“You play the drums?” Stuart demanded.
“Do I play the drums,” Peaches repeated. She dragged the comb through his hair with rapid, jerky strokes. “I do sometimes, yes. At this crazy bar no one ever goes into. I put on music and play along on the drums. It’s pretty lame, but also sort of fun.”
“I need to check it out.”
“No, you don’t.” Peaches hadn’t yet owned up to the fact that she knew who he was. Now was her chance. “You’re famous. And I’m really not that good.”
Chapter 2
Latin was Shy Clarke’s new favorite subject. She’d only started last year, and she’d hated it, but lately she couldn’t wait for Latin class.
“Latin is a dead language,” her mother, Wendy, insisted. “You should be taking Mandarin. It’s the language of the future, whether we like it or not. That’s why all the private schools are offering it.”
But her father had lobbied for Latin. Shy muddled through the first year, feeling a little insane for trying to learn a language no one spoke. She’d thought about switching to Mandarin. Now she was so glad she hadn’t. Second-year Latin at Phinney Collegiate was taught by Mr. Streko. And okay, yes, he had a mustache, which sometimes had bits of dried cappuccino foam in it, and he wore the same light gray V-neck sweater, which also sometimes had bits of food and cat hair on it, almost every day. He had tattoos on his forearms that she couldn’t quite make out because his hair was so thick and dark. But he was passionate about Latin—the other students rolled their eyes at him—so passionate, Shy had begun to feel passionate about it too.
She’d hated her new school from the moment she started there last year. The kids rolled their eyes at her, too. They rolled their eyes at her Gucci sneakers, a spare pair her mother had brought home for her from the fashion closet at work. They rolled their eyes when she didn’t understand the people who worked at Just Salad when she attempted to eat out for lunch—what in bloody hell was Buffalo chicken? They rolled their eyes when she didn’t know how to play basketball or volleyball. They rolled their eyes when she asked where she could get a cup of tea. Now, a year later, Mr. Streko had changed all that. She felt like a rare butterfly, shedding her cocoon in his classroom.
Today, Latin was just before lunch. They were attempting to translate Ovid’s Amores—poems about love.
“Sin, sin, sin—who has it?” Mr. Streko demanded, his brown eyes flecked with bright orange light, his fuzzy black mustache doing that sad and sexy thing where it went down over the corners of his mouth. Shy wondered if he maintained his mustache on his own or if he had weekly appointments at the barber. “This is a good one,” he prompted. “Remember this one on Valentine’s Day.”
“ ‘I can’t live either without you or with you,’ ” Shy translated, her long, frail body trembling with the effort it took to keep her voice normal and her eyes disinterested.
“Yes!” Mr. Streko beamed at her with his straight, pearlescent teeth and perfectly curled black eyelashes, shooting out arrows of love that bullseyed her heart, almost knocking her out of her chair.
“For tomorrow, translate the next four lines. Try to use your hearts and minds rather than your dictionaries. Remember, it’s poetry, so it has an emotional logic rather than a literal logic.”
No other teacher said things like that. No one did. She could have listened to him for hours. But class was over. The other students were already packing up. Shy put her books into her backpack slowly. She planned to follow Mr. Streko and see what he did at lunchtime, if she could find a way to do it inconspicuously. She also wanted to get the hell out of the building while her mom was there.
The meeting with the principal and Shy’s teachers wasn’t for another fifteen minutes, but Shy could already hear her mother’s voice echoing down the hallway, repeating the same diatribe she’d overheard last night while she was brushing her teeth.
“What do you think she does all afternoon? Other girls play on teams or go to dance classes. She isn’t interested in anything. And she doesn’t ‘hang out’ with anyone. I’m not sure what that means, but isn’t this the age when you’re supposed to want to ‘hang out’? She only eats bread and Coke. I tried to eat like her for a day and I had to lie down. She’s so thin. I just wish she had interests.”
Shy didn’t hate her mother exactly. She hated this side of her—the meddling, judging, overinvested, insecure side that thought her daughter’s grades, looks, behavior, and number of friends somehow reflected her capability as a mother. Why did she care so much? It was impossibly irritating.
Mr. Streko strode down the hall and disappeared into the Latin office. Shy was about to rethink her plan when he emerged again, wearing a green down vest and round, mirrored sunglasses. He was going out.
Walking down Court Street, it was easy to pretend she wasn’t following him. He paused outside of Starbucks, but there was a line, so he moved on. He seemed to consider going into the pizzeria, where there was also a line, then looked at his watch and carried on. He walked all the way to Atlantic Avenue and waited to cross at the light. Juniors and seniors were allowed out at lunchtime, but Shy never went this far, preferring to nurse a Coke alone on a random stoop. He was walking in the direction of Cobble Hill and home.
Just past the Trader Joe’s, he turned in and pulled open a door. It was Chipotle, the Mexican fast-food place. Shy had never been inside. Should she go in and risk a face-to-face exchange? Would he address her in Latin, the way he sometimes did in class?“Salve, Shy Clarke.”
And what would they talk about? Poetry? Emotional logic?
She couldn’t do it. Instead, she darted into Trader Joe’s to buy a demi baguette and whatever the Trader Joe’s version of Coke was. The huge store was busy and crowded, the line even longer than at Starbucks. She pulled out her phone to check the time. Her mother’s meeting was just getting started. After lunch she had American history, Algebra II, and physics—all of her very worst subjects, taught by teachers who would most certainly not leave her to space out at the back of the classroom now that her mother had told them how clever she was and how she was wasting her potential. School’s over, she decided. She was almost home anyway. She put back the baguette and ducked outside again.
“Salve, Shy Clarke,” Mr. Streko greeted her, his Chipotle bag clutched in his fist. “Grabbing lunch?”
“I—I. Um,” Shy stammered. She raised her hand in greeting. “Salve, Mr. Streko.” Show me your tattoos. Take me away from here. I can’t live either with you or without you.
He grinned in reply, suddenly seeming very young and hip outside the confines of the classroom. He probably played guitar and surfed and ate in those outdoor pop-up barbecue restaurants near the Gowanus Canal with dumb names like Pig Party and Cow Town. He probably had a beautiful twenty-three-year-old girlfriend with a perfect body and amazing hair, piercings in all the right places, and even more tattoos.
“Wanna walk back to school with me?” he offered.
Shy shook her head. “I’m actually going home. I’m… um… not feeling that well.”
The corners of Mr. Streko’s expressive mouth turned down in sympathy, his black mustache glinting sexily in the bright sun. He patted her on the shoulder and Shy flinched. He’d never touched her before. Was her face red? Could he tell how nervous and pathetic she was?