There’s this pause. We’re still looking at each other. And there’s this feeling in my stomach like a coil pulled taut.
“It’s you,” I say.
“I know I’m late,” he says.
Then there’s a grinding noise and a jolt and a swell of music. Someone shrieks and then laughs, and the ride spins to life.
Bram’s eyes are clenched shut and his chin is locked down. He’s perfectly silent. He cups his hands over his nose and mouth. I hold the metal wheel in place with both hands, but it keeps pulling into a clockwise rotation. It’s like the ride wants to spin. And it spins and it spins.
“Sorry,” he says, when it finally stops, and his voice is stretched thin, and his eyes are still closed.
“It’s okay,” I say. “Are you okay?”
He nods and exhales and says, “Yeah. I will be.”
We step off the ride and make it to the curb, and he leans all the way forward, tucking his head between his knees. I settle in beside him, feeling awkward and jittery and almost drunk.
“I just got your email,” he says. “I was sure I was going to miss you.”
“I can’t believe it’s you,” I say.
“It’s me,” he says. His eyes slide open. “You really didn’t know?”
“Not a clue,” I say. I study his profile. He has these lips that meet just barely, like the slightest touch would coax them open. His ears are slightly big and there are two freckles on his cheekbone. And his eyelashes are more dramatic than I’ve ever noticed.
He turns toward me, and I look away quickly.
“I thought I was so obvious,” he says.
I shake my head.
He stares straight ahead. “I think I wanted you to know.”
“Then why didn’t you just tell me?”
“Because,” he says, and his voice sort of shakes. And I’m aching to touch him. Quite honestly, I’ve never wanted anything so badly in my life. “Because, if you had been looking for it to be me, I think you would have guessed it yourself.”
I don’t quite know how to respond to that. I don’t know if it’s true or not.
“But you never gave me clues,” I say finally.
“I did,” he says, smiling. “My email address.”
“Bluegreen118,” I say.
“Bram Louis Greenfeld. My birthday.”
“Jesus. I’m an idiot.”
“No, you’re not,” he says softly.
But I am. I’m an idiot. I was looking for him to be Cal. And I guess I assumed that Blue would be white. Which kind of makes me want to smack myself. White shouldn’t be the default any more than straight should be the default. There shouldn’t even be a default.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“For what?”
“For not figuring it out.”
“But it would be completely unfair of me to expect that,” he says.
“You guessed it was me.”
“Well, yeah,” he says. He looks down. “I kind of guessed a long time ago. Except I thought maybe I was just seeing what I wanted to see.”
Seeing what he wanted to see.
I think that means Bram wanted it to be me.
There’s this twist in my stomach, and my brain feels hazy. I clear my throat. “I guess I should have shut up about who my English teacher is.”
“Wouldn’t have helped.”
“Oh no?”
He smiles slightly, and turns away. “You sort of talk the way you write.”
“No freaking way.”
I’m kind of hardcore grinning now.
In the distance, they begin shutting down the rides and turning off lights. There’s something beautiful and eerie about a darkened, unmoving Ferris wheel. Beyond the carnival, the lights turn off in the doorways of the department stores. I know my parents expect me home.
But I scoot closer to Bram, until our arms are almost touching, and I can feel him twitch just slightly. Our pinkie fingers are maybe an inch apart, and it’s as if an invisible current runs between them.
“But how are you a president?” I ask.
“What?”
“The same first name as a former president.”
“Oh,” he says, “Abraham.”
“Ohhh.”
We’re quiet for a moment.
“And I can’t believe you rode the Tilt-A-Whirl for me.”
“I must really like you,” he says.
So I lean in toward him, and my heart is in my throat. “I want to hold your hand,” I say softly.
Because we’re in public. Because I don’t know if he’s out.
“So hold it,” he says.
And I do.
33
IN ENGLISH CLASS ON MONDAY, my eyes find Bram immediately. He sits on the couch beside Garrett, wearing a collared shirt under a sweater, and he’s so freaking adorable that it almost hurts to look at him.
“Hi, hi,” I say.
He smiles like he’s been waiting for me, and he scoots over to make room.
“Good job this weekend, Spier,” says Garrett. “Pretty friggin’ funny.”
“I didn’t know you were there.”
“I mean,” he says, “Greenfeld made me go three times.”
“Oh, really?” I say, grinning at Bram. And then he grins back, and I’m giddy and breathless and kind of unraveled. And I didn’t sleep at all last night. Not even for a second. I’ve basically been picturing this moment for ten hours, and now that it’s here, I don’t have a clue what I’m supposed to say. Probably something awesome and witty and not school-related.
Probably not: “Did you finish the chapter?”
“I did,” he says.
“I didn’t,” I say.
Then he smiles and I smile. And then I blush and he lowers his eyes, and it’s like this entire pantomime of nervous gestures.
Mr. Wise comes in and starts reading aloud from The Awakening, and we’re supposed to follow along in our own copies. But I keep losing my place. I’ve never been so distracted. So, I lean in to look on with Bram, and his body shifts toward me. I’m perfectly attuned to every point of contact between us. It’s like our nerve endings have found a way to slip through fabric.
And then Bram stretches his legs forward and pushes his knee into mine. Which means the rest of the period is pretty much devoted to staring at Bram’s knee. There’s a place where his jeans are fraying, and a tiny patch of brown skin is barely visible between the fibers of the denim. And all I want to do is touch it. At one point, Bram and Garrett both turn to look at me, and I realize I’ve just sighed out loud.
After class, Abby hooks an arm around my shoulders and says, “I didn’t realize you and Bram were such good friends.”
“Hush,” I say, and my cheeks burn. Freaking Abby never misses a freaking thing.
I’m not expecting to see him again until lunch, but he materializes at my locker right before. “I think we should go somewhere,” he says.
“Off campus?”
Technically, only the seniors are allowed, but it’s not like the security guards know we’re not seniors. So I imagine.
“Have you done this before?”
“Nope,” he says. And he presses his fingertips softly against mine, just for a moment.
“Me neither,” I say. “Okay.”
So, we walk out the side door and briskly through the parking lot with as much confidence as we can muster. The air is sharply cold from an hour or two of early morning rain.
Bram’s Honda Civic is old and comfy and meticulously neat, and he cranks up the heat as soon as we get inside. An auxiliary cable strings out from the cigarette lighter, attached to an iPod. He tells me to pick the music. I’m not sure if Bram knows that handing me his iPod is like handing me the window to his soul.
And of course his music selection is perfect. A lot of classic soul and newer hip-hop. A surprising amount of bluegrass. A single guilty pleasure song by Justin Bieber. And, without exception, every album or musician I’ve ever mentioned in my emails.