Better Than Running at Night Page 5

  Then he snow-kissed me. His mouth was gentle and cold, and he rolled his tongue around mine while the snow melted in my mouth.

  It was so silent, we seemed to be surrounded by the absence of sound, as if the freshly falling flakes absorbed everything audible.

  The snow was dying down and I really thought I might not have feet anymore. Nate marched us back inside to warmth and dry blankets.

  Convincingly Cut

  It was so dark when the alarm started screeching, I couldn't believe it was morning. Rain had pounded the snow out of sight. I didn't want to move, become separate from the bed. But if I didn't get up soon, I'd be late for class. No, I was already late. There wasn't time to go home and change. I'd have to make my second appearance as a tree. I'd tell Ralph my clothes didn't dry in the dryer last night.

  I told Nate we had to get up, but he rolled onto his stomach and pulled the covers over his head like a snail being poked. He could stay there, but a teacher notices when one of three is missing.

  There was so much rain flowing on the pavement, the sewers couldn't suck it up fast enough. People rushed through the waterfall streets, their drawing boards in huge plastic bags. Luckily, my class was allowed to leave our stuff on racks in the room.

  At first my coat saved only my upper half, and served as a slide for the rain to land on my thighs. Passing vehicles seemed to take pleasure in splashing cold slushy puddles against my side. The water had soaked through my jacket by the time I got to the Garage.

  Ralph and Sam had already pinned their drawings on the wall.

  "Welcome, Ellie!" Ed shouted. "You are just in time for our first crit! I was telling Sam, here, that I was hoping you weren't sick."

  He wasn't even being sarcastic.

  I hung my drawing with the others.

  "Look at the shapes, the negative space! Your progress is astounding!" Ed raced back and forth in front of our pieces.

  He went on, analyzing each one individually. But my heavy head was bobbing as if my neck was made of rubber and couldn't support the weight of my brain. What I caught of Ed's crit sounded something like, "Rendered blah blah can you see how the planes and the angle with the blah blah blah captured perspective oh look at blah blah to the vanishing point! And blah blah BLAH, what do you think, Ellie?"

  That was my name.

  He still looked just as excited as ever.

  I recrossed my legs in the other direction and looked from drawing to drawing, first taking in the picture as a whole, then focusing on the details. I scrunched my face up, hoping to appear as if I was considering everything he'd been discussing, rather than figuring out what he was asking. "Hey, guys, guess where my virginity is! I left it back at Nate Finerman's house!" was all that came to my head.

  "I think ... he cut the shapes out very convincingly," I said.

  "Yes. Yes! Didn't he? You wouldn't know they were whole to begin with! Good job, Ralph!"

  And so the morning went. Luckily he didn't ask me any more questions. At least not in front of Ralph and Sam.

  On a break, Ed asked me if I was feeling okay. "There's something a little un-Ellie about you today," he said.

  "I'm fine," I told him. "I just didn't sleep much last night."

  "That'll do it," Ed said, a little quieter than usual. "When I have trouble sleeping, I drink a mug of hot milk. I can't work without enough sleep. Try milk next time." Then he turned to the rest of the class. "Everybody!" he announced. "Let's take lunch!"

  I wondered if Nate had gone to class. Maybe I should go to the painting building and get him to have lunch with me, I thought. No, the next time I see him we should have some privacy. Plus, we'd need time to talk.

  Instead of finding Nate, I went to the dining hall with Ralph and Sam.

  When we returned, Ed had set up a still life with fruit and bottles that he had painted in varied tones of gray for our practice. Even the apple was gray. At least we were on our way to drawing real things. It seemed ridiculous to me that I couldn't be painting like Nate, or at least drawing people.

  "Does anyone notice anything special about these grays?" Ed shouted.

  No answer.

  Ed pulled out a piece of cardboard with gray squares on it, fading from white to black. "There are nine values on here! And the values decrease in whole steps! See?! The square in the middle is exactly the average of black and white. And each of the squares is the average of the two squares that surround it!"

  I didn't want to be in the Garage, and couldn't imagine being there until six. I needed to know what Nate was feeling now, if he regretted it, if he'd ever want to talk to me again. Like in the movies, when the guy just uses the girl for sex and never calls. Maybe I should've waited.

  The next thing I heard Ed say was, "Check this out, Ellie! Which one do you think it is?!"

  "Um, it's the one ... in the..."

  Ralph covered his mouth to hold back a laugh. Sam peeked at me from under his cap.

  "That's correct, Ellie! The tall bottle on the right is the middle value!"

  "That's the one I meant," I said.

  "Of course it was!"

  The tail end of a laugh escaped through Ralph's cupped hand.

  I wondered if I should go to Nate's right after class, or if I should go later, or if I should even go at all. I wanted to see him, but I didn't want to seem clingy. And what if I showed up and it turned out that he had changed his mind about me?

  But when six o'clock rolled around, I found myself running straight through the freezing mist to his house.

  Last-Minute Self-Portrait

  I rang the buzzer.

  He opened the door just enough to stick his head between it and the frame.

  "I'm on my way out," he said.

  His first assignment, a self-portrait, was due tomorrow, so he had to go to the painting building to work on it. He said he didn't get work done last night for obvious reasons.

  "You sure you're not offended?" he asked, rubbing my cheek with his thumb.

  It hadn't occurred to me to be offended until he brought it up. That's why we were in school. To get work done.

  I wondered if he really had work to do, or if he didn't want to see me.

  I headed home. The brown slush of the day had frozen fast with the setting sun. A girl ahead of me on the sidewalk slipped and fell on her butt. Her gluteus maximus. I jumped over an ice puddle and walked on the tire-marked road, where my boots could grip the ground.

  At home I cooked myself some mac and cheese, and scribbled copies of pictures from Human Anatomy for Artists in my sketchbook.

  That night I climbed into my bed as a nonvirgin for the first time. Until yesterday there was always this open-ended wondering about when and where and if it would happen. Now there was one less word that could be used to describe me.

  All You Need to Know

  I lay in bed for hours that night, wishing I could turn back the universal clock and get some sleep. Maybe I should've cooked up some milk. As if that would really work.

  I was thinking about Nate. And his dad. Nate never got a father-son sex talk—an experience I thought all boys were supposed to have. Unfortunately, my dad tried to have a father-daughter sex talk with me. Back when I had no concept of what sex really was.

  "What do they teach you in sexual education?" he asked me after dinner one night. He made it sound so official. At school we all said "sex ed."

  "I don't know," I said. I was rummaging through my mom's high school yearbook. I was looking for a guy with dark wild hair. I'd seen him in some pictures that I found in a shoebox under my mom's side of the bed and I wanted to know his name. Mom was at her gold leafing class.

  "I can't believe they start you in on this in sixth grade," He peered over his glasses.

  I shrugged.

  That was our first-year meeting with Ms. Tittlebaum. After lunch for a week, the girls and boys were separated into different rooms, which was supposed to make us feel more "comfortable." The first day, Ms. Tittlebaum had drawn a gig
antic penis on the chalkboard and asked us if we knew any nicknames for it. It was pretty hard to feel comfortable, even with only girls in the class. Nobody raised her hand.

  "I'll tell you all you need to know about sexual intercourse," my dad said.

  "Please don't." I found a picture of a guy with wild hair, but not the right face.

  "Hold on to your virginity. Hold on with all your might. Those high school boys have only one thing on their mind. Trust me, I was one once."

  I scrunched my face at him. "That's gross. Don't tell me things like that."

  There were a few guys on the next page with his hairstyle. It must've been in back then.

  "Well, what do they tell you about?" he asked.

  "Puberty. You know, growing hair and stuff."

  One guy left a note, "Love You Always," by his picture, but he was all skinny and geeky looking. Couldn't be him.

  "How about protection? Are they teaching you about that?"

  Sure they were. But I wasn't going to tell my dad that Ms. Tittlebaum had brought in condoms and that we'd all passed them around the room like we were playing hot potato.

  "Okay, you don't have to answer," he said, smiling. "I can see that yearbook's way more interesting than your old man. Find any of Mom's friends?"

  "Some, I guess."

  He had to be in here. Maybe I'd skipped a page somewhere.

  "Mom's got all sorts of ex-boyfriends in there," he said. "But I won her in the end!"

  I turned back to the first page to start again.

  He sat, watching me, for maybe ten minutes. He got fidgety—bouncing his knee and tapping the table. I pretended he wasn't there.

  "What are you doing, anyway?" he finally asked.

  "Just looking for someone, okay?" I said. "Not that it's any of your business."

  He took off his glasses and sneered at me. "I was only asking a question," he said firmly.

  "And I was only answering."

  He sat back and fumed.

  "Who are you looking for?" he asked after a long silence. "Your real dad?" Suddenly his eyes looked stunned, as if he couldn't believe those words had escaped his mouth. He took a deep breath and let out a forced chuckle. "Or do you have a crush on someone in there?"

  I didn't join his laughter.

  He put his hand on top of mine, sandwiching it against the yearbook. "I'm just teasing," he said. "You know that, right?"

  His hand was shaking.

  The Gilloggley Workout

  Friday morning, Ed had set up a table full of dilapidated violins. He put on a tape of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D as inspiration. I recognized the melody, but had never known what it was called. I wrote it down in my sketchbook so I'd remember to buy it. I had always thought of classical as background music. Easy to tune out. But the piece was so intense it was hard to concentrate on drawing.

  Ed was doing a composition analysis, jumping from person to person. He wanted us to make the negative shapes, the spaces around the violins, dynamic.

  "Negative and positive shapes must play off one another!" he shouted. "And in this case, I mean it literally!" He bowed his air violin in sweeping strokes as he laughed. He circled around, giving a few tips here and there, but soon he stepped back and let us work. For a while, all we heard from Ed were Disney whistles mimicking the violin concerto.

  Ralph and I stood at easels, but Sam sat hunched over a desk. Headphones on, select dreads peeking out from under his hat.

  At the end of the concerto's first movement Ed stopped behind Sam and said, "Hey, Sam, what's playing?"

  Sam kept sketching, like there was another Sam in the room and Ed was definitely talking to that one.

  Ed scuttled in front of him.

  "Sam! Sam!" He waved his arms around, adding occasional jumps to his flailing.

  At this point, Ralph and I didn't even attempt to stifle our laughter. And when Ralph started laughing, he had a hard time stopping. He also had a hard time not sounding like a girl experiencing mild hysteria.

  With a look that seemed to say, "Get this, guys!" Ed burst into fully fledged jumping jacks, shouting Sam's name in time, comb-over flopping with each jump.

  "SAM! SAM! SAM! SAM!"

  Finally, Ed knelt down and stuck his face in front of Sam's to get his attention.

  "What's playing, Sam?" he asked, just as energized as the first time.

  "What?" Sam said, not removing his headphones. He looked Ed in the eye without moving his head.

  "What are you listening to?" Ed pointed to his own ears, just in case Sam didn't understand.

  "Phish," Sam said. His mouth barely moved when he spoke.

  "Fish? Fish! Sam, what a good idea! I will have to get fish for you guys to draw next week! Just picture their color, their texture, their movement! Sam, you are wonderful!"

  Sam's unmoving eyes seemed to refuel Ed's energy, as if they were mirrors reflecting it right back into him.

  "And Sam!" Ed shouted as he jumping-jacked back to the setup.

  "Yeah," Sam answered dryly.

  "Thanks for the workout!"

  High School Friend

  I walked to the computer lab after class, thinking maybe I'd run into Nate. But he was nowhere in sight, so I decided to make use of my new e-mail account while I was in the building. Nate must check his messages often, since he works here, I thought. I wanted to tell him how much I liked lying beside him and feeling him in the dark. But I didn't want to sound like a cheezeball.

  For a few minutes I twisted in semicircles on a swivel chair, watching the cursor blink back at me, before I came up with anything.

  Finally I wrote:

  Nate,

  You have the best back in the world, and I feel privileged that you let me touch it. I know that sounds silly, but it's true and there's no other way to express it. Looking forward to our next encounter,

  Elite

  It was warmer than usual outside. The campus was still slushy from all that rain and melted snow.

  Going up the hill, I recognized Nate's electric hairstyle.

  He was walking with some girl. Half of her head was shaved to a dark stubble. The other half of her hair was bleached blond and came to her chin. She kept flipping it out of her eyes.

  "Ellie!" he said overenthusiastically. "This is Clarissa. She's visiting for the weekend from NYU. She's my, you know—" He smiled sheepishly and looked back and forth from her to me. "My um—"

  "Girlfriend," she said curtly, shoving her hand in my direction for a shake.

  Her hand felt like a limp flounder.

  She looked my charcoal-covered body up and down, as if I were a cute little dress she was thinking of buying. A miniature backpack clung to her shoulders over her leather jacket. Her black boots laced all the way up to her knees. There they were met by the hem of a leopard-print skirt.

  "You should come over sometime," Nate said, glancing back and forth from me to Clarissa. "I bet you two would hit it off."

  "I have to go home now," I said. I tried to form the words clearly, but they came out all wavery. I wanted Nate to wink or give some sign that Clarissa was delusional—that maybe she thought she was his girlfriend, but he was merely humoring her. All I got was his usual grin and her footsteps clacking into the distance.

  Where the F@#! We're Looking

  When I was sure they were around the corner and out of sight, I ran to my house. My head throbbed. I had heard of people who drank to forget. No, the best thing to do would be to keep running. Running and running until the name Nate meant nothing to me. But I'm not that much of an athlete. I don't think my feet could've taken me far enough.

  I did have wheels though.

  I bolted down the stairs to the basement, where my bike was locked. I didn't even wait to get to the street before I got on. I wanted to pump my thoughts out as I stood on the pedals, pushing through the slushy mud. By the time I got off the grass I was in a rhythm, booking down the sidewalk.

  I wished more than anything that I could e
nter cyberspace and delete that stupid e-mail.

  Tears stuck to the walls of my throat. It hurt to keep them from spouting out of my eyes, but I forced them back anyway.

  I should've known that Nate didn't really like me, that he only wanted me for my body.

  I did know. And now I wouldn't let him make me cry. He wasn't worth it.

  I saw some movement coming from the courtyard ahead and to my left, and it occurred to me a little too late that I should grab my brakes. I came to a screeching halt. My front wheel just barely bumped the leg of a woman in a fur coat. She gasped and looked at me as if I had murdered before her eyes the minks she now clutched around her wide bosom.

  "I'm sorry, I'm really sorry," I said.

  But her blood-red lips were stuck in a giant O.

  From the window of a purple pickup truck, a man called to the mink lady, "Hey, are you okay?"

  This broke her from her trance and as she crossed the street she yelled back to him, "I don't know where the fuck they're looking, but it ain't ahead!"

  We, the bikers of America, are looking ahead, lady. We're just trying to hit you.

  Quad Coasting

  I may have said I was sorry, but hitting Her Minkness didn't bother me in the least. What upset me more than crashing into mink lady was that I'd been so distracted I didn't see her in time. Just because I was doing exactly what I had told myself I wouldn't do: let Nate get to me.

  I continued riding down Artist's Row and turned left on College Street, heading toward the quad on top of the hill. The pedals fought back against my calves as I pumped. By the time I reached the grass, I had slowed down so much I thought I might start rolling backwards.