Читать книгу Be More Chill - Ned Vizzini - Страница 10

I grab the seat next to Christine’s in the circle.

“So, uh, congratulations,” I say quietly, speaking to the air in front of me and hoping she’ll notice, “on Puck.”

“What is this crap?” she turns, fierce. Christine has brown eyes with her blonde hair. Up close she looks like all the cutest movie starlets, all those ones that haven’t really been in any movies but you see them in Stuff magazine or wherever, all combined in Photoshop, except someone checked the “constrain proportions” box so nothing got distorted. “I can’t believe he’s making us fetch him chairs—isn’t that illegal?”

“Uh, I don’t think so, actually, but it’s very bad—”

“Oh yeah, whatever. We don’t have any rights under the constitution about discrimination?”

“We don’t have any rights under the constitution at all, because we’re students—”

“That is such crap!”

“Yeah…” I drum the head of Shakespeare in my pocket. “I’m Jeremy, by the way.” I reach out to shake her hand, then pull back—I don’t want people seeing.

“I know who you are,” Christine says. “You’re in my math, right?”

“Oh yeah.” I pretend I wasn’t aware of that fact. “But you know, you can be in a class with someone for a long time and never really—”

“Lysander!” Mr Reyes snaps. “Speak!”

“Uh…” I’m Lysander, right?

“I’m Lysander, right?”

Mr Reyes: “Yes.”

“Yes. OK, um…‘You have her father’s love, Demetrius, Let me have Hermia’s: do you marry him.’”

Mr Reyes: “Thank you, Jeremy.” He sucks in his lips in the angry/disappointed adult way. “Really excellent.”

Me: “Uh, ‘I am, my Lord, as well derived as he, as well possessed—’”

Christine: “I hate him. His English classes are awful. He can’t teach—”

Me: “‘And, which is more than all these boasts can be, I am beloved of beauteous—’”

Christine: “I’m seriously thinking about writing a letter about him to the Metuchen Home News/Tribune—”

I can’t tell if Christine likes me or she just hates Mr Reyes, but one way or another she’s talking, and you can’t beat that. I keep going, and every time I come to a sweet line in the read-through (and you know Shakespeare—the sweet lines are really sweet), I direct it at her, tilting my head so my sound waves ruffle some molecules on her cheek and she reacts in some imperceptible way that I might be imagining.

See, when I’m talking to girls, I develop an out-of-body consciousness, or unconsciousness. Everything means so much more. My posture, which is hopeless, gets a temporary lift as I arch my back. I can feel all my organs stacked in place and eyeball with pinpoint accuracy how far Christine’s leg is from mine, and when they touch just for a second I wonder if it’s her doing or my doing or chance. How can she not notice if our legs touch? How can she not notice my extremely unslick peripheral vision? How can she not notice my white socks, showing between my pants and shoes? (I have to fix that.)

“Lysander!” Mr Reyes snaps again halfway through some scene with fairies. I scramble with the script. Christine smiles, which doesn’t help me, and I try to smile back even though she might not be smiling at me, or she might be smiling at me in the wrong way, the eunuch way.

This is good. This is a step.