Turns out I do need it.
A little. I mean, I’d like to say that I’m the kind of girl who can shut down a year’s worth of feelings in the space of fifteen minutes. That would make me strong and independent, right? And I feel ready to do just that. I’m so hurt by Liam’s nastiness that, for a few seconds, I do write him off completely. So I truly am a loyal sister for those hazy, brief moments in homeroom.
But then I walk into chemistry. And Liam is standing by his lab bench (our lab bench!) with his back to me, and all it takes is one glimpse of the familiar curve of his long neck and the mane of dark brown curls around his ears, and suddenly my anger goes from flaming crimson to a dull red. And then he turns around (and waves at me! And smiles!) and that anger fades even more until it’s just a pleasant pinkish shimmer, barely obscuring the boy I like. I’m still offended and disappointed, but I’m also desperate to explain it all away. Maybe Ethan did something awful to Liam, I reason, and Liam was just hitting back. No, that couldn’t be it. I shake the disloyal thought from my head. Ethan has never intentionally hurt anyone.
Perhaps Liam simply didn’t understand the history of that word and how much it hurt. Still, if that was the excuse, could I continue to like someone who was so clueless?
I advance slowly toward the lab bench. As I draw closer to him, my anger pales to gray; it’s barely a shadow between us. I should forgive him, I tell myself. Forgiveness is a sign of maturity. But am I just being charitable because he’s cute? I stop walking and briefly close my eyes. Repeat Marcus’s words in my mind. Oh, please. He’ll never change. Why is she wasting so much energy on a—
The anger flares to life, red-hot and roaring again. Damn.
I open my eyes.
There is only one possible explanation. Marcus had hallucinated. Clearly. The sweet boy in front of me couldn’t possibly have said that. As I approach, Liam looks over at me and smiles shyly, then ducks his head over his syllabus.
How can Hope not see how cute he is? Sure, his brows are a bit thick, and he’s surprisingly pale and skinny for a lifeguard. But how could she miss his large, brown eyes—made even larger by those heavy frames? The quiet, smart kid that no one dislikes but everyone ignores. I’m not sure why I’m attracted to him, but I don’t want to give him up. A year is a long time to like the same guy. That’s a lot of history in my head. We’re talking about countless hours of daydreaming and planning. All that anticipation, waiting for him to appear from around a corner, stealing glances over my book in class, every movement and expression tinged with the hope that maybe, maybe this would be the moment that he finally sees me. So much useless, wasted hope!
In my dreams, I’ve heard him tell me that he loves me hundreds of times, each declaration a little different and more beautiful than the last. And now I can’t believe that the boy who whispered those perfect things could be so hateful. It seems impossible.
I slowly lay my bag down on the table and turn to him. His first words to me will tell me everything, I promise myself. He will redeem himself. He has to. I will wait for him to speak. It’s the moment of truth.
He says nothing. The smile is all he’s going to offer, it seems. He’s flipping through our chemistry syllabus now.
Okay, fine. I’ll start.
“Hello, Liam.” There. That’s all he deserves. It’s up to him now. Impress me, I will him silently. Make me like you again. Prove to me that you’re worth the time I’ve spent fantasizing about you.
“We’re making elephant toothpaste,” he says.
That’s not even close to what I expected.
“What?”
“Elephant toothpaste,” he repeats, pointing to the syllabus. “Our first experiment.”
“Oh.”
You called my brother a retard, I think. How can you be standing there with no idea that I need you to make this better? And why are you talking about elephants?
“I didn’t know elephants brush their teeth,” I say nonsensically. “I mean, tusks. Their tusks. They don’t have teeth, of course. Ha.” Crap, I’m babbling.
“Elephants have teeth.”
“They do?”
He takes his hand off the page and regards me with a vague smile. “How else would they chew their food?”
This is so stupid. Of course they have teeth. The point is that I don’t care about elephant teeth right now. The moment of truth has come and gone, and he hasn’t redeemed himself even a tiny bit. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion he’s making fun of me and my ignorance of elephantine dentistry. “I guess I’m a retard too,” I blurt out, a touch maliciously.
And then I stare at him meaningfully. You know what you did, I tell him with my eyes. I know what you’re thinking now.
“What?” There’s a volume of innocent confusion in his voice.
“All I’m saying is that it must be genetic,” I continue doggedly. “The entire Rosenblatt family is a bit retarded!”
“Okay…” He’s looking a little frightened of me. “Which Rosenblatt family are you talking about?”
“Me! My family! I’m talking about my family, Liam.”
“Oh. Your last name is Rosenblatt?”
“Yes! How do you not know that?” How can you not know my last name? I think. When I know everything about you?
He glances desperately around the classroom as if looking for some way to escape the crazy that is his new lab partner. There’s a faint sheen of sweat glistening on his forehead. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I’m not so good with names.”
“That’s okay,” I respond automatically. There’s something sweet and vulnerable about his meek apology and the vague look of terror in his eyes. I’m suddenly not so furious anymore. It’s hard to be mad at someone who looks so scared.
As my head clears and my heart rate slows, I quickly review our jumbled conversation. He obviously has no idea why I’m upset. And I’ve been operating under the assumption that he remembers his comment to Marcus. Even worse, my righteous outrage has totally screwed with my judgment. In trying to make my point, I’d just used the word I’ve loathed since I first heard it in kindergarten, hissed maliciously at my brother behind the jungle gym.
I have to fix this. Say something that actually makes sense to him, for a change. I need a simple fact, something easy and obvious.
“My name is Rain Serenity Rosenblatt.” I declare. For no reason, of course. It’s the first thing that pops into my brain. Oh, yeah, I think. He will never forget my name now.
And of course now he’s laughing at me.
Well, not laughing exactly, but his lips twitch in the corners, and his dark eyes have a suppressed dancing light lurking in their depths. Why did I tell him my middle name? Rain Rosenblatt is bad enough, but when you throw Serenity in there—that just screams offspring of stoned Jewish hippies, right?
“Everyone makes fun of my name,” I admit sullenly.
He nods seriously, as if absorbing the information without judgment, but his eyes are still dancing. “So your parents are just—free spirits or whatever?”
I shake my head. “One of them. My mom and dad could never agree on anything. So my big city corporate lawyer father got to name one kid and my organic granola, environmentalist mom named the other. They came up with Ethan David and Rain Serenity. Take a guess which parent named me.”
He gives a nervous laugh and readjusts his glasses. “How did they ever get together in the first place?”
“They met in law school. My mother is a lawyer too, but since we moved out here to Montana she mostly does consulting work for environmental causes. People who are convinced that the nearby factory caused their kid’s asthma or their grandmother’s kidney stones. Stuff like that.”
“Like Erin Brockovich.”
I smile. “Yeah, exactly. It’s my mother’s favorite movie.”
“There’s work for your dad out here in the middle of nowhere?”
“My dad has a new family in DC. My parents split when my brother and I were little.”
“Oh. Sorry.” He fiddles absently with his shirtsleeve. “Didn’t mean to bring up a sensitive topic.”
I wave away his apology. “It’s fine. I was okay with it, even then. I still remember their fights. I was really young, but I remember.”
“Yeah, it’s not the kind of thing that you forget, I guess.”
It’s weird how we’ve gone from awkwardly talking about elephants to the personal history of my parents’ divorce—all in the space of five minutes. Mr. Green, our teacher, has finally appeared and is shuffling through his papers at the front of the class, while the rest of the students chat and arrange their stuff. I’m still a little uneasy about talking to Liam; I’m supposed to be furious with him. But I can’t muster the will to scorn him. I want to learn more about him, to really understand the only boy in school who’s ever fascinated me. And then maybe I can scorn him. A little bit later.
I’m not the only uneasy one though. As he stares at me, Liam’s hands drift up toward the countertop, then hover over his syllabus, finally coming to rest in his pockets. He shifts back and forth in place, and the glimmer of sweat over his brow seems even shinier than before.
I decide to put away my hostility for a moment and make some attempt at normal conversation. “You’re new to Clarkson,” I remark. “Besides my friend Hope, pretty much everyone at our school has grown up here.”
“I know.” He clears his throat and glances at the teacher.
This is going to be harder than I thought. Pulling words out of him is like pulling teeth, except that it seems to be painful for both of us. I’m about to abandon the whole thing and concentrate on our assignment when he turns back to me. “I lived with my grandmother in Missoula until ninth grade,” he says abruptly. “Now I live here with my father.”
“Oh. I don’t think I’ve ever met him.” That’s unusual for this little town. I know all my classmates’ parents, and they can give a pretty thorough summary of my family history as well.
“He’s a trucker. So he’s away a lot.”
“And your mom?”
“No idea where she is,” he replies shortly. “Haven’t seen her since I was three.”
“Oh. Sorry.”
“It’s fine. Can you hand me that beaker?”
I pass it over and edge a little closer to him. He seems absorbed in arranging the materials for the experiment, but I can’t help noticing that his fingers tremble a little as he reaches for the flask.
Mr. Green has begun addressing the class and droning on about lab goggles and safety.
“Respect the chemicals…” he commands. “Always wear your protective gear…”
It seems like pretty common sense stuff, and I tune out five seconds after he starts. We’re at the back of the classroom anyway, so he can’t see that I’m not listening. On the other side of the room, Mike has already started to mess with the lighter for his Bunsen burner, so if anyone is going to get a lecture on safety today, it isn’t me.
“I wonder why they call it elephant toothpaste,” Liam muses under his breath. “I wish Mr. Green had given out the syllabus before class. I would have looked it up.”
“I have my phone,” I suggest, pulling it out.
“There’s no reception in the lab,” he responds, slowly pouring out a beaker full of hydrogen peroxide. “Not on my phone, anyhow.”
I check my screen and then slip it back into my pocket. No signal on mine either. “Do you really research your science experiments before you do them?”
He glances up at me, his hand still poised over the flask. “Yeah, don’t you?”
“No. Why would I?”
He shrugs and concentrates on his collection of measuring spoons. “Two tablespoons of yeast, dissolve in water, add two drops of green food coloring,” he reads. “I like to be prepared, that’s all.”
“You’re already top of the class,” I point out.
He shakes his head. “So far. But you haven’t exactly made it easy.”
I smile broadly and inch even closer to him. Hope was right. He had noticed me—or at least my GPA. “That’s pretty impressive.”
He turns back to me and holds out a bottle of yellow dish soap. “What’s impressive?”
“You are. You’ve got all these other obligations—lifeguarding, volunteer work—”
“And tutoring,” he puts in. “Five days a week after school.”
“And yet you’re still beating me. My friends are always joking that I plan too much. I have papers done two weeks before they’re due, that kind of thing. But you still leave me in the dust. And I don’t have all your extracurriculars.” I take the container from him and place it next to the beaker on the table. The teacher is babbling on about careful titration and keeping a safe distance, but I don’t need to hear him. The other students around us are still fumbling with their measuring equipment.
“So why do you do that?” He’s stopped concentrating on the assignment too, and I feel the full force of his dark eyes on my face. It’s a little intoxicating. I’m mad at him, I remind myself sternly. He may be acting all interested and caring now, but just half an hour ago, he was an insensitive jerk. I can’t let myself forget that.
“Why do I do what? Plan stuff?” I can’t help smiling at the question. I’m the one who overanalyzes everybody. It’s weird to suddenly turn the magnifying glass onto myself.
“Is it just about the grades?” he asks. “Or are you naturally super organized?”
I know the answer, of course. I plan because I can’t afford not to. Because without my planning, without my constant attention to details, Ethan couldn’t have made it through our childhood. So when my father basically abandoned us and my mother began to unravel beneath the stress of her failed marriage, I was the one who protected my brother from the world. And I would never stop protecting him. Ever. Wherever I go, Ethan is coming with me. I plan because whatever life I build for myself must always have a cozy glass bubble for my twin brother.
That’s why I’m like this, Liam.
Of course I don’t say any of that. That’s the sort of thing you tell a therapist or maybe a best friend. But you don’t say that to a boy you barely know, a boy who may or may not be flirting with you. Is he? I wonder. Is that what that smile on his face means? I push away the pleasant hope. It doesn’t matter if he is. I can’t flirt with a guy that would hurt Ethan. It would be like violating all the rules, all at once.
“I have to think about my family,” I say vaguely. “People…count on me.”
“What do you mean?”
I’m a little uncomfortable now, and I’m starting to feel strangely defensive. This is exactly the topic I was trying to avoid. “It means that I’m not just taking care of myself. I have to think about my family too.”
“Yeah, okay, but so do most people.”
Why is he challenging me? We’ve only just met. What is up with this guy?
“Most people don’t have a brother with autism,” I say, a little louder than I intended. I regret it before the words are even out of my mouth. Ethan was the last person I wanted to discuss with Liam. Especially after what he’d called him that morning. Had he really forgotten about that? Or was it so common for him to say nasty things about people that the event hadn’t even registered? My anger is up again, and the expression on Liam’s face isn’t helping. He looks baffled—skeptical, even.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Mr. Green advancing toward us, and I suddenly realize I’ve forgotten all about the experiment on the table. I grab the container of soap off the counter and invert it over the mixture into the funnel. “And another thing,” I continue heatedly, squeezing out the contents of the bottle in vicious pumps. “Maybe it wouldn’t be so hard on us, if some people didn’t say awful things behind our backs—”
There, I think. Now he has to know why I’m upset. What did he expect anyway? That Marcus wouldn’t tell me what he said? Everyone knows that we’re friends. Yet he doesn’t seem embarrassed or ashamed at all. If anything, he’s just a bit distracted; he’s glancing back and forth between our teacher and me. “Rain, I think you need to stop—”
But I’ve already picked up the yeast water, and with a quick, deliberate motion I dump the contents into the dish soap solution. “No, I think you need to—”
“Rain, get away from there!” From somewhere behind me there’s a shout, and I see Liam’s eyes grow wide. I turn around too late; he barrels toward me, pushes me to the ground and throws his arms up to shield my face as the rumbling sound behind us swells. And then suddenly there’s hot foam everywhere, pouring from the ceiling, spilling out over countertops and floors, bubbling and spurting like green lava from a volcano. Some of it hits us as it comes down, and I hear Liam swear under his breath and swat at the soapy green mess landing on his neck.
I still have no idea what’s happened, but the expression on Liam’s face, and on Mr. Green’s face—who’s now hovering over us and shouting—makes it pretty obvious that I’m the one responsible for blowing up the class’s first chemistry experiment. “Did…I add the wrong ingredient?” I gasp, sitting up shakily and brushing off the warm fizz on my shirt.
“Too much, Ms. Rosenblatt,” our teacher bellows. “I gave specific instructions—”
“What…what happened?” I stammer, before catching a glimpse of our work station. It looks like an elephant took a green bubble bath in the chemistry lab. “Are you okay?” I ask Liam.
He’s sitting cross-legged next to me on the floor and surveying the damage. “Well, I know what we’ll be doing after class today.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say. I really am. I have an uneasy feeling that the foam explosion was strangely connected to my out-of-control emotions. I’d squeezed the soap too hard; I’d vented my frustration on the bottle; the flask had responded by spitting up all over us—and the entire lab.
Mr. Green kneels beside Liam and anxiously scans his foamy clothes. “The product can get pretty hot,” he says, laying a hand on his shoulder. “You sure you’re all right?”
“I’m fine,” he replies. “Sorry about the mess. We’ll clean it up.”
The teacher shoots me an exasperated look and scrambles to his feet. “You weren’t even wearing your safety goggles, young lady. If your lab partner hadn’t jumped in front of you, that explosion might have hit you in the face.”
“I—I’m sorry,” I repeat. God, this is so embarrassing. The entire class has gathered to stare at the foam disaster around us. Mike is nudging Grayson and laughing under his breath at me. And our teacher isn’t planning on making me feel any better about myself.
“Well, this was barely an experiment, people,” he announces. “But one student has already demonstrated what happens when you don’t follow instructions. Thank you, Rain.”
I hang my head and mouth a silent “sorry” to the class, hoping to coax a smile from Mr. Green and maybe a brief nod of forgiveness, but he turns his back to me and marches to the front of the room without another word. As the rest of the class slowly drifts over to their stations, I get up off the floor and walk over to Liam, who’s pulling paper towels from the dispenser on the wall.
“Thank you,” I say to him bashfully.
He stops what he’s doing and turns to stare at me. “For what?”
“Jumping in front of me,” I explain. “I would have been hurt if you hadn’t done that.”
He shrugs and goes back to gathering napkins. “That was just instinct. You were right in front of the flask. And you were too busy yelling at me to notice that it was erupting.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m really sorry about that too.”
My earlier anger feels pretty pale now, especially since he may have just saved me from a trip to the hospital. “Can we just forget about it and start again?”
“Forget about what? I have no idea why you were angry at me in the first place. What did I do?”
“Just leave it, okay? It feels kind of stupid.”
“Maybe to you. But I want to know what I did.”
It’s a chore carrying around this grudge already, and I’ve only had it for an hour. I try vainly to revive my feelings from the morning, try to refresh the righteous outrage I’d felt. But when I finally say the words, they come out like an apology, rather than an accusation. “In the hallway this morning, Marcus told me that you said—”
“Yeah?” He still looks blank.
“You don’t remember? You called Ethan—”
“I didn’t say anything about your brother,” he protests. “I actually thought the way you told off Mike was pretty awesome…if a little pointless.”
“Pointless?”
“Well, you’re never going to get people like Mike to change.”
His meaning hits me like a lightning bolt. “Oh, god. You called Mike a retard, not—”
“Yeah. What did you think?” His face falls suddenly, and he shakes his head. “Oh. Oh.”
“Yeah, I’m an idiot.” I want to hide my face; my cheeks feel like they’re on fire. Why hadn’t I guessed that earlier?
He laughs at my remorseful expression. “No, it’s fine. I probably shouldn’t have used that word, even to describe Mike. I get why you were upset.”
“Well, I should have at least given you the benefit of the doubt.”
He brushes the last puffs of foam from his shoulders. “It’s okay. It’s not like you know me or anything.”
I feel an unexpected surge of boldness. “Maybe not, but I’d like to.”
His expression is an adorable mix of surprise and embarrassment. “You would?”
I shrug to dilute the eagerness of my last statement. I don’t want to completely give myself away. “Yeah, I like getting to know people. And I’m sorry I got so crazy just now.”
It’s not until I see the tension draining from his face that I understand how nervous he’d been. His blush is a little boost of confidence. For better or worse, at least he’d cared what I thought.
I make a mental note to thank the Octopus later. It may have been a complete accident, but Marcus’s mistake had actually loosened my tongue at the right moment. Just enough to let me make a complete fool of myself, but at least I’d managed to break the ice.
And, for once, despite everyone’s predictions, I’d been completely unpredictable and gotten an unexpected, quiet blush as a reward. Also a loud explosion of hot green foam—but still. Totally worth it.