If Only Every Moment Was Black and White (3 page)

Minutes passed as I checked the fish, noting those in distress (which was most of them). Our control group, aka the fish we weren’t killing, looked great. The same could not be said of those about to get a fresh dose of salt in their tank. Those looked shell-shocked. Despite that fact, I measured the salt — not table salt, but the stuff used for saltwater aquariums — smoothing the top to level the amount. Then I took a cup and scooped out some water from the tank. The salt went in the water until it dissolved, then the whole thing went into the tank via the filter. This is science, friends, and it can be dangerous.

“John,” Carrie said from somewhere behind me. Her voice was quiet, like she didn’t want her mom to hear it.

I froze.

I didn’t turn around or reply. I just froze.

“John,” she said again.

Still looking down the tanks, I spoke slowly, deliberately. “Uh huh?”

“What happened the other day?”

I blinked.
Oh God
. “Um. I’m… really sorry. I don’t know how to explain it. I…”

Carrie interrupted. “I mean, maybe I misunderstood, but… what was that?”

Suddenly, the prospect of facing off against Sol sounded preferable, despite the fact that I would die doing it. It was certainly better than having Carrie McGregor grilling me on
why
I tried to ask her to the Prom. I stammered. Finally, I said, “I’m sorry, maybe I did it in a stupid way.”

“Stupid way? I just don’t understand how it all happened?”

“Well, you know we’ve been hanging out a lot and, I don’t know, I guess I assumed you knew.”

“Really? How could I know?” she said.

“How could you not? I’ve been coming over every Wednesday, sometimes on other days. I just figured…”

Carrie shook her head. “You figured I would know from that? How?”

I was flustered. “I don’t know. I mean, I thought we had a connection or something.”

Carrie pulled back. “Wait. What are we talking about?”

I blinked again.
Uh oh
.

Simultaneously, we spoke.

“I thought we were talking about what happened in your room,” I said.

“I thought we were talking about the hammer that fell on you,” she said.

This is when I muttered a rather severe curse word under my breath. Thankfully, Carrie was too preoccupied to notice.

“I’m confused,” she said.

Why couldn’t we just stick to killing fish?
I thought.
 

I didn’t want to talk anymore about what I thought we’d been talking about. Yet I didn’t want to even start talking about what she thought we’d been talking about. “Never mind,” I said, turning back to the tanks.

“No way. Not
never mind
,” she said. “How did a hammer fall off the roof, tear through your shirt, and leave you just fine? It looked…” She paused.

Here we go
, I thought.

Carrie McGregor moved so that she was looking me straight in the eye. “It looked like your shoulder
bent
or something. Like it moved out of the way of that hammer.”

Well, there you go, John Black. Cat’s out of the bag. Now the whole school will find out. And Mom. Then the world. They’ll know you’re a freak.

Of course, I had options. Or, more specifically, one option: I could push Carrie’s mind. But the thought of it just seemed wrong. I mean, prior to the fiasco of asking her out, I was trying to form a bond with Carrie. Pushing her mind seemed…
inappropriate
.
 

What else? Was there any other option?

I started to twitch, bunching up my shoulders. Once again, I was stammering. “I… I just…”

“Are you double-jointed?” she asked.

“Huh?” I replied, still twitching.

“Is your shoulder double-jointed? Is that how you did it?”

A slow smile dawned across my face. “Uh, yeah. Yes.” I cleared my throat, trying to sound like I wasn’t completely lying. “Yeah, weird, huh? But, yep, you caught me. The old double-jointed shoulder trick.”
Don’t lay it on too thick, John. Geez.

“That’s
awesome
!” Carrie said, smiling. “I mean, how random? That totally saved your butt. You could’ve really been hurt!” She almost giggled with the news.
 

I couldn’t believe what was happening. I smiled. A huge, silly, smug smile of relief, nodding and laughing.
 

Then Carrie stopped, like she had just remembered something. “But…”

Still smiling, I tilted my head. “But what?”

“What was the deal with you closing my door and asking about the Prom?”

Well, shit
. There I was, thinking I had just gotten away with something huge, and then.
Oof
. The old sucker punch to the gut.

I simply couldn’t tell her. It was way too embarrassing.
 

“You wanted to ask me to the Prom? Is that it?” Carrie looked up at me with those eyes, her long eyelashes fluttering in time with my heart. Could it be things would work out after all?

“Yeah. I did. I mean, I
do
.” Her face seemed unreadable. “If you want to go with me, that is. I’m sorry about the whole business of closing your door. I just wanted, you know, to ask you privately. I thought it would be a little weird if—”

“John.” Carrie cut me off. “I can’t. So, thank you for asking, but no.”

My mouth clamped shut as I considered what she’d said. “You…
can’t
? I don’t understand.”

“Larry Jennings asked me two weeks ago. I told him yes.”

Oh good. Thank you, Larry Jennings. Perfect.
 

Still, I had to admit, at least Larry wasn’t a freak. He wasn’t even a bad guy. I
liked
Larry Jennings. Just not right at that moment.

I closed the notebook and tidied up without a word, then grabbed my things. “Okay, then. Uh. I guess I’ll see you next Wednesday to kill some more fish.” I managed a half-hearted smile, but inside, I felt like one of those freshwater fish, struggling to breath in a toxic environment. I had to leave.

As I reached the front door, Carrie’s mom called out. “Experiments still on track, John?” I just nodded and opened the door.
Oh yeah. Everything’s just as it should be.

“John,” Carrie said, coming up behind me. “Sorry. If I hadn’t already said yes to Larry, well, you know… maybe things—”

“I understand.”
Maybe
. She said
maybe
. But that can mean
maybe not
, too.
 

“But. Um. Your shoulder? Double-jointed? That’s really cool.” Carrie McGregor smiled at me in a way that melted my heart.

I walked home thinking,
the one thing Carrie likes most about me isn’t even true.

* * *

Time passed. The science project was completed and turned in for a grade. Ninety-two out of 100. Not bad.
 

Mr. Arbogast wrote a note in red pen on the top of our report:
Very good use of scientific methodology and reasoning. Interesting hypothesis, though honestly I feel bad for those poor 32 dead fish!
He didn’t realize the final tally was 41. Nine more died after we finished the report.
 

We should have named our experiment
Methods for Effectively Eradicating
Carassius auratus
(Common Goldfish)
.
 

And of course, the Prom finally arrived. I went. I know, that’s probably shocking. But don’t hold your breath. I went alone. Well, worse, I went with Tom and Steve. Just us three dudes, no dates anywhere to be seen. Sad. Except, honestly, we had some fun. Three idiots being idiots, loud music playing, watching all the people (Marjorie Green, of course, looked like she had just stepped off the runway at a fashion show), cracking each other up like friends do.
 

And I saw Carrie. She and Larry seemed to be having fun, sitting together with a few other couples at one of the big, round tables. My mind wandered, wondering if they’d hit it off, maybe go steady, maybe one day get married. Carrie and Larry.
Ugh
. It sounded awful. Or maybe I was just jealous.

While I was busy having this elaborate and unlikely daydream — evening dream? It was after dark — Larry walked away, leaving Carrie alone at the table. All the other couples were out dancing. She just sat there, by herself. And, from what I could see, she looked, well, kinda sad.
 

John, this is it. The moment you needed. Go. Make her laugh. Make her realize she should have said yes to you, not Larry Jennings.
Sure, it would likely be just a momentary victory, but… Prom wasn’t the only opportunity to go on a date.

I pushed back my chair. I almost excused myself from the table, like I would at home, but Tom was making fart sounds under his arm and Steve was laughing uncontrollably. They’d be fine for a couple minutes without me.
 

I was wearing a white, button-up shirt and a black tie, with black pants and shoes. I left my basic black sport coat on the seat where I’d been sitting. The clothes were way too uncomfortable. They were essentially the clothes I wore to any formal or semi-formal event. I had nothing else. I’d worn them over a year, so of course they no longer fit right. As a fourteen-year-old at a middle school Prom, renting an actual tuxedo was out of the question. And, I don’t think we had the money for it, anyway. So, while I was
relatively
fancy, that fact was only relative to my normal sloppy attire.

I approached Carrie gingerly, like she was a bomb that might go off. “Everything okay? You all having fun?” She didn’t hear me. This was because the musical offerings for the Prom were delivered by none other than Slick and the Shades, a cover band I’d never heard of before. But they had one great quality: They were exceptionally loud. Suddenly they slammed a hard note and went silent. People clapped. Before Slick and the Shades began beating to death another pop song, I cleared my throat and asked again: “Everything okay? You all having fun?”

Carrie looked up quickly, then looked away, but I could see her eyes were red. Something was wrong. I scanned the crowd.
Where’s Larry?
 

Finally, I noticed him, across the room, chatting with Jenny Ingram. Slick and the Shades suddenly launched into a new tune, and their light system spun and blinked to catch up, sending alternating blobs of darkness and color in all directions. I could see that Larry and Jenny were laughing together as the light would swoop over them. Jenny was one of Marjorie Green’s posse. One of the uber-popular girls, in the most fashionable clothes, doing only the most fabulous things. She must have come with a date, but that date was nowhere to be seen. So Larry was talking with her. But it was more than that. The laughing, the glances. He wasn’t
just
chatting with Jenny. He was flirting.
 

Now I knew why Carrie was upset.
 

Out of nowhere, we heard a pop and the deafening roar of Slick and the Shades died, as did most of the lights. The crowd gasped, then, once they realized it was probably just a blown fuse, they giggled at themselves for being startled.

A voice called out from the stage. “Just a sec, everybody! We’re having a little technical difficulty, but we’re working on it!” It sounded like Slick, the lead singer. The crowd applauded, with someone shouting less than helpful advice about turning the power back on. After maybe a minute of fumbling, the lights flashed brightly, and there was the unpleasant electronic squeal of guitar amps turning on. In the far back of the stage, a man stood up from where he’d been plugging in an extension cord. He waved to the crowd and ran behind the drum set.
Glad to see this has been handled by a trained electrician
, I thought. But what did I know? The drummer for Slick and the Shades could very well
be
a trained electrician. I certainly doubted he was a full-time musician. “And we’re back!” Slick shouted, launching the band into another blasting tune.
 

I turned back to Carrie. She’s only human. She must make mistakes, too. Maybe one of those was to dream of a perfect date with Larry.
 

One where he didn’t flirt with other girls.

And it wasn’t happening the way she dreamed.

I got angry.

Why didn’t you just bail and let ME ask her out, Larry, you jerk?

“I’m fine, John,” Carrie said. Then quickly she changed. Put on a strong and happy face, eyelashes fluttering.
Hold it together, John
, I thought. “Ooh, I love this song! Do you wanna dance?”

Okay, conundrum.
Did I want to dance, exclusive of all other details?
No. Absolutely not. I was a nerd and, you know, I’d never taken Juilliard class or whatever people do to become good dancers. Dancing, to me, was like having an extended, music-induced body spasm. While people watched. And laughed. However,
did I want to do whatever was necessary to stay with Carrie McGregor?
Oh, friends, that was a hell, yeah!
 

So what was my answer? If I danced with her, she would, no doubt, notice my dance skills. Or, lack thereof. I hesitated, just a moment.

And then felt the tap on my shoulder.

Turning, I saw Larry. “Hey, John. What’s up?”

Oh crap
. What was I supposed to say?
Well, I noticed you were off flirting, so I thought I’m come steal your date
. I chose option two: silence and a little shrug.

“Okay, well, enjoy the Prom, John.” It was clear Larry was dismissing me.
 

Carrie interrupted us. “I want to dance with John.”

“What?” Larry said.
 

“What?” I said.

“You guys heard me. Come on, John.” Carrie reached for my arm, to drag me onto the dance floor.
 

“Hold up.” Larry put one hand on Carrie’s arm. Not hard, but the implication was clear.
No
. “We came together.”

“Really? Did we?” Carrie was shouting, loud enough that a few people nearby could hear her despite the music. “Then why have you been off with Jenny all night?”

“What? Come on, I just talked to her for like a minute,” Larry said, hands up in defense.