“No,” she said guardedly. “Xannies as in Xanax?”
“The kids who were with him said it looked like Tylenol PM, but who knows? Guess it’s against the rules to bring any medication to school.”
“A parent can drop off medicine with the nurse, and the nurse can administer it, as long as there’s a prescription,” Gertrude said.
“Ah.”
“Did Ben get busted?”
“Suspended. I don’t know for how long.”
Gertrude shook her head. “Dumbshit.”
“You said it.”
We sat in silence. I bobbed my head to a pretend beat, just for something to do.
“Did you know that the average male can strangle the average female in five to fifteen seconds?” Gertrude said.
I reared back. “What?”
“The girl wouldn’t necessarily die that fast, but she’d lose consciousness. If no one came to save her, and the guy kept strangling her, well . . .”
“Okay. That’s disturbing.”
Gertrude gazed at me without blinking, like a cat.
“Is there a reason you happen to know that?” I asked.
“I read a lot of crime novels.”
“What if a woman tried to strangle a man?”
“What do you think? The man would throw her across the room.”
“That’s insane,” I said. I glanced at Gertrude’s neck, which was slender and pale, with a hollow beneath her throat. “But Gertrude, I would never strangle you. I wouldn’t strangle anyone. But if I were a strangler, and I saw you, I’d say, ‘No way.’ You’re the most intimidating girl I’ve ever met.”
Gertrude looked surprised. “I am?”
“I’ve been scared of you since the first day I met you.”
“Ha,” she said. Her lips curved up. “I’m gay, you know.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“As in, I’m into girls.”
“I figured that’s what you meant. You dating anyone?”
“Not at this very moment.”
“All right, well, all in good time.”
“Paul,” she said, “why are you here?”
“As in, why do I exist?”
“Ha ha, no. Why are you here with me? What do you want?”
“Gertrude, Gertrude, Gertrude. You’re a human. I’m a human. We’re talking.”
She arched her eyebrows.
“I should have said ‘no’ to Stevie’s question,” I admitted. “Yesterday, in Ms. Summers’s class.”
“About having sex with random naked girls?”
My face flamed.
She smiled. “Paul, are you blushing?”
“Yes. Absolutely. Very much.”
“You didn’t blush yesterday, when Stevie said all that.”
“Oh, I did. Believe me.”
“And then you sat with him at lunch. With Stevie.”
“I wasn’t in my right mind.”
“Lame.”
“But I’m in my right mind now, which is why I apologized.”
“You apologized? How’d I miss that?”
I grabbed fistfuls of my hair and tugged. “Woman, I am sorry from the bottom of my sorry ass.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Could we leave your sorry ass out of it?”
“Fair enough. Until further notice, my sorry ass is closed for business.”
She leaned back on her palms. She waited, almost placidly.
My words registered, and I groaned. “Ah, man. Will I always be an idiot? Are all boys idiots, always?”
“Pretty much,” Gertrude said. “But like you said, you’re a human, I’m a human . . .” She squeezed one eye shut. “You know, you’re not as vapid as I thought.”
“What does vapid mean?”
She laughed. “Pretty much that.” She winced. “Ah, boo. Here I was trying to be less bitchy.”
“You’re not bitchy.”
She regarded me.
“You just scowl a lot, so people think you are,” I explained.
“You know what my mom says? That girls — meaning me — shouldn’t scowl because it makes them look ugly. Meaning me.”
“What? You’re not ugly.”
Gertrude looked away. Her mom probably said shit like that so often that at some point she started believing it.
“Gertrude?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t let this go to your head, but you’re kinda smoking hot, whether you’re scowling or not. Which I can tell you since you’ve let me know, very clearly, that you’re not interested in my sorry ass. Which is closed for business anyway.”
Her cheeks turned pink. “Am I still scary?”
“Are you kidding? Gertrude, you’re terrifying.”
There was another person I needed to make things right with. I found him at the end of the day, in the courtyard adjacent to the pick-up lane.
“Yo, yo, Roby,” I called. I jogged over and joined him. “Robicon. Robe-a-licious. The Robester.”
Robe-a-licious? The Robester? Shoot me now.
“Paul,” Roby said. “The Paulster. Pocket Paul.” He had an impressive poker face. “Wassup?”
“I didn’t mean to call you Robe-a-licious. I have problems with impulse control.”
“So you wanted to call me Robe-a-licious? That was your impulse, which you failed to control?”
“When you say it like that . . .” I shook my head, laughing.
He smiled. It was a good smile, easy and open, and it pained me to know that I’d picked Stevie over him. It pained me to know that he knew I’d picked Stevie over him.
I cleared my throat. “Listen. The whole stupid lobster discussion yesterday, that was messed up.”
“You think?” He was standing in front of a planter, a large brown cobblestone thing designed to look as if it were made from hundreds of pebbles. He leaned against it and folded his arms over his chest. “Never mind. Done and done. But want to know something?”
“Sure.”
“Stevie pretends he’s king of the mountain — king of the lobsters, my bad — but he doesn’t know shit.”
“How do you figure?”
Roby nodded sagely. “Girls love the short boys. Since I’m short, they can cuddle me. Or rather, they do cuddle me.”
“When does this cuddling occur?” I asked.
“All the time.” He pursed his lips. “On the sly, obviously. In the name of public safety.”
“Public safety? Or public decency?”
“There’s nothing decent about cuddle time,” he said. He gestured at himself with his thumbs. “Not when this guy’s involved.”
I didn’t know if he was two-thumbing himself seriously, or if he was mocking Stevie, who for sure is a fan of “this guy” jokes.
“Did you know that Stevie once stuck a sharpener up his brother’s butt?” Roby said.
“A pencil sharpener?” My asshole clenched.
“What? No, a Sharpie.”
“I thought you said a pencil sharpener.”
“No. Stevie stuck a Sharpie up his brother’s butt while his brother was sleeping.”