“What if she has class?”
“If she has to, she’ll go out. But she doesn’t like to.” Cross tipped back his glass again and swallowed the rest of his milkshake. “But she can be cool. You know what’s cool about her? Actually, never mind.”
“Oh, come on.”
“You’ll probably be offended.”
“Now you definitely have to tell me.”
“It’s something most girls don’t like.”
“I won’t be offended.”
“She loves giving blow jobs.”
I blinked at him.
“I knew I shouldn’t have told you,” Cross said.
“No.” I looked down. “It’s okay.” In my mind, I had a flash of Sophie kneeling before Cross while he sat on the mattress of a lower bunk, both of them naked. The image seemed so grown-up, and so foreign. Everything I didn’t understand and wasn’t part of at Ault rose up and loomed over me, like buildings in a city; I felt myself shrink back into a small, hunched figure, walking against the wind. When I looked up again, I knew that my ability to talk to him unguardedly was gone. Who was I to be having a conversation, to be joking, with Cross Sugarman?
“I didn’t-” he began, and too loudly, I said, “No, no. It’s fine.”
We watched each other for several more seconds. “So what about you?” he said. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
I shook my head quickly.
There was more silence. We seemed trapped inside it.
“Listen,” he finally said. “I was planning to go to this movie. I’m supposed to meet John and Martin, you know those guys?”
I nodded. They were also freshmen, teammates of Cross’s from basketball; John Brindley was in my biology class.
Cross looked at his watch. “I’m kind of late, but-”
“You should go,” I said. “You definitely should go.” My wish for him to leave felt desperate in its intensity. I did not understand how things had become so abruptly uncomfortable, but I knew it was my fault. And now he would think that I was even weirder than if we’d never spoken, if I’d just been some anonymous girl he passed in the halls of the schoolhouse.
He set a few dollar bills on the table and stood. I looked up at him. Just be normal for one more minute, I thought. Come on, Lee. I tried to smile, and my face felt like a rotting pumpkin. “I hope it’s a good movie,” I said.
“I’ll see you around.” He lifted one hand in the air, as if to wave, but just held it there. Then he was gone.
For the first time, I looked around the restaurant. I saw no other Ault students. Being alone, I felt embarrassed and relieved. When the waitress came back, I thought that I would order more food, a real lunch-ideally, something huge and numbing, like a hamburger that came with a puffy bun and lots of french fries. I pulled a menu from behind the napkin holder and was trying to decide between a cheeseburger and a ham-and-cheese sandwich when Cross reappeared.
“Hey,” he said. “Why don’t you come?”
“What?” I snapped shut the menu.
“Why don’t you come to the movie? You’re just hanging out here, right?”
“Oh, that’s all right. I mean, thanks, but you don’t have to-”
“No, it’s not like-”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I hardly even know John and Martin.”
“Lee.” He stared at me. “It’s just a movie. Come on.” I could feel his sense of hurry-the movie was about to start, if it hadn’t started already.
“I’m fine.” I gestured around the booth. “I don’t mind being by myself.” I knew right away that this was one protest too many; the amount that I needed him to convince me that it was okay to come, that he wanted me to come, exceeded the amount that he cared. “Actually, wait. I will go.” All I had in my wallet was two ten-dollar bills, and suddenly the urgency of the movie felt too pressing to allow for getting change. I set a ten on the table next to his one-dollar bills, and though it occurred to me to take those, it also occurred to me that it could seem chintzy, and then we were leaving the diner and I was skipping to keep up with his long strides. We headed out of the mall, into the rain, then jogged across a parking lot-normally, I did not like running in the presence of boys, but I knew he wasn’t looking at me-and ended up in front of the glass windows of the theater. Cross held the door for me as we entered, and I wondered briefly if he would pay for my ticket, but when he didn’t, it seemed stupid that the thought had crossed my mind. The movie had started; I followed him into the darkened theater, the screen bright and loud above us. As we walked down the aisle, someone hissed, “Yo, Sugarman,” and Cross pulled me by the forearm into that row.
After we sat, I was panting slightly, and I could tell he was, too. My clothes were damp from the rain. The image on-screen-two men were standing in a seedy kitchen, one of them holding a gun-seemed incomprehensible and irrelevant. I never arrived at movies after they’d started because it was confusing, plus you missed the previews. But this movie, a movie about mobsters that I wouldn’t have gone to on my own, was beside the point.
While looking straight ahead, I noted each time Cross shifted or sighed, each time he laughed, though his laughter also was subdued; on his other side, John and Martin kept guffawing. Cross smelled like soap, and like the rain we’d come in from, the smell of the earth in spring. Our bodies did not touch at all, but sometimes our clothes did-our sleeves, the legs of our pants. I didn’t know if this was a thing anyone besides me would notice.
For the whole movie, I had that sense of heightened awareness that is like discomfort but is not discomfort exactly-a tiring, enjoyable vigilance. I did not get a grasp on the movie’s plot, or the names of any of the characters. Then it was over, and the lights came on, and I felt self-conscious; in the dark, I could be any girl, crossed legs, shoulder-length hair, but in the light, blushing and fidgety, I was me. Because I was on the outside of the row, I was in front of the boys walking up the aisle to leave. I hadn’t stood until they were standing, and as we walked, I was afraid to look back to see if they were still behind me. Maybe this was the place Cross and I would part ways, I thought. And maybe we wouldn’t even say good-bye, now that he was with his friends again; maybe I was just supposed to know.
In the lobby of the theater, I paused at the water fountain and glanced over my shoulder. They were right behind me after all. They kept walking, then stopped perhaps ten feet beyond the fountain, appearing to wait. I swallowed, stood, and approached them slowly.
Martin was reenacting a part from the movie where one guy had strangled another; he was performing the reenactment on John, who was sticking his tongue out and making his eyes bulge. “And then he’s like, ‘Now do you remember? Now do you remember?’ ” Martin said. John gagged noisily, and all three of the guys cracked up. I stood slightly farther away from them than they stood from each other, and tried to seem amused.
“You like that, Lee?” Cross said.
I didn’t know if he meant the whole movie, or the strangling in the movie, or Martin’s rendition of the strangling. “It was pretty good.”
“There were some nasty parts, huh?” John said, and I could tell, by the friendliness of his tone, that my presence was no big deal to him. We had never introduced ourselves, and it was apparent we were not going to now.
“I closed my eyes for the nasty parts,” I said. “The part by the dumpster-I think I missed most of it.”
“The dumpster scene was awesome,” Martin said. “You should go back and see the next showing right now.”
“You guys hungry?” Cross said. “I’m hungry.”
“I’m starving,” Martin said.
And then we were walking back through the parking lot-it had stopped raining, though the sky was still low and gray-to the sub shop, and I was still with them. It seemed fine that I was with them; it didn’t seem like they wondered why I didn’t leave them alone, or why I wasn’t with a group of girls. They all got subs and I got a pack of pretzels. At the table, they kept talking about the movie, repeating lines from it; Martin tried to do the strangling thing on Cross, but Cross laughed and shrugged Martin away. I decided that if Martin wanted to do it on me, I would let him, but he didn’t try.