Two Parties, One Tux, and a Very Short Film about The Grapes of Wrath (19 page)

He says the words without inflection, but I can hear the emphasis on the pronoun.

Lately I seem to be more and more confused by pronouns

After Louis leaves, David and I don't discuss what happened. Maybe nothing happened—Louis picks on everybody, and his questioning of David might just have been his abuse du jour. But as I walk back to wait for Danielle outside the Forrest Klimer Multipurpose Conference Room, I have an attack of the uneasies.

Danielle emerges from her committee meeting looking emotionally bruised.

“I hate everyone who goes to this school,” she announces to me as I walk her to her lunch. So far, our relationship has consisted of one visit to a park, a conversation
at my locker, and two walks in the hallway. Except for the kissing part, I could be replaced by a good spaniel. “I don't hate you,” she adds as an afterthought.

“What about Nicole? I thought you two were still …”

“Don't even breathe the bitch's name. She told Ryan everything I said about him. She went and told Ryan what I said. Can you fucking believe that? I think he's screwing her too.”

As the apparent new boyfriend, I am a little put off by her concern about what Ryan is doing. I'm not sure how to voice my objections, and so instead I take an unusually avid interest in my feet, which are plodding along in Danielle's wake. I have been staring at Danielle every chance I got for years, and now I'm afraid to look at her.

Danielle stops suddenly and I almost bump into her. She faces me and tries to find my eyes, which involves a little bending. Finally I look up. “Are we doing all right?” she asks.

I nod. She isn't, I'm not, but I'm still hoping
we
are.

Her eyes search my face. I'm not sure what she's looking for. “Are you taking me to the prom?” she asks. It's more of a challenge than a question.

“Do you want to go to the prom with me?” It's a question, not an invitation.

“Okay. I just needed to know. Are we double-dating with David? Does David have a date?”

“M.C.”

“He's dating Marie Claire. That's cute. I didn't know that.”

“Mary Clarissa. They're just going to the prom together.”

“He should date her.”

Punctuation matters

I say good-bye to Danielle at the cafeteria door, wondering, but not asking, who she will sit with. I decide that I need to go to my locker before heading over to the film lab.

“Is it true?” M.C. is standing between me and my locker.

“What?”

“Carrie said she was at your house yesterday. Are you really dating Danielle?”

There are at least three good responses to this question. I could ask why she cares, I could ask why it is any of her business, or I could tell her that I'm allowed to date whoever I want to, but all I say is “Yes.”

M.C. looks at me like she's not quite sure who I am. “Wow,” she says.

We stand in the hall and stare at each other until I am totally uncomfortable. M.C. seems frozen in place. I have never known her to be at a loss for words, but here she is standing in front of me like she wants to ask me something but can't get it out. I've known her for so long, but the person opposite me in the hallway isn't the seven-year-old
who used to steal my Transformers so they could date her Barbies or the twelve-year-old who used to screech during sleepovers with Carrie.

“Are we still going to double-date for the prom?” I ask her.

“Do you still want to go with me—and David?”

“Why wouldn't I?”

“Then sure, if David is still taking me.”

“I think he is.”

M.C. nods, but doesn't move. “Could you ask him?”

“I can do that. Not a problem.”

M.C. smiles and regains her animation. “Call me tonight. Please?” Only the “please” has a question mark attached. I tell her I will.

Wallman weighs in

“Mitchell, could we talk for a moment?”

I look up from the little lump of Plasticine that I am trying my best to attach to a round-shaped armature. I was hoping for an armadillo, but this thing is most likely on its way to becoming a slug. Wallman is standing beside me fidgeting and chewing on his beard.

“Sure,” I say.

“Let's step outside.”

I follow him out of the troll cave, half expecting he will evaporate or explode when he steps through the door. We stand in the hallway, and he does look a little different in
the fluorescent light. His jeans and sweater, which are formless in the dim lab, are baggy but reasonable out here. There are no visible stains anywhere. His face is lined and furrowed in places. He is older than I thought, but mostly he looks like a teacher.

“I understand that you have been asked to appear before the Judicial Board.”

“Yes.”

“Because of the film you turned in for your English assignment.”

I nod. My first reaction is relief. At least Wallman isn't asking me about Danielle. It kind of sucks when you're relieved to be discussing your own possible expulsion.

“Was it because you had made it originally for this class? Did Curtis … Mr. Curtis consider that cheating?”

“Um… no. That never came up. It was because someone in the class, or someone's parents, thought it was … um… offensive. To their religion.”

“You're kidding.”

“No.”

Wallman looks confused. He scratches at his beard. “I was going to go talk to Sorrelson, if you wanted me to, to tell him that I thought it was okay to use the film for your English class. I could still talk to him if you want me to. Would it help if I told him that I approved the content? You should probably know that we …” He scratches his beard again. He's trying to be diplomatic,
something he never feels the need to do inside his classroom. “We don't see eye to eye.” He sighs, then gives up trying to impersonate an actual member of the faculty. “He's an ass, but you've probably noticed that. But if you want me to …”

This is not the Wallman I know. He looks smaller, almost human. He is volunteering to help because he feels responsible in some way, or he likes me, or maybe just because he's a nice guy, but he clearly wants me to say no. Of the two of us in this hallway, I'm feeling like the only adult.

“Thank you,” I tell him as sincerely as I can. “I think it will be fine. But I appreciate the offer. I really do.”

He seems relieved.

“Maybe we could skip the religious imagery in your next project,” Wallman suggests, but the joke feels a little flat. I go with it anyway.

“Don't worry, only sex and violence.”

“Good,” he says, smiling and fidgeting. He's had enough of the outside world and needs to return to the gloomy comfort of the lab.

When I get back to our construction table, David is taking a turn trying to armadilize the slug. He asks what Wallman wanted. It isn't until I am halfway through telling David what happened that I realize Wallman had just volunteered to lie to his boss on my behalf. I wonder what his relationship with the administration and the rest
of the faculty is like. Does he have friends here? I have a sudden awful vision of the world as just a much bigger version of high school, where adults still have to worry about being popular and whether someone in charge has it in for you. Please don't let that be true.

“We are a race of tit men …”—Henry David Thoreau

The world doesn't change slowly. It changes all at once. I can remember, almost to the minute, the day we became teenagers. It was somewhere around 2:20 on a Thursday afternoon in the spring of seventh grade, either the last week of March or the first week of April.

We were sitting in art class and drawing Rebecca Kessler. We each took turns being models. Fully clothed, of course; we were only in seventh grade. I was doing my best to draw something that might qualify as vaguely humanoid. Everyone else was talking about a party that had been thrown by someone in the eighth grade, which some of the girls had been invited to—somebody's house had been TP'd or something. I was not startled by the acts of juvenile delinquency. Something more important had transpired. There were now parties to which not all of us had been invited.

We were a small class. Maybe forty kids in the whole
grade at that point. Everyone went to the parties. Parties were controlled by the Mothers. Mothers sent in valentines for everyone in the class and baked cupcakes on birthdays and always insisted that everybody be invited to parties. Sometimes a party might be all guys or all girls, but the Mothers would never sanction exclusion based on any criteria other than gender. Now we were entering a world where our social lives were no longer controlled by our mothers. This new world was a much more frightening place. The pecking order would now be public, our self-esteem more tendentious, our fate more directly in the hands of our classmates. It would be harder to pretend that we were cool. Now there would be choosing, and some of us would form the ranks of the unchosen.

If this had been the only thing that changed that day, I probably could have learned to deal with it. But there was more. During that conversation, Ryan—who, by the way, was the only boy from our class who'd gone to that party—had been concentrating on drawing Rebecca. Now, by seventh grade, Rebecca had already become a junior goddess. Shoulder-length blond hair held back with a hairband, big blue eyes, always tan. She had delicate features but she was never prissy. She could wear a dress and look sweet, but she was athletic and competitive and would regularly kick butt on the soccer field.

Rebecca sat on the stool, her bare legs dangling from a short but appropriate skirt. Her knit jersey was neatly
tucked in, emphasizing her rapidly developing body. It seemed to be developing at an almost visible pace. She had tits and we knew it. I never said a word about them, but all the rest of that year the boys who knew what French kissing actually meant and talked about meeting girls at parties, girls from other schools where all sorts of things happened all the time—held lengthy discourses about Rebecca's breasts. No one claimed to have touched them. Rebecca was not an object of gossip, only admiration.

And not just ours. By the end of the year, Rebecca was dating a sophomore, and as an eighth grader she went to the junior/senior prom. Then her mom packed her off to some all-girls boarding school and we never heard from her again.

But that day, as she sat modeling for us, the world changed. We became different. I can trace it to a single moment. While I was standing there drawing, unsuccessfully trying to wrestle my pencil into at least allowing me to keep her eyes on separate sides of her nose, Ryan drew a simple line sketch. Nothing fancy, just straightforward, clean lines, proper proportions, profile. Then he did something that the rest of us wouldn't have dared to do. In one simple curved line, he drew what he saw. His profile of the seated Rebecca included her breast.

When the teacher held up Ryan's sketch, Louis laughed out loud. The rest of us stared mutely, unsure of how we were supposed to react. Rebecca blushed, but she
was a goddess; she did not burst into tears. Ms. Winslow then complimented Ryan on the drawing. She did not make direct reference to the breast, but she obviously thought the picture had been properly done. I did not give Rebecca breasts in my sketch. Yet somehow, with that line, we all crossed some sort of boundary.

Danielle's shirt has an awful lot of buttons. Little teeny buttons. It ends just above midriff and the skin underneath is pale and less firm than it looks. I hadn't intended to place my hand on that exposed flesh, but as she moves toward me on the couch I have to hold her somewhere for balance and, without thinking, I place my hand on her side. I am touching her skin. Not an arm that I see every day, but a part of her body that is usually covered by clothing. She doesn't seem to mind; in fact, she leans into me more. I haven't figured out what to do with my other hand yet, so I leave it by my side, which probably looks awkward, but I know she can't see it and I don't think we would be doing this at all if we had an audience.

We are on the couch in her living room. Her parents aren't home and Danielle says we have about half an hour, which I interpret to mean that we can make out on the couch but we aren't going to take off our clothes and jump into bed, which is in fact a relief to me. Although I've certainly imagined sex, I haven't imagined that we would
actually be having it; I think I'd want to have talked about it first. But since even kissing is new for me, I am more than happy to follow her lead. Bodies, I quickly learn, take a little adjusting to get into kissing position, and none of this comes naturally for me.

So my hand is on her side, and as she shifts, I realize that there are only a few inches between that location and the bottom of her breasts. There is enough room beneath her shirt for my hand. So do I ask? How would I phrase it? “May I touch your breasts?” Should I call them “breasts” or is that too clinical? What about “May I touch you?” Does the word “may” make me sound too formal?