None of the Above (12 page)

The next day, Faith stopped by with the promised almond cookies and a Get Well Soon card. She'd gotten a normal-sized one, unlike the card for my birthday just a few weeks earlier, when she'd bought a huge thing that looked like a small poster. She'd even gotten some people to sign it: a few track teammates, a couple of choir members, and some of the girls from her youth group.

“I hope you get better soon,” she said. “It sucks driving in alone.”

“What, Vee isn't riding with you?” I tried to sound casual, but failed.

“I don't want things to get awkward when you get back. She's been hitching a ride with Bruce.” She hesitated. “I know she doesn't show it, but I think she feels really badly about how things went down.”

I snorted. Faith meant well, but she was kidding herself if she thought I believed that. Vee didn't do guilt, unlike Faith, who always seemed to feel responsible when someone was upset, as if all the sorrows of the world were somehow her fault, and the solution to all sadness was in her hands and her hands alone.

She looked guilty now as she asked, “Would you be willing to talk to her? Work it out? I hate seeing you two fight. We've been the Three Musketeers since
preschool
. This can't go on forever?”

“What would I possibly say to her?” I said. I hated acting irritated, but sometimes Faith was
too
nice, to the point of it being a fault. “She hasn't even tried to call me, or apologize. For God's sake, Faith—she
screwed
me by telling Sam. How could I forgive her for something like that when she doesn't even think she's done anything wrong?”

Faith was silent. I couldn't tell if she was hurt by my anger, or if her well of sympathy had just run dry. She opened her mouth to say something. Paused. Shut it again.

I went on before she could start her “turn the other cheek” mantra. “I know you're going to say something about forgiving other people's trespasses, but sometimes forgiveness needs to be earned. I'm sick of appeasing Vee. She's not the only person in the world with problems.”

Faith looked uneasy, the way she always did when there was conflict. “But what if—” She stopped, and brushed a couple of
cookie crumbs off her jeans.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing. Just . . . I hate this.”

“You and me both.”

After Faith left, our doorbell rang again within a few minutes. I let Aunt Carla answer it, assuming it had to be a delivery truck or something. Instead, I heard her yell up the stairs in an excited voice.

“Krissy—there's someone here to see you. It's a boy!”

My heart skidded to a stop in my chest, and my first thought—a hope that washed over me like a tidal wave—was that it had to be Sam. I rushed down the stairs, but even before I saw his face I knew the silhouette was too tall, too rangy.

My face fell.

“Hey, it's me,” Darren Kowalski said. “Ms. MacDowell asked if I could take notes for you again. The guidance office added on some stuff from your other classes, too.”

I tried to smile, to brush away the crushing disappointment. Darren deserved better than that. “What'd I miss in English?”

“Not too much. Wrap-up stuff on
The Merchant of Venice
—people did their extra-credit scenes.”

“Did you do one?”

“Nah. I don't think any of the seniors did, except for Jessica. She did Portia's speech.”

The quality of mercy
, I remembered.

A blast of cold wind ran through our porch, and Darren stuffed purpling hands into his windbreaker. Feeling the draft, Aunt Carla peeked out of the kitchen and proceeded to bodily drag Darren into our house.

“Kristin Louise Lattimer, are you
trying
to freeze your friend to death? I'm about to make some hot cocoa this very instant, so please do invite this young man who I've never met in, and introduce us like civilized people.”

I sighed. Sooner stop a steamroller than halt Aunt Carla once she got the wheels of hospitality going. “Aunt Carla, this is Darren. Darren, this is my aunt Carla.”

“Actually, I think we met a long time ago, back when I was in middle school,” Darren said. “I'm Anna Kowalski's son.”

Aunt Carla brightened. “That's right! The caterer. I always did say that Bob let that one get away.”

I couldn't tell if Darren's face was flushed from embarrassment, or if it was the cold, but he came into our kitchen anyway.

Aunt Carla showed him to a counter stool. “Kristin, can you get the sugar for me?”

“You're making it from scratch?” Darren asked. “Can I help?”

“Oh, no, no,” Aunt Carla clucked. “Just sit and relax, dear. You're the guest.”

“Please,” Darren insisted. “Do you know what would happen in my house if I just sat on my butt while the women cooked?”

“He can stir,” I volunteered.

“Yes, that is an appropriately basic task for this hapless male.” He imitated a caveman. “ME STIR. USE STICK.”

For the first time in what seemed like years, I cracked a smile. Darren peeled off his windbreaker, revealing a T-shirt that said
DATE A RUNNER. EVERY OTHER ATHLETE IS A PLAYER
.

When the hot chocolate was done, and poured into our mismatched coffee mugs with a dollop of Reddi-wip on top, Aunt Carla picked up her paperback book and went to go read in the den.

At first, Darren and I drank in companionable silence. Then the quiet grew heavier and heavier, and eventually he cracked his neck and cleared his throat. “So, you doing okay?” he asked, peering over his New York Rangers coffee mug.

“Yeah,” I lied. “I had surgery. For a hernia.”

Darren nodded thoughtfully.

Too thoughtfully?

Even when we were in middle school, Darren had always been a fact-checker, the kid who couldn't watch a movie without looking up its historical or scientific accuracy online. I wondered how much searching he'd done on the internet, and what, if anything, he knew about my insides.

I was staring at the dregs of cocoa staining the bottom of my cup when Darren said, “Your dad must be pretty depressed. . . .”

A jolt of pain flashed through my body, laced with disappointment and anger. Why was everyone so fixated on how crushed my dad must be about my diagnosis? I opened my mouth to tell Darren off, but before I could say anything, he continued. “I mean, the Rangers are totally tanking this year. That goalie they have? It'd be more effective if they put pads on a chimpanzee and stuck him in the net.”

Hockey! He was talking about hockey. I almost laughed out loud.

“Are you still an Islanders fan?” My relief made me punchy. “Wasn't it the twentieth century the last time they made the playoffs?”

“Hey, it's all part of their grand plan. Suck for a few years, get a bunch of lottery picks in the draft.”

“Do you still play?” I had a vague memory of freezing my butt off in a rink or two while our parents were dating.

“Nah. When you get to travel league, it gets pretty expensive. And once my center of gravity got really high I didn't have the speed to be a good defenseman.”

We bantered back and forth for a little longer until Darren looked at his watch and frowned.

“I'd better get going,” he said, picking up our cups to take them to the sink. “I've got to pick up Becky. I'm sure you've got other plans, too.”

I couldn't imagine where he thought I'd be going, dressed
in warm-up pants and an old track T-shirt, with hair that hadn't been washed in three days, but I nodded anyway. “So you're still going out with Jessica Riley's sister?”

“Yeah.” Darren blushed a little, and I felt an odd wistfulness.

“Well, have a good time.”

After Darren left, I was channel flipping in our living room when Aunt Carla peeked her head in. She had her handbag over her shoulder, and a fresh coat of magenta lipstick that was about three shades too dark for her pale winter skin.

“Well, I'm glad to see you up and about, dear. I wanted to tell you that I have a casserole in the oven that should be ready by the time your father gets home.”

I blinked at her, not understanding.

“I've got to get going!” Aunt Carla said brightly. “It's book club night, and I've got to bring the chips and dip!”

“Sure. Have fun,” I said. Aunt Carla packed up her knitting, and I decided that I had officially hit rock bottom: my divorced, fifty-year-old aunt had hotter plans for Friday night than I did. I couldn't remember the last weekend night when I didn't have a date, or a party, or some sort of track thing to go to. Being friends with Vee meant you never had to fill your calendar.

Before Aunt Carla left, she gave me a little hug, and whispered, “Maybe tonight you guys can have some father-daughter bonding time!”

That's when I knew I had to get out of the house. After
Aunt Carla left, I went up to my room. Sitting on my bed, dreading the sound of my dad's car pulling into the driveway, I realized I couldn't stand the thought of him having to come up with some awkward, public thing we could do together, like playing miniature golf, or ice-skating.

So I steeled my shoulders, opened my closet, and chose a skirt and top fit for a Homecoming Queen.

My dad must have expected to find me moping around when he came home; he did a double take when he walked in at eight and saw me glammed up and ready to go.

“Faith and I are going out tonight,” I lied.

“Oh, okay.” I could see the relief in his eyes. “Do you need some money for gas?” It was his favorite way to be a good dad, so I took the twenty that he waved at me.

Walking out of my house into the cold felt amazing, like getting freed from a straitjacket. Never mind that I was freezing my ass off in my miniskirt. I thought about how weird it was that, before, I would never in a million years have gone out alone on a weekend night. It just wasn't something you did when you were popular. You ran with the herd, even if it meant having to argue for an hour about where you were going to go, or who got to ride shotgun, or who was designated driver for the evening.

When you were going out by yourself, you didn't have to deal with all that crap. You made your own decisions, and lived
with the consequences. You had to be strong in ways that I'd never thought of back when I believed that not being surrounded by a bunch of friends meant that you were weak.

Instead of turning east out of our development toward Utica, I headed west to Whitesboro, where the restaurants were a little older and the bars not as trendy. Where no one, I hoped, knew about the intersex girl next door.

My heart pounding, I circled around the main strip three or four times before I parked in front of a pub that didn't have a bouncer outside. Sam had gotten me a passable fake ID last summer, but when I saw my reflection in my rearview mirror I worried that I didn't look enough like my picture. Instead of my normal pastels or earth tones, I'd put on the Red Vixen lipstick that I bought for a Halloween costume. I'd deliberately overdone my eyeliner, and had curled my hair instead of putting it in my usual ponytail, praying that even if I did run into someone from my school, they wouldn't recognize me.

After I turned off my engine, I sat in my creaking car as the cold settled in, gathering my nerve. The initial excitement of going it alone had worn off, and I felt suddenly vulnerable. Afraid. For a split second I considered restarting my car and heading home; then I thought about sitting at home with my dad, watching Classic Sports Network while he did sudoku and nursed a Heineken.

I opened my door.

The bar was perfect—cozy and dark, and busy enough
that you could pretend that you were with any one of a number of groups. Noisy enough that if someone wanted to talk to you they had to get so close you could smell the beer on their breath.

I scoped out the crowd. There seemed to be a lot of people who were on their second or third drinks already. Some guys who looked like they were there after work. A bunch of college students watching the game on the flat-screen TV. Not very many couples. More men than women. The odds were in my favor.

When I got up to the bartender I ordered myself an appletini and he barely glanced at my fake ID. While he fixed my drink, I smiled at the boy waiting behind me, a twentysomething guy with a buzz cut. He was wearing a blue pinstripe shirt with the sleeves rolled up like he was getting ready to change the oil in his car or something. He was around my height, but stocky, and built like a wrestler. You could tell he went to the gym. I paid for my drink and I could see out of the corner of my eye that he was checking me out.

Back when I was with Sam, I used to hate the meat-market looks I would get at clubs. Strange, that I had been so ungrateful when guys thought I was sexy.

This time, when I turned to Pinstripe Shirt and saw his gaze slide down my body, I felt a surge of pleasure headier than any booze.

I still had the power.

Leaning just the slightest bit toward Pinstripe Shirt, I sucked on the tiny straw in my appletini, pursing my lips the way I'd practiced when I was twelve and learning how to flirt from TV shows. A little voice in my head whispered,
What if he finds out that you're a boy?

I'm a girl
, I shouted back.
I'm a girl
.

I didn't have to wait long for his pickup line. “Haven't seen you around here before. You here with those guys?” he said, pointing toward the college kids.

“No,” I said, laughing like I was insulted. “I'm out of school.” It was easier to lie when you were wearing makeup. Like you were in costume or something.

“Nice. I don't do college drama.” Someone crowded in to buy a drink and he moved away from the bar, still facing me. “What's your name?”

“Lara,” I said, giving him the name of a foreign exchange student from a couple of years back. “What about you?”