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Teddy
“I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU got the fittest one!” Peter slaps me on the back the moment I enter my room—which is a surprise as Xavier is my roommate, not him. But there’s no sign of Xavier, and Peter is instead bouncing around the room, all red-faced and shiny with sweat.
“Excuse me?” I stare at him, faint irritation stirring in me. I’ve only known Peter for a week—that’s how long it’s taken the teachers to decide whom will be matched together for the primary dance pairings—and already he’s the guy I like least.
This isn’t the first time Peter’s been overly loud and raucous when talking about girls. Only yesterday he was boasting about his ‘body count.’ It took me a good few minutes to realize he was referring to the girls he’d slept with and not people he’d killed.
Sometimes, I feel like I’ll never fit in with other guys.
“Taryn. Did you see her—” Peter motions to his own chest. “None of the other girls have anything like hers, and you’ve got her.”
It’s true. Taryn is curvier than the other girls. I noticed that. Of course I did. But I didn’t notice it in the way that Peter and the other boys are laughing about now. For me, it was just an objective observation. But I can imagine what thoughts are going through their heads...and I’ve never really thought about any girls like that. I notice things, like appearance and physique, but it doesn’t make me want to try and seduce them or whatever. Ha, Peter would probably laugh if he knew I was thinking of the word ‘seduce’ and not something more...rowdy?
“So, did she put out?” Peter asks, breathless.
“Excuse me?” I stare at him.
“You just went to her room?” He gives me a look that I think is supposed to convey something—but what that something is, I don’t know.
“I did.” I nod. Taryn had this cool idea that each week as we dance together, we should take a photo.
“We should do it no matter what,” she’d said, her face flushed and eyes sparkling. “It’ll be a record of our progress, and we can see if our acting is also getting better, if we’re looking like we’re romantically involved by the end of it. See if we can fool the world.”
She said the words like it was a challenge, but it had made me nervous. She couldn’t have worked out that there’s something...different about me. That I’ve just never felt those feelings. But I do like how she didn’t just assume that our romance would be real. In several of the ballet clubs I joined as a young teenager, it turned out all the female dancers wanted to be paired with me for romantic pas de deux under the belief that we’d develop real romance. And then when I never asked them out, they got angry at me.
“So did you get laid?” Peter’s question jolts me back to my present.
My throat is suddenly dry. “What? No!”
“Third base then?”
I have never quite been sure what third base is. When I asked my cousin a few years ago, he just taunted me for not knowing. “No. We’re just friends.”
“Just friends? With her?” Peter’s eyebrows nearly disappear into his messy blond hair. “What are you, gay?” He laughs, then stops. “Wait, you’re not, are you?”
“Would it matter if I was?” I stare at him. It’s my best confrontational stare, one that I know makes people uncomfortable.
Peter splutters and looks at anything but me. “Uh, well, no. It’d... just be a waste that’s all.”
“A waste?” I raise my own eyebrows this time.
“I’d dance with Taryn in a heartbeat. You ever want to swap, just let me know.”
“No.” My word comes out quickly, and I realize I feel strangely protective of Taryn. She’s my friend already, and, although I don’t know her well yet, I am sure Peter’s words would hurt her. I just know it instinctively. Because Peter’s a jerk and women don’t like jerks. Or at least they shouldn’t. But I’ve also seen what magazines say, how women like bad boys and that good guys get left behind. Whatever that means. I always think those articles are written by these so-called ‘good guys’ who have been rejected by women and so they call it ‘being friend zoned’ in an attempt to shame the women.
Peter gives me an odd look. He doesn’t say much after that, but then Xavier, my actual roommate, returns and tells us the other guys are having a party of sorts in the lounge.
“Just the boys, yes!” Peter holds his hand out for a fist-bump, but neither Xavier nor I complete the action. “You coming?”
Still, both Peter and Xavier are both going to this party, and it appears they’re going right this very second, so I follow them. I need to be more sociable, I know that.
The party’s by Roseheart’s lake, and it’s cold. But as I listen to the other boys with their talk about girls and sex, I can’t help but think these aren’t the guys I want to be socializing with. It’s like they’re talking a foreign language, all about who’s hot, who they want to hook up with. As they rate the girls on the course—and all I can think of that’s remotely similar is that maybe kissing could be fun, but not really anything more, which I can’t share with the boys here—I can’t help but wonder what is wrong with me.