Delilah breast-strokes forward, shoveling bubbles out of the way. She reaches past me for the illuminated panel and presses a button. The machine shudders to a stop. I let out a sigh of relief.
Delilah glares at me. “I cannot believe you did this.”
I grin, scoop a dollop of bubbles onto my finger, and touch it to her nose.
She wipes it away, pretending to be annoyed, but then she lifts a handful of bubbles and palms my face with it. Laughing, we fight a war in a battlefield of soap, slipping out of each other’s embrace as we tumble to the ground. Then I kiss her, or maybe she kisses me, until we’re completely enveloped in a foam cocoon, and for a few moments, neither of us cares one bit about the mess.
Eventually, though, reality comes crowding in, when the taste of Delilah begins to morph into the bitter taste of detergent. I sit up, pulling her with me. “How do we get rid of all of . . . this?” I ask, gesturing at the foamy swamp that surrounds us.
Delilah rummages in the cleaning closet and returns with a blue bucket. She scoops an armful of bubbles inside and instructs me to go dump them in the bathtub upstairs. She does the same, using Jessamyn’s spaghetti pot. We cart the evidence away one trip at a time, running cold water in the tub until the soap dissolves down the drain.
Finally we mop the floors and walls with a towel, leaving the house in an even tidier state than it was, ironically. Then we collapse onto the floor, exhausted. “I suppose I should be grateful you didn’t start your independent streak by attempting to flambé baked Alaska,” Delilah says.
Her hair is straggling out of her ponytail, and her shirt has started to dry stiffly against her skin. But despite the mess, she’s still the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.
I cup my hand around the back of her neck, pulling her closer. “You know your pupils get bigger the closer you get to me. That means you love me.”
“Or that you’re blocking my light.”
I laugh. “My girlfriend is such a romantic.” Leaning forward, I start to kiss her, when suddenly the door clicks open and Jessamyn walks in holding two large grocery bags.
Delilah and I spring apart, putting a foot of space between us.
Jessamyn’s brow furrows as she examines the two of us, still drenched and matted. “What on earth happened to you two?”
I offer my most brilliant smile. “We cleaned the house!”
A week of high school has taught me the following:
1. Packing one’s own lunch is preferable to eating the questionable mass that is served in the cafeteria.
2. Nobody actually studies in study hall.
3. The same six boys in gym class play the game of the day as if their lives depend on it, no matter if the game is dodgeball or badminton.
4. Everyone has a phone, but no one ever seems to use it to make a phone call.
5. There is something called Facebook that is neither a face nor a book.
I’ve noticed that the school isn’t divided by grades as much as it is by personality.
There are boys who insist on carrying their lacrosse sticks to each class as if it is a standard bearing the family crest. Some students take notes as though they are writing a novel, while others don’t even pick up a pen but instead paint their nailsand regard their features in the tiniest of mirrors while the teacher speaks. A roving gang of minstrels uses the school as a performing ground, riding wheeled boards down the staircase rails and hopping over concrete benches in the main entrance. There are some who look like creatures of the night, pale as the moon, with black hair and painted eyes and jewelry shaped like skulls. And then there are the girls I can’t even look at without blushing—the ones who dress in so little clothing that I asked Delilah if they work at the local brothel.
Unlike the characters in the book, however, these different sorts of people don’t seem to mix well. It is like the salad dressing Jessamyn makes: a little bit of olive oil, a squeeze of lemon, and some red wine vinegar. If whipped, they combine. But leave them to their own devices and they will sort themselves out again.
I don’t really understand this. When you have so many people, each one inevitably fascinating, why would you limit yourself to only those like you? If I behaved as most of the students in this school do, I would never have talked to Charlie, who recruited me for the fencing team, or Darrell, who sells homemade sock puppets to raise money for children in Uganda, or Tina, who is having a baby this winter. I wouldn’t have joined the drama clubandthe Ultimate Frisbee teamandthe Dungeons & Dragons society (though, truly, I was born for that). It doesn’t matter to me if the person I’m speaking with is talking about comic books, or sales at Sephora, or how many touchdowns he made at the homecoming game. I just like listening.
I guess maybe because of that, it’s easy for me to move between groups. Instead of feeling as if I’m being judged by someone different from me, I learn from them.
Today in pre-calc Mr. Elyk is explaining the standardized examination we will be taking on Saturday morning, a day we usually do not have to go to school, when I usually am with Delilah instead. The test has something to do with sitting and sounds relatively simple, since all we have to do is fully fill in the bubbles with a number two pencil. After the fifth time he repeats this, I begin to tune out, sketching mermaids and pirate ships in the margins of my notebook. Suddenly a pencil lands in front of me, and I look up. Raj, the skinny kid sitting to my left, holds up his calculator. Across the screen is a number:
I lift a shoulder, shrugging.
Raj grins and spins his calculator so that the numbers are now upside down.
“Boobs,”Raj mouths silently, and giggles.
I laugh out loud, and Mr. Elyk turns. “Edgar, is there something you’d like to share?”
