A Sense of the Infinite (5 page)

I TOLD NOE ABOUT THE NUTRITIONIST,
feeling only slightly guilty as I exaggerated the details of his audiobook.

“
Suck my blade, you horny wench
?” screeched Noe. She shuddered theatrically. “Christ, what a perv. Trust good old E. O. James to hire the creepiest-possible fake nutritionist.”

“I’m keeping a food journal,” I said.

“What?”

“You know. So we can make a plan, set some goals, and figure out how to proceed.”

“But you’re not—”

“I know. He’s bribing me with pizza coupons until he finds
a real anorexic to work on.”

Noe smacked herself in the forehead. “Oh, Bethy,” she said. “This cannot end well.”

“It can end in free pizza,” I said.

THAT AFTERNOON WAS THE FIRST GYMNASTICS
practice of the year. I felt a little silly being the only new senior on the team, but with Noe to smooth things over it wasn’t too bad. During warm-up stretches, we sat in a circle with the other senior girls, and soon she had them all laughing with my story about Bob the Nutritionist’s dirty fantasy novel. By the time Ms. Bomtrauer had us break into levels to start training on the beam, bars, vault, and floor, I felt like I was in. Even though I was lumped into Level One with an assortment of earnest freshmen, it wasn’t so bad. My allegiance was clearly to Noe and Kaylee and Rhiannon and the other seniors on the opposite side of the gym.

Walking home with Noe after practice, I was tired and elated.

The air still felt like summer: humid and warm. The gutters were littered with popsicle sticks stained pink and orange, and crushed Slurpee cups from the Avondale store.

“Want to know something crazy?” Noe said. “Steven’s mom told me he attempted suicide last winter.”

“What? Why?”

“He was already depressed and his stupid friend got him really drunk, which is the worst thing for depressed people. He’s just lucky someone stopped when they saw him on the bridge.”

“Whoa,” I said. I’d never met anyone who had tried to kill himself before.

“His mom says I pretty much saved his life,” Noe said. “She hasn’t seen him so happy in years.”

I thought of the note Noe had shown me after English, the one Steven had tucked into her copy of
Modern Western Poetry
. He’d copied out a Shakespeare quote in exquisite calligraphy:
Hear my soul speak/The very instant that I saw you did/My heart fly to your service.

That was it, I’d thought to myself. That was it exactly.

“He does seem happy,” I agreed.

We came to the intersection where we normally said good-bye. “Want to come over?” Noe said.

“Only if we can take the shortcut.”

“Bethy, I’m wearing ballet slippers.”

“So go barefoot.”

“
You
go barefoot, Rambo.”

I dragged her off the sidewalk and onto the tiny trail that led into the maples, and soon Noe was singing. The leaves were still green, still soft and whispering, like summer dresses the trees had yet to exchange for sturdier clothes. A broken bottle sparkled in the dirt.

In my head, I was doing spins on the uneven bars. I was on a plane to Paris. I was dropping a goldfish into a bowl, and I’d never been happier in my life.

SEPTEMBER IN OUR TOWN IS THE
fastest month, and also the most beautiful. The blue of the sky is made sharper by the yellowing leaves, the air turns clear and pure, and the roadside fruit stands that hawk peaches and plums all summer set out baskets of apples and pears instead. Tourists still come by the busload to stand by our waterfall in disposable raincoats and buy fudge from the little gift shops that clog the main road, to ride the SkyTram back and forth across the river and pay too much for a horse-drawn carriage to clop them up and down the historical district’s flower-lined streets. At school, the bulletin boards are plastered with sign-up sheets for sports and clubs and volunteer groups, and everyone seems to rush around in a
great hurry before the lethargy of winter sets in.

It sucked not having most of my classes with Noe, like we’d had every other year. Normally, we did all our group projects together, but now when I met her by our lockers, she’d be bickering over animal rights with Steven or chatting about a physics assignment with Kaylee and Rhiannon or helping some lumbering Senior Leader conjugate the verb
comer
, and I wouldn’t know what they were talking about. Noe had always been friendly with a wide range of people, but they’d stayed on the periphery. Now that I wasn’t there to be Noe’s project partner, the peripheral people were stepping in to fill the vacuum: to make inside jokes in Spanish class, to get mutually indignant over an unfair biology test, to make plans to go to the Java Bean after school.

“Lindsay’s thinking we should make reservations at Luigi’s,” she’d say, and after some questioning it would emerge that she and Lindsay Harris had spent Biology making plans for the homecoming dance.

I did my best to keep up with the changes. I said hey to all the people Noe said hey to. In practice, I stayed with Noe’s group as long as I could before being banished to the Level Ones.

I learned to point my toes when I cartwheeled and sweep my arms up when I landed. I waited in line with the other Level Ones to take my turn running at the vault or swinging on the
bars. Mostly Noe was too busy working on her own routines to talk much during that part of practice, but she would surprise me at random moments, popping by the mat where Ms. Bomtrauer had left Greta and Emily and Sawyer and me to work on our floor moves to wrap me in a hug or offer a tip or make fun of my less-than-fruitful attempts at grace. At one point, Noe lay on her back and laughed until she cried. I stood over her with my arms folded.

“What?” I demanded. “WHAT?”

“Annabeth,” she said. “It’s a gym, not a maximum-security prison. You don’t have to look so
stern
.”

She peeled herself up off the mat and did an impression of me: jaw set, eyebrows knit, planting her hands with a
thwack
and landing with a
clomp
.

“That is
not
how I look,” I said.

“Oh, Annabeth,” she said. “We’ll make a gymnast of you yet.”

She straightened my shoulders and turned my hips, showed me how to lift my arms high above my head and rock back slightly before throwing my body forward one limb at a time.

“Noe,” a semi-irritable Ms. Bomtrauer called from across the gym. “Your exalted presence is required in Level Nine Land. Annabeth, that’s enough cartwheels, I need you to work on your bridge.”

“Coming,” Noe sang, scampering back to the vault. I
blushed, sheepish at getting in trouble and privately enjoying the shared reprimand.

As the palms of my hands met the coolness of the mat, I thought how lovely it was to feel yourself molded into something better, to feel the motions of your real limbs and muscles inch closer to the perfect version in your imagination. Maybe that was why Noe loved it so much, why she treated the other gymnastics girls like fellow members of a secret society, hugging them and trading obscure lingo in the hall. After practice, I always stayed back with her to stack the heavy mats into a pile and push the equipment to the walls, or we’d go to the Java Bean with Kaylee and Rhiannon and Lindsay, squeezing into a booth by the window and drinking iced cappuccinos until it got dark.

One day at the end of practice, I went to grab Noe’s hoodie where she’d forgotten it by the vault and saw a bright red heart sewn inside it, the stitches hidden behind the kangaroo pocket. I stood by the vault with the hoodie in my hands, momentarily stunned. Noe hadn’t told me that Steven had sewn a heart into her hoodie, with stitches so tiny and close they looked like a string of kisses.

As I walked across the gym with the hoodie tucked under my arm, my heart thumped in a way I couldn’t explain. Somehow, I wished I hadn’t seen it. The discovery made me feel strange and guilty, like the time I’d found the antidepressants
behind Mom’s bathroom mirror. Great love, great pain: both made me uncomfortable, tugging as they did at the corresponding places in myself. I wondered at the startling red of the heart stitched so tightly into the well-worn fabric, at the intimacy and certainty it suggested.

“You forgot this,” I said, and tossed it to her.

“Thanks, doll,” she said.

THE WEEKEND OF THE SENIOR CAMPING
trip, we had a gymnastics meet at Gailer College, the sprawling university forty-five minutes from our town. I didn’t have a floor routine or bars routine yet, so all I had to do was jump over the vault a couple of times and do a few simple moves on the beam. Noe had forgotten the camera, so we couldn’t take pictures like we’d planned. I got restless waiting around the noisy gym for the rest of the day, and tried to go for a walk outside, but the campus was basically a giant parking lot, and when I walked toward a stand of trees I ran into the freeway. I sat on a strip of grass and browsed through the beat-up copy of
How to Survive in the Woods
I always kept in my backpack, until a maintenance
person rode up with a weed whacker and the noise forced me back inside.

After the meet, Noe and a bunch of girls from the team wanted to go to the mall to shop for dresses and shoes for the homecoming dance. The mall was right across the freeway from the college, so it wasn’t very hard.

“Let’s give Annabeth boobs,” Noe said, and everyone crowded into Victoria’s Secret to hunt for horrifying push-up bras. It was fun to be the center of attention; exhausting, too. When we left the lingerie store, I was drained. As our group drifted to the next shop, I glanced forlornly at the puffy white clouds and sunshine showing through the mall’s skylights. It would have been a great day for the forest.

“You look pooped,” Mom said when Noe dropped me off at home. “How’d you do?”

“The things I put myself through for Noe,” I groaned, and flopped onto the couch.

I meant it to be funny, but Mom didn’t laugh.

“She’s sure lucky,” she said, and waggled my socked foot back and forth before disappearing upstairs.

HOMECOMING WAS A WEEK LATE THIS
year, so it landed in early October. Normally, the homecoming dance is in the gym, but one of the Senior Leaders’ parents owned a hotel across the parkway from the Botanical Gardens, and they were letting the school have both homecoming and prom in the ballroom for free. It was a good thing, too, because on the day of the dance a pipe burst in the gym ceiling and swamped the floor with an inch of water, and some of the bouncy mats got ruined and the vault was soaked through.

In sophomore year, Noe and I got ready for the dance at my house and took a million silly photos before Mom drove us to the school. We stayed at the dance for only half an hour,
then walked to the Jamba Juice in our dresses and high heels, the fall air cool around our bare shoulders. We spent the rest of the evening drinking raspberry smoothies and gossiping about last year’s seniors, who were mostly going to Gailer College and mostly drunk out of their minds. That was the night we made our plans for Paris and the dandelion tattoos.

“If I’m still here in three years, crashing my old high school’s homecoming dance, please shoot me,” Noe had said.

“This time three years from now, we’ll have already gone to Paris,” I’d answered.

“Do you think you’ll still be a virgin?” Noe had said.

“I hope not. What about you?”

“I think so.”

“Even after Paris?” I teased.

Noe had nodded. “I want it to be with my forever man.”

“I would go for a hot French guy.”

“Really?” Noe said.

“The way I imagine it, I’d be sitting on the edge of some beautiful fountain in Paris, and this hot guy would sit next to me, and we’d feel a crackling soul connection, and we’d go drink wine at one of those outdoor cafés and talk for hours, and then we’d kiss in an alley and we’d be so overcome by passion we’d just do it.”

“Your dream is to lose your virginity in an alley with a stranger,” Noe said.

“It’s
romantic
,” I’d said, somewhat miffed at Noe’s overlooking the crackling soul connection part.

“
I
think you’re going to fall madly in love with someone and marry him,” Noe said.

I’d rolled my eyes. Noe always wanted me to have the things that made
her
happy; it was annoying sometimes, but mostly it was charming.

“Maybe it’s a Freudian thing,” Noe said. “You’ve never met your dad, so you fantasize about a stranger. My parents got married right after high school, so I fantasize about finding my true love.”

We’d psychoanalyzed each other all evening, spinning out each other’s every feature in the way that only best friends can. When the Jamba Juice closed, we teetered to Noe’s house on high heels and fell asleep in front of a movie, both of us bundled up on the couch under one blanket.

I wished that this year could be the same, but Noe had ambitions.

“It’s our senior year,” she said. “We should go all out.”

Before the dance, we went to this fancy Italian restaurant in a big group, Noe and Steven and me and some girls from gymnastics. It was frankly kind of exhausting. The restaurant was noisy and crowded, and people kept putting their hands to their ears and saying
“WHAT?”
every time I tried to say something. Steven and I joked around for a while, drawing portraits
of people on our napkins, but then Noe noticed what we were doing.

“It’s not a Chuck E. Cheese’s,” she said. “You don’t draw on the napkins.” She swiped the pen we were sharing and stuck it in her purse. I felt bad for bringing down the tone of her romantic evening, and I could tell Steven did, too. A few minutes later, they got up to make the rounds of other tables. He slipped his arm around her back and didn’t even try to tickle her, a boy on conspicuous good behavior.

I got squished in beside Kaylee and Rhiannon, and they kept asking me questions like “Why are you so quiet? Why don’t you ever talk?” and “Is it true your mom had you when she was in high school? What happened to your dad?”

I didn’t know what to say to them. Even Noe didn’t know the whole truth. It all made me so uncomfortable, I couldn’t finish my linguine. I pretended to send text messages on my phone until Noe slid onto the leather seat beside me and said, “How are things going at this end of the table? Everyone having fun?”

Things got better at the dance. The ballroom was decorated with streamers and flowers in the E. O. James colors, and the Senior Leaders were handing out Gerbera daisies at the door. Everyone danced in a big group and I didn’t have to talk, but in the second hour, they started playing slow songs. Noe and Steven put their arms around each other and got all serious
and whispery. It felt weird to lurk around them while they were dancing like that, so I took my purse from the place where I had stashed it and headed outside. I told myself I was going out for fresh air, but the truth was, I was still feeling kind of bad from the restaurant, and I wanted to be alone.

There were too many people going in and out of the big fancy doors at the front of the hotel, laughing and taking photos of themselves next to the potted plants, so I walked around to the parking lot side. I sat on a low concrete stoop next to a buzzing heater vent and took out
How to Survive in the Woods
from my purse.

I’d been sitting there for only a few minutes, feeling the pleasant dampness of the concrete through my dress, when Oliver Mazetti came around the corner, holding a plastic sports bottle in one hand. The back of my neck warmed. Oliver was a senior last year. That summer, he’d worked as a groundskeeper at the Botanical Gardens. We’d said hey a couple of times when I was working at the ice-cream shop, but I hadn’t thought about him at all since school started.

“Hey,” said Oliver. “Ice-cream girl.”

He’d been walking to his car, I guess, but he changed course and walked over to where I was sitting. Oliver didn’t even go to E. O. James anymore, but it was kind of a tradition for last year’s seniors to crash homecoming. I’d seen a few others inside the dance.

“What are you doing back here?” he said.

“Just taking a break.”

Oliver’s arms were tanned from working outside all summer, and he had a long, pink scar on the back of one hand from an accident with a pair of hedge clippers. I knew because I’d been working that day and Oliver’s manager had come in to borrow our first-aid kit.

Oliver settled himself beside me on the concrete wall. “Whatcha reading?” he said.

I showed him my book.

“You brought a wilderness survival manual to the homecoming dance?” said Oliver.

“Hey, man,” I said, “it’s a jungle in there.”

He laughed, and it felt like the temperature had shot up by a hundred degrees.

“Want some of this?” he said, holding out his sports bottle.

“What is it?”

“Jack Daniel’s and Gatorade.”

“Classy,” I said. “What are you, an alcoholic football coach?”

“You’re mean,” he said. He bumped my knee with his knee. “I bet you’re one of those girls who like the fruity drinks with the little umbrellas.”

“Nah,” I said. “Hand it over.”

My hand was shaking as I took the sports bottle and
squirted the drink into my mouth. What was I doing? Whatever it was, I liked it. Already I could see myself on Noe’s bed, telling her everything.
Hey, man, it’s a jungle in there
.

“You still working at the Gardens?” I said.

“Three more weeks,” said Oliver.

“Then what?”

“Then I’m going to Alaska.”

“No shit.”

Oliver took a squirt of Gatorade and handed the bottle back to me. “Yeah, a buddy of mine has an uncle up there, he’s going to get us on with a crew fishing king crab. Most dangerous job in the world.”

“Wow,” I said.

“They made this whole TV show about it. Fuckin’ sick. It pays like a thousand bucks a week.”

“I want to go to Alaska someday.”

“That’s why you’re reading that book, huh. Maybe you can give me some advice. What do I do if a polar bear attacks me?”

“I don’t know,” I giggled.

“Come on, you’re the girl with the book.”

“Throw it some king crab.”

“I’m not giving my crab to the fucking polar bear, that shit’s worth a hundred dollars a pound.”

We kept talking like that until the bottle was empty—about Alaska, whose job at the Botanical Gardens sucked
worse, impressions of Mr. Beek, the principal, who was the person responsible for getting Oliver expelled last year.

“So are you going back in there or what?” said Oliver.

“I don’t know,” I said, my cheeks pinkening with the admission that I was open to more exciting possibilities.

“Want to go for a walk?”

“All right.”

We slipped off the ledge and started across the grass toward the Gardens. My high-heeled shoes felt tippy and strange on the knobby grass, like walking on the moon.

“Easy there,” said Oliver, and slipped an arm around my back.

We crossed the parkway and walked right past the ice-cream shop and into the Gardens. I paused and wrestled my shoes off, clutching Oliver’s arm to keep from falling over. I put them on top of a garbage can, which my slightly tipsy brain assured me was a responsible choice of location, where I would be sure not to forget them.

“Want to see something cool?” said Oliver.

I murmured yes. He took my hand and we walked through the damp grass, threading our way between beds of coneflowers and banks of roses. It was strange to think that a month ago, I was here as an employee, sweating in my uniform shirt and scooping cone after cone. So much had already changed since then, and now here I was, on a walk with Oliver, moonlight on my bare
arms and neck, having the kind of night you remember forever.

We walked down a path to a backstage part of the garden, with storage sheds and a fleet of golf carts parked under a metal hangar. I’d never been there before, but as a groundskeeper Oliver knew it well.

“It’s right over here,” Oliver said.

He led me to a small greenhouse, more of a crystalline shed. He opened the door and we stepped inside. It was filled with orchids nodding on wiry green stems. The air was warm and damp and fragrant, like a shower when someone’s just turned the water off.

“Pretty cool, right?” said Oliver.

He put his hand on my hip and I made an acquiescing motion. Our mouths met and our tongues began to move against each other like Siamese fighting fish dropped into the same bowl. We did a dreamy stagger from the middle of the orchid house to the wall, and from there a slow collapse to an accommodating stretch of ground.

“Do you want to stop?” Oliver said.

Did I want to stop? No, I wanted to keep going.

“Still okay?” Oliver said. “Still okay?”

“Yes.”

Some maneuvering. More maneuvering. An embarrassed mumble from Oliver, an encouraging word from me, and then—

I gasped, and my foot kicked a flowerpot.

“Still okay?”

In response, I kissed him.

The orchids peered down like little faces.

Fallen flowerpots spilled soil on the ground.

Moonlight slanted through a broken section of greenhouse glass.

Oliver tasted just like the waterfall.