The Other Girl: A Midvale Academy Novel Read online

  But I shouldn’t think about him. I should study.

  Which I did until I heard the thump of a lacrosse ball against plaster. It was a familiar sound in Proctor 307—the boys’ room, in the biggest, rowdiest boys’ dorm, named for Jebediah Proctor, the great-grandfather of our former roommate, Marcy Proctor. Gideon was awake. The room took shape for him and, an instant later, for me: it was a large, pleasant space under the eves with wooden floors, single beds tucked into its shadows, and a row of desks along one wall. Outside one window was the tree that made Proctor 307 one of the most desirable rooms on campus—it was easy to sneak out of. Decoration was sparse: A Beyoncé poster over Cullen’s bed and a framed print of Jean Seberg in Breathless hanging on Nicholas’s closet. That pretty much said it all.

  No posters for Gideon—just the photo of me that he reached for right now and smiled at. At moments like that, I think I loved being in Gid’s head, even more than I loved being in his presence.

  Then a cell phone was ringing: Apple bottom jeans and boots with the fur! Cullen’s. “Hey, Pilar! You guys aren’t coming over tonight? You have to study? Whatever. That is such bullshit. OK. Later.”

  Gid thought, Wire and fruit. He saw Pilar’s breasts. He shook them out of his head. Whatever. He pictured my breasts. My breasts were next to Pilar’s in his head for a second. He closed his eyes and threw hers away.

  Cullen got off the phone with Pilar and started bouncing a lacrosse ball against the wall again. “I’m pissed PBJ and Mads aren’t coming over. I like hanging out with them. I feel like they’re always about to have a fight and maybe, like, rip each other’s clothes off.”

  Gideon imagined Madison pulling Pilar’s shirt in such a way that those breasts were half exposed. Put your shoes on, dumb ass. Shit. Where are my keys? He tried to remember where he’d put the keys to the BMW that he had kind of but not really won in a bet about his virginity. “Whatever,” he said out loud. He said this about Pilar a lot. Did it mean whatever for her, or did it mean that sometimes you just can’t get what you want? His thoughts never got worse than this. I kept waiting, but they just didn’t. He always whatevered himself before he thought something I really couldn’t bear.

  Nicholas was using a Bunsen burner to make green tea out of distilled water. He was obsessed with health, fitness, and aging in a way that was amusingly female. “Madison and Pilar are nuts,” he said. “Did you know they’re, like, going to work together this summer? I mean, how much time can two people spend together?”

  “We spend a lot of time together,” Cullen said, feeling Nicholas’s butt.

  Nicholas just shook his head. He thought the best way to deal with Cullen’s idiocy was to ignore it, and he was probably right. “We should go soon,” he said. “I will be really pissed if they’re out of it.”

  Cullen snorted. “Cullen, honestly, can you imagine the WMDT having a late-afternoon run on superglue?”

  Vectors would have to wait. I couldn’t study with them going to the WMDT—World’s Most Depressing Target—for superglue. For something. What?

  Gid picked up a blue T-shirt printed with red letters that said SKI DEER VALLEY—BAKED. Underneath the writing was a drawing of a pot leaf with a face, wearing skis, flying over a mogul. His keys were underneath the shirt. “What a surprise,” he said, throwing the T-shirt to Cullen.

  Cullen took the opportunity to change, and ran his large hands appreciatively over his muscular chest. “You’re a slob,” Gideon said.

  Cullen pointed at Nicholas. “At least I’m not gay.”

  Nicholas sniffed. “I don’t need to deflower poor unsuspecting Midvale freshmen to prove I am heterosexual,” he said.

  “No,” Cullen said, “you just have to not be gay. And that’s freshwomen to you. OK. Fresh pussy!”

  Gideon laughed out loud. “You are so fucking ridiculously stupid,” he said to Cullen.

  “You’re right,” Nicholas nodded at Gid. “When you’re right you’re right.”

  “Oh yeah,” Cullen said. “And when you’re a giant pole smoker with a picture of a dude on your closet, you’re a giant pole smoker with a picture of a dude on your closet. Look. If I’m so stupid, how come I’m the one who thought of the most amazing plan in the world to make Cockweed look like a douche bag and totally get back at him?”

  “Jean Seberg,” Nicholas said haughtily, “is considered one of the most beautiful women in history.”

  They all went into the hall and Gideon locked the door. Two freshman boys were sitting on the ground doing trig problems together. Star struck, they looked up at Gideon, Cullen, and Nicholas.

  Cullen walked up to one of them. “What’s up, Ethan? Joe?”

  “It’s Etan,” the kid said.

  “It’s Giles,” said the other.

  “Whatever, you’re both gay,” said Cullen. “OK. Someone with no tits and a shaved head is…fill in the blank.”

  “A dude?” Etan bit his thumbnail.

  “Yeah,” Giles nodded. “A dude.”

  A few minutes later Cullen, Gid, and Nicholas were on the road that went from Midvale to the highway. It was a picturesque, tree-canopied, curving road lined with distantly spaced old houses. Very few cars passed them, but those that did were of a classy, expensive European sort, all with windows sealed up to keep in the climate-controlled air and the pure, dignified sounds of Mahler and NPR. Gideon drove five miles over the speed limit, whistling. It was quiet for a while, and then Cullen sing-songed, “I love you too, Gideon.”

  I wondered when that was going to come up.

  Nicholas snorted. “Yeah, I can’t believe you’re still going to lame-ass Oswego with the g.f.” This is what Nicholas and Cullen call me behind my back. It evokes perfectly the worst things they feel about me and our relationship. They like me, I guess, but nowhere near as much as they’d like Gid to be free to pursue idiocy with them.

  “It’s not Syracuse, it’s Buffalo,” Gid said. “Oswego is in the Finger Lakes region and—”

  “Did you just say the Finger Lakes?” Cullen said. “Because that just reminds me of all the girls you’re not going to finger in St. John.”

  Gid said, with a patience cultivated from months of being in love in the presence of two heartless bastards said, “I have a girlfriend.”

  As they continued down the road there was a lonely stretch of marshland, followed by a subdivision.

  “Oh Christ,” Nicholas said. “Do you know that not only are you going to miss out on the best snorkeling ever—”

  “And hot, sandy beave!” Cullen piped up.

  “But that one day,” Nicholas continued, “you’re going to live in one of those giant beige mansions with a highway sound barrier in your backyard. With Molly.”

  This made me feel better. I can get to thinking that these two fuckheads know Gid better than I do. But we would never live in a subdivision.

  “You’re going to look back at all this and think…I don’t know…” Nicholas stroked his ribs.

  “I do! I know what you’re going to think,” Cullen shouted. “You’re going to think, I missed out on a lot of snatch.”

  They pulled into the Target parking lot. They attracted a lot of attention, three clean-cut handsome sixteen-year-olds getting out of a large BMW. Housewives in dingy sweats with bad dye jobs glared at them as they closed minivan doors around their sniffling offspring. Boys their age with mustaches and baseball hats tracked them out of the corner of their eyes as they trudged to their after-school jobs. I really don’t ever want to get kicked out of Midvale. I got written up today. I get written up twice more and I think I am fucked. I don’t want to be the guy sucking down that last Marlboro Light before the four-to-eleven shift at Applebee’s.

  They traipsed through the store. Passing the Intimates section, Gid caught sight of a pair of silky pink underwear, and when he let his finger brush them—Cullen and Nicholas were safely ahead—he shivered and asked himself, Am I really this simpleminded?

  They came out of Target with th
ree bottles of superglue.

  Gid drove home. The guys fell asleep, and he listened to Radiohead and thought about the way the fluorescent light in the store left a little twinkle of light on the sheen of the underwear’s silken fabric. A twinkle of promise.

  Back at school, they parked the BMW on the street, on the road above the chapel.

  Minutes later, inside the darkened chapel, they squeezed tiny drops of superglue onto the chair joints. This prank was very them. Clever and stupid all at once. They worked quickly, silently, and with solemn dedication, as if they were carrying out a mission for the French Resistance.

  “Be careful not to get it on your skin,” Nicholas whispered. “It will give you lymphoma.”

  “Lymphoma, huh? Another entry from the Book of Medical Facts by Nicholas,” Cullen said.

  When he first got to Midvale, Gideon had been totally accepting and reverent of every piece of holistic health bullshit that came out of Nicholas’s mouth, and every lame-ass piece of Cullen’s chick advice. But now he saw them more clearly. They were funny, they were fun, they were his friends. But even if he was really as stupid as they tried to tell him he was, they were stupid too. “OK, guys,” Gid said. “This is good enough. Let’s go.”

  “We gotta get all of them. We want Cockweed to be chiseling superglue off these for years,” Cullen said.

  “Guys?” Gid whispered. “Keep your voices down. There are no leaves on the trees now. Sound travels.”

  “Jesus,” Cullen said. “Listen to fucking Hiawatha here, tellum talk story. All right. Our work is done.”

  Gid watched the confident, happy faces of his roommates as they made their way back to Proctor. He hated Cockweed just as much as they did, and his whole body buzzed with the pleasure of illicit fun. He pulled the Hat That Changes Everything down over his ears. Nicholas and Cullen, who’d grown up skiing the Rockies and the Alps, weren’t even wearing hats. Don’t forget, Gid told himself, you’re lucky, but you’ll never be as lucky as these guys. Watch yourself.

  Gideon would never have told me all that, not in so many words. I knew next time I saw him he’d be feeling a little vulnerable, and I would of course treat him with extra tenderness.

  And the next time we had sex I’d be wearing silky pink underwear.

  Back in his room, Gid lay on his bed. He sent me a text message.

  Want me to come over?

  I did want him to come over, but I had to study. And besides, since Pilar and Madison weren’t going to sneak into Proctor to party tonight. I texted back, Wait for Buffalo.

  No girl has ever been sorry about making a guy wait for sex. Gid was sweet. He wasn’t totally like other guys. But he wasn’t totally unlike them either. Now that I had turned him down, he would be supernice until we did it.

  OK, going to study now too, CU tomorrow. Ur so hot.

  I wrote, UR 2.

  I went back to vectors. Edie was still reading. I wanted to say, “I’m glad we’re hanging out tonight,” but naked expressions of sentimentality didn’t go over well with Edie. So I just said, “Maybe later we can watch Lost or something. I need to catch up before the new season.”

  She didn’t smile, but she did nod and say, “OK.”

  An hour passed, and I was deep into a line of figures and symbols and other nerd stuff when suddenly I heard Cullen shout, “Suck it!”

  “What the fuck?” Gid said. “God. You scared the crap out of me.”

  “Madison and Pilar are coming over. And get this. Pilar said she wants to see you before she leaves.”

  Cullen ran around the room doing war whoops.

  I got a sick feeling as I waited to see what Gid thought about all this.

  Wire. Fruit. A brief image of Pilar getting out of a pool in a white bikini, coming toward him, slipping her hands under the straps. Me, in a sundress. Why did I get the sundress? Me again. Pilar was slipping away. But: I guess it would be fun to hang out with Pilar.

  “Dude, did you hear me? Pilar totally wants to, like, take your balls and put them so far down her throat.”

  I texted Gid as fast as I have ever texted anyone in my life.

  Come over.

  I thought u were wrkin.

  I was going to get a B on this test if I stopped now. I tried to access some part of myself where I cared, but I couldn’t find it fast enough before I wrote:

  Done w work!

  CU soon.

  “I’m going over to Molly’s.” He thought, I am relieved. I don’t want to deal with Pilar.

  Did that mean, I don’t want to deal with Pilar because she is a pain, or I don’t want to deal with Pilar because…Oh, Jesus. I was driving myself nuts.

  Gid was brushing his teeth. His roommates were telling him he was a pussy. It was business as usual. The white bikini was gone. He was thinking of me.

  I knew I should just leave him to temptation. If he stayed and nothing happened between them, and all he did was think she had nice boobs and a nice ass and gorgeous hair and then she went her merry way and it was over…but since I could, why shouldn’t I just get him out of there? This is what I told myself every time I used my being inside Gid’s head in this way: why shouldn’t I?

  “Edie,” I began. “Gideon…”

  But she was already grabbing her blanket, pillow, book, and flashlight. “Good thing I charged this,” she said as she went out the door.

  That made me feel bad.

  More than ever I wanted to tell her I was in Gid’s head. That I just couldn’t help myself, not just because I was in love, but because I had the very special power to ensure, almost beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I would never lose him. Surely she would understand. Well, after I convinced her I wasn’t crazy she would understand.

  I got up and went to the door. Edie was already halfway down the hall, so very small from this perspective, a corner of her blanket trailing behind her. I wanted to call after her. But Gid was on his way and, for better or worse, that was all I really cared about.

  Chapter Four

  The moment the door was shut behind us, I began to kiss Gideon up and down his neck and run my hands over his chest. “You are so sexy,” I murmured into warm skin. “You are adorable and special and the best!”

  “Whoa,” he said, slipping his hands under my shirt, “what did I do to deserve such—”

  But I covered his mouth with my hand and unbuttoned his shirt.

  “Wow,” he said, when I took off my pants. He gave me that same look of adoring wonder he’d given me when I’d taken off my bra in the chapel. “I love that underwear.”

  It was always good, but this time it was even better than usual.

  After, we lay there in my little bed, me packed against the wall and Gid on his side propped up on an elbow. We were cozy. We were happy. Pilar Benitez-Jones was probably sitting on Gid’s bed right now, annoyed that he wasn’t there, unable to believe he could pass up the opportunity to flirt with her when he could be having sex with me. Or this is what I liked to think she was thinking.

  I looked into Gid’s eyes. He was thinking about Buffalo, about walking through the train station holding hands, about standing in some hideous form of precipitation between rain and snow, waiting for my parents to come get us.

  “I was really nervous telling you I loved you this morning,” he said.

  “I know. I mean…I can imagine that,” I said.

  “I…I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but…” He trailed off.

  I pushed myself up on one elbow. “What?” I said.

  “It’s not me…it’s Cullen and Nicholas. They like you. It really doesn’t have anything to do with you. It’s just…they put a lot of pressure on me to, like, be with other girls.”

  I blinked a few times. “Do you want to be with other girls?”

  “No!” he said emphatically. He hugged me and pinned me down. His face was right over mine. “It’s just that the guys bug me. I don’t even know why I am telling you. It’s not that I want to do what they say anymore. It�
�s just more like…how annoying it is.” He lay back down. “I mean, you must have people in your life telling you not to be so serious about anyone, you’re so young, etc.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “But I mean, they don’t know how we feel about each other. They’re not us.”

  I thought of Mrs. Gwynne-Vaughan and my enormous pile of ATAT information and the scholarship.

  “No, they’re not us,” Gideon said, turning his face toward me and shifting his body closer. His eyes were inches from mine. “They aren’t even like us. I mean, I guess…maybe…some people just meet the person they’re supposed to meet when they’re young, right?”

  Ever since the first moment I got inside Gideon’s head, I had been dying to hear him think this. I hadn’t even dreamed of hearing him say it.

  “Maybe we’re each other’s true love,” Gid said, swallowing. His face was soft and vulnerable. “Maybe we feel this way because we’re just meant to be together forever.”

  We were intertwined again, making out. I had never felt so close to him before. All the anxiety about my grades, about Pilar, about Edie and the question of whether our friendship would survive my relationship with Gid fell away, and there was nothing in the world except the two of us in this bed, kissing.

  It was like this for a while. Then a thought of Gid’s intruded: My leg is falling asleep. I moved. My arm is cramped. I shifted to set it free. I hope I can do this again, he thought. I tried to help in this area as well. I think I was helping a lot. Gid’s mind whirred around images of various body parts. I recognized mine in there, and he thought, This is working.

  We kept kissing and everything seemed to be going just fine when, all of a sudden, I saw what had made his mind stop shuffling images and the image he’d rested on that had made him stop worrying that he was too tired to do it one more time. There was a body in his mind, but those weren’t my breasts, my legs. I saw hair—longer than mine, similar in shade but darker, bigger, long looping curls that snaked around the curves. The pieces came together, and suddenly I saw the whole thing. It was wearing a white bikini.