Page 39 of Caught in a Storm
“It’s totally them,” someone somewhere says. A guy in an Orioles jersey gives Billy a nod on his way up the stairs. “Respect, dude.” A woman a few rows over is definitely taking their picture. Someone else nearby, a guy, says that Margot is surprisingly short.
“Who knew so many people have the Internet?” Billy says.
The Orioles third baseman pops out, and a woman somewhere behind them says that she thinks Margot deserves something good to happen.
“How does this work, exactly?” Billy asks. “Do we pretend people aren’t looking at us? Do we act like we can’t hear them?”
“You guys are adorable!” a young woman at the other end of their row shouts. She’s in her twenties, wearing a sideways Orioles cap. “It helps when they say nice things,” Margot says as she tips her beer at the woman.
“Isn’t it exhausting?” he asks.
Margot looks up. The first handful of stars are doing their best against the stadium lights. “You’ll get used to it,” she says, and it might be the most thrilling thing anyone’s ever said to him, because it sounds like a promise.
The Red Sox score a bunch of runs. Between innings, the stadium crew entertains the crowd. A guy in a bird costume dances on top of the dugout. Pretty girls in orange tank tops throw T-shirts into the stands.
When the Red Sox are finally out in the sixth inning, the “kiss cam” appears on the large scoreboard screen, and the whole stadium watches. An elderly man and woman, a young husband and wife, two shy teens in matching hoodies. Each is shocked, then embarrassed, before kissing to polite applause. The whole thing is sponsored by a local florist. Then Billy sees someone who looks very much like himself: a man in a cardigan beside a woman in an Orioles cap. It isn’t until he hears “Power Pink” being blasted over the stadium’s PA that he realizes the man is him and the woman is Margot.
“Oh,” he says.
People around them cheer; some sing along with the chorus. Not everyone was looking at them before, but now everyone is, and Billy feels his stomach drop. An old man in front of them turns in his seat. “You see that up there?” he says. “That’s you two. Means you gotta kiss. Those are the rules.”
“I guess we should,” says Billy.
“Yeah, probably,” says Margot.
He’s seen hundreds of kiss-cam kisses. Sometimes they’re chaste little things, followed by smiles and giggles. Sometimes either the guy or the girl hams it up for the crowd. One time, Billy saw a guy turn away from the mortified girl beside him and pretend to kiss his beer. When Billy’s mouth touches Margot’s, though, despite the rising volume all around them, he somehow forgets that they’re in the middle of a stadium.
He takes her chin. The bill of her cap bumps his forehead, but she adjusts and then sighs into his mouth as they sink into each other. Four seconds, maybe five. But who knows, because it feels like slow motion.
“Okay, that’s enough,” the old guy says. “Come on, there’s kids here.”
Chapter 24
Justin: Just open it ffs!!
Shin-Soo: Yeah…DO IT.
Caleb: I will. Shut up!
Caleb is messaging with his friends Justin and Shin-Soo from his laptop. Among the academic top 10 percent in Ruxton Academy’s senior class, Justin, Shin-Soo, and Caleb are the only males. Junior year, Justin tried coining the nickname “the Bro-Brain Triumvirate,” but it didn’t stick. Among their classmates, the three friends are mostly just known as the nerdy dudes who sit together at lunch. Caleb is the tall one. Justin has glasses. Shin-Soo breakdances at pep rallies to uproarious applause. He’s inexplicably good at breakdancing and has more than fifteen thousand followers on TikTok.
Justin sends a GIF of a robot twiddling its fingers: We’re waiting! Shin-Soo highlights the GIF with an exclamation mark.
Caleb looks at his phone on his desk, which is open to his email inbox. If it were a letter—sent on actual paper like in the days of yore—he imagines the corners would be as sharp as throwing stars, weaponized.
He doesn’t want it to say yes, but he totally wants it to say yes. Caleb has decided that he’s staying in Baltimore. He’s never actually said those words aloud, but he’s committed to them in his mind. Either way, it’d be nice to be wanted. To know that he’d been invited in.
Shin-Soo: It’s totally gonna say yes. It’s time a straight white guy finally catches a break in this country.
Justin: Hahahhahaa
Plus, there’s the element of competition. The other two bro-brains both got into Ivies last week. Shin-Soo is heading to Yale and Justin to Penn, the bastards. Fine, Stanford isn’t technically an Ivy, but pretty damn close.
Caleb shifts the chat box on his laptop and goes to his browser, where he opens the Stanford site. He looks at the same students/models he’s been cyberstalking for months. He knows all about impostor syndrome. Everybody does. Still, despite his Hoops Compendium app and his GPA being legit great, everyone on the screen looks smarter than him—better looking, too. Does Stanford give extra points to prospective students for hotness?
He hasn’t been rejected from a university yet, so he’s not sure how the email would start. Dear Caleb, we regret to inform you…Dear Caleb, we’re sorry to report that…Dear Caleb, go fuck yourself.
Regardless, it’d be nice to have the decision made for him—to have the Stanford door slammed shut. Yeah, it’d be a body blow, but he’d recover. He’d claim his blue jay stuffed animal from Mr. Butler. He’d buy a cool Hopkins hoodie and start the next part of his life: the college part. He and his dad could watch rock documentaries together and poke around under the Champagne Supernova’s hood for years to come. A couple of weeks ago, before accidentally getting stoned to bejesus and emailing a rock star, Caleb thought about how sad his dad would be if Caleb left. Caleb is smart enough, though, to know that he’d be just as sad.
