It was a very different smile now. I tried not to feel too cocky about that, but it was a sort of powerful feeling knowing that I could make her smile. Every time it lit up her face, she looked more beautiful than ever. The next thought that consumed me was that she was mine. We kissed. We had the boyfriend/girlfriend label conversation. Everything is now legit.
Maya never actually demanded a label. She never insisted on having “the talk” about our relationship, but we ended up having it anyway because of Dwight. We were eating lunch, and out of nowhere he asked the question. “So are you guys like a couple now?” And before I could swallow my food and think of something clever to say in response to this, Maya said yes, without giggling like an idiot or adding anything else to the conversation. Dwight smiled at us, then went back to eating his organic, vegan lunch, with the school paper propped up against his water bottle.
“We are?” I asked.
“Unless you don’t want to be,” she said.
“No! I do,” I said a little too enthusiastically.
“Good,” she said.
“Yeah, good.”
And that was how the pathetic conversation happened. Clare and Rosa both giggled but didn’t say anything. Our new status had been declared like a proclamation. The kind that signals high school intimacy in a way that nothing else can.
I should probably add here that Maya and I haven’t done anything yet, and I’m telling you because it feels like the kind of thing that might make me seem like a regular guy. Because it isn’t that I don’t want to do anything, but she isn’t ready. And that’s fine because I’m not the kind of guy who pushes to do things with a girl. The kind of things we all think about in the shower.
But yes, I think about sex. A lot. It’s just more than that. There’s this feeling that I have to be near her because she makes me less afraid, less angry, less paranoid that someone is going to find out about me and sound the alarm to remove the crazy guy.
In a lot of ways, she’s the thing that keeps me sane. More than the drug or the therapy. She’s the cure. That was all I could think about while I doodled on my scratch paper and listened as my team answered questions.
Then something weird happened. Dwight got a massive nosebleed and had to be escorted off the stage. I guess it wasn’t actually weird because he’s gotten them at practice before, but this time it spurted out of his nostrils like a geyser. Torrents of blood gushed down his face and onto his ridiculous short-sleeved collared shirt that made him look like a traveling Mormon. As if she had been waiting for something like this to happen, his mother raced up the stairs and onto the stage, pulled a heavy-duty plastic container of Kleenex out of her bag, and stuffed a tissue into his nostrils. Poor Dwight.
Once he was carted off, Sister Helen grabbed me by the collar and practically threw me into Dwight’s empty chair so the competition could continue.
Maya smiled her usual serious smile (because she was onstage), and then she squeezed my thigh. Her hand lingered there for a moment, then moved back onto the table.
I don’t remember breathing after that. I’m sure I did—I just don’t remember doing it. For the next few moments, I wasn’t really onstage with the rest of my team. I was in my head, somewhere alone with Maya.
“Adam, pay attention!” Sister Helen hissed at me.
No one had seen Maya touch me. She barely hid her smile behind her hair as she bent forward to work out a problem. No one suspects her of anything devious. Probably because she looks innocent. It’s incredibly misleading.
Then a strange haze fell over me. I knew something was off because after the moderator called for silence, I could still hear voices. They were soft at first, and then they got louder.
They were giving me answers.
Capital of Burkina Faso?
“Ouagadougou,” they said.
What character in Shakespeare’s Othello…
“Iago!” they shouted.
I was on a roll. I was buzzing in faster than anyone else. Dwight watched from the audience with a dazed expression on his face while his mom tried to soak up the blood. Maya’s eyes were wide with shock. My mom and Paul were wearing similar expressions of fear mixed with what appeared to be pride. And I knew why. Every question I answered was golden, but I’d never been this quick on the buzzer at practice. I must have looked manic.
The voices got louder until, quite suddenly, the buzzer signaling the end of the match sounded. We’d won by over sixty points.
But the voices didn’t stop. They kept growing louder until I couldn’t hear my own voice and couldn’t concentrate over the sound of my pale, nerdy, cheering teammates, who were all as shocked as I was that their lowest scorer at practice had just miraculously out-geeked them all. I knew how to pretend. I just nodded and smiled at everyone, even though I couldn’t hear a word they were saying.
Sister Helen looked pleased as well. She was eating a cookie as she chatted up Father Benjamin. Maya was obviously surprised, but she had a big grin on her face.
Then I saw my mom and watched her face fall. Her eyes said it all.
Be careful. Are you okay?
The voices stopped and I could think again.
—
Maya and I went out for coffee afterward. I guess I would consider it our first official date.
Actually, she had coffee. I had juice. I bake with coffee, but I don’t drink it. I hate stuff that smells better than it tastes. Seems ass-backward.
Maya likes it, though. She says when she drinks it on the weekends, it’s the only time her brothers leave her alone. For some reason, the “don’t bother me until I’m done with my coffee” seems to work on them.
Anyway, there was a moment of awkwardness. We sat down at a table at Starbucks, and I kissed her. Well, tried to.
“Did you just kiss my eye?” she asked, squinting up at me. I’d leaned in a little too early, and as a result, I’d kissed her eyeball.
“Yeah,” I said, laughing nervously. “Girls aren’t into that?”
“No, that’s totally hot,” she said in a mock serious tone, rubbing her eye. “But I prefer this.” She put her hand on the back of my neck and pulled me toward her, kissing me hard on the mouth. When I started to pull away, she bit my lower lip and then gently let go.
“I prefer that, too,” I said, still smiling. The biting thing was amazing, but I was a little freaked out by how advanced that move was. I thought it might be a good idea for me to say something really clever or romantic.
I tried to think of a cool way to tell her that coffee tasted better on her lips, but Maya pulled me in again before I could speak.
—
My mom and Paul are disgustingly cute sometimes.
They have a date night once a week. It was something my mom insisted on doing when Paul was made partner at his firm. She said she was feeling a little neglected when he started bringing more work home, and I think after my dad, Mom still has a hard time believing that Paul isn’t going anywhere. But I don’t.
It’s the way he looks at her. My dad never looked at her like that. At least that I can remember. With the eyes and the grin. She doesn’t have anything to worry about. Paul loves her.
Every once in a while, he’ll surprise her and take her somewhere really special. He’s even gone so far as to buy her a new outfit, lay it out for her, and tell her exactly what time to be ready for their date. Apparently, he’s asked stores to save her size and brand preferences so he can continue to do this in the future. Barf, but yeah, okay. I get it. It’s cute. Like that scene in Field of Dreams where we find out that Moonlight Graham bought all those blue hats for his wife, so many that when he died, they found boxes of them he never got a chance to give her.