Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn (10 page)

"Cullen and Nicholas," Pilar says when Madison's out of earshot. She shakes her head sympathetically. "That
must be fun, but also"
—she puts out one of her hands, turning it from side to side so her assortment of rings
sparkles under the lights—"maybe a little bit not so fun?"

Yes, yes. This is exactly what it is like. This girl, with her beautiful white clothes and her sparkling jewelry, she
deserves to know everything about him. He wants to tell her about his parents and the culs-de-sac and the kids
playing in their driveways and Merle Haggard. About how the Vaportech is wonderful and awful all at once, and how
when he runs, he dreams that a girl as absolutely perfect as she might one day think he's something other than
skinny fat.

"Do you need help?” he says. "I could bring this stuff up to your room."

"You can't go there," Pilar says.

"Oh, right," Gid says. Perhaps the best thing to do at this point is extract himself before saying anything that
would point to how he feels. "I guess I should get back to my dorm."

"But if you go back to your room," Pilar says, "you're not going to hear the secret I'm going to tell you."

So I'm not imagining things, Gid thinks. We connect.

He comes to this conclusion partly because he wants to and partly because he doesn't know that a pretty
young girl will tell a secret to a fucking handbag. It's just what they do. What we do.

Pilar leans in. Gideon focuses all his attention on the light pressure of her mouth on his ear as she whispers,
"Madison likes to record herself deflowering guys on her camera phone and then send the footage to her boyfriend.
She says he gets 'bored on tour."' Pilar says this last part in a not very good British accent, which nonetheless
conveys her lack of sympathy. She's visibly delighted to share this information, and her already formidable glow
intensifies. "Have you ever heard anything so crazy in your life?" Pilar gives the word
life
about fourteen syllables.
Moments from now, the radiance of her smile will not shine on me, Gid thinks, and I will die a little.

"Yes," Gid says. "I mean, I don't know." Then he backs away, tries to smile. Oh, Gid! Get out of there.

"Maybe?" Pilar suggests. She says this over her shoulder, where her T-shirt has moved a precious few inches
to the side, revealing a narrow pink ribbon of a bra strap.

Gid nods. "Maybe."

"Maybe I'll see you around," Pilar says.

"That would be great," Gideon says. He looks down at her pile of luggage. He can't help her take it upstairs,
since that's against the rules. But he bends down, picks up the heaviest duffel from the floor, and helps to arrange it
comfortably on her shoulder.

Then Gid, not one to resist the final gesture (this is why I adore him so), tucks her T-shirt under the strap so it
doesn't dig into her pretty skin.

"I'll bet you had a crush on Madison before I told you that," Pilar says.

Gid blushes.

"Try not to make any more drug deals," Pilar says and walks away.

may be not zero game

Gideon has been at Midvale for three weeks now. He has settled into a routine: running, class, lunch, more class,
dinner, sitting around, studying, and, most nights, sneaking out.

I've found a way to sleep through some of the sneaking out. There's only so much of Madison Sprague's wine
guzzling and Erica's Nicholas-loving and Mija's, well...general Euroness that I can stand.

Erica's Nicholas-loving is especially disturbing. There's nothing more depressing than watching a girl love a
guy who doesn't love her back.

The morning runs no longer shock Gideon. Sometimes he takes it upon himself to brew the daily batch of
green tea that he and Nicholas carry off to class. Nicholas says he uses exactly the right amount of tea. Ms. San
Video doesn't get less hot, but Gid knows he's going to see her every day except Thursday, so he regards her with
more restraint. He actually read
A Tale of Two Cities,
and Mrs. Yates has taught him the difference between a da
Vinci and a Caravaggio, a Rembrandt and a Vermeer.

Perhaps more important, Liam still scares him, but he no longer feels the impulse to sob when he sees him.

I've seen Gid look at me. I'm not saying where I fall on the worth-looking-at scale, but I will say that when Gid's
eyes fall on you, you can't help but feel kind of pretty. Even if you know, as I do, that Gid's head does little but run in a
loop, as regular as a train route.

It starts off with Pilar. He sees her from afar, sometimes she even comes close to him and says hello, and this sends him into near-spasms of happiness, which almost as quickly turn over into anxiety as he realizes that he has
not, since that glorious day in the girls' dorm, had an actual conversation with her, and that he must make that his
very first order of business. But he barely has time to settle on that plan before he remembers his anxiety growing
that he must step things up with Molly McGarry. He tried to talk to her yesterday. But she was with that Edie girl from
his English class.

At this point, frustration makes Gid's mind go blank, but only for a second. Because then, inexplicably, Danielle
pops up, not Danielle per se but a dark, stomach-churning feeling of guilt for not yet having called her, and the only
way he can stop berating himself is to again think pleasant thoughts about Pilar.

You might think it would be hard to be in love with a guy and watch him lust after other chicks. The thing is, I am
in for the long haul. I want Gid forever, and I can wait for forever to start. (Oh my God, who is channeling Mariah
Carey?) Besides, I already know Gid and I are going to end up together, because I know him better than he knows
himself. Remember what Mickey Eisenberg said about Ms. San Video? That he knows what he likes? Well, Gid
knows what he likes too. He just doesn't know that he knows.

On this particular night, Gideon has just smoked a little pot, and although Cullen assured him this particular
pot's effects would be soporific, he can tell that he is (we are) going to be awake for a long time. You have
permission, he tells himself, to think only of Pilar until you manage to fall asleep. But it's no good, because there's
Molly McGarry, or the anxiety of the bet, weighing dark and heavy on his chest. He realizes with some surprise that
he might want to win this bet more than he wants to sleep with Pilar. That means, he tells himself, stoned and fascinated, that I don't care as much about what I want as I care about what other people want for me. He beats
himself up about this for a few minutes, but then, remembering that it's not likely that either girl will ever sleep with him
anyway, he can't help but laugh.

He's amazed at his total absence of tiredness. The whole inside of his head feels white, sparkling, alive. He
remembers that he didn't brush his teeth or wash his face. He brightens at having something to do. In the bathroom
Gideon stares at his face, at his nut brown eyes, his graceful eyebrows, and his fantastic, well-orthodontured teeth.

The more he loves Pilar, the cuter he gets. It's like her beauty shines on him. And the Mariah Carey theme
continues.

He's staring at his face when the door swings open and standing there
—no, this can't be, is he that high? But
no, it's really her: Pilar Benitez-Jones. She looks right at him, but her eyes are big and unfocused. She ducks around
the corner. "You have to help me get out of here, Gee-de-on," she hisses. The way she says
help,
with no
h,
and a
long e, even her mangling of his name, gets him right in the knees.

Gideon leaves his toothbrush in the sink and rushes to the shower, where she stands, her back pressed up
against the gray-and-pink-tiled wall. She looks terrified but elated, her big eyes glassy around the whites and shiny in
their black middles. Her teeth gleam. His insides feel as if someone is pouring cold water over them.

Is Pilar in his dorm because she's visiting a guy? Why else would she be there? So he shouldn't put himself at risk of getting in major trouble for no good reason, for Pilar and some other guy's benefit. But
—did he really just think
this?—he loves her. He has to help.

Gideon ushers Pilar farther inside the shower, taking his toothbrush with him. "You're lucky there's no one in
here," he says, liking the way he sounds vaguely reprimanding.

"We're in here," Pilar says, is she wasted? Gid doesn't yet know the difference between merely under the
influence and wasted.

"Sit down," he says. She looks at him challengingly. "Sit down," he says again. "You're going to fall over. Okay.
You came running in here. Why?"

"I was in Mickey Eisenberg's room," she says. Gideon's eyes widen. Pilar laughs, a delightful bubble, with a warm vodka vapor. "Not like that," she says, poking him with one finger. The entire range of skin around the poke
turns hot. She reaches her other hand inside her bra. God, a beautiful girl who is always pulling things in and out of
her bra... it's too good. "Like this," she says. She holds a small packet of white pills and smiles proudly.

"Oh, right," Gid says. "The drugs that I got with my phone call, which was no doubt a felony."

"Anyway, Mickey was pissed I came over. He told me at dinner there was going to be a meteor shower tonight,
and that your dorm head would be outside watching it."

Gid runs to the left-hand bathroom window and, careful not to stick his head out too much, looks down to the dorm steps. The meteor shower! Mickey Eisenberg was right! Captain Cockweed sits on a lawn chair five feet from the dorm's front door, his head tilted slightly to the heavens, moonlight shining on his bald spot. At his feet, his son,
Tim, looks to the sky, his head tipped back at the same reverent angle. Gid knows the kid's faking it, that even at age
ten, he's figured out how to pretend he likes things like stars so his dad will think he's a good, curious kid and not just
a budding hoodlum who only wants to slam into people on his skateboard while muttering choruses from Blink-182
songs. Gid's about to wonder if he should feel sorry for Tim Cockweed when Pilar peeks around the edge of the
shower wall. "Gee-de-on," she says, louder than necessary.

"Shhh," he says, shoving her back in the shower. The drugs have made her pliant and unstable, as if her body
had been loaded onto a giant spring.

She giggles. "You're hurting me!" Her tone is mocking; she's not really saying
You're hurting
me. Gid realizes.
She's imitating someone who might play damsel in distress this way. She can joke all she wants, but seriously, honey, you don't just accidentally find yourself stranded at midnight in a guy's prep school dorm without kind of
wanting it to happen.

But Gid
—in love, seeing nothing really beyond the velvet softness of Pilar's brown eyes and the satin of her
skin—is incapable of such a critique.

Very incapable. "Pilar," he says, tenderly, bravely, putting his palm on her head, stroking her hair as if she were
a child. "Why'd you go out tonight? Even when Mickey told you it wasn't a good idea?"

Pilar shrugs, and Gid, poor Gid, just watches the play of light on her shoulders as it moves up and down. "I ran
out?" she says.

Pilar Benitez-Jones was an Ecstasy fiend! She was getting more and more interesting by the second. At this

moment the bathroom door opens. Gid thinks about clapping a hand over Pilar's mouth, like he's seen in movies.
Then he does it. Wow. He's enjoying this.

"Gid, are you in here?" It's Cullen. Pilar looks at Gid: What should we do? Gid shakes his head: Don't say
anything. She nods.

"You know, Gid's pretty tight-lipped about who he really wants to nail." It's Nicholas talking now. "Surprisingly
tight-lipped for someone with zero game." Gid wants to die. The sound of running water and vigorous toothbrushing.
"I mean, I see Gid looking around at girls. But you know how we always tell each other who's in the hot seat? He
says nothing. For a dork..."

"Don't talk about Gid like that," Cullen says. "He's our brother."

"Just telling it like it is. I like the guy, but he's not that cool."

"Personally," says Cullen, "I think that's what makes him cool. But what would you know, because you're
completely cool, and that's what makes you so uncool."

"Suck it," says Nicholas. "We're not talking about me. Anyway, for a guy who doesn't seem to have a big
game, he's real casual when it comes to the girls. Is he into Kelly, the sophomore with the big earrings and the
matching butt? Rose May, that southern girl? Or maybe he's after Pilar Benitez-Jones?"

Cullen laughs. Gid would love to interpret the laugh in a different way, but he knows that a laugh like that
—loud,
quick, totally sarcastic—only means one thing: not in a million years.

"He probably just went down to the basement to sneak a Coke," Cullen says. "It's a funny world where you can
smoke all the pot you want but Coke is off-limits."

"Coke is poison," Nicholas mutters.

"Yeah, well, my dick is poison," Cullen says. "But everyone still wants it." Nicholas manages a tolerant snort.

Pilar takes a deep breath, obviously about to speak. Gid shakes his head vigorously and clamps his hand over
her mouth. Her lips worming against his palm, the wall of her teeth. Why do girls get so excited whenever their name is mentioned? He looks right into her eyes. She bites the skin between his thumb and pointer finger, and Gid moves
against her. He is aroused. They stay this way until Cullen and Nicholas leave.

But when he goes to take his hand away she grabs it. She doesn't stop looking into his eyes. She grabs his
hand, and she puts it
—well, the fact that I don't want to say where she puts it should let you know where.

And what does Gid do? For those of you who said he grabs her and they make passionate love under the
running water, well, you overestimate him. For those who say he sets his hand on her cheek and says, "Not here,
Pilar. Not like this," well, that would make for great television. But it's not what happened. Because even though Pilar
might have what it takes for primetime, Gid is pure after-school special.

Which is why I like him. And why he struggles.