Читать книгу Send Pics - Lauren McLaughlin - Страница 5

I remember the first time I saw Suze Tilman. Lunch period, this past April. She didn’t look like a Jonesville girl. She was alone out in the parking lot, leaning against the hood of her silver Prius, reading an old paperback. Jaws, I think. She kept pushing her fine, light brown hair out of her face whenever the wind blew it. She wore a vintage Bob Seger concert T-shirt, baggy 501s, and these old black Chuck Taylors. Anyone else would have looked like a slob in that getup, but she pulled it off. She had beauty to spare, like a Disney princess, but of the alt variety—like if Disney ever made a movie about Frances Bean Cobain. Practically the whole school was staring at her through the floor-to-ceiling windows, wondering who she was and where she came from. I remember turning to my friends, Ani and Lydia, and saying, “There is something off about that girl.” I meant it as a compliment. Normal people bore me.

It didn’t take long for Tarkin Shaw to notice her too. Jonesville High’s a jock school, and he’s the king jock. He thinks he owns the place and every girl in it, because his parents are rich and he made all-state in wrestling his junior year, like these are major accomplishments. Actually, most girls go giggly and stupid whenever Tarkin comes around, like even being seen with him makes you a minor celebrity. Of course, Suze, being new to the school, didn’t know his “status,” so when Tarkin went out there to hit on her with his posse of wingmen, all he had going for him were his movie-star looks and I guess what passes for charm. I couldn’t hear anything, but I’m sure he pulled out all the stops—flattery, negging, his pathetic attempt at humor. Whatever he was slinging, though, Suze wasn’t having it. Never even changed her expression. It was like she was analyzing him. But not like an interested girl sizing up a hot guy, more like a scientist inspecting a vial of urine. You could tell, just from her body language, that all she wanted to do was get back to her book. Tarkin was so confused. It was beautiful.

Tarkin and I have a history. But I don’t like to talk about it.

After he got the message that his “charm” wasn’t working on Suze, he turned tail and jock-walked out of there, flexing his pecs and smirking with his wrestler buddies. By the time they made it back into the cafeteria they were dropping words like “dyke” and “skank.” Typical. They say that about me and my friends, too. They say that about any girl who doesn’t worship them. By then, Suze had gone back to her book, like the whole incident had no effect on her at all, like it was just some lame Netflix series she wasn’t going to bother finishing. I turned to Ani and Lydia, and said: “We need to meet this girl.” They agreed.

The three of us went out to the parking lot while Tarkin and his buddies stank-eyed us the whole way. I guess he assumed that since he’d written her off, everyone else had to.

“Hi,” I said. “You’re new. I’m Nikki.”

“Suze,” she said, offering her hand.

“Are you English?” Lydia asked.

“No. But I lived there for a while. Hence the accent. I was born here, actually, but I haven’t lived here since I was a baby. Been in Munich for the past three years.” She nodded toward Tarkin, who was openly glaring at us through the window. “Are all American boys like that one?”

“I wouldn’t know,” I said. “Are German boys different?”

“Loads.” Then she told us about Hans from Munich, who lived next door to her. “He was a bit of a nerd, really. But he had eyes the color of pond water.”

“Was he your boyfriend?” I asked.

“More of a friend, actually. But we fooled around sometimes. Now, Piotr.” She put her book down on the hood of her car and settled in to talk. “He was this university student from Poland, studying microbiology. He had the most expert hands in the world. Older guys, you know. They’re much better at it.”

“Really,” I said, making a mental note that there might be something to look forward to, romance-wise, beyond Jonesville.

“We’re not dating anyone until college,” Ani said. “Jonesville boys are revolting.”

“Are they?” Suze surveyed the cafeteria crowd. She didn’t seem intimidated by the fact that people were staring at her. It was like she expected it. Like people stared at her all the time.

“To be honest,” Lydia said. “Most of the girls around here are pretty revolting, too.”

“You don’t seem revolting,” Suze said.

“Oh, we are,” I said. “But we’re the good kind of revolting.”

She cocked her head as she looked at me. Curious, appraising. Sort of the way she looked at Tarkin. Was I a vial of urine, too?

“Want to come for dinner tonight?” she said, finally. “My dad’s an appalling cook, but he means well.”

SHE WAS RIGHT about the food. It was awful, some kind of lamb-sausage casserole. I had to hold my breath while eating it. But the girls and I stayed until midnight, listening to Suze’s stories about Munich and London and Paris and Madrid. She was seventeen, a junior like us, but that’s where the similarities ended. Compared to her adventures, life in Jonesville seemed small and dull. Suze had already lived in six different countries and traveled to more than she could count. Her parents were academics: a historian (her mother) and an ethnomusicologist (her father). According to her, they took lots of sabbaticals and only worked when the money was running out. Their main interest was traveling. Nomads, basically. They were only here in boring old Jonesville because her Dad’s great-aunt had died, leaving her house empty and available.

I’d never met anyone with a history like Suze’s. But the strangest part, for me anyway, was that she was just as fascinated by life in Jonesville as we were by her life on the road. She’d tell us about the sprawling souk in Marrakesh, where the leather factories smelled so bad you had to walk around with orange peels under your nose, and we’d take her to the food court at the Liberty Tree Mall, which smelled like Windex and pizza. Imagine being wowed by a food court. But Suze could create an adventure out of anything. I remember one Saturday a few weeks after that dinner party, she drove to my house at 5:30 a.m., unannounced, because she’d read about this place called the Desert of Maine. “It’s a real desert,” she said breathlessly, practically jumping out of her skin at my front door. “And it’s in Maine.”

“Okay,” I said.

But it wasn’t just okay to Suze. It was an emergency. She had to go there. And it had to be now. I’d planned on spending the day doing homework, but this sounded way more fun, so I grabbed a backpack and jumped in her car. We hit Dunkin’s for some iced coffee, then drove all the way to Freeport.

As it turns out, the Desert of Maine is not a real desert, just a forty-acre patch of glacial silt that basically grew out of an old farmer’s mismanagement of the land. But that didn’t dampen the thrill for Suze. She loved every minute of the tour. I think it was the tour guide’s thick Maine accent that did it. Afterward, we stopped for lunch at this rustic dive called the Muddy Rudder and shared a lobster roll.

“What if we dropped out of school and moved here?” she said. “We could be waitresses at this very restaurant!” I told her I had plans, like graduating and going to college, and she just laughed and laughed.

“Plans,” she said.

Suze didn’t believe in plans. She believed in improvisation and serendipity. “After all,” she explained, “if everything goes according to plan, how can you ever be surprised?”

I guess she had a point, because I had certainly never planned on meeting her. But before long, we were doing everything together. My little nation of three became a nation of four. Ani, Lydia, and I had been tight since freshman year, which is when things were at their worst for me. Ani and Lydia were the only ones who knew about Tarkin and me. I was nervous about telling Suze, because I figured it would change the way she saw me. But it didn’t, and I’ll never forget what she said to me afterward. We were in the woods behind her house, sitting on this big, sloping rock she liked. I told her what had happened. She closed her eyes for a minute. Then she looked straight into my face and said, “Do you know what you are, Nikki?” At that point, I felt so wrecked from telling my story, all I could think was, Yes. I am dirt. But she said, “You’re gold.”

“Really?” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “You’re gold and he’s nothing.”

And you know what? At that moment, I believed her.