Smith’s and Miss Brown’s happy faces on the Fourth of July, an unwelcome image that let in unwelcome thoughts: the effort it had taken to get him here, the missed biology class. And Patti.
“What’s wrong?” Izzie said.
“Nothing.”
She opened her eyes-he felt the eyelid’s tiny struggle against his lips-and turned her head so she could see him. “You’re thinking about something.”
“No.”
“Is it Grace?”
“Of course not. Why would I be thinking about Grace?”
Izzie didn’t speak.
And Patti. Now messy memories from the Thanksgiving party threatened to spill out in his mind, but the most important, more important than how drunk Patti had got, or the way she’d vomited in bed that night, all over both of them, was the way he’d seen everyone back home, his old friends, changed. He was the changed one, of course. The cliche at the heart of so many coming-of-age stories, but that didn’t make them false. He would call Patti today. He’d changed. It was normal. Out of the corner of his eye, he was suddenly aware of her picture on the upside- down crate at his bedside. Something writhed inside him.
“Then what are you thinking about?” Izzie said.
“Nothing.”
“That’s not true. I can tell.”
He was wondering whether to drag her through the whole thing, or to simply answer you, which was true-his mind was full of her-if not factually correct at that exact moment, and also might sound a little buttery, when he heard someone entering the outer room. Izzie went still.
“Nat,” called a voice. Grace. He saw fear, real fear in Izzie’s eyes.
“Just a sec,” he said, hurrying out of bed, pulling on sweatpants. He stepped into the outer room, closing the door, he hoped casually, behind him.
Grace looked up from reading something on his desk as he came in, her gaze going to his bare chest first, then to his face. “Morning, sleepyhead,” she said. “And hung over, too.”
“A bit.”
“Moi aussi,” she said, although she didn’t look it. “But isn’t it great?”
“What we found?”
“And the way we found it,” Grace said. “Defines serendipitous.” She glanced around as though someone might hear. “You haven’t mentioned it to anybody?”
“No.” He noticed she was wearing overalls, with a hammer, screwdriver, pliers sticking out of the pockets.
“I’ve already been down there today,” she said. “It really is like Alice-through the looking glass and down the rabbit hole.”
“What have you been doing?”
“Fixing up.”
“How?”
“You’ll see.” She pulled a book from her back pocket. “And look at this-plot summaries of all the major operas, so we’ll know what we’re listening to. For example…” She flipped through the pages. “Rigoletto: Gilda-she’s the one who sings that song, ‘Caro Nome,’ means ‘dear name,’ she sings it to her lover, but it isn’t even his real name… and then it looks like there’s some kind of kidnapping-her own father, that’s Rigoletto, helps without knowing it.”
“Helps who?”
“The kidnappers.”
“Why?”
“Doesn’t say,” Grace said, running her eyes over the page. “She dies at the end, by mistake.”
“What kind of mistake?”
Grace checked the text again. “It’s convoluted. And not very believable. But the music makes all that irrelevant, I guess.”
“Last night it did,” Nat said.
“Exactly,” said Grace, closing the book. Her eyes went to his chest again, then back to his face. “I guess it’s my fault,” she said.
“What is?”
“That we got off to maybe a bad start.”
“What do you mean?” he said, wishing she’d talk a little more quietly.
“You and me. That night in New York. At my da-at my father’s. Too much to drink and smoke, et cetera. And I was probably a little too forceful. For you, I mean. For other men, though…”
Her voice trailed off. Nat thought of Paolo, and the married man Izzie had told him about. He felt a little sorry for Grace. “Forget it,” he said.
“You mean that?” The way she asked that little question, the words, the intonation: pure Izzie; he revisited the most obvious fact about them, one he’d been leaving behind, the fact of how alike they were.
“Yes,” he said. “I mean it.”
“A clean slate, then?”
“Sure.” Who could say no to that?
Grace smiled a bright smile. “See you in class,” she said, and left the room; very light on her feet, almost skipping. He went over to the desk to see what she’d been looking at and found Patti’s letter.
Nat went into the bedroom. No Izzie. He opened the closet and, as though it were a children’s game, there she was, hiding behind his Clear Creek letter jacket, worn once at Inverness and never again.
“Has she gone?” said Izzie.
“Yes. What’s this all about?”
“I told you-I just don’t want her to know right now.”
“Know what?”
“That anything’s happening between us.”
“Why not?”
“Just give me time.”
“But why not?”
Izzie watched him over the letter jacket. “I never did better than Grace in anything, not a single race, a single essay, a single exam, not ever.”
“So what?”
“Until the SATs. I scored twenty points higher on the verbal.”
“Do we have to talk about the SATs?”
Izzie smiled. “I never met anyone like you.”
“That’s because you haven’t led a sheltered life.”
She laughed. “You see? Every time you open your mouth you prove it.” Her eyes went to the Clear Creek jacket. “Can I wear this?”
“You want to wear that?”
“It’s not something Wags left behind, is it?”
“No. It’s my old high-school jacket.”
“Then I want to wear it. Just for a while,” she added when he was silent.
“Okay.”
Izzie put it on. She wasn’t wearing anything else. “Now close the door.”
“We’re in the closet.”
“That’s right.”
Nat closed the door. In the darkness she leaned against him.
“But you’ve had boyfriends before,” he said.
Izzie knew what he meant. “Only ones she’d rejected or didn’t want in the first place, like Paolo,” she said.
