Out (5 page)

Finally, I say,
“Are you sure she'll be there? The girl? Carmen?” Saying her name gives me a
little jolt of electricity.

Andi
smiles. “Leave it to me. I'll make sure she's there,
even if I have to pretend I'm crazy to propose to her or something. Sheila will
be really excited.”

“And then
you'll set up the meeting at the coffee shop?”

Andi
nods. “As soon as possible.”

“What if I see
her and just go crazy or something?” I stare at the floor, imagining all kinds
of nightmarish scenes in which I lunge at the girl over a frothy latté or knock
her down in front of the biscotti display, ravaging her in a pile of crumbly
cookies and self-loathing.

“You’re not
going to do anything. You’ll see…it was just an accident. You’ll go back to how
it was. Back to how you want it to be.”

Thing is, I
don’t think that’s what I really, really want. And that scares the hell out of
me.

As
Andi
and I walk up the immaculate brick path to the
Cavendish Hotel, my stomach starts to churn.
 
I’d met most of the members of the
Perp
League
through church. Stick-thin, perfectly manicured women made up the majority of
the group.

 
Low-level chatter and the clinking of spoons
against china cups stops when we enter the room (or maybe I imagine it stops.)
Only three other guys are present, so I automatically feel awkward, and since
we’re the last to arrive, everybody stares at us.
Andi
gestures silently to two empty chairs in the corner, behind a pillar that
partially obscures the laser-beam nastiness of Chairwoman
Lainie
Goldman's stare.

“Let's begin,”
Lainie
Goldman says, endowing the crowd with a toothy smile
bleached unnaturally white. “Minutes from the last meeting are available
online. Treasurer’s report?”The woman rambles on and on, and I tune her out
after a few seconds. I start scouring the room for Carmen. “Do you see her?” I
whisper to
Andi
. She shakes her head as she, too,
tries to scope out the room, trying to make it look like she has a bad kink in
her neck.

The door, which
had been discreetly closed when
Lainie
Goldman
started to speak, creaks open rudely, interrupting some fascinating updates
about the faulty plumbing in the office.

 
I nearly choke. It’s her.

All doubt
disappears, zapped out of existence the moment she walks into the room.
 
An intense rush of blood to the face,
tingling in my hands and feet,. A white-hot knife with a serrated diamond edge
slices me from inside, arcing outward in a cascade of ruby sparks.
 
Oh hell.

Lainie
Goldman doesn’t get angry at the interruption. She
sees who it is, and her smile widens. “And here is our special guest, all the
way from California! I'd like to introduce you to Carmen Wilde, daughter of
national president Alexandra Wilde.” Enthusiastic applause rings through the
hall, and Carmen blushes prettily.

I’ve never seen
anything so beautiful.

Andi
jabs her elbow into my side, causing an embarrassing
exhalation of air that makes more than one
Perp
League member glance at us disapprovingly. Carmen waves to the applauding
crowd; she seems shy, like she doesn’t want the attention. Maybe she'd felt
attracted to me, and felt guilty! Wouldn't that be wonderful? No, it wouldn't
be. It would be disaster. It would be the Titanic swirling in a cosmic cocktail
glass full of icebergs then sprayed with a geyser of molten lava spewed out
from hell. If she was attracted to me too, what was going to stop us?

Ms. Goldman
continues to gush about Carmen, but sound seems to rush out of the room like an
outgoing tide, and all I hear is my breath, my heartbeat. Carmen tries to fade
into the woodwork, or at least into an empty seat. Without thinking, I get up,
offer her my chair.
No!
some scared,
panicky voice that usually wins all arguments about risky behaviors stutters,
but it’s too late. Carmen has seen me, and she looks relieved to find a place
to sit away from the stares of the
Perp
League elite.

“Thanks,” she
whispers in my ear.
 
I nearly faint. The
scent of her tan skin—some unidentifiable combination of jasmine, musk, green
grass, and lemon—fills me with dread, and desire. I lean against the pillar,
ignoring
Andi’s
stern glare, and try to focus on
anything but Carmen’s black-silk hair and exquisite profile.
 

“—and then
Carmen decided that she would follow in her mother's footsteps and become one
of the youngest
Perp
League board members in the
society's history. Her tireless work for the group is well documented, and
she's also managed to maintain a straight-A average in her studies. She's also
in her school's choir as well as the speech and debate club. So, we’re honored
to sponsor her as the Perpendicular League of Northwestern Ohio’s exchange
student for the rest of the school year.” Riotous applause breaks out; every
person in the room turns and smiles at the amazing Ms. Wilde, so I’m able to
stare at her too without looking obvious.

 
When
Lainie
Goldman
just keeps clapping and gesturing toward Carmen, it becomes obvious that she
wants her to stand up and speak to the group. Blushing, the girl stands and
waves graciously, a reluctant princess greeting her kingdom. “Thank you so
much,” she says. Her voice is strong; it resonates like music or deep water
against stones. “I am so honored to be here with you, and I know my mother will
be really excited to hear about all the great progress the group is making here
in Northwestern Ohio.” She pauses, but judging from
Lainie's
gleaming, high-beam smile, more is expected. “And...” she falters. “And I am
having a wonderful time, meeting all the great people here in Bentham.” She
sits down, making it clear that this is all they are getting out of her.

 
I can’t stop looking at her, and in a couple
of seconds, that’s going to be embarrassingly obvious. She isn’t talking
anymore, so I have no excuse to stare at her like a drooling idiot. She must
feel me looking, because as soon as
Lainie
starts
babbling on about some new topic, she turns her head slowly and stares up at me
with those amazing blue eyes.

It’s like
drowning, but I don’t want to come up for air. I want to swim in her eyes and
dive deeper, be crushed under the weight of water, let my lungs explode as I
touch bottom. And as I’m thinking this ridiculous romantic nonsense, the room
erupts in manicured applause. The meeting is over.

Carmen sighs
heavily and studies her hands, which are folded in her lap. I shoot
Andi
an urgent look, and she takes the hint, turns to
Carmen and introduces herself.

“I'm Andrea,”
she says brightly.

 
The girl’s tanned hand reaches for
Andi’s
, and I have to stop myself from touching her as she
says, “I’m Carmen. Well, you probably already heard that, huh?”

“Yeah, well,
you must be something for
Lainie
Goldman to brag on
you like that,”
Andi
says, glancing nervously at me. “This
is my friend, Chris.”

Carmen blushes
slightly, and suppresses a smile.
 
“I
think we've met before, haven't we?”

“Uh...yeah.”
God! Why do I sound like I'm as intelligent as pocket lint? I've never had
trouble talking to a...a girl before. Of course, I was never attracted to one
before, either. “I'm Chris.”

Instead of
looking at me like I’m an idiot, or pocket lint, or idiotic pocket lint, she
extends that graceful hand capped with short shell-pink nails, and takes my hand.

 
It’s even worse than at the church. Blood
pounds in my ears, a current runs from fingers through arm, into belly, out
through the top of my head.

She lets go,
but I’m still reeling.

Andi
, bless her, saves me from abject embarrassment. “Uh,
so, I'd really like to welcome you to Bentham. You know, officially, like as
one of the young people.” I hear words, but it’s like the touch of this girl’s
hand knocked out my ability to understand language. “Anyway, would you like to
have coffee with me? With us? Just as a get-acquainted kind of thing?”

Do I just
imagine that Carmen’s blue eyes show the same intoxicated confusion I
feel?
 
“I think that'd be great,” she
says softly. “I haven't met too many young people here, actually.
Lainie
keeps me kind of busy with
Perp
League stuff, and then I've got my test to study for. I'm taking my college
boards
next month.”

“In November?”
Andi
asks. The lovely feeling is zapped out of existence by
the mere mention of college. “Isn't that kind of early?”

“Yeah,” Carmen
answered shyly. “But I want to get to university early. I'm really done with
high school, you know, the whole high school attitude. They're so immature, and
stupid to people who are...different.”

Is this a
message? Does she feel it too? I can’t stop staring.

Andi
links arms with Carmen and starts to walk toward the
door. “Well, we're pretty mature out here. You grow up early when you have
to...milk cows and stuff.”

“Do you milk
cows?” Carmen asks.

“No, not
really. But that's what people think about Ohio.” The girls laugh as they walk,
and I follow, watching the curtain of Carmen’s dark silk-raven hair, and the
autumn bounce of Andrea's curls.

I should run
away, fast, in the opposite direction. I should forget I ever met her. But it’s
like watching a car accident—even if you know it’s awful, even if you know
someone might be dead in the wreckage, you can’t help but slow down to watch.

 
Except this time, I’m in the car.

She blows into
her cappuccino and gets a flick of white foam on the end of her nose. It’s the
cutest thing I’ve ever seen.

“Let me get
that for you,” I say, wiping it with the end of my napkin.

“Thanks,”
Carmen says, laughing at herself. “God, I am the most graceless person on the
face of the earth.”

“Oh, you've
never seen Chris in action,”
Andi
says. I glare at
her. “Uh, sorry.”

Carmen turns to
me. “So, Chris, are you interested in being part of the Perpendicular League?”
She sips her cappuccino, carefully avoiding the mischievous foam.

“Uh...well, I
don't exactly know. I'm pretty busy with school and stuff, but I was...we were,
Andi
and I...interested in what the
Perp
League actually does. I guess you'd be the person to
ask, huh?”

Carmen smiles
and sets the oversized blue mug on the cafe table. “Sure. I can tell you
anything you want to know. I've been raised in it. Raised by it, I guess you
could say.”

Andi
shoots me a guarded glance, then turns to Carmen. “What
do you mean, raised by it?”

Carmen sighs,
then checks over her shoulder as if she were scouting for spies. She studies me
for a moment, and then moves in closer, and says confidentially, “It's all
bullshit.”

I am,
unfortunately, taking a sip of my latté, and spew it in a geyser worthy of a
silent-film spit take. “What did you say?” I ask, choking.

Amused, Carmen
grins even larger, satisfied at my reaction. “I said, it's all bullshit. The
Perp
League is just an excuse for people to hate other
people. What good does it do?”

Andi's
face registers the same amazement that I feel. “But...your
mother is the head of the national group. What, you just sort of go along for
the ride?”

Carmen's
intense blue eyes go stormy for a minute, and her lips tighten.
 
I can see what it’d be like to have her mad
at you. “No, I don't go along for the ride,” she answers curtly. “I don't have much
of a choice right now. Once I'm eighteen, though, I'll be telling everybody
what I really think of it.”

I clear my
throat. “So, why do you think it's...uh...”

“Bullshit?” I
can’t help but laugh even though I’ve never heard anybody talk that way about
anything related to the
Anglicant
Church.
Andi
doesn’t look all that shocked.
 
“As I said, it's a bunch of people hating
another bunch of people for no good reason.”

“What about the
church?” I hear myself parroting my dad. “What about the Bible?”

“What about it?”
Carmen leans closer, and the smell of her hair and perfume makes me dizzy. “Do
you know what it really means, or just what they've told you it means?”

“What's the
difference?” I ask.

She stares down
into her coffee cup. “I've known since I was ten that I was…different. Imagine
how it was living in a place where what I am, what I can't help being, is
nothing more than somebody's idea of an abomination against God.” Her smile is
angry, cracked. “I knew that if they knew, they wouldn't love me anymore.”

Andi
and I are silent, searching the table full of empty
sugar packets for answers.

“I know it's
hard to accept,” Carmen says. “I hope I haven't misjudged you. If you tell
anyone, I'll deny it.”

Andi
touches her hand. “It’s ok. So you’re a...”

“Do I like
guys?” She grins, then gives me a smoldering stare that makes it hard to sit
still. “Yeah. I do. Some guys.” She looks down at her coffee. “Probably why my
mom wants to get me married as soon as possible,” she mutters.