“Who said anything about love?”
Sammy tossed his controller on the floor and stood up to make himself another drink. “Kid, I’ve known you your whole life. You’re in love and it just might get us both in a whole lot of trouble.”
Delia and Donna Lee rarely fought. But when they did, Delia knew it was better to give her feisty sister a few days to cool off before seeking
a reconciliation
. This tiff had especially baffled Delia. They always joked about Donna Lee’s sex life and she never got offended before. But after careful consideration, Delia decided that her comment may have been a little insensitive so she decided to make the first move and apologize. She desperately needed her best friend back to help her figure out what to do about Chase.
After knocking several times with no response, Delia decided to use her key to enter her sister’s apartment. Being 4:00 on a Monday afternoon, she knew she’d be home from work soon. The apartment was its usual mess and Delia thought she would straighten up a little while she waited when she heard something from Donna Lee’s bedroom. Stepping over a few random pairs of shoes lying on the living room floor, Delia approached her sister’s room and heard the noise again. It sounded like a whimper. Was her sister crying? Donna Lee never cried.
Slowly pushing the door open so as not to startle her, Delia peered into the room. The lights were out and the setting sun only provided enough illumination for Delia to make out Donna Lee curled up in an armchair by the window.
“Are you okay, sweetie?” Delia crossed the room and sat on the edge of the chair. She tried to stroke her hair but Donna Lee jumped out of the seat.
“I’m fine. What are you doing in here?” she snapped, wiping her face with her hands then tightening the straps on her red silk bathrobe.
“I let myself in. I came to apologize for Friday night.”
Donna Lee crossed her arms and stared out of the window as if she hadn’t even heard Delia’s comment.
“If this is about what I said at the club, I’m sorry. I don’t think you’re a slut, Donna Lee. I would never think that about you.” Delia approached her sister and rubbed her back.
With a shrug, Donna Lee said, “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I am a slut.”
Her dry matter-of-fact tone worried Delia. She sounded truly depressed.
“Okay, that’s it. We’re
gonna
sit down and you’re going to tell me what’s going on.” Delia led her sister to the bed and sat her down.
After a few silent moments, Donna Lee said, “Do you remember Brad? The guy I dated about two years ago?” Her voice was a whisper. Delia was so gripped with worry she found it difficult to try to focus enough to remember one of her sister’s many exes.
“Um, was he the weightlifter from Poughkeepsie?”
“No, that was Brandon. Brad was the hockey player with the ponytail.”
“Oh, okay. Why are you upset over him? You were only together for like a month, right?”
“He called me last week.”
“And?
Does he want to get back together or something?”
Donna Lee shook her head and closed her eyes tightly, fighting tears. Delia knew her sister hated to appear vulnerable. She’d barely shed a tear in the seventh grade when she fractured her hand playing softball.
She took slow deep breaths with her eyes closed but she still didn’t respond to Delia’s question.
“You can tell me anything. You know that, right?” She stroked her sister’s long dark hair trying to comfort her.
“He has HIV.”
“Oh God, Lee-Lee,” Delia said, wrapping her arms around her sister and using the pet name she hadn’t used since they were eleven.
“He says he doesn’t know when he got it so he doesn’t know if he was infected when we were together.”
“Oh, Lee-Lee,” was all Delia could think to say.
“What am I
gonna
do, Dee? What if I have AIDS and die? Would anyone even care? I’m not
married,
I have no children, no legacy.
No one to carry on a piece of me.”
“Donna Lee, I love you more than anything in the world. We can get through this, okay?”
“I’m so scared.”
“I know you are, but I’m here for you. And no matter what happens, I’ll always be there for you.”
The two sisters cried in each other’s arms until the sun set and left them in complete darkness. Finally, Delia started to compose herself and reached for some tissues on Donna Lee’s cluttered nightstand.
Drying her eyes she said, “First off, we need to get you to a doctor. All these tears could be for nothing, you know. You could be perfectly fine.”
Taking a tissue from her sister’s hands Donna Lee replied, “No, first off, you need to never call me Lee-Lee again. You make me sound like a Chinese panda.”
They both laughed.
***
Delia tried not to think about her sister’s upcoming possibly life-changing test. Instead, she focused on trying to find a way to make it through the school year without revealing how uncomfortable she was with Chase/C.J. in the room. Every time he came to class, she ended up getting flustered and giving the students a pop quiz in order to give herself time to collect her thoughts and settle her nerves. She decided she needed something to make amends with the students and give everyone a chance to relax. She found a cartoon in the newspaper that showed an imaginary number telling PI to be rational. In response, the Pi says ‘get real.’ Delia thought it was absolutely hysterical. She hoped her students would as well.
Unfortunately, they didn’t. She showed them the cartoon on the overhead screen then erupted into laughter. Seconds later, she realized she was the only one laughing. Well, she and one other person.
Delia locked eyes with Chase for a second before awkwardly looking way. Chase put on a pair of dark shades and slouched further into the chair trying to seem cool. She cleared her throat then proceeded to explain the difference between rational and irrational numbers and real and imaginary numbers to the students. They still didn’t quite get it. At this point, she was very happy for her dark olive complexion. That way no one could see her blush with embarrassment.
She wondered why, of all the
students, Chase was
the only one to pick up on a math joke. He really seemed to be an intelligent young man hiding behind a façade of casual popularity. She felt a little sorry for him. It was like he couldn’t be himself. He couldn’t reveal who he really was. He probably had more emotional damage in his life than she did.
She wanted to help him. She wanted to reach out to him and let him know that it was okay to be smart. But then she thought about her own high school experience and how often she was ridiculed for being intelligent. Maybe he had the right idea. Maybe she wouldn’t have been such an outcast if she had made an effort to be popular.
In any case, reaching out to Chase/C.J. was not an option. She didn’t want to lead him on and let him think that a relationship was possible. She couldn’t show him any special attention. She would have to draw out his intelligence another way.
“Okay, let’s try something else,” Delia said once she recovered from the failure of the math cartoon. “I’m going to tell you a joke.” She cleared her throat again and sat comfortably on her desk. “Rene Descartes walks into a bar —”
“Ms. Clark?” Angie interrupted. “Who is she?”
Delia closed her eyes and sighed. How was she ever going to get through to these students? How had they made it through Algebra and Geometry without ever hearing of Rene Descartes?
“He was a French philosopher and mathematician who lived in the earlier seventeenth century. His application of Algebra to Geometry left us with Cartesian geometry from which we get the Cartesian coordinate plane.” The entire class turned to stare at the sunglass laden C.J. Mitchell, the epitome of cool, as he rattled off these facts no one else seemed to know. “He also coined the phrase ‘I think therefore I am.’”
A hush fell over the room as the students continued to stare at him. Delia wondered how he had come across such information and why he so readily shared it. In a class like this, he should be afraid of losing esteem with his fellow students for being perceived as intelligent. But, then again, the simple fact that he didn’t care who knew he was smart made him somehow even … sexier than he was before.
Delia felt her body flush. She couldn’t believe she was letting herself be attracted to a seventeen-year-old just because he knew a few historical facts about one of her favorite mathematicians. But it wasn’t just that. When he spoke intelligently like he just had, his voice, his mannerisms, even the expression on his face transformed him from C.J. and back into Chase.
Her Chase.
The one that held her close and whispered Frank Sinatra lyrics in her ear as they danced in nostalgia bars on the cruise.
She hated that he had this effect on her. She hated how, with just one word, one look, one gesture he could send her body aflame with memories. But she was the adult here and he was the student. She had to have control over the situation.
Flopping into her desk once the bell rang, Delia took a bottle of water from her purse to help her cool down. She spent her entire free period pondering her situation. With each passing day she realized there was less and less of a chance of exposure. If Chase wanted to get her into trouble he would have done it long ago. And as he stated at the club, he didn’t want anyone to know about their relationship. It would be bad for his “image.”
She thought about the two completely different people she had encountered, C.J. and Chase. Maybe Chase was the real him after all. He was just trying to keep up this C.J. image for his classmates. She had the freedom to just be her nerdy self. She decided she needed to help him. She had to show him that it was much easier to be yourself than who people wanted you to be. And she knew just how to do it.
Most of the homecoming dance at the Capitol Hilton went off without incident. There were, of course, three or four students Delia had to send home in a taxi because they had shown up intoxicated and the obligatory fight between two best girlfriends that ended in tears, but that was to be expected. She would deal with a million hysterically crying girls if it meant she didn’t have to talk to Chase/C.J.
But then, thirty minutes before the dance ended, just when she thought she would make it through the night without seeing him, he entered … no, swaggered into the room with a girl on each arm. He was too cool to wear a suit, so he had on a tuxedo jacket with jeans and a dark blue T-shirt that matched his eyes exactly. He made no attempt to control his hair, but that only added to his
I’m
-too-sexy-to-care look which made him even sexier.
Chase scanned the room until he found what he was looking for or, rather,
who
he was looking for. He released his two lady friends, walked straight up to Delia and said, “You look beautiful.” Delia sneezed three times, causing Chase’s lips to curve up into a sly grin. He knew what effect he was having on her.
“It’s Ms. Clark to you,” she said as she took her allergy medication out of her purse and swallowed two more pills. She briefly wondered how many she had taken that day.