Two Parties, One Tux, and a Very Short Film about The Grapes of Wrath (18 page)

At first I'm a little freaked out by having another person's face so close to mine. I realize that her eyes are closed, and it helps to close mine as well. Otherwise, I'm kissing a cyclops. She presses closer and I let her kiss me, hoping that I'm not supposed to be doing a whole lot on my end. I'm a little overwhelmed by her smell. It's not bad, sort of strawberry or some fruit, but I'm not used to smelling someone so intimately and when that person's practically lying on top of you, it's more noticeable. I try to concentrate. It takes a little while to get used to having someone else's tongue in your mouth, but I think I figure it out and she's not complaining—in fact, she seems to be enjoying herself. I might be too, but it's hard to tell yet.

“This is okay. right?” Danielle asks, pausing for a breath.

Is that a trick question? I manage a sort of nod.

“I'll take that to mean yes,” she says, and reattaches.

Joy (if ecstasy counts)

We make out for almost twenty minutes, just kissing and a little bit of rubbing against each other, lying on the grass.

“I should get home,” she says. “I still have to do my homework. Does that sound pathetic? Well, it's true. You're a brain. I have to put in the butt time or I'm toast.”

The concept of Danielle being a grind doesn't fit my image of her, but she
is
in my honors classes. She's quiet in class, and it hadn't occurred to me that she might be smart.

“Are you okay? I mean with all of this. I know it's moving a little fast, and that I'm a mess …”

“I'm okay,” I tell her, assuming that ecstatic probably counts as okay. She stands up. Her lips look a little swollen, and she has grass in her hair. My jeans feel overly tight, and I don't dare look down because I'm sure that I still have a visible erection.

“Come on, I really do have to go.”

Distress

Thinking about the tightness in my pants only makes it worse. I desperately want to reach in and rearrange my
privates. Danielle offers me a hand and I ignore the pain of the squeezing and stand up, praying that it isn't too obvious. She turns to head out of the park and I make what small adjustments I can.

As we walk to the car, Danielle shifts back into manic conversational mode. “I hope my parents didn't get you into too much trouble. They did, didn't they?”

“Your parents?”

“About your English project. My parents complained. I told them about it because I thought it was really funny. Especially the Garden of Eden with all the piles of animal poop—that was hysterical, and I had to go tell my mother about it, didn't I? And of course, my mother would be offended because she's all religious and anything with the devil in it is sure to corrupt her sweet little virginal daughter, because you know I live in a box, right? So I know she called Sorrel-drool. I heard that he hauled you out of class to talk to you. He's a little wacked, isn't he? Are you in a lot of trouble?”

Am I in trouble? She lost me at the word “virginal.” It's one of those words I can't hear without blushing. “I don't know yet.”

“I'm really sorry. I had no idea my parents were going to do that. I mean, I knew they were freaks, but come on.”

Actually, I'm sort of impressed that Danielle talks to
her mother about school. It's hard to picture her with parents. She doesn't seem so controlled by anyone.

Danielle kisses me good-bye at her car door. Right in front of my house. A real kiss, deep, the tongue, the whole bit. It feels daring and reckless. I stand in the yard for several minutes after she pulls away. I don't want to go back inside and re-become Mitchell.

Contempt

My parents are sitting in the living room pretending that they aren't waiting for me. I know there is some problem. For starters, Dad is awake and Mom is sitting down.

“She's cute,” Dad says as I walk in.

“Thanks,” I answer, not sure what I'm taking credit for.

“She seems nice,” Mom adds. Her hands are in her lap. My unflappable mother looks flapped. Something about Danielle makes her nervous.

Somehow, in the last hour, our relationship seems to have changed. The couch they sit on is now miles away from where I stand, and they look small and helpless—trapped on their upholstered island. They want to talk, but there is no way I'm talking to my parents about Danielle.

“I've got homework,” I say as I disappear down the stairs.

I am not doing homework. I look at the pile of books
on my desk, which may as well have been transported here from the planet Muba. Why does anyone do homework? Everything in my life now feels silly and childish. I can't write in my journal. I don't check my e-mail. I don't call David.

The late Mitchell Wells

I wake up late, not horribly late, but latish. It takes me longer than usual to get myself out of bed. Showering, brushing my teeth, even spraying on my possibly ineffective deodorant seems to take an extraordinarily long time. Even brushing my now-shorn head takes too long. I am in slow motion. It is the opposite of a dream state. Everything feels too real.

Realities:

1) I seem to have a girlfriend. I don't know what I'm supposed to do with a girlfriend. It would be nice if Danielle came with instructions. I am, of course, making the assumption that her tongue in my mouth indicated a changed status—that face sucking means something. That I am now a “boyfriend.” But it doesn't feel like one of those
things you can ask about—it feels like I should already know. I don't feel like a boyfriend.

2) I haven't told my best friend (boy and friend, but not boyfriend) that I have a girlfriend. What do I tell David? “Hey, guess what happened to me yesterday?”

When I finally make it to school (Mom drives us; Carrie sits in the back pretending she's being chauffeured and doesn't know either of us), David isn't doing his sort of waiting-for-me-in-the-hall shuffle, but he's never there if I'm really late and I am really late, and sure enough he's already in the classroom—notebook open, pencils ready—when I show up for English with only about thirty seconds to spare. We don't have time to talk and he doesn't seem to be in talking mode anyway. David hasn't seen me since I left the party on Saturday, but he doesn't ask what happened. Maybe he just assumes nothing happened. Normally, that would be a good assumption.

Danielle sits next to me, but she always sits next to me in English, and I'm not sure that anyone else can tell there's something different about the way she is sitting next to me now. I'm not sure I can tell. She takes notes dutifully, writing down everything the substitute writes on the board. This is new. She never took notes before. Maybe now that she is dating a nerd, she feels like she needs to look more studious.

Nothing else seems different. Ms. Chimneystack talks, mainly to the blackboard, but about the book. She occasionally asks a question and Mariel answers it. This arrangement works well for both of them, and the rest of us are happy with it too. Danielle fills three pages of her notebook, as if she's been taking dictation. I've spent the entire period watching her take notes.

English ends and we walk out, pretty much like we have done all year. But this time, there is a moment in the hallway, when there are three of us standing there rather than two. Then Danielle says, “French,” because that's her next class, and I say, “Calculus,” which is what David and I both have next, and she smiles a see you later and we all go off to class.

We have said two words, neither very revealing, but it is enough to show that something has changed.

David doesn't say a word.

After calculus, David goes to German and I have a free. I don't know what Danielle has, so I hang out a little at her locker, trying to pull off David's trick of not looking like I'm hanging out at someone's locker. I don't manage it as well, and after a few minutes of pacing between the J. P. Gilley water fountain, my own locker, and the space in front of Danielle's, I give up and go to the library. I meet David again at history and I have a small attack of paranoid guilt that someone else has told him about Danielle and me, but all he does is ask me a question
about our chemistry assignment (the syllabus said
chapter 10
, pages
116
–142 but the actual
chapter 10
goes on to 146 and it wasn't clear whether we had to read those four pages—I thought we probably should), and I assume he hasn't heard, because I feel that if he had, he'd say something about it, although for the life of me I can't figure out what I'd expect him to say.

Lunch is next. David is carrying his in his backpack (he only returns to his locker twice a day as a rule) but I never think ahead, so we head off separately. I find Danielle leaning on my locker, not looking relaxed and definitely waiting for me. I consider kissing her, just a friendly peck on the mouth the way my parents often do, but they have years of practice in this protocol, so instead I stand a safe distance away and say hi in what I'm hoping is a calm tone but I suspect is more of a scared squeak. Danielle isn't smiling.

“Look,” she says. I look down at the carpet because that's where she is looking, but there isn't anything there to see. “I have a meeting during activity. Stupid prom stuff. So I'll see you at lunch, okay?”

“I have lunch now.”

“You have early lunch?” Danielle has obviously never noticed my absence from junior lunch.

“Because of Wallman.”

“Then maybe between?”

I nod. Danielle pushes herself off the locker, which brings her almost into kissing range, but she doesn't look like she wants me to kiss her and I don't try. Maybe we haven't been together long enough for public kissing. She does her less-than-comfortable-with-the-situation smile and leaves me standing there. I don't watch her walk down the hall.

In order to open my locker I need to step forward a grand total of about three steps, but it takes all of my willpower to make it there. My books have gained several pounds apiece, and my muscles strain to lift them into my locker. I know David is waiting for me at lunch.

Somehow unpredictably predictable

David is waiting for me at lunch.

“How's married life?” he asks as we sit down, breaking off half of his roast beef sandwich for me. This is an unusual gesture. I think I prefer having to beg.

“So you heard?”

“Everybody's talking about it. Nobody has a good explanation for why she's dating a loser like you.”

David's use of the term “loser” is a factual classification, not an insult. I don't have a good explanation for it either. I keep scanning his face for some sort of reaction. He is still there, still David, his chips on the napkin in front of him next to his shiny red apple. How widespread does this gossip have to be if David knows?

“It's a little weird,” I admit. “I keep wondering if I just dreamed the whole thing.”

David shrugs at this. I try to take in what it might mean if
everyone
is talking about it. As if in answer, Louis appears.

“So,” he says as he plops into the chair next to me.

“Hello, Louis,” David says evenly. “Please, pull up a chair.”

Louis ignores this sarcasm, which is easy to do since, in typical David delivery, it lacks anything approximating a sarcastic tone. Instead he looks up brightly and addresses David in a voice full of unrelenting cheer. “It's so nice to see that you're handling your squeeze double-dipping with little D. Very bigamist of you.”

David's reaction is hard to read. My face must show nothing but confusion as I try to translate.

“Quite a shocker,” Louis continues as he reaches over and helps himself to David's potato chips. “I had you two pegged for the queen and the queen of the prom. I mean, you two have been dating for—what?—almost a year now? So, Mitch, are you trading in the old stroke and swallow for a little bearded clam action?”

David looks up at me, and we take too long to respond. Louis turns to face David full on.

“Don't look so surprised, closet boy. Mitch here could go either way, even with that haircut, but you've never been on the straight and narrow.” Over the goofy smile, Louis's eyes are still and observant. He may have been just prospecting, but he knows he has hit ore. He's not about to let up.

“You can tell me,” he mock-whispers.

“You're an asshole, Louis,” David says, but his voice is more serious than it should be.

“True but irrelevant, Suckmaster Flash. You might as well have it tattooed on your cheeks, either end. You can't even lie about it. Just try. Look me in the eye and tell me that you aren't gay.”

Louis is right; I've never known David to lie. I am beginning to visibly panic, but David folds his napkin calmly and pockets his apple. He then looks Louis straight in the eye and says, convincingly, “We aren't gay.”