Since Joni can drive, we could conceivably go somewhere else. But I want to be within departure range this time, just in case Chuck makes me want to go away.
What I really want to do is, of course, spend as much time as I can with Noah. This is sudden and unusual for me, but I decide to ride it. I want to know more. I tell him this when I see him at his locker before first period. He tells me not to worry about lunch--we have a whole weekend coming up, and all the time it offers. Without saying a word, we arrange to pass notes between each class. Between first and second, we meet at my locker. Between second and third, we head to his. And so on. Reading about his boredom in math class, or the dream he had last night about penguins, or his mom's phone call from some indistinguishable airport lounge, I begin to learn about him in the first person. I try to write back in the same way, giving a little clue to myself in every sentence. For him, I recall my grandmother's smile, the time Jay and I dressed as each other for Halloween (none of the neighbors got it), Mrs.
Benchly's words on my kindergarten evaluation. It's all very random, but that's what my thoughts are like. I can tell from Noah's notes that we have a compatible randomness.
I've told Joni to meet me (with Chuck) in front of my locker. In retrospect, this is a stupid, stupid decision. Because as soon as they show up, Infinite Darlene walks past, clicking her tongue and swishing away. Then, even worse, as Chuck and I are nodding hey, Ted appears behind him. He stops for a second and takes a good look at what we're doing. He, too, walks away irate, betrayed. I feel like a dust mite. And I still have to get through lunch.
Chuck is a short guy but he works out a lot, so as a result he's built like a fire hydrant. Most of the time he acts like a fire hydrant, too. Conversation is not his strong suit. In fact, I'm not sure it's a suit he owns.
So it's Joni and I who chat the whole way to Veggie D's. I doubt Chuck is very happy about our destination--he strikes me as a carnivore--but he doesn't really protest. I find myself liking him okay when his mouth is shut.
After Joni orders a VegHummus and a six-piece Tofu Veg-Nuggets, Chuck and I both opt for the Double Lentil Tempeh Burger with a side order of fries. I get a smoothie, but Chuck goes for a VegCola.
"I don't like fruit," he explains. "No offense."
Only his "no offense" offends me.
But because he's my best friend's new boyfriend, I let it slide.
(For now.)
Eating makes Chuck talk more. He and Joni are sitting across from me, holding hands while they chew. They are exactly the same height.
Since Chuck's a sporting guy, I think it's only fair that I keep score of his conversation.
"So I hear you're planning that dance?" he says. (Five points: He's showing an interest in me instead of prattling on about himself.)
"Well," I reply, "Lyssa Ling's planning it. I'm merely the architect."
"Whatever." (Minus two points.) "If you want to sneak in a keg, my dad knows a supplier and I can probably get you one cheap." (Plus three points for helpfulness, minus two for inappropriateness.)
"Chuck's dad has the biggest liquor collection I've ever seen," Joni chimes in.
"But he doesn't drink any," Chuck continues. "He just likes the bottles." (Plus three for an interesting father.) "How lame is that?" (Minus four for not realizing it.)
"How's football going this year?" I ask.
Chuck's eyes light up. (Joni would be lucky if the mention of her name ever got such a response.) "I think we really have a chance to take State. Watchung is weak, and South Orange's best player graduated last year. Livingston's best player is on the verge of indictment, and Hanover hasn't fielded a decent team since their coach was a player.
Caldwell's the one to watch, but I feel like we could take them if we keep our guard up. Our practices have been so rockin lately. We're tight, you know. Real tight." (Ten points for passion. So what if it's football he's talking about--if you can be so engaged and excited by the thing you do, you get points.)
"The only problem," Chuck continues, "is our goddamn quarterback. He's totally psycho."
Minus twenty points. Chuck knows I'm friends with Infinite Darlene. So why is he slamming her? Doesn't he know any better?
He goes on. "He's more worried about breaking his nails than throwing the pigskin." (At the sound of the word pigskin, half the Veggie D's customers turn around and give us a nasty look.) "He should just enter the beauty contests instead of heading onto the gridiron, if you know what I mean."
Oh, I know what he means. He means: I had a crush on the quarterback and she didn't have a crush back, so now I'm going to bad-mouth her since I can't undo the crush I once had. I can see right through every word he's said, because I've witnessed Infinite Darlene on the football field. When she is on the hundred yards, she is all business. She will break her nails and blotch her mascara and sweat and grunt and shove and do whatever it takes to get to the end zone. She is all precision, no distraction. It's probably what attracted Chuck in the first place.
I stop keeping score, because in my book, Chuck's already lost the game. I look over to Joni for confirmation . . . but she just smiles at me. As if to say Isn't he cute?
Chuck asked me about movies, because Joni must have told him I like movies. But he only asks me about the movies he's seen, so he can give his own opinion. Opinions like "That helicopter chase was intense" and "She can't act, but she sure is a babe." I look over at Joni again.
She's nodding along.
She's not saying much.
She hold his hand and looks happy.
Part of me wants to scream and part of me wants to laugh, both
I for the same reason: This is an impossible situation. Joni doesn't need my approval, but she wants it, in the same way that I would want hers. But if I approve, I'm lying. And if I don't, I'll be shutting myself out of a major part of her life.
"I really liked that article you wrote for the paper about the hate crimes law," Chuck is now saying. Does he realize he's lost me? Is he trying to win me back? That effort alone would count for something, if not a lot.
I usually think our thirty-four-minute lunch period is too short. Now I feel it just right. We sort and throw out our garbage, then head back to school. Since it's Friday, we talk about our weekend plans. For some reason, I decide not to mention Noah. In contrast, every plan Joni and Chuck mention starts with the word we. Usually Joni and I would plan a point to connect over the weekend. This time, neither of us makes that move.
I notice this. I wonder if she does, too.
In between sixth and seventh periods, before I get a note from Noah, Ted comes right up to me and calls me a traitor. Now, I've never felt any allegiance to Ted before. In fact, I was usually a big fan when Joni decided to dump him. But today it feels different. Today I do feel like a traitor though maybe the old Joni is the one I've betrayed.
"You're taking sides," Ted spits out at me.
"I'm not," I try to convince him. "And I thought you said you didn't care."
"I don't. But I didn't think you'd be supporting her stupid decision, Gay Boy. I thought you had some sense."
I can't tell him I agree, because then word will get back to Joni and she'll know how I really feel. So I stand there and take his wave of anger. I make it clear I don't know what to do.
He stares me down for a second, says "Fine," then heads off to his next class.
I wonder if it's possible to start a new relationship without hurting someone else. I wonder if it's possible to have happiness without it being at someone else's expense.
Then I see Noah coming over to me with a note folded in the shape of a crane.
And I think, yes, it's possible.
I think I can fall for him without hurting anybody.
A Walk in the Park
Our plan for Saturday is to not have a plan for Saturday. This un-eases me a little, since I'm a pretty big fan of plans. But for Noah, I'm willing to try a planless day out.
He's going to come by my house a
t noon. I'm totally fine with this--until I realize it means he'll be meeting my family.
Now, don't get me wrong--I like my family. While many of my friends' parents have been arguing, divorcing, and custody-sharing, my parents have been planning family vacations and setting the table for family dinners. They're usually pretty good about meeting my boyfriends, although I think they're always a little confused about who's my boyfriend and who is just a friend who happens to be a boy. (It took them a couple months to catch on that Tony and I weren't a thing.)
No, my fear isn't that my parents are going to push Noah out the door with a cattle prod.
Instead, I'm afraid they'll be too friendly and give too much of me away before I can reveal it.
As a precaution, I lock all the family photo albums in a drawer and decide to tell them Noah is "a new friend" without specifying anything else. Jay, who (like any older brother) loves to see me squirm, is the big wild card--he's off at tennis practice, but there's no telling when he'll come home.
I clean my room thoroughly, then mess it up a little so it won't look so clean. I worry that it's not whimsical enough. Instead, it's the museum of my whole life, from my Snoopys with their wardrobes to the mirror ball my parents got me when I graduated from fifth grade to the Wilde books still open-winged on my floor from last week's English report.
This is my life, I think. I am an accumulation of objects.
The doorbell rings precisely at noon, as if it were attached to a grandfather clock.
Noah is right on time. And he's brought me flowers.
I want to cry. T am such a sap, but right now I am so happy. Hyacinth and jacaranda and a dozen other flowers that I cannot begin to name. An alphabet of flowers. He is giving them to me, smiling and saying hi, reaching out and putting them in my hand. His shirt shimmers a little in the sunlight. His hair is as unkempt as ever. He teeters a little on the front step, waiting to be invited in.
I lean forward and kiss him. The flowers crush between our shirts. I touch his lips, I breathe him in. I close my eyes, I open them. He is surprised, I can tell. I am surprised, too. He kisses me back with a kiss like a smile.
It's very nice.
Actually, it's wonderful.
"Hello," I say.
"Hello," Noah says back.
I hear footsteps coming down from upstairs. My parents.
"Come in," I say. I hold the flowers in one hand and swing my other hand behind me. Noah takes it as he walks through the door.
"Hello there," my parents say together as they reach the bottom of the stairs. In one glance they see the flowers, and me and Noah holding hands. They can immediately figure out that Noah is more than just a new friend.
I don't care.
My mother instinctively looks at Noah's teeth as he says, "It's a pleasure to meet you." I can't really blame her: she's a dentist, and she can't help doing it. The biggest fight we ever had was when I refused to get braces. I wouldn't even open my mouth to let the orthodontist see my teeth. He "threatened to put the braces on my closed mouth, and as far as I was concerned, that was that. I won't be bullied into anything, and I have the crooked teeth to prove it. My mother is constantly mortified by this, although she's nice enough not to mention it anymore.
Because I am my mother's son, I noticed right away that Noah's bottom front teeth overlap a little. Because I am not entirely my mother's son, I find this flaw to be beautiful.
"It's a pleasure to-meet you," my father tells Noah, putting his hand out to shake. Noah and I disengage so he can make a good impression. My father has, I believe, the perfect handshake, neither fish nor fist. The handshake is his great equalizer--by the time he pulls his hand back, you feel you're right on his level. He's honed this craft in his years as the director of philanthropy at Puffy Soft, a national toiletries chain. His job is to take a portion of the profits that come from selling TP and give the money away to underfunded school programs. He is a walking example of why our country is such a strange and unbelievable place.
Noah is checking out our living room, and I am getting a look through his eyes. I realize how strange the wallpaper print is, and how all the pillows from the couch are in a pile on the floor, betraying the fact that someone (probably my father) just had a lie-down.
"Do you guys want pancakes?" my mother asks.
"My family believes breakfast can be served at any meal," I explain to Noah.
"I'm all for it," he says. "I mean, if you want to."
"Do you?" I ask.
"If you do."
"Are you sure?"
"Are you?"
"I'll make the pancakes," my mother interjects. "You guys have about ten minutes to decide if you want to eat them."
She heads into the kitchen. My father points to the flowers.
"You should put those in water," he says. "They're lovely."
Noah blushes. I blush. But I don't move. I'm not sure if Noah is ready to be alone with my father yet. Still, if I say that, I'll offend both of them. So I head for the nearest vase.
It's not until I'm alone -- it's not until I'm given a sensory pause--that the full enormity of what's happened hits me. Two minutes ago, I was kissing Noah and he was kissing me back.
Now he's in the living room with my father. The boy I just kissed is talking to my father. The boy I want to kiss again is waiting for my mother to serve pancakes.
I must fight the urge to freak.
I find an old Dallas thermos and put the flowers inside. Their color complements Charlene Tilton's eyes nicely. The thermos is a relic from the early years of my parents' everlasting courtship.
Now that the flowers are in place, I'm feeling a little better. Then I hear my father's voice from the other room.
"Look at how big his thighs are here!"
Oh, no. The photo shrine. How could I have forgotten?
Sure enough, I walk in and find Noah framed by frames, the story of my transformation from pudgy to gawky to awkward to lanky to awkward again, all in the space of fifteen years.
Luckily, the thighs in question are on my six-month-old self.
"Pancakes are almost ready!" my mother calls.
We head to the kitchen. My father takes the lead, so I get to hang back a moment with Noah.
He looks perfectly amused.
"Do you mind?" I ask.
"I'm having fun," he assures me.
I know that other peoples families are always more amusing than your own. But I'm not used to my family being the other person's family.
"States or countries?" my father asks as we reach the kitchen.
"You tell me," my mother replies.
I have no idea why I'm surprised by this. It must be Noah's presence that makes me expect normal from my parents, even when I know this is rarely the case. Whenever my mom makes pancakes, they are usually the shape of states or countries. It's how I learned geography. If this seems a little bizarre, let me emphasize here -- I am not talking about blobs of batter that look like California when you squint. No, I'm talking coastlines and mountain ranges and little star imprints where .the capital should be. Because my mom drills teeth for a living, she is very, very precise. She can draw a straight line without a ruler and fold a napkin in perfect symmetry. In this regard, I am nothing at all like her. Most of the time, I feel like a perpetual smudge. My lines all curve. I tend to connect the wrong dots.
(Joni tells me this isn't true, that I say I'm a smudge because I can see my mother's precision growing inside of me. But let me tell you--I could never make two separate pancakes that fit together the way my mother's Texas and Oklahoma do.)
My parents steal glimpses of Noah. He steals glimpses of them. I watch them all openly, and nobody seems to mind.
"How long have you been living in town?" my father asks, perfectly conversational.
Just then, my brother busts into the room, leaving a trail of tennis sweat.
"Who are you?" Jay asks, pouring a little syrup on Minnesota before lifting the whole thing into his mo
uth.
"Noah." I like that he doesn't explain any further, and that he resists saying "It's nice to meet you" until he figures out whether such a statement is true.
"Another gay boy?" my brother says to me, then sighs. "Man, why can't you ever bring home a really cute sophomore girl to fall desperately in love with me? Do you have any cute girlfriends? Dogface doesn't count." (He and Joni go way back; she calls him Dungbrain.) Before I can say anything, Noah steps in. "I was going to set you up with my sister," he says,