Love All: A Novel (22 page)

“Julia,” said Mrs. Boulanger. “Find your seat, please,” but I stayed at my locker, my classmates’ voices echoing in my ears.

Kneeling in front of my backpack, I glanced at Carl. He wore a Myrtle Beach T-shirt and jeans with a blue ink stain on the pocket, and I could tell that he wasn’t really reading by the way his eyes kept darting to the clock on the wall. In the same way I tried not to know too much about my parents’ disagreements, I guess I’d avoided knowing this about Carl: he liked me, and the evidence was in the way he waited for me after class, looking for reasons to let his arm brush against mine, and in the way he called me at night with homework questions, the answers to which it was clear he already knew. It occurred to me that I was Carl’s Sam, and I pictured a paper chain of broken hearts, each of us hooked on to the one person whose arms were out of our reach.

Just then I caught Sam stealing a look at me, his blond head bobbing up, his eyes—green-blue like the shallows of the lake—sweeping my face and pausing, locking on my eyes. My sinuses started to ache and I pushed my fingers into my tear ducts until I saw white. The day stretched out before me in light-years as I thought of all the places I’d have to see him—gym, lunch, tennis. I felt for the folded-up note about Carl’s mom in my back pocket. In
The Sex Cure
, the characters were forever sabotaging their relationships because they loved each other too much, and I thought I could understand that. The only people who could really hurt us were the people we loved. I pictured someone unwrapping the note, discovering the nugget about Carl that couldn’t help but be true, and there was a kind of power in the truth—by breaking the social bonds of friendship, I could send Carl running back to me; when the whole school was feeling sorry for him, who else would he want around him but his best friend?

When the bell rang for first period, I muscle-memoried to math class, eyes on my feet, sensing Carl in the hallway up ahead.

Mr. Robin was already stationed at the chalkboard, pumping his arms and marching in place as though he were going to lift off.

“Quiz day,” he said, setting a kitchen timer for ten minutes. “Eyes on your own papers. Good luck.” With a flick of his wrist, the projector screen sailed up, revealing five quadratic equations all requiring Carl’s formula.

It felt like a month had passed since Monday night, when Carl had tried to get me to study with him. I could feel his finger poking my ribs, picture his mom’s translucent orange pill bottle in the cabinet—but the pulse of the memory was still.

“Julia,” Mr. Robin called, beckoning me to his desk. Arms out, palms up, he appeared genuinely baffled. “You’ve already wasted one-tenth of your time.”

“I forgot my notebook,” I said. “I don’t have any paper.”

Mr. Robin tapped his number-2 against his forehead, then pointed the eraser at me. “Who could help Miss Obermeyer with a sheet of paper?” he called.

No one responded—bungholes—then Carl opened his notebook and ripped out a piece without removing the fringies. Mr. Robin nodded in his direction.

Inside Carl’s halo of desks, he reached up from his chair and handed me the white sheet without looking at me. There was a word, maybe. An open sesame or an abracadabra; a Perkins tardmore or a super big H. I closed my eyes and tried to see it. Ten times a day, through spontaneous acts of our imaginations, we pioneered new slitters for our lexicon: Sam whippoorwilled a forehand into the net; I went Cecil, letting a drop shot bounce twice; Carl’s plan to get the goods was the key to salvation. Words burst out, broke in, and we played them, played with them, tasting them on our tongues. File, file out, you’re filed out, that was the all out, I’m going all out, I’m going professional, profesh, provides, profit, please, oh please, take an order please, tardmore, two by two, file in, file. Let me have Sam. Dunghi, mayhi, bihi, sky high. Let me have Sam. My lights, my stars, for my sake.

“Carl,” I said.

Carl glanced up, his jaw set, his gray eyes like stone, and I saw that this wasn’t the Carl I knew, and there was no word for this.

Back in my seat, I wrote my name at the top of the page and copied down the first problem, but I couldn’t concentrate. Suddenly I stood to lose both of my friends—Carl, when he found out I liked Sam; Sam, who had already taken Carl’s side. The note about Carl’s mom wouldn’t fix anything—I wanted my friends back.

If I could reschedule the exhibition match, or somehow give it to Carl, maybe I might buy back their collective affections. This time I’d do everything out in the open and there’d be no ditching, no silent treatments. I practiced explaining it to Claw:

It’s not that I don’t want to play—

No.

I’m into—

No.

I want to play—I
do
want to play, but I can’t on Thursday.

I exhaled and repeated it. The English language. Not so hard.

When Mr. Robin’s timer went off, I passed my blank paper forward and asked permission to go to the bathroom, then headed off to the main office.

The secretaries’ phones were reserved for emergencies, and it took a song and dance to convince Mrs. Bryant that I was having a tennis emergency.

“Honey,” she said, “are you even on the team?”

I told her I was, but she had an official roster and my name wasn’t on it.

“I’m co–team manager,” I lied. “It’s probably in the addenda.”

Mrs. Bryant blinked. “Shouldn’t you be in class right now?”

“Please, Mrs. Bryant. This is really important.”

She glanced around the office and saw that Mrs. Hoeke wasn’t listening, then bent low over the phone to dial. Her frosted hair fanned her face, hiding her mouth, and she spoke softly into the receiver before passing Claw to me.

I heard a saw buzzing in the background and then the sound of Claw’s voice, pitched up a note.

“This is Barry,” he said.

“Coach Klawson, it’s Julia Obermeyer.” For a second there was only the sound of the saw.

“Yes,” he said. “What is it?”

“It’s about the exhibition match tomorrow. I do want to play, but I can’t on Thursday.”

For a second I thought the line had been disconnected, then I heard him clearly, sharply. He seemed to have stepped into a private office and closed the door. “I went out of my way to arrange this for you,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “But Sam and Carl aren’t speaking to me. I can’t just go behind Carl’s back and take a match without telling him.”

“You didn’t seem to have a problem with that yesterday,” Claw pointed out.

“Right,” I agreed. “But I’ve changed my mind.”

“I see,” said Claw. “Well, I guess that runs in the family—changing your mind.”

My heart started to thump, sweat clamming my hands. He was talking about my father, I gathered, but just then it seemed incidental that I should be related to my parents—Sam and Carl were my family—and I didn’t care what my father had done.

I turned my back to Mrs. Bryant and cradled the receiver with both hands. “Look—” I began.

“No, you look,” said Claw. “I’m the coach. I run the team. If we’re being honest here, you’re not even on the team.”

I said nothing.

“If you want to play, you do it my way. If not, don’t bother coming back.”

“Okay,” I said, and okay that Poppy had backhanded me, and Teddy could buy a Jeep, okay. I pictured my brother halfway to Albany; Nonz was already gone. 59 Susquehanna, which had once felt enormous, had lately shrunk to the size of my parents’ marriage. Okay was wishful thinking. Okay was willing it to be true.

“I’ll think about it,” Claw conceded. Then, “See you at practice.”

I handed the phone to Mrs. Bryant. “All done?” she asked, but I was already backing away.

I went to the nurse’s office. Mrs. Henderson took one look at me and forked over the Kleenex. “Are you sick?” she asked. I shook my head. “Do you want to lie down?” I nodded and she pointed to the back of her office.

On a cot in the dark, I hugged the Kleenex to my chest and pictured 122 Chestnut Street, where I’d had a room down the hall from the one that’d been Mom’s when she was a little girl. Maybe Poppy missed Nonz, and maybe that was why he’d drummed my ear. He didn’t hate me; he just didn’t want to live with me. But he couldn’t go home, because home wasn’t a place, really; it was a set of people acting a certain way—alive, married, happy-ish—and when that was gone, you were sunk. I pictured Sam traveling between his parents’ houses with two sets of everything. Two of everything, and still it wasn’t enough.

*   *   *

Second period, for the first time in months, I made my way to the girls’ locker room for gym class, spinning my combo 17-27-37, the same as homeroom, the same as Sam and Carl’s—we’d shared everything back when we were friends.

“Is that Julia Obermeyer?” called Miss Horchow, following me to my locker bay near the showers. She stood with her legs apart, her arms crossed over her chest, her wraparound sunglasses perched on her head. “Glad your injuries have finally healed.”

Two girls from my French class—Carrie Bosworth and Trisha Pashner—exchanged looks and I felt something pass between them, unspoken and knowing, and I thought of all the billions of words and signs coursing through the air at that very moment, electric pulses, signals picked up, signals ignored.

“Girls,” said Miss Horchow, tapping her Timex.

“We’re going as fast as we can,” said Trisha.

I removed a pair of stiff gray sweatpants from my locker and pinched the plug of fabric jutting out where the hook had pressed through.

“Help yourself to the lost-and-found,” said Miss Horchow. “The janitors cleaned over spring break. The clothes are mostly clean.”

Carrie giggled and I turned in time to see her rounding the corner toward the field exit. Trisha followed, hopping on one foot, her left sneaker still in her hand. The smell of bubble gum—gym-class contraband—hung sweetly in the air.

I suited up in a long-sleeve T-shirt and a pair of cardinal mesh shorts with
ONEONTA
COLLEGE
ATHLETICS
printed on the leg. My socks were ossified at the bottom of my locker, so I went barefoot in my old Nikes, doubly sorry that I hadn’t thought to shave my legs the night before.

Pausing at the full-length mirror, I thought of Sam in the boys’ locker room on the other side of the painted cinder-block wall. Would he look for me on the bleachers? Would he be surprised not to see me? Did he even care? In the past, when Carl and I had fought, Sam had gone Switzerland; this time he’d taken Carl’s side.

He likes you, you know
.

In all the years we’d been friends, I had never taken Sam’s hand, never taken his warm cheek in my hand, never touched his wheat-colored stubble with my fingertips, more golden than the hair on his head. And Sam had never pressed his callused palm to my cheek or run his hands along the ripples of my ribs. I had wished for it a thousand times. Eyes open, eyes closed. Clothes on, clothes off. Not just Sam but all of Sam.

He likes you, you know
, he’d said, and now I saw Sam’s words as a coin in the air. Maybe in telling me Carl liked me, Sam had really been asking if I liked Carl.

At the field exit, I pushed open the metal door and a blast of cold air penetrated my thin T-shirt. It was just past nine in the morning, the sky overcast, the grass thick with dew. I crouched and hugged my knees, rubbing the goose bumps on my shins.

“Bring it in,” called Miss Horchow. She dropped a stack of Frisbees in the grass and started to hand out orange cones.

I saw my friends Katie and Em huddled with an orange cone at their feet. It’d been a couple of months since we’d last hung out, but I’d known them forever. In elementary school we played Cabbage Patch Kids and jumped Chinese jump rope and pierced our ears on the same day. In the fifth grade, we’d used Em’s older brother’s razor to nick our fingerprints, pressing our index fingers into the shape of a tepee, blood trailing our fingers to our wrists and staining our shirt cuffs red. It wasn’t only me who’d drifted away this year. Katie had been farming Luke Fletcher since September, and Em had gotten mayhi into a group of juniors who did theater stuff. Somehow we’d remained friends, though, which gave me some hope for Sam and Carl and me.

I crossed the field toward them, waving once. “Hey,” I said. “It’s freezing.”

Em twisted in place with her arms tucked inside her sweatshirt, her sleeves beating her like a drum.

“What are you doing out here?” said Em. “I thought you were too cool for gym.”

“She’s not too cool for gym,” said Katie. “She’s too cool for us.”

Katie smiled—
kidding!
—her button nose wrinkling at the bridge. When we were little, Nonz had called her peppy
,
by which she’d meant that Katie was small and blond and pretty. Sam and Carl called her Teen Spirit.

“I heard Sam hooked up with someone in Myrtle,” said Katie, frowning sympathetically.

I shrugged. “It was a dare.”

“It didn’t look like a dare,” said Em.

Had she seen it? I kind of wanted to ask her what it had looked like. The way I kept picturing it was broad daylight, Sam and Megan holding hands on the boardwalk and stopping every few steps to make out. Sam would’ve been wearing a T-shirt and his baseball cap—he burned easily—but this girl? Short-shorts, bikini top, SPF 4. In that outfit, it might not have mattered how Perkins she was.

“Okay, ladies,” said Miss Horchow. “Teams of three. You know the drill. Miss Vincent, Miss Chatham—Miss Obermeyer is on your team.”

“Go, team,” said Em, stooping to pick up our cone. She set it on her head and walked heel-toe, with her chin in the air, her pigtails bobbing.

“Are you and Sam going out?” asked Katie. She tossed me our Frisbee and I caught it in my stomach.

“No,” I said.

“Everyone thinks you are,” said Katie.

“What does everyone think Carl’s doing with us?”

“Carl’s so cute,” said Em, nodding the cone into her hands. “I think my sister should go for him.”

Em’s sister, Maggie, was in the eighth grade and had enormous boobs. I earmarked the idea.