The sharp edge of silenc.., p.33
The Sharp Edge of Silence, page 33
“I’m jealous of people who can garden. I can’t even keep succulents alive. It’s sad,” she says, examining the bread knots in the basket. “How about you? Green thumb or plant killer?”
“I can’t say I’ve given it my best shot yet.” I butter a knot, keeping my hands busy. “But if my luck with goldfish is any indication . . .”
“What happened to your goldfish?”
She’s chewing her bread and her lips are distractingly soft and pink, but I manage: “Let’s see. Second grade, Goldie. Overfed. Third grade, Annoying Orange. Starved. Fourth grade—the final fish—Jaws. Vanished.”
She stops chewing and smiles. “Vanished?”
“I think he was abducted by aliens,” I say. “One morning I went to sprinkle the magic three flakes into the bowl, and he simply wasn’t there.”
Her eyebrows crinkle adorably. “What?”
“It’s possible my little sister tried to take him for a walk.”
She laughs.
The waiter, Gregory, arrives after a few minutes and tells us about the soup and tonight’s special venison confit with roasted gnocchi and broccolini, and the duck ravioli in browned butter-sage sauce.
“Oooh,” says Alex.
“I know, right? We switched to the fall menu today,” Gregory says with a wink.
I feel Alex tap my calf under the table, and our eyes meet. We’re in on a secret, and life is a perfect and beautiful thing, and I am so grateful that I have come to this school and joined those boys in the boat . . . and that doing so gave me the guts to ask Alex out, Hotness Correlativity be damned. I can’t make my feelings for her fit into the Slycroft vision of girls as conquest.
Gregory departs, and we study the menu. I try not to twitch at the prices. My dad’s so excited I’m going out with a girl he told me to “Go nuts, Max!” and transferred an extra two hundred into my bank account. Alex and I discuss the merits of chicken versus beef, and the environmental benefits of the Wonder Burger, but decide we’ve both left a small enough carbon footprint to indulge in the filet mignon. It’s amazing. We get cappuccinos and chocolate volcano cake and two forks for dessert. It’s kind of like we’re playing grown-up, but also not.
The older couple at the next table gets up to leave. The woman, an elegant sort with long white hair and bright lipstick, leans over on her way by and says, “I’ve never seen two people have so much fun eating a meal together. You’re darling.”
Alex and I catch eyes and quickly look away from each other. I have no idea how to respond. Alex pats her mouth with her napkin, a grin bursting across her face. “We’ve never been here,” she says, her cheeks flushing.
I stand and shake the man’s hand, and I’m pretty sure he knows I’m out of my league, too. Male intuition. They leave, and neither one of us can stop smiling. I’ve lost total control of everything, and it’s empowering and terrifying.
When the bill comes, Alex says, “Let’s split it.”
“No, this is my treat,” I say, adding a line I’ve heard in many a cheesy movie: “I insist.”
She looks hesitant.
“Is it insulting for me to do that?” I say. “Because I don’t want to insult you. I just want to take you out tonight. Like a real date.”
She smiles. “I don’t know. Am I supposed to refuse on the grounds that it’s sexist to think I need to be paid for?”
“I have no idea!” I say. “I don’t feel sexist. . . .”
This sounds so stupid it’s funny, and we crack up.
We stop, and she sighs and locks her brown eyes on mine. “I would be honored to have you take me to dinner, Max,” she says, sparkling there like a big glass of champagne. “Thank you.”
I’m butter on a hot fry pan. Bread on level 5 in the toaster. Kernels in the popper.
I don’t know what love feels like, but this right here is pretty damn good.
Ubers have not yet made it to Whitney, New Hampshire. A-Plus Cab has a corner on the LPS market, and it’s the same driver who dropped us off a couple hours ago. It’s a quick ride, and we hold hands the whole way. We pull into the circular drive in front of Calloway Hall, Alex’s dorm. She says, “I’ll pay for this,” and hands a credit card to the driver before I can object. If I say no and insist on paying for the cab, it will border on bossy, which is more sexist than letting her pay, right? She eyes me as we wait for the driver to process the sale. “Don’t sweat it, Max,” she says breezily. I don’t get how she knows what I’m thinking all the time.
The cab zooms off, and we’re standing on the grass, looking up at a sliver of moon. “Beautiful,” she says, leaning her back into my shoulder. For the eight millionth time in my life, I wish I were taller. I want to be big and protective, like a guy is supposed to be.
“You’re beautiful,” I say, focusing on the positive instead. Nils would be proud.
“Aw,” she says. We kiss. Under the White Mountains October sky, chilly. Alive with stars.
We have well over an hour before dorm check, and apparently Q is out somewhere. We bumble up to their room, giggly in a way that would be embarrassing under absolutely any other circumstances. I follow her in the room and inhale. “Why does your room always smell so much better than ours?” I say.
She laughs and queues up her Google speaker. Then she closes the door to sneaker width, the rule for when you have a member of the opposite sex in your dorm room. LPS hasn’t caught up to same-sex relationships. Typical LPS.
We flop into the overstuffed chair positioned where passersby can’t see us. She fits perfectly into the crook of my arm. “I don’t know,” Alex answers, nuzzling into my neck. “We have better product,” she says.
I’m having so much fun, I try to forget that this is the night I’m supposed to get the panties for Slycroft. What if I didn’t follow through tonight? So what if I don’t get the bunny ears. They’re ridiculous. But then I think of the shit that will fly my way from Pearce, et al. And really, would I be here at all without the boys in the boat? If I don’t seize the moment of my rise in status, I’ll never get it back. And then Alex would lose interest.
Pretty soon we’ve flopped onto the floor with some big velvety throw pillows. My hands have a will of their own and somehow know how to climb up her dress.
I haven’t asked her, I realize when my fingertips brush the hem of her underwear, and I open my eyes to monitor the situation. She pulls her face back and to my relief is smiling, her eyelids dewy. “I’m thinking maybe I’ll just change out of this dress. . . .”
“I kinda like the dress,” I say, even though everything is going too fast for me, too. I don’t want to rush anything with her. We’ve only been seeing each other a week. But I’m confused as to what she thinks. Or maybe I’m saying it to the guys, who seem crowded into my head. I’m supposed to be overcome with horniness for her, right? Part of me is, sure, but it’s the same part that would eat birthday cake for breakfast.
She makes a jokey scolding face, gets up, and slips into the bathroom.
I take a deep breath. I’m in way too deep here, not really sure what to do. I feel my phone vibrate in my pocket.
Khalid: Don’t overthink it.
I roll my eyes. Jesus, why can everyone read my mind? Under the bathroom door, Alex’s shadow moves.
I spring to my feet and hurry to her dresser. I get the sock drawer first and then find the drawer with panties and bras. I yank a piece of flowered fabric, stuff it in my pocket, and scramble back to the floor just as the door opens. Alex is wearing pants that tie at the waist and a shirt that looks very soft.
“I feel kind of guilty getting all comfortable while you’re still dressed up,” she says sheepishly.
A pang of true guilt makes me look away, and I cover it by stretching. Then I reach out my hand. She takes it and rolls back into the crook of my arm, her clean smell filling my head. I’m overcome with the need to tell her something truthful. “I’ve wanted to ask you out since the first time I saw you. On your First Year Opening Day.”
She sits up and looks me in the eye. “Really?”
“Yep. Nils and me were tour guides. We led the song. . . .”
She squints. “Oh, yeah.”
“You were late and crossed the crowd when you saw Q. I told Nils you were perfect.”
She gently punches my stomach. “I’m definitely not perfect.”
We alternately kiss and talk and kiss more, and eventually it’s time for me to go. In the doorway, we break apart. Standing up, we are perfectly eye to eye.
“Tomorrow?” I say.
She nods. I grin. As I walk away, I can feel her eyes on me, so I turn to face her, walking backward a few steps. I catch a look of alarm and spin in time to swerve and miss bumping into the RA.
“Whoa,” she says.
“Excuse me,” I say. “I’m just leaving.”
The RA gives a prim smile. “That’s good,” she says, and goes through a door. Alex’s face is crinkling into confusion. She’s staring at the floor next to my feet.
My blood rushes away from all of my organs because I know what she’s looking at.
Her flowered panties are crumpled on the carpet, a perfectly silent bomb.
“Why did my underwear just fall out of your pocket?” Alex says. A red flush is rising up her neck.
“What?” I say, though there was no mistaking her words.
“Why did my underwear just fall out of your pocket?” It’s sharp-edged this time.
I have no words.
“That is so creepy,” she said. “Why would you take my underwear?” Her eyes well up.
I want to run away.
My brain is shorting out. “I—”
She trusted me. That’s what it is. She trusted me, and I stupidly—idiotically—just fucked it up.
“Do you have anything else of mine in there?” she says, pointing at my pockets.
I shake my head. I’m welling up myself. Glancing at the door the RA just entered, I whisper, “Can I come back and explain?”
She folds her hands across her chest. “What kind of explanation could there possibly be for stealing my underwear?”
But she’s still here. She hasn’t slammed the door.
“Please?”
“You can tell me from there,” she says.
“Uh,” I say, shifting my weight. “That’s not a good idea. But there’s an explanation—it’s a stupid one, but—”
She sighs. “Hurry.”
I stoop to pick up the panties.
“Do NOT.”
“Right, sorry,” I mumble, moving into the room so she can get them.
I start with “I’m so sorry.”
Her face is a mask of ice. I have no choice. I can’t even think of another option besides the truth. I need some dignity. “Okay. I have no right to swear you to secrecy, I know that. But I’ll just let that ask sit there while I explain and you can decide afterward.”
Her disgusted expression prompts me to blurt, “It’s not like I have some underwear fetish. I didn’t take it for me.”
Her eyebrows fly up. “So who did you take it for?”
“So, our school has a secret prank society called Slycroft,” I whisper. I have trouble looking directly at her and study a callus on my palm.
“The prank is stealing underwear? Are the members all in, like, seventh grade?” she says, blowing a breath of very dismissive sounding air.
Do I tell her that the underwear is merely evidence of hooking up with someone? I rub my closed eyelids with my thumb and forefinger. “Actually, the underwear isn’t a prank.” I can hear her staring at me. I steal a glance, and the disdain on her face is brutal. “I mean, the idea is . . .” I have to move. It buys me time. I pace in a little loop around the room. “So, the idea is that when you hook up with someone, you prove it by getting her panties. Then you’re a full-fledged member.” I leave out the bunny ears because, seriously, it’s just gratuitous information about an already entirely idiotic tradition.
“Hook . . . up?” she says. Slowly. Deliberately. With scalpel precision. “Define ‘hook up.’” Air quotes.
“I know how bad this sounds,” I say, finally meeting her gaze. “I know.”
“Hook up?”
“Technically, it’s supposed to be, you know, having sex. Then you get your name in the book.”
“What book?”
Shit. This is really bad, but there is no turning back. I explain the book, how it’s old and how each year there’s a Lord of the Book, and I know each word I say is another nail in the coffin of my relationship with Alexandra Buchanan.
“That’s what this is all about for you, then?” She’s up, storming around, and at this point, I just get out of the way.
“No!” I say. “I wouldn’t—” But I did.
“Quit cowering! It’s pathetic.”
“I’m sorry!” I can’t bear hearing her anger, because behind it is hurt. “Please. I was just trying to satisfy them. I knew it was macho bullshit. I should have listened to myself. How I feel about you is—is—is—” I stammer, “the . . . the . . . the opposite—” I don’t know how to phrase it. “The Slycroft thing and you are in two totally different compartments in my head.” She’s quiet and staring, and I dare hope . . . “Alex, I would never do anything to hurt you.”
“Yeah, too late for that.” She swipes a tear off her cheekbone. “I’m not a thing you can keep in a compartment. Like a pair of shoes or—” She shakes her head in disbelief. “You were going to tell them those were mine?!”
“Seb and I were going to get rid of the tradition. I just had to satisfy Pearce—”
“None of this makes any sense. Why? Why do you have to?” she demands.
I try to retrace my reasoning. Because I didn’t want to deal with his crap? Because I was afraid Alex wouldn’t be interested in me if I wasn’t like them? That’s seeming unlikely at the moment. I rake my fingers through my hair. “You deserve better. I am so sorry.”
“Go,” she whispers, barely controlling her voice.
I drop my head. “Yeah. Okay.” I stop. “One question?” I say. Alex simply scowls. “Would you have gone out with me before I joined the rowing team?”
She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “Nice job ruining a great night,” she mutters. “Nice job ruining everything.”
And she doesn’t slam it, but she shuts the door hard enough to express cold disgust.
I am officially the worst kind of asshole.
Q
“I think we should just cut off Pearce’s balls,” Hannah says. She’s lying on her back on the floor, feet on her desk chair, filing her fingernails. “That’s what we did to our dog, Scout, when he became sexually active.”
After dinner, I couldn’t be alone. I texted Charlotte, but she’s with Seb. With Alex out, too, I texted Hannah. She invited me over.
“Macy thought of that,” I say. I’m playing bits of Fleetwood Mac songs on my guitar. “She sent me a 1990s news story about a woman named Lorena Bobbitt who cut off her abusive husband’s penis when he was asleep.”
Hannah sits up, her eyes moony. “Seriously?!” I nod. “Now that’s badass,” she says. We chuckle.
“Surgeons sewed it back on.”
We’re now laughing. I add, “She had to go to a psychiatric hospital for a while, but she definitely got her revenge.”
“Yeah, of course the woman’s always the crazy one,” Hannah says.
My stomach twitches. I’m remembering myself in Khalid and the rat bastard’s room, cutting up pillows to Lenny Kravitz. “What is crazy, really?” I say softly.
Hannah says firmly, “Crazy is a meaningless word in your situation. Leave it out of your vocabulary. Don’t give someone who is capable of violence any more power over you.”
There it is again, that word. Power. It somersaults around my head.
I don’t know how Hannah has such certainty unlike me, who has to hear it and rehear it, how she knows that a guy like Pearce wants all the power and is not afraid to steal it. And also, that I don’t have to let him. I feel an invisible bond forming between me and Hannah, like she’s a person to latch your tow rope to.
“Wanna hear something?” I say, setting down the guitar. “I stole Pearce’s Italian leather loafers, and I have them in my closet.”
She snorts. “What? How?”
“I broke into his room during Vespers a few weeks ago. He wore them that night. . . .”
Shush shush shush.
“Whoa,” Hannah says. “Wow.”
“I don’t know why I took them. I hate them.” Shush shush shush. Shush shush shush.
“Hmm,” Hannah says. “Maybe taking them was a way of taking something back. . . .”
Her words are slow, coming to me through a fog, because I’m lost in a montage of myself during my break-in and of the night in May at the Amphitheater. I’m watching the images float by, not letting them into my heart, but seeing them from a cool distance. Shush shush shush.
I bolt upright. “They were telling me to be quiet!”
Hannah cocks her chin, interested. Listening. “Who?”
“The shoes!”
She blinks.
“When he left me there on the ground, I realized that he never even took his shoes off during that event and that bothered me so much. Like, I’m not even worth taking the time to pretend that this is meaningful in some way, even though he took something from me I’ll never get back. And then he just walked away through the dewy grass, and the sound it made.” My heart thunders in my chest as I imitate it: Shush shush shush.
Hannah nods very slightly. “They’re a metaphor. For—”
“Him telling me to shut the fuck up, that I’m not worth taking his shoes off for, and that he can just walk away while me and Euterpe are frozen there, barefoot!” I stand on the mattress, electrified.
“Euterpe?” she asks.
My phone vibrates. I ignore it. “That’s the Muse statue we were next to,” I say, hoarse. All of this is lightning out of the sky. The phone vibrates again and goes to voice mail.
Hannah’s 100 percent with me when she says, “You have to kill those loafers.”
We stare at each other, knowing the enormity of this truth even though killing shoes sounds ridiculous. My phone starts ringing again.
