I looked down at him in my lap. He squeezed his eyes shut, hurting and wired. To me this didn’t say Percocet. “Doug.”
“Zoey,” he said evenly. His very evenness dripped sarcasm.
“Are you okay? You don’t seem okay.”
He licked his lips, just a tiny pink stroke, upside down. “I didn’t want to take these pills because they’re addictive. It’ll be hard enough for me to get a swim scholarship after all this. The last thing I need is a painkiller addiction. But the hospital warned me if you wait until the pain is unbearable, the pills don’t take the edge off.”
“Oh.” My concussion was bad enough. I could only imagine what Doug’s broken leg felt like when the IV wore off, he hadn’t taken Percocet yet, and he realized he was caught.
I placed my fingers on either side of his forehead and rubbed his temples. Even though he was upside down, I could tell he reacted properly. He tilted toward my fingers, tensing at the pressure and relaxing all at once. He went still. I kept massaging him for a long time. His skin was hot.
Finally I reached into my backpack on the floor and snagged my electronic sudoku. Ahhh, I still had problems, but nothing more pressing than where the nine went on the grid. Minutes passed. The conversations on the bus settled into a lulling hum. The van reached the four-lane.
Just when I’d exhausted my possibilities horizontally on the grid, Doug sighed. Without opening his eyes, he rolled just enough to turn his head to the other side on my leg. I returned to sudoku. The land of numbers was stark, with white columns towering in a white room, but familiar and predictable. I relaxed here, wiggled my toes in the sand.
I hadn’t yet exhausted my possibilities vertically when he sighed again. This time when he turned his head, he shook it a bit as if to place as much as possible of his longish black hair behind him to cushion his hard skull on my harder leg bone.
The van was freezing. Coach didn’t play around when he turned on the air conditioner. But I pulled off my swim team sweatshirt—carefully, so I didn’t wake Doug. I folded it in fourths.
I paused, sweatshirt in one hand, the other hand poised beside Doug’s head. We were already taking up the backseat of the van together. He lay in my lap. Putting the sweatshirt under his head would be the next step in making him comfortable. It was the least I could do after what we’d been through together last night. Yet my arms tingled and my face flushed hot. For the first time ever I was glad not to be wearing a sweatshirt on the van. I looked up to see if anyone was watching me. It didn’t seem possible I could be blushing like this for no reason.
Fourteen backs were turned. Even fifteen and sixteen didn’t pay attention to me. Mike and Lila arm wrestled with their elbows on a calculus textbook, which I thought was weird. They’d brought their calculus homework on the bus. I usually finished my calculus homework during class, though sometimes I did extra problems for fun. And Mike was actually speaking to Lila. Mike never spoke.
But no one was watching me.
Gently I scooped up Doug’s head with my hand and slipped my sweatshirt underneath.
As I laid his head down, his eyes opened. Intense green stared up at me in the afternoon sunlight streaming through the van’s back window.
And then he was gone again, head turned on the sweatshirt pillow.
I picked up sudoku and tapped it to turn it back on. But now I didn’t feel comfortable holding something hard so close to Doug’s face. U.S. 98 wasn’t the most evenly paved highway, and I didn’t want to bang his nose with my electronics in addition to whacking his leg with my Bug. I didn’t feel comfortable touching him either. There was no place to put my hands. I tucked them under my thighs.
And stared down at Doug, drugged, sleeping hard. Black stubble barely shadowed his upper lip and chin and cheeks. His eyes were closed, his eyelashes long, his lips soft with sleep. He was a beautiful boy. It was hard to imagine him going to juvie in ninth grade, or getting suspended in tenth grade for fighting in the hall outside history class, or calling me a spoiled brat last night.
Even though he wore his own swim team sweatshirt, he was cold. His arms were folded tightly across his chest. His sweatshirt bunched around his ribs and stopped there, exposing a flat expanse of tanned stomach and a V of fine black hair that started around his inny belly button and pointed downward.
I wondered if blond hair dusted Brandon’s belly, and whether he was an inny or outy. I’d seen him without his shirt plenty of times. In the hot afternoons behind the concessions counter at Slide with Clyde, sometimes he’d bare his chest. My dad let him do this because we sold a lot more ice cream that way. And I’d rubbed my hand across Brandon’s bare chest not half an hour ago. But all I’d ever noticed was how big and muscular and tan he was. Little things like fine hair and his belly button hadn’t occurred to me. Strange that I could share the ultimate intimate moment with a boy without any intimacy at all.
He hadn’t even taken his shirt off when we’d done it last Monday. I had always thought my first time would be more of an event, with more leading up to it. Brandon had had enough sex with enough different girls that sex with me didn’t reach event status.
But I knew we would get there. I never would have pictured us as a couple before, but now that we shared this bond, I could see us staying together through high school graduation and even into college if he got his football scholarship to FSU.
Doug had nobody. Other than that girl from Destin, I’d never heard of him asking someone out since—well, me, in ninth grade. I wondered if he’d ever had sex.
Despite myself, my eyes traveled back to his flat stomach dusted with fine black hair. From underneath his cargo shorts peeked the gray heathered waistband of his underwear. I wondered whether they were boxer briefs or maybe plaid flannel boxers, but I couldn’t see farther than that waistband. His underwear disappeared into the dark.
Now it wasn’t just my face burning and my arms tingling. I was tingling in places that Doug was nowhere near touching, so why did I feel guilty? This had nothing to do with Doug. The non sequitur tingling must be what happened when you had sex for the first time and then got a concussion and thought you’d had sex again when you didn’t and then found out you wouldn’t be alone with your boyfriend for at least a few more days. That is, brain damage.
With a gasp I returned to the swim team van jerking across “repairs” in U.S. 98 that had done more harm than good. Doug snuggled his cheek deeper into the sweatshirt in my lap but didn’t wake.
Then I looked up at Stephanie Wetzel staring at me over the back of the second seat. I wondered how long she’d watched me look down Doug’s pants, and how quickly this would get back to Brandon.
Looking isn’t cheating. Brandon had said this to me a million times on our lunch break at Slide with Clyde. He would seem deeply absorbed in relating his troubles to me about the latest girl he really liked. Then his eyes would follow an entirely different girl’s ass across the food court, and I would punch him playfully for being a hypocrite. Looking isn’t cheating, he would say. The only difference was that those girls had looked back at Brandon and given him a knowing smile. Doug had no idea I was looking, and if he knew, he would just laugh and say something in that sugar-sweet sarcastic voice of his. Zoey Commander thinks I’m hot. Hoo-ray.
Except he’d asked me out this morning.
In the end I stopped torturing myself and allowed myself to look at him. Stephanie couldn’t tell what I was staring at. I could say I was staring into space. And Doug was a lot more interesting than sudoku’s white landscape of numbers. The landscape of numbers made me feel more sane and the contours of Doug’s body made me feel less sane. But in this controlled insanity maybe I could exorcise what was eating me. I let my eyes and my mind wander.
“GO, LYNN!” I CALLED. IF SHE could find an iota more power inside her, she could win the women’s 100 fly. On second thought, I screamed, “Go, Stephanie!” She was part of this heat too, and I didn’t want anyone to think I was dissing her because she was
giving my boyfriend rides.
But before Stephanie or Lynn touched the wall, I sank to the front row bleacher. I’d felt disoriented since I’d followed Doug limping into this fancy natatorium. I’d thought the problem might be that for the first time since I’d joined the varsity team, I was in the stands with screaming friends and parents from five schools rather than in the locker room, getting ready to swim. Or that instead of focusing on the pool in front of me, my mind was on Doug lying on the bleacher behind me, still half asleep. Now that I was getting really dizzy, I decided to cheer from a sitting position for the rest of the heats.
My muscles tensed. My body ached to stretch out and swim. I watched my teammates so closely that I was down in the water with them. I could feel their muscles work, then burn and tire, and the cool water swirling past their bodies. I could tell how fast their times would be before I saw them. I didn’t take notes on my clipboard because the host school would give Coach a computer printout of the times for the whole meet, but I was so keyed into times that I guesstimated them automatically.
Even when I wasn’t watching the clock, I knew which runs would be personal records. And not because of some internal clock I’d constructed from attending so many practices, but because I knew my teammates’ bodies, the ways they moved when they were on, or tired, or distracted. That included Doug. Before the boys touched the wall at the end of the 200 free, I knew they were slower than Doug’s personal best, which he’d bettered every meet this season before we came to a screeching halt in the wreck.
I bet Doug never watched anyone this way.
At the end of the meet, my headache came back. It was kind of funny actually. Watching Connor and Ian in the final heat, I felt a twinge at their first turn. By their second turn I knew the culprit was the headache and not the fact that I’d stared at the pulsing water too long with my eyebrows in knots. By their third turn the golf ball was back, banging against the inside of my skull. By their fourth turn I was looking at my watch to see whether the recommended four hours had elapsed since the last dose of painkillers I’d swallowed during the meet. I stared at my watch dial for a long time. People with concussions needed digital.
The heat ended. Everyone knew what the finish meant toward the point count. Fans of the home team sprang from the bleachers, cheering that they’d won the meet. We came in third out of five. Normally I would have gone with my teammates into the locker room and bitched with them about the officiating, and that one chick from Apalachicola who was like a Creature from the Black Lagoon, and the fact that we would have won or at least come in second if we’d had Doug.
The headache anchored me to my seat. I couldn’t have withstood the escalating pitch of the excited girl-squeals in the locker room. And if Mike sang the boy-band falsetto on the van, I would kill him.
Four tall boys from other schools called to Doug. He brushed past me, maneuvering down the bleachers to the floor to talk to them. They pointed to his splint. He held it out to show them, nodding and then laughing. They’d come to the meet expecting to lose to Doug. They couldn’t believe their luck. They wanted to know how long he’d be out—that is, how long their luck would run. I knew this though I couldn’t hear them. Their voices mixed with the echoes of the crowd in the natatorium. Every word sounded five times.
Suddenly Doug’s finger was under my chin, tilting my face up so he could look into my eyes. I had no idea how long he’d been crouching in front of me, propped on his crutches. “This is why I came,” he said. “I figured you were running on adrenaline this morning but you’d crash tonight. And I knew you’d come to the meet, because you’re such a dork.”
“I love it when you talk dirty.” This was not the thing to say. Doug was telling me he cared about me. He’d come to the meet to watch over me. I should say the right thing and then we would have a little conversation. He would feel comforted because he’d connected with another human in the very small way that was the only way Doug ever connected with anybody. He’d limp back to the van and fall asleep to sweet dreams. I couldn’t think of the right thing to say.
“Go take some Tylenol,” he told me.
“I can’t,” I whispered. “It won’t be four hours for another hour.”
“Go—take—some—Tylenol,” he said in the stern voice of my mom when I talked back.
I found the bottle in my backpack and swallowed three pills at the water fountain. Relaxed against the painted cement block wall (ah, nice and cool) and stared into space for a while. Followed my teammates to the van. Leaned heavily on each seat as I passed. Thank God the backseat was empty. I would still need to argue over it with Doug, but at least I could argue lying down. He was welcome to share the seat with me. Lying down in more cramped quarters shouldn’t bother him. With Percocet on his side, he could fall asleep in a mosh pit.
7
“Zoey! Doug!”
“What,” I grumbled into the seat. I could tell from the way my face resisted movement that the fabric texture had imprinted itself on my skin.
“Captain Anderson’s!” Keke sang. Captain Anderson’s in Panama City was my favorite tourist trap seafood restaurant. And there was no way I was getting off this van. My headache had faded, but I was asleep. Gone. Checked out of the ocean-side resort.
“Fuck off,” Doug said. His voice came from right beside me. I was lying on my stomach, so he must be lying on his side against the seat back.
The front doors slammed, and the side door rolled shut.
A stuffy silence settled. Even though night had fallen, the van was too warm with the air conditioner off. Welcome to Florida.
Doug slid along my body, backing out one end of the seat without disturbing me. Now that plenty of seats were available, he wanted his own. Fine. I spread out over the whole seat like an ice cube melting, liquifying faster as my fingers touched the upholstery still hot from his body. Dreams of him were better than the real thing.
A creak and a thump. He cranked open one window, then another.
His weight flattened the seat padding as he slid next to me again. It made sense for him to return. He’d have to lie with me when the team got on the van anyway. And if he felt as bad as I did, he wanted to move as few times as possible.
Back to dreams of him. He probably couldn’t help his knee touching my thigh.
“Zoey,” he said, reaching into the Bug. He lifted me out and carried me across the grass. Behind us, the Bug exploded (the deer had wandered to the shoulder and was peering at us through the trees). Even as tall and solid as Doug was, the shock wave slammed him to the ground. He twisted in midair so he took the brunt of the landing and I was cushioned on top of him.
“Doug, I’m so sorry,” I murmured.
“It’s not your fault,” he whispered. “Hush now.” His knee pressed my thigh. His knee nudged my thighs open as his tongue opened my mouth. He kissed me hard in the soft rain. I shivered.
I TOOK ONE MORE BREATH THROUGH my nose as the van came to life around me. Without opening my eyes I knew exactly what had happened. I’d gotten cold when Coach turned the air conditioner on, and I’d snuggled close to Doug. I recognized his scent of sea and chlorine. Now we’d parked at our high school. The lights were on and the team gathered their bags and shuffled through the door. Every one of them probably peered into the backseat to see what Doug and I were up to.
But maybe Doug wouldn’t know I’d snuggled up to him. Maybe he was still asleep and I had nothing to worry about. I opened my eyes.
He was staring down at me.
I jumped in surprise.
“Sorry,” he said. “I wanted to make sure you had normal pupil reflexes.”
I started to ease up into a sitting position, but something held me down. Doug’s long fingers circled my arm. His thumb pressed my wrist.
“Checking your pulse.” He let me go. “Now it’s sped up.”
Was he telling me he knew I’d dreamed about him? I asked casually, “What would my pulse tell you anyway?”
“Do I l
ook like a doctor?” He bent down. I bent too, to grab his crutches for him, but he’d already snagged them from the floor.
He crutched up the aisle. At the sliding door he paused to say something to Keke. She nodded. Then he placed the tips of his crutches carefully on the pavement outside the van and heaved himself down. I couldn’t see him fall but I heard him yell, “Fuck!”
“Zoey, girlfriend,” Keke called back to me. “You’re spending the night with Lila and me so we can keep an eye on you.”
Gabriel said something about girl-on-girl-on-girl action. Lila vaulted over two seat backs to slap him. Everyone remaining on the bus gathered around them to watch. Everyone, that is, except Mike. Right in front of me, he bent to stuff his belongings into his bag, then turned for the door.
As he turned, he looked straight at me. Then he looked away just as quickly so I’d think his eyes were simply wandering as he exited the bus.
But I’d seen it. And he’d blushed. As if he’d witnessed everything I’d done to Doug in the grass beside the wreck, and he was embarrassed for me that I’d do such a thing while I had a relationship with Brandon.
Or as if he were angry Doug had asked him to lie to everyone, including Brandon, and pretend he hadn’t seen what I’d done.
Or . . . like he wanted to get out of the van before I could ask him any questions about the wreck. Like he knew something I didn’t.
“Come on, girl.” Lila pulled me.
“I can’t stay with you,” I murmured. “My dad expects me home.”
“Doug said your dad is gone and your mom is out of town and we need to keep an eye on you,” Keke informed me.
Your mom is out of town. I laughed at this euphemism. At least Doug wasn’t spilling the beans about her. As long as nobody knew about it, I could keep pretending it hadn’t happened.