Hot Pterodactyl Boyfriend (19 page)

Until now it had always been a Shiels-Sheldon coproduction.

And the new issue was supposed to go live in a matter of hours.

Hours!

Life seemed to be conspiring. Shiels's stomach felt wobbly. Her palms itched. Her scalp seemed to channel a rogue electric current, not strong enough to burn, not weak enough to ignore.

Her breath felt like it was going in her nose and then directly out of her mouth, missing her lungs; her chest was too tight to let in fresh air.

There was Sheldon now, walking away from Gendered Society. Talking with Rachel Wyngate. Again! So tall and leggy. Her forearms permanently red from volleyball. Shiels picked them out with her gaze across the whole length of the eastern corridor. A moment later Sheldon turned, as if he could feel in his cells that she was watching him.

A naked stare. She would not look away. Not this time. Even across that riotously populated hallway, that stupid distance, she saw the hurt still in his eyes. Then Rachel Wyngate turned to see what—who—Sheldon was looking at. And others, too, turned to look.

Though not at Shiels. The commotion was behind her. The fire doors opened. Shiels, too, turned. Pyke burst through, tottering as he walked, leaning upright with Jocelyne Legault beside him and the usual mob trailing them both. Pyke halted when he saw Shiels. He stretched his wings so that Jocelyne had to step away. He waggled his crest at Shiels, and made low squawking noises. He hop-hipped toward her.

“Stop it,” Shiels said, but without conviction. “You're making a spectacle of yourself.”

He waved his beak. His shriek sent a roar of approval from the crowd up and down the hall.

“That's too loud. That's not appropriate,” Shiels said, too softly to be heard.

Pyke circled, he warbled. Where was Jocelyne? Standing back. Watching the display. Where was Sheldon? Sheldon should step between them. Knock the pterodactyl flat on his back and say—

What could he say? Nothing. He wasn't there anymore, and neither was Rachel Wyngate.

It was Jocelyne who said, “Pyke,” in her quiet, cutting voice. Who yanked that bird back by his invisible leash. “Go to class.”

The pterodactyl slunk away. Leaving the two purple noses to face each other. With about eighty onlookers still crowded in.

“This is no one's business but ours,” Jocelyne said in a voice taut enough to hold an ocean liner stiff to a dockside. When Shiels added a glare, the other students melted off.

“He can't help himself,” Jocelyne said finally.
But you can,
her eyes were saying.

“I have no interest in a freshman,” Shiels said. What a relief to hear her own voice, more or less normal-sounding, to have a sense that her life was not over. (Her life as herself, Shiels Krane, the self she had built so consciously over the years and thought she knew so well.) “Don't misunderstand me. I'm not out to steal Pyke. We need him for Wallin. Why isn't he going to practice? Tell him he needs to go.”

Those shallow blue eyes. Jocelyne Legault would never have thought of Pyke for the football team. She had no ambition for her boyfriend.
Forgive me for seeing the big picture,
Shiels thought.

Forgive me for not being like everybody else.

Jocelyne shook her head in tiny, jiggly movements, as if her neck were a spring. “They can't practice on the field. Everyone's watching. So they're doing it in secret in the gym. Behind closed doors.”

“And Pyke is actually showing up?” Shiels said.

“He will,” Jocelyne said. Her eyes narrowed. She was staring at Shiels's shoes, brighter even than her own. “Why are you . . . Why are you running?”

“I just want to get in shape,” Shiels said. “Don't worry. I just like to jog around. And,” she repeated, “I'm not after Pyke. My nose to the contrary, he doesn't affect me the way he seems to affect everyone else. You can have him as long as you like.”

Shiels felt the corner of her mouth turn into a little smile. A trace of fear passed Jocelyne Legault's eyes, like the brief shadow of a bird flying overhead. “Really,” Shiels said then, and touched the other girl's arm lightly.

It wasn't a lie. Was it? It felt perfectly true in this moment. “We all have the will and means to reshape reality,” Lorraine Miens had said. Shiels was just thinking of the good of the school. Wasn't she?

•  •  •

Then, later, there was Sheldon already sitting in the office off the library, in their little space, working away on the
Leghorn Review
. Shiels had the door key in her hand when she gazed through the glass and saw him in his dingy blue cable-knit sweater—his holey garment, he called it, because of the patches—his rounded shoulders leaning toward the monitor, his jaw thrust forward, fingers dancing across the keyboard. Composing. The words flying on-screen. If she opened the door, she would distract him. She wondered if she should walk away, let Sheldon have
Leghorn
.

Clearly he could do it himself. She was prepared to do it all by herself as well, and she knew his
Leghorn
would be miles ahead of hers. He was the writer. She was the . . . facilitator.

Those fingers were flashing. Facilitating just fine without her.

She pushed open the door anyway. He turned, startled out of his thought. She could see in his kind eyes—his dear, gray, lovely eyes—that he'd been far away for a moment, even in the middle of something funny, and that the something evaporated the moment he saw her.

No, no, not precisely. The moment he saw her, his eyes lit more, but then something seemed to leak out of him, obviously with the realization, the memory, of where they were now, who they had become.

“We don't have much time,” Shiels said, just to say something, to get them past the awkwardness. She took her seat beside him. They could do this. “What are you writing on?”

His fingers were still poised above the keyboard. “I've been horsing around with flying dreams. Ever since Pyke got here, I've been having them. I have this sense of lifting off, floating above the ground with every step, like I'm walking but not walking. It turns into flying, only it feels completely normal. Like walking on the moon, maybe.”

“It's running for me,” Shiels said. “In my dreams. Same as you.” She hesitated. Were they really talking like this, as if everything were normal? “It turns into flying. But often I'm naked, except for my yellow shoes.”

“Really?” Sheldon glanced down at those shoes, his fingers tapping something out.

“Don't write that!” Shiels said.

“It's not about you. But you did buy the same shoes as Jocelyne's, didn't you?”

“Maybe the whole school is dreaming about flying,” Shiels said. “We could put it out there. Ask for people's flying dream stories.”

“We could call them ‘Pyke dreams,' ” Sheldon said, and he couldn't help it, he was a smiling little boy over his pun. Shiels thought:
Two minutes sitting with Sheldon, and already the ideas are brimming.

“I don't . . . I don't think of him directly in my dreams,” she said. “I mean, obviously it's him. I see him, but at the time of the dream, I think that it's you. You with muscles.”

“I have muscles,” Sheldon said. He was writing, writing away. The way that he did. She didn't watch the screen. He was a composer, obviously—the writer. She was the facilitator.

The muse? No, that would be Pyke.

She said, “I find myself running, like I'm in Africa or something. On the savanna. Or I'm pulling myself out of the jungle, looking for sky. That's what I want. And his muscles and his heat.”

“You want his muscles and his heat?”

“It's not sexual,” she said. This always happened when she was with Sheldon. The barriers broke down. It was like they were one person. She could just say what she had boiling in her brain. “It's just physical.”

“Like the wrangle dance? Like the way his crest flares whenever he sees you?”

So—Sheldon had stuck around long enough . . .

“I don't know what that was,” she said. He was writing and warm now too, in his sweater, a hand width away from her. She could reach over. Their whole life together had started in this very room, working on a different version of this project many issues ago.

So easily, she felt like she had dialed back the clock and none of the coldness of the separation had happened.

“You're going out with Rachel Wyngate,” she said suddenly. When he didn't react, she said, “Does she have Pyke dreams too?”

“Everyone has Pyke dreams.” Sheldon's fingers did not slow down. “We're going to be inundated with Pyke dreams as soon as we put this out.”

Words slapping up on-screen. She didn't read them.

“You're in love with Pyke,” he said, and she nodded, because it was a dream (sort of) that they still were in. This was a dream kind of truth. She had just told Jocelyne she did not love him, and that too was true. From a different dream.

“Everyone's in love with Pyke,” Shiels said.

•  •  •

Everyone was in love with Pyke. Sheldon was right—as soon as
Leghorn
went live, the Pyke dreams flooded in.

It's water. I'm swimming but I'm flying, too. Breathing underwater. I'm a dolphin with wings, my skin is stretched all tight around my body, and I have a way of jumping that turns into something else. Diving in reverse. I'm doing all the steps. Watching myself and doing it at the same time. The water is warmer than the air.

For me it's all about the umbrella. I'm late for something, class I guess. And I just wish he would come and pick me up. Swoop down and cradle me. He's so gentle. The way he was holding Jocelyne. That's how he would hold me. And my umbrella. When I open it. It's kind of hard to explain. I open the umbrella and the umbrella starts to cradle me, and then we're flying together. I can't believe other people have had almost exactly the same dream!

My Pyke dream is about being on my motorcycle. I'm rounding a curve, it's a jump. I rev it and rocket, and then I'm off-ramp. I turn the way I would on a board, just slow and casual, looking down, staying calm, one big loop, and my engine cuts—it's quiet. I'm going so slow, I might as well have stopped in midair. I had this dream before Pyke came to the school, but now it's like the dream is in hyper-view because I can see the colors in the bike. I mean, I could always see the colors, but now the colors see me, too. Does that sound weird? I didn't even go to the dance. I felt like bonking my head against concrete when I found out how great it was and watched it all later online. Every time I have this dream, it gets clearer and slower, so now it doesn't even feel like flying anymore. Is that still a Pyke dream?

it's twisting maybe a propeller or a tail whipping round like a crocodile in one of those nature shows that grabs the calf and brings it under and then whips around and around and i step into the blade but i know the blade will slide off me if i'm loose enough and not just me but a better me the gentle me i'd like to ride his back to tell you the truth i could wrap my arms around his chest i could hold him with my legs i could hug him not hard just right i don't really dream all this the twisting yes but that's the way i feel

Robbie Lewis tracked
down Shiels near the portable outside when she was heading to Postlethwaite's forgettable English class. It was another gray, cool, wet day, and Robbie Lewis was not in Postlethwaite's class, so he had clearly gone out of his way to reach her.

“Is Pyke a go for Friday?” he asked. “Because Coach has to submit the lineup sheet now. So we have to know.”

Robbie seemed smaller. He was shivering in his Vista View colors, the gray and gold.

“I thought you were practicing in secret,” Shiels said. “Haven't you been working out plays and stuff?”

“He hasn't come yet. But you said he would. You practically guaranteed him!”

“Did I?” Shiels was enjoying her little moment of teasing. Finally she said, “Of course he'll be there. Put his name down.”

He almost needed to bend double just to talk to her. “But what position does he play?”

The same question she had asked him when she'd nearly knocked him over in the hall. “Anything where he has to catch the ball.”

“Tight end? Wide receiver? How about special teams? Punt returns?”

“Sure. You saw him in the cafeteria, in the auditorium. Just get the ball to him! It's not rocket science.”

“Catching the football is a whole lot different from playing in an actual game. Does he even know the rules? Has he ever been hit? He wouldn't swallow the ball, would he?”

“He grew up in the Himalayas playing football with his brothers and sisters,” she said.

“Really?” Was it getting bonked on the helmet that made Robbie Lewis so credulous all of a sudden? Shiels took a moment to enjoy him shivering in his flimsy shirt, trying to figure out if she was kidding or not.

“Every day on the mountaintop. Football, football, football,” she said. “That was his whole life. Just you see. It'll be a game for the ages.”

•  •  •

I have always wanted to be a doctor,
Shiels wrote in her application essay for her mother's choice, Stockard College.
I suppose it was simply in my genes, in the soup of my childhood. Having two doctors as parents helps a great deal, no doubt. I took it for granted that every girl grew up surrounded by microscopes. At breakfast, conversation revolved around the latest in cancer research or what an elderly woman might do to prevent bone loss. It is simply a given in my family that we serve others, that our lives were meant to be dedicated to improving the health and well-being of the ill and suffering, patient by patient, neighbor by neighbor, friend by friend.