Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn (27 page)

The door is shut. Precautions are on the nightstand. He puts his hands on the hem of her shirt and lifts it up,
slowly. He wonders if she thinks he's being purposefully sensual, but the truth is, he's a little afraid to see her bare
breasts up close. "Let me get the something," she says. Gid enjoys watching her cross the room dressed in just her
undershirt and underwear. Molly opens up her dresser, producing a shoebox, from which she removes a fat yellow
candle and a pack of matches. She lights the candle. She lies back down and smiles at him. Molly smiles at him! He
kisses her cheek, her lips, her neck, then her lips again. Getting enough courage to look at her breasts. He puts his hand on one of them and thinks, I am touching Molly McGarry's breasts. He's here. He's really here. He's a can-do
kind of guy.

Molly says, "You know what's good about this we-don't-know-whether-we're-virgins thing?"

Gid shakes his head.

"We can each take away, like, half of the other one's virginity. It's totally fair."

Okay, he's ready. But his neck is feeling a little stiff. That collar. It was worth it, but there's a little crick. If he
hikes himself onto his elbows and just turns a little bit to the right, there. There. He's relaxing back onto the mattress,
admiring the colors of the Picasso print reflected in the window, and...what is that underneath it? "No," he says, "it
can't be," slowly turning, pointing at the doorknob. "Look," he says. "Look there." Hanging on the doorknob are a pair of yellow thong underwear.
The
yellow thong underwear. "Oh my God," he says. "Those are Danielle's. Danielle's
underwear."

Molly sits up in her little twin bed, the sheet pulled over her chest. She rolls her eyes at Gideon. "Okay, why
would I have Danielle's underwear in my room? They're probably Edie's."

"No, because, I remember...when you shut the door, I remember seeing your hand on the doorknob,
because..." He blushes, because he really did, as boyishly idiotic as it sounds, pay attention to her hand on the
doorknob, thinking about...oh, you know! "The point is," Gideon says, not sure, not caring whether Molly knows why
he remembers her hand in this very place, "the point is, that was an empty doorknob. I know it like I know my own name." He seizes the underwear and holds them up. "Size six. Medium. You're a medium. Edie's
a...
I don't know, a super-small. These are Banana Republic. Shall I go on? I mean, these are the underwear!"

Molly is wide-eyed, shocked. And probably a little nervous.

"Oh, Jesus." Gideon starts to pace back and forth. "Okay, i didn't finish the thong story. I mean, the fallout from the thong story. I'm having sex with you, well, I was about to have sex with you
—because of a bet. I mean, I like you, I'm attracted to you. But the whole reason this thing got started is because of a bet I made with Cullen and Nicholas,
like, on the first few days of school."

"Why me?" She doesn't sound particularly mad. She just sounds curious. But Gid, so racked with guilt, doesn't
hear.

"God." Gid sits down at the foot of the bed. Molly, he can't help but notice, inches away from him in various
phases.

"So why are you telling me this?" Molly asks, now sounding a little more annoyed than curious.

"Why am I telling you this?" Gid shakes his head in disbelief. "What do you mean, why am I telling you this?
Because it's mean. Because... I mean, you're the subject of a bet. Doesn't that make you feel, like, cheap?"

Molly takes a deep breath. As she exhales, her voice shakes a little, like she might start to cry. Her eyes are
big and shiny.

"Please say something," Gid says.

Molly gets out of the bed. She looks smaller than usual. She pulls down her shirt so it is covering her again and
pulls on a pair of sweatpants. She walks to the door, opens it, and looks both ways down the hall. "The coast is
clear," she says. "I think you'd better go."

Gid's already dressed. He's about halfway down the hall when she calls after him. "You know what? I always
thought it was sort of stupid that they didn't let boys up here. But now I can see why."

Gid would love to believe girls forgive boys for making dumb sex bets about them. He would love to believe that
he and Molly can start over. But judging from what happens in Spanish the following Monday, when they perform the
play, it seems like maybe he's going to have to adjust his expectations.

Molly makes out the way she's supposed to. It's weird how they're doing the same thing they did for real just a
few days ago, but it feels totally different. Well. He opens one eye just a sliver while they're kissing and sees Liam,
staring up at them, watching, interested. This is good, he tries to tell himself, now when I see actors kiss on TV, I will
know how they feel. This is a good experience. Except it doesn't feel like one. When the class claps for them, they have to stand very close together, the three of them, on the classroom's tiny makeshift stage, and Molly digs the
pointed heel of her shoe into Gid's foot. Hard. "I like very, very much," Ms. San Video says. "How you all wear the
snout. Because in fascism, we are all pigs." She claps again.

They don't correct her and remind her they are dogs, because their dog snouts really do look like pig snouts.
They get an A. It makes Gid strangely sad that Molly was right.

_{sour november}

On Sunday night, Cullen and Nicholas took the oversize question mark and the underwear outside and stacked them
neatly beside the Dumpster behind Proctor.

Tuesday afternoon, Gid, Nicholas, and Cullen return from their afternoon classes to find both pieces of the
Halloween costume and a note:
This
is
Oversized Trash, please handle disposal by Tuesday afternoon

OR FACE FINE OR EXPULSION.
—GENE CAVANAUGH.

Twenty minutes later, they're driving around the Boston suburbs in the seven-series, looking for a Dumpster
without a lock on it.

Gid's in back, settling into his moroseness. He has a paperback today. They're still reading
Moby-Dick.
Mr.
Barnes had one word for Gid's idea
—that the whale represented man's drive, that the whale could have been a
mountain, or a skyscraper, or a woman—and that word, written across the title page in dark red letters, was "Duh." On the part about the woman, Mr. Barnes scrawled, "Oh, Jesus!" He gave him a C. Gid thought, It sucks that I got such a bad grade, but I have to tell Molly what he wrote because she would laugh. But then he remembers: Dude,
she hates you.

"Wait a minute," he says, suddenly energized. "You guys put the underwear on the door. You had motive,
opportunity. The underwear."

"But you have the underwear in the room," Nicholas says with uncharacteristic gentleness, pulling out of a
Target and crossing a state road to a Bed Bath & Beyond.

"I know you've been through a bit of an ordeal," Cullen says, pulling excitedly at his curls with one hand,
smoking with the other. "I'm still not going to tell you in some split second while you were taking out and considering
your tumultuous wiener..."

"Tumescent," Gid and Nicholas say in unison.

"Whatever." Cullen taps an ash out the window and continues, "You can't tell me while you were looking at your
torpid wang in its last moments of virgin glory that one of us somehow soundlessly opened Molly's door and hung a pair of underwear
—a common brand, a common color, a common size—on her door."

"Aha!" Gid seizes on this. "How did you know they were on her door?"

"You told us," Cullen and Nicholas say in unison.

Gid rolls down the window and inhales the comforting cool scent of ozone. "At least it's over."

Cullen puts his bare feet on the dashboard. He flexes his toes, smiles, unflexes. Still enjoying his feet, he says,
"We love you. We love you a lot. You're so great." He holds his big toes in both hands, rocking back and forth. They
are circling a mall parking lot about four miles from campus. It is teeming with public school girls in cheap fuzzy
sweaters, big butts packed into tight jeans, small butts packed into tighter ones.

Gid is staring at one girl's eyes, marveling at how much makeup she has around them, when Cullen says, 'The
bet is still on. We're going to shift the dates, obviously, one month forward, but we're proceeding."

I can't believe it. I almost wish that I was inside Cullen's or Nicholas's head just for the experience of being
close to someone so insane that they would consider continuing a secret bet that is no longer secret.

"Uh, you guys, isn't part of the bet that she doesn't know. ..so...?"

"Sure, sure, sure," Cullen says. "That was an important component of the bet."

"But now," Nicholas continues, "the fact that she does know..."

"Is an important component!" Cullen concludes.

Okay, so it wouldn't be that interesting to be in their heads. They're really just making it up as they go.

Finally, they find an open Dumpster
—an employee had been filling it and he was wheeling his pallet truck back
to the store when they pulled up.

"I'll get it," Gid says, wanting an excuse to get out of the car despite the rain. He takes the red question mark
and the panties out of the backseat and heaves them on top of a pile of broken-down shoe boxes and packing
peanuts. He tries to stuff them down but the Dumpster is too full. Finally, he stands on tiptoe to get some leverage
and pushes with all his might, bending the panties and the question mark in half. He walks back to the car, rubbing his
hands against his pants. He casts a look backward. The panties stay down, but the question mark snaps up again,
like the bet, indestructible.

Back in the car, Gid is too stunned, too demoralized to speak for a few minutes. As they're pulling into school,
he says, "You know, every time I talk to her she's going to think, You're trying to have sex with me."

"That might not be such a terrible thing," Cullen says.

What Cullen means is that girls like to be wanted. This is certainly true. But he's missing the point. No big

surprise there.

They go directly to dinner, where Gid, hollow, empty, eats like he's forgotten about skinny
fat. He
sees
Molly
and tries to smile. Nothing. He expected that, in keeping with her style, she would at least be cordial to him. But she
looks right through him. Needing badly to disparage her, Gid thinks, That's so high school, then remembers, they're
in high school.

Molly's actually the one thing about this high school that's not high school. And she hates him.

"You're not allowed to discuss the bet with anyone," Nicholas says, swiping a glass of chocolate milk out of
Cullen's hand and replacing it with water.

"If anyone asks about it, deny it," Cullen says. "We could get in trouble."

"For what?" Gid whispers, because Devon and Liam are coming.

"Gambling," Nicholas whispers back, raising his eyebrows with subversive glee.

They can't be serious, Gid thinks. He wishes he could take a week off.

"Oh, and hey," Nicholas adds, "in all the excitement, I forgot. My mother wanted me to invite you home with me
for Thanksgiving. Do you think you could come?"

Thanksgiving on Christmas Park Circle, since Gid's mom left, involves lots of college football, a badly cooked
turkey, and lots of canned vegetables. And it's always
just Gid and
his dad. "I think so," Gid says, hiding his
enthusiasm. Well, this is something to look forward to.

At this moment, Molly passes by their table. He knows that look. She's not looking at him, and she's trying not
to look at him. She's aware of me, Gid thinks. She's aware of me, and I am not going home for Thanksgiving. Not an
ideal life, but a livable one.

It doesn't stop raining. The boys do a lot of staying in, which results in a lot of pot smoking. But one night Gid is about to take a hit out of the Vaportech, and out of the corner of his eye he sees the
Moby-Dick
paper, with the
Duh
written across the front. "I don't think I want to smoke any pot," he says, passing it to Cullen. "I think pot's making me
stupid."

"Dude," Cullen says a minute later, over a bulging mouthful of smoke, "don't blame your problems on pot."

"Okay," Gid says. "How about I blame them on you instead?"

Nicholas makes him go running every morning, despite the rain. "You seem down," he says. "You need to
shake this off."

"Is that what you did with Erica?" Gid asks. "Shook it off?"

Nicholas, tugging his arm over his head, freezes and stares at Gid. "I wasn't upset about her; I was upset
because she was upset. There's a difference."

Gideon writes Molly a letter, apologizing about the bet. How does he reconcile the fact that the bet's still on?
He doesn't. Or if he does, in a tiny way, it's that he feels like he's a double agent. He used to tell Cullen and Nicholas
everything he did with regard to Molly. But his remorse is a giant secret. He actually mails it, in town, with a stamp.
He types the letter, even types the outside of the envelope, in case one of them sees her getting her mail.

Dear Molly,

I feel bad that I made a bet about you. It wasn't a nice thing to do. I do really like you, and I hope you don't feel too
bad.

Gid.

After mailing the letter, he calls his father from the Student Center pay phone. As the phone rings, he prays
with all his might for the answering machine, and he gets it. "Hi, Dad," he says. "I just called to tell you that I won't be
making it home for Thanksgiving."

"Hello?
Gid? What's this you're saying?"

"Uh..."
That was all going so well, Gid thinks. "I'm...I'm going to Nicholas's, in New York City."

Jim laughs, but Gid can tell it's forced. ^Well, I guess I can't compete with that, can l?
^;
'

Gid finds this question passive-aggressive. What's he supposed to say now?

Come on, Gideon. Remember you want your dad to think he's getting a good deal?

"You can compete with anything, Dad." Whoa, that was hard to get out. But he's glad he managed it.

"So the good news is," he says, "I'll see you at Christmas."

Good job, Gideon. You're getting it.

"Right, right." He can hear the relief in his father's voice. "The Big Apple."

"I knew you were going to say 'Big Apple,'" Gid mutters.

"What was that?" Jim Rayburn says. "That was just an ambulance going by."

Gid says he was just asking one of his friends to go buy him a Snapple. Jim laughs again and then tells Gid he
quit drinking Snapple at lunch and lost three pounds in a week.