Things Change Page 6

  "What's wrong?" he whispered. "Why can't I touch you?"

  "You are touching me," I said softly. "Kissing is touching, holding is touching, hugging is touching. Let's go slow, okay?"

  Paul moved his left hand away and slammed it hard off the steering wheel. He sat there for a minute; I could see the activity going on behind his eyes.

  "I didn't mean to make you angry," I said softly. I was looking at him, trying to figure things out. What is the difference? When is it groping, and when is it touching? Was it okay to do these things if you called someone your boyfriend? I'd been down this road once before, with Ty. I thought he liked me, but I soon saw what he wanted from me. Maybe if my Dad saw me with Ty, he might have appreciated how tough I could be. "I just don't want to be rushed again."

  "Again? It sounds like you speak from experience." There was an angry and jealous tone in his voice.

  "You should talk; I know all about you and Carla." I knew it was a mistake the minute it was out of my mouth. Was I this juvenile? This jealous? The earth should open up and swallow anyone as stupid as me.

  He took a deep breath. "There's not much to know. It just didn't work out."

  "That's not what I heard." I really hadn't heard anything, but I was dying to know and too afraid to ask him directly.

  "What did you hear?" he came right back at me.

  "Brad told me about the two of you." That wasn't exactly true. Brad had only told me that she went to South High.

  "Let's change the subject. I never ever want to hear that name again," he said sharply.

  "Paul, is there something wrong?" The bounce had vanished from his voice.

  "No, I just don't want to talk about it." He eyes were glued to the floor, and he was biting his bottom lip.

  "Paul, is there something about Carla you want to tell me? Are you hiding something?" I thought that I had a pretty good sense of when people were lying to me. Paul leaned toward me; his forehead was resting against mine. I could hear his words, but I couldn't see his eyes.

  "Trust me." He kissed his own fingers, then put them over my lips. "Now you're the next contestant on true romance con­fessions."

  "His name was Ty. It was over last May."

  "How long did you go out? What was he like?"

  I shifted uncomfortably in the seat. I started picking at the upholstery. "We only went out for a couple of months. We had nothing in common. He was just somebody I knew from the neighborhood. My parents didn't like him."

  "Not like they love me."

  I laughed. "Anyway, they couldn't stand him, and I guess after a while he didn't like me too much, either." I was revealing far more than I wanted. Maybe we should have just kept making out. This was a lot more intimate and personal and embarrassing than Paul sliding his hand underneath my T-shirt.

  "Well, I'm not the smartest guy in the world," Paul said, leaning in toward me again. He took his hand, rubbing it softly against my lips, then the side of my face. "But at least I'm not as stupid as Ty. You are wonderful. He's an idiot not to want to be with you."

  "I was thinking the same about Carla."

  "Let's promise, then, that we won't talk about those losers again, because we're pulling out of here to win," Paul whispered.

  "Promise," I said. Who needed the past when I had in Paul a wonderful present.

  "You know, I thought Pam was your boyfriend," Paul said with a grin.

  "What?" I must not have heard him right. "Pam is my best friend."

  "She's a dyke, you know that, right?" Paul said, making it sound like it was well-known.

  "Pam isn't gay!" I said with great confidence. "Who told you that?"

  "That's what everybody thinks. So if you're spending time with her, people think you're gay, too. That's why I didn't kiss you right away. I thought you were like her, but I guess I was wrong about that," he said, leaning in toward me.

  "You're wrong about Pam," I insisted. Pam and I were best friends; she couldn't keep something like that secret from me. We told each other everything. Paul was just wrong, but I could tell his mind was made up.

  "I think you shouldn't hang out with her anymore," Paul said, then pulled me toward him. "I think you'll find time with me a lot more fulfilling, if you know what I mean."

  He laughed, then turned up the music. Even as we started kissing again, I was hoping the heat in my face would dry up the tears welling behind my eyes. I could taste these tears. It was a flavor, a very sweet flavor, that I had never tasted before, but I knew. I knew. My waiting and wanting was over.

  ELEVEN

  Dear Dead Dad:

  It's Paul, again.

  I am sitting here with you all around me.

  I guess it's been about a month, all the way since September, since I've been here at room 127 of the Atlas Mini-Storage. I started seeing that girl Johanna. I spent three solid years wanting Vickie, three years smashing my head into a wall of rejection. I decided, like with Carla, if I couldn't get what I wanted, I would start getting what I needed.

  You notice I don't come here much anymore. After work I'll go home and call Johanna or send her an E-mail. I pick her up first thing in the morning, and we drive into school together. She is the last person I talk to before I go to bed. When I am in school, I look for her. I smile just knowing her. We spent last Saturday afternoon just driving around in the Bird, listening to the Boss, and laughing. There is no fear. I can't explain it, maybe because I don't understand it. I don't understand any of it, but I never understood anything that happened with Carla, either.

  I first saw Carla about a year ago when I was taking the SATs in my junior year. That, and the fact I didn't study anything much the night before—except the ingredients listed on the Stroh's bottle—explained why I tanked them. I had to work the first go-around, so I had to go over to South High to take the test. If I was going to go to Stanford with Brad, I had to do well. So, there I was, and I saw her, two rows over. She was tall; she was gorgeous. Not like Vickie, no one was like Vickie, but something special. She had this crazy red hair: It looked like her head was sprouting oranges. She was wearing a black leather jacket, dark blue jeans, and a white T-shirt. I couldn't take my eyes off her, even as they handed out the test and went over the instructions. Once the test started, I would read a question, tell myself, okay, you are not going to look up at her. Buckle down and answer the question, but I couldn't control myself. Every time, my eyes wandered over to her. She was concentrating so hard, putting her pencil in her mouth, trying to suck the right answers out. I lost it. She got done well before me. She wasn't the first to hand in her test, but she got done pretty quickly. She was going to hand in that test, leave the room, and I would never see her again.

  I had to decide.

  It took just a second. I got up and handed in my test with about 75 percent of it complete and followed her out of the classroom. She was bundling herself up in her jacket and putting on a long black scarf. She had stepped outside, and I decided to make my move. I was tired, a little hungover, and pissed off at myself. It was enough of a combination to hurl me over fears of rejection and take a risk. I had nothing to lose.

  "Hey, was that some test or what?" I tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention.

  "Sure." She looked confused, but not upset.

  "I think SAT stands for Staring at Time."

  "Maybe." She smiled, but didn't laugh.

  "Or maybe Seeking Another Thought, or maybe Shit! Another Test!"

  She laughed. Sometimes you had to go right to the blue material. "Hi, I'm Paul."

  "Carla." I waited, and she finally responded, putting out her hand. I took a quick look to make sure there was no class ring branding those long, lovely fingers.

  "I go to Pontiac West," I said, a little more confident now.

  "I figured. I don't remember seeing you."

  "I would certainly remember seeing you." I threw a Hail Mary pass; it was now or never. "Hell, a blind man would remember seeing you."

  She laughed, pu
tting her hand over the top of her mouth, ending her performance with a small eye roll. "Oh, that's funny."

  "Really? That's kind of my calling card." I shoved my hands in my pockets so she wouldn't see them shaking. "Actually Sprint is my calling card, although I have been known, despite repeated advice to the contrary, to dial 0 rather than 1-800-Collect."

  She didn't say anything, only flashed a nice smile. I took that as a good sign.

  "I'm so tired. I was up all night studying." It wasn't true, but she didn't need to know that.

  "I know, me, too," she said, then yawned.

  "Do you wanna get some coffee?" I pushed my foot out in front of me, rubbing my toe across an imaginary line. I was channeling Brad; no way I could do this alone.

  She hesitated for a minute, looking at the ground in front of her. I had blown it, so I forged ahead. Nothing left to lose. "Your boyfriend is probably coming to pick you up, probably after he's done with football practice where he bounces linemen off the ground like they had Superballs in their butts."

  "He doesn't play football."

  "Then I'm not scared of him, so will you have a coffee with me?" I saw her blush; she kind of shrugged her shoulders. "We need to recover from the SAT: Students Accepting Tension. Maybe SAT stands for Smart-Ass Trial." She laughed and followed me out to the Bird.

  "You are too funny," she said. And she smiled; that smile was all I ever needed.

  I was having a good morning. I had cracked her up a couple of times, almost getting her to spit her caffe latte through her nose. Turned out her boyfriend was a basketball player. She waited until we were sitting at Starbucks to tell me.

  "But maybe we can be friends." I let it go for a second. She didn't know what a trigger that was for me. She didn't know the many different ways Vickie had said that to me. I just sat there blowing the heat off my coffee, which made sense as Carla had just blown all the heat out of me. We sat in silence for a bit, then I stood up and walked away from the table. I refilled my coffee, then stopped by the coffee bar. I grabbed a pitcher of cream and a few packets of sugar, then returned to the table.

  "Well, Carla, let me tell you something." I pushed my black coffee into the middle of the table. "I'll drink my coffee black, but I would like it better with cream and sugar."

  She just looked at me, again with the small head shakes. "What do you mean?"

  "Look, I don't know you, so I don't have anything to lose here." I poured cream and sugar into my coffee, then mixed them together. "Coffee is good, but it's better like this. If you want, we can be friends. That is fine with me. But I think we could be better than that."

  "Paul," she said, but I couldn't read her tone. She looked a little shocked, a little confused; but mostly, it seemed, she looked interested. She didn't slap my face, and she didn't leave the table. She just kind of sat there, taking it all in, waiting for me to make the next move.

  I took a deep breath, imagined what Brad would do, and then took a pen out of my pocket. "Carla, I enjoyed meeting you. I even enjoyed maybe failing the SAT because I cared more about looking over at the shape of your beautiful face than figuring out square roots. I'm sorry you just want to be friends, but if you change your mind . . . " I scratched out my E-mail address on a napkin and pushed it over to her. I hoped she didn't notice my hand was shaking, and it wasn't just from the coffee working its magic on me.

  I didn't even look back as I walked out the door.

  When I got the E-mail from Carla on Tuesday morning, Dad, I couldn't believe it. She told her boyfriend about me on Saturday, they broke up on Sunday, she missed school on Monday, then E-mailed on Tuesday. I E-mailed her back, and we got together right away. We started spending all of our time together and became consumed with each other. Turned out, she had had lots of boyfriends, which intimidated me. But then I figured I could learn from their mistakes, which was something I had never been too good at.

  I didn't even want to go to my stupid junior prom, but she insisted. It was our worst fight ever. Before that day in May, we would break up, get back together, fight some more, and then she would try to end it; but I wouldn't let her leave me. After the prom we were making out and I was pushing myself on top of her, but she kept shoving me off. I decided to end it once and for all with a hard smack of the back of my hand across Carla's face a couple of times. That turned out to be the end, but that smack across her face certainly wasn't the first, just the worst.

  Nobody knows about this. Brad suspects, but he doesn't know for sure. Johanna will never learn about this, because I'm not going to be that way again. I know Carla. She won't tell anybody, because she doesn't want anyone to know about it either. I have kept this a secret, Dad, and so can you. After all, I've kept your secret all these years. It's the least you can do for me.

  TWELVE

  I looked at my watch, maybe for the twentieth time in the past ten minutes, as if looking at it would have some effect. I stood waiting on my front porch in the early November cold. I never even invited Paul into the house anymore. My parents had no use for him ever since that first date when I missed my curfew. I could tell they were just waiting until we broke up so they could prove once again that they were right and knew more about how to run my life than I did. They had done everything but forbid me from going out with him, but spend time with him is just what I did the day I got off being grounded last month. Not only did they not like Paul, but I knew they resented how much time I spent with him. Sometimes I thought they were even jealous.

  I put my hand over my mouth, stifling a yawn. I was exhausted. Paul and I had talked until past midnight; then when my mother screamed at me to get off the phone, we IM'd for another hour. Paul was now bringing me to and from school every day, and normally we would spend our lunch together in his car or anyplace we could be alone. Instead of eating lunch with Paul today, I took time to get caught up with Pam, since I didn't even see her anymore for our bookstore ritual. Paul had changed his work schedule, so he and I usually spent Saturdays together. I knew Pam was happy for me, but I just couldn't find time to see her anymore.

  I looked at my watch again, then chewed on my thumb before sticking my hands in my pockets and out of the cold. Why cant he be on time? I thought. I’m always on time for him and especially tonight when we are celebrating our two-month anniversary I reached up and touched the star-shaped earrings he gave me. I wore them all the time. I didn't take them off for any reason. I started to go for my watch again, but I felt guilty. Paul bought me this great gift and had been so nice to me the past two months. It was silly to be mad just because he was running a little late. It was just a mistake. He always made up for it when he made a mistake.

  From a distance I heard that sound I had come to love: the churning sounds of the Boss battling the Firebird's aging muffler for noise rights. The Firebird turned into the driveway, and Paul jumped out of the car.

  "Forgive me, my lady fair." He went down on one knee. "I offer only a slight gift as an act of forgiveness."

  "Speaking of acting—"

  Before I could finish, Paul produced a single red rose. "For thine gift explains and, I hope, forgives my tardy nature."

  "Paul." I just shook my head; he was always giving me gifts.

  "A rose by any other name is a rose is a rose is a rose, blah, yadda, blah."

  "Its beautiful." I leaned over to kiss him on the cheek.

  "What's this cheek crap?" Paul said, switching from the accent of a Shakespearean actor to that of a street tough. "Can I get some lip action here or what?"

  I stood up, and I gave him a big hug, then the kiss on the lips he had requested. I sensed that maybe my mother was watching me; I must have smelled the smoke in the air, so I held the kiss for a long time. "Can't you be serious?"

  "I can be serious any time!" Paul said, holding his finger in the air as if making an important point. "I can be serious any time I'm not being funny."

  "Let's go; we're already running late." I gave him another hug and started toward the c
ar. He followed and opened the door for me. "Brad and Kara will think that we've—"

  I couldn't finish, because on the seat there were the other eleven roses.

  "What? You thought I only sprung for one rose?" He started sniffling and pretending to dry his eyes. "I am deeply hurt. I mean what kind of person do you think I am?"

  "A wonderful one," I said, the words choking out of me as I picked the roses up and sat down in my seat in his Firebird.

  "I'm really sorry I'm late," Paul said, backing out the driveway slowly. My dad had told me to tell Paul that the next time he left rubber in his driveway, he would be cleaning if off with his tongue. Since then, his exits from my house had become less dramatic.

  I put the roses on my lap, then cuddled up next to him. "How was work?"

  "It was the best day at work: payday!" He was smiling as he said it. He pulled me closer to him. "I promise you every Thursday when I get paid, I'll buy you something. What is your favorite thing in the entire world—other than me, that is?"

  "That's a silly question." I didn't need Paul to buy me gifts. In fact, part of me didn't feel I deserved it. I wasn't as wonderful as he thought I was, and I kept wondering when he was going to figure that out.

  "Joha, I'm being serious here," Paul continued. "What could I bring you each week that would make you happy?"

  "Well, I really love ice cream." That was putting it mildly. I was once happy to envision thoughts of living my life in my parent's basement, eating ice cream and reading fantasy novels all day until they would come with the forklift to take me to an early, but very happy, grave.

  "Ice cream it shall be!" Paul said, snapping his fingers. "There's a Baskin-Robbins just down the street from Sand's Pizza. What flavor?"

  "Peanut butter," I said without hesitation.