Extraordinary Means

  “Shit,” Nick whispered. “The nurse is coming!”

  Most of us were in the hallway at that point, rubbernecking, and Nurse Monica had to wade through it.

  Med sensors went off only if your vitals spiked pretty badly, if you needed immediate medical attention. Most of the time anyone that sick was already staying in the medical building.

  “Move!” she snapped. “You know better!”

  “Where’s Charlie?” I said.

  “Oh God,” Nick said, going pale.

  The beeping was coming from Charlie’s room.

  Nick and I started pushing to the front, and I couldn’t remember being more terrified. My heart was hammering, and I felt like I was going to throw up. It couldn’t be Charlie. It couldn’t be.

  Nurse Monica banged open the door.

  And there was Charlie, hunched over his desk, while two naked dudes went at it on his giant cinema display. From the huge bottle of lotion and his lack of pants, it was obvious what he was up to.

  The entire hallway was in hysterics.

  “Oh-oh,” Nurse Monica said. Clearly she’d been expecting a different kind of disaster.

  “Fuck!” Charlie gasped. “Shut the door!”

  “Yo, that’s dude on dude,” this guy Preston called out, thinking he was very astute.

  “Gross! Turn it off!” someone yelled.

  “More like turn it on!” someone else said.

  “That’s enough!” Nurse Monica scolded. “Go away! Back to your rooms!”

  And then she barged into Charlie’s room and shut the door.

  I could hear her in there, trying to calm him down while he yelped, “Get away, oh my God, I’m fine!”

  “That,” Nick said, “is probably my greatest fear.”

  “Is he going to be okay?” I asked.

  “Oh, he’ll never live it down,” Nick said gleefully, and then he saw the look on my face. “Yeah, dude’s fine. He just jerked off so hard he triggered his med sensor.”

  “I thought that was an urban legend.”

  I mean, I’d never had that problem? And I’d assumed from the, uh, general activity on my hallway that it wasn’t a usual thing. I’d heard some guys joking about it, but I’d figured it was just one of those freak-out-the-new-kid things.

  “Nah, it happens sometimes, if you’re, like, really going at it. The thing is not to rush. You’ve gotta get your heart rate down just enough—”

  “Shut up,” I said.

  “You’ve gotta do, like, yoga breathing,” he continued.

  “Seriously, shut up.”

  “Hey, I’m just giving you some free advice here,” he said. “So you don’t wind up being the next victim of the med sensor.”

  “No offense, but I don’t want to think about you when I’ve got my dick in my hand.”

  “Aha!” Nick accused. “Aha! So you and Sadie haven’t yet made the tiny little love muffins!”

  I didn’t even know what to say in response. Or why Nick thought our love muffins were so tiny. Maybe we had massive love muffins. How did he know?

  “This really is the darkest timeline,” I said, shaking my head as we walked back upstairs.

  “Of course it is. We’re all sick virgins. Except for Charlie, who’s a sick gay virgin dumb enough to tilt his computer screen right at the freaking door,” Nick said, shaking his head. “I wouldn’t want to be him tomorrow.”

  FROM THE WAY Charlie slunk into the dining hall the next morning, it was obvious he wanted to disappear. And I didn’t blame him. The guys in our dorm were still laughing over his misfortune, and I was pretty sure the story was about to make the rounds, if it hadn’t already.

  “What’s going on?” Marina asked suspiciously, narrowing her eyes at us.

  “Nothing,” I said, shrugging. But Nick must have smirked, because Marina stared us down until he told her.

  “Um, Charlie’s sensor went off last night,” Nick said, and then quickly took a huge bite of toast so he didn’t have to say anything else.

  Marina gasped.

  “Charlie, are you okay?” Sadie asked, looking concerned.

  Charlie sank even lower in his seat, until his chin was level with the table. He looked awful, like he’d been up all night.

  “Dontwannatalkboutit,” he mumbled.

  That guy Preston sailed past our table.

  “Hey, homo, hands where we can see ’em,” he called, laughing.

  “Hey, Preston, you’re an asshole,” Nick called back.

  Charlie put his head down on the table and sighed.

  “Nick,” Sadie said, sounding stern. “Tell us right now.”

  And so, laughing the entire time, Nick told them.

  When he was finished, Marina was grinning, and Sadie was having a hard time keeping it together.

  “Just one of the many reasons why it’s better to be a girl,” Sadie said, which just about killed me, thinking of her doing that.

  “The entire floor saw?” Marina said. “Like, all of them?”

  “Seventy-five percent. Plus Lane and me,” Nick said.

  “It isn’t funny!” Charlie wailed. “And it wasn’t even Nurse Jim, it was Nurse Monica! She’s like a mom!”

  “She is a mom,” Nick said. “Her kids are adorable. I’ve seen pictures.”

  “Oh, shut up,” Charlie said. “I hate this stupid sensor. I wish I could just disable it.”

  “Actually . . . ,” Sadie said, and we all stared at her.

  “You know how to turn it off?” Charlie asked eagerly.

  Sadie shrugged, exactly the way she did when she tossed a bag of contraband candy onto the bed, or got held after class by Finnegan. Like it wasn’t a big deal, and she was trying to play it cool. But the hint of a smile gave her away.

  “Of course I do,” she said. “Dr. Barons was changing the battery, and mine glitched, so he reset it.”

  “Can you show me?” Charlie sat up, his eyes wide with excitement.

  “It’s easy. You just poke a paper clip into the middle hole until it clicks,” she said.

  “That’s amazing.” Charlie grinned.

  “Great.” Nick rolled his eyes. “You’ve created a monster.”

  “Hey, I just want to make the most of having my own room,” Charlie said. “I share with my kid brother at home, and he’s nine.”

  “You think your life sucks? I have to go to an all-girls’ Catholic school,” Marina complained. “With uniforms and nuns. And I’m the only black girl.”

  Another guy from Charlie’s hall walked by the table, snickering. Charlie sighed, then burst out coughing. It sounded terrible, and at the end of it, he was gasping for breath. He shoved his handkerchief back into his pocket without bothering to look at it, even though it sounded like he’d coughed up blood.

  “I’m going back to my room to channel this crap into my music,” he said, standing up to bus his tray.

  “We have class in ten minutes,” I pointed out.

  Charlie let out a ridiculously fake high-pitched cough.

  “I’m too sick to go,” he said, smirking.

  ON TUESDAY, MR. Finnegan was waiting for us in French class with a paper bag on his desk and a bowl of mini Halloween candy. He grinned at us when we filed in.

  “Bonjour, classe,” he called, still smiling. “Ça va bien? Vous avez passé un bon Halloween?”

  I shot Sadie a questioning look, and she shrugged as if to say she didn’t know, either. I’d never seen Finnegan so chipper. And the bowl of candy on his desk was totally bizarre. It was like something in him had woken up, a part of him that remembered that he was a teacher, and we were a French class. Or maybe it was the promise of the protocillin, which, if Sadie’s theory was correct, would cure his employment problem.

  “We’re going to do something different today,” Finnegan said. “A game. And the winning team gets this leftover, half-priced Halloween candy. I have a bag of French tongue twisters. Each of you will pick one and read it aloud. If you get it right, your team get
s a point. If you get it wrong, your team loses a point.”

  “What are the teams?” Nick called.

  “Does boys against girls seem fair?” Finnegan asked.

  We said it did. And then we spent the rest of class trying to pronounce les virelangues like “Ces cerises sont si sûres qu’on ne sait pas si c’en sont” without messing up.

  The girls won, and they triumphantly descended on the candy bowl.

  “Homework,” Finnegan said while we were packing up.

  Everyone paused, and Nick actually snorted, thinking it was a joke.

  “Your homework,” Finnegan continued, “is to come up with your own virelangue. If you want to borrow a French-to-English dictionary, they’re on the bookshelf in the back.”

  We all stared at him, confused.

  “Well,” he said, shrugging. “If you’re going back to high school next semester, you should get used to doing homework. Class dismissed.”

  CHARLIE HADN’T BEEN in class, and he didn’t come to lunch, either, so the four of us ate quickly, then drifted over toward the cottages to check on him.

  I didn’t blame him for sulking, since a lot of the guys in our dorm still hadn’t let it go. Nick said that if the video clip had been girl on girl, Charlie would have been a hero, and I hated that he was probably right.

  A frantic ukulele solo spilled through Charlie’s window, and we took turns throwing stones through it until the music stopped.

  Charlie came to the window. His hair was a mess, and his face was flushed, his eyes glittering feverishly. He stared down at us like he couldn’t figure out what we were doing, or even what day it was.

  “You alive in there?” Sadie called.

  “I’m working,” he said, peering down at us. “I need to get this song out before the emotion is gone completely.”

  He walked away from the window, and we could hear him coughing. A moment later, the music started again.

  “Perfect,” Marina muttered.

  She and Nick went to see if a library computer was free, and I was going to follow them, but Sadie grabbed my hand.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  She’d seemed worried lately, like there was something on her mind that she didn’t want to tell me. And I hoped it was just the enormity of going home with tuberculosis-free futures.

  “Of course,” Sadie said, and I wondered if I was imagining it. “I have a proposition for you.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Wanna sneak a girl into your room?” she asked, grinning.

  “Do I ever.”

  Sadie and I crept up the stairs and onto the third-floor hallway. When I opened the door to my room, you could still hear Charlie’s music, the sad, high croon of his voice, and the wild strumming of his ukulele. I couldn’t tell if it was any good, but it was certainly heartfelt.

  “Sorry,” I said. “His room’s almost directly below mine.”

  “It’s fine. Just put something on and we’ll drown it out,” Sadie said, so I started a Belle and Sebastian playlist on my computer.

  Sadie surveyed my room with a smirk.

  “Were you planning on moving in?” she teased.

  “I unpacked!” I said, although it did look pretty temporary.

  My room wasn’t like Nick’s, with all his electronics and action figures, or Charlie’s, with his records and weird assortment of musical instruments. I had clothes in the closet and notebooks on my desk, and the picture Sadie had taken of us in the gym printed out and propped against my desk lamp.

  She picked it up, smiling.

  “Our fake-dance photo,” she said.

  “That was a pretty good night.”

  “I almost didn’t make it back in time for lights-out,” Sadie said.

  “Me neither. I had to climb into bed still wearing my tie.”

  My room was so narrow, and she was standing so close to me in those tight, dark jeans of hers that I could barely concentrate on anything else.

  “Well, if we’d had more time . . . ,” I said, and then I kissed her.

  Her lips were soft and warm and tasted like coconut, and her leg wrapped around the back of mine, and it was so sexy that I couldn’t take it, I just wanted to press her against me until there wasn’t any space between where I began and where she ended.

  “You’re going to set off my med sensor,” I teased.

  “Well, lying down lowers your heart rate,” Sadie suggested innocently.

  She smiled up at me, all mischief through her eyelashes. God, I wanted to throw her on the bed. I wanted to do everything I thought about when I was alone in my room with my evil little med sensor, going slow.

  “So?” she said. “What do you think?”

  What did I think?

  “Yeah, that would be cool,” I said, and Sadie laughed at me for pretending I wasn’t completely freaking out.

  She sat down on the edge of my bed, and I was like, “It’s bigger at home.”

  I don’t know why I said it, because it made Sadie almost die laughing.

  “Um, I don’t think that’s how anatomy works?”

  “I meant my bed,” I said, humiliated. “And my room, which actually has posters up, and a view of—”

  And then I didn’t say anything else because she was kissing me, and it was all I could do to take terrified yoga breaths through the whole amazing thing.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  SADIE

  AS THE DAYS went on, I began to accept that Latham wouldn’t last forever. And I wondered if maybe I could be something of my Latham self after I went home. I didn’t have to go back to my old high school. I could always transfer to another one, or to an arts high school, or get my GED and be done with it.

  Part of it was Lane, with his unflagging optimism about the future, and his determination not to miss out on anything. And part of it was having an answer to the question of how much sand was left in my hourglass, and how many plans I could realistically make.

  I tried to picture all of us in a few years, sitting in some late-night diner over winter break and catching up on each other’s lives. Charlie with his music, and Marina with her fashion, Nick already building his business empire, and Lane, all collegiate, and still looking at me like I was the person he wanted to see most in the world. Maybe it was possible, and I’d study photography at some art school in San Francisco, near Stanford. Maybe Lane and I would drive to the diner together.

  There was another collection on Friday, and Nick came with me, I suppose because he knew I’d “accidentally” forget his alcohol if he didn’t. It was cold that night, and dark, with almost no moon. The woods didn’t feel dark so much as thick, and finding a path through them was a challenge.

  Nick didn’t say anything until we were halfway there, and then he sighed, loudly.

  “What?” I asked.

  “So you and Lane,” he said.

  “That’s not a sentence, an opinion, or a question,” I told him.

  He snorted, clearly not amused.

  “Well, good luck with that,” he said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re not actually thinking you’ll stay together after Latham, are you?” He said it with this wide-eyed concern, but I could see right through him to his trembling, jealous little soul.

  “Maybe. What’s it to you?”

  “I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  “Wow, thanks for the concern,” I said. “You’re such a good friend.”

  I hadn’t meant it to come out as sarcastically as it did, but it was too late now. Nick scowled at me in the moonlight.

  “I never wanted to be friends,” Nick muttered.

  “Well, haven’t you heard?” I said. “Life is full of disappointments. I’m sorry you didn’t get the chance to check my name off your fuck-it list.”

  “Is that what you think I wanted?” Nick asked, shocked. “I thought you knew.”

  Knew what? I wondered as his expression softened. And then he
pulled me toward him, going for a kiss.

  “Get off!” I said, pushing him away. “I can’t believe you!”

  “Sorry,” Nick said, embarrassed. “I’m really sorry.”

  “Nick Patel, you can be a real buttpocket,” I told him.

  “Just forget it happened,” he said. “Please.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Whatever.”

  We’d reached the place where we usually met Michael, but he hadn’t arrived yet. So I stood around seething at Nick and wishing he’d get over himself. Or, I guessed, over me.

  After a minute, I heard leaves crunching in the distance, and then the beam of a flashlight passed across a nearby tree trunk. It was Michael, carrying our stuff.

  “Sorry,” he said, doing this combination cough and sniffle thing. “Not feeling that great. You have the money?”

  Nick handed over the envelope, and Michael counted it out. He charged us triple, and while paying thirty dollars for a ten-dollar bottle of vodka wasn’t a bargain, it was the only option. I guess Nick and I were supposed to mark things up even more and take a commission, but we never did. Well, except for the people we couldn’t stand. Genevieve’s Milk Duds had cost her five bucks a box.

  “Looks good,” Michael said, stashing the envelope in his jacket. “I’ll see you in two weeks.”

  “Yep,” I said.

  “You kids stay out of trouble now.” He stared straight at me while he said that last part, like it was a warning.

  MARINA’S BIRTHDAY WAS on Saturday. She was turning seventeen, the youngest of our group, and we’d always joked with her about it when we watched R-rated movies or smuggled Nick’s booze, even though none of us were old enough for that.

  I always hated having my birthdays at Latham House, because I wondered if anyone actually cared that it was my birthday, or if they were just so relieved that I’d made it another year. This was Marina’s first birthday at Latham House, and she’d missed the awkwardness of what it had been like for Nick and Charlie and me. But we gave her our tradition anyway.

  We stuck an unlit candle in a plate of pancakes and sang to her at breakfast.

  “Happy birthday, dear Marina, happy birthday to you!” we finished.

  “And many morrrre, since there’s a cureeeee,” Charlie added, before coughing into his handkerchief. His notebook was out, and his eyes were glittering like he’d been up all night slamming contraband energy drinks.