9
High School Flirtations
OBSERVABLE CHARACTERISTICS: Fidgeting, awkward body language, strained laughter, giggling, neck-straining in an attempt to make eye contact.
COMMON PLACES OF OCCURRENCE: Hallway lockers, the cafeteria, sticky-floored basement of a keg party, empty classrooms, janitorial closets.
Instead of finding another corner of the party to bury himself in, Norris claimed the couch for the following hour. It was not at all on the vague chance that Aarti might make good on her word and come back looking for him, which she hadn’t, by the way. A second rum and Coke seemed unwise, so Norris occupied himself by scribbling in his notebook instead. He had taken to carrying it around everywhere with him; the thing had proved to be something close to useful after all. It was thick but pliable and fit into his back pocket pretty well. There was no way he would actually use it to diarize like Kolb had suggested, but it was perfect for jotting little doodles and thoughts as he had them. The notebook had become his own personal field guide, a spot for his observations of everything and everyone that had crossed his path since arriving in Texas.
No one looked out of sorts and pathetic while writing something down, Norris told himself, a fact that was coming in particularly handy now in the basement of a party that he could not wait to leave. According to Judith’s text, she needed another hour before she could make it up through the late-afternoon traffic to pick him up. Doodling on the couch felt safe.
“Pouting alone at a party; very hot.”
Norris quickly shut the notebook, hiding the outline of a skate he had absently been tracing, and looked up to a vaguely annoyed Maddie, staring down at him with crossed arms. Her hair was curled for the evening, and there were bathing suit straps peeking from under her top.
“Shouldn’t you be holding court upstairs in the VIP section?” he mumbled.
“I should, but all the girls are asking me about the brooding hot black guy in the basement.”
“I—wait, really?”
“Of course not, you toddler!” Maddie cackled, plopping down onto the couch next to him and pulling out her phone to text as they talked. She had the casual white girl confidence of someone who did this, exactly this, every weekend.
“Dude,” she said, eyes on her phone. “You need to do something. Anything. You’re scribbling names into a notebook in the middle of a party. That is ‘Tell an Adult’ behavior.”
“It’s not names, it’s—”
“Whatever it is, Canada, it’s not a good look. And it’s not going to get you the attention of a certain girl in earrings I would very literally kill someone for.”
“I saw her, y’know,” Norris sighed. “And Ian.”
“Of course I know,” Maddie said with a frown, still texting. As if the notion that anything could happen on the premises that she would not know was ludicrous. “I also know that Elisa and Ian got into a fight last night, which is probably why he started to hit up Aarti again. He’s from the ‘Cake and Eating It Too’ school of dating.”
Norris’s head was spinning. Was this all he had to look forward to in this stupid country? Elisas and Ians and whispers and gossip and stupid slut boy Ian always being able to burst through the door and command Aarti’s attention? He really missed Montreal.
“I don’t like to be used,” Norris sighed. “It’s . . . decidedly unfun.”
Maddie smiled sympathetically.
“If it helps, I can tell you that Aarti really liked Ian,” Maddie said. “Moving on from someone you really like takes time. But honestly, Ian is kind of a big slut—don’t tell anyone that I said that.”
“Well, I’m not sure I’m cut out for—”
Maddie suddenly leaned into him as if to listen to something Norris was currently whispering and then threw her head back, laughing loud enough to get a few nearby folks to look their way.
“Are you having a stroke?”
She rolled her eyes and nodded over to the foot of the staircase, where Aarti was standing with a raised eyebrow, looking a little confused at the moment.
“Don’t stare, moron,” Maddie said before laughing again in a way that actually looked sincere. Lightly shoving at Norris’s shoulder was a nice touch. The sudden thought that all cheerleaders were functioning sociopaths crossed Norris’s mind.
“You’re very rude for a basic white girl.”
She pinched him—hard—and Norris’s resulting yelp might have sounded like a laugh. When he looked back up, Aarti gave him a smile and raised her cup to him as a salutation, which Norris returned with an awkward little wave as she went back up the stairs. “She left!”
“Don’t worry; that’s good,” Maddie said, instantly pulling away from Norris’s close proximity and returning to her phone.
“How is that good?”
“You gotta learn to play the game a little, Canada,” Maddie answered. “People like what they can’t have. It’s a rule of dating in these parts.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not from these parts.” Norris sighed before getting off the couch, notebook in hand, and going after Aarti. He was already exhausted by all the games. It was almost seven, and the upstairs crowd had increased to include the kids who had been outside when he’d gotten there and the new arrivals for whom this was the second stop of the night and who hadn’t been interested in the poolside portion of the day. There was booming music vibrating through the floor as Norris pushed his way through, returning a stray fist bump to someone he didn’t actually know as he looked for Aarti. Judith would be there soon; he had to act quickly.
“Hi,” Norris said, finding Aarti on the outside porch as she leaned against the railing, a new beer in hand. Everything this girl did seemed like a still from an indie comedy with A-plus cinematography, Norris thought, definitely not looking at her butt.
“You and Madison McElwees were having a good time in there,” Aarti noted with a tired smile.
“I just started working at her restaurant, that’s all,” Norris said. He didn’t like games, but he was beginning to think that Maddie knew what she was doing, and it couldn’t hurt to make Aarti a little jealous, right?
“So, how did things work out with Ian?”
“They didn’t.” She sighed with a note of finality before going on to add, “He wanted us to keep hooking up while he continued to date Elisa. Do you believe that?”
“I sincerely do,” Norris replied. The outside heat was already seeping into his T-shirt.
“Fair enough. Well, anyway, ibidee, ibidee,” she said bitterly. “That’s all, folks. Another one bites the dust.”
“You really liked him, huh?”
Aarti shrugged.
Just then Ian and Elisa came out of the house. Elisa made a show of tightening her arm around Ian and throwing Aarti a vicious glare as the happy couple literally walked through them.
“Enjoy the bucket of crazy, dude,” Ian muttered, strictly for his benefit. “You’re welcome to it!”
“Yo, Ian? Enjoy the herpes medication, dude!” Norris suddenly yelled out, causing Elisa’s eyes to widen as they walked to a red Honda. “Remember: remission isn’t just a gift for yourself—it’s a gift for your partner too!”
Aarti and Norris watched Ian make a show of angrily slamming his door and screeching his tires as he drove off.
“You really don’t mind people not liking you, do you?” She chuckled, half-accusatory, half–something else. Amazed, maybe.
Of course I mind, Norris thought with a twinge. “Not really,” he lied. “Not much I can do about it.”
A moment passed.
“So what was the plan, anyway?” Norris started. “Ian, the guy that you like—”
She grimaced.
“—the guy that kind of screwed you over by telling you he was breaking up with his cheerleader girlfriend and then, after some back-seat spoils, changed his mind . . .” Norris revised. “Am I getting it mostly right?”
She remained silent, her arms now crossed in front of her chest. Norris was dangerously close to entering his rant mode, as Judith called it, and the heat wasn’t helping.
“Enter this jerk,” Norris said pointing a thumb at his own face, plastering the biggest grin he could muster. “New kid, roaming the party with no one to talk to, and with an inborn ability to piss off people that could probably fight off Magneto . . . and also, black.”
“That doesn’t matter!” Aarti said, offended. Now it was Norris’s turn to give her that look. One of Norris’s biggest pet peeves, growing up in Canada, was the people telling him that his race didn’t matter to them and giving themselves preemptive credit to do or say whatever they wanted. He didn’t know her that well, but Aarti was smart enough to know better. Especially being a brown girl herself.
“It doesn’t not matter and we both know it, Aarti.”
“I’m sorry,” she said after a beat, her hands now fidgeting with one of her many rings. “I don’t always consider people’s feelings, all right?”
Norris acknowledged the statement with a tip of the head, not really knowing what to do with himself now. An apology wasn’t really on the list of outcomes he’d expected. He’d just known he had to say something.
“So, can this complete curse word of a girl at least give you a ride back to your place to apologize? I just called a cab, and I’ll cover the detour.”
“No thanks. My mom’s picking me up.”
Then Norris heard himself say, “But how about you give me your number?”
Suddenly, and without much historical precedence: balls.
Aarti blinked at him, and as the moment stretched on, Norris felt like an old photograph developing in Aarti’s mind. An image suddenly forming. As if this was the first time she was actually seeing him come into focus through the whole “black Canadian” smoke shield.
“Sure,” she finally said with a slight twinge of a smile.
Her car pulled up just as she finished entering her number into his phone. He had to suppress a grin as he watched her type. Her contact name simply amounted to an emoji: .
“That makes complete sense,” he noted with a smile.
Norris tried as best as he could to suppress the giddy snort he felt when Aarti kissed him on the cheek and stepped into her cab. Instead of battling his way back into the increasingly drunk crowd, he quickly texted Maddie while Aarti’s cab pulled away. He doubted that she’d waited for him in the basement anyway.
Norris: I got her #.
Maddie: Congratulations. Successful evening! I’d wait a few days to text her, make her sweat a little bit. Oh and you also need to cover my shift on Wednesday, btw!
Norris slipped his phone back into his pocket with a smile. Against all odds, allowing himself to become the Moneypenny to Maddie McElwees’s overextended James Bond had worked. He wanted to type thank you or at least a string of exclamation points, but he didn’t; he and Maddie weren’t friends. Still, all things considered, this first social foray into Austin life hadn’t been as bad as he feared. Not one bit.
One might even go so far as to call it a success.