21
The Big Date
APPROXIMATE TIME TO PLAN THE MOST IMPORTANT DATE OF ONE’S HIGH SCHOOL CAREER: Four days.
APPROXIMATE TIME TO GET READY FOR SAID DATE: Twenty minutes.
APPROXIMATE TIME TO ANXIOUSLY PUT THE SAME “MIDNIGHT NAVY” T-SHIRT (MISTAKEN FOR BLACK UPON PURCHASE) ON AND OFF BEFORE FINALLY LEAVING THE HOUSE: Two hours.
“School? Seriously?” Aarti said, following Norris into the now-emptied halls of Anderson High. Unlike his own tattered sneakers, her heels created an echo around the hall in a way Norris hadn’t anticipated.
“I promise: I am categorically not going to murder you,” he found himself reassuring her for the second time as he led them down the east gate entrance. The fact that he had to remind her of that twice couldn’t bode well, but it was the only school door still unlocked at this hour. They had roughly twenty minutes to get settled before lockdown, and a full two hours after that before the cleaning staff made their first sweep. Norris had spent enough hours roaming these halls to know them very well.
“Really? Because ‘new foreign student lures local teen into school after hours’ seems like the start of a horror story that ends with my beautiful murdered body dumped in a creek.” Aarti laughed, looking around the halls like she expected a masked accomplice to jump out at any moment.
Norris had spent days trying to figure out how to deliver on the special evening that Maddie had promised. Creative and personal. The personal was easy; Norris just hoped that what he had planned qualified as special. And not in a bad, murder-y kind of way.
Aarti wore short-shorts and an open jacket with a peacock bedazzled on the back. Her hair was still slightly wet at the tips, meaning that she either dashed off in a hurry or spent a good hour in front of the mirror perfecting every aspect of this look. Norris could never quite tell which, but his mouth always instantly dried up when he saw her.
“So, you have dates in Canada, right? You’re familiar with the concept?” she asked dryly, replacing a stray lock of hair.
“We’re still waiting on iPhones, but yes. Yes, we have dates . . . Exhibit A. Ta-da!”
Above them, framed on the ceiling in all its glory, stood Coach Bombay, a pile of hockey urchins behind him. Pool ripples reflected quavering blue across the tagline “He’s never coached. They’ve never won.” On his sharklike wanderings during free period, Norris had discovered where the AV club hoarded their equipment. Norris had “liberated” a projector for the occasion, setting up his all-time favorite movie to project onto the ceiling of the Anderson High Olympic-size (of course) swimming pool. He figured if Aarti couldn’t appreciate The Mighty Ducks, well . . . he’d cross that bridge.
“Is that a hockey movie?”
Blasphemy.
“The Mighty Ducks is a hockey movie the same way Citizen Kane is a snow globe movie.”
“Really? You want to bring up snow globes right now, Kaplan?”
“Touché.”
Their footsteps echoed around the empty facility as Norris led Aarti to a prime viewing location in the bleachers. In a basket were blankets, some recently, if not freshly, microwaved popcorn, and beer.
“Okay, this is actually kind of cool,” Aarti admitted. “But seriously: the second you try to murder me I am pushing you into that pool with the plugged-in electrical equipment and leaving your body to be violated by the swim team.”
“Well, there goes my carefully planned homicide for our second date,” Norris retorted, dripping sarcastic regret.
Aarti laughed, and Norris felt himself relax a little.
She must have felt the chemistry too because they barely paid attention to the movie once it started playing. It wasn’t that Aarti couldn’t appreciate fine hockey culture. It was that they were both far more interested in talking to each other than watching the actual movie. Norris shared the broad strokes of his parents’ divorce, and the fact that even though he was bilingual, his brain still defaulted to French, his first of the two languages, when counting or doing math. In return, he learned that Aarti had seen an episode of Law & Order at age four and gone through a phase of leaving stray hairs everywhere so her DNA would be trackable if she were to be kidnapped, which lasted until she was twelve.
“We’ve never lived anywhere else either,” Aarti said when Norris revealed that Austin had been his first move. “Well, like maybe two years in Chicago, but I was barely out of the womb, so it doesn’t really count for me.”
Norris grimaced. “Can’t imagine why anybody would willingly come here. It’s barely fit for cockroach survival. . . . Although some of the residents might qualify.”
“Right?” Aarti laughed. “But compared to the rest of the state, it’s not that bad. Austin isn’t full-on, real Texas. Seriously, the state tree might as well be a cactus covered in NRA bumper stickers.”
Norris shuddered. “That sounds like some sort of Orwellian dystopia. With sand.”
“You have no idea. If you’d moved anywhere else in Texas, you’d be walking around with cowboy-boot footprints permanently imprinted on both ass cheeks.” She paused, as if to figure out how to make her next inquiry.
“I always meant to ask you . . . why didn’t you stay with your dad?”
Norris couldn’t repress an eye roll before launching into that saga. “Dad transferred to a hospital in Vancouver right before we moved. With the new wife and a kid, he doesn’t really, quote, ‘have room for a teenager,’ unquote.”
Norris pushed down his irritation at the topic as best as he could, choosing to focus on Aarti instead.
“Standard child-of-divorce baggage. Had to pay extra to check it at the airport.”
“Everybody’s got their thing.” Aarti nodded. “My parents were total world travelers before getting jobs in academia and tying themselves to this patch of dirt.”
There was a bitterness to her tone that Norris hadn’t heard before. “So does this mean you haven’t had that talk with your parents yet? About what you really want to do with your life?”
“Not yet.” Aarti looked away, lost in thought. “I remember the first museum we visited as a family. My dad marveled at the classical Impressionist painters but scoffed at any experimental art or photography—he kept saying that anyone could do that nowadays.” She shook her head, then seemed to return to herself. “Hey, I didn’t tell you, but I actually got a mentor.”
“Oh yeah?”
“I’m going to be shadowing, or I guess it’s technically an unpaid internship, but I’ll be helping out this photographer at her studio downtown. Alayna Kerr? She’s phenomenal. She’s from Guinea-Bissau and has taken all these amazing photos, met all these people; it’s freaking insane. She’s, like, barely twenty-five!”
Her eyes were almost sparkling as she spoke.
“How did she end up here?”
“The great melting pot,” Aarti said, opening her arms forward dramatically. “I’ll be able to go to her studio during free periods, and not having to spend my entire day here keeps me from, y’know, burning this entire school to the ground sometimes.”
“I’d start with the gym locker rooms—that way, even if the fire department stops the flames from spreading, you’ll still have thrown a wrench into the entire high school football–industrial complex.”
Aarti tossed back her head with a burst of laughter.
Something about the sound short-circuited every electrical impulse along Norris’s spine. He liked making her laugh. More than that—liked that she liked him. Aarti was worldly and cool and, somehow, his misanthropic streak appeared to have found a welcoming audience, which was more than he could say for . . . well, anyone except his parents and Eric, really.
The time was passing so quickly that Norris was surprised when the movie ended. At some point, she’d snuggled up to him, and after playing possum for a few seconds, he’d exhaled and leaned into it.
“If you try to quiz me on any of the finer plot points, I will absolutely fail and argue sabotage,” Aarti said as the credits rolled. For all of Norris’s carefully planned larceny, smuggling, and breaking and entering, The Mighty Ducks had proved to be little more than an elaborate soundtrack. Had they really talked through the whole movie?
Aarti’s chin fell sharply onto his chest, but Norris honestly could not care less if she was piercing his skin with a screwdriver right now. They lay there, staring at the lit-up roof of the pool.
Could he . . . ? Dammit, yes: he could and he would.
3 . . . 2 . . . 1.
Somewhere between heartbeats, Norris leaned down and kissed Aarti. It was weirdly more nerve-racking and intimate than kissing her at the movie had been. Aarti’s mouth tasted like tea with too much sugar in it, which was the only way tea tasted good anyway. The solid nineteen minutes of making out that followed were a very specific form of awesome. Norris’s nerves soon faded away and something about the making out felt incredibly familiar, as though they had been doing this for years now and would for more to come.
Just then, the pool doors burst open, and Norris instinctively recoiled from Aarti.
“Aw,” a gravelly voice echoed around the pool. “Young love, ain’t that sweet?”
Mr. Goade, in a disturbingly tight and small swimsuit and flip-flops, sounded more amused than disapproving at the sight.
“What was the movie?”
“Um . . . The Mighty Ducks.”
“Ah.” Goade nodded approvingly. “Fine cinematic achievement. I know you’re still relatively new, Norris, but you do know you are not allowed to be here at this hour, right?” he commented, taking in their setup.
“Um, neither are you,” Aarti said, looking away and covering both eyes with her hand.
“Also, why are you naked?!” Norris blurted out, opting to cover the sight of Goade’s body from the neck down with his hand. “Please address the nakedness!”
“I’m obviously not naked on school premises,” Mr. Goade said calmly. Through his fingers, Norris could see the chemistry teacher place by the bleachers the small duffel bag he was carrying, alongside a frayed gray-green towel, which he was taking his time spreading out. A distant part of Norris admired his lack of body shame. “If you two would stop the theatrics, you’d see I’m working a bathing suit.”
“No, that’s a freaking Speedo, dude!” What the hell was wrong with this country?
“These are brand-new swim trunks,” Goade said, now sounding a little defensive. “Maybe a little snug . . .”
“If it takes a V-shape like that, it’s definitely a size too small, Mr. Goade,” Aarti said, still looking away, stifling her laugher.
“Noted, Miss Puri,” Goade said, actually stretching. “Although, unlike certain parties, I actually have a key to this building, granting me access after hours. Cheaper than a gym membership these days. And just what exactly might those bottles contain?”
“Canadian soda,” Norris quickly lied. “Imported.”
“Canadian soda,” Goade casually repeated as he slowly stepped out of his flip-flops and lowered a very retro-looking pair of swim goggles from the top of his head. “Tell you what? I’m going to jump into this pool and take exactly five laps, as recommended by my asshole of a cardiologist. Afterward, I will be tempted to take a sip of this Canadian soda. Unless you two lovebirds find a way out of here before I’m done.”
Norris and Aarti exchanged quick looks. There was definitely no making out left to be had at this swimming pool.
“Say no more. We were just heading out. Right, Aarti?”
“Yes, right. Lap away, Mr. Goade,” Aarti quickly added, already grabbing the nearest beer. “We’ll be out of your hair in a second.”
They left the projector on a bench outside the AV club for someone else to deal with, and it wasn’t until they were safely at Aarti’s car that they permitted themselves to laugh, doubled over against the passenger-side door.
“So how does a half-naked chemistry teacher rank, date-wise?” he asked.
The ten additional minutes of car-leaning makeout and giggles that followed were answer enough for Norris.