The Other Girl: A Midvale Academy Novel (4 page)

“You’re going to look back at all this and think…I don’t know…” Nicholas stroked his ribs.

“I do! I know what you’re going to think,” Cullen shouted. “You’re going to think, I missed out on a lot of snatch.”

They pulled into the Target parking lot. They attracted a lot of attention, three clean-cut handsome sixteen-year-olds getting out of a large BMW. Housewives in dingy sweats with bad dye jobs glared at them as they closed minivan doors around their sniffling offspring. Boys their age with mustaches and baseball hats tracked them out of the corner of their eyes as they trudged to their after-school jobs.
I really don’t ever want to get kicked out of Midvale. I got written up today. I get written up twice more and I think I am fucked. I don’t want to be the guy sucking down that last Marlboro Light before the four-to-eleven shift at Applebee’s.

They traipsed through the store. Passing the Intimates section, Gid caught sight of a pair of silky pink underwear, and when he let his finger brush them—Cullen and Nicholas were safely ahead—he shivered and asked himself,
Am I really this simpleminded?

They came out of Target with three bottles of superglue.

Gid drove home. The guys fell asleep, and he listened to Radiohead and thought about the way the fluorescent light in the store left a little twinkle of light on the sheen of the underwear’s silken fabric. A twinkle of promise.

Back at school, they parked the BMW on the street, on the road above the chapel.

Minutes later, inside the darkened chapel, they squeezed tiny drops of superglue onto the chair joints. This prank was very them. Clever and stupid all at once. They worked quickly, silently, and with solemn dedication, as if they were carrying out a mission for the French Resistance.

“Be careful not to get it on your skin,” Nicholas whispered. “It will give you lymphoma.”

“Lymphoma, huh? Another entry from the Book of Medical Facts by Nicholas,” Cullen said.

When he first got to Midvale, Gideon had been totally accepting and reverent of every piece of holistic health bullshit that came out of Nicholas’s mouth, and every lame-ass piece of Cullen’s chick advice. But now he saw them more clearly. They were funny, they were fun, they were his friends. But even if he was really as stupid as they tried to tell him he was, they were stupid too. “OK, guys,” Gid said. “This is good enough. Let’s go.”

“We gotta get all of them. We want Cockweed to be chiseling superglue off these for years,” Cullen said.

“Guys?” Gid whispered. “Keep your voices down. There are no leaves on the trees now. Sound travels.”

“Jesus,” Cullen said. “Listen to fucking Hiawatha here, tellum talk story. All right. Our work is done.”

Gid watched the confident, happy faces of his roommates as they made their way back to Proctor. He hated Cockweed just as much as they did, and his whole body buzzed with the pleasure of illicit fun. He pulled the Hat That Changes Everything down over his ears. Nicholas and Cullen, who’d grown up skiing the Rockies and the Alps, weren’t even wearing hats.
Don’t forget,
Gid told himself,
you’re lucky, but you’ll never be as lucky as these guys. Watch yourself.

Gideon would never have told me all that, not in so many words. I knew next time I saw him he’d be feeling a little vulnerable, and I would of course treat him with extra tenderness.

And the next time we had sex I’d be wearing silky pink underwear.

Back in his room, Gid lay on his bed. He sent me a text message.

Want me to come over?

I did want him to come over, but I had to study. And besides, since Pilar and Madison weren’t going to sneak into Proctor to party tonight. I texted back,
Wait for Buffalo
.

No girl has ever been sorry about making a guy wait for sex. Gid was sweet. He wasn’t totally like other guys. But he wasn’t totally unlike them either. Now that I had turned him down, he would be supernice until we did it.

OK, going to study now too, CU tomorrow. Ur so hot.

I wrote,
UR 2.

I went back to vectors. Edie was still reading. I wanted to say, “I’m glad we’re hanging out tonight,” but naked expressions of sentimentality didn’t go over well with Edie. So I just said, “Maybe later we can watch
Lost
or something. I need to catch up before the new season.”

She didn’t smile, but she did nod and say, “OK.”

An hour passed, and I was deep into a line of figures and symbols and other nerd stuff when suddenly I heard Cullen shout, “Suck it!”

“What the fuck?” Gid said. “God. You scared the crap out of me.”

“Madison and Pilar
are
coming over. And get this. Pilar said she wants to see you before she leaves.”

Cullen ran around the room doing war whoops.

I got a sick feeling as I waited to see what Gid thought about all this.

Wire. Fruit.
A brief image of Pilar getting out of a pool in a white bikini, coming toward him, slipping her hands under the straps. Me, in a sundress. Why did I get the sundress? Me again. Pilar was slipping away. But:
I guess it would be fun to hang out with Pilar.

“Dude, did you hear me? Pilar totally wants to, like, take your balls and put them so far down her throat.”

I texted Gid as fast as I have ever texted anyone in my life.

I was going to get a B on this test if I stopped now. I tried to access some part of myself where I cared, but I couldn’t find it fast enough before I wrote:

“I’m going over to Molly’s.” He thought,
I am relieved. I don’t want to deal with Pilar.

Did that mean, I don’t want to deal with Pilar because she is a pain, or I don’t want to deal with Pilar because…Oh, Jesus. I was driving myself nuts.

Gid was brushing his teeth. His roommates were telling him he was a pussy. It was business as usual. The white bikini was gone. He was thinking of me.

I knew I should just leave him to temptation. If he stayed and nothing happened between them, and all he did was think she had nice boobs and a nice ass and gorgeous hair and then she went her merry way and it was over…but since I could, why shouldn’t I just get him out of there? This is what I told myself every time I used my being inside Gid’s head in this way: why shouldn’t I?

“Edie,” I began. “Gideon…”

But she was already grabbing her blanket, pillow, book, and flashlight. “Good thing I charged this,” she said as she went out the door.

That made me feel bad.

More than ever I wanted to tell her I was in Gid’s head. That I just couldn’t help myself, not just because I was in love, but because I had the very special power to ensure, almost beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I would never lose him. Surely she would understand. Well, after I convinced her I wasn’t crazy she would understand.

I got up and went to the door. Edie was already halfway down the hall, so very small from this perspective, a corner of her blanket trailing behind her. I wanted to call after her. But Gid was on his way and, for better or worse, that was all I really cared about.

The moment the door was shut behind us, I began to kiss Gideon up and down his neck and run my hands over his chest. “You are so sexy,” I murmured into warm skin. “You are adorable and special and the best!”

“Whoa,” he said, slipping his hands under my shirt, “what did I do to deserve such—”

But I covered his mouth with my hand and unbuttoned his shirt.

“Wow,” he said, when I took off my pants. He gave me that same look of adoring wonder he’d given me when I’d taken off my bra in the chapel. “I love that underwear.”

It was always good, but this time it was even better than usual.

After, we lay there in my little bed, me packed against the wall and Gid on his side propped up on an elbow. We were cozy. We were happy. Pilar Benitez-Jones was probably sitting
on Gid’s bed right now, annoyed that he wasn’t there, unable to believe he could pass up the opportunity to flirt with her when he could be having sex with me. Or this is what I liked to think she was thinking.

I looked into Gid’s eyes. He was thinking about Buffalo, about walking through the train station holding hands, about standing in some hideous form of precipitation between rain and snow, waiting for my parents to come get us.

“I was really nervous telling you I loved you this morning,” he said.

“I know. I mean…I can imagine that,” I said.

“I…I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but…” He trailed off.

I pushed myself up on one elbow. “What?” I said.

“It’s not me…it’s Cullen and Nicholas. They like you. It really doesn’t have anything to do with you. It’s just…they put a lot of pressure on me to, like, be with other girls.”

I blinked a few times. “Do you want to be with other girls?”

“No!” he said emphatically. He hugged me and pinned me down. His face was right over mine. “It’s just that the guys bug me. I don’t even know why I am telling you. It’s not that I want to do what they say anymore. It’s just more like…how annoying it is.” He lay back down. “I mean, you must have people in your life telling you not to be so serious about anyone, you’re so young, etc.”

“I know what you mean,” I said. “But I mean, they don’t know how we feel about each other. They’re not us.”

I thought of Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan and my enormous pile of ATAT information and the scholarship.

“No, they’re not us,” Gideon said, turning his face toward me and shifting his body closer. His eyes were inches from
mine. “They aren’t even like us. I mean, I guess…maybe…some people just meet the person they’re supposed to meet when they’re young, right?”

Ever since the first moment I got inside Gideon’s head, I had been dying to hear him think this. I hadn’t even dreamed of hearing him say it.

“Maybe we’re each other’s true love,” Gid said, swallowing. His face was soft and vulnerable. “Maybe we feel this way because we’re just meant to be together forever.”

We were intertwined again, making out. I had never felt so close to him before. All the anxiety about my grades, about Pilar, about Edie and the question of whether our friendship would survive my relationship with Gid fell away, and there was nothing in the world except the two of us in this bed, kissing.

It was like this for a while. Then a thought of Gid’s intruded:
My leg is falling asleep.
I moved.
My arm is cramped.
I shifted to set it free.
I hope I can do this again,
he thought. I tried to help in this area as well. I think I was helping a lot. Gid’s mind whirred around images of various body parts. I recognized mine in there, and he thought,
This is working.

We kept kissing and everything seemed to be going just fine when, all of a sudden, I saw what had made his mind stop shuffling images and the image he’d rested on that had made him stop worrying that he was too tired to do it one more time. There was a body in his mind, but those weren’t my breasts, my legs. I saw hair—longer than mine, similar in shade but darker, bigger, long looping curls that snaked around the curves. The pieces came together, and suddenly I saw the whole thing. It was wearing a white bikini.

I don’t know how long it took me to claw my way out of
the tangle of his arms and legs, but when I did, I jumped up as if Gideon was fire. He fell on the floor, his limbs splayed out around him. “What?” he shouted, dazed, shocked, angry all at once. He grabbed at the blankets hanging off the edge of the bed.

“Molly,” Gid cowered behind a sheet corner. “What the hell’s going on?”

“I just felt really claustrophobic,” I said.

“Claustrophobic? Molly, it’s not like we haven’t done that before.”

I just looked at the floor, my face limp with sadness and defeat. I was miserable and I was going to be miserable for the rest of my life.

“What?” Gid said, and he came over and put his arms on my shoulders. I shook them off.

I gathered up my clothes—my cute T-shirt, my cute pajama pants, my silky pink underwear—and went to dress in the closet. I didn’t want him to see me naked. I had to get him out of here. I had about two minutes left before I would start to cry, and if I started crying, I might start talking. And I didn’t want Gid to know how I felt or what I knew.

“I know it sounds really sudden,” I said. “I just have been thinking lately…and sometimes I just don’t see this going anywhere.”

That was true. Sometimes, when I thought about the fact I was in his head, I thought about something like this happening, and it had just happened.

Being in and out of Gid’s mind, and watching him think about other girls was bad, but it was bearable. But I never, ever thought I would find myself in bed with a guy and know for a fact that he was thinking about someone else.

I could hear Gid getting dressed behind me.
Get dressed slow
, he was thinking,
make it look like you’re doing what she wants but try to stay until she calms down
. “What happened?” he kept saying. “What happened?”

He didn’t know. He had forgotten about thinking about Pilar.

I don’t know if that made it better or worse. I zipped up my pants with an air of finality.

“Molly,” Gid said again, “can’t we talk about this? Are you really telling me that this is over, just like that?”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s what I’m telling you.” My boyfriend had thought of Pilar Benitez-Jones in a white bikini while he was in bed with me. Even if he didn’t remember it, I would. And if it happened once, it would happen again. I wasn’t willing to take that chance. I remembered what Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan had said: “There’s nothing in this world more foolish than seeing a smart girl throw her life away for love.” I had thought she just didn’t get it. But maybe the one who didn’t get it was me.

Friday a taxi came to pick me up and take me to the train station alone.

The driver wore a beret and was blasting very cheery music with lots of drums and chanting. “Miss,” he said as he took my luggage from me, “are you all right?” He had a nice French accent.

“Oh yes,” I said. Since Gid and I broke up I had been functioning, going to classes, taking exams, but I didn’t talk much and I moved as if in pain, like an old person. “I’m just a little tired.”

“You are too young to be tired,” he said as he put my luggage in the trunk. He snapped it shut. After what seemed like forty or so minutes I had managed to ease my body into the backseat. We were about to leave when Edie came running down the Emerson steps holding the giant ATAT folder. “This
says
DO NOT FORGET TO TAKE HOME
,” she called out. “So I didn’t want you to forget to take it home.”

It was raining out. Edie was in slippers, holding a small blue umbrella. “Thanks,” I said.

Her eyes were wide with concern. “Molly,” she said, “are you OK?”

I had told her Wednesday morning that Gideon and I had broken up. We had spent the past two days in silence. I wanted to tell her what was going on, but it wouldn’t make any sense unless I told her everything.

Everything not being an option, I told the oldest lie in the world: “I’m fine.”

I added, “I don’t think anyone’s ever died of a broken heart.”

Edie closed her sweater against the wet cold. “Well, yes, certainly, but I was just wondering if…”

“Well, don’t wonder,” I snapped. “I mean, what the hell am I supposed to do? Can I sit in a cab and get out of it and then sit on a train and get out of that and walk across a station? Yes. I think I can manage.”

Edie backed away. I knew I was being a bitch, but whatever. I hate it when people ask you if you’re OK. It’s such a meaningless question. Obviously on some level you are, because there’s not an arrow through your head, and on some level you’re not, because you wish there were.

I shut the door and then remembered something. “Hang on,” I said to the cabbie.

We’d gone about twelve feet. He stopped and I rolled down the window and called out to Edie. She came shuffling over.

I handed her my phone out the window.

“Take a picture of me,” I said. I held up the ATAT folder. “Get this in, and the taxi.” She snapped the picture.

“I’m going to do you a big favor and not make you explain what that’s for,” she said, handing me back my phone.

“I appreciate that,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “I thought you might.” I watched her pick her way through the puddles as she walked away.

I e-mailed the photo to Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan, as promised. “I know this isn’t from the train station,” I wrote. “Extenuating circumstances.”

Those being that the person who was supposed to take that photo would not be around to take it.

We made the left out of the Midvale campus onto the road. I sat back and listened to the music and tried to absorb the absurd notion that somewhere, someone had once been happy enough to have written this song.

Meanwhile, Gid was packing his stuff to go to St. John. He willed every step, mechanically placed items in his Fairfax Pee-Wee Hockey duffle: two white T-shirts, two red, two black, bathing suit, jeans, shirt with buttons. There were no words in his head, just a dull ache of pain and loneliness. He sat down on his bed and put his head in his hands. How I wanted to call him. I looked at his number in my speed dial. But as soon as I placed my finger over his name, the image of Pilar in that white bathing suit came into my mind.

I knew that I could never look the way Pilar looked in a white bathing suit.

That was just a fact.

But what about everything else that I was? Did it really, for Gideon, not add up to Pilar in a white bathing suit?

I’d handed him my heart on a silver platter, and he’d accepted it with one hand while keeping the fingers on his other hand crossed behind his back. If he hadn’t loved me at all, I
could have forgiven him. But he did love me, just not enough not to think of a hot girl in a white bathing suit while we had sex, and that was…well, first of all, it was gross. And it left me with two choices. Hate myself, or hate him.

I erased his number. Since I would never forget it, it was just a symbolic gesture. But it was a step. One small step away.