He is smart and funny and just kind of comfortable, which I almost never am. I was wrong when I thought what we’d have in common was thinking this was awkward. That part is just me.
And somehow, this makes me start to unfold. I’ve had my feet on the chair, knees pulled up tight into to my chest, both hands around my mug. Now I unwrap one leg and then the other and drape them over the armrest. I lean back, just a little, adjusting my sweatshirt so it’s still baggy over my body. I hear myself say, “You’ll be fine. But your German room is in the same hallway as my math class, first period, so if you start to panic, yell for me. Greer! I’m lost!” His cheeks spread out with a big, real smile. “Greer! Helpen mich por favor!” I’m loud enough that Mom looks over, curious. Not annoyed; surprised. Jackson laughs out loud. “Say it in English, though,” I add. “My German is gesundheit.”
* * *
σ
When it’s time to leave, Mom says, “Oh, Jackson! Why don’t you take Greer’s number? You know, in case you have any more questions about school?” I hate and love her for this.
Mom starts to rattle off my number, and I wonder if Jackson is only pretending to type.
But before she finishes, he stops and hands me his phone. “Do you mind doing it?” and there I am, already added as a new contact: Greer Walsh. He spelled Greer right. No one has ever spelled Grier Garear Gruyere right the first time in my life.
I retype the number twice to make sure it’s right, even though I figure a butt dial is the only way he’s ever going to use it. I hand it back, he taps a couple of keys, and there is the sweetest little ping! in my bag. “Now you’ve got mine, too.” He smiles, and I blush hard in every part of my body. I’m glad he can only see my cheeks turn pink.
On the way out, Mom says, “You should have brought along your daughter, too!”
The whole mood changes. Jackson and his mother look at each other like Mom has just said there would be anchovy and liver subs in the welcome basket.
“We did,” starts Mrs. Oates. “She, ah, decided she’d rather stay in the car with the iPad.” She looks embarrassed, and Mom cringes in sympathy. “She gets a little nervous around new people.”
It’s hard, even for my mom, to know what to say to that, knowing that they keep moving the kid around anyway. I don’t remember anybody being particularly compassionate as a third grader, so good luck at school on Monday, Oates Girl.
“Actually, it works out perfectly,” Jackson finally says. “We like to save Quinlan for after people have already decided to like us. I mean, if they decide to like us.” He gives me a shrug and a goofy look.
“Of course we like you,” says Mom through a little waterfall of a laugh, her eyes on me the whole time.
And we do. We really, really do.
CHAPTER 2
Before the garage door closes on Mom’s Land Rover, I’m on my way to my room to do what I always do when I get home: lock my door, take off my shirt and bra, and lie flat on my back on my bed. I’ve got this old blanket, the kind with satiny trim that’s always slippery and cool even when the rest of the blanket is warm. I position myself so that the trim goes just along the indent where the back of my bra was and roll back and forth against it a few times. It’s like putting a cold cloth on a hot forehead. I spread out and feel everything I’ve held tight let go, my spine unfurling into the shape it’s supposed to be. Five or six minutes, that’s all. Five or six minutes to give my shoulders a break, to give my neck a break, to give myself a break. To breathe.
Usually, I can almost turn off the outside. I don’t hear my dad streaming Wilco in the kitchen or my mom asking him for the thousandth time if that’s who they saw at Grant Park that time. I don’t think about what’s due in AP History, or if Tyler is the reason my toothbrush was already wet this morning, or about Maggie calling the vegan club hypocrites because their cats kill birds. I try to not think about anything at all, but just feel like this.
But today, lying here half naked feels different. Because I’m still thinking about Jackson. I feel . . . open. Exposed. Poised. Not like I’ve unwound; like I’m even more wound up. In a good way. Like maybe I’d rather be in my body than out of it for once.
My breasts slide out to each side, and I can see between them down to my belly button and to the top of my jeans, and all the way down to my feet. There is a whole body here that is not boobs. I forget that sometimes. I arch my back. I lift my legs and flop them down over the edges of my bed. I run a hand over my belly and it’s smooth and soft and cool. And then I imagine it’s someone else’s hand touching that same skin.
And I stop.
This is stupid. It’s stupid because I don’t even know him. And he doesn’t know me. He is nice because he’s new and if you are new and not nice, you’re going to have a very rough year. And even if he turned out to have some weird quirk or disease that means he likes awkward girls who don’t know how to dress, it’s stupid because you can only touch someone’s stomach for so long before you move your hand up and eureka! you’ve discovered the mountains. And not the lovely ski peaks they have in the Rockies. You’re lost in the Himalayas, which are inhospitable to life and give you altitude sickness. Which are lumpy and painful and sweaty. Okay, that’s not the Himalayas, that part is just me. But still, no one vacations at Everest. They scale it, snap a photo, and try to get the hell out alive with a good story to post.
I roll off the bed and dig my clean bra out of the drawer. The other one’s too sweaty. I pull on a supersize tee and the rest of me disappears under it, too.
You know who gets to touch my stomach all they want? My breasts. They can hardly help themselves.
CHAPTER 3
Maggie is outraged. As usual.
We were supposed to turn in one page on a poem about dying and not wanting to. It’s more complicated than that, but it’s basically summed up in the famous lines about raging against the dying of the light.
Maggie turned in five pages about how terminally ill people should have the right to doctor-assisted suicide.
“Maggie, this is AP Lit. The assignment was to analyze the poem, not argue with it.”
“How am I supposed to analyze it when I disagree with it?”
“How do you disagree with a poem?!”
The rest of the class has already left, so it’s just Maggie, Ms. Mulder, and me. I spend half of my time with Maggie listening to her argue with a teacher. Or a student. Or a parent. Or an eight-year-old trick-or-treater who says Hermione isn’t as cool as Harry and Ron because she doesn’t play Quidditch.
This is why I didn’t tell her about meeting Jackson this weekend, even though now he’s here somewhere in the building—because she is too busy arguing with people. Or maybe it’s because she will want me to ask him out, and I will say, “No, I prefer to bury my feelings deep inside this giant sweatshirt so I won’t be embarrassed when he rejects me for a regular-shaped girl,” and then it will be me that Maggie is arguing with. As a general rule, I avoid arguing with Maggie.