THE MUSIC ON THE KMART BOOM BOX WAS GERSHWIN. The three preludes. I’d tried to learn those a few years earlier. No dice.
Jarvis sat at his desk. This time the coffee mug said WE’RE WHEELING THRU WEST VIRGINIA! He gave back the Gatsby essays. He stopped at Caroline. “Some very deep observations here, but do you think it held together?”
Caroline shrugged. “I can’t write essays.”
Mine? A big red A, with no explanation. Weird.
Then he went to the whiteboard. “Okay. So who can tell me, what’s the music?”
“Gershwin’s preludes,” I said.
Jarvis looked at me. “Jock Lefferts knows his tunes,” he said.
• • •
“Hey, Jarvis was a little tough on you,” I said to Caroline after we’d cleared the room.
“No, he was right. I’m not very good at writing. They tested me at my old school. Apparently I don’t have any typical learning disabilities. I don’t have ADHD, either of the ‘inattentive’ or ‘hyperactive-impulsive’ category,” she said, punctuating the phrase with air quotes.
“Let’s see. Oh, yeah. My ‘proximal-distal planning’ seemed to be within normal range. I also have no apparent ‘executive function disorders’ or ‘visual processing disorders.’ My ‘phonological awareness’ is normal, and therefore, in ‘metacognitive’ terms, there is no need for my teachers to consider ‘remediating’ me.”
“That would mean drugs, right?”
“You got it. I dodged that one. Apparently I’m just having trouble coping with a ‘high-stim’ world that ‘selects for multitasking.’”
I laughed. “How did you remember all of that?”
She smiled. “I don’t know. I guess my memory isn’t the problem. Then, I didn’t even think there was a problem.”
We’d reached the arts building “Maybe I just can’t stay on the trail,” she said. “See you.” Then she peeled off into a practice room to join her octet. I headed past the frowning portraits, trying to sort through the stuff in my head. Like how her hair swung when she walked. Like how it felt as if she could be a great friend, if girls can be friends, and I didn’t want to mess that up with any other feelings. But there were definitely some other feelings. Each time I saw her, even when she was off in the distance walking between classes, I’d started to try and see if she was walking with a guy. So far, so good.
• • •
I hadn’t ever really had a girlfriend. Where I came from, unless people said your name in the hallways like you were some boldfaced guy, you didn’t have much bait to fish with. Last summer, after everyone knew I was going on to prep school, I’d sort of been going out with a girl I’d met at a dance at some fancy hotel for people who went to prep schools. Everyone was dressed in tuxedos that didn’t fit quite right and fake bow ties. She was drunk and pulled me out of a corner. She told me her last boyfriend was in college—a frat guy/hockey player from St. Lawrence who was majoring in prelaw. She went to Dalton, and she was pretty stuck up. I took her to some movies. I hadn’t made any moves on her that first night, and the longer I waited, the harder it was to actually try.
Then one time when she’d been desperate to see Kill Bill 2 again, in the middle of the movie she leaned over and said, “Tarantino is so, like, an auteur,” and then suddenly her tongue was stabbing into my mouth so hard all I could think of was a snake. I tried to duel back with my own, but it was a losing war. It felt like we were jousting or something, which couldn’t, I figured, be a positive thing. It was supposed to feel good, right?
She dropped me for a kid from Essex. Later Luke told me she’d told someone else she thought I was gay. Actually, I was just really relieved.