Instamatic. Shooting baskets in the driveway by herself. Kim and Cricket are all in love, you know. Always out with the boys.”
“Yeah, I know.” I had honestly never thought about what Nora was doing when the rest of us were out with our boyfriends.
“You should call her.”
“Maybe.” I shrugged.
We sat there for a minute. I fiddled with the zipper on my backpack.
“I was in Big Sur last month,” Gideon said, finally. “You know where that is? South of San Francisco, along the coast. They have hot springs there, hot water bubbling up from underground, and you go in without any clothes, men and women together, lounging around naked with steam rising up.2 And I’m learning to surf.”
“Cool.”
“You need a wet suit that far north. It’s cold. But I kept at it and now I can stand up and catch a wave pretty damn good, if I say so myself.”
“Wow.”
“You would love it. You’re a swimmer, right?”
“Yeah.”
“So you’d be good at it. You have that upper-body strength. Then I drove up to San Francisco,” he went on. “And I heard some awesome bands. You been there?”
“No.”
“It’s amazing. The wildest people walking through the streets. Men in drag. I did an open-mike night with my guitar at this coffeehouse. I pretty much sucked, but I got out in front of people and actually sang, can you believe it?”
“Good for you, rock star.”
“Well.” He laughed. “I felt like a goofball. But hey, I’m never seeing any of those people again, so what the hell?”
“Exactly.” It was very un-Tommy Hazard, getting up and singing badly in front of a crowd, but somehow it made me like Gideon even more.
“I never would have done something like that at Tate,” he said. “When I was here, my whole world was just sports, and parties, and refectory gossip. The Tate universe.”
“Yeah.” I knew all about the Tate universe.
“I’m serious,” Gideon said. “Chinese food like you’ve never eaten. Architecture. Landscapes. Before I came west, I was in the desert in Arizona. I saw the Great Lakes. I hiked some of the Appalachian Trail.”
Mr. Wallace cracked his door and stuck his head out into the hallway. “Van Deusen!” he cried, his face lighting up. “Slumming, are you?” He ushered Gideon in.
I was late for my next class, but I walked there slowly. Thinking about Gideon, naked in the hot spring.
And about San Francisco.
People in general are bad apologizers. Even my dad is—for all his talk about forgiveness. He doesn’t say sorry. He grabs my mom from behind and starts kissing her neck.
“Kevin, I’m still mad at you,” she complains.
“Oh, but you smell good,” he whispers into her throat.
“Kevin!”
“No one smells as good as you,” he moans, or some other ridiculousness, and before long she says, “Fine. Come look at this thing I bought today,” or something like that.
Mom is even worse. She sulks and pouts and storms around the house banging pots and pans, and then after a couple of hours she starts acting like everything’s okay again, and Dad and I are supposed to know that she’s over whatever it was and not to mention it again.
Other people apologize and don’t mean it. “Sorry, but you shouldn’t have …” or “Sorry, but I just didn’t…” They apologize while telling you that they were right all along, which is the opposite of an actual apology.
I am definitely a bad apologizer. I talk too much. I leave the whole thing until way too late, and then I babble on, and end up not saying what I mean and starting whatever argument it was over again. It never comes out right.
Well, truth be told, I usually still think the other person was wrong, and that’s probably why.
The next Thursday, Doctor Z looked down at the list and asked me about Noel. “It was only a rumor,” I said. “About me and him. One of forty-eight rumors, by this point.”
“He’s the one you held hands with at the party?”
“Yeah. He stands on the other side of the studio in Painting Elective now. I never even talk to him.”
“And?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even think he likes girls.”
“Why not?”
