Читать книгу The Sixth Form - Tom Dolby - Страница 12

The next week, Todd finished dinner early and arrived at six o’clock at the Stevenson Art Center, where Ethan was waiting with his sketch pad and board. The studio was empty, as most people were still at dinner. It was already dark, and the room was lit with washed-out fluorescent light.

“Sit over there, near the skeleton,” Ethan instructed him.

Todd sat on a creaky stool in front of an anatomical model that the intermediate class was drawing for Halloween. His right foot was shaking slightly; he tried to steady it against the hard metal of the stool.

Ethan began to sketch Todd. “I’m going to do a few versions,” he said, flipping his pad to a fresh page after several minutes.

He worked diligently, and for a quarter hour, all Todd could hear was the scraping of Ethan’s pencil against the rough paper. He tried to keep still, but the more aware he was of Ethan watching him, the more nervous he became. Keeping a normal expression on his face became an unnatural act. It was like posing for a photograph. If the picture wasn’t taken soon enough, the smile became an act of will, an expression that represented not happiness but pain.

After Ethan had completed several versions, the door opened, and Ms. Hedge, the gray-haired art teacher, came in. Todd let out an inaudible sigh. Trailing behind her was Alex.

“Hi, Todd,” Alex said. “What’s going on?”

“Ethan’s sketching me,” he said. “What are you doing here?” As he said it, he remembered: Alex was in the intermediate studio art class. He knew he needed to treat her more civilly.

“Ms. Hedge is looking at my portfolio,” she said.

The art teacher came over and stood behind Ethan, appraising his work. “It’s coming along well,” she said, smiling at Todd.

Ethan mumbled a response Todd couldn’t hear. Todd loved how intent he was on his work, how he didn’t want anything to intrude.

“It’s so nice of you to pose for your friend,” Ms. Hedge said to Todd, giving him a knowing look. He was crazy, mooning over Ethan like this. He looked over at him, bent over his sketch pad, brow creased in concentration, cowlick of hair touching the frames of his glasses. He was nothing like the guys Todd had grown up with; they were masculine, tough. Ethan was the type of boy who would have been picked on, who would have spent his entire adolescence buried in a book. But Todd liked that he wasn’t the same as the other guys at Berkley. Todd didn’t want to be different himself, but in Ethan, he admired the quality.

Why did Alex have to be here? It was as if she knew his every movement, every nuance of his day. Alex hadn’t altered her schedule to avoid him since he had broken up with her; she had adhered to his even more stringently. As he kept one eye on his ex-girlfriend, her pert ass encased in a pair of designer jeans, feet shod in a pair of trendy hiking boots (as if she would ever go hiking), he hated that she was in the studio.

Ethan announced that he was finished, and Todd could take a look. It wasn’t a bad likeness, though Todd was bothered that his expression was curled into a permanent frown, brows narrowed, wrinkles visible on his forehead. “I look confused,” Todd said. “Why did you do it that way?”

“I don’t know.” Ethan shrugged. “I just drew what I saw.”

Over the past several weeks, Ethan had continued sorting through Hannah’s library whenever he had a free moment, though he was easily distracted. He had started reading snippets from her book collection, looking at the opening pages, author photos, acknowledgments. It reminded him of one of his favorite things he used to do when walking home after school, stopping at a used bookstore on University Avenue and browsing for hours through the shelves. Unlike those books, whose anonymous owners Ethan would never know, Hannah’s books carried stories of their own that went beyond the words on their pages. Dozens of her volumes had the name Hannah McClellan written in the upper right-hand corner of the first page; in some, the last name McClellan had been crossed out and replaced with Reinard, which had then been crossed out and replaced with McClellan. Curiously, several volumes of French children’s books were labeled with the name Bertrand Reinard. One of these, a copy of Le Petit Prince, had a photograph tucked into it, a color snapshot of a boy sitting in a restaurant, the type of photo one takes for fun, not planned or posed. Ethan immediately recognized the boy in the picture as the one from the mantel. He wanted to know more about the names, about the photograph.

One afternoon, Ethan stood in the doorway of Hannah’s study and held out the photo. “What should I do with this? It slipped out of The Little Prince.”

Hannah was typing away at her laptop. She turned toward him and looked at the photo he was holding up. An expression of alarm crossed her face, but she quickly composed herself. “Oh dear, I was wondering where that went,” she said, without offering any explanation. She carefully took the photo from him and put it in a desk drawer. He felt, in the look she had given him, as if he had done something wrong, as if it were inappropriate for him to be handling the snapshot.

Ethan wished he could ask her who the boy was, but he knew from her reaction that she didn’t want to tell him.

The following Saturday was the annual Halloween dance. As soon as Ethan arrived at the dining hall, he cursed himself for not having picked out a costume. When he ran into Todd, his friend scrutinized his jeans and sweater and promptly dragged him back to the dorm so they could rummage through his closet.

Todd was dressed as Zorro, the Masked Man, complete with a hat, long cape, rubber boots, gloves, and a mask. As they entered Todd’s room, its rancid guy smell hit Ethan, a mixture of sweat, mildew, and Right Guard. Perhaps Todd did the same thing as Kevin Bradshaw, spraying his dirty shirts with deodorant instead of washing them.

“I have an old mask in here somewhere,” Todd said. He seemed a bit wobbly as he rifled through his closet; Ethan wondered if he was drunk. “We’ll get a cowboy hat from Cren. You can go as the Lone Ranger. We’ll be a team, Zorro and the Lone Ranger.”

Todd headed out the door to the room of George Crenshaw, a beefy young man from Texas.

“I won’t be able to wear my glasses with that mask on,” Ethan said, but Todd was already gone. He never went anywhere without his glasses, not even running. He supposed he could get by without them for one night.

Once Ethan was suited up, the two of them went back to the dining hall. Todd led Ethan into a circle of guys and girls dancing. They moved along with the group, engaging in the sort of low-commitment gyrations that were popular at Berkley dances; no one was specifically connected with anyone else, everyone was moving with the crowd, as if they had all been swept into a collective frenzy.

After about ten songs, Ethan was hot and tired; he was grateful when Todd motioned for them to go to the snack bar. He bought a large cup of soda and took it to their table.

“Sit next to me,” Todd said. Concealed by his cape, Todd pulled a small airline bottle of vodka from his pocket. He took a gulp of the soda, and then poured the bottle into the cup, swishing it around. After taking a sip, he passed the cup to Ethan, who took a swig of the antiseptic formula, the alcohol burning his throat.

“Why didn’t we do this at the dorm?” Ethan whispered.

“I had some at the dorm already. I couldn’t find you then.”

The two finished off the drink together and went back out to the dance floor. Enveloped in the music, Ethan was drifting. In his mask and cowboy hat, no one could recognize him. Buoyed by the vodka, he didn’t need to worry about anything: college applications, girls, his mother and her disease.

As Ethan danced in a daze, he noticed a cute girl dressed as a fairy. Though his vision was blurry, he was pretty sure it was Alex Roth. He wanted to talk to her, so he moved a little closer.

She looked his way, and he smiled. Her glittery wings flapped at him.

He gave a half wave. “Do you like the music?” he shouted. The deejay was playing Abba.

“What?” she said.

“Do you like the music?”

“It’s okay.”

Now he was standing next to her, swaying back and forth in tandem with the organza folds of her costume. He was dancing well, or at least he thought he was. He could smell the sweet mixture of her perspiration and body lotion.

“Do you want to get something to drink?” he asked. Since when did he ask girls if they wanted to come to the snack bar with him?

“I’m okay dancing,” she said, giving him a saccharine smile.

Of course Alex Roth wouldn’t want to go to the snack bar with him. He didn’t know how to act around someone like her; though he was fascinated by Alex, she scared him. She was popular, she was from Greenwich, she played sports. They had the art thing in common. But that wasn’t enough, was it?

Ethan looked up and saw he was standing directly below the portrait of Louisa Berkley that hung above the dining hall’s walk-in fireplace. He couldn’t make out the image clearly, but he could tell from the light flashing on it that he knew it from somewhere. He remembered: the photo on Hannah’s mantelpiece. At first he imagined Louisa Berkley staring down at him, smirking at his social inadequacy. Then he imagined her commiserating with him in his unhappiness. He decided he liked that vision of her better.

Ethan licked his lips; he wanted a cigarette. Over the past few weeks, he had gotten used to sharing butts with Todd in the shower after check-in, to sneaking behind the tennis courts while everyone was at the snack bar. He knew he shouldn’t be smoking, but how much damage could a few do, anyway? His mother had never smoked, and she had gotten cancer; it didn’t matter what you did, you could still get it anyway.

He wondered where Todd had gone. Ethan’s eyes darted around the dance floor, but he didn’t see his friend. He wasn’t in the snack bar, either.

Chastened from his rejection by Alex, Ethan decided to head back to the dorm. Outside, the air cooled the vodka-induced heat on his face. He didn’t want to go inside, not yet. As he passed the cemetery, he saw a glow from the tip of a cigarette. He let himself in the side gate and walked among the headstones. In the middle, next to the crumbling monument under which Louisa Berkley was buried, was a stone bench. On it, a figure in a black cape and mask stubbed out its cigarette in the grass.

“Greetings, my masked brother,” Todd said. He giggled and held up a soda can. “I got a refill.”

Todd handed it to him and Ethan took a sip. Once again, the delicious burn warmed his chest. He sat down next to Todd. He took another swig and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. There was a rustling on the far side of the cemetery.

Ethan asked Todd why he left the dance.

“It was lame,” Todd said. “I wanted to be alone.”

Ethan shifted his body away from Todd. “I can leave, if you want.”

“No, no, stay, it’s better. I like having you here. You know, someone to talk to.” Todd paused. “Besides all the dead people. Hell, you’re probably on top of Louisa Berkley’s feet.”

“That’s creepy. Don’t talk like that.”

“What do you mean? It’s nothing. It’s just bodies.”

Ethan looked at his friend. He wasn’t sure why he was about to say what he did, but it just came out. “Todd, my mother is sick. She has cancer.”

“Oh, shit, I’m sorry,” Todd said. “That was really uncool of me.”

Ethan said nothing.

“I’m such an idiot, talking about dead bodies.”

“She’s going to die,” Ethan said quietly. “But she’s not dead yet.”

“I’m sorry, Ethan, sometimes I don’t know how to act around you.”

“Don’t stress about it.”

Todd looked up. “Maybe it’s the full moon.” He let out a small burp. “Or the vodka. They make me want to do strange things.” Todd took another swig from the can and handed it to Ethan, who gulped down a mouthful.

“Easy there, don’t kill it.”

Ethan started feeling flushed again, not an unpleasant sensation. All he could see of Todd was his mouth, his lips. In his mask, Todd could be anyone. In his own mask, he could be anyone, too.

“Come here,” Todd said. “I want to show you something.” Todd pulled his face close to Ethan’s, so close that Ethan could feel Todd’s breath on his cheeks. “Try to relax.”

Lit only by moonlight, Todd gently held Ethan’s chin, opened his mouth, and kissed him. Ethan sensed Todd’s tongue probing around in his mouth like a slug, but he felt powerless to do anything. He wasn’t even sure he wanted to push Todd away, for this was Todd, his friend whom he could trust, his friend who had invited him into his home, his friend who was now kissing him. When Todd pulled away, Ethan jumped up from the bench and ran back to the dorm. It was the first real kiss he had ever gotten in his life, and it was from a guy. It was nothing like what he wanted: it was—grotesquely, as if he had created his own nightmare—the exact opposite of what he wanted. It didn’t feel like he imagined a girl’s kiss would; far from the passionate experience he had always envisioned, it was little more than two people’s body parts touching each other. Aside from the sliminess, apart from Todd’s exertion, he could have been kissing a doll, or a piece of fruit. After shedding his costume and changing into some sweatpants, Ethan hurried to the bathroom and brushed his teeth, wanting to get rid of the alcohol, of the remnants of Todd’s saliva. (In grade school, once, a bully had held Ethan down and spat a glob of phlegm into his mouth—he had immediately run home and brushed his teeth for half an hour. He supposed, remembering that incident now, that Todd’s offering wasn’t quite so bad.)

There was still another ten minutes until check-in. Ethan went back to his room and lay down on his bed, only turning on his desk lamp. He tried to forget about what had happened, tried to pretend Todd had been a girl, tried to imagine that this was an everyday occurrence, but he couldn’t.

After Ethan had bolted from the stone bench, Todd felt queasy. The alcohol, the full moon, the graveyard: they all spiraled together in his mind. To do this right after Ethan had confided in him about his mother made Todd feel like an insensitive letch. But he had wanted so much to connect with his friend, to show him how he cared for him; instead, he had done completely the wrong thing.

He hoped no one had seen them. There had been some movement on the other side of the cemetery, probably just a senile faculty member walking his dog. He didn’t know if Ethan would ever speak to him after this, if he had ruined their friendship with one simple action. Todd raced up to his room, the muscles in his legs quivering. As he rinsed himself off in the shower, he wondered if he was being silly. He liked Ethan; he had wanted to kiss him. He hoped desperately for it to be as simple as that.

After toweling off and returning to his room, though, he knew it wasn’t. A hot burst of shame surged over him, though he was naked in his darkened room, the October breeze drifting in through the open window. The kiss was such a revelation that he felt conflicted. He wanted more, but he also wanted to run away: to get back together with Alex, to reconcile with her, to acknowledge that this was all a mistake. Maybe he was attracted to girls and guys, destined to be one of those sexual chameleons who refused to be labeled. He considered the possibility as he threw on a pair of pajama bottoms. Going back to Alex would be safe and secure, but stifling, a prison. Going in the other direction, whatever that might be, was the only option.

Ethan stayed in his room for the rest of the evening, and Todd didn’t come to visit as he usually would on a Saturday night. The next day, he was in the library studying when Todd sat down across the table from him. Todd looked frightened, ashamed, his usually clear complexion mottled and red. He glanced around to make sure no one could hear them.

“About last night,” he whispered, “I’m sorry, I was drunk. I guess I thought you were someone else. I really had a lot to drink.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Ethan said. “Let’s just forget it.”

This was the pathetic state of his life. The most exciting thing to happen to him all semester was that his best friend had kissed him. Ethan considered himself a liberal thinker. His parents had gay friends whom they would invite to dinner. There wasn’t anything wrong with it; it just wasn’t for him. Could Todd really have been drunk and confused? Ethan bit down on his tongue as he tried to concentrate on his reading. After making it through a page, he raised his fingers and let them graze over his own lips, letting them linger there, just for a moment.