If I sit still and focus on reading, it’s a little better. Today, I’ve got a Stephen King book, and it does its job. I forget I’m on a train till we’re approaching Fulton. Back into fiction land until Chambers, and that’s my stop. I slip the book into a slot inside my backpack and keep my head down as I step off the train and start toward the street.
I can feel the looks I’m getting as I pass the crowd that’s heading into the station. I tell myself it doesn’t matter. A week or so, and the eye will fade from ugly purple black to greenish yellow, and it won’t be such a flashing light.
I stop as soon as I get into the sunlight, set my backpack on a bench, and pull out a ball cap my pal Missanelli gave me. Dude wants me to go out for the baseball team, but I don’t think that’s gonna work. Not with what I’ve got going this summer.
Don’t think about that shit right now.
I fit the ball cap onto my head. It’s deep purple with twin interlocked “M”s in gold thread on the front. With the cap on and my chin tucked, I don’t get as many looks. It’s a sunny day, and the cap’s bill casts a shadow over my eyes. Plus, shit’s busy.
Chambers Street always is. Guys unloading frozen cuts of pork from delivery trucks, people hawking stuff from stuff stands, all the shop doors swinging, cool air wafting out onto the sidewalk. Lots of people walking to work, and a few people pedaling. It’s early October and the leaves are just starting to turn, with streaks of gold near their tips and spots of brown creeping along rich green facades. It’s a perfect fifty-seven degrees this morning, according to a digital sign above a store’s awning.
I lengthen my strides as I pass a crew on scaffolding, eight arms reaching to smear putty on the outside of a brick building. A green-haired guy nods my way as he pedals by on a bike towing a portable espresso station. I’ve gotten my caffeine fix from him a few times, and I’m pretty sure he’s around my age.
“Hey, man.”
An older guy in front of me glances over his shoulder before returning to his cell phone conversation.
Most students at Manhattan Magnet aren’t commuting from Brooklyn, much less Red Hook. As far as I know, it’s just me making the march from Chambers Station toward Washington Market Park—which is to say I’m walking toward the Hudson.
Some days—including this one—there’s a breeze off the river that blows through my shirt. I always think the sunshine streaming through these trees seems sunnier than the stuff in Red Hook. At this new school of mine, damn near anything seems possible. Even if it’s not.
By the time I get to the gardens at Washington Market Park, I’m feeling all right. Beyond the thick green trees that line the sidewalk up ahead, there are some tennis courts. If I time it right as I approach them, I’ll see what I’ve waited for all morning. It’s a familiar scene now: a black Lincoln pulls up to the curb. She always hops out the back door, which is how I know she’s being driven by a service.
Every day, I watch her rise to her full height…which isn’t too high. I watch as she lifts her long hair over her purple leather backpack. It’s long and wavy, dark but not exactly black. It has some red, I think. Not hair-dyed, but a sort of maroon shine, when the sun hits it, which it does some days as she walks toward Tribeca Bridge, some twenty feet in front of us. The covered bridge takes us over West Street and into the school.
Every day, I watch as she saunters toward the bridge, and then I watch her as she walks across it. I stay back far enough so she doesn’t feel as if she’s being followed and close enough so I can appreciate her ass as it bounces below the backpack, usually clad in colored jeans or leggings, sometimes hidden by an extra-long blouse.
I stay close enough that I can smell her. Not because I’m fucking weird and like to smell girls, but because she smells abnormally good. Like what I think gold would smell like if it were a scent: pure and clean, with a hint of something like vanilla. It’s probably some Bergdorf Goodman bullshit, but damn, it smells so fucking good.
Even after the bridge leads us to the school’s side door and we go opposite ways, I can still smell her.
Elise O’Hara—that’s her name. Kind of awkward on the cadence there. Elise O’Hara. Might sound better with Galante at the end. Elise Galante.
I stop under one of the trees shading my stretch of sidewalk by the park’s garden, frowning at the empty tennis court and then out at the traffic.
Did I miss her? Did she come early? Or is she late?
It’s kind of creepy, okay? I know. But I crouch down so I can fuck with my shoe, for just a second. I’m only going to wait here for a minute. I hate being late, and today especially, that would suck. Everyone will stare at my busted up face even if I’m at my desk early.
I toy with my new Jordans. My dad owns a shoe store. Usually he sells more formal shit, but I can get pretty much whatever for the vendor’s price. I’m messing with the laces when the black car parks beside the sidewalk.
Almost before the wheels stop rolling, the rear door opens and she’s out. Damn, she’s like a rocket today. Doesn’t even stop to pull that waterfall of hair out of her backpack straps.
She walks like she’s pissed or in a bigtime hurry. I check my watch, but we’re not really late. Maybe on the later side of on-time.
Black pants today. From twenty feet behind her, I can’t see the stitching well enough to know if they’re leggings or this new girl pants thing—“jeggings”—but goddamn with that ass.
I cast my eyes down to the sidewalk, but it doesn’t last. Just a second later, my gaze jumps back up her curvy form. This time, my eyes rest on her slim shoulders, the sway of her arms. I can tell she’s clutching something half a second before it hits the ground and bounces toward me.
A stuffed animal?
I scoop it up, smiling at its big bear eyes and happy panda smile—and then she’s on me. I get a whiff of her—the clean, rich smell—before she snatches the thing from my hand and whirls away, her long hair brushing my cheek as she spins.
She lowers her head, draws her shoulders in, and dashes toward the bridge that’s just a little up ahead of us—the one that arches over West Street and connects to the side of our school building. As she runs, I hear a clacking sound I realize is her boots. She’s in a fucking run to get away from me.
I wonder if she’ll stop when she gets to the side door of the school, or at least slow down so I can ask if she’s okay. It doesn’t happen. By the time I make it into the school, she’s lost in the crowd.
I wonder about her all damn morning. During homeroom when my dickhead teacher, Dr. Brown, asks what happened to my eye—like it’s his business. My pal Loren Missanelli snickers and whisper-hisses, “Did you run into a fence, Galante?”
“Why a fence?” I throw him a what-the-fuck look.
He shrugs. “Why not?”
“Fucking random, man.” I shake my head and slip into thinking about her while everyone around me works on homework.
In first period it’s the same song, second verse. My buds Liam and Max give me shit about the black eye, and this girl we chill with, Maddie, tries to touch it. When I lean away, she sits on my lap, wraps her arms around my neck, and leans in so her tits are pressed against my chest. I wrap my arm around her back, prepared to move her off me, and that’s the moment our calc instructor, Dr. Sweedish, steps into the room.