Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn (21 page)

This is incredible. Asking about other girls. Putting her bare feet on his chair. And now the necklace playing.
He's taking his nail polish, and he's going to go tell Cullen that the bet is all about Pilar now, and he knows...she can
sneak out of her room! He's going to have this tied up in no time.

At that moment, her tiny silver cell rings. She ducks behind a shelf of totally ignored foreign policy periodicals.
Gid enjoys the view of her lower legs and the murmur of her voice. He pretends she is whispering to him. When she comes back, she tucks the phone into a tiny pocket in the front of her skirt and says, "That was a friend of mine who
you know."

"Who?"

"A British friend," she says.

"I don't know anyone British," Gid says. "Oh, except those guys at the party. Dennis was nice to me."

"Dennis likes you," Pilar coos. "Because you protected me."

"Protected you? I don't have any idea what you're talking about."

He's still in the midst of saying the words as he gets it.

Dennis Tolland is dating Pilar. It all makes perfect sense.

Dennis encouraged him to go upstairs. To go and find Pilar, lie down with her. And Gid thought he was
coaching him, well, not necessarily as an equal, but at least as a fellow guy. But really, Dennis was just thinking of him as a Boy Scout. Dennis was too drunk to go upstairs with Pilar, so he sent Gid, because he knew Gid would
deter other suitors from trying to get into the room with Pilar. And that with Gid up there, Dennis could drink and strip-poker himself into oblivion and never wonder if anyone was macking on his lady. (Dennis's probable words of
choice, not mine.)

Gid remembers Cullen telling him not to make the bed and feels a terrible chill.

The memory of every single fantasy he's had about Pilar since then blackens in his mind and fills his chest with ash. And that's why she moved rooms
—to sneak out at night for her little Eurotrysts with Dennis Tolland.

"Are you okay?" Pilar touches his forehead. He wants to cry at how exquisite the feeling of her finger is and
how heartbreaking it is that she always smells like roses. Dennis Tolland. That British asshole, whom he fantasized
about being friends with. Repeatedly. Much more embarrassing, at this moment, than fantasizing about an
unrequited love.

Pilars phone rings again. Before she answers it, Gid glances at the display:
Dennis.
Calling repeatedly. As
lovers do.

"Bye," he says. He hopes Pilar hears the note of finality. Then he thinks, I could be like, Bye, you ruined my life,
and she would just say, Good-bye, Gee-de-on.

^{totally playing the dog}

Pollard Theater is the newest building on campus. It was designed and built by someone famous and foreign. It's
rectangular with a round porch, tiled in black and red. Large glass doors lead to its lobby, which is decorated
sparsely and features randomly placed Plexiglas cubes that function as chairs. Molly, sitting on one of them, waves.

Gid notes that she
looks
pretty cute. She's wearing a skirt. Has she dressed up for their first night of
rehearsal? He should probably say something about it. But what? He doesn't want to be too provocative. He could
go for a sort of sly thing, like, "What's the occasion?" But that reminds him of his dad. Always trying to be so
knowing, when he knows nothing.

"You're staring at me," Molly says.
                                                                                                                                        
*.

Or he could just say nothing and make her really uncomfortable. "I'm sorry," he says. '1 guess I am a little distracted." I love Pilar, he thinks. I like you but I love Pilar and every time I start enjoying talking to you I remember
that I feel like an idiot because of her.

Molly tucks her skirt around her legs. "Why are you distracted?" she asks.

Her curiosity touches him. But not so much that he's going to actually say what's on his mind. He is amazed at
how instantly he's ready with a good lie or half-truth. "It's my girlfriend," he says.
"Well,
I guess she's my ex-girlfriend.
Though not officially. I came to school here, and I just basically..."

Molly smiles. "Never called her?"

Gid rolls his eyes. "I know it's not great behavior. It doesn't exactly make me look like a good guy to girls."

"What do you mean, to girls? Like, all girls? Are we on a team? Do we have uniforms?"

"Come on," Gid says. He shifts on the cube, which, as you can imagine, is not all that comfortable. "You know
what I mean."

"If all girls are really on a team, I want to know what our team shirts look like. Are they baby tees? Are they
pink? Do they say 'Princess' on them? Because I wouldn't wear that shirt. But a lot of girls would."

"You win," Gid says.

"I just feel like...guys think all girls have, like, one idea about how guys are supposed to act. I don't think I know
how anyone is supposed to act. Do you know what I mean?"

Does he ever. But he doesn't want to admit that kind of vulnerability. Though the fact that she did is good.

It's quiet for a few seconds. Gid tries not to stare at her, or the floor, and ends up in a kind of spacey
middle-distance thing which, if Molly were that alert, which she may well be, makes him look stoned. Which he is. But
not as stoned as he looks. "Did you read this play?" she asks.

"It's pretty racy," Gideon says, reddening. "I'm not sure Ms. San Video wilL.uh, go for it."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that," Molly says. "She's essentially European. They love it when kids talk about
sex. She'll think it means we're smart."

Liam enters, walking fast, his hand held up in apology. "Sorry I'm late," he says. "I was sleeping."

This is an arrogant, annoying excuse, Gid thinks. Why doesn't Liam just say the prospect of being here with
the two of you bored me? Then Gid remembers that he doesn't always have to go on the defensive with Liam. He's gained ground. Gideon stands up. "What's up, bro?" he says, slapping him on the arm.

"Nada, nada, nada," Liam replies, seemingly unmoved by Gid's bravado. And then he throws Molly one of his
smiles. "Aren't you looking hot tonight, Ms. McGarry!"

Okay, Gid thinks, this has got to be considered overboard, right?

Or...not. Molly blushes, thrilled. "Wow, Liam, thanks. Do I really?" She's standing up now, and playing with her skirt. She tilts her head coquettishly, indicating that they should head to the practice space down the hall. She leads
the way. Liam follows, staring the whole time at her butt and legs. Gideon, behind them, feels a sharp and sudden
stab of ownership.

And Liam's not done. As they enter the practice space, just a dark plywood box down a stairwell between the
theater office and the costume studio, he says, "You know, Molly, while I was napping, before I got here, I had a
dream about you?"

This surely is not going to fly with Molly. She's going to make fun of him. She's got to. Gideon sits down in one of the metal folding chairs that are the only furnishings in the room, save a coatrack hung with a fur stole, and waits
for this to happen.

It doesn't. Instead, Molly saunters over to the fur stole and, throwing it around Liam's neck, pulls her to him.
"Did I do this in your dream?" she asks. Her head's tilted back and she looks right into Liam's eyes.

"No," Liam says, a little hoarse, "I would have remembered that." Molly backs away from him, keeping eye
contact. Gid knows that Liam is now fully aware of the fact that Molly is a little bit more than a stealth babe. This
flirtation is throwing a wrench in his plans. And now Molly gets to choose between them. She's definitely going to pick
Liam. If only because she'll be embarrassed to pick Gideon, because she knows him better. Unless that works the
other way? Or is there no way that she would miss a chance to kiss Liam, just out of sheer respect for his
handsomeness? So many stupid variables.

"I want to play the guy," Gid hears himself saying. He looks from Liam to Molly. Both wear neutral expressions. He keeps talking. "I am getting terrible grades, and Liam, your grades are fine. Ms. San Video already thinks I'm kind
of lazy. This is probably my chance to change her opinion."

Liam's expression is still neutral, but he starts to step from side to side a little. He's nervous, Gid thinks. He's
got to be thinking of a way to argue this without looking like he wants the part.

"You know," Liam says, "we all get the same grade for the project."

Just as Gid thought. This is about the only good point he has. If Liam keeps arguing, he's going to look like he
cares. And there's nothing Liam likes less. This was his whole plan. Gid doesn't say a word. Let Liam keep talking if
he dares.

"Well," Liam says, "what do you think, Molly?"

Gid feels the world go absolutely still. "Oh, no," Molly says. "This is between you two."

"I don't want to be a pain," Gid says. He looks at the ground humbly. "I just want to do well in school. I don't want
to piss off my dad."

A masterful performance. Liam came in strong with the flirting, but he was no match for Gideon. "Sure," Liam
says, "whatever."

Liam's playing the dog. Liam's totally playing the dog. He did it! And it wasn't even that bad.

Gid searches Molly's face for signs of disappointment or relief or excitement but she's not showing anything.
Maybe she doesn't care.

Not possible, Gideon. When there's kissing involved, even if it's only make-believe, people always care.
Especially girls.

They read through the play. Or, rather, Gid and Molly read and Liam alternately sulks and uses little corners of
his script to clean things out of his teeth. "Do I have to bark in Spanish?" Liam asks at one point. "Because I don't
understand how they spell out barking. I mean, ruff-ruff, that makes sense, but guau-guau? I can't say that. I'm going
to look stupid."

"I'm going to go in the costume room and see if they have any plastic snouts," Gid says. He can't resist.

And really, why should he?

^{give me an a}

"Yo quiero elperro,"
Gideon reads, trying to make important eye contact and follow his lines at the same time.

"You're going to have to learn how to roll your damn Rs," Molly says. "Let's take a break."

It's the following night. They've been rehearsing for about seven minutes.

Liam takes off his plastic dog snout. "Thank God. This is fucking melting my fucking nose," he says, lying down
on his side.
He rolls
over to the other shoulder. Then he rolls over onto his back. "Lying on my side hurts," he says.

"No need to apologize," Molly says. "It's great. You're really acting like a dog."

She reaches down and rubs his stomach. Liam kicks out a leg.

Liam pushes himself off the floor. He frowns and brushes the dust off his perfectly faded Levi's. "Can I leave?"
he asks Molly. "Seriously."

He pretends to beg. Molly pretends to throw a ball out the door and Liam chases after it and is gone for the
night.

Right after Liam has left, the smile lingers on Molly's face just a few seconds longer than makes Gid totally
comfortable.

"I don't know about you," Molly says, sitting in a metal chair, leaning back, and putting her feet up on the back of
another metal chair, "but I think that the Spanish are a little too obsessed with death and love. I mean, would a
rousing musical number kill them?"

Gid nods. He couldn't agree more. This play is even weirder than it sounds. Yesterday, Molly brought in a little
information about the author that she'd gotten off the Internet. He wrote this play five years into his incarceration. He
was married to a woman and a man, at the same time. The dog in their play, some people said, was supposed to
represent Franco, who, Molly informed him, was once the dictator of Spain.

"Frank O.?" Gid asks. "You'd think if he was such an important guy, they'd use his whole last name."

Gid thinks this is a very erudite comment and is not at all prepared to see Molly fighting off a smile.

"It's one word. Like
Charo.
Or, if you don't know who that is, like
SbarroV

Gid nods happily. He knows what
Sbarro
is. It's his dad's favorite place to eat on the highway.

"But back to Franco," Molly says. "It's not that I don't understand how a dog could represent a dictator. I just
think it's kind of stupid. They're afraid of the dog, but they take care of it, they allow it to exist. Okay, I get it. They're
afraid of the dictator, but they keep him around. Is that supposed to be profound or something?"

Molly is smart, Gid thinks. She is probably smarter than he is
—though he imagines he himself is pretty smart.
But the fact that he doesn't always get what Molly's saying can make it difficult to respond to her. He considers
making a joke but can't think of anything particularly funny to say.

Gid taps his lips with his fingers. "I wish I smoked, sometimes," he says. "Wouldn't it be nice to be smoking
right now?"

This is all he can come up with?

"You didn't even respond to what I just said," Molly says, annoyed.

This isn't good. He remembers his mother telling him that talking to his father was like talking to a banana. "Well," he ventures, "I guess I feel like, who am I to judge? I barely speak Spanish. How do I know what's good?"
This is better. At least on subject.

Molly picks up the script. "Allow me to translate: I love the dog. You love the dog. We love the dog. We hate the
dog. Who is the dog? The dog is the one who tells us who we are!" She flings the script back down. "I may be just a
campesina
from Buffalo, but I don't need anyone to tell me that is some of the most ridiculous shit ever written."

"Maybe we should do another play," Gideon says.

"No way." Molly shakes her head. "Ms. San Video is going to love this. She's so pretentious and annoying."

"Really?" Gideon says. "I think she's a good teacher."

Molly leans forward and puts her hands on his knees. Whoa. Not sure where to go with that. Boys have such a
love-hate relationship to physical contact. "Why do you think that?"

"Uh..." Gid fights the urge to look down her shirt. She's at a prime angle for it.

"Because she's mean to you? Because she wears nice clothes?" Molly prods.

"I don't think she's mean to me. I think she's just trying to make me so ashamed of myself that I actually learn
Spanish. It's working."

Molly laughs at this, as she should. She laughs hard enough, in fact, to drop her script. As she bends forward
to retrieve it, he looks down the back of her pants. At first he is disappointed to see that she isn't wearing a skirt

tonight, but then, when he sees that her pants were tighter than usual, he becomes elated-
He thinks her ass looks really good in those pants, and turns bright red.
"I think that's a pretty good observation of your psyche," Molly says.

"Really?" Gid is pleased. "I feel like you say things like that, like, five times a day." And he blushes more,
because he knows that this is kind of like telling her that he likes her.

"Oh," Molly says wryly, and if she notices Gid's embarrassment, she doesn't let it show. "I'm sure one day
you'll be as wise as me!" She pauses and looks at him. "Are you okay? You're all red!"

"I...I..." Gid decides to tell a very partial truth. "I was just thinking of something embarrassing."

He wants Molly to ask what it is. But she just nods and jumps up. "I do that all the time," she says. There's a
tentative knock on the door. It opens, revealing Edie and her ubiquitous book bag.

"Hi," she says to Molly. "I need to show you my American history presentation." She gives Gideon a brief
glance. "Hi," she says.

Gid stands up, to be polite. "You're in Cullen's class, aren't you? How did his thing with the little toy soldiers
go?"

Edie waves her little hand from side to side, the international sign for so-so. "I laughed," she says.

"Were you supposed to laugh?" Molly asks.

Edie shrugs. "I was too busy laughing to decide."

Now they both laugh.

"What are you doing for your project?" Gid asks. You know, I don't know if it's obvious to Molly that he's only
giving Edie the time of day to look better in Molly's eyes. Later in life, Gid's going to have to work on talking to all
girls, not just the ones he wants to screw, so that when he talks to the ones he wants to screw, it won't be so
incredibly obvious. Edie
—whether she's on to him or not, I can't say—answers his question.

"I'm writing Betsy Ross's diary. Around the time that she's making the flag." Gid sees Edie redden, and the way Molly stands next to her at a solicitous, protective angle, he knows that Edie's not real big on sharing.

Gid nods.

Edie continues, "But it's not about, like, the war and stuff. It's just about the actual flag. Like, imagining the
stores she has to go to and how she makes the cloth and how she has to get some guy to come to her house when
her loom breaks. It might sound weird, but I'm learning a lot about the way the economy worked back then."

Okay, whatever. Someone needs to put the kibosh on all these hippie projects going on at this school. No
wonder we are all nuts.

The next night is Friday. Cullen and Gid are sitting together at dinner, late, long after the other boys have

evaporated. "You should blow off rehearsal," Cullen says. "Ask Molly if she wants to go for a walk."

"Go for a walk? That's so obvious."

Cullen
leans forward, fixing his pretty eyes on Gideon's. They have yellowish flecks in them, and they've
seemed to blossom over the last few weeks. Is it drug use? Has their friendship deepened to the point where Gid
has more chances for close observation? "Girls like obvious," Cullen says.

Gid considers. "We have been getting out of study hall for the play," he says. "All the teachers think we're at
rehearsal, and no one's checking up on us." But he frowns, looking out the window to the dark and cold. "But I think
that... I mean, I think if I move too fast on her, she's going to think I'm weird."

Cullen lifts a giant glass of milk to his mouth and rolls his eyes. He's laying off the chocolate for now, because
Nicholas told him he was getting back fat.

"What?" Gid says. "All I'm saying is that I know you don't think she's, like, the most incredibly gorgeous thing on
the planet..."

"Yeah," Cullen says. "Liam referred to her as stealth hot. Which I think is generous."

Cullen is getting back fat, by the way. I've seen it.

Gideon wasn't surprised that Liam
told
him he thought Molly was hot
—excuse me, stealth hot. But he is
surprised Liam admitted it to Cullen. This is not good news. His telling Gid was kind of like a tree falling in the forest.
But Cullen matters. Telling Cullen means Liam might be prepared to do something.

Gideon says, "Great. Liam Wu. Great."

"Fuck Liam Wu."

"You don't really mean that," Gid says.

Yeah, he can't possibly really mean that. That's like saying, Fuck Pilar Benitez-Jones.

"Okay," Cullen says, wagging his head from side to side. "I don't really quite mean it."

"They flirt," Gid says miserably. "I mean, Molly really talks to me, but those two flirt."

"You're selling yourself short, buddy," Cullen says. "You're a lot more visible on campus now. I see a
lot
of
girls
look at you. I think she already...Oh God. Look..." His voice trails off. "Okay, shit, well, we're about to have a little
moment of truth here. Molly's coming toward us," he says. "I am going to tell you whether she's ready for you or not.
Ill
kick you under the table. Okay?" His wink is so confident.

Molly is a little ramshackle in a shiny black slicker and oversize boots with a skirt. She has a knowing smile,
and when she gets right up to the table, she opens her hands. In each of them is a plastic snout, identical to Liam's.

"Check it out," she says. "You know what we were talking about yesterday, the dog represents the dictator, et
cetera? Well, how about we wear the snouts too, not just Liam." She puts it on. "And it's like, we're all our own

dictators. Whoa! Deep, right?" She laughs. Gid decides: She is excited to see me, just as Cullen kicks him, a little
too hard. "She's going to love it. We can even be really bad, and she'll love it and give us A's, and well all go to
Harvard, which is, let's face it, the only reason we all bother with this crap."

"Oh, come on," Cullen says, stretching his arms up on purpose
—clearly forgetting about his love handles.
"This place isn't that bad."

"For you," Molly says. "I mean, if I were a tall, handsome heir to a frozen diet cheesecake fortune and all I did
was smoke pot and tell sophomores they were pretty, I'd like it here too."

The look on Cullen's face is exactly the same as the look Liam got on his face the night Gideon yelled at him
about finding Molly. It is the look of extreme confidence shattered. He is pale, his features seem to curl in on
themselves a little. He stands up. Gid stands up. The three of them walk out of the cafeteria in silence.

Passing through the alcove out of the cafeteria, Gid focuses on the notices pinned to the bulletin boards lining
the walls: mini-fridges for sale, standardized test notices, offers of tutoring and summer programs and holiday rides
to various locales on the eastern seaboard. Molly walks slightly ahead of them. She keeps turning around to look at Gid. Gid's torn between paying attention to her or to Cullen, who seems a little blindsided. "I thought your dad was a
lawyer," Gid finally says.

"He is," Cullen says. "He opened up the cheesecake business when I was three."

So he hasn't actually been a lawyer for quite some time.

"You can ask him all about it over Parents' Weekend," Molly says to Gid.

Frozen diet cheesecake! He can see why Molly thought this would be an Achilles' heel. He had always
imagined that Cullen's dad did something much more glamorous than that. He pictured a man in a dark suit, as handsome as Cullen, maybe with a little gray in his hair. Cullen's mother would be blonde and have tan legs from playing golf in short flowered skirts. Did Cullen's dad eat a lot of diet cheesecake? Was he fat? Was his mother fat?
Gideon's mother had been fat when she was married to his father, but now she was thin. She and the science
teacher were into power walking, which made them look like total assholes
—part zombie, part windmill. But at least
they weren't fat.