32

Because her oboe teacher had been called away at short notice to attend the birth of his third child, Vân Ước had spare time after school on Wednesday before going to Billy’s. She took some David Foster Wallace essays to the part of the river where school and university boat sheds congregated, and found a bench in the shade of a plane tree.

Billy’s crew was going to be doing sprint training, so she’d see him row for the first time, and maybe get a glimpse of what all the fuss was about.

She got out her camera, put on a telephoto lens, and looked idly through the viewfinder. After all the rain and the heat, the riverbanks were deep green and smelled sweetly of grass. A bicycle crunched along the track. It was Billy’s coach, the head of rowing, Mr. Robertson, holding a compact megaphone and shouting unintelligible things like, “Speed up the catch. Hughes, YOU’RE LATE. Square up earlier.”

She trained her camera on the crew. They didn’t appear to be slacking off. These boys were working as hard as she’d ever seen human bodies work. They’d transformed themselves into a machine, made of muscle and rhythm and—what? What could possibly motivate them to push themselves like this? Ambition? Determination? Pride? Or was it enough that, to them, being dropped from the most prestigious crew in the school would be unthinkable?

Billy and Ben Capaldi were the only two year elevens in the first eight. The other crew members and the cox were year twelves. She recognized them, but didn’t know any of them.

Ben was concentrating so intently she could feel it even from the bank. Sheer, brutal willpower was driving him. But Billy looked angry, as though harnessing every negative emotion to fuel the relentless repetition of the stroke.

She walked down the embankment to the edge of the water to be closer to the crew’s level, and shot a series of stills as they rowed. She’d give them to the editor of the school newsletter—contributing-to-community-life bonus.

As well as all the evident mental exertion, she could certainly see great beauty in the harmony of what they were doing. Beauty, too, in the way Billy seemed so easily, so perfectly, suited to the sport. Born to row. His muscled arms; wide, square shoulders; and long legs seemed purpose-built—and, she supposed, in a sense, that’s exactly what training did: build this body to move that long boat through the water.

When the cox called, “Easy. Rest,” and the boys relaxed and stretched backward, their faces broke out in grimaces of relief and grins of satisfaction that were short-lived. The coach was yelling back at them, “Let’s have a set of sprints from here to Princes Bridge. On Jonno’s count.”

Walking back to Billy’s, she felt autumn’s incipience in the warm afternoon, a whisper that the early evening might be cooler than the string of hot nights they’d had for the last few weeks.

“You know when you shower after training…?”

“Yeah.”

“What, if anything, do you do with your hair?”

He put a hand up, grabbed a handful of hair, and gave it a squeeze. “Nothing. I guess I sort of pull it together, like a ponytail, squeeze it, and then I shake my head. That’s about it.”

“I figured.”

“Low maintenance.”

She smiled at him. He sure was Mr. Careless Magnificence. No preening or vanity. Or maybe the vanity was so deeply assured it didn’t need constant reinforcement. Interesting.

“What do you do with your hair?”

She laughed. “Pretty similar, actually. I insert a quick towel-dry before I brush it and let it air-dry. I can’t be faffed spending time with a blow-dryer.”

“We’re so hair-compatible. We should go out. Oh, wait…”

“What are you thinking about when you row?”

“I’m not thinking; it’s pure physical effort.”

“No, but where is your head?”

“I’m not kidding; it’s just—for me, anyway—100 percent concentrated, in the moment, in the body. Or I’d fuck it up.”

“So, what’s the good bit?”

“Winning.”

“Why?”

“All the work’s paid off.”

“Huh.”

“You know, it’s like lots of sport; it’s not an intellectual thing.”

“And yet it’s what’ll get you to Brown.”

“If I do well enough academically.”

“Of course you’ll do well. You’re smart; you will excel. That’s what Crowthorne Grammar does. It’s an excel factory.”

“But with a heart.”

“That’s part of the excel—the human, well-rounded angle.”

“True. Anyway, I’ll definitely excel now I’ve got you as my English partner.”

“That’s not for keeps; it’s only for our first oral prep.”

Billy leaned in, arm around her waist, and kissed her; as they walked on, he held her hand in his engulfing, calloused grip.

“How am I going—breaking down the PDA resistance?”

“I’m still resistant. But back to rowing—what is it that you love? It must be love, right? It takes up so much of your life.” She imagined that whatever it was that pulled him out of bed at such ungodly hours must be, to him, something as desirable as art was to her.

Billy looked thoughtful, and dubious. “I don’t know that I love it. It’s just always been there—my dad rowed in the first eight, and my grandfather, and so do I. I like it when we’re flying along. The rhythm. If I can forget the pain. And you get used to that. You can put the pain in a different part of your head and ignore it.”

“You’re a machine.”

“Yeah, baby.”

“I’m not a baby.”

“But you’re a babe.”

“Nuh-uh. Is anything we’re talking about in Theory of Knowledge sinking in?”

“Of course it is,” he said, rethinking. “You’re—beautiful?”

“That’s more acceptable, so long as you don’t just love me for my beauty.” She was being flippant, but felt embarrassed that the L word had slipped out in this particular context.

“I don’t,” he said. “Despite your beauty being… great… it’s the least of the reasons I love you.”

They walked along a few more steps.

Surely now she would hear a shimmer of fairy bells. Come on, cue magic SFX. He’d actually said those words? That had to be wish-induced. If his parents knew what he’d just said, they’d probably have her banished from the city. Or at least from the school.

“Wow,” he said. “That was a bit intense. Sorry. I’ve never said that before.” He broke out into a huge smile; he leaned down, and they kissed again, and worry about being affectionate in public was the last thing on her mind.

Mel was like something from old American TV make-believe land. This afternoon, in that pristine kitchen, sat a plateful of homemade chocolate chip biscuits, and another of chilled grapes and strawberries. Moving through the house was a little more fraught now that Vân Ước had met the parents, but they made it upstairs with no sightings.

Kissing Billy was like discovering a many-petaled, deep, complicated flower with her mouth. First, his lips, smooth and strong. She’d never thought of lips as strong or weak, but his expressed such confident intention. They moved over her face and mouth and neck as though with a true compass. These lips were surrounded by rasping whiskers. She touched her fingertips along his jawline and felt the direction of the whiskers change. So alien and beautiful. They created their own growth pattern. There was a tiny whorl under the end of the jawbone on the left side of his face.

“Do I need a shave?” Billy whispered.

“I don’t know. I like the way your face feels.”

“How does it feel?”

She considered this for a while. “Strange, but good.”

Then there was his open mouth. She loved the taste of him—the inside of his mouth was an unexpectedly great place to be. The whole thing disconcertingly reminded her of the mew; she put it out of her head. Right now, if there were an animal noise she might make, it would be a demanding growl, which might be a bit frightening; perhaps better all-around if she avoided animal sounds. At least until they’d known each other a bit longer.

Surely kissing like this couldn’t be very far removed on the Richter scale from what actual sex must be like. They were inside each other in a seductively involving way, being pulled through concentric circles of longing to the deep center of things.

They were lying on his bed now, watching and touching each other, aching, entranced. The maybe-probably-impossible-wish had become a nagging backbeat of anxiety, but this—this was real-world magic, a spell insistently weaving them together.

The idea of drowning in someone’s eyes had always seemed too silly for words. Not anymore. Not now that she knew Billy’s eyes. The outer circle of each blue iris was thick and black; the blueness, at close range, was assembled from myriad fractured facets; his lashes and eyebrows were dark and defined.

It felt as though she might have been kissing Billy Gardiner for a thousand days and that they would keep kissing forever. When he put his hand under her dress and up, gently, between her legs, she held it there, and moved against it until she came. He didn’t take his eyes off her face, and she only squeezed her eyes shut because she couldn’t not.

She’d barely had time to wonder how they’d so quickly leapfrogged to here, or worry that she had no idea how to return the favor, and that he would soon know the full extent of her sexual cluelessness, when there were three sharp knocks on his bedroom door, making them both sit up quickly, trying to breathe normally.

Billy picked up a book and said, “Yeah?”

His mother came in. “Hello, darling. Hello…”

“Vân Ước,” said Billy.

“Of course: Vân Ước.”

“Hi.”

How must this look to Billy’s mother? They were both in full school uniform; neither of them had even one button undone. Her dress was on the slightly too-big side, loose and almost knee-length. Billy’s books and folder were on the bed, and so were hers. It kind of looked like they’d been working there. They had been working there. Before they were kissing there. The only giveaway was her school shoes. Off, next to the bed. And perhaps their flushed faces.

Billy’s mother seemed to be talking to Vân Ước’s shoes, those guilty little islands on the floor. “I just popped up to say it’s nearly dinnertime. Would Vân Ước like to stay, or does she need to be getting home?”

“Thank you—Abi—but I’d better get going.” She looked at her watch. It was later than she’d realized.

“What a shame. Perhaps another time.”

The way Abi said what a shame reminded her of Tiff and Holly’s sorry. And she guessed another time might be when hell froze over.