We are at my house, doing each other's homework. We try to do this as often as possible. In much the same way that it's more fun to clean up someone else's room than it is to clean up your own, doing each other's homework is a way to make the homework go faster. Early in our friendship, Tony and I discovered we had similar handwriting. The rest came naturally.
Of course, we go to different schools and have different assignments. That's the challenge.
And the challenge is what it's all about.
"What book is this paper supposed to be on, anyway?" I ask him.
"Of Mice and. Men."
"You mean, 'Please, George, can I pet the bunnies?' "
"Yup."
"Cool, I've read that one."
I start scribbling a topic sentence, while Tony flips through a French-English dictionary to finish my French homework. He takes Spanish.
"You don't seem very surprised about Joni," I say.
"Saw it coming," he replies, not raising his eyes from the dictionary.
"Really? You pictured Ted and me catching them in the hallway?"
"Well, not that part."
"But Chuck?"
"Well, not that part, either. But face it. Joni likes having a boyfriend. And if it's not going to be Ted, it's going to be someone else. If this guy Chuck likes her, odds are she's going to like him back."
"And you approve of this?"
This time he looks right at me. "Who am I to approve or disapprove? If she's happy, then good for her."
There is an unhappy edge in Tony's voice, and it doesn't take leaps to get to the source of it.
Tony's never really had a boyfriend. He's never been in love. I don't exactly know why this is.
He's cute, funny, smart, a little gloomy--all attractive qualities. But he still hasn't found what he's looking for. I'm not even sure he knows what that is. Most of the time, he just freezes.
He'll have a quiet crush, or even groove with someone who has boyfriend potential . . . and then, before it's even started, it will be over. "It wasn't right," he'll tell us, and that will be that.
This is one of the reasons I don't want to dwell on Noah with him. Although I'm sure he's happy for me, I don't think his happiness for me translates into happiness for himself. I need another way to buoy him. I resort to speaking in a nonexistent language.
"Hewipso faqua deef?" I ask him.
"Tinsin rabblemonk titchticker," he replies.
Our record for doing this is six hours, including a lengthy trip to the mall. I don't know how it started--one day we were walking along and I just got tired of speaking English. So I started throwing consonants and vowels together in random arrangements. Without missing a beat, Tony started to speak back to me in the same way. The weird thing is, we've always understood each other. The tone and the gestures say it all.
I first met Tony two years ago, at the Strand in the city. It's one of the best bookstores in the world. We were both looking for a used copy of The Lost Language of Cranes. The shelf was eight feet up, so we had to take turns on the ladder. He went first and when he came down with a copy, I asked him if there was another up there. Startled, he told me there was a second copy and even went back up the ladder to get it for me. After he came back down, we hung together for a minute -- I asked him if he'd read Equal Affections or A Place I've Never Been, and he said no, Lost Language of Cranes was his first. Then he drifted off to the oversized photography books, while I got lost in fiction.
That would have been it. We would have never known each other, would have never been friends. But that night as I boarded the train home, I saw him sitting alone on a three-seater, already halfway done with the book we'd both bought.
"Book any good?", I asked as I hit the space in the aisle next to him.
At first he didn't realize I was speaking to him. Then he looked up, recognized me, and half smiled.
"It's very good," he answered.
I sat down and we talked some more. I discovered he lived in the next town over from mine.
We introduced ourselves. We settled in. I could tell he was nervous, but didn't know why.
A cute guy, a few years older than us, passed through our car. Both of our gazes followed him.
"Damn, he was cute," I said once he'd left.
Tony hesitated for a moment, unsure. Then he smiled.
"Yeah, he was cute." As if he was revealing his deepest secret.
Which, in many ways, he was.
We kept talking. And maybe it was because we were strangers, or maybe it was because we had bought the same book and had thought the same boy was cute. But it was very easy to talk. Riding the train is all about moving forward; our conversation moved like it was on tracks, with no worry of traffic or direction. He told me about his school, which was not like my school, and his parents, who were not like my parents. He didn't use the word gay and I didn't need him to. It was understood. This clandestine trip was secret and special to him. He had told his parents he was going on a church retreat. Then he'd hopped on a train to visit the open doors of the open city.
Now the city lights ebbed in their grip over the landscape. The meadowlands waved in the darkness until the smaller cities appeared, then the houses with yards and plastic pools. We had talked our way home, one town apart.
I asked him for his phone number, but he gave me an e-mail address instead. It was safer that way for him. I told him to call me anytime, and we made our next set of plans. In other circumstances, this would have been the start of a romance. But I think we both knew, even then, that what we had Was something even more rare, and even more meaningful. I was going to be his friend, and was going to show him possibilities. And he, in turn, would become someone I could trust more than myself.
"Diltaunt aprin zesperado?" Tony asks me now, seeing me lost in thought.
"Gastemicama," I answer decisively.
I'm good.
It's hard for me to concentrate on Tony's homework, with so many things to think about.
Somehow I manage to write three pages before my brother comes downstairs and offers to give Tony a ride home. Of all my friends, Jay likes Tony best. I think they have compatible silences. I can imagine them on the way back to Tony's, not saying a word. Jay respects Tony, and I respect Jay for that.
I already know that Tony won't give me any advice about what to do with Noah or Joni or Kyle. It's not that he doesn't care (I'm sure he does). He just likes people to do their own thing.
"Lifstat beyune hegra," he says when departing. But his tone holds no clues. Good-bye?
Good luck? Call Noah?
I don't know.
"Yaroun," I reply.
Good-bye. See you tomorrow.
I head back to my room and finish my homework. I don't look over what Tony's already written. I'm sure it's fine.
I spend the rest of the evening in a television daze. For the first time in a long time, I don't call Joni. And Joni doesn't call me.
This is how I know she knows I know.
Dangling Conversations
The next morning, I look for Noah and find Joni instead.
"We've got to talk," she says. I do not argue.
She pulls me into an empty classroom. History's great figures -- Eleanor Roosevelt, Mahatma Gandhi, Homer Simpson--look down at us from posters on the walls.
"You saw us. Ted saw us."
It isn't a question, so I don't have to answer.
"What's going on?" I ask instead. Implied in that question is the bigger one: Why didn't you tell me?
"I wasn't expecting this to happen."
"Which part? Falling for Chuck, or having to admit it?"
"Don't get hostile."
I sigh. Early signs of defensiveness are not good.
"Look," I say, "you know as well as I do what Chuck did after Infinite Darlene rejected him.
He trashed her locker and bad-mouthed her to the whole school."
"He was hurt."
"He was psycho, Joni." (I don't mean to
say that; it just comes out. A Friendian Slip.) Joni shoots me the look I know so well -- the same look she shot me when she dyed her hair red in sixth grade and I unsuccessfully tried to pretend it had come out well; the same look she shot me when I tried to convince her (after the first break-up) that getting back together with Ted wasn't the best idea; the same look she shot me when I confessed to her that I was worried I'd never, ever find a boyfriend who loved me the same way I loved him. It's a look that stops all conversation. It's a look that insists, You're wrong.
We've been best friends too long to fight each other over this. We both know that.
"So have you talked to Ted?" I ask.
"I wanted to talk to you first."
I think she's doing the wrong thing. My intuition is clear on this: Chuck is bad news. But I know there's nothing I can do to convince her to change her mind. Not without proof.
"So are you, like, Chuck's girlfriend now?"
Joni groans. "Remains to be seen, okay? And how are you doing with your Mystery Boy?"
"I have to find him again."
"You lost him?"
"Suppose so."
I say good-bye to Joni and head to Noah's locker. I see Infinite Darlene and duck past her--
I'm sure by now she's heard about Joni and Chuck, and I'm sure she'll have loads to say about it.
I also pass Seven and Eight in the halls, their heads leaned gently into each other, their words impossible to overhear. Their real names are Steven and Kate, but no one has called them that for years. They started going out in second grade and haven't been apart since. They are the one-percent of one-percent who meet early on and never need to find anybody else. There's no way to explain it.
Noah is waiting by his locker. No--let me change that. He is standing by his locker. There is no sign in his posture or in his gaze that he is waiting for anybody.
"Hey," I say. I scan his features for a reaction. Surprise? Happiness? Anger?
I can't read him.
"Hey," he says back closing his locker.
"I'm sorry about yesterday," I continue. "Did you get my note?"
He shakes his head. I'm a little thrown.
"Oh. I put a note I your locker. I tried to get here right after school, but ten thousand things got in my way. I really wanted to be here."
He can't read me, either. The confusion is on his face. He doesn't know if I'm being since.
"Locker two-six-for, right?"
"Two-six-three."
Oops. I apologize on behalf of my pathetic memory and then ask him what he did last night, trying to ease things into a conversation.
"I painted some music. You?"
"Oh, I fought a fast fire." When I don't have anything interesting to say, I usually y to make up something interesting. Then I take one last stab at sounding impressive: "And I started thinking about the Dowager Dance. I'm going to architect it."
"What's the Dowser Dance?" he asks.
I forgot he's new to the school. He has no idea what I'm talking about.
For all he knows, leally do fight forest fires in my free time.
I start giving him answers, explaining away the Dowager Dance and the organization fury of Lyssa Ling. But instead of giving answers, I want to be king him questions. What does he mean by "paint some music"? I'm happy I'm here? Does he want me to stop talking? Because I keep talking and talking. I am telling him about the time Lyssa Ling tried to sell bagels with fortunes baked inside them as a sixth-grad fund-raiser, and how the shipment was switched and we got the fortune bagels that were supposed to go to a bachelor party, with XXX-rated slips of paper inserted into the dough. It's a funny story, but somehow I am making it boring.
I can't stop in the middle, so I go on and on. Noah doesn't walk away or nod off, but he's certainly not riding my tangent. I'm barely on it myself.
"Thank God I found you!"
It's not Noah saying this. It's Infinite Darlene, right behind me.
"Am I interrupting?" she asks.
Now, I really like Infinite Darlene. But among all my friends, she's usually the last I introduce to new people. I have to prepare them. Because Infinite Darlene doesn't make the best first impression. She seems very full of herself. Which she is. It's only after you get to know her better that you realize that somehow she's managed to encompass all her friends within her own self-image, so that when she's acting full of herself, she's actually full of her close friends, too.
There is no way I can expect Noah to understand this.
I try to send Infinite Darlene a look to let her know she's interrupting, without actually telling her out loud.
It doesn't work.
"You must be that boy Paul likes," she says to Noah.
I turn Elmo red.
"And boy," Infinite Darlene continues, "you sure are cute."
The first time Infinite Darlene talked to me like this, I stuttered for days. Noah smiles and takes it in stride.
"Now, are all the girls at this school as nice as you?" he asks. "If so, I'm definitely going to like it here."
He looks right at her as he says it. And I can tell that even Infinite Darlene is a little taken aback, because it's clear he's seeing her just as she wants to be seen. So few people do that.
With two sentences, he's managed to win over my most critical friend.
I am in awe.
I am also mortified by Infinite Darlene's declaration of my liking. Sure, I'm about as smooth as a camel's back . . . but I was still trying to win him over with my own sweet plan (whatever that might be).
Of course, Infinite Darlene will only let a beat last so long before stepping in again.
"Is this awful, vile rumor I hear actually true? Break it to me gently."
"Do you mind if I derail for a second?" I ask Noah, then quickly ; add, "Please stay."
"No problem," he says.
That settled, I face Infinite Darlene. In heels, she is easily six inches taller than me. In an effort to break it to her gently, I talk to her chin.
"It appears that Joni has started something with--"
"Stop!" Infinite Darlene interrupts, stepping back and holding up her hand. "I can't take any more. Why, Paul? Why?"
"I don't know."
I am not about to argue with a football captain who has long fingernails.
"Haven't I taught her anything?" Infinite Darlene is clearly exasperated. "I mean, I know she has bad taste. But this is like licking the bottom of your stiletto."
Clearly, Infinite Darlene still feels some hostility toward Chuck.
"I have to find that girl and talk some sense into her," she concludes. I put up a show of trying to dissuade her, but we both know there's no way I'm going to stop her. She leaves in a huff.
"Friend of yours?" Noah asks, eyebrow raised.
I nod.
"I'll bet she's always like that."
I nod again.
"I feel very calm in comparison."
"We all do," I assure him. "This is the kind of stuff I was dealing with yesterday when I should've been here."
"Does this happen often?"
"Not this specific thing, but there's usually something like it."
"Do you think you could escape the crisis for a few hours this afternoon?"
Since Infinite Darlene blew my cover so thoroughly, I decide to take a risk.
"You're not asking me just because I like you?"
He smiles. "The thought never crossed my mind."
We don't say any more than that. I mean, we say things--we make plans and all. But the subject of us is dropped back into signals and longing.
We make plans for after school.
I'm going to help him paint some music.
Painting Music
Noah's house is in a different part of town than mine, but the neighborhood looks just the same. Each house has a huge welcome mat of lawn sitting in front of it, bordered by a driveway on one side and a hedge on the other. It should be boringly predictable, but it's not really. The ho
uses are personalized-- a blush of geraniums around the front stoop, a pair of shutters painted to echo the blue sky. In Noah's yard, the hedges have been made into the shape of lightbulbs--the legacy of the former owner, Noah tells me.
He lives close to the high school, so we walk the bendily cross-hatched roads together. He asks me how long I've lived in town, and I tell him I've lived here my whole life.