of the guys’ lacrosse team are ogling a bookstore clerk from Literature. She doesn’t seem to mind. Her glasses are the colour of liquorice.
I move through the crowd with ease, sharing nods and smiling hellos. I love this scene, this floating reality. I am a solo flier looking out over the land of Boyfriends and Girlfriends. I am three notes in the middle of a song.
Joni grabs me and Tony, pulling us into Self-Help. There are a few monkish types already there, some of them trying to ignore the music and learn the Thirteen Ways to Be an Effective Person. I know Joni’s brought us here because sometimes you just have to dance like a madman in the Self-Help section of your local bookstore. So we dance. Tony hesitates – he isn’t much of a dancer. But as I’ve told him a million times, when it comes to true dancing, it doesn’t matter what you look like – it’s all about the joy you feel.
Zeke’s jive is infectious. People are crooning and swooning into one another. You can see the books on the shelves in kaleidoscope form – spinning rows of colours, the passing blur of words.
I sway. I sing. I elevate. My friends are by my side and Zeke is working the Huguenots into his melody. I spin around and knock a few books off the shelves. When the song is through, I bend to pick them up.
I grasp on the ground and come face to face with a cool pair of sneakers.
“This yours?” a voice above the sneakers asks.
I look up. And there he is.
His hair points in ten different directions. His eyes are a little close together, but man, are they green. There’s a little birthmark on his neck, the shape of a comma.
I think he’s wonderful.
He’s holding a book out to me. Migraines Are Only in Your Mind.
I am aware of my breathing. I am aware of my heartbeat. I am aware that my shirt is half untucked. I take the book from him and say thanks. I put it back on the shelf. There’s no way that Self-Help can help me now.
“Do you know Zeke?” I ask, nodding to the stand.
“No,” the boy answers. “I just came for a book.”
“I’m Paul.”
“I’m Noah.”
He shakes my hand. I am touching his hand.
I can feel Joni and Tony keeping their curious distance.
“Do you know Zeke?” Noah asks. “His tunes are magnificent.”
I roll the word in my head – magnificent. It’s like a gift to hear.
“Yeah, we go to school together,” I say casually.
“The high school?”
“That’s the one.” I’m looking down. He has perfect hands.
“I go there, too.”
“You do?” I can’t believe I’ve never seen him before. If I’d seen him before, it would have damn well registered.
“Two weeks now. Are you a senior?”
I look down at my Keds. “I’m a sophomore.”
“Cool.”
Now I fear he’s humouring me. There’s nothing cool about being a sophomore. Even a new kid would know that.
“Noah?” another voice interrupts, insistent and expectant. A girl has appeared behind him. She is dressed in a lethal combination of pastels. She’s young, but she looks like she could be a hostess on the Pillow and Sofa Network.
“My sister,” he explains, much to my relief. She trudges off. It is clear that he is supposed to follow.
We hover for a second. Our momentary outro of regret. Then he says, “I’ll see you around.”
I want to say I hope so, but suddenly I’m afraid of being too forward. I can flirt with the best of them – but only when it doesn’t matter.
This suddenly matters.
“See you,” I echo. He leaves as Zeke begins another set. When he gets to the door, he turns to look at me and smiles. I feel myself blush and bloom.
Now I can’t dance. It’s hard to groove when you’ve got things on your mind. Sometimes you can use the dancing to fight them off.
But I don’t want to fight this off.
I want to keep it.
“So do you think he’s on the bride’s side or the groom’s side?” Joni asks after the gig.
“I think people can sit wherever they want nowadays,” I reply.
Zeke is packing up his gear. We’re leaning against the front of his VW bus, squinting so we can turn the streetlamps into stars.
“I think he likes you,” Joni says.
“Joni,” I protest, “you thought Wes Travers liked me – and all he wanted to do was copy my homework.”
“This is different. He was in Art and Architecture the whole time Zeke was playing. Then you caught his eye and he ambled over. It wasn’t Self-Help he was after.”
I look at my watch. “It’s almost pumpkin time. Where’s Tony?”
We find him a little ways over, lying in the middle of the street, on an island that’s been adopted by the local Kiwanis Club.
His eyes are closed. He is listening to the music of the traffic going by.
I climb over the divider and tell him study group’s almost over.
“I know,” he says to the sky. Then, as he’s getting up, he adds, “I like it here.”
I want to ask him, Where is here? Is it this island, this town, this world? More than anything in this strange life, I want Tony to be happy. We found out a long time ago that we weren’t meant to fall in love with each other. But a part of me still fell in hope with him. I want a fair world. And in a fair world, Tony would shine.
I could tell him this, but he wouldn’t accept it. He would leave it on the island instead of folding it up and keeping it with him, just to know it was there.
We all need a place. I have mine – this topsy-turvy collection of friends, tunes, after-school activities and dreams. I want him to have a place too. When he says “I like it here”, I don’t want there to be a sad undertone. I want to be able to say, So stay.
But I remain quiet, because now it’s a quiet night and Tony is already walking back to the parking lot.
“What’s a Kiwanis?” he yells over his shoulder.
I tell him it sounds like a bird. A bird from somewhere
