Thursday (part 2)

Around the time my lunch came surging back up my esophagus was when I also got my brain back. Meredith was a dear—she drove slowly and carefully, trying to avoid sudden starts or stops, and never once complained about the mess I'd made. Forget Brandon Chambers, Naked in School: let me be Brandon Chambers, Boyfriend of Meredith Levine for the rest of my life, and I'll be happy. Except for that whole nausea-in-the-aftermath-of-anti-pot-treatment. Ugh. Have you ever tried to drive the 220 while nauseous? I do not recommend it.

"Would you like to come in," I asked. She'd stopped the car in the driveway and I was pretty sure she didn't want to leave. I didn't want her to either. "No, seriously, you should stay for dinner or something." Watch me brainstorm. I was making this up on the spot. "I have to cook all the time, I've gotten pretty good at it. And I've got to do something to thank you for putting up with me." Not the part about cooking, I can do that. But the rest of it.

She smiled at me. "Sure. That sounds nice."

"Good, that's settled," I said, smiling too. At least, until I opened the car door and tried to stand up. "Oh-kay, maybe it'll be dinner for one, I'm not sure my stomach likes food right now."

Meredith giggled, kissed me on the cheek, and took my arm.

"This place is big, isn't it," she said to me as I led her through the white, sterile hallways.

"Yeah," I said, "too big for one person. That's why I keep bringing girls home. It's too quiet in here." She laughed, but I think she knew I wasn't really joking.

The kitchen was in its usual state of order and stainless-steel serenity. Greta, the housekeeper, did most of the organizing and cleaning, though I'd been known to pitch in on occasion. Sometimes that made finding my way around the kitchen difficult, because where Greta might store something and where I might look for something, could be two completely different places, but for the most part we got along.

"First," I said, and got some aspirin. "You want something to drink?" I filled a glass with water, swallowed two tablets and chased them down with a mouthful of water, used the rest of the glass to rinse out my mouth from the lingering puke-taste (Yum!), then turned to see if Meredith wanted anything. "Do you want something to—"

She was sitting on one of the high stools that serviced the island. (For those of you unfamiliar with architecture, that's a freestanding counter not connected to the wall.) I'd tossed the aspirin container on it while I went for some water, and she was staring at it... Or maybe past it. Through it. What was she seeing?

"Why, do you need one," I asked.

"No, " said Meredith, not moving at all except to expel that single word.

Then she seemed to realize what she was doing (whatever that was) and looked up at me. "I do have a question, though."

"Shoot."

She gave me a lopsided grin and mimed firing a gun at me. "No, seriously. We..." She hesitated for a long moment. "We haven't done anything yet. I mean... You know. Haven't fooled around or anything. Were you... Were you intending something to happen tonight?"

I blinked at her. "No, I wasn't." No, I wasn't? I sound like a fucking eunuch! "Not that, like, I wouldn't mind something happening, but, like..."

"I mean, I know how it was like with Jane," she said. "And... It's your Program week and all that. So, I guess, I was just wondering."

I said, "No, Meredith, I don't want to have sex with you."

She smirked. "Riiiight."

Watch him dig himself deeper, folks! "Okay, more accurately. I do wanna have sex with you, but there's other things I wanna do with you more than I want that. I like being around you. I like talking to you. I like just holding you. And sex is... Well, I mean, it's sex, it's cool. But not if it means forfeiting that other stuff. I want the other stuff. If I just wanted sex, I'd have taken more advantage of The Program. I didn't. I don't want that. I want..." Deep breath, try not to sound overly sappy or outrageous, ignore just how many lines you may be stepping over: "I want you."

She stood up and flowed into my arms. "Well, you've got me." And she rested her head on my shoulder and we stood there for a long moment, feeling only the dual rise and fall of our synchronized breathing.

"Do you have any idea," I said, "how scared I was of how you'd react after you'd heard about Arie and I? Today, I mean. After I'd let you rescue me from impotence in the face of psychology experiments. I would've given anything to get you to put your hand down, because... I mean, what if you'd heard what Arie had to say and then decided you hated me? And you'd just gone and blown me? How awful would that be?"

"About as awful as this," Meredith said, her eyes shining, and kissed me. For a long moment everything—the cold of the floor and the air, the reddish late-afternoon light slanting through the windows, the vague whispers of trees and birds—were gone, replaced only by the softness of her lips, the deftness of her tongue, the smell of her skin. She was warm and alive in my arms. I could feel faintly the beat of her heart.

"You," she said, "are just the sweetest man."

"At least I'm not dizzy anymore, or I'd be on the floor," I said, a little grumpish, and she laughed.

Meredith called her parents while I took stock of the state of the refrigerator. To minimize the number of times Greta or I would have to go grocery-shopping, my parents had bought the largest fridge they could find, and we shopped at Costco a lot. Greta had obviously restocked recently: some frozen ground beef, frozen chicken parts, some sausages, a bunch of different vegetables... Goodness, it was getting towards October, where had she found corn on the cob? I hope we pay her a lot.

Meredith called from the phone on the wall. "When is dinner?"

I shrugged. "I dunno, maybe an hour, hour and fifteen minutes?"

Meredith consulted with the phone while I checked the pantry. Good, apricot jam, just what I was looking for. This would be perfect. Too bad no dried apricots, but if wishes were fishes, we'd need a lot more ocean.

Meredith appeared, bouncing up and down. "We're good," she said.

"Yay. You're not vegetarian, are you?"

"Nope." She beamed. "I like meat."

"Cool," I said, grinning, and deciding to ignore the double meaning. "Now, give me a second and I'll get this thing started."

One thing that surprises most people about cooking is that some dishes are actually surprisingly easy. Spaghetti is one. Ground beef is easy to cook and mix with pre-made sauce, and any kid can boil spaghetti. Boom! Done. Okay, maybe I'm cheating a little with the Prego, but I am sixteen. And who cares where it came from, as long as it tastes good? I mean, people buy fast food, don't they?

Okay, let's see here. Oven to 325 degrees (Fahrenheit). Chicken breasts into the microwave to thaw. Normally I'd set them out to thaw the instant I got home; normally, I'd get home before 5 PM. Apricot jam, dried onion soup mix, French dressing, into the bowl to mix. Atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed. Rice into the rice cooker, which takes care of everything—steams it, and then shifts over to 'Keep Warm' mode when the cooking's done. (Arie's Chinese, does her family have one of these?) Foil on tray, chicken onto tray, sauce over chicken, chicken into oven, timer set for forty-five minutes. Done!

"Now we have some time to kill," I said to Meredith, grinning and feeling bizarrely like a cooking show host. Which she only amplified by batting her eyelashes and clapping appreciatively. I fought the urge to flex.

I had planned to just flick on that big-screen TV, but Meredith saw the gaming consoles. Do you have any idea how disconcerting it is to have your girlfriend beat you at "Smash Brothers"? Do you have any idea how fun it is? For a while we were lost to the chaotic, kaleidoscope whirl of colors, sounds and images, laughing at the craziness onscreen. Smash Brothers is a great multiplayer game, because the action never stops; and mashing random buttons will still get you somewhere, which means anyone can play it—as opposed to some other games, which require you to memorize long, tricky combinations of button presses. To know what you're doing, in other words. No such thing here. Good thing the oven alarm was as loud as it was.

Back in the kitchen, I grabbed and washed the asparagus spears, chopped them up, tipped them into a pan with a bit of oil, and covered it. Which was a good idea, because it started splashing up immediately. I learned that lesson the hard way, let me tell you. As it sizzled and hummed to itself, I checked the chicken. It was basically ready to come out. I needed to toss a bit of salt, and maybe a little garlic, on the asparagus, and stir it a bit to make sure it had gotten cooked all the way around, but after that, we could eat.

Of course, when I started digging around for more suitable serving dishes than the baking pan, Meredith said, "Oh, no, Brandon, you don't have to do that." And I rolled my eyes and said, "Of course I do, how could I give my girlfriend anything less than the best?" And Meredith tossed her hands and sighed with an expression of exasperated affection, and let me be my usual sappy self.

We sat at the table—a little too large for just the two of us, but nothing to be done about that. Meredith, of course, took the first bite. I felt a passing flicker of panic—what if I'd totally screwed up? What if the chicken was pink, the rice inedible? What if I'd somehow managed to put too much salt on the asparagus? What if the whole thing, despite any signs or signals to the contrary, was totally ruined?

... What if I panicked without the slightest provocation?

"Mmm," said Meredith. "This is delicious."

Like that. See. What if I did that for the rest of my life and died of a premature and pointless heart attack? What a dumb eulogy. Brandon Chambers, and then the year I was born and the year I died, and then, Died of worrying too much. The stupid idiot.

After the small talk and pleasant, pointless chatter of dinner, we ended up back at the television, smashing our little cartoon heroes about. But that only lasted for a little while, until Meredith set the controller away and said she'd had enough. "I can do this at home," she said. "But I don't always have you around."

"And now that you have me," I said, letting a smile grow on my lips, "what are you going to do with me?"

She looked at me in complete seriousness. "Wrap you around me like a blanket. And never let go."

I sat on the floor with my back against the sofa, and she reclined between my legs, using me as her chair, my arms draped (non-provocatively, I hoped) across her belly. It was slightly uncomfortable to support two people's weight, but I didn't mind. Her head rested back against my shoulder, and I was pretty sure she could feel my heartbeat. She was wearing a pretty loose white shirt with one of those ribbonish gathers across the chest—supposed to accentuate the cleavage, I guess—and if I cared to, I could probably see down her shirt. And of course, I was getting an erection just because of her proximity. Which she could probably notice, too, if she had a mind to.

She sighed. "I haven't had somebody hold me in years. Do you know how long it's been? Freshman year. Well, not freshman year, it lasted through the summer. But right around the second week of school, well..."

"Who was it," I asked.

"Nick Housman," she said. Huh. Didn't have the faintest idea who he was. "What about you, when was your last hug?"

"Hmm... Late August."

"Jane?"

"Yeah."

"... Wait, it's September. She didn't hug you for a whole month?!"

"Nope."

"... Is she nuts?"

"No," I said, "just extremely dedicated to maintaining propriety. Could we talk about someone else right about now?"

Meredith's hand moved to cover mine, squeezed it gently. "She still bothers you?"

I sighed. "I have had one relationship aside from her," I said, "in eighth grade, and that wasn't exactly real. I mean, how could it be, we were so young. So this thing with Jane was kind of significant. We only broke up yesterday. And yeah, I found you, which has helped me stay away from all that self-doubt shit and dwelling on it and all that... But no, I'm not over it. I don't think you can do that in two days."

"No, you can't," Meredith said. "If you can, it's probably a sign that you shouldn't have gotten into it in the first place."

"Yeah, that's what I figure," I said. I let a flash of humor register on my face. "Now a week, on the other hand..."

She giggled.

After that there was silence for a little while. I didn't mind. Every now and then, Jane had allowed me to hold her like this—probably telling herself that it was simply a nice, comfortable way to sit, that it wasn't the least bit sexual (despite how easy it would be for my hands to stray to her breasts), just... Two people sitting. No. I think there was something sexual about the way we sat, the way our bodies pressed together. And I think we knew it, and liked it. We were... Flirting with it. (With each other?) Wondering where it would lead, but content to let it sit for now.

And besides, there's something to be said about sitting around with an armful of warm, breathing, beautiful, fragrant female.

Eventually Meredith took my right hand in her own, turning it over with the same deft, delicate motions I had learned to recognize. Her fingernail traced over the raised, pale line, making it tingle. "This is from... That one time, I suppose."

It was kind of funny—I couldn't see very well, only feel, and this time my stomach showed no sign of discontent. "Yeah," I said, "that one time."

Much to my surprise, she raised her wrist to my lips and kissed it—just a gentle brushing of lips. And strangely, I felt... Whole, as though some part of me long missing had been returned.

Her hand trailed down my arm. I was wearing a T-shirt, so she had full access to the skin of my arm, covered in sparse, dark hair. "Anything else out here of interest?" Her fingers paced the distance, coming to rest on the outside of my elbow.

"Good instincts," I said. "That's the one I got on my bike. After the last time I went to Rob's house— Did I tell you about that?"

"You told us on Monday," she said.

Her fingers investigated. It was a jagged, irregular-shaped patch of scar tissue, roughly the shape size of the gap between thumb and forefinger when you join their tips together.

"Proof, of a sort," I said. "Proof of a pain that might not have been real. Proof of a pain that no one could see."

"Mmm," said Meredith, a sound of understanding, and her fingers left it be.

I picked up her hand now, raising it above her head so that I could kiss the back. She had beautiful hands, slender and well-formed. Everything about this girl was beautiful. I had no idea how I had gotten so lucky with her. I turned her hand over, to kiss the palm, and her shirtsleeve slipped down to her elbow, letting me see the inside of her wrist.

For a moment, we were completely still. She knew what I'd found. All this time she had hidden them, but she knew what I'd found. Just as she'd known, immediately, what the marks on my wrist were.

The ball of my thumb traced gently the line of her scar.

"It was last Christmas," she said quietly. "Christmas is a time of great joy. But then you go outside and see the couples all bundled up—wrapped in their woolens, wrapped in each other—and you feel the empty space next to you where somebody should be, where nobody is, and it can be hard to remember."

"And your had just been dumped that August," I murmured. I'd spent Christmases alone; I knew what she meant. It's like Valentine's Day, except it's the entire month of December, of being cold in bed at night and watching people with girlfriends rub it in your face. No wonder the aspirin had momentarily freaked her out.

"No one heard about it," she said. "Because it was Christmas. Like, literally Christmas. My brother was home, and my mom came in to tuck me into bed on Christmas Eve, and she was all happy and smiling and, you know, 'I'm so glad it's Christmas and our whole family's here and... ' I felt so bad. I felt so bad knowing that tomorrow she might wake up and the youngest member of the family might be dead in bed. So I told her. An hour later they were pumping out my stomach. And spent Christmas Day in the hospital.

"I have some friends, yeah, but none close enough to care that much. None that I could trust. Dr. Zelvetti knows, but only because they thought she ought to know—"

"They?"

"My parents. And later my therapist." She sighed, and suddenly I heard the tears in her voice. "Put it down, Brandon, it makes me feel sick too."

I held her tightly.

"You're the only one who knows now," she said. "I'm done being with depressed, I'm glad I'm done with being depressed, but... There they are."

I held her tightly.

"Are you going to say something," she asked.

"I don't know what to say," I said honestly. "So instead I thought I'd show you. That nothing I could find out about you, could ever make me feel differently about you. And that I'm never letting you go."

"I can live with that," she said quietly, and she sank into my arms. "I can live with that."

Th .7

I don't know how I did it, but I somehow completely forgot about my birthday. Not that, like, your seventeenth birthday is really important, but it's one more step to the big one-eight. But seriously. If you were Arie Chang, Naked in School—and, more importantly, Arie Chang, Figuring Out How To Face Down Your Parents—you'd forget your birthday too.

"When are you going to tell us," my mom said, grabbing me as I went upstairs.

"After dinner," I said. "After Trina goes to her flute lesson." I didn't want her here. Her skepticism and ridiculous attitude would make it a lot harder to explain. Even Mom, perpetually blind, could see that, and she let me delay until after dinner.

During dinner, though, my dad asked what I was planning for my birthday tomorrow. He'd asked me about this time last week, when I couldn't think of anything—I'm turning seventeen, I've got no friends (at least no friends who I don't talk to through the computer), everybody hates me, my arms are bleeding under my shirtsleeves... Not a good time to ask about birthday party plans.

"I dunno, let me think, I'll have to make some phone calls," I said, reaching for my school's phone directory.

'Chambers, Brandon' was first on my list for a really simple reason: because I needed to ask him what Sajel and Zach thought of me. I wanted to invite them, but I wouldn't even try if Brandon thought they'd decline. My self-esteem isn't that robust yet. (Though at least now I have some.) Brandon thought they'd be interested. "They like you, Arie. Maybe Meredith and Derek and I have been around you a little more frequently, but I know they like you. Go for it. Just," he chuckled, "you'll have to tell us what presents to get you. I don't think we know you that well."

As an added bonus, Meredith was there with him. She said she'd need to clear it with her parents, but she was pretty sure there would be no objections.

("Jeez, Brandon, you just kissed her today and you're already bringing her home!" "Shut up, you know it's not like that. Besides, we didn't kiss, doesn't look like they're very related.")

I had almost hung up with them when I remembered another glitch in the plan. "Brandon! Wait! Can you drive?"

He laughed. "Uh, well, I've only driven you around twice this week, I think I can drive."

"No, I mean tomorrow, " I said. "I can't drive. How many people can your car fit?" "Five, counting me." "Crap, there's six of us. Well, assuming everyone says they can come—"

In the background of the kitchen, Mom asked Dad, "What's she doing?"

In the background of Brandon's kitchen, he said, "Meredith, would you mind driving people around for Arie tomorrow?"

Both of them made decisions at the same time, because Brandon said, "Good news, Arie, now we have ten car seats, " about the same time my mother shrieked, "What were you thinking, Bernie!" Bernie's my dad. Don't ask me. These immigrant families—the scary part is that they named themselves when they came over. I haven't a clue what Dad's name is in Cantonese, but I assure you, it's not Bernie.

She grabbed my shoulder. "Arie! Put down the phone right now!"

"Mom, please," I said, "I'm trying to talk to—"

"—So, don't worry, that's gotta be enough—"

"Brandon, can you hold on a second— Mom! Please. At least let me finish talking to Brandon, that'll take about a minute. Okay? Brandon?"

"Umm. Hello? Sounds like a mess over there."

"Just a little. Anyway. Thank Meredith for me and tell her that's great. I'll get back to you tomorrow on how many— She drives to school, right? Good. Okay. All right, thank you. Bye.

"Yes mother?"

"Who said anything about a birthday," mother said.

"Uh," I said, feeling stubborn and rebellious, "mine's tomorrow. Don't you remember, you were there at the time, I think I was being pushed out of you."

"Who said you could do see your friends," she asked.

"Who said I couldn't? It's my birthday, Mom. I want to take my friends out to dinner because this is the first time I've had any to take."

"That's ridiculous, what about your friend, uh, whatshername... Larsa?"

"Lisa," I said. Still doesn't remember that girl's name. "We haven't talked regularly since eighth grade, Mom, she goes to Westport now." Not that there's anything wrong with Lisa. It's just that, when a friendship starts with seeing someone every day in school, sometimes it doesn't survive the change to a once-a-week-phone-conversation friendship.

"And who's paying for all this," my mother asked.

"Melissa, be reasonable," said my dad. See what I mean about naming themselves? Who'd want to be called Melissa? Bernie and Melissa. God, that must have been a crazy wedding. "It's her birthday, she wants to see her friends. When's the last time you've seen her smile?"

When's the last time you've seen me... What? "Have I really been that dismal?" I asked him.

"When are you not dismal," Trina said.

"Thanks hon," I said, "I love you too."

"Let her go," my dad said to my mother. "It'll be good for her." My mom looked rather annoyed at being overruled by common sense—after all, nothing must get in Mom's way!—but she subsided, and I made my other phone calls.

Sajel and Zach, true to predictions, were interested and enthusiastic. Even better, Zach had access to a seven-seat van, which eliminated the annoying hassle of splitting into two cars. However, when I told Brandon on Friday, he laughed and said, "You really want Zach driving," which made me wonder just exactly what I had signed myself up for. When Sajel and Zach asked about presents, I told them not to worry: "Having friends around will be cool enough as it is." Which Zach of course teased me mercilessly for. Stupid boy. Can't a girl be shamelessly sentimental without being made fun of around here?