The Beginning of Everything

  “Did we escape?” I called.

  “Not even close.”

  I sat down on the swing, hoping that would disguise my problem. Cassidy took the other swing, making a complicated design in the sand with her toes.

  “Do you see that house just to the right of the tallest tree?” I asked, breaking the silence.

  “With the two chimneys?”

  “Yeah.”

  “My bedroom’s the one with the fake balcony. It’s right above our pool with the fake waterfall,” I added, earning one of Cassidy’s rare smiles.

  “I’ll send you secret messages,” she promised. “In Morse code. With my Hello Kitty flashlight.”

  “You better.”

  Suddenly, Cassidy’s phone buzzed. She slipped it out of her pocket and I glimpsed a list of missed calls.

  “I should get back,” she said, standing up. “Pop your trunk so I can get my bike?”

  “I don’t mind driving you.”

  Cassidy shook her head. “I’d rather bike. It’s like, my mom’s already pissed? I’m not used to living at home, and I forgot to check in.”

  “Well, if you’re sure.”

  “I’ll see you at school,” she said, and then grinned evilly. “Unless I’m attacked by nocturnal wolves, in which case you’ll just have to live with the guilt.”

  She scooped up her shoes, and I watched her silhouette as she ran across the grass, and I thought about how it usually wasn’t like this when it came to me and girls.

  9

  I SUPPOSE I’D better explain about Charlotte Hyde and how we’d started dating. I asked her to be my girlfriend in October of our junior year, during a scorcher of a weekend when we’d all driven out to Laguna Beach for the day. It was the usual crew piled into the usual cars, about fifteen of us.

  Jimmy had packed a cooler of beers, bought with his older brother’s ID. In typical Jimmy fashion, he’d forgotten to bring anything that might disguise the open containers, so the guys kept sneaking them into the public toilets. The cops parked out on Beach Boulevard must’ve thought they all had the shits.

  The girls wanted to sunbathe, as usual. They rarely did anything besides recline in beach chairs and flick through magazines, and it baffled me how anyone could go to the beach to willingly engage in the same pass-the-time activities that passengers suffered through on airplanes.

  The seniors in our crowd put Evan and me to work grilling hot dogs on a public barbecue near the lifeguard stand. Evan complained about being a grunt, but I honestly didn’t mind. It was peaceful standing there, the heat from the coals drying my bathing suit, the sun slanting off the water. It was the beginning of junior year, and we had everything to look forward to.

  After we ate the hot dogs on hamburger buns (“No one fuckin’ told me what kind of buns,” Evan had protested) and the girls pretended to be upset over it, Brett Masters, the captain of the water polo team, challenged the tennis guys to five-on-five volleyball.

  They destroyed us because, unlike tennis, water polo plays all on the same court and knows how to pass the damn ball. I’d managed a pretty spectacular spike out of sheer luck, but Jimmy and Evan were drunk enough that it was actually entertaining to watch them fumble and curse at their own ineptitude.

  The sun had begun to set during the game, the ocean breeze turning cold. The girls put back on their sundresses. Charlotte unhooked her bathing suit top and removed it from beneath her dress as if by magic. She caught me looking and grinned, sensing that I was under her spell.

  “Ezra, come over here,” she demanded, pouting cutely.

  Dutifully, I went.

  “Jill and I found this quiz in Pop Teen magazine about how to tell if a guy likes you,” she said, and before I knew it, the girls had trapped me on their matching hot pink towels and were making me take the quiz from their magazine. The questions were ridiculous, and when we finally reached the last one, Charlotte insisted on looking up my horoscope.

  “Love is in the cards for all of you stubborn Tauruses!” she told me, and then frowned. “Well, what do you think?”

  “I think I just learned the plural form of Taurus,” I joked, and Charlotte pretended to be upset that I wasn’t taking the horoscope seriously.

  Ever since the end of sophomore year, I’d suspected that Charlotte liked me, but that day at the beach was the first time I sensed that she wasn’t just flirting for the fun of it—that she had something specific in mind.

  “You’re so sweet,” she murmured, leaning into my shoulder as we sat side by side on her towel. “It’s a shame you’re not over Staci.”

  Staci Guffin and I had broken up a month earlier, for reasons I didn’t fully understand and didn’t particularly care to. She’d traumatized me with a Sex and the City DVD marathon when I thought I was going over to her house for, uh, something more orgasmic than shoes. Maybe she’d just wanted to break up so she could have an ex-boyfriend to complain about to her friends. I honestly didn’t know.

  “Trust me,” I said, glancing down at the long blonde hair piled on top of her head, and her endless, tanned legs, dusted with a fine layer of sand. “I’m definitely over Staci.”

  I didn’t know much about Charlotte back then, just that she was gorgeous and sexy and always had gum in her purse that she’d offer me with a smile, like she’d brought it just for me. I didn’t know that she listened to her iPod in the kitchen while she made elaborate cookies and cupcakes from gourmet baking blogs, or that she thought it was bad luck to eat the batter. I didn’t know that she’d danced since she was three, that she did yoga with her mom before school, or that she collected everything to do with ladybugs. I didn’t know that we’d be together for more than eight months, the longest relationship I’d have in high school.

  We wound up taking a walk to the other end of the beach, where the rocks jutted into the surf, forming little tide pools. She wore my Eastwood Tennis sweatshirt, because she’d gotten cold. I was secretly glad, since it made her seem more real somehow, the way she kept pushing up the sleeves of my hoodie as we walked through the tidal foam.

  We scrambled onto the rocks, the barnacles stabbing into the soles of our feet. In the distance, I could see our friends beginning to pack up, and it filled me with a strange sense of urgency. I watched Evan heft the cooler, dumping its contents over Jimmy’s head, and I judged that we had maybe five minutes for whatever it was that had brought us apart from everyone else.

  “I’m glad you’re not a complete jerk,” Charlotte said. She had slipped her phone out of the pocket of my sweatshirt and was texting.

  “Thanks, I guess?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.” Charlotte looked up from her phone with a guilty smile. Her hair streamed behind her in the breeze, and the bridge of her nose had turned pink from the sun. “Sorry. Jill wanted to know where I’d put her sunscreen. Anyway, I just meant how we’re, like, destined to date each other. The most popular girl in the junior class and the most popular guy.”

  “I’m not the most popular guy in our year,” I protested, dropping my gaze to the tide pools.

  “Um, duh. Of course you are. Why else would I have brought you here?”

  “You brought me here?” I raised an eyebrow, teasing her.

  “Yes, I did. Now shut up and kiss me.”

  I shut up and kissed her. She tasted like strawberry lip-gloss and diet soda, and she smelled like suntan lotion and my mom’s favorite detergent, and we were sixteen and not fully dressed, even as far as the beach is concerned.

  “So?” Charlotte asked with a sly smile when we pulled apart.

  “You should keep my sweatshirt,” I said. “It looks nice on you.”

  “Ezra,” Charlotte chastised. She put her hand on her hip, waiting.

  “Um, would you like to go out with me?”

  “Of course.” She grinned triumphantly and kissed me again, her hands warm and soft on my back. “Mmm, you’re so cute. We should take you shopping. I bet you’d look super hot in some new jeans.”
>
  So there it is. The day it happened: a romantic tale filled with beers consumed in a public urinal, getting creamed at volleyball by varsity water polo, kissing a girl in the tide pools, and not knowing what I was getting myself into.

  Back in ninth-grade science, we had a unit on ecology, and I’d read Steinbeck’s Sea of Cortez for extra credit after failing to impress Mr. Ghesh with my tenuous understanding of the water cycle. Steinbeck wrote about tide pools and how profoundly they illustrate the interconnectedness of all things, folded together in an ever-expanding universe that’s bound by the elastic string of time. He said that one should look from the tide pool to the stars, and then back again in wonder. And maybe things would have been different if I’d heeded his advice that day on the beach with Charlotte, but I didn’t. Instead, I linked my hand in hers and failed to appreciate the bigger picture, and the only stars I saw were wearing varsity jackets.

  10

  YOU CAN ALWAYS tell when it’s Friday. There’s an excitement specific to Fridays, coupled with relief that another week has passed. Even Toby’s friends, who I didn’t think ever did much over the weekend, were in a good mood that first Friday.

  Luke, Austin, and Phoebe were already there when I got to the table during break. Luke had his arm around Phoebe, who was eating a Pop-Tart, and Austin was engrossed in some mobile gaming device.

  “No, no, bad portal,” he scolded, totally oblivious to the world. “Stop—evil—eurgh! Suck my flagellated balls, douchenozzle!”

  Phoebe sighed. “Help, help, Austin! Your flagellated balls are on fire!”

  Austin didn’t even look up.

  “Told you he was in the gaming zone,” Phoebe said.

  “What’d I miss?” I asked, sliding onto a bench.

  “Well, I heard Jimmy’s having a sick kegger tonight,” Luke said, in this sarcastic way that let me know he still wasn’t all that thrilled to have me around. “It’s a Tier One party, of course.”

  “Yeah, I heard that too,” I said, not liking the way Luke had casually thrown around the term my old friends used to express the exclusivity of their little events. “It’s like Animal Farm.”

  “You mean Animal House,” Luke corrected. “The movie about college frat parties.”

  I shook my head. “No, I mean Animal Farm. You know: ‘Some animals are more equal than other animals.’”

  Phoebe laughed and squirmed out from under Luke’s arm to throw away her Pop-Tart wrapper.

  “Ezra, you’re taking me to Jimmy’s party, right?” she asked, fake-pouting.

  “Definitely,” I said, playing along. “Should we bring a bottle of wine or an assortment of cheeses as a host gift?”

  Luke broke off a piece of Phoebe’s Pop-Tart and she squealed in protest, ignoring my question.

  “What up, minions?” Toby slid a preposterously large coffee thermos onto the table. “Ooh, is that Mortal Portal Three?”

  Austin still didn’t look up.

  “He’s in the zone,” Phoebe said. “Honestly, what is it with boys and video games? No wonder print is dead.”

  “I read,” Toby protested as Sam and Cassidy joined us, eating fresh cookies from the bakery line. “For instance, last night I read that you can levitate a frog with magnets.”

  Phoebe rolled her eyes, unimpressed.

  “Hypothetically, or scientifically proven?” Cassidy wanted to know.

  “Scientifically proven,” Toby said triumphantly. “These Nobel Prize–winning scientists did it.”

  “How many beers do y’all think it takes before one internationally respected scientist turns to another and says, ‘Dude, bet you twenty bucks I can levitate a frog with a magnet?’” Sam drawled.

  “Well, which magnetic charge?” Cassidy asked. “I mean, it has to be either positive or negative, doesn’t it?”

  “You think you’re so clever, don’t you?” Toby teased.

  “Just a tadpole,” Cassidy replied.

  Everyone groaned.

  And then the bell rang.

  Cassidy and I had English together—with Luke, actually, but he usually walked Phoebe to class.

  “So,” I said as Cassidy and I headed toward Mr. Moreno’s room, “I didn’t see any secret messages last night.”

  “I didn’t want to be predictable,” Cassidy retorted. “But at least now I know you’re paying attention.”

  GOOD OLD MORENO and his pop quizzes. I’d nearly forgotten about those. He slammed a tough one on us—themes and metaphors from the first one hundred pages of Gatsby.

  I was slogging my way through the questions on the Smart Board when it hit me how the billboard that Wilson thought was watching him—the one with the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg—wasn’t so different from the idea behind the panopticon. I scribbled my revelation down as my final long-answer question and finished just before Mr. Moreno called time.

  He made us trade papers with the person sitting behind us, which, lucky me, was Luke. Luke grinned as I tore my page out of my notebook and handed it over.

  “Hope you studied, Faulkner,” he said, uncapping his pen.

  I got Anamica Patel’s paper. At the top of it, she’d written her name, the date, our teacher’s name, our class period, and “Gatsby Quiz #1” in the neatest handwriting I’d ever seen.

  Mr. Moreno went over the short-answer questions and the true-false. Anamica missed one of the true-false.

  “All right, hand them back and then pass them forward. I’ll grade the long-answer questions myself,” Mr. Moreno said.

  I passed Anamica’s quiz forward and she scowled at me, as though it was my fault she hadn’t gotten a score as perfect as her handwriting.

  “Hey, uh, Luke?” I asked. “Can I have my quiz back?”

  “Nice essay, Faulkner,” he said, leaning back in his chair, still holding my paper. “Which version of CliffsNotes did you use?”

  “I didn’t know there were different versions,” I said. “Which one do you recommend?”

  Luke muttered something under his breath and passed back my quiz. There was a piece of computer paper beneath it, folded in thirds.

  I was about to mention it, but Luke shook his head slightly in warning, so I slipped the piece of paper into my bag and passed my quiz to the front.

  “MS. WENG WANTS to see both of you,” said Toby, when Cassidy and I arrived at the lunch table with our mini-pizzas. “By the way, that means now.”

  I crammed a slice of minipizza into my mouth and indicated that I was good to go.

  “Great, now when he does eat, it’s disgusting,” Phoebe noted.

  Cassidy sighed and sat down. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t get that message until the very end of lunch. How about you, Ezra?”

  I swallowed thickly. “What message?”

  “Good boy.” Cassidy put on her sunglasses and nibbled her way through half of her pizza before getting up.

  “Are you seriously not finishing that?” I asked.

  “Why?” Cassidy grinned, dangling the pizza half over a trash can. “Do you want it?”

  “I want it,” Austin said, finally glancing up from his game console. “I’m broke. I spent all my money on MP Three.”

  “I knew that’s what you were playing!” Toby said. “Dude, what level are you? Is it true the Eyes regenerate twice as fast if you Infinity Drop them?”

  “Let’s go,” Cassidy said with a sigh, and I followed her to Ms. Weng’s classroom.

  Ms. Weng was eating last night’s leftover spaghetti out of a plastic container at her desk and reading a celebrity gossip magazine. I’m not going to lie; it was pretty sad.

  “You wanted to see us?” I asked.

  She startled and guiltily slid an attendance folder over the magazine. I pretended not to notice.

  “Yes, our two new recruits! I’m so happy to have both of you on the team.”

  Suddenly, I remembered that sign-up sheet the first day of class and how I’d put Cassidy’s name down. I was screwed. I glanced at Cassidy, and her exp
ression was a mixture of shock and horror.

  “Um, about that?” I began. “I don’t think—”

  But Ms. Weng wasn’t listening. She rambled on about how wonderful it was to have a seasoned pro like Cassidy, and how she was sure Cassidy or Toby could answer any questions I might have about competing.

  Cassidy’s face had gone gray. “Ms. Weng,” she finally said. “I think there’s a mistake. I didn’t sign up.”

  “Oh, I’ve already registered both of you for the San Diego open tournament in two weeks,” Ms. Weng said, misunderstanding. “And I’ve reserved the school van to drive everyone down for the weekend, unless either of you have any, er, special needs you’d like to discuss privately?”

  “Nope,” I said through clenched teeth. “No ‘special needs.’”

  I made the phrase sound good and dirty, and Cassidy shot me a look of sympathy.

  “I’m so glad,” Ms. Weng said, handing us each a thick packet. “Now you’ll need to have these permission forms signed by a parent or guardian.”

  “My parents are out of town,” Cassidy said. “Yeah, they’re in Switzerland at this medical symposium for the rest of the month.”

  I was pretty sure Cassidy’s parents were at no such thing, but Ms. Weng just smiled and assured Cassidy that her old coach could fax over last year’s form for the time being. There was such a finality to her tone that we didn’t dare to question it.

  Cassidy and I slunk from Ms. Weng’s room in defeat. The moment the door closed, Cassidy turned toward me, eyes blazing.

  “What the hell?” she demanded. “She cornered us back there. And I never signed up to compete—it’s like she was planning this all along. I knew there was a reason I got put in debate class! ‘Oh, there aren’t any other team electives open,’ my advisor said. ‘It’s this or phys ed.’ Yeah, freaking right. I’m not some champion pony they can parade around whenever they feel like it. I don’t compete anymore, and they have no right to force me into it like this.”