One Lonely Degree (2 page)

“After school?” she adds. “I won’t say anything about him. I promise. I won’t even go in if you don’t want me to.”

“It’s not that,” I say sharply. The guy in front of me turns and stares at me like I’ve run my fingernails down the blackboard. I
give him a wild voodoo stare and turn back towards Audrey. “I’m not sure about him anymore, and you know nothing’s ever gonna happen there anyway. What’s the point?” I fold my arms in front of my stomach and slide down in my chair, watching her face. “I mean, we can go to the mall after school if you want, but I don’t want it to be about Ryan, okay? If we go to the mall, let’s just go to the mall.”

Audrey frowns like I’ve nipped her hand, but she recovers fast. “It’s okay. We don’t have to go to the mall. I just thought you might want to do something—take your mind off stuff.”

I feel like a rotten stump, the remains of a tree that fell in the forest while one person was watching. “I know,” I tell her. “We should go, you’re right.” Audrey is my witness for everything, my best friend in the universe for the past four years, the only person under thirty that I trust implicitly—the absolute least I can do is try.

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is painted Pepcid pink. It’s supposed to be feminine and pretty, I guess—disguise the gross things happening inside the cubicles and in our
Girls Gone Wild
minds. In my particular cubicle, for instance, I hover over the toilet seat emptying my bladder and reading the following red-pen message: “Drew S. popped my cherry last night.”

A concerned silver marker asks: “Did it hurt?”

The reply is in different handwriting yet again: “Not as much as when he …”

I grimace as I read the rest. I don’t know why I bother looking at that stuff—except that it’s there and I’m already late for art class. It took me six minutes to remember my locker combination, which is one of the things that happens when I don’t get enough sleep. I should’ve written the combo down earlier this morning, but I forgot. The result is me in the washroom, reading
scrawls on the wall and wondering if any of them are true. I could take out my own pen and ask, but I’d never be able to verify the answers.

I wash my hands, wipe them on my kilt, and head slowly for the art room. Inside, Mr. Ferguson is playing one of his environmental tapes. This one is of the ocean and I’m instantly grateful that I’ve already peed. Mr. Ferguson nods at me as I walk into the room but says nothing. I’ve caught him in a good mood, apparently, and I nod back and make a beeline for my usual seat.

Jasper eyes me guiltily from across the table, and then I spot him—another guy sitting in my chair. Jasper is no help. He’d be a social climber if he wasn’t a gay guy trapped in a Catholic high school. He’s not a true social outcast; he doesn’t understand that saving a seat is crucial.

I look over the guy that’s filled my space—disheveled light brown hair, a fine scar that must be nearly half an inch long on his cheek, his thin build clothed in the same navy sweater and gray pants that every other guy in St. Mark’s is wearing. He must be new; I’ve never laid eyes on him before. I don’t particularly want to make his acquaintance now, but I don’t want to find another place to sit either. If I have to shimmy in next to Abel and listen to him plug his Catholic Youth Group, I’ll end up stabbing somebody with my pencil.

I walk over to my chair and put my pencil case and books down on the table, right next to the new guy’s virgin sheet of bristol board. He glances over his shoulder at me, and it occurs to me that he has no idea who I am yet. I could be winner of the Freshman Science Award or a religious zealot like Abel. I could be the girl who lost her virginity to Drew S.

“You’re sitting in my seat,” I say. “This is my spot.” My finger is
pointed down at his bristol board. It’s overkill and I’m verging on rude, but I’m extremely tired and slightly panicked. If he refuses to move, I won’t be able to do a thing about it.

“I didn’t think you were coming,” Jasper says, regaining the power of speech. “You’re late.”

“I know.” Everyone is watching our mini-drama and I’m stupid to care.

The new guy’s staring at me with an expression I don’t recognize. If we could be strangers forever, I’d never know what that look means, and I wish it could stay that way. Why does everyone in St. Mark’s feel so depressingly similar in the end?

“I didn’t know,” the guy says, shrugging. “You’re welcome to it.” He pinches his bristol board between two fingers and gets to his feet.

“Sorry,” I tell him. “I’m a creature of habit.” A creature of what? Those aren’t my words. Maybe I feel bad now that he’s given in. I could be dooming a decent person to the cult of Abel.

Jasper strokes his nose as I sit down across from him. With his wispy blond eyelashes and the glow-in-the-dark veins on his wrists, he could be the only person in the school whiter than me. That complexion helped earn him the nickname Casper. Most people are too polite to say it to his face, but everyone knows.

“So what happened?” he asks. “Where have you been?”

“Forgot my locker combo,” I say irritably. “Thanks so much for saving my seat.”

Jasper rolls his eyes like I’m being a bitch. “It was a misunderstanding, Finn. I thought you weren’t here, okay? Calm down.”

“Whatever.” I retrieve my rough sketches from Mr. Ferguson’s cabinet and examine the clean sheet of bristol board in front of me. I’m not ready to put a mark on it, and there’s no time anyway; Jasper spends the entire period talking to me, trying to make
up for giving my seat away. I don’t take long to forgive him. It’s easier on both of us, and besides, I’m distracted by the sight of the new guy glancing periodically over at me from his new seat beside Abel.

“So what’s the new guy’s name anyway?” I ask Jasper.

“I don’t know. He just sat down before you came in.” Hmm. Jasper, for the second time today, is no help whatsoever. I flick my gaze back to Abel’s kingdom as Jasper drops his voice. “Stop checking him out.”

“I’m not,” I say, although I suppose I am. For now he’s an unknown quantity. “He keeps looking at me. It’s creepy.”

Creepy isn’t the right word. Mysterious, maybe. It doesn’t even matter. I pick up my pen and print my locker combination on the inside of my palm, in case my memory shuts down again. The sound of ocean waves breaking against our landlocked classroom makes me want to draw the sea. A river at least. I’m not a future Dalí or van Gogh, but I’m pretty good at putting things together. I figure I could be a graphic designer if I keep it up. London or New York would be the place for that. I don’t even care if I’m a poverty-stricken graphic designer, so long as I’m in London or New York.

At the moment, Mr. Ferguson’s got us working on a pretend fund-raising campaign for an environmental agency. I was planning something simple. A smiling little girl, sitting cross-legged and holding up a pristine glass of water. But the ocean is very persuasive. It has me envisioning a tranquil forest, a fox lapping up river water at the edge of the scene.

Jasper is way ahead of me, another reason he’s talking so much. I don’t really mind, only I wish he wouldn’t watch so many movies. Half of them sound boring and I don’t want to know what happens in the other half, in case I ever see them myself.

“Don’t worry. I won’t give anything away,” he promises. “I’ll just tell you the premise.”

But there’s not enough time for that either. The bell sounds, signaling the beginning of lunch, and Jasper and I pack up our stuff and shuffle through the door, single file. Jasper’s waiting for me on the other side of the hall, ready to continue from where he left off, but I never get to him. Somebody touches my elbow and I swing around in the middle of the hall, people buzzing by me on both sides.

“So what’s your name?” the new guy asks. He’s in no hurry to get the words out, and I’m immediately suspicious. Why does he want to know my name?

“Finn Kavanagh,” I tell him. He breaks into a toothy grin that makes my stomach churn. Did somebody put him up to this? I glance over at Jasper, who is taking it all in like a silent movie, and telepathically command him to stay where he is. “What’s yours?”

“Jersy,” he says happily, smiling wider than ever. “Jersy Mikulski.”

Jersy
. A familiar feeling ripples through me. Like eating ice cream on your front porch in summer. I say his name over and over again in my head, waiting for a lightbulb to switch on. He’s waiting too, and we stand there facing each other, feeling the moment stretch back into the past.

“Yeah,” I say slowly, memories jogging back to me in frustratingly small pieces. “Okay.” I bob my head and shift my books to my other arm. It’s a weird feeling, remembering something you didn’t know you’d forgotten in the first place. My brain doesn’t know where to put the fragments at first. “Your mom was at Eastman’s, right?” My mother still works in their marketing department. Our moms were pretty good friends back in the day. “You guys moved to—”

“Kingston,” he says. “Yeah. It’s weird. When I saw you in there, it didn’t really click, but there was something …” He motions vaguely towards my body. “You look different. You’re so tall.” He doesn’t say that like it’s a good or bad thing, just a fact.

“Well, six-year-olds are usually shorter,” I joke, beginning to relax. “Hair’s the same, though.” I grab a chunk with my free hand and he laughs. “So what’re you doing back?”

He shrugs, his smile beginning to disappear. “What’s this place like anyway?” He’s two inches shorter than me and his blue-green eyes have to look up at mine. It makes me want to slouch, and because of that I stand even straighter.

“It’s okay,” I tell him. The kind of information he wants is no good coming from a stranger. The answer’s completely dependent on who’s asking and who’s answering. “But then I have nothing to compare it to, you know?”

Jersy nods like that’s just the answer he was expecting. The boy I remember wasn’t afraid of anything. He got a concussion somersaulting into the pool at a company barbecue. The next time I saw him, both his arms were bandaged. He’d scraped them something fierce trying out a stunt on his bike, and his mother shouted at him, without raising her voice, when he unwrapped one to show me.

“It all looks the same from here,” he says, staring up the hall. I follow his eyes. Kids. Lockers. A sea of uniforms in motion. My eyes zoom back to the spot where Jasper was waiting. He’s deserted me, but this time I can’t blame him. Lunch never lasts long enough. I concentrate on my kilt, ignoring my own silence. “So I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” Jersy continues. “Don’t worry, I won’t sit in your chair.” He blinks at me like he knows he’s cute. All the cute guys at St. Mark’s know they’re cute, but there’s not one genuine Beautiful Boy in the entire population.

“Ha. Ha,” I say sarcastically. God, I’m an absolute genius. I turn my back on him and point my genius self in the direction of the cafeteria.

“Finn,” he shouts after me.

My head whips around to find him. “Jersy,” I shout back. My palms are sweaty and I can’t explain why.

“Where the fuck’s the cafeteria in this place?”

Jersy doesn’t sit with us at lunch. He disappears into the crowd the second we step into the cafeteria. I buy chicken nuggets and fries and plop down next to Audrey. Everyone else is already seated: Jasper, Maggie (who isn’t quite smart enough to be a brainiac but too quiet to be anyone else), Teresa (Audrey’s friend from drama class), and her boyfriend, Edwardo. It’s not a pack the way other people have them. We don’t do group activities together outside of school. We don’t exclude people.

“So what’d the new guy have to say?” Jasper asks, plunging his fork into a plate of macaroni and cheese. “Did he tell you his name?”

Audrey, Maggie, and Teresa stare optimistically over at me. “New guy?” Audrey repeats.

We’re all so starved for variety that I’d laugh if it wasn’t so sad. “Our moms worked together years ago,” I say dismissively. “His family just moved back.” I don’t want any of them getting too excited, because I know exactly how this will go. He won’t be the new guy for long. He’ll be just like everyone else, and then we won’t even mention him.

But Maggie’s already fired up. “And he remembered you,” she says. “That’s sweet.” Maggie’s big on “sweet.” She uses that word
a lot—mostly in relation to romances she reads about in
Us
magazine.

I shrug and shake my head a little.
Whatever, Mags
. That girl needs to get a life. I pop a chicken nugget into my mouth, suddenly feeling too bitchy for words. It’s better not to expect too much to begin with. I shouldn’t let myself forget that.

Audrey bumps her shoulder against mine, sensing my slip into bad-mood territory. I don’t know what I’d do without her. Would I have to start reading
Us
magazine and haunting Blockbuster Video so that I could communicate meaningfully with Maggie and Jasper? “Are we still hitting the mall later?” she asks.

“For sure,” I say gratefully.

Jasper’s macaroni makes a squelching noise as he stabs it. Audrey and I giggle with our mouths closed. Jasper smiles too. “It lives,” he jokes.