Sophomoric (10 page)

“Asshole.” I stumbled again. Maybe I wasn’t completely sober. Not quite.

He lowered his mouth to my ear. “You know you love it.” Every muscle in my body clenched, perhaps trying in vain to capture the bottom of my stomach (or my judgment) before it took a long walk off a very short cliff. Bad idea or no, I unfortunately loved it a lot.

My back pressed against the brick of the building. Out of the lights, his face became contours of shadow and angular line. I traced them with the tip of my finger. His hands settled against the brick on either side of my body. “So what am I going to do with my ten minutes?”

As much as I trusted Cleo, I was still surprised to wake up in her room on Sunday morning completely unscathed by last night. Security, the R.A.s and the teachers on “Bush Patrol” had completely missed our stumble back to the dorms at eleven, never mind everything that had preceded it. It is remarkable how often adults are conveniently oblivious—for whose benefit, exactly, it’s uncertain. Gotta love it.

“I need coffee.” Cleo’s voice came from somewhere above and to the right of my head. I pressed my face into the pillow next to me on the floor. It could not be time to wake up yet. We had been up until three watching bad comedies and calling the boys.

“Kill me.” The cushions muffled my moan.

It was noon when we finally dragged ourselves out of bed with a lot of help from Amie and Nicky. At least they brought coffee, even if it was crappy, watery, under-caffeinated dining hall coffee. Amie looked worse than I felt. Surprisingly, so did Nicky. I guess alcohol consumption wasn’t the deciding factor.

One of the best things about dorms is that on the days when all you want is chocolate and chick flicks, you have a building full of people to join you. Cleo’s room was vacated once, and only once, to pick up ice cream from the snack bar in large quantities. Then it was back to a marathon of movies the boys would never watch willingly.

Everyone cries during that scene when the sun sets and the blond costars make out in slow motion. We were all teary at the end of some piece of sappily wonderful boy-meets-girl fluff. Except Cleo. However, there is a line between appropriately misty-eyed and sobbing, and Nicky was well past it.

“Oh, babe.” Cleo wrapped an arm around her. Amie scooted in on Nicky’s other side, rubbing her back. “It’s okay. Shh, it’s okay.”

I watched, feeling awful and awkward and extraneous.

“But we fought and he doesn’t even know.” Her words were muffled by Cleo’s shoulder and distorted by sobs.

“Shh.” Cleo smoothed her hair in an oddly maternal gesture. “It’s okay.”

“You’ll make up.” Amie’s voice was comforting. The look she shot Cleo over Nicky’s head was not. “He can’t avoid you at Cleo’s this weekend. If it even lasts that long, which it won’t. He loves you, Nicky. You know that.”

“But what if he doesn’t anymore?”

“He does.” Cleo shook her head at Amie. “You know he does.”

“But wh-what if he d-doesn’t?”

“Shhh.” Amie’s face was still entirely at odds with her voice.

Nicky wasn’t sobbing for long. After a while, she was just curled on the floor, her head still on Cleo’s shoulder, her eyes red and puffy. I didn’t know how long it had been when Amie got up, motioning me to come with her. Pulling sweatpants over my underwear, I followed Amie out into the hall. To say she was furious went beyond understatement. The entire way back to her room, she was silent, walking quickly. She didn’t say a word until after she slammed a pizza menu on her desk in front of me.

“I cannot believe that son of a bitch.”

I winced, sure the people through the wall could hear her. She obviously didn’t care.

“The asshole says it’s the fucking college pressure. Screw him, what does he know about pressure, she’s under the same crap and then some. And then he goes and gets wasted, what the hell is his problem?”

I was really confused. I was also terrified to ask what was going on.

“She’s been with him through every stupid damn thing he has ever done. She never blamed him, she never bitched him out, even though she should have. That stupid—agh.” She concluded with a nonsensical noise of frustration that did not bode well for Scott. After there had been silence for a little while, I thought it might be safe to ask. Didn’t mean I wasn’t still tempted to edge toward the door.

“Amie, what happened?”

She looked up at me, surprised. “I thought Cleo told you.”

I shook my head. “No.” I couldn’t read the look on her face. “But I mean, you don’t have to tell me…”

She shook her head. “No, it’s fine. Just don’t tell anyone. Obviously.”

“’Course not.” I felt a little guilty for being curious. But I did care.

“Some of it’s just Scott being an asshole.” She ran a hand through her hair. “He’s always a little bit of a jerk. I love the guy, don’t get me wrong, but he’s not always the most sensitive guy. And with college and the pressure they’re both under from their parents. Plus his brother’s back in rehab. Alcoholism.” She shook her head, looking more than a little disgusted with Scott. “And now…Nicky’s late. Very late. And she doesn’t know if it’s stress or…”

It didn’t click for a second. When it did, my eyebrows shot up to my hairline. “She thinks she’s pregnant?” I whispered the words, terrified someone might hear through the walls.

Amie shrugged. “We don’t know. She doesn’t know, she hasn’t said anything to him. But if she is…it’s really bad. Her parents?” She sighed. “We would go get a test or five in town, but they’d know we’re Academy students. We’d get in so much shit. At Cleo’s maybe, since it’s not too long, but we can’t really do anything now except bitch at Scott. I’m gonna call Alec. Can you order pizza?”

“Sure. Large cheese?” I reached for the cordless phone on the desk. Amie pulled her cell phone out of a drawer.

“Yeah.”

As I picked up the phone, I remembered the night before and Nicky’s disinterest in the pizza. “Should I get something for Nicky?”

Amie shook her head, a crease forming between her eyebrows as she lifted her cell to her ear. “She won’t eat it. I thought we were past that after freshman year, but every time she and Scott fall apart…” She shook her head again, turning back toward the cell in her hand. “Alec? Hey, babe. No, I’m not alone. Are you?”

I tried to tune out their conversation. It felt like I already knew a lot more than I should. The number for the pizza place was ingrained in my muscle memory so it was impossible not to think about what Amie had just told me. Nicky hardly seemed like the abortion type. Then again, with her perfect GPA and college hopes, she didn’t exactly seem like the teenage mother type. Maybe adoption? But then what would Scott say?

“Italian Kitchen. May I take your order?”

“Large cheese pizza.” Which reminded me that Nicky was apparently not eating. If you were pregnant and didn’t eat, did you end up looking like one of the starving children in Africa?

“Cash or credit?”

I had to stop thinking about this. She’d be fine. Of course she would be fine.

On Tuesday, Scott was still not talking to Nicky. Alec was, according to Amie, completely useless. He didn’t understand why his advice to relax and give Scott time was so awful. I didn’t press Dev to talk to Scott. Really, I didn’t have the right. Either way, I had my own pre-break problems to deal with. Someone had seen me and Dev making out behind the auditorium on Saturday night. Or heard him talking about it. Or was just making up crap. Whatever it was, someone had made assumptions and was telling the entire student body that we were having sex. The same someone was also kind enough to remind the entire student body that we weren’t dating. They got it half right, but I’d rather they get the dating wrong than the sex. Besides, when you have everyone thinking you’ve had sex, you should at least get something out of it. Namely sex.

I hated boarding school sometimes.

Dev, in true boy form, didn’t care. Worse, he was proud. Freaking double standards: he got backslapped, I got bitch-slapped. So much for feminism. Cleo kept telling me it didn’t matter. Of course, I wasn’t exactly her top concern. Thank God classes this week were basically to keep us occupied before the long weekend. Midterms had supposedly burnt us out. It made a good excuse.

Math gave us back our scores first. When I saw the score scrawled in bright red across the top, I froze. 98%. Shit.

“What’d you get?” The only thing I knew about the speaker was that she was on the crew team. Not that I needed anyone to tell me; the girl was hugely tall with broader shoulders than half the guys in our class. She also probably had more muscle in her hands than I did in my whole body. Her test, which she wasn’t bothering to hide, had 87% in matching cramped red scribble.

I flipped my test over on my desk. “Eighty-nine.”

“Nice.” She grinned at me. “Congrats.”

“You too.” Hopefully, I sounded enthused. “Great score.”

“I studied for hours.” I nodded and continued to smile as she went on and on about her study sessions and her flashcards.

This is why I lie.

Thankfully, my friends had bigger things to worry about. Not one of them asked me about my grades. They were more concerned about when I was planning to leave for Cleo’s and whether or not Dev had gotten in my pants. Everyone seemed to think I was lying. Even when Scott said he believed me, Alec was laughing behind a supposedly subtle hand. And Dev was terrible at pretending he had sympathy, which just pissed me off.

“‘Relax, baby,’ my ass.” I snapped at him. It was Wednesday night after study hall and it felt like the entire student body was watching us. “I’m not making out with you in front of a bunch of people who think we’re having sex.”

“Bizza, it’s fine.” He grinned that same stupid cocky grin. Right now, not so cute. “They already thought we were having sex.”

I pulled away, crossing my arms over my chest. It was freezing tonight, one of the first cold nights of fall. Of course, it would also be the night I couldn’t share body heat. “You asshole.”

The grin faded. “It’s true!” Leaning into the wall and shoving his hands deep into his jacket pockets, he looked about as happy as I felt. Let the gossips figure out what the hell was going on now. Laying the groundwork for makeup sex?

“Look, Bizza, it doesn’t matter. Who the hell cares? We’re not.”

“Well, why not?” Why are my brain and mouth always disconnected at the worst moments? I didn’t even know what I was mad about anymore.

“Because…” He searched for a reason, rubbing the back of his neck. “Because you haven’t. And we’re not dating. And you’re my friend. And Cleo would kick my ass if I screw up.”

Great. Just great. He couldn’t even come up with a good excuse. We’re not dating? Like he cared. I may have been the kid that checked whether “gullible” was actually in the dictionary, but I’d learned my lesson since middle school. I didn’t need anyone protecting me from my own decisions, not even Cleo.

“Oh, so I’m too good to have sex with, but not too good to blow you.”

I really hoped nobody heard that.

The fingers he was running through his hair clenched into a fist. “What the hell, Bizza? What is wrong with you?”

I threw my hands up, the classic gesture of surrender, ignoring that it was me sending seven kinds of mixed signals. “I give up. Find someone else’s reputation to screw up, Dev, because I am so damn sick of this.” Stupid cocky jackass.

The air felt heavy as I ran the twenty-odd yards back to my dorm. Of course it was going to rain, because wasn’t life just flipping perfect. At least it was a kind of cover for the fact that I was crying. As if the rumors could get any worse.

Drama on Thursday sounded like hell on earth. So I did what any high school student would: I cut. Whoop-dee-freaking-doo. I thought that since drama wasn’t exactly high-caliber academics, my teacher would let it slide. My mistake. Unfortunately for me, he was one of those arts teachers who take great offense at the fact that his students see his class as any less important than AP Calculus.

Slightly delusional. It worried me.

I had to sit through an hour-long rant from him, before being handed off to my counselor for a lecture. Then my parents called. It would have been easier explaining to a five-year-old that Santa and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy don’t exist than explaining to them why I’d cut a class. Their minds could not wrap around the concept. For some strange reason, that kind of made me want to cry.

Denial is a beautiful thing. It is also the root of all evil, but at least there would be some time-delay.

This was going to be a very long weekend.

Times have changed, I guess, since girls wanted to be princesses. Now the freshman girls were all begging to be dead. Maybe they hoped that senior guys had a severe case of necrophilia. As three of them surrounded Dev-as-Harker at center stage, though, I realized that my apparently oblivious acting teacher might just have been typecasting. The other two senior guys in our class had been joking that Vampy Succubi 1, 2 and 3 definitely wanted to suck something the entire time our teacher had been attempting to stage this scene. It would have been funnier if Dev wasn’t so likely to be the something in question.

Dev looked anything but the “confused and terrified” directed by the script: hand in his pocket, lines in his hand, slouching as always in his own personal spotlight. His role was hardly typecasting—except maybe regarding idiocy. A tiny red-haired freshman with freckles that, according to the guys behind me, did actually go everywhere, tossed her hair. It gleamed under the stage lights. I tried not to laugh. The stare that I think was supposed to be predatory was more petulant than anything. Pouts do not generally convey superiority.

I probably shouldn’t have been talking. Smoldering wasn’t exactly my strong point.

Neither were student-teacher relations. My drama teacher was giving me a colder shoulder than usual, insulted at my apparent disdain for his art. The man had been waiting for Godot just a little bit too long.

Vamp 2, a curvy Indian girl, was speaking her lines now. “Go on.” She had now inspired a conversation among the guys behind me about the Kama Sutra. She was also staring at Dev and not at his jugular, where the script said she was supposed to be looking. “You’re first and we’ll follow.”