“Art,” Judy whispers to me. “These things are dangerous. There are always cops . . .”
I ignore her. “Yeah, I want to help,” I say, more firmly this time. “Just tell me where to be.”
I don’t know how, but I know that this decision will change my life. I’m a little psychic sometimes. I see colors. I can’t describe it, but I know that in this moment, it’s like a bright-pink light shines around me, and it just feels right. I hand my camera to Judy. “Hey, take a picture of me,” I whisper.
“Why?” she asks.
“Just because,” I say. “I want to remember this moment.”
Judy
At first, I see only his eyes. They’re staring at me from above his long blue locker door. Brown doesn’t do justice to the color of these eyes. My eyes are brown. His are something else entirely. Other eye colors conjure up so many beautiful images. Blue eyes bring to mind deep oceans and endless skies. Green eyes bring to mind rolling fields of grass or ancient emerald stones. But brown doesn’t conjure much, does it? Mud. Dirt. Excrement. Pretty much describes my eyes. But his, they are more like the richest caramel ever created. They look like a vast desert, endless, beautiful, romantic, like some gorgeous Saharan desert, not that I’ve ever seen those places outside of some old Marlene Dietrich movie my uncle chose as one of our Sunday-night films.
Once my dull brown eyes manage to glance away from his caramel ones, I look down and see his bare feet, also caramel colored, with a few stray black hairs on each toe. So basically, I see the top of his eyes, one long locker, and bare feet, and I can’t help but think that maybe this mystery man is naked, and that behind that locker, he’s mooning our whole high school. His index toe is bigger than his big toe. I notice that right away because Art once told me that guys with an index toe longer than the big toe are supposed to be phenomenal in bed, or are going to be really rich. I don’t remember anymore. Art has a lot of theories and superstitions, like people with gaps between their front teeth are supposed to be geniuses, which he obviously thinks is true because he and Madonna have huge gaps between their front teeth. If I were Art, I would start spreading a theory that fat girls with avant-garde fashion sense and severe black bangs are the chosen people.
“You’re Judy, right?” the mystery man asks in a shaky voice, his mouth still hidden by the locker.
Wait, he knows your name, Judy. Maybe he traveled from a distant land to find you. But what will you wear for your wedding? Not some boring wedding dress. Maybe like a slip with an absurdly long veil.
I look up to his eyes (still perfect) and down to his feet (still perfect). Eyes. Feet. Eyes. Feet. Oh, and I haven’t even mentioned his hair: black, thick, wavy. I let my mind wander, imagining he really is naked behind that locker, and that soon he will reveal himself to me: body, heart, and soul. Art always says I’ll be the first to meet my soul mate, and I always say he’s totally wrong. But maybe he’s not. Art says he sees auras around people and things. I think he makes that up to seem interesting, but maybe not.
“Um, yeah, I’m Judy,” I say. “And who are you, naked man?”
Shut up, Judy. That wasn’t an internal monologue. He can hear you.
“I’m sorry?” he asks with a laugh, and now I notice his sexy accent.
“Oh God, I’m the one who’s sorry,” I say. “It’s just that you’re not wearing any shoes, so from where I’m standing, it kind of looks like you might be naked behind there.”
I sound like an idiot, but what else is new? This is why I limit my conversation partners mostly to Art and Uncle Stephen. I know they’re not going to judge me no matter what lunacy comes out of my mouth. And yeah, I have parents. And yeah, they judge me, usually silently or through annoyingly supportive suggestions about how I could slim down. For the record, my parents have female baldness and cancer all over their family trees, so a little extra weight is the least of my problems.
He closes the locker door and reveals he’s very much not naked. Oh well, that fantasy is over. But he’s also definitely not wearing our school uniform. His khaki shorts and white polo shirt are appropriate for the September heat wave, but most definitely inappropriate for this prisonlike school my parents choose to send me to, even though it’s killing them financially.
“My stepbrother told me this was the uniform,” he says. “Luckily, I brought tennis shoes for gym class, so I was just putting my sandals away.”
That’s when I notice that in addition to the aforementioned, and very hot, Middle Eastern accent, he also has a weird choice of words. “We call sandals flip-flops here,” I say. “And we call tennis shoes sneakers.”
He nods as he ties the laces of his white sneakers. “Thank you, Judy.”
I let myself imagine bending over and tying his shoelaces for him, massaging his legs in the process. God, I’m a perv. Art always says that straight people are ultimately much pervier than gay people, and if we were the only variables in the sample set, he’d probably be right. Art has a dirtier mouth, but I have dirtier thoughts. I have to—there’s no way other people’s brains are this gross. I mean, I’m seriously picturing myself rubbing this guy’s thighs right now.
“Hey, so how do you know my name, mystery man?” I ask, attempting flirtation, but the minute the words escape my lips, I realize I probably sound pathetic bordering on creepy.
“Oh,” he says. “They sent me this.” He pulls out a yearbook from his locker.
“And you actually studied it?” I ask. I haven’t looked at our yearbook since sophomore year, when me and Art went through and rated all the guys together, hating ourselves for giving tens to all the biggest assholes, like there was an actual correlation between a guy’s dickishness and hotness.
He nods. I don’t mean to make him feel bad. I hope I didn’t.
“I don’t remember everyone, but you stood out.”
Of course you did. You’re the only fat girl in there.
“So, um . . . ,” I stammer, trying to make scintillating conversation and failing. “What’s your name? I haven’t studied the book like you.”
“I’m Reza,” he says. “I’m not in the book yet. There wasn’t time to include me. I just moved here from Toronto, by way of Tehran.”
“You didn’t wanna move to Tokyo next?” I ask, but he doesn’t seem to get the joke. “You know, cities that start with T.”
“Oh,” he says. “I understand.”
If this were Art, we’d be riffing by now, listing off every T city we knew. I search for something else to say. “Well, I wish my picture was cuter. I look like a girl who cut her own bangs in a sad attempt to look like Louise Brooks but achieved Cousin Itt instead.”
“Judy?” Reza says quietly, and when I look up, he asks, “What are bangs? And who is Louise Brooks? And Cousin Itt?”
I laugh. “Bangs,” I say, pointing to my forehead, “are this ugly shape my hair makes on my forehead, which was both an attempt to cover up my forehead acne and an effort to look like Louise Brooks, a silent-film star of the 1920s who never made it in talkies. And Cousin Itt is a hairy creature from the television show The Addams Family.”