Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn (17 page)

impulsive gid

Gid figures the dining hall is the best place to start. He makes his way there in what he hopes is a stealthy manner,
low to the ground, ducking behind a bush, hovering near a tree whenever possible. He takes a wide angle on a
seldom-traveled campus road behind Emerson, and cuts through a small patch of trees behind the dining hall to find
himself standing in front of a picture window, looking right in at their regular table, where Liam Wu sits, alone. He's trying to look as if he's staring into space, but Gid is almost sure he's looking at himself in the window.

Gid waves. He thinks, God, I'm not even scared of him. He waves some more, with two hands. Liam continues to stare. Gid waves faster. It is only when Gid is jumping up and down like a shipwreck victim seeking the attention of
an airplane that Liam leans forward, his brow furrowed, and mouths what appears to be the word
me?

Gid stops jumping and shakes his fists in the air. He mouths, "Yes, you, you moron!" Shit. He squats down
against the edge of the building, breathing hard. By the time he's gotten the courage to stand up again, he sees Liam storming down the hill toward him. To Gid's ever so slight pleasure, Liam looks annoyed.

"What's the big friggin' deal? Where the fuck is my ride, yo? And Where's the weed? It's half ours."

"Liam, please just do what I tell you, and don't ask me any questions. I want you to go inside. I want you to find
Molly McGarry and bring her to me. And if you can't find her, find out where she is."

"Are you joking?" Liam asks. "Why can't you go inside and do it yourself?"

"Liam," Gideon says. "We have a big problem. And you can go find out where Molly McGarry is or you will be
extremely sorry that you didn't."

"Molly McGarry?" Liam asks. "That sounds familiar. She's, like, brunette...has a little friend with sort of freaky
eyes?"

"Liam, I really don't have time for the whole let me try to place her on my exclusive radar routine."

This statement is a miraculous distillation of the exact way in which Liam is an asshole. Liam, despite not being

all that bright, knows this. His whole body deflates. Even his lips get small.

"I actually think Molly McGarry is kind of a stealth babe," Liam says.

Oh, okay, Gid thinks. He knows what Liam's trying to do. He's trying to turn the balance of power back in his
direction. He knows that Gid wants Molly. Liam doesn't know why but he knows that, and he's trying to make it clear
that what might be a real babe to Gideon is just a qualified babe to Liam. A stealth babe. What a dick. Well, fuck
Liam. Molly would never fall for him.

Not so fast, Gid. Look at all the annoying hot girls that you want. Girls may be less susceptible to sheer beauty
than you, but we're not immune to it. Besides, just because Liam Wu doesn't share his charming side with you
doesn't mean he doesn't have one.

Gid wisely doesn't respond to Liam. They face off in the dark, cold quiet of a New England night. Finally, Liam
says, "Dude, if you're going to make me go do something for you, you have to at least tell me why I'm doing it." He
crosses his arms.

"I really want to punch you in the face," Gid hisses.

That was immature. Suburban. Gay. As soon as the words are out of his mouth Gid is mortified. But Liam's
face grows instantly red and mottled. Gid knows that look. Liam is feeling shame. His ego is big, but it's fragile, and
the fact that Gid, the new guy, is suddenly no longer terrified of him has rocked Liam's world.

Liam stalks off without saying a word.

Gid watches as Liam moves through the cafeteria. He's back with appropriate speed. Good, Gid thinks. He
seems to understand. "Molly's in the library," Liam says. "What's this all about anyway, dude? Where are Cullen and
Nicholas?"

"Where in the library?" Gideon says, ignoring the rest. "Come on, where?"

"In the carrels. In the basement. Jesus. I had to talk to the little weird girl. She's probably going to think I'm into
her now. Great. Thanks."

Gid puts his hand on Liam's shoulder. He looks him straight in the eye and says, "Do you have any idea what a
totally ridiculous person you are?"

He's gone before Liam can process what's just happened.

Gid giggles to himself all the way to the library. He might be screwed, but at least he knows who he is right now.
What he's doing. The campus clock, a stately, Roman-numeraled thing above the chapel, reads twenty after seven.
Forty minutes to find Molly, and a good hiding place.

Gid enters the library through the basement to avoid detection. He steps carefully through fiction, A-D, E-H.
Finally, from behind the row of Henry James novels, he sees her nestled in a carrel with
Moby-Dick
and a red pen.
"Hey," Gid whispers. She turns. And Gid's heart
—like it's a tiny frog in his chest—inflates and jumps. The thing is, he

can't help but think of Pilar, that Pilar is, like, really, four hundred times prettier than Molly, four hundred times prettier,
really, than anything he's ever seen. He's even thought of her, embarrassingly, as lit from within by a thousand
candles. But Molly looks so knowing. Amused. The way her lips curve like that, it's not that it drives him crazy with
sexual desire, but it does make him feel curious.

He's staring at her for some time before she says, raising one eyebrow so that she makes herself even more
curiosity provoking, "May I help you?"

Gideon puts a finger over his lips. Beckons to her. She tiptoes over, the wry smile deepens. "My, my," she
says. "This is very James Bond. You have this mysterious injury..."
—she alludes to his eye—"and my pen doubles
as a sword, you know." She pokes him lightly in the ribs, her knuckles brush against a bare strip of skin between the
buttons of his shirt. Gid's aware of every stage of her fingers touching him, the light scratch of her nail, the warmth of her skin, the cooler metal of her ring. He finds himself, as if guided by a force greater than himself, taking her hand.

To his immense pleasure, and surprise, he sees that she's trying not to smile. He thinks this might be even
better than if she smiled outright. Yes, Gid...this is indeed correct. "You're worried about the pot," Molly says. "But
it's hidden. It's in my room. No one will ever look there."

"They have a dog," Gideon says. "And they are coming to look." He thinks he can put her hand down now. This
is serious.

"What?" Molly says. "Who is 'they'?"

"A dog," Gideon repeats. "This guy has a big yellow dog, and it can smell things, the constable..."

Molly scowls and waves a dismissive hand. "That whole constable thing, that's just some dumb prep school
myth. Like the ghost in the chapel."

Gideon tells her about the headmaster's kitchen. How, out of sheer boredom, he arranged a bouquet of roses,
ranunculus, and lavender that the headmaster's wife seemed to be rather impressed by. He tells her about the
phone call. "You can't redial a myth," he says importantly. "The constable is very real, and he's on his way."

Molly puts on her coat but leaves
Moby-Dick
and the red pen behind. "I'm coming back," she says. "This is my
little way of telling myself I'm not getting kicked out of school tonight."

Molly insists they walk right through the middle of campus. "Hiding in plain sight," she says. "Didn't you see
The
Fugitive?"
Gid still walks as fast as he can, with his head bent into his chest. "Oh, you don't look guilty at all," Molly
says.

"I could hold a newspaper over my face," Gid says. "Would you like that?"

"No," Molly says, "because then I wouldn't be able to see how handsome you are."

Sometimes girls make comments that are so transparently flirtatious that guys are supposed to think, "Wow,
that was way too flirtatious to actually be flirtatious." I think this was one of those.

"We do have to cut behind Morrison," Gid says. "Your hide-in-plain-sight plan was a good one, but there are
limits." He likes the way she lets him take her arm to guide her into a small patch of woods, and when he lifts her
over a tiny stream so she doesn't get her big black boots wet, she doesn't protest either.

When they arrive at Emerson, they agree that she will take the back entrance and he will wait outside, behind
the Dumpster, under the fire escape.

Waiting for her, Gid stares up at the stars and remembers he's in trouble. He reminds himself that he's
insignificant, that it won't matter at all in the grand scheme of things if he gets kicked out of prep school. I spend a lot of time trying to convince myself that nothing really matters except being alive. It never works for me, and I'm not
surprised when Gid gives up on it too and just starts praying.

"Jesus," he whispers, into the brick wall, which feels like a holy thing to do, "I know that it's not a big deal to the rest of the world, but please don't let me get kicked out of prep school." He adds, "Because someday I want to help
people and it will be easier to do that if I have gone to prep school. Whatever. Jesus. Or God, I guess. If you don't
want me to get kicked out of prep school, send me a sign." And at that moment, an airplane flies overhead. No
kidding. And then another one. Then Molly appears at the top of the back landing. "Check it out," Gid says. "I prayed
to God to send a sign that I wasn't going to get kicked out of school, and a plane flew overhead. And then another
one."

Molly puts her hands on her hips. "Look up." Gid looks up. Another plane flies overhead. "Behold, the celestial
event so incredible it happens every thirty-four seconds." Gid stares at her, uncomprehending. "It's called a flight
path," she says. "You're a moron."

Molly lowers the fire escape ladder and climbs down. She walks right up to Gid and, smiling her cryptic smile,
plants a kiss on his cheek. "Thanks," she says. "As much as I respect the city of Buffalo, I have to say I'm not too
keen on going back. Not like this."

"Thanks? It was my fault in the first place. I...just wanted to do what was right." Molly nods at this. But her
expression, which he would have expected to be reverent, is instead somewhere between guarded and amused.
"Do you always do the right thing?" she says.

Gid thinks of his Molly/Pilar plan. Which can hardly be classified as saintly. But is it wrong? "I mean, the right
thing in the sense that letting you hang out to dry for our problem, that would really, definitively have been the wrong
thing."

"What about other wrong things?" Molly asks. "When things get ambiguous?"

This question makes Gideon nervous.

Then it hits him: Molly just kissed him. Without him even trying.

He smiles at her. Inexplicably, he says, "Hi." But Molly smiles back. He thinks he might want to kiss her again.

They're kind of standing side by side, and he takes a step so he's halfway to facing her. It's a very natural step.
Another step would not seem so. He stares at her hipbone. Then he looks at her jawline. She is thin but strong and
sturdy. He likes her body. He can't think of a really good reason to move his foot again.

"Gid," Molly says, her voice low and intimate.

"Yeah?"

"You've got to take the pot and get out of here," she says. She hands him the bag. She holds it by its corner,
as if it were a dead fish.

The kissing moment is past, but he still wants to touch her, somehow. He grabs her wrist and looks at her
watch
—which, although he doesn't realize it, is perhaps as good a tactical gesture as kissing her back. Molly
blushes at his hand on her wrist. What do you want? She's from Buffalo.

"I'll go with you," Molly says. "I'll help you."

"No, no. Just give it to me. I don't need any help." Molly opens her mouth in protest, but he puts a hand up. "Go
back and read your book," he says. She smiles, and he sees that she knows he remembers that she left the book
for herself. He sees her anxiety melt away. He sees that she believes he can take care of this.

He sprints across the field, hiding in plain sight, thinking, Molly McGarry calling him a moron, playfully, and then
leaving her entire future in his hands...It's almost as fun as sleeping chastely in a bed with Pilar Benitez-Jones. By
the time he reaches the car, he's elated, high on adrenaline and possibility.

Did you know that if you stuff marijuana into a gas tank, the gas overpowers the smell of the marijuana? Gid
did. He saw it on the Discovery Channel, sometime last year when he was home from school with strep throat, on a special about bloodhounds. They aired it three times in one day, and Gid, too racked with fever to move, saw all of
them. At the time, he was bored out of his mind but now, holding the roll of duct tape he filched from Mrs. Frye's
potting shed and tucking the neatly rolled bag under the gas cap of the BMW, he can't believe his luck. Perfect. But
now it won't quite shut. The bag is too full, by just a little bit. He takes it out, pulls off a bud, and on second thought,
another. But what's he going to do with them? He can't throw them in the woods. As Nicholas said earlier, they're
prep school kids, they don't have any rights, and any pot found in the vicinity of this house is going to be blamed on
them.