Love and Other Words

The only reason I made it through freshman and most of sophomore year was because of Elliot—and Dad’s willingness to spend nearly every weekend up in Healdsburg. The weekends we were up there were spent reading, tromping through the forest, and on occasional outings to Santa Rosa. Once, Elliot and I even ventured together as far as a concert all the way down in Oakland. Elliot was more family than friend, but over time, he became more personal in some ways than family, too.

But what all of this closeness meant was that whenever we missed a weekend at the cabin, the intervening weeks seemed interminable. We both did well in school, but I hated the social posturing and politics of high school friendships. Nikki and Danny felt the same about it, and were always zero drama—we spent lunch together every day as a group of outcasts-by-choice, sitting on a sloping patch of grass and watching most of the chaos unfold.

But after school, Nikki went to spend time with her grandmother, Danny went home to skateboard with the kids on his street, and I carried out my weekday routine that felt nearly ritualistic: swim practice, homework, eat, shower, bed. That we did nothing together outside of school made it hard to form very tight emotional bonds with them, but all three of us seemed oddly fine with it.

As spring of sophomore year wound down, I grew acutely aware of Elliot becoming . . . more. Not only intellectually, but physically, too. Seeing him only on weekends and during the summers made it feel like I was watching a time-lapse video of a tree growing, a flower blooming, a field sprouting across the year.

“Favorite word.” He shifted on the pile of pillows, eyes moving over me. They were doing their own catch-up, apparently.

It was May 14, and I hadn’t seen Elliot since my sixteenth birthday weekend in March—the longest we’d gone in nearly two years. He was . . . different. Bigger, somehow darker. He had new frames, thick black ones. His hair was too long, his shirt stretched tight across his chest. His jeans skimmed the tops of his black sneakers. New jeans, then, too.

“Tremble,” I said. “You?”

He swallowed and replied, “Acerbic.”

“Ooh, good one. Update?” I settled in, picking up a book of Dickinson Dad had left on my bed.

“I’m considering learning to skate.”

I glanced up at him, eyes wide. “Like ice skate?”

He glared at me. “No, Macy. Like skateboard.”

I laughed at the emphasis he put on the word, but stopped when I took in his expression. In a pulse I wondered whether he was learning because he knew it was something Danny did . . . “Sorry, it’s just . . . maybe just say skateboard.”

He nodded tightly. “Anyway. I saved up and am looking into boards.”

I bit back a smile. The boy was so hopeless. “There has to be a website that has lingo or something.”

He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes, annoyed.

“Sorry. Go ahead.”

“Also,” he said, staring down at his shirt as if engrossed with the hem, “I’m taking some of my classes next semester at Santa Rosa.”

“What?” I gasped. “Santa Rosa as in college?”

He nodded.

“As a high school junior?” I knew Elliot was smart, but . . . he was still only a sophomore now, and already qualified for college courses?

“Yeah, I know. Biology and . . .” He blinked away, suddenly fascinated with something in the corner of the room.

“Biology and what, Elliot?”

“Some math.”

“ ‘Some math’?” I gaped at him. He’d finished advanced calc already? I mentally glared at my impending algebra course.

“So the skateboarding is maybe to help me bond with some of the students in my grade.”

The vulnerability in his voice made me feel like an enormous jerk. “But you’re with them every day at school. Right?”

He was quiet, watching me. “Yeah, after school. At lunch.”

“Wait. You’re not in classes with kids in your grade now?”

“Only homeroom.” He swallowed and attempted a smile. “I’ve been working on my own at school but I’ll start this semester at SRJC.”

I glanced down at the book in his hand. Franny and Zooey. It was dog-eared because we’d each read it several times.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were so special?”

He laughed quietly at my question and then it transitioned into a full-on laugh attack.

“Sorry,” he said, slowly catching his breath. “I don’t really think of it that way.”

I stared at him, trying to figure out why he thought it was so funny.

“It’s just been this semester,” he explained. “And, I don’t know.” He looked up and suddenly seemed years older. I had a preemptive pang for our lives in the future, wondering whether we’d be close like this forever. The possibility that we wouldn’t was revolting to me. “It didn’t seem like the right thing to include in an email because it seems sort of braggy.”

“Well, I’m super proud of you.”

He bit his lip through a smile. “Super?”

“Yeah. Super.” I lifted my head, shifting my pillow. “What else is new?”

“There’s a new ‘skate park’ ”—he made quotation marks with his fingers and a teasing little grin—“just past the Safeway, though I’ve been learning in the beat-up parking lot behind the laundromat. And, let’s see . . . Brandon and Christian are going hiking in Yellowstone for a month this summer with Brandon’s dad.”

His two closest guy friends. “You’re not going?”

He shook his head. “Nah. Christian is already talking about how much booze he’s going to hide in his suitcase, and it sounds like a mess.”

I didn’t press. I couldn’t really see Elliot hiking in Yellowstone anyway.

“Go on.”

“Went to a prom,” he mumbled.

The sound of tires screeching to a halt echoed through my head. Taking classes at a junior college seemed tiny compared to the magnitude of this omission.

“A prom? But you’re a sophomore.”

“I went with a junior.”

“Was he cute?” I swallowed my more honest, bitter reaction.

“Ha ha. She is fine looking. Her name is Emma.”

I made a face. He ignored it. “ ‘Fine looking,’ ” I repeated. “What a roaring compliment.”

“It was pretty boring. Dancing. Punch. Awkward silences.”

I grinned. “Bummer.”

He shrugged but grinned back. Not a half-hearted half smile—a full, eager one. But it slowly straightened as my expression darkened. I remembered the name Emma, and the cute, rosy-cheeked preteen in the photo on his bulletin board.

“You mean the same Emma from that picture?”

He gave a deliberately casual shrug. “Yeah. We’ve known each other forever.”

Forever. My stomach twisted. “Did you get lucky?” I asked, keeping my tone light.

His eyes narrowed and he shook his head. “No . . . I’m not sure I like her like that.”

Not sure?

“Does it matter for guys?”

He continued to stare at me, confused.

“Did you kiss her?”

His cheeks pinked, and I had my answer.

Elliot had kissed someone.

Maybe he had kissed a lot of someones.

I mean, of course he had. Not everyone was as picky and socially stunted at the romance game as I was. Elliot was turning seventeen in a matter of months. It seemed almost laughable that I imagined he was innocent in the way I was. I was sure he’d done a lot more than kissing. My blood seemed to sour inside my chest, and I let out a little growl at my lap.

“Why are you so mad all of a sudden?” he asked quietly.

I kept my head down. “I don’t know.”

After all, Elliot was just my friend.

My Everyfriend.

“What’s your update?” he asked.

I looked back up, eyes flashing. “I had my first orgasm.”

His brows lifted, his face grew red, and his mouth formed about a hundred different shapes before he spoke. “What?”

“Or. Gaz. Um.”

“You’re . . . sixteen.” He seemed to realize at the same time I did that this wasn’t actually all that scandalous an age.

“You mean it’s shameful to be so old?”

He let out a nervous laugh.

“Besides,” I said, looking up at him, “you’ve had one. Probably lots and lots, thinking about dragons.”

His neck flushed bright red and he sat up, sliding his hands between his knees. “But . . . only by myself.”

His words sent a cold flush of relief through me, but my temper was already off and running. “Well, what did you think I meant?”

His eyes suddenly fixated on my hands. “Oh. So no one . . .”

“Touched me?” I lifted my chin, struggling to not look away. “No.”

“Oh.” He swallowed audibly. All around us, the blue walls seemed to close in.

“Is that a weird update?” I asked.

He shifted where he sat. “Sort of.”

I felt mortified. The blush I’d been fighting seemed to explode beneath my skin, and I wanted to roll over, press my face back into my pillow. I’d been jealous, trying to get a rise out of him, and had basically just thrown his own honesty back in his face. “Sorry.”

“No, it’s . . .” Elliot scratched his eyebrow, pushed his glasses up his nose, rallying. “It’s good you told me.”

“You said you did it, too.”

He cleared his throat, nodded sternly. “It’s normal for guys my age.”

“So it’s not normal for girls?”

With a cough, he managed, “Of course it is. I just meant—”

“I’m joking.” I closed my eyes for a breath, working to get my own craziness back under control. What was with me?

“What did you think about?” The last word of his came out sticky, caught in a slightly strangled voice.

I stared at him. “I thought, ‘Holy hell, this is amazing.’ ”

He laughed, but it was awkward and high-pitched. “No. Before. During.”

I shrugged. “Being touched by someone else like that. Do you still think about dragons?”

His eyes flickered over every part of me all at once. “No,” he said, not laughing at my joke even a little. “I think about . . . wrists and ears, and skin and legs. Girl parts. Girls.” His words all ran together and it took me a beat to separate them.

Girls? My blood heated with jealousy.

“Any girls in particular?”

He opened a book, thumbed a page. He held still like he did when he omitted information. “Sometimes.”

That was the end of the conversation. He didn’t ask me anything else and didn’t offer more.