“Yeah, how else are we going to preserve your glory years, Zuckerman?” Will asked.
I felt like I didn’t know quite what was going on between Ace and Will. Somehow, it made me long for James.
“So, Will, you mind if I take my girl for a dance?”
“She doesn’t like to dance,” Will said under his breath. Then he excused himself. I didn’t see him for the rest of the night.
After the dance, Brianna and Alex decided to get a ride home with someone else, so Ace and I were alone in the car. I thought he was just driving me back to my house, but instead he took me to his.
He said his parents had gone to Boston for the weekend and that we had the run of the place.
He asked me if I wanted a drink, and I declined. I had been avoiding alcohol since his friend’s party, which seemed like something he might have guessed.
He led me to his room, which was tidy and preppy like the rest of the house, and like Ace himself, for that matter. The wallpaper was plaid, and vintage wooden tennis rackets hung from the wall. I looked at his bookshelves, and other than school books all he had were athletes’ memoirs and a set of leather-bound classics. He had one picture of us taped to the wall by his bed. We were both dressed for tennis. The picture was out of focus, but I could see my hair was in a ponytail, the way Ace had said that he liked me best.
I sat down on his bed: an old, spring-loaded mattress that sounded like it was wheezing. Ace sat down next to me—squeak—and kissed me on the mouth. He still tasted like Gatorade even though I knew for a fact he hadn’t had any for at least the last five hours.
“Do you remember what happened here a year ago?” he asked.
Duh, I had amnesia. “No,” I said.
So he told me. At last year’s homecoming dance, Ace and I had “put one over the net”—i.e., we had done it for the first time. We had “played several sets” since then, but had mutually agreed to sit out the “summer season” for reasons which Ace chose not to specify. It was his idea that we should celebrate our anniversary with a “rematch.” I’m not sure if nerves were the reason for Ace’s lame sports/sex metaphors, but it was starting to put the whole tennis wristbands debacle into pathetic perspective.
I told him that I still hadn’t started up with the pill again, and he said, “That’s okay. I’ve come equipped.” He whipped out a pack of condoms from the nightstand like a sports manager providing balls for the team. His hands were so quick—I barely saw him open or close the drawer—I got a sense of what he was probably like on the courts.
I felt oddly numb about the whole thing. My thinking was along the lines of Well, I’ve done it before. Might as well get it over with and do it again.
Ace started to unzip my dress, but he couldn’t get the zipper down. “This is stuck,” he said.
“Well, don’t break it,” I protested. “I need to be able to put it back on.”
At that moment, his one-hundred-year-old basset hound came into the room to say hello. “Get, Jonesy,” Ace said. “Get!”
Jonesy didn’t want to go. He mounted Ace’s right leg and started humping it. Ace kept shaking his leg at Jonesy, but the dog would not be deterred. “Get, get!” Ace stood up and pushed Jonesy from the room, but I could still hear the dog’s howls outside the door.
I started to laugh. It struck me as humorous that something Ace didn’t want his dog to do was something he desperately wanted me to do.
“Where were we?” Ace asked.
The whole thing was absurd.
Since I couldn’t remember the “real” first time I’d lost my virginity, this would have become my de facto first time. I wanted a better story than I did it with this boy who I wasn’t very into and who had mysterious Gatorade breath; in his room decorated with sports equipment; at least he was nice enough to provide condoms and get his ancient, horny dog to leave us alone. Put it that way, and I couldn’t help but wonder how I’d let it get so far in the first place.
“Ace, I’m not going to have sex with you,” I said. I reached over my shoulder and zipped my dress back up without any problems.
“Is it the howls? I can put the dog in the yard,” Ace said. “Just hold on a second. I can get him to stop. Bad Jonesy! Bad dog.”
I told him that it wasn’t about the dog.
“Well, what is it then?” He walked over to his bedroom window. His back was toward me, and I couldn’t see his face.
“I…I just don’t know,” I said. “The truth is, I don’t even know you. I don’t even know what we have in common.”
“There’s lots of stuff,” Ace said.
“Tell me, then. I’d really like to know.”
“Tennis. School.” Ace sighed. He wouldn’t turn back around. “I love you, Naomi.”
“Why?”
He shrugged violently. “Jesus, I don’t know. Why does anyone like anyone? Because you’re super-hot?”
“Are you asking me or telling me?”
“I’m asking you. I mean I’m telling you. I don’t know. You’re confusing me.” Ace turned around and looked at me helplessly, hopelessly. “Because you’re good at school, but can also hold a drink. Because we used to talk about stuff. I don’t know. I just did.”
“Did or do?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Did in the past, or do in the present?”
“Do! I meant do. Isn’t that what I said?” He collapsed onto his bed, so that he was staring up at his ceiling. The box spring squeaked in agony, which started Jonesy barking again. I opened Ace’s door, and Jonesy ran in. Luckily, Jonesy wasn’t in the mood for sex anymore either. He wanted cuddling and intimacy. He jumped onto the bed and lay down next to Ace.
“But honestly, you’ve been acting so weird lately,” Ace said quietly.
Maybe because I can’t remember anything? I thought bitterly.
“Like yelling at Alex in the car, what was that about? And now you’re in this play? And your hair!”
It was the first he’d mentioned it since the day I’d cut it. I had no idea he was still thinking about it. “What about my hair?” I asked. Not because I cared, but because I was sort of curious.
“I loved it long.”
It was the second time he’d used the word love all night, but it was the only time I believed him.
“I’m not used to it this way,” he continued. “I honestly don’t even know what to think.”
“Say what you mean, Ace.”
“I hate your stupid hair,” he said, his voice rusty with truth, bitterness, feeling. Everything else he’d said the whole time we’d been together had sounded merely confused or frustrated, but this was different. This was unmistakable. This was passion! It was what was missing from every other element of my relationship with Ace. It was what I’d heard when Alice spoke about the play, or Will about yearbook, or Dad about Rosa Rivera. It was what I’d heard when James had said he’d wanted to kiss me in the hospital.
For the record, I didn’t know boys could care so much about hair. Maybe this was asking too much, but I wanted someone who felt as strongly about the rest of me. Poor Ace. The boy had been in love with a haircut.
I knew what I had to do.
“I think we should take some time off. From each other, I mean,” I said. Then I tried to make a joke. “Give my hair some time to grow.”
Ace didn’t laugh. “Are you saying you want to break up?” he asked. Did I detect a hint of relief in his voice?
“Yes.”
“But that’s not what I want!” Ace protested a little too adamantly. “I want you to get your memory back and for everything to be like it was.”
“Well, maybe that will happen. But in all likelihood, it won’t. And you’ll be in college next year anyway, so this was bound to happen sooner or later,” I reasoned.
“Is it Will?” Ace asked.
This annoyed me. It only confirmed how much Ace didn’t know me. If anyone, it was James, and it wasn’t even James. It was no one. Or, more t
o the point, no one except Ace. “Will’s my friend, which is more than I can say for you.”
Ace closed his eyes. “This wasn’t the way I saw tonight going.”
I asked him if he could drive me home. When we got to my house, he walked me to the door. I kissed him on the cheek.
“I know this is probably dumb, but I feel like I’m never going to see you again,” he said.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Ace. I’ll see you at school,” I replied, but of course I knew exactly what he had meant.
“What I said about your hair…” he began.
“It’s okay. You were being honest.”
By the following Tuesday, everyone at school seemed to know about our breakup. The story got back to me that Ace had dumped me because I was a “prude” in bed since the accident and “not entirely there,” both of which had some basis in truth while not conveying the essential nature of what had happened. I didn’t know if Ace spread these rumors or if they were just the idle speculation of my peers. People like Brianna, who’d had it in for me even more since I’d tried to stand up for her in the car. She could really let loose now that Ace was no longer required to defend my honor.
I would have understood if it had been Ace—maybe he was saving face, or maybe that was how he actually saw things? In any case, I did not go out of my way to set the record straight. People could think what they wanted to. Screw them.
6
I STILL HADN’T TOLD WILL ABOUT THE PLAY. Maybe it was because I felt like I was betraying him; maybe it was plain cowardice. I was late to yearbook about half the time and I let him think I was either with tutors or at the doctor. If my chronic tardiness annoyed him, Will was too much of a friend to let on.
He probably wouldn’t have found out about it at all, if Bailey Plotkin hadn’t shown up to photograph rehearsals. Bailey was the arts photographer for The Phoenix, the same position I’d held my freshman year, according to that year’s masthead. If I’d been paying any attention to yearbook matters, I might have guessed someone from the staff would eventually come.
Bailey was a mellow person in general, and he didn’t appear particularly surprised to see me. “I didn’t know you were in the play, Naomi. Cool,” was pretty much all he said about the matter. Still, I knew I had to tell Will, and preferably before he saw the pictures.
I went to the yearbook office as soon as rehearsal was over, and Will barely glanced up at me when I came into the room. He asked me if I’d had time to look over the cover mock-ups. I hadn’t, so I went to do that. The cover Will liked was all white with just the words The Phoenix in raised black text, all caps, right justified, halfway down the page. It was extremely plain and not the sort of thing you usually see on a high school yearbook. He had mentioned that it was a reference to an album or a book, but I hadn’t been paying enough attention. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it yet.
For the next two hours until yearbook was over, Will said nothing to me about the play. He was all business the whole time: very polite questions and no wisecracks. This was unlike him and only confirmed my belief that he already knew but was waiting for me to bring it up.
At the end of the meeting, I asked him for a ride home. “So that we can talk,” I added. He was quiet on the walk out to the parking lot. It was the end of October and I felt a chill, but it wasn’t from the weather. That fall had been particularly mild, and I was wearing a hoodie and a parka besides. I think the chill might have been something like déjà vu. I felt as if I had taken this very same walk before. Of course, I had. I had gotten many rides from Will since I’d been back at school, but there was something specifically familiar that I couldn’t quite identify.
“Are you cold?” he asked me when we were halfway to the parking lot. “I should have offered you my gloves.”
I shook my head. Will was always so concerned about me—even now, when he likely knew I’d been lying to him for weeks. It made me feel like the smallest person in the world.
When we got to the car, he stood there for a second without unlocking the doors.
“So?” I said.
“So, you’re the one who wanted to talk, Chief.”
“Well, um, in the car’s fine,” I said.
“I’d rather hear it here,” Will said.
I told him. “I’m in the play. I don’t know why I didn’t mention it before. That thing about the additional therapy was a lie.” I glanced over the roof of his car to see his reaction. He didn’t have one really, so I rambled on. “It happened almost by accident,” I continued, “but it’s only another two weeks, and then I’ll be back full-time.”
Will nodded for a second before replying, “You had sure as hell better comp me, Chief.” He loosened his school tie and then he laughed, so I asked him what was funny. “The thing is, I’d been afraid you were going to quit.”
“Why?”
“For the last couple of weeks, we’ve barely spoken. At least now I know there was a reason.”
I assumed he meant the play.
“And your heart hasn’t really been in it for a while. It’s only natural that I wondered. I want you to know I would probably have understood if you had quit with everything that’s happened to you, but I’m relieved that you didn’t.”
Will unlocked the doors to his car and we got in.
“The play…is it fun?” he asked me.
“Yeah, it is,” I admitted.
“I’m glad.” Will nodded and then he started the car.
When he got to my house, he asked if he could come in. He said he hadn’t seen my dad in a while.
I asked him why in the world he wanted to see my dad.
“Well, I really like his books. We’re pals, Grant and me.”
I told him that Dad was probably writing.
“Come on, Chief,” he said. “I haven’t been over to your house in eons.”
We went inside, but Dad wasn’t even there. Instead of leaving, Will sat down at the kitchen table. “I heard you and Zuckerman broke up,” he said.
“Yeah.” I didn’t really want to talk about it with Will, but he wasn’t taking the hint.
“Why?” Will asked.
“Because he hated my hair,” I said.
“I always thought he was a dick,” Will said.
“A dick?”
Will blushed for a second. “Maybe not a dick, but not good enough for you.”
“He’s okay.”
“Is there somebody else?” Will asked. He took off his glasses and wiped them on his pants.
“Nope,” I said. “I’m not planning on it either.”
He said he didn’t believe me.
“Well, you can believe what you want. But I’ve got enough on my plate without a boy.” Then I told Will I needed to study, which was true.
I’d finally gotten him to the front door when he spun around and said, “You know how I call you ‘Chief’?”
I nodded.
“Didn’t you ever wonder what you call me?”
“Uh, ‘Will’?”
“No, what you used to call me.”
I hadn’t.
“Coach. You know, short for co-chief. You could call me that again if you wanted to, Chief. If it ever should happen to just pop into your head.”
“Coach,” I said. Despite the fact that he couldn’t have been less athletic, the nickname suited him well. A good nickname tells you something about the person it belongs to, and it was so with this one. In all he did, Will was fiercely loyal, a good motivator, intelligent, passionate, and thoughtful. He was everything a coach ought to be. “It’s a good name for you,” I said. “I wish I’d thought to ask you about it before.”
“There are all sorts of things I could tell you,” he said, “if you ever wanted to know them.”
The play opened the second weekend in November. Each of the cast members was allotted four tickets. I gave one to Will and two to Dad, who gave one to Rosa Rivera. I thought about giving my last ticket to Mom, but my part wasn’t all that big for
her to bother driving in from the city. Plus, I didn’t have enough tickets for Nigel and their kid anyway.
The show ran for only two nights, so in a way it wasn’t all that different from yearbook—a lot of effort for not much product. But, well, I think it was a good play. That must count for something. Will, his mother, Dad, and Rosa Rivera came on the second night, and everyone told me it was a good play, and that I was good in it. I was really only in a couple of scenes. To commemorate the occasion, Will made me a new mix CD, Songs for Acting Like You’re at Your Therapist When You’re Really Just Acting (“Hilarious,” I said), which he gave me after the show was over; I hadn’t finished listening to his last mix yet. Dad said how he liked the video installation part that James had done. The footage had looked pretty amazing projected—you would never have known that we shot it at a park in Rye. James had treated the footage so that it looked like an old silent movie. All black-and-white and faded and flickery.
The cast party was at Alice’s house. Or behind Alice’s house by her pool. It being November, the pool was covered over with a green vinyl tarp.
Yvette hugged and congratulated me. In return, I told her how amazing the costumes had looked. “Have you seen James?” she asked.
“Why?”
“I didn’t get a chance to tell him how beautiful his images were. Best part of the play. Don’t tell Alice,” she whispered.
I swore that I wouldn’t.
I hadn’t encountered James since that day at the park. He didn’t need to go to actor rehearsals, and at the few rehearsals he did attend, he was occupied with technical matters. Truthfully, I had been too busy to care. Besides, I was past expecting that anything might happen between us.
Alice came up to me next. “Where’s your cocktail, cookie?” This was the drama crowd—while there was no beer, there was plenty of harder stuff.
“I’m abstaining,” I said.
“Do you have a problem with drinking?” Alice asked me.
“Yes. I have no tolerance to an embarrassing degree.” No one really wants to hear about your medical problems at a party.
Alice laughed. “Sounds like it’d be fun to get you liquored up, cookie.”