Dear Little Jo,
Well that wasn’t exactly how we planned it. I hope you’re not mad. I mean I didn’t plan on it at all. Sylvan and Julia were coming for dinner, so I’d promised Mom I’d help her cook. I only had half an hour left after we came downstairs from your room.
By the way I didn’t mean to make it sound like I thought you should have let me come into your tent with you. Not with everybody downstairs like that and the girls likely to barge in any second. At least standing behind your bedroom door we could do what we liked, or some of what we liked, and still not get caught if we heard someone in the hall outside.
Well not getting caught was the theory, anyway. I guess we didn’t account for my big mouth. Everyone was sitting around in your living room: Bron, Shayna, Lyle, Rich, and me. You were only out of the room for two or three minutes, Jo. Somehow the conversation had drifted to the topic of body smells. Rich said his father’s hat still smells like his hair, even though he’s been dead for twenty years. Bron swore she could tell Isaiah and Ezra apart by smelling their necks.
Lyle and Rich were already getting their coats on. They were just about to leave for rehearsal. I mean the conversation was basically over.
Then Shayna said, “Jojo’s feet smell like peanut butter.”
And without thinking at all I said, “Hazelnut.”
“What?” she said, and I repeated it: “They smell like hazelnuts.”
There was total silence, but it wasn’t too late. I mean there were so many things I could have said. “He told me himself, in a letter,” or “He shoved his feet in my face one time,” or even “It’s his vintage shoes.” There were so many simple things that could have explained it away, or at least made it seem sort of logical that a teenaged boy would say a thing like that about the scent of another teenaged boy’s feet.
But none of those things came into my head. Or at least not fast enough to dodge Bronwyn Otulah-Tierney.
And of course it was Bron. She knew instantly. She said, “How is it that you’ve become the authority on the smell of Jonathan’s feet, Kurl?” Her voice all chirpy. Her head sort of tilted to one side, her lashes fluttering. Letting me know she’d figured it out.
I sat there, dead silent. Speechless. Heat crawling up my neck to my face. I mean I could feel the heat burning behind my eyelids, even.
Bron looked at Shayna, and Shayna’s eyebrows disappeared under her bangs. “No way,” she said. “You and Jonathan? No way. Since when?”
“Are we talking about what I think we’re talking about?” Lyle said.
“I wasn’t supposed to…” I stuttered. “I mean, he didn’t want to…”
And then you walked into the room. You looked around at the gaping faces, and asked, “What’s up?” And then at me, with my hot face: “What’s the matter?”
Everyone cracked up. You have this way of smiling, Jo, when other people are laughing and you don’t know why. Your eyes crease at the corners and your mouth turns up, but only for a second. Then it flips into a half frown, and then back to smiling again. Like you’re testing which one might be the right answer. It’s one of those things about you that pumps adrenaline straight through my guts. Makes me want to punch anyone not sharing the joke with you.
“I told them,” I said, before anyone else could say it, “about us. It was an accident.”
Bron leaped up and hugged you. It was kindness, I think. Holding you in case you fainted or something.
“Well, no wonder you’re such a good cook,” Rich said.
Shayna punched him. “Rich!”
You sank into Bron’s chair, and Shayna sat next to me on the couch. “So, how long? Weeks? Months?”
“A couple months,” you said. A bit teary from the shock.
Lyle and Rich gave us a big round of congratulations on their way out the door.
“You’re not mad, are you?” you asked Shayna. “Lying by omission?”
“No. I mean I wish you could have told me sooner. But no.” Shayna laughed. “Hazelnuts! Oh my God, Kurl.”
So I had to explain it to you, about your feet smelling like hazelnuts. It was the first time I was talking about our universe, our secret dream universe, out loud. It was still a dream but suddenly also real life. This realness made everything so much sharper. Honed the edges of everything.
You laughed at my stupidity and dragged my hand to your lap and lifted it and bit my fingers, hard. I snatched my hand back and dug my knuckles under your ribs until you yelped and squirmed. It was the first time we’d touched in public. The first time people were watching us. Seeing us. It felt like something striking sparks in my chest. The sharpness of it! Grinning. Both of us grinning like idiots, and Bron saying, “Oh my God, stop it. Stop, I can’t take it; my brain is exploding.”
I had to go. You walked me to the door and we kissed as quickly and quietly as possible. You whispered, “Don’t leave me to this pack of jackals.”
I brushed the side of my face against your face: mine rough, yours smooth. “I won’t sleep,” I promised, for no reason at all.
But you understood whatever I was trying to say. “I won’t either,” you vowed.
Sincerely,
AK