Cycler (10 page)

“Prude.”

I whack him on the arm. He smiles. “So,” he says. “How’d you do?”

“Still standing.”

“You’re sitting.”

“Metaphor, dude.”

He keeps looking at me. I think we’re heading for the Guinness World Record of sticky eyes.

“Anyway,” I say, “being bi is one thing, but I’m much more loath to be seen with someone who’s flunking calculus.”

“Loath?”

“It’s a word,” I say.

He laughs.

“Maybe we should sneak back inside,” I say. “We could go to the library.”

He kicks at a Trident gum wrapper with the toe of his dirty white sneaker. “Word got out while you were absent, you know.”

“Really?”

Daria, undoubtedly. She’d never do it out of malice, but she does have a tendency toward chattiness.

“Word always gets out,” he says. “Eventually.”

He keeps his eyes locked on mine as the cool air makes us shudder. The combination of fear and desire washing through me is a brand-new sensation. A terrifying sensation. But I feel braver than I’ve ever felt. Whatever Tommy and the gay leg-touchers from his past have to throw at me, I can take it.

Half an hour later, between A Block and B Block, I race to Ramie’s locker, where she’s trying on a necklace from the stash she hangs on her locker door.

“We need to talk prom dresses,” I tell her.

“What?” She slams her locker shut and stares at me.

Over her shoulder, I spot Daria rushing toward us. She has to pause and wait for some wrestling freshboys to get out of her way. “Hey, Jill,” she says. “Did you cut A Block?”

Ramie looks at me, stunned.

“Walk and talk,” I say, “or we’ll be late.” I rush them both toward the South Wing.

“So?” Ramie says.

“Yes,” I say. “I did cut A Block in order to have a chat with Tommy Knutson at the soccer bleachers.”

Ramie stops short, causing Wayne and Gloria, a.k.a. the Siamese Couple, to bump into us. “You did what?” Ramie says.

“Come on.” I tug her along with me. When we get to the intersection of South Wing and East Wing, Ramie pulls me with her, even though I should be walking in the other direction.

“Talk,” she says.

Daria, who should be heading to gym class, tags along.

“Call me crazy,” I say, “but I don’t care if Tommy’s bi. He’s still Tommy.”

“So he’s not a ‘gay man in training’?” Ramie says.

I shake my head. “That is such a brain-dead philosophy.”

Daria skips around Ramie and walks on my other side. “But Jill,” she says. “Aren’t you worried?”

“About what?”

Daria leans in close. “AIDS.”

“Daria!” Ramie reaches over me to whack Daria on the shoulder. “Don’t be ignorant. Hey, Jill, has he actually had sex with a guy?”

“Not that it’s any of your business,” I say, “but no. He’s still a gay virgin.” I lower my voice to a whisper. “But
not
a straight one.”

“That is so gross,” Daria says.

Ramie shoots her a scowl. “No it isn’t. It’s deeply normal.” She looks at me again and there’s something strange in her expression. When we get to Ramie’s chemistry class, we hang back outside the door while the other students filter in.

“So,” I say. “We’re back to the original plan, right?”

“What plan?” Ramie says.

“Shhh!” I pull them both close. “The
prom,
” I say. “I still have to score an invite. And I need to start thinking about a dress. A
normal
dress, Ramie. Nothing bizarre.”

Daria’s face scrunches up so much it looks like it hurts. “You still want to go to the prom with him?”

“Of course,” I say. “He’s going to look so cute in a tux.”

The late bell rings.

Ramie squeezes my arm. “Jill, listen—”

“Don’t you dare tell me I shouldn’t go with him because he’s bi.”

“Yeah, right, dingbat. I became a homophobe like Daria over the weekend.”

“Shut up,” Daria says. Then she lowers her voice. “I’m not a homophobe. My cousin Sasha is gay.”

“Congratulations,” Ramie says. “Anyway, Jill, listen.” She grabs my head, buries her mouth in my ear and whispers, “I let a stranger into my bedroom window last night.”

“You what!” I pull away from her.

She yanks my ear back to her mouth and whispers, “We made out on my bed.” She pulls away and looks at me. “Deets later. Gotta run. Total support on the Tommy front. I’m proud of you.” She slips into the classroom.

“What?” Daria says. “What did she say?”

Ramie smiles at me from her seat in the third row.

Daria grabs my arm.

“She’s lying,” I tell her. “She’s trying to one-up me.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing,” I tell her. I turn and run back down the East Wing to art class. “Go to class.”

Daria stomps her foot, then runs off.

Love, or something like it, must be in the air. In chem lab, Steven Price giddily recounts his successful attainment of a prom date with fellow trombone player, Petra Klimova, an accomplishment that apparently eviscerates any residual mal feelings he has for me. So we’re back to being buds. Then, just as the bell rings, Ramie pushes the door open, all excited to fill me in with the “deets” about her window guy.

Placing the last beaker in the drying rack, I grab my bag and head into the hallway with her.

“Did you cut class early?” I say.

Nodding, she hooks her arm through mine and rushes me down the hall.

“So,” I say. “Full disclosure.”

“Like I ever leave anything out,” she says. “Jill, when I say he’s hot, I’m talking supernova. I’m talking the big bang. I’m talking—”

“Very nice, Ramie. Who
is
he?”

She shrugs theatrically.

“What do you mean you don’t know? What’s his name?”

She shrugs again, then throws her arms around me and nudges her nose behind my ear. “I think I’m in love.”

Behind us, a pair of freshman boys giggle; then one of them blurts out, “Kiss her.”

Ramie glances over her shoulder at them, then grabs my face and plants one on my lips.

I shove her away and wipe her spit from my mouth. “Ramie! I am deeply not into that
Girls Gone Wild
crap.”

The freshman boys are already cheering.

I grab Ramie’s bony wrist and yank her along with me. “You’re such a deviant,” I say. “How did you meet this guy?”

“He just showed up at my window,” she says. “But the weird thing is, Jill, I feel like I know him. Don’t ask me how. It’s like we have this—”

“Don’t say ‘connection.’ ”

“We do!”

“Ramie!” It’s déjà vu all over again. “You mean like you had with that Lansdale kid?”

“He’s not a Lansdale kid.”

Lansdale is a sleepaway school for boys from broken homes. Sad cases. Every once in a while, a Winterhead girl gets mixed up with one of them and it always ends badly. Ask Ramie.

“So,” I say. “What did you do with him?”

Ramie gets all swoony and says, “We mostly just did, like, tongues and stuff, but he was lying on top of me and he had his hand up my shirt.”

“And you don’t even know his name?”

“What’s in a name?” she says.

“Right,” I say. “And when are you seeing him again?”

She shrugs.

“You don’t know?”

“It’s not a conventional relationship, Jill. Don’t be boring.”

“So, it’s a relationship now?” I say.

Ramie nods.

“Oh, this is promising.”

“Yeah,” she says. “I know.”

When we get to the art room, I pull her aside. “Ramie, promise me something.”

“What?”

“Promise you’ll call me the next time he shows up at your window.”

“Why?” she says. “You want to watch?”

I poke her bony sternum with my finger. “You are a sick and dangerous individual.”

She smiles sweetly. “I know. But you’re the one who’s dating a bi.” She winks at me, then skips down the hallway, her wild black hair flowing like a wave.

On the one hand, it’s nice to see Ramie take an interest in guys again. On the other, she’s reached a new depth of malness in her choice of lust objects. And this guy has some stiff competition, no pun intended. Two weeks pass, and surprise, surprise, Mr. No-name Window Stalker fails to make an appearance. Fortunately, Ramie has my deeply urgent prom situation to occasionally distract her from the never-ending play-by-play of their one night of tongue action. She’s even put together a “look book” of prom dress ideas for me. Most of them are wildly unacceptable, but I appreciate the effort.

On Friday, May 18, thirty-six days until prom night, I enter the cafeteria solo and find Daria and Ramie sitting at a table by the window.

“Where’s Loverboy?” Daria says. “Aren’t you tutoring him today?” She makes room between herself and Melinda Peters.

I sit down and take out my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “I think Tommy’s absent. I haven’t seen him all day.”

Ramie reaches into her bag, then slaps a big piece of paper in front of me. “My final offer,” she says.

On the left side of the page is a colored-pencil drawing of a silver, pink and black dress. On the right, she’s pasted a photo of a vintage silver ball gown, a one-inch square of black tulle and a magazine cutout of a pink column dress.

“It’s a cut-and-paste job,” Ramie says. “The vintage number is my mom’s, which I’m sure she’ll donate. The black tulle I already have. And we need this pink column dress, which I’m pretty sure we can pick up at Le Château for under a hundred.”

“Oh, Ramie,” I say.

She rolls her eyes. “I’m sorry, Jill. I am constitutionally incapable of designing anything more conservative than that. If you don’t—”

I throw my arms around her. “It’s beautiful.”

“Let me see.” Daria grabs the paper. “Wow, Rames. That is deeply cool.”

Ramie pulls away and looks at me. “Do you mean it? Do you really like it?”

“I love it,” I tell her. “You’re a genius. The black tulle peeking through the slit and the way it contrasts with the pale pink and silver? It’s inspired. It’s . . . I don’t even know what to say, Rames. It’s like you designed the dress of my dreams.”

Ramie beams. “That’s ’cause I know my girl.”

I take the paper back from Daria and stare at the dress. “You must. You really must.”

“Don’t worry,” Ramie says. “I can deeply pull it off.”

“I know you can,” I say. “All right. The prom dress is settled thanks to Ramie’s brilliance. Now all I have to do is ramp things up with Tommy.”

“Right,” Daria says. “Back to Project X.”

“No!” I say. I look around to make sure no one’s listening. Melinda Peters is trying to look like she’s not eavesdropping. I shoot her an eyeball missile and she resumes her fake conversation with Alicia Bernstein. Then I lean over the table for a bit of privacy, or what passes for it in this Orwellian environment. “Project X is eighty-sixed,” I say.

“Because it’s sexist,” Ramie adds.

“Yes, whatever,” I say. “And archaic and dishonest and just generally mal. But I still need to score a prom invite.”

“Oh,” Daria says. “I thought scoring a prom invite
was
Project X.”

Ramie shakes her head. “Did you even
read
the mission statement? Jill, how can we work with her?”

“Testify,” I say. “Anyway. Let’s focus here. I think the boy needs a nudge.”

“Really?” Ramie stabs at a cube of tofu with a pair of red lacquer chopsticks. “He seems fairly Jill positive to me. You’re doing sticky eyes again, right?”

“Yes, but—” I face Alicia Bernstein, who is not even trying to hide the fact that she’s eavesdropping. “You want me to type this up for you?” I say.

She makes an innocent face for a second, then says, “Whatever. Tommy Knutson’s gay.”

Ramie points a chopstick at Alicia. “Bi, dude. Google it.”

Melinda Peters nods sympathetically at me. “He is really cute, though.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I know. Anyway.” I turn my back to them and huddle with Ramie and Daria. “The thing is, I think Tommy might suspect that I’m only doing sticky eyes out of political correctness. So I was thinking that maybe we need to kiss.”

Ramie raises her eyebrows.

“I think if he kissed me,” I say, “he’d know that my lust for him is genuine and not political.”

“I see,” Ramie says. “So you vant to speak in zee language of loffff.”

“Yeah, Dracula.”

“No way,” Ramie says. “That was deeply French.”

“Whatever,” I say. “How can I get him to kiss me?”

There’s a bit of silence and some chewing; then Daria unleashes the following Einsteinian proposal: “Why don’t you just grab him in the hallway and kiss him?”

I just look at her.

“What?” she says.

“Yeah, Daria,” I say. “Then I can rip off my shirt and shake my boobs in his face.”

“That reminds me,” Ramie says. She picks out a long strand of seaweed and stares at it before sliding it into her mouth.

“Ramie,” I say. “Please don’t tell me you ripped off your shirt and shook your boobs in someone’s face.”

“Yeah,” Daria snorts. “ ’Cause they could deeply sue you for damages.”

Ramie places her chopsticks down. “Jill,” she says. “Why are we friends with Daria again?”

“She has a swimming pool.”

Ramie nods.

“You guys deeply suck,” Daria says.

I put my arm around her and give her a peck on the cheek, which, not surprisingly, inspires an improvised round of “lezzy, lezzy, lezzy” from a tableful of sophomore a-holes.

Yes, I am the subject of homocurious speculation because of my association with Tommy “the gay” Knutson. At least five times a day, someone calls me fag-lover or lezzy, which doesn’t even make sense when you think about it. But since when do cranially challenged homophobes need to make sense, right? Anyway, I will undoubtedly come out of this whole affair a more well-rounded and worldly individual.

“As I was saying,” Ramie says, “Mr. No-name Window Stalker is an amazing kisser.”

Oh great. Another spell of pointless blatheration about a guy who Ramie spent exactly half an hour with and who, let’s face it, people, she’ll never see again. But I’m a good friend, so I do not roll my eyes at this. I nod supportively and wait for the right moment to move the conversation back on track.

“Jill,” Ramie says. “Don’t look at me like that. He
is
a good kisser. Although he did bite my lip.”