Empress of the World (10 page)

We realize after we’ve been playing for quite a while that we have absolutely no idea what the score is.

“That means we win!” yells Isaac.

“No, that means we win!” counters Katrina.

“Whoever scores the next point wins,” says Kevin slowly and mildly.

After a few more minutes, Isaac misses the ball that Katrina has sent over the net, and immediately begins to claim that he missed it on purpose as a gentlemanly courtesy to us.

“Bullshit! Girls kick ass! And take names!” says Katrina, doing her own version of Isaac’s butt-wiggling dance.

Battle retrieves the ball and says, “I’ll take this back to the RA.” Kevin follows her, which makes my stomach twist itself into a knot.

As soon as she’s out of earshot, I say in a low voice, “Isaac, are you doing anything right now?”

“Other than regretting our tragic loss? No.”

“I need to talk to you. Can we go for a walk?”

“Uh . . . sure. Now?”

I nod. “See you later,” I say to Katrina, and start walking off the courts in the direction of the river, looking at the ground. I hope Isaac is following me. I hope Katrina doesn’t think I’m trying to come onto him. No, she knows how I feel about Battle. She and the rest of the world.

“I think you know this already,” I say. “I don’t know what I think you can do about it, but I want to talk about it anyway.”

He must think I have entirely lost my mind.

“I’m assuming this doesn’t have anything to do with volleyball,” Isaac says cautiously.

“Score one for you,” I say. “Want to guess what it does have to do with?”

“I have no idea.” He actually sounds like he doesn’t.

A butterfly appears in the sky in front of me, a flickering pattern of purple and pale yellow. I don’t want to do anything but watch it, but it only stays near for a few moments, and then flutters away.

“Isaac, I—” My courage fails me. “I’m just really worried about you.”

He looks at me as though I’m a bug that’s just landed on his candy bar.

I shrug. The essential Isaac gesture. “You know. The whole thing with your parents.”

I wish there were a rock handy that I could kick.

“I’m all right,” he says.

Don’t be all right. Please. Get upset, get mad, get something.

Awkward silence. Isaac shoves his hands in his pockets.

“Katrina thought you missed the wastebasket because you wanted us to know,” I blurt.

“She did?”

“Yeah. That it was, you know, subconscious, but that you wanted us to find it, the letter, I mean.”

“Jesus.” Isaac shakes his head.

“You’re not mad, are you?”

“It’s a little late for that. You already know.”

“I’m sorry.”

We’re at the river. I kick off my sandals, sit down, and put my feet in the water. It’s cold, but it makes my ankle feel better. It only gets sore now when I walk for a long time.

Isaac leans against a weeping willow. “Is this really what you wanted to talk about?”

I kick my left foot up, splashing myself. “Yes!” I let it fall back into the water.

“So? What do you want to know?” He sounds angry now. So do I.

“Just, how was it, dealing with them? I mean, they came together, wasn’t that weird? And how’s your sister? Have you talked to her? Your mom said she was having a rough time, what does that mean?”

I’m slightly surprised to realize that I really want to know the answers to all these questions.

“I talked to her last night,” he says, pulling a branch off the tree. “Rebecca—she’s like Katrina. Anything that’s up with her, you know it. Instantly. I think they thought if they brought her she’d cause a big scene and embarrass them in front of all the other parents.” He begins ripping the leaves off the branch. Isaac is destructive to the natural world.

“Like, what kind of scene? What would she do?”

“Well, her big plan now is that we should get a place by ourselves, and just not even bother with Mom and Dad. She probably would’ve explained that to everyone at brunch.”

“How old is she again?”

“Ten.” He sits down next to me. “I’m not worried about her. She really digs Aunt Mim and Laura.”

“Laura?”

“Yeah, she’s my aunt’s girlfriend.”

“Girlfriend?” I squeak before I can stop myself.

Isaac thwacks the leafless branch lightly on the surface of the water. “Yep, that’s right! My aunt’s a big old dyke! Does that bother you?”

I start laughing, the crazy kind of laughing that isn’t far from crying. “No,” I finally manage to gasp. “And I bet it wouldn’t bother you if I said I thought I might be one, too!”

“Really? Huh.” Isaac sounds as though I’d just said I thought it looked like rain.

My surprise at his lack of reaction must show on my face, because he says, “Nic, remember, I’m from San Francisco. I assume everyone I meet is a bisexual pagan until proven otherwise.”

All my muscles turn from wire to Jell-O with relief.

“It’s because of Battle,” I say before I lose my nerve again. “That’s what makes me think it, that I might be.”

I’ll tell him everything. I’ll make him admit he wants Katrina.

I wonder how old his aunt was when she knew.

It’s raining, and it’s very hot, and I feel like an entire pantheon is trying to hammer its way out of my head.

I can hear the rain splat against the sides of the building. Through the tiny windows of this room, I can see it falling: fat, heavy drops of rain that don’t do anything but make it seem even hotter, as though the sky was sweating.

“Nic?” Anne pokes me. “Wake up.”

“I wasn’t asleep, just thinking.”

“Well, your eyes were closed,” Anne says.

“It’s too hot to keep them open.”

Anne looks perfectly cool and collected, as usual. No sweat has gathered on the keyboard of her laptop, though she’s been taking notes as rapidly and conscientiously as always.

“Are you okay? You look kind of flushed.” Anne’s looking at me all concerned, as though I’m a potsherd she can’t identify.

“I kind of have a headache,” I admit.

“What do you want? I’ve got aspirin, ibuprofen, Midol . . .”

Of course she does. She probably keeps them in color-coordinated vials.

“Midol would be great, thanks.”

She opens her purse, removes a tiny blue vial—I was right—shakes out two tablets, and gives them to me. She’s probably got some fancy bottled water in her purse, too, but I decide not to push my luck. I swallow the tablets dry.

I just pray that Alex doesn’t break in with one of his totally off-topic rants—I couldn’t take his voice right now.

“But don’t you think there’s a responsibility to the greater society that’s more valid than whether the bones happen to belong to some distant relative of some Indians?”

It’s not Alex. It’s his partner in crime, Ben, who likes to think that he’s being hip and cynical when he’s actually just being stupid and offensive. But at least Ben’s voice doesn’t grate on me the way Alex’s does.

“What sort of responsibility are you referring to?” asks Ms. Fraser.

“The record of the past should belong to everybody. Catering to one group over another doesn’t make sense,” Ben says, putting his feet up on a desk.

“Anyone have another opinion?” Ms. Fraser asks.

I raise my hand. My headache is getting worse by the second, but I can’t let him get away with that. I say, “So Ben, what you’re saying is that you’re really interested in the culture of the ancestors of Native Americans, but you couldn’t care less about what the actual Native Americans who are living now think about the burials of their relatives being desecrated. That doesn’t make sense to me, I don’t know about anybody else.”

Anne snickers.

Ms. Fraser clears her throat. “Thanks, you two. Ben’s and Nicola’s comments provide a good basic overview of the debate around these issues. There aren’t any easy answers. Ben, I’m sure you can imagine a situation where you plan to excavate a site and the arguments of the indigenous people make you reconsider your plans. And Nicola, perhaps one day you’ll be doing research on important human remains in a museum somewhere, only to find out that a tribe has demanded their return before you can finish your work.”

I look back at Ben, who has wrinkled up his nose as though he smells something bad. I have an urge to stick my tongue out at him but decide that the action would be overly juvenile. Instead I merely wrinkle my nose in the same way and turn again to the front of the classroom to try and pay attention to Ms. Fraser.

 

My headache hasn’t gotten any better. Headaches have been part of my personal cornucopia of PMS symptoms for years, but this one is much worse than normal. It must be stress.

I tried to eat dinner after class, but just the smell of the cafeteria made me gag. Battle made me drink juice so I’d get vitamin C, but that didn’t help. I went to my room, turned off the lights, and pulled down the shades, but that didn’t help either.

I paw through the shoebox of CDs that I brought with me and find Carmina Burana. It’s not the most soothing piece of music in the world, but I love it so much, I think maybe hearing it will make me feel better. Or at least my head may start to throb in time with the percussion. I put the CD into my little boom box and lie back down.

As usual, while I listen, I stare at the picture on the CD cover—a medieval engraving of Fortune’s wheel. Fortune’s wheel has fascinated me since the first time Dad explained it to me—the idea that at any moment, the wheel could turn and a queen could become a peasant, or vice versa.

There’s a knock at my door. When I sit up, my head spins, and when I stand up to walk to the door, I feel like I’m on some alien planet where I’m not used to the gravity.

“Um, hi—I thought you might still not be feeling well,” says Battle. “I brought aspirin—and this.” She holds out a washcloth full of something, with a rubber band around it, I guess to keep the something from spilling. “It’s crushed ice. You, uh, put it on your head.”

“Thank you,” I manage to say, aware that I’m speaking more slowly and softly than usual. “Please come in, I kind of have to lie down again but don’t—I mean, you don’t have to leave.”

Battle steps into my room and shuts the door quietly as I collapse back onto the bed. Now my headache is mixed with the manic nervousness I get right before a concert or a show.

Carmina is suddenly loud, startling Battle. “What are you listening to?”

I point to the CD case, which I have conveniently left on the floor. She picks it up. “Oh—I know this. They choreographed part of it for us to do at All-State. Um . . .you have a headache?”

“I know,” I say, louder than before, to be heard over the chorus that’s blasting out of my boom box. “But I love it. I thought it might help.”

Battle’s still holding the washcloth full of ice. “Do you want this? You don’t have to—”

“Oh, yes, I do,” I say.

walks to the bed, leans over, and very carefully places the ice-filled washcloth onto my forehead. There’s a small trickle of sweat running down into the hollow of her neck, and her green tank top is clinging to her. I feel something start thudding more than my headache and realize it’s my pulse. I hear
her breathing, and mine, and then
her face is so close and I lift my head just a little and our lips touch.

I close my eyes.

I am kissing her, and she is kissing me back.

I can still feel my head throb but the pain is very far away.

Even farther away, I hear the soprano solo. “Dulcissime,” she sings, “totam tibi subdo me.” Sweetest one, I give myself to you totally.