One Lonely Degree (9 page)

But I’m still here, so you know that’s not what happened. Lukewarm water rushed over my hair and rinsed it clean. Afterwards Adam grabbed my arm, shoved me roughly aside, and told me to go home.

I did what he said without questioning, and in the moment I reached for the laundry room door my mind vaulted towards safety. It tried, but never really got there. A different version of me walked out of the laundry room with dripping wet hair and the taste of rust and pepperoni in her mouth. That new Finn rubbed her eyes, wrung the excess moisture from her hair, and went to look for her best friend, Audrey.

A
u
D
rey
’S TH
e
O
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LY
person who knows what happened that night. When I found her, I couldn’t talk. She dragged me outside with her, into the Nielsens’ front yard, beside their yellow rose bushes. We were still too close to where it’d happened, and I asked her to walk with me. I started to cry again as I told her about Adam, and the look in Audrey’s eyes made me cry harder. She said we should call my parents, or the police, but the suggestion made me tremble.

Audrey stretched a rubber band around my wet hair and rubbed my back. “It’s over,” she told me. “You’re going to be okay, Finn.
You’re safe now
. You’ll be home in a few minutes. Then we can think what to do next.”

“I don’t want to do anything next,” I croaked. “I just want to forget about it. Nothing even happened.”

Audrey stopped walking and pinched her top lip between her fingers. “It’s not nothing. He was trying to force you.”

“You can’t tell anyone,” I pleaded. “Promise me you won’t.” There was no evidence, just my word against his. How could I look anyone in the eye and explain? I wanted to forget the details, not repeat them out loud. I thought of the way Adam’s penis had felt in my hand and the sound of his voice when he’d barked instructions, like the fact that I had no choice but to follow them was part of the fun.

This couldn’t have happened to me. Any second now I’d wake up.

“You know I’d never tell anybody unless you wanted me to,” Audrey said, putting her arm around me. “Don’t even worry about that.” Her jaw wobbled a little as she looked at me. “I shouldn’t have left you with him. I should’ve come back to check—”

My head whipped from side to side like I couldn’t believe she’d just said that. It wasn’t her fault. I didn’t want to hear another word.

“Okay,” Audrey said softly. “Okay. Just concentrate on breathing, all right? Nice and slow. It’ll calm you down.”

I took deep breaths and listened to the sound of Audrey’s voice. We circled around my neighborhood until my hair was dry and I was calm enough to face my parents. Then we lied to them, told them I’d felt sick and that we’d gotten one of the girls at the party to drop us off. Audrey called home and arranged to stay the night, but I didn’t sleep.

I kept thinking about forgetting, and how doing anything else would be worse. I didn’t want to be the person this had happened to, and I didn’t have to be. Not if I kept it to myself.

Adam wouldn’t come near me again; he was disgusted with me. What happened was done and over with, and anyway, it’d never really happened in the first place. Not really. All I had to do
was stay quiet, and things would go back to the way they were before.

I listened to Audrey roll over next to me and told myself those same things over and over again until they were the only reaction that made sense. Then I lay there with my eyes open, feeling my wrist ache in the dark. He must’ve bruised it at some point, but I couldn’t remember when. Maybe that meant I was already forgetting.

So nothing happened that night in the Nielsens’ laundry room. I didn’t make the details realer by sharing them with anyone else— I did my best to make them disappear and stuck with my earphones blasting and the teeter-tottering back and forth between fuzzy viewpoints. Old me. New me. Old me. New me. They’re so mixed up now that I’m not sure I know the difference.

Audrey still thinks I should talk to someone about that night, even if I don’t want to do anything about it. She’d have let Jersy fight Adam if it was up to her, but she knows I wouldn’t like it. We’re doing this my way all the way, and Audrey knows I want to be completely off Adam’s radar. The less he notices me, the less likely it is that anything really happened to begin with.

It’s a system, sort of, and it’s more or less worked up till now. Between Audrey and the system I’m mostly doing all right. She’s been a therapist, bodyguard, and best friend rolled into one. For three weeks after the party, she raced around escorting me between classes. Then she got a written warning about her lateness. We spent so many hours talking on the phone that my mother suggested we should cut back to allow time for “other activities.”

“Friendship isn’t meant to be quite so intense,” Mom admonished. “You see her every day at school—what could you possibly have to talk about for two hours afterwards as well?”

I lied and told her Audrey was heartbroken over Massy. In actual fact Massimo had stopped registering her existence shortly after the party, without explanation. Obviously he’d chosen to believe whatever bullshit story Adam had fed him, and Audrey told me she was glad nothing had happened between them. “If he’s that controlled by other people’s opinions, I had him all wrong,” she said bitterly. “Especially if he’s listening to guys like Adam Porter. He must be a real prick. I can’t believe how he had me fooled.”

I don’t know how you ever really know people—even when you’ve spent your whole life with them. I thought my dad was the kind of person who didn’t have any secrets. Now I wonder where he goes when he’s out late. Could there be someone else?

“I can’t imagine your dad doing that,” Audrey says as we stroll through the mall with Jersy one day after school. “He’s too nice. Besides, your mom would kick him out.”

That’s true and I nod at Audrey, trying to be positive. She’s been so happy since she and Jersy made it official that lately I feel extra gloomy in comparison.

Come on, that’s not exactly a surprise, is it? The attraction energy was obvious that day at my locker. Honestly, I’m pretty happy for the two of them. It’s not like I could handle a boyfriend now, and Audrey isn’t the kind of girl who deserts her friends to worship at a guy’s feet. I haven’t lost her; I haven’t lost anything.

Audrey’s so sensitive about including me that Jersy’s nearly become a second best friend to me in the last four weeks. The weirdest thing about that isn’t the time frame, which is a personal record for an anti-socialite like me, but that we’re wildly different. Jersy’s into any kind of extreme sport you can think of. He’s broken more bones than I can name and thinks Beyoncé is a goddess. He’s at least as smart as me but twice as lazy. The range of drugs
he’s into officially qualifies him as a stoner, but he doesn’t act like one. Stoners don’t have self-proclaimed social outcasts as girlfriends or hang out with brainiacs and dramaheads part-time.

“People don’t always split up when someone cheats,” Jersy adds as the three of us wander by Old Navy. “Sometimes they work it out.”

“Maybe.” Audrey shrugs. “Wouldn’t be me, I can tell you that. It’s disrespect.”

“You’d never get the trust back,” I add. “What good’s a relationship without it?” Listen to me, the relationship expert. Everything I know about love comes from song lyrics.

“Yeah,” Jersy says, nodding. “I know what you’re saying, but marriage is different.” He shoves his hands into the pockets of his baggy pants. “With a long-term thing like that, you have to expect some hiccups.”

“Hiccups?” I repeat, unconsciously slowing down as we approach HMV.

Jersy glances at the store as if suddenly remembering something. “I need new headphones—busted mine last night,” he says, charging towards HMV before Audrey or I can protest.

Audrey glances apologetically over at me as we cross the threshold. “Jazz section,” she whispers, but of course I’ve already spotted him. As if I could ever in a million years walk into HMV and fail to notice Record Store Guy’s presence. For one, he’s so keenly edible that he may as well be made of Belgian chocolate. His curly hair and Celtic tattoo are giving me a fever. Not to mention the way his chest fills out his T-shirt. It’s all hitting me bad, which is good, but it scares me just the same. Wanting someone that much is dangerous. Somebody should stamp a warning on Ryan’s chest for people who don’t already have the message stamped into their heads the way I do.
Jersy’s already halfway across the store, in search of replacement headphones, and I’m relieved that Ryan’s busy talking to a middle-aged woman in a blue hijab. Maybe I won’t have to feel weird about making conversation while Jersy and Audrey listen in. Not that they
would
, but the thought makes me edgy anyway. Since September the thought of speaking to Ryan makes me nervous no matter who is or isn’t around. It’s just not the same.

I scope out the farthest point of the store from the jazz section, which seems to be precisely where Jersy’s standing, examining various sets of earphones. When I get there, he looks up at me and then into the distance, like something’s caught his eye. “Hey.” Jersy knocks his arm against mine. “I think that guy’s waving at you.”

Sure enough I turn to find Ryan waving casually in our direction, the woman with the hijab striding away from him. As I raise my hand to wave back, the woman swings around to engage him in conversation a second time. Ryan smiles at my return wave before refocusing his attention on her.

“Who’s that?” Jersy asks, a pair of mid-priced noise-canceling headphones in his left hand.

“Stop looking at him already,” I command.

Jersy’s gaze flicks away from Record Store Guy and holds on me. “Why?”

I raise my eyebrows impatiently. Do we have to do this here?

“Do you guys have a thing?” Jersy continues. He says that so easily that it makes me feel more uptight.

“There’s no thing,” I insist, crossing my arms against my chest and wishing that I didn’t feel compelled to answer. My big toe curls up inside my shoe as I lower my voice to a whisper. “I guess you could say I
had
a thing for him once upon a time.” I flex my toe inside my shoe and focus anxiously on Jersy’s headphones. “But it was nothing really.”

Jersy shakes his head but smiles. “You’re not a very good liar, are you?”

You’d be surprised
. But that’s not the answer I give him. My arms fall back into place at my sides as I try to match his casualness. “We used to talk music a lot, but I don’t come in here much anymore.” I’ve been going to the record store on the main floor instead. It feels like cheating, but I know that’s ridiculous. I’m sure Ryan couldn’t care less if I ever set foot in HMV again. He’d wave at anyone he recognized. He’s just like that.

My spine starts to tingle. If Jersy grills me about Ryan any deeper, I won’t know what to tell him. I can’t explain why I don’t talk to Ryan anymore. Jersy and I may be friends, but we’re not as close as that.

“Are you getting those?” Audrey asks, swooping in out of nowhere and grabbing Jersy’s headphones.

He walks over to the cash register to pay for them, and then the three of us go. Regret tugs at me as I walk away from HMV and leave Ryan behind. When will I be able to feel giddy again without worrying where the feeling will lead?

If I was alone, I could get stuck on that question for hours. As it is, Billy Young cuts in front of us with two of his stoner pals outside HMV. “Hey, Mika,” he says, calling Jersy by his stoner nickname. “Hey, girls,” he adds, nodding at Audrey and me. The days of my rumored Billy infatuation are ancient history and not a problem. I don’t even think Billy was aware of the possibility to begin with.

We nod back, and Billy slides his hands into his back pockets. “So, Mika, coming over to Joel’s on Saturday to do some damage?”

“Sure thing.” Jersy’s all smiles.

“What about you two?” Billy focuses on Audrey and me. There’s no way in hell we’d ever show up at a stoner party, and Billy knows it as well as we do.

“Maybe,” Audrey says politely, answering for both of us.

As the three of us walk away, I can’t help but feel surprised, all over again, about being born-again friends with Jersy Mikulski. Sculpting my former feelings into friendship wasn’t rocket science, but it took some effort. There’s something in Jersy that I want to trust, and that makes this the best-case scenario in the end. Audrey’s super happy, and I don’t have to worry about fucking things up for myself. Plus, now I have other people to talk to at school, like Billy Young. He’s not a bad guy, despite the drug use and general lack of direction. Turns out he’s even an Our Lady Peace fan.

Unfortunately, Audrey’s current boyfriend status has Mom homing in on my seeming disinterest in the opposite sex more than ever, and when I get back from the mall she calls me into the kitchen, sits me at the table, and says, “Finn, I know you say there’s no one you like at the moment, but I’m the last person you’d tell if there was, aren’t I?”

“Maybe.” She has a point, but I’m sure this is just some new psychological tactic that has nothing to do with the real truth. “But there isn’t anyone. Maybe you think it’d be cool if I was having some secret relationship with someone you wouldn’t approve of or something, but it’s not actually happening, Mom.”