Counting to D (6 page)

Nate stared at me with those giant brown eyes. “So should we head down to the kitchen and start writing Spanish verbs in rice?”

“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “I mean, the writing in rice worked. I know basic phonics. But every time I pick up a book, I still have to look at every single letter individually and carefully sound out each word. And that’s when I’m reading English — a language I’ve been speaking fluently for years. How am I ever going to learn to read in Spanish when there’s a totally different set of phonemes? And even if I somehow manage to sound out the words correctly, they’re in a language I don’t know, so they don’t mean anything.”

Nate’s hand reached toward me and squeezed my knee. Somehow his contact made me want to cry. I blinked and looked away from Nate, focusing instead on the hundreds of books covering every surface of the room. Hundreds of books I’d never be able to read. I pulled my knees to my chest and searched for something to look at that wasn’t covered in words.

Nate moved closer to me and put his arm around my shoulder. At first I felt stupid and weak for acting all mopey. But then I remembered Nate was an emo poet — he probably thought mopey girls were hot.

Once I’d managed to compose myself, Nate said, “So I have an idea for how you can pass Spanish.”

I sat up straighter and turned to face him. “Yeah?”

“You’re like an expert conman, right? You’re crazy smart, and you’ve been forcing everyone to ignore your reading and spelling faults since long before you even knew you had them.”

“So?”

“So how do you do that?” He was smiling at me, like he already knew the answer. How did he know the answer when I didn’t?

“I don’t know. I just do.”

He cocked his head to the side and looked at me like I was an idiot. “You do know. You do it by talking. You memorized entire novels as a little kid ’cause it was simpler than learning the alphabet. Sam, you’re not just a math genius — your verbal skills are unreal. There is absolutely no reason why you can’t learn how to speak Spanish.”

Obviously, I knew speaking and reading weren’t the same thing. But this wasn’t kindergarten. And I wasn’t taking a conversational Spanish class geared toward future tourists. “You are way oversimplifying things.” I found Nate’s Spanish book among the clutter and shook it in the air. “All our homework assignments and tests and quizzes and everything come out of this book. It doesn’t matter if I can speak the language or not. If I can’t read this book, I still fail.”

“Yeah, just like you’re failing all your other classes that you don’t know how to read the textbooks for.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “What, you want me to get my Spanish textbook on tape?”

“You actually could. There are tons of foreign language tapes. I’ve never tried any of them, but it might work for you.”

“It might help me speak Spanish, but I’m never going to learn how to read it.”

“I may have only met you two weeks ago, but somehow I trust you’ll figure something out. I’ll help you learn how to speak Spanish. And then I’ll leave it up to you to figure out how to
talk
Señor Gonzales into giving you a higher grade. Maybe you’re never going to waste your free time reading Spanish poetry, but you’re not going to flunk out of school either.”

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s start speaking Spanish.”

“Well, that’s sort of the problem. I speak French. I can read Spanish pretty well, but I’m not very good at speaking it. So I think your homework should probably be talking to your friend Gabby.”

“Talking to Gabby.” I laughed. “I think I can probably do that.”

“Get her to tell you all the best San Diego gossip in Spanish for a minimum of twenty minutes a day. Then you can have ten minutes of English to help clarify your burning questions. I’d be willing to bet money that by the end of the semester, you’ll be tutoring me.”

“Is that it?” I asked. Nate was still sitting there looking adorable, his fingers aimlessly toying with a loose thread at the pocket of his hoodie. “We’re done now?”

“Humm, we could watch TV.”

“TV?”

“You ever watched a Spanish soap opera?”

So that was it. We left Nate’s book-laden room and headed downstairs to his family room. The soaps were so overacted, it didn’t even matter that I only understood every third or fourth word. There was no question about who was cheating with whom. I wasn’t paying very close attention, though. The whole time I kept on thinking about how Nate was sitting two feet away from me, not touching me. If I got up and moved closer to him, would it be weird? Randomly kissing him in the middle of a passionate Spanish argument would definitely be weird. So why was that the only thing I could think about?

W
hen Nate’s mom got home, she hollered her greetings from the kitchen. Then a minute later, she appeared in the family room doorway. “Nate, are you watching TV?”

“Yeah.” He blushed brighter than the oriental throw pillows sitting next to him on the couch. I knew Nate read a lot, but how unusual was it for a teenage boy to watch television? “Sam and I are watching the Spanish channel to help us absorb the language.”

Nate’s mom pulled her eyes off the television long enough to realize there was a girl sitting beside her son on the couch. “
Sam,
your new lab partner?” She blinked before forcing an uncomfortable smile onto her face and stepping forward to shake my hand. “Of course, it’s so nice to finally meet you.”

Apparently, Nate had told his mom about the new kid at school named Sam. He just hadn’t bothered to mention
Sam
was short for
Samantha,
not
Samuel.
I didn’t want to think about what that could mean. “Will you be staying for dinner? I’m about to throw some garden burgers on the grill.”

I looked from Nate to his mom and then back to Nate.
Should I stay? I want to. I just wish I had a clue what he wants.

“We still need to type up our lab report. You should stay. I mean…if you want to.”

“Yeah, dinner would be great. Thanks, Mrs. Larson.” Mrs. Larson smiled at Nate and headed back to the kitchen. I pulled my phone out of my pocket. “I just need to call my mom and let her know.”

“Can’t you just send her a text?”

I groaned. “No, you think I can spell big words like
dinner
and
lab report?
”

Nate laughed. “Cute.”

Cute. That’s it? What’s cute? Me? My inability to text? What?
I wanted to interpret his comment as an admission of his undying love for me, even if that wasn’t what he really meant.

I called my mom while Nate booted up his computer. He typed really fast. At this rate, our lab report would be done in five minutes. “Do you need any help? I can’t read or write or anything, but I did memorize the textbook.”

He stopped typing to turn around and shot me an irresistible smile. “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

I felt my cheeks burn. “Well, not all of it. I’ve only listened through chapter eleven.”

“Sam, you do know we’re on chapter eight right now, right?”

“Yeah, I know. But I can’t take notes in class. So it’s easier if I know the material in the textbook before the teacher lectures about it. That way I can notice and remember topics the teacher covers that aren’t in the text.”

He turned back to his computer. “You already told me everything I needed for the lab during class, so I think I’m good for now, but you’re definitely helping me study before our next exam.”

“Okay.” I leaned back on Nate’s bed while he finished typing up our report, then lifted a poetry book off the bed and started flipping through it. It took an embarrassingly long time for me to figure out the poem I was trying to read wasn’t in English.

A couple minutes later, I heard Nate’s printer churn to life. He crawled across the bed and pulled the book out of my hands. “Do you want me to read it to you?”

“Sure.”

“
Avete ’n vo’ li fior’ e la verdura…
” The words tumbled off his tongue. I didn’t understand what he was saying, but I didn’t care. It was beautiful. He was beautiful. I closed my eyes and absorbed his every word. “
…perché di tutte siete la migliore.
”

I opened my eyes. “What language is that?”

“Italian.”

“Italian? I thought you only spoke English, French, and Spanish.”

He blushed and looked at his hands. “Yeah, about that, I kind of speak Italian and German too.”

“You speak five languages? Why didn’t you tell me that?”

“When an infant math genius shows up in your Spanish for toddlers class, you don’t start bragging about knowing five languages. I didn’t want to intimidate you.”

Infant? He thought I was a baby. I blinked away the anger and frustration. “And what, now you’ve decided it doesn’t matter?”

“Now you admitted to memorizing our entire chemistry textbook. Forget about me intimidating you. I’m doing everything I can to stop you from thinking I’m a complete moron.”

“Nate, you’re not a moron. I’m the one with the D, remember?”

“You’re not a moron either.” He punched me in the arm, the universal guy sign for friendly affection. “You’re not.”

Nate and I were alone together, in his bedroom, and he was punching me. I shouldn’t have felt sad. He was being really nice — helping me with Spanish and not making fun of me for being mentally deficient. Nate was acting like a friend, and I needed that. I needed someone I could talk to and be myself around. But knowing Nate had accepted me as
one of the guys
just made me miss Gabby and Arden more.

I punched Nate back, not knowing what else to do. I didn’t want to hit him. I wanted to kiss him, but I’d never kissed a boy before. I’d never even sat on a boy’s bed before. Gabby, Arden, and I discussed the possibility of kissing boys all the time. Arden had even done it. She’d had a boyfriend for about three weeks during our freshman year. Afterward, she claimed he was boring and incapable of engaging in stimulating conversation. Really, I think she was just bummed that he wasn’t a vampire.

I wanted a boyfriend. Of course I wanted a boyfriend. It was the ultimate normal teenager thing to want. But boys didn’t like girls like me. They just didn’t. So I shouldn’t have been surprised that Nate wasn’t interested. If he had tried to kiss me, I wouldn’t have known what to do anyway.
Being friends is good,
I thought. I tried to make myself believe that.

“Kids, the burgers are ready,” Nate’s mom called from downstairs.

Nate moved toward the door. “Okay, Mom, we’ll be right down.”

Mr. Larson got home, and I managed to carry out a civil conversation with both of Nate’s parents all through dinner. They were really impressed with my mathlete origins. But then, they did have a son who spoke five languages, so my traveling to Washington, DC, for national math competitions probably seemed common to them.

The grandfather clock in the corner of their dining room chimed seven times just as we finished eating. “I should head home. Thanks again for dinner, Mrs. Larson. It was delicious.”

“It was my pleasure. And I do hope we’ll be seeing you again soon,
Samantha.
”

I looked over at Nate. “I hope so too.”

Nate raced up to his room to retrieve my backpack. When he returned to the dining room, he jingled his keys in my direction. “Ready to go?”

When we were in his car, he asked me, “So why didn’t you tell me you were a mathlete?”

I shrugged. “You know, I was trying not to intimidate you.”

“Right, of course.” He popped a CD of whiny emo music I’d never heard before into his stereo, giving us both an excuse not to say anything.

Still, the lack of conversation grew heavy in the car. I tried to think up interesting things to say and finally lamely settled upon: “So, your parents seem pretty nice.”

“Yeah, they’re all right.”

When we pulled in front of my apartment building, I looked up and saw that the lights in our unit were all off. When I’d told my mom I was having dinner at a friend’s, she said she’d probably just work late. Apparently, she was still there.

“Well, goodnight,” I told Nate. I opened the car door and stepped out into the drizzle.

“Don’t forget to call Gabby.”

“I won’t.” I walked toward the empty apartment, glad I had an academic excuse to call home.

The next day in English, Mr. Donavan figured out he needed to assign some kind of homework. Instead of making us write papers, like a normal English teacher would, he divided us up into groups and told us to film a five-minute video acting out one of the scenes from
Macbeth.
Extra points would be given for artistic display, props, and creative interpretation of the scenes. I was assigned to do Act 5, Scene 1 with Kaitlyn and Eli.

Kaitlyn glared at me in disgust. “I already have plans tonight. But if you guys want to come over to my house tomorrow, I’ve got video editing software and stuff.”

“I’ve got basketball practice until five,” Eli said. “Assuming you want me to shower, I could probably meet tomorrow night at seven.”

“Fine,” Kaitlyn exhaled, looking bored.

Eli turned toward me. “I totally love driving. If you want me to pick you up, I wouldn’t mind.”

Eli already had his license. I wouldn’t turn sixteen until August. I knew I was younger than all the seniors I hung out with, but was I younger than every single person in the Portland metro area? At least I wouldn’t have to ride the bus. “Sure, I live in the apartments on Twenty-First and Flanders. Can you pick me up at six forty-five?”

“I’ll be there.”

Nate gave me a ride home from school that day. Since my mom was busy settling into her new job, she’d been working pretty late most evenings. I didn’t want to slink around the apartment alone for hours. “Do you want to come up? We can do homework or whatever.”

“Sure.” Nate followed me through our small two-bedroom apartment, his fingers tracing the tops of still-packed boxes as he walked. When I opened the door to my bedroom, he followed me inside. It was small and tidy. I’d tucked all my dirty laundry away in a hamper in my closet, and there wasn’t a single book to be found. I’d even made my bed that morning. The room looked nothing like Nate’s.