Empress of the World (15 page)

Our footsteps sound so loud on the old wooden stairs that lead down and outside.

It’s like an echo chamber. Thud, thud, thud. It’s dark in this stairwell, too. There’s a little bit of light shining from underneath the big metal door at the bottom of the stairs. That door looks like an alarm will go off if you open it. Ms. Fraser pushes the bar forward, and it opens without any sound but the squeaking of hinges. It opens out into the courtyard.

Too many people like the courtyard. I saw Battle and Kevin on one of the benches there yesterday. I turned and ran.

“Can we walk more toward the river?” I ask.

“Certainly,” says Ms. Fraser.

I’m glad she’s not forcing me to talk. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what she wants to hear. Maybe if I tell her why I’m upset she’ll be sorry she ever asked.

It’s sticky hot. For the first minute or two, I feel like I’m defrosting from the library air conditioning, and it’s almost pleasant. Then my tank top starts sticking to me, and my jeans start to feel welded to my legs.

“I don’t want to pry into your life, Nicola. I don’t want you to feel that you have to share private things with me just because I’m your teacher. But you can talk, if you want to.”

I sigh. I can feel tears starting to well up. It’s like I’ve got a pressure gauge inside my head but I’m not in control of it, and when the pressure builds up too much the tears just gush right out. I haven’t been looking where I’m going as we walk through the grass toward the river, and I slip on some goose shit and almost fall flat on my face. It’s only by flailing my arms wildly that I manage not to fall over.

I say, and my voice comes out bitter and angry, “It’s a story you’ve heard a zillion times. The cast of characters is different, that’s all. There’s two girls and a boy, but they’re not in the roles you’d think they’d have.”

Ms. Fraser says, “Ah.” It’s a very neutral “Ah”—it doesn’t sound shocked or as though she suddenly understands the whole scenario. It’s just “Ah.”

I say, “But in a hundred years we’ll all be dead so it doesn’t matter.”

Ms. Fraser says, “An archaeologist would say, in a hundred years we’ll all be dead so it does matter.”

“I don’t even know if I want to be an archaeologist,” I say. My voice reminds me of the way Isaac’s sounded when he was saying he didn’t even know where he was going to be living.

“You have a long time before you have to decide,” says Ms. Fraser.

“You mean they don’t kick you out of college if you don’t know what you want to do right when you get there?” I ask.

Ms. Fraser laughs. “There are people who get through graduate school without knowing. I know someone who got his Ph.D. in philosophy and then became a mailman.”

I say, “Listen, I really appreciate you being worried
about me. But I’m going to be
fine. Archaeology actually really helps. When I
inking about people from thousands of years ago, what’s happening to me now doesn’t seem to matter all that much.”

This is true, some of the time. Just not as often as I’d like.

Ms. Fraser gets a funny look on her face. “That’s good—but don’t go overboard with it. Don’t use what you’re studying as a way to get away from your feelings. It’s not good for you.”

I look at her, and wonder what she’s thinking. “Okay,” I say.

“Let’s walk back,” she says abruptly.

“Okay,” I say again. “And thanks, again.”

“I think of it as part of my job,” says Ms. Fraser.

“Well, I think you should come to San Francisco,” says Isaac.

We’ve been talking, of course, about the phenomenon of Battle and Kevin. Katrina was going to come too, but at the last minute she said that she had too much work to do. This “masterwork for Carl,” some giant program that she’s writing, really seems to be taking over her existence. Apparently she hasn’t even seen much of Battle and Kevin, because she’s been taking all her meals up to her room. (And to judge from the trash that’s been accumulating on her floor, most of said meals have been wrapped in plastic.)

It’s colder today, amazingly enough, so I’m wearing a jacket over my T-shirt, and Isaac is wearing a baggy sweater over his.

“Why?” I ask, trying to put all of my irritation into that one word.

Isaac starts to say something, then coughs, then says in an overly manic way, “Because there are tons of dykes! I’m sure some of them would be just delighted to console you in your sorrow!”

“I think there’s only one person who could console me now, Isaac, and it doesn’t seem like she’s at all inclined to do so. But I appreciate the thought.” I sigh.

“I just have one question for you, Lancaster,” Isaac says.

“What’s that?” I ask.

“Since you first saw them holding hands that day, have you ever done anything other than run like hell when you’ve seen her coming—whether she’s with Kevin or not? I’m not even talking about having a big conversation, I’m talking about something on the level of making eye contact with her. Have you?”

I glare at him. “You know I haven’t. What’s your point? Why should I put myself through more hell than I’m already going through?”

“Would you listen to yourself? Come on, Nic. This is the world’s smallest violin,” he says, rubbing his index finger over his thumb. “If you want to punch Kevin’s lights out, I say go for it. If you want to give Battle a big old bitchslap, I say go for that too. But turning around and running like you’re Bambi’s mom and they’re the evil hunters is doing dick for you.”

“Shut up. If you’re so hot for direct action, why haven’t you asked Katrina out yet?” I ask.

I know, of course, that the likelihood that Katrina would actually go out with him is close to nil, seeing as he’s not a toadish-looking Computer Science teacher. But I don’t want to tell him that.

He shrugs. “There are a lot of factors,” he says, sounding uncomfortable.

I say, “Yeah, and one of them is that there’s not a hell of a lot of time left, relatively speaking.”

“Don’t remind me,” says Isaac. “I never thought I’d be dreading the end of PoliSci.”

I realize belatedly that I’ve been self-centered during this entire conversation.

“Hey,” I say softly. “You figured out where you and Rebecca are going to live yet?”

Isaac sighs, and rips up a patch of grass. Isaac Shawn, Destroyer of Lawns. “I think so.”

“Where?” I pull one blade of grass carefully out of the ground, and put it between my lips.

“With Mom. She’s going to stay in the old house, and that means we won’t have to switch schools.”

“Is your dad upset?” I ask. The blade of grass falls out of my mouth.

Isaac laughs, a bitter laugh. “Hardly. I think ‘relieved’ would be a more accurate representation of his feelings on the matter.”

“Is he moving far away?” I ask.

“I
don’t think he knows what he’s
doing. He’s so—” Isaac gropes for the right word, throwing a handful of grass up in the air. “He’s so random. I mean for years, they didn’t even go to temple, okay? And now all of a sudden he’s like, ‘Maybe I’ll take some time off and go to Israel.’ Well, bon fucking voyage, Dad—don’t miss those settlements on the West Bank while you’re there.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

Isaac shrugs. “Not your fault he’s an ass-hole.”

We’re quiet for a while, and I realize that we’re sitting closer together than usual.

The silence gets louder and louder.

Something in the air changes, and I feel suddenly reckless, filled with a desperate desire for everything to become boy/girl simple. I lean in even closer to Isaac, kind of tilt my neck back and close my eyes, and sure enough, that’s when he kisses me.

After a while, I break the kiss, and we blink at each other like cave-dwelling creatures who have stumbled mistakenly into the sunshine. Isaac clears his throat. “I’ve known that was going to happen for a long, long time,” he says quietly.

“You have?” I squeak.

Isaac shrugs, of course. “I’m just not surprised,” he says.

“Well, I am,” I lie. Isn’t this what I wanted? “I don’t know what it means, what just happened.” I move away from him.

Isaac cracks his knuckles, methodically, one by one. The silence extends.

“Well?”

Isaac cracks his wrists, then his neck.

“You’re running out of joints,” I point out.

He sighs. “It just makes sense, on a certain level,” he says.

“Why does it make sense?” I tear my thumbnail off with my teeth. Nervous habits “Я” us.

Isaac shakes his head. “This is doing my male ego no good at all.”

“Ha ha. So?” No blood this time. I’ll have to try the other thumb.

“So neither of us can have who we really want,” Isaac mumbles.

I stand up, furious. “You don’t know you can’t have Katrina, you haven’t even tried, and besides, I don’t want to be, or have, a consolation prize.”

“I didn’t say that!”

“Yes you did.”

“Fine then, forget it. Walk away, pretend nothing happened.” Isaac tries to crack his knuckles again, but they’re all cracked out, so instead he takes off his glasses and polishes them with his shirt.

“That’s not possible. It did, and I still don’t know what it means.”

“Jesus-crucified-Christ, Lancaster. If you didn’t spend every goddamn second of your life trying to analyze the exact meaning of every single thing that ever happened to you, Battle might not have dumped you!”

A lump forms in my throat and my eyes sting. I rub my fists into them to banish the tears, but it does no good. “That wasn’t fair,” I almost whisper.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Isaac mumbles. He stands up, and tentatively puts his arms around me.

We stand like that for a long time.

I shut off first the hot, then the cold water. For a minute I stand dripping in the stall. Then I step out and grab my towel—and I’m face to face with Anne from my class, who’s about to get into the shower next to mine.

“Hi,” I say, wrapping my towel quickly around me. Anne looks startled, then says, “Oh, hi.” We exchange embarrassed smiles, and then I notice that Anne looks more than startled. Her eyes are red, as though she’s been crying.

“Hey, are you okay?” I ask. It’s incredibly strange to be asking this question, while wearing only a towel, to another person who is also wearing only a towel. But Anne has been nice to me, and I want to be nice back.

“Oh, I’m fine,” she says, and I can tell she’s lying because her voice cracks a little on the word “fine.”

“Are you sure? Because you seem pretty upset,” I say. I would reach out a hand to put on her shoulder, but then my towel would fall.

“I’ll be fine—I just need to take a shower!” she says, dismissing me.

“Okay—well, I guess I’ll see you on the bus,” I say.

This is the day we visit an in-progress dig. I’m pleased—it will get me away from everyone.

Obviously Anne’s not fine, I think as I get dressed. I yank my brush through my hair and tie it back. Maybe I’ll ask her about it on the way there.

After I get coffee and a bagel, I end up being one of the first people to arrive at the place where the bus is waiting. Unfortunately, the people who have gotten there before me are Ben and Alex. I attempt to ignore them, wishing I’d brought a book.

“Oooh, Little Miss Bleeding Heart Lesbian’s by herself today,” says Ben. “Did China Girl turn you down?”