Chapter 2 #2
“Hey, uh — I’m Cole.” A little wave and a shrug of his narrow shoulders. “Um, I just moved here, and — well, that’s not part of the game, because obviously you can see me.”
There were a few titters, evidence of just how badly we all wanted to see a new face among us.
“So, uh — let’s see. My dad took a job in Paris for the year and my mom went with him, but they thought I should stay in the country for my last year of high school, so that’s why I’m living here with my Gram.
Um, I saw Imagine Dragons this summer, and I had backstage passes, so I got to meet them.
And, uh — I have a girlfriend back home and I miss her. ”
A flash of blue eyes, and Cole stared us all down. “So, which is the lie?”
“The girlfriend?” Courtney leaned forward a little too eagerly.
Cole grinned and shook his head, his cheeks turning a little pink.
“Paris? That sounds farfetched,” Drew scoffed.
“Quel dommage, c’est vrai,” Cole replied with a laugh. “So that leaves —”
“The concert —” Melissa supplied.
Cole shrugged. “Yeah, it wasn’t Imagine Dragons, it was Green Day. So, you know, technically a lie. Anyway, enough about me, right?” And he sat back in his chair, lacing his fingers behind his head and giving us all an appraising look.
The game continued, and as I waited for my turn, I could feel my palms sweating.
Coming up with answers in games like this was always hard for me.
I knew if I said anything too personal or revealing, that it would end up getting twisted on me.
I definitely didn’t want to say anything about Mom.
So when the game passed to me, I blurted out the first ideas that came to mind.
“Uhh, I’m Ezra, but you guys already know that.
” I could feel my face burning, and I shifted in my chair.
“Um, I don’t like chocolate. I’ve never been on an airplane.
And, uh — that’s it about me. You’re never going to find out more about me playing a game like this because there isn’t anything interesting to find out. ”
Silence. Fuck. Then —
“You’ve never been on a plane? Not even to go to Disney World?” Melissa took a break from examining her fingernails long enough to give me a withering look.
“What kind of freak doesn’t like chocolate?” Tyler added.
There was a general titter, but then Cole’s voice cut through the chatter. “The last one is the lie.”
I folded my arms across my chest and cocked an eyebrow, hoping I at least looked self-assured as I stared him down. “Why would you say that?”
“Ezra, is it?” When I nodded, he went on. “Because I’ve only just met you, and already I can tell there is way more to you than meets the eye.”
And why did that make me feel so warm inside? As the game went on, Cole kept his eyes on me, and I could feel something shimmering between us, something I didn’t quite understand.
I didn’t know how, but I had a feeling something was going to change.
***
Later that afternoon, I stopped at my house just long enough to dump my backpack in my room and exchange my jeans for swim trunks.
Then I was back on my bike, zipping down the hill and over the Highlands-Sea Bright Bridge, crossing the bay to reach the ocean.
When I came down from the bridge, I turned up toward the north end of Sandy Hook, deep blue water spreading out on either side of me as I rode.
When I reached the first parking lot, I left my bike locked up at the rack and then made my way through the dunes, until finally I was standing in the surf, the water washing over my ankles as I faced into the wind, letting the tension of the day evaporate.
It felt good to be outside and away from the school building.
Nothing bad had happened, necessarily. Mostly, everybody ignored me, just like they always did, and I was fine with that.
But no matter where I went, I couldn’t stop running into Cole.
I guess it made sense that we would have so many classes together, with the school being so small.
But for some reason, he was an itch begging to be scratched, and no matter how much I tried to mind my own business, my eyes kept wandering up the curve of his spine, settling between his shoulder blades.
He chose the seat next to me in English class, and I spent the period watching over his shoulder as he decorated his course syllabus with intricate drawings of faces, some of them human and some of them monsters.
And I couldn’t help feeling a little bit curious, shuddering at the memory of the way his blue eyes had met mine from across the room earlier that day.
But then, at lunch, he went and sat at a table with the closest thing our tiny school has to the “popular” kids you see in teen movies.
And I reminded myself how important it is not to get too attached to people, that Cole clearly fit in a way that I never would, and that he would figure that out soon enough.
I spread my beach towel out on the sand and lay down, folding my hands behind my head and shutting my eyes, enjoying the warmth of the sun on my face.
Whatever the fuck else I had to deal with, this made sense.
It still felt like summer, and probably would for most of the next month, so there was still time to enjoy the sun and the water before it got too cold to do anything more than walk along the shoreline.
And I guess that was the one thing I had in common with everyone else in town — knowing we would all make the most of it.
“No, wait — nononononono —”
SPLASH.
The sounds of shrieks and laughter cut into my reverie, and I pushed myself up on my elbows to look for their source.
Far down the beach, Cole was emerging from the surf, shaking the water off himself and laughing with Drew and Tyler, who had just tossed him in.
He was wearing bright yellow swim trunks that hung low on his slim waist, the soaked fabric clinging to his thighs, droplets sluicing down his hairless chest as he pushed his wavy hair out of his eyes.
Courtney and Melissa were there too, adding their own laughter, but somehow I could only look at Cole.
That hot, shivery feeling that had come over me when I first laid eyes on him was back, making something flip behind my navel, a radiating warmth that made me tingle all the way to my fingertips.
Even though none of them were looking at me, I felt totally exposed, a specimen pinned down for dissection, my viscera spilling out in front of me.
For some reason I thought of Kevin Matthews in the sixth grade.
He was a weird kid like me, and for once, I felt like I actually belonged to somebody.
He liked gaming as much as I did, and for a while he would come over every day after school, and we would sit on the couch with our controllers, and he’d casually lean his knee against mine and I felt it then, too — that weird tightness, like I was doing something wrong, like I didn’t know what to do with my hands.
And it was good for a while, I guess, but maybe I called him too much or something, or I tried to take up too much of his time, because he made some other friends and eventually he pulled away, and that was it.
But I couldn’t really blame him, because I don’t like having to hang out with me all the time either.
I lay down in the sand once more, closing my eyes, but I could still hear the voices, and suddenly the beach wasn’t doing it for me anymore.
It was just as well, I supposed — Dad was always hungry when he got off the job for the day, and if he and I were going to have dinner, I was going to have to put it in the oven.
So I rolled up my towel and trudged back to my bike.
I wasn’t quite ready to face the house, but I guess some things just can’t be helped.