have to be in the mood for that stuff. I’d started about four million letters to Alex but hadn’t finished any of them. Maybe Jessica was right. Maybe Alex was a bad idea. My confusion was only compounded by the general air of
amour
that had suddenly settled over Morlan like some sort of sticky, cotton-candy fog: Geek Camp wasn’t even halfway over and relationships were sprouting up — and in some cases had already bloomed and died — all over the place. It was mystifying, entertaining, and gross. The Kissing Tree had lost its charm; the whole campus had become one big Kissing Tree, with people making out indiscriminately around every corner and beneath every eave.

“New rule,” Chloe said, eyeing us over a chocolate milk shake. “Nobody at this table is going to go out, make out, or otherwise dally romantically with anybody else at this table. Got it?”

Calvin nodded brightly. I shot him a look. “Way to be enthusiastic about rejecting us, there, Cal.”

“I’m all for friendship,” Calvin said. “It’s the way to go.”

“Chloe, does this mean we’re breaking up?” Mason intoned in mock-horror. Chloe blew her straw wrapper at him. “Please,” she said. “You are so not my type.”

“What’s wrong with me?”

“Well, you’re a guy, for one thing.”

This overdue bit of information hovered lightly above the table for a second and finally caught on Calvin’s left eyebrow, which hitched ever so slightly.

“Congratulations, Cal.” Chloe grinned. “You’re actual, true friends with a real-life lesbian. You did it without even trying!”

Calvin blushed deeper than ever. “Cool,” he said.

“So what brought this on?” Mason asked, distracted as usual. He was busy photographing the contents of Chloe’s bag. On the table, lined up in a neat row, he had arranged a silver skull ring, a cough drop, a tube of mascara, and a Magic 8 Ball, which Chloe told us she had purchased for fifty cents at the legendary World’s Longest Yard Sale.
Still Life with Chloe’s Luggage
.

“What brought what on? The gay thing?”

“No, the rule thing.”

Chloe sighed and gazed skyward. “I just think this campus has gone nuts, that’s all. I mean, my roommate’s been preaching the gospel at me since the second I met her, trying to save my soul and all that, but she doesn’t seem to mind falling into bed with Eric.”

“Wait a minute. Eric the resident adviser?”

“Eric the RA.” Chloe nodded. “Twenty-year-old Eric the RA, he of the overzealous spray tan. But don’t worry, it’s cool, it’s a
God Match
.”

Nervously, I scanned Calvin’s and Mason’s faces for signs of agitation. The conflict with Jessica and Sonya was still heavy on my conscience, and I worried that our little foursome might implode in the face of someone’s hidden religious agenda. GoGo was right: It is not wise to go around casually yak-yakking about religion and politics. I picked up Chloe’s 8 Ball and gave it a shake.
Reply Hazy, Try Again
.

“A God Match,” Mason repeated. “Sounds incendiary.”

Calvin shifted uncomfortably and rubbed his eyes. “Talking about God, it’s like trying to . . . I don’t know. It’s like trying to catch a blue butterfly. To nail something beautiful like that to the wall.” Calvin paused to sip from his milk. I exchanged a glance with Chloe: This was an example of what the two of us had started referring to as a “Calvinism”; i.e., the sort of startling kernel of wisdom and deep feeling that Calvin would quietly toss out after any number of minutes or hours of complete silence. The boy contained multitudes. “My roommate wants me to go to church with him next Sunday,” he continued. Church. I kept forgetting that Geek Camp provided us with the option of worshipping at the college’s chapel on Sundays.

“Are you gonna go?” Chloe asked. “Because you know, you guys can always come to visit me in God’s very own Boone County. Never mind that the place is named for a freaking historically immortal fron
tiers
man; now our claim to fame is the Creation Museum! Come one, come all to see the Bible in megatronic, supersonic —”

“Chloe,” Calvin said evenly, “are you going to let me talk? I mean, are you going to let me answer your question or not?”

“I’m sorry,” Chloe said, chastened. We watched her rummage in her brain for a second. “What’d I ask you, again?”

“Am I going to church with my roommate next Sunday.”

“Right. Well. Are you?”

Calvin shrugged. “Why not? Maybe I’ll learn something. Then maybe I can take him to my church, see what he thinks.”

Chloe’s steel trap of a mind seized on that immediately. “Wait a minute. Didn’t you tell us a while back, right here at this table, that you don’t
go
to church?”

“The farm,” Calvin said, clear-eyed, direct. It was the most confident I’d ever seen him be with us. “That’s my church.”

Nobody said anything for a few seconds, and Calvin rapped his knuckles on the table, two swift wrap-’em-up knocks. “Let’s go,” he said. “I’ve got to go pick up Holyfield.”

Holyfield, as it turned out, had all but officially become Calvin’s dog. Somehow X had managed to keep his job despite what Jessica had claimed were his attempts to brainwash us, and — perhaps most significantly — despite his having basically pawned his dog off on Calvin Little. Our own Calvin, with his needlepoint belts and immaculate manners, had succeeded in convincing all the in-charge types over at the boys’ dorm that Holyfield was not only an important lesson in caretaking and responsibility, but also a noble and respectable mascot. Everybody loved Holyfield, and Holyfield, in turn, had increased everybody’s love for Calvin, the skinny redheaded dude who didn’t say much but had managed to break all the rules through the devilishly clever move of appearing to be the sort of person who would never, ever dream of breaking the rules.

“So what’s your roommate have to say about that dog?” Chloe asked as we made our way to class, Holyfield in tow.

“One of God’s creatures,” Calvin grinned. “What would Saint Francis do?”

X had agreed to hold class outdoors, and we found him where he said he’d be: dozing beneath the Kissing Tree. Holyfield beelined for his face and slathered it with slobbery Holyfield love. “How’s he doing?” X asked Calvin.

“Fine,” Calvin said. “We get along.”

“This is just a trial period, you do understand,” X said, peering at Calvin over his glasses. Then Holyfield broke everybody’s heart by looking from one to the other of them, old dad to new dad, confused. He cocked his head and waited for something to happen.

“Holyfield, buddy, come here,” Calvin said softly. The dog perked up his ears, trotted up to Calvin, and rolled onto his back, tongue lolling goofily from the corner of his mouth.

“Trial period, my arse,” X said. “Calvin, my man, looks like you’ve got yourself a dog. Also, you’re on. The stage is yours. Knock us out. Everybody else: Lend Calvin your ears and your full attention, please. This is serious business.”

As we made ourselves comfortable in the shade of the tree, Calvin shuffled to a standing position before us. His face and the tips of his ears were fully aflame. In his hands he rotated a neat stack of index cards. “Okay,” he breathed. “Um, okay.” He cleared his throat a couple of times, and Mason elbowed me to look at something he had scrawled in his notebook:
What about the talent show?
I shook my head in a
not right now
warning just as Chloe thwacked me on the arm with a pencil.

“Ow!”

“Cal,” Chloe said, giving me the evil eye, “we’re listening. Remember, it’s just us. You can tell us anything, right?” She took a drag from her pencil, scooped up Holyfield, and gathered him into her lap. “Here,” she said. “Forget about us. Forget we’re here. Just talk right to Holyfield, okay?”

Dutifully, Holyfield perked up his ears. He kneaded his little white sock-paws into Chloe’s skirt as if he were cozying himself up to hear a good story. I’m telling you: Holyfield was absolutely the coolest dog I’d ever met in my life. He could make a convert out of anyone.

“Okay,” Calvin said. “Okay.” He stared down at his index cards and took a shaky breath. In that moment I could sense Calvin’s nervousness so keenly that I almost got up and ran, just to free us all. It’s like when you go to a play and an actor falters — even if it’s just a line, just a single word, the veil comes crashing down and it’s so excruciating and embarrassing that you just want to
la la la!
squinch your eyes shut and pretend yourself back to the safety of the parking lot. I mean, I know it was just us, sitting around in the sunshine waiting for Calvin to talk about some book, but the performance anxiety was killing me; it was catching; my armpits were dampening on Calvin’s behalf.
Cal,
I prayed,
get it together
. Then he looked up at us, eyes a clear and steady blue. “My Great American Novel is called
Nathan Coulter,
and it could be the story of my life.”

It was just like in that movie, the one where they put on the play and the guy with the stage fright is responsible for the opening speech of the first-ever performance of
Romeo and Juliet:
You’re cringing and dying, thinking the guy won’t get over his stammer, that the play will be a failure, and then he comes out with it —
Two households, both alike in dignity
— with such nobility and strength of purpose that you’re already hooked, you’re already crying, and Gwyneth Paltrow and her doomed lover haven’t even appeared on the scene yet.

I had never the hell even
heard
of Calvin’s book, but as he stood beneath that ancient sycamore, explaining to us why he loved it, reading a passage from it with genuine conviction and gaining confidence as he read, I fell for him a little bit, just for a second: the rogue lock of red hair that the breeze kept blowing into his eyes, the pale down on his neatly sinewed arms — arms that I could suddenly (ridiculously) imagine hefting firewood, cradling newborn babies, commandeering wheelbarrows and other farm paraphernalia.
Conviction,
that was the word — it was that belief in, that
loyalty
to, a thing. I had been surprised — no, awed — to see it all over the place at Geek Camp. I mean, I couldn’t fathom how someone could look at the ruins of a mountain and see it as anything other than a crime, but for Jessica it was linked to things she would defend with her life: her family, her hometown, her history, her future. She thought I was weird and had said so out loud, but I had no doubt that her loyalty to me — to anyone she befriended — was fierce and final.

Jessica and Sonya, they had it all figured out: They were going to stay in Kentucky and become lawyers and, like Calvin, give something back to the place that had raised them. I myself could barely see past the dreamscape of next week . . . What did I want? Unexpected magic. To get swept up and carried away, daily and maybe forever, by the powerful undertow of music and books. I marveled that I had ever landed at Geek Camp to begin with — I didn’t have the grades or the ambition or the drive, I was beginning to realize. I was lazy. Lazy and given to paroxysms of boy-craziness that I would have denied with a furious passion if you’d asked me. I did seem to be armed with a sort of pathological thirst for learning stuff, but that’s just it: The
learning
was what got me. The business of learning-as-a-means-to-an-end? Well. That eluded me completely. I was hopeless. Destined to be broke and brokenhearted.