Page 36 of Tell Me Softly
Without a word, Taylor sat, took out his pen and notebook, and listened attentively to our teacher. I didn’t get him sometimes.Not for the first time, I wondered why he had managed to forgive me when his brother couldn’t. In that way, I probably understood Thiago better. Resentment was easier to grasp than grace.
Ms. Denell gave her very uninteresting lecture on a subject that would probably have set the class on fire if it had been twenty or thirty years ago, but nowadays, with everything we’d seen on the internet, it was all passé: human reproduction. We were seniors. What was the point? Anyone who didn’t know how babies were made by now should probably crawl back under the rock they’d emerged from.
“We’ll be working in pairs this semester,” she said, putting up posters of human genitals by the chalkboard. Whoever had drawn them must not have had much of an idea what they were like in real life. Did they really have to draw the people like two dolls? Wouldn’t that make people feel weird about the whole thing later? She continued, “You’ll need to do a research project on human sexuality. You can pick the topic, but it needs to be related somehow to adolescence. You can choose, for example, LGBTQ issues, how sex education is taught in schools, or what STDs are most common among adolescents. You’re free to choose whatever topic you prefer, but you have to figure it out and let me know by Friday. I’ll need to approve it before you can present at the end of the semester.”
People started laughing, and friends signaled to each other, getting ready to pair off. “And everyone, this is not a joke assignment,” she added in a louder voice. “It will be 50 percent of your grade, and your partner is the person you’re sitting next to today.”
Everyone started complaining. I looked over at Taylor. He didn’t seem to care. Or if he did, he didn’t want me to know what he thought about the whole thing.
“This Friday, you’ll need to bring in a one-page report on your subject and why you’ve chosen it,” Ms. Denell said, puttingaway her things. “I know many of you will be attending the game against Falls Church this weekend and will be missing my class, so if that is the case, you should bring it to me Thursday afternoon. You can leave it in my mailbox in the office, OK?”
We all nodded, and I tuned out the rest of the class. When the bell rang, I watched Danny stand. His partner was Susan Tribecky, his ex from before we were dating. I noticed that didn’t make me remotely jealous, even when she grinned at me smugly. If only she knew how little I cared.
“So, sex partner,” Taylor said, interrupting my thoughts. I rolled my eyes as I tossed my bag over my shoulder. “I can’t even begin to tell you the number of subjects I think you and I should explore together.”
At least he was relaxing, and when he smiled at me, I couldn’t help but smile back. He was always so cheerful. Or at least, almost always… I had to admit that lately he’d been awfully angry too.
“Let’s talk about it this afternoon,” I said, walking through the door and toward my locker. “Maybe we can hang out for a while.”
“We’ve got detention, remember?”
“Shit.” I had not remembered.
“I’ve got time after, though,” he said. When I closed my locker door, I saw he was standing much closer to me than I’d imagined, a glimmer of mischief in those clear blue eyes that I knew were driving the better part of the girls at school wild.
“The library closes at eight, though I’m not sure where…” It seemed obvious our homes were out of the question. But he responded, “Kami, you can come to my place. My mom really wants to see you.”
It was as if he’d read my mind. I paused a moment, feeling something too intense for me to deal with at that moment, at school, with half the student body milling around me.
“Hey,” he said, cupping my neck. “Are you about to cry? You better not. I don’t want to see a single tear.”
I shook my head, electrified by his touch––my neck was one of the most sensitive parts of my body––and closed my eyes.Calm down, dammit. I responded, my voice trembling, “You know perfectly well I can’t go to your house.”
“You can. It’s my house, and I’m inviting you,” he affirmed. “The past is the past, Kami. And it’s time we left it behind and moved on.”
I shook my head and rushed to catch the tear that was falling down my cheek.
“If only I could make you understand––”
“You don’t have to make me understand anything. We can’t control destiny. There are things that are just meant to happen, and they’re no one’s fault.”
“I think you’re literally the only person who sees it that way.”
“Trust me, I’m not.”
He reminded me of his mother just then, of the woman who had taken such good care of us when we were kids. She had baked us birthday cakes, taken us to the park, sewn our Halloween costumes. We asked a lot of her with those costumes; we had no idea how hard we were making her work, and we chose the most complicated designs you could imagine. But she didn’t care. She’d make them, and then she’d take us trick-or-treating. That was something my parents never did; all they could talk about was how candy would make me hyperactive so I wouldn’t sleep. Katia Di Bianco loved the holiday, though. Not only did she walk us around our neighborhood, she even drove us to other ones so we could keep getting more and more candy—so much we didn’t know what to do with it when we got home. After sorting through it and dividing it up, trading Snickers for Starbursts, we’d take whatever was left and pass it out among the kids at the hospitalwhere she worked because they were sick and hadn’t managed to go trick-or-treating themselves.
“Listen,” Taylor said, “if it’s my brother you’re worried about, he’s going out tonight near Stony Creek. He’ll be home late, so I can promise you won’t see him.”
I took a deep breath and nodded.
“Fine. I’ll come for an hour. We’ll choose our idea, write an outline, and then I’m going home.”
“Great.” Taylor kissed me on the cheek and walked off, and it was all I could do not to reach up and touch the place where his lips had been.
I was finally going back to the Di Biancos’ house. I was finally going to see their mom again. And I had no idea how I’d make it through it with my heart in one piece.
Chapter Fourteen
