"Except that. It’s like I’ve been whacked with the puberty bat."
"It’s like you sort of are the puberty bat."
"Can you maybe help me?" squeaked Doug. "Instead of making fun?"
"What can I do?"
"I don’t know. Don’t punch me. What’s the opposite of punching someone? Shaking his hand? Buying him dinner?"
"We should get out of the open," said Jay. They were standing far from the road but were still pretty exposed.
"And go where?" asked Doug. "I can’t go home. My mom noticed that time I trimmed my eyebrows. She’s gonna notice this."
"I can…hide you in our shed," said Jay.
Doug sighed like a tin whistle. "Okay…but I need a lift. I don’t think I can ride a bike like this."
They walked to Jay’s car — a long walk, now that Doug was roughly the size and build of E.T. He imagined himself riding home in the front basket of his own bike.
Jay loaded Doug’s bike into the trunk and helped him into the backseat, where he could lie down. And as they drove he felt unexpectedly childlike, lying in the back of the car at night, listening to the road hum through the seat, someone there to take care of him.
He’d known Jay forever. They hadn’t gone to the same elementary school (Jay had been homeschooled) but had met through Jay’s mother, a noted doctor of the hair and scalp. Dr. Rouse had chosen her specialization mostly out of frustration from dealing with her own son’s uncombable hair syndrome. To this day if you google "uncombable hair syndrome" you can easily find a photo of Jay from a scientific article written by his mother, his eyes masked by a scandalous black rectangle.
As a toddler he’d had pale, shimmery dandelion hair that could not be combed down nor back nor parted or tamed in any way. Like a spray of fiber optics. Like something that should be plugged in at Christmas. This and a naturally inquisitive temperament had given him the appearance of always being startled.
At the age of six Doug had taken part in a study conducted by Dr. Rouse to investigate a new head lice treatment. He had even been persuaded to have his picture taken for a series of informational posters (caption: Sleep tight. Don’t let the head bugs bite) that hung in hospitals and clinics. These posters now fetched upward of fifty dollars on eBay. A hundred if they were signed. Doug didn’t really understand it, but that didn’t stop him from selling signed posters.
Jay and Doug had met in Dr. Rouse’s office, and once Doug’s lice had cleared up, the boys fell into an easy routine of play in the common areas and empty clinical spaces. They hid in cupboards and wore rubber gloves everywhere. They made spaceships and Podracers out of stethoscopes and vaginal specula.
Doug’s eyes welled up just thinking about it.
"Jay…" he said, "I…really appreciate all you…I’d have been screwed these last few weeks without you. You’re a good friend. I know I’m not, sometimes."
"What did you say?" Jay called over his shoulder. "I can barely understand you."
"Nothing."
9
Sound bites
"HELLO?"
"Mr. Lee? This is Jay."
"Oh, hi, Jay. Is Doug with you? He hasn’t come home yet."
"He’s here. We wanted to know if he could spend the night at my house."
"Tomorrow’s the first day of school, isn’t it?"
"Yeah, it’s okay, though. He can ride in with me. He has his book bag."
"Why didn’t he call me himself?"
"He said you’d say no. We want to play D&D."
"One last hurrah, then it’s back to the coal mines, is that right?"
"Um…right."
"Well, I suppose. Don’t stay up too late slaying elves!"
"…Okay. Thanks. Good-bye."
"Bye, now."
10
Confluence
THE NEXT MORNING, Sejal followed Cat to the high school office. She’d taken half a Niravam with her orange juice and her surprisingly bacon-oriented American breakfast and was feeling okay.
"Hope we have some classes together," Cat told Sejal. "Probably not, though. You’re way smarter than me."
"That is not true."
"It is. Plus you speak three languages and you’re Indian and you don’t use as many contractions as I do. That alone’ll get you into AP everything."
"Hmm."
"Don’t worry about it," said Cat. "I can always rely on my breathtaking hotness, right? See you at lunch."
"By the tree, na?"
"By the tree."
Sejal entered the office and stepped up to a wide counter. Beyond this were a pair of desks, one of which was occupied by a middle-aged woman as blond and toothy as an ear of corn. Sejal waited to be acknowledged. After a while this didn’t seem to be working, so she cleared her throat.
"Hello," said Sejal. "This is my first day."
The woman didn’t look up from her computer. "This is a lot of people’s first day, hon. Take a seat."
Sejal blinked and looked around her at the otherwise empty office. She sat down in an unfriendly chair next to a fake plant.
There were no sounds, save the faint clicks of a mouse and the constant sigh of an unseen air conditioner. Each click sent a little tickle up her spine. She willed herself to be at peace. She tried to quiet her mind. In moments like these she once would have been texting or talking or checking her email. Now, more often than not, she found herself filling the void by twiddling her thumbs. Honest-to-gods thumb twiddling, but it helped.
Her heart and soul were off someplace, hopping from one computer to the next. They were riding the rails like hoboes.
On a wall behind the counter a framed poster said POSITIVITY, beneath a photo of a blizzard-battered penguin cradling an egg on its feet. Below the frame was a cartoon cat who hated Mondays. Sejal rather thought the two posters canceled each other out and searched for a third to break the tie.
The office door opened and a boy entered. He was gathering up a rain poncho as if he’d just been holding it over his head, though a glimpse of the sky outside confirmed that it was just as sunny and cloudless as it had been a few minutes ago. The boy stood at the counter and waited.
The blond woman rose and said to the boy, "Now then. It’s your first day?"
"What? No, I’m just late. I need a late pass."
"It is my first day," said Sejal, standing.
"Oh my dear!" the woman said to her. "You’re our foreign exchange student, aren’t you? Why didn’t you tell me?"
"I’m sorry, I didn’t think it made a difference," Sejal explained, though clearly it had already caused this woman to double the volume of her voice.
"Say-jall…Gangooly?" the woman ventured, reading Sejal’s name from a file. "From India?"
"Yes. Kolkata."
"It says here ‘Calcutta.’"
"It is the same thing."
"And this is an Indian dress you’re wearing? It’s very exotic."
The boy was frowning at it. "It’s from Dark Matter," he said. "In the mall."
The corn woman’s entire demeanor went stale as she turned to the boy.
"Name?"
"Um, Doug. Douglas Lee."
"Reason for being tardy?"
"It…took me longer to get ready this morning than usual."
The woman sniffed. "That’s no excuse. I’m afraid I’m going to have to give you a Tardy."
"Right. Hey," said Doug, pointing at Sejal’s file, "that says she’s in the same Pre-Cal class as me first period. I can show her the way."