The Bermudez Triangle (7 page)

At the end of the day, when they were alone, the next phase would begin. There was frequently an exchange of very fast test kisses, quick little brushes of the lips that, if a witness were pressed, might not hold up in court as
real
kisses. This seemed to be the way they asked each other if this was okay, if they should do it again. The answer was always yes, and then making out would commence.

For Avery the game was almost better than the kissing. She liked the slightly dangerous feeling that came from doing these things right under people’s noses. No one knew, of course, because they weren’t acting any different from the way they’d always acted.

One of the most amazing things was the fact that Mel had
kept this information hidden for so long. Mel was notoriously bad at hiding things. She was the great revealer of surprise parties, the one who turned three different shades of pink when she tried to tell even the smallest lie. Yet she had managed to go an entire lifetime without revealing the fact that she liked girls—a lot. And she definitely liked Avery—a lot. Avery could tell that it took every ounce of strength Mel had not to be the one who always initiated the kissing.

A month after the big event they were sitting at a back table at The Grind, a coffee shop on Broadway. The Grind was run and populated by the Skidmore College students who hadn’t gone home for the summer. These were the intensely friendly people—the girls with the unwashed hair that they wrapped in colorful scarves or tied up in intricate knots that always looked like they were on the verge of coming undone, the guys with the beards or the out-of-control curls. They were also kind of unobservant and hopeless at giving the right change.

In Avery’s mind it was the perfect place to hang out. Only a few people from their school came in during the summer, and the ones who did weren’t the types who would be looking around and trying to spot the lesbians. The high-maintenance, gossipy, “I need my latte or I’ll die” people went to Starbucks, where they had a blender and could make frozen drinks. The Grind served lower-tech iced coffees, which were kind of thick and just a little too strong. It was a trade off Avery could live with.

She shifted in her chair, pulling up her leg to tuck it underneath her. As she moved, she ran her foot alongside Mel’s calf.

“Okay,” Avery said, her eyes gleaming once she noticed the effect her stealthy move had had on Mel. “Let’s review. What’s one way to tell that a band is really bad?”

“If it has five guys who do coordinated dance moves,” Mel said, reciting the answer just as Avery had taught her.

“The exception to this rule is?”

“The Jackson Five.”

“Who was in that?”

“Michael Jackson, before he was scary.”

“Right! You get a prize!”

“What?” Mel asked.

“You’ll get it later.”

Mel smiled. “You know,” she said, “it’s a month today.”

“A month what?”

“You know what I mean.”

Avery poked around at the ice at the bottom of her glass. “Weird,” she replied.

“So.” Mel kept her eyes down. “What … are we?”

“Um, finished?” Avery grinned and held up her empty glass. “Want to walk?”

They continued down to the end of the stretch of shops, to Congress Park. Two busloads of elderly tourists had just been deposited there, and they were making their way around the Greek pavilion and the cupolas that housed the springs and the
decorative ponds. They took pictures of one another and happily fumbled with their cameras and video recorders.

Mel walked along quietly. Avery could almost feel the question coming out of her pores, jumping over and invading Avery cell by cell.

“Mel,” she said.

“It’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it.”

This was a huge, obvious lie.

Alongside the path a woman in a flowing purple dress was sitting on a folding stool, stringing red and pink beads together and smiling to herself. At her feet were two flat, velvet-lined cases of beaded necklaces, earrings, and silver rings. Avery stopped and knelt to look them over.

“How much are these?” Avery asked, pointing to a selection of plain silver bands.

“Fifteen dollars.”

“We should each get one,” Avery said. “Friendship bands.”

“You want two?” the woman said. “Two for twenty-five. It’s a beautiful day. Why not two for twenty-five?”

The woman smiled at them, and Avery felt a wave of recognition. She
knew
. Avery was sure of it. The woman was giving her a coded message of affirmation.

Avery picked out a band for her left thumb. They had to find the tiniest band for Mel’s index finger. It looked like it took a huge effort for Mel to keep her hands from shaking. She reached for her purse.

“It’s okay,” Avery said. “Early birthday gift.”

Mel’s birthday was in May.

“Know what?” Mel said when they were just out of the woman’s earshot.

“What?”

“I have the best girlfriend in the world.”

Avery squinted at one of the ponds, which was brightly reflecting the sun. She didn’t reply for a minute.

“So do I,” she finally said.

August 14

TO: Mel; Avery

FROM: Nina

ARGH! I wish, I wish, I wish that you could just come here for a day or something and meet Steve because it is almost impossible to explain how much I love him. Here is some evidence to show you just how great he is:

1. Makes me call him whenever I work late at the library so he can come over and walk me back to the building.

2. Rode his bike into town at 11 p.m. the other night to get me Pamprin(!).

3. Has never slept with anyone because he wanted to wait for the right person, and he says he thinks it is me, but only if I want—and he’ll wait until whenever I’m ready, even if that means when we both get here for school next year (!!!!!).

4. Ave: He is a huge Elliott Smith fan. That’s good, right?

5. Mel: He can’t watch that part of “Finding Nemo” either.

August 15

TO: Nina; Avery

FROM: Mel

OMG. I thought about this all day at work. Keep him!

August 19

TO: Avery; Mel

FROM: Nina

RED ALERT!

MIR (mentally ill roommate) has been missing for two days. She left for class on Thursday morning and never came back. Our RA is freaking out because they are kind of extra responsible for us since we’re the high school group. I am not freaking out so much. I sleep
better knowing that a naked cork-eater is not sneaking around at night, stealing my underwear.

August 19

TO: Mel; Avery

FROM: Nina

UPDATE:

Sadly, MIR has returned. Not in M hospital, as hoped. She went to San Francisco. EWSPFHSL staff totally furious with her. She brought back a v. small turtle, about three inches big, which she keeps in a takeout container on the floor by her desk. She didn’t feed it, so Steve rode down to Whole Foods on his bike and bought it organic lettuce. He says that he is going to take it from her if she doesn’t start treating it right and will find an ecologically appropriate place to set it free, where it hopefully won’t get eaten by something.

He is so good.

August 20

TO: Nina; Mel

FROM: Avery

I drove past school today. They finally took down the HAVE A GOOD UMMER sign and put up the WELCOME BACK STUDENTS one. I guess they bought a new S.

August 20

TO: Mel; Nina

FROM: Avery

Hey! Four hours later the
S
thief was back. Sign now says, WELCOME BACK TUDENTS. LONG LIVE THE
S
THIEF!

August 24

TO: Avery; Mel

FROM: Nina

36 hours until my flight. Going to be v, busy for the next day and a half. V excited to come home, but leaving Steve is hard. So hard. I can’t think about it or my head will explode. Need serious I Power. At 9:15 tonight (your time) I will call you to take T position and say the chant. I need you!

“
I like your
hair,” Mel’s mom said, reaching out and feeling Avery’s bobbed locks. “You’ve colored it. It looks good darker.”

“Thanks.” Avery nodded, not looking thrilled at being petted. She hunched up her shoulders.

Avery was just trying to make it a little more bearable for Mel by coming along for dinner at her mom’s house, but Mel could see that she was already regretting her decision.

Mel was five when her mom met Jim Podd. Apparently her parents had been growing apart for some time, and this was the final push her mom needed to make the move out of the house. Jim already had two boys, so it was decided that Mel should remain with her father.

The oldest Podd, Brendan, was now about to start his freshman year at Cornell. He was also a known hacker and software pirate and had a padlock on his room. Richie, his brother, was a fifteen-year-old skater—friendly enough, but erratic and uncontrollable. Things tended to get broken around Richie. Lastly there was Lyla, the one child Mel’s mom and Jim had on their own. The only thing Mel had ever seen Lyla do was watch television.
She had a TiVo in her room. She would only eat plain white rice, chicken nuggets, or hot dogs (boiled—not grilled), so she always had a special plate made up for her.

The Podds lived in one of the developments around Saratoga Lake, in a clump of absolutely identical houses bunched close together along the lakeside. Their house was much more expensive than the one Mel and her father lived in, as was everything in it. Whenever Mel got there, either Jim or her mom pointed out some new thing they’d just gotten, never once realizing that Mel not might want to know how much better they were doing.

“We drove Brendan out to Ithaca on Wednesday for move-in,” Jim said, coming out of the kitchen with a plate of seafood and fennel sausage. “Freshmen aren’t supposed to have cars, but he found someone to rent him a parking space at their house. For all I know, he won’t even be in school that long. A lot of these companies, they hire people like Brendan. They show them the flaws in their systems. He’ll probably get a great job out of it.”

There was a thunk as Richie jumped down the stairs and leapt into the room.

“Hey, Mel. Hey, Avery,” he yelped while stepping onto the recliner. “Guess what? I’m going sandboarding later this year. When are we eating?”

This last remark was yelled out to Jim.

“Soon.”

“I’ll be back,” Richie said, springing off the chair and out of the room.

Avery silently mouthed the word
Ritalin
to Mel.

About ten minutes later Jim had arranged all of his platters on the table. Richie had been recalled, and Lyla had been coaxed downstairs with the promise of a boiled hot dog. Jim encouraged everyone to dig in. Dinners at the Podd house were always like something out of a magazine spread. Along with the seafood sausage, there was citrus shrimp, broccoli rabe with grilled cipollini onions, heirloom tomato salad, and some kind of purple Thai slaw. Mel and her dad tended to eat things like rotisserie chicken from the Price Chopper and hamburger mixed with mac and cheese, so even the Podd food was a little disturbing.

“So,” Jim asked, “any summer love stories, Mel?”

Avery sighed. “She’s got loads. Like,
hordes
of them.”

Mel froze. Avery was staring at her from across the table with a “dare me?” smile twisting her lips. Mel rounded her eyes and tried to send Avery a telepathic message to cease and desist whatever it was she was planning.

“Really?” her mom said, not picking up on this battle of the Jedi mind tricks.

“Yeah.” Avery nodded, spearing another piece of sausage. “It’s weird. Guys seem to follow Mel wherever she goes. I try for her leftovers.”

“So,” Mel’s mom said, leaning in eagerly. “Come on. Details.”

“God,” Avery answered, “there’s been like, what, three or four? You know Mel, she’s playing them off one another.”

Mel’s mother looked at her with an admiration Mel had never seen before. Dating was very critical to her mom. She really seemed to measure a person’s entire worth in the world by whom
they’d dated and what they’d gotten from that person. Mel’s father, though handsome, was a contractor who didn’t make nearly as much as Jim Podd. Mel hated seeing the big diamond that always flashed around on her mother’s finger. She always had to make an effort not even to look at her mother’s left hand.

“The last guy,” Avery went on, now caught up in her own elaborate story, “was an actor who came up from New York to do one of the shows at the arts center. He was way too old. I think he thought Mel was in college or something. How old was he, Mel?”

“Um … I don’t know.” Mel stared down at her plate and twirled her fork on one prong, choreographing a delicate little ballet around the sausage. Sausage Lake.

“I think he was twenty-three,” Avery said, nodding to herself. “Anyway, once he found out we were in high school, he was nice about it and backed off. But you could tell he was so into Mel.”

As Mel sent her fork ballerina into a heroic leap over the pile of onions, she wondered what would happen if she slipped in a casual, “Actually, Avery’s my girlfriend. She’s incredibly hot, and I love her.”

Avery just kept on going. “Then there was Patrick, this guy who kept coming into the restaurant to see Mel. He’s a sophomore at Yale. I think he majors in microchemistry. So hot, but he just wasn’t Mel’s type.”

Patrick was a mildly retarded dishwasher who spent his breaks playing games on an old PalmPilot. Even as she told this ridiculous lie, Avery’s foot found Mel’s under the table.

“Can I go to my room?” Lyla asked.

“Finish your hot dog, sweetie,” her father admonished.

“I’m full.”

“And what about you, Avery?” Mel’s mom said. “Still playing piano?”

“Still playing piano,” Avery replied.