“I’ve been thinking about something you said,” Oliver tells me as his Air Supply song plays softly for the second time this morning.
“That we should be paying more attention to climate change?” I ask.
“No.”
“That people should reconsider their feelings about insects as food because eating them instead of meat would be better for the environment?”
Oliver laughs. “No, but I would pay good money to watch you eat a grub worm.”
“I said I’m reconsidering my feelings,” I remind him. “Not that I’m ordering grub worm sandwiches.”
“Poser.”
“Baby steps,” I tell him. “What have you been thinking about?”
“The senior prank.” Oliver waits patiently while I perform a bunch of eye rolling and excessive sighing. “Is it out of your system?”
“One more.” I heave a final deep groan. “Okay, I’m done. Go ahead.”
“No more laxatives.”
“Am I expected to cheer?”
“No.” Oliver pokes me in the ribs.
“Hey!”
“But you are supposed to hush and listen.”
I hush and listen.
“Theo says that Jimmy McKay says he can borrow a really tame cow from his uncle’s farm.”
“ ‘Borrow.’ ” I say it with a heavy dose of skepticism.
“We won’t give it any laxatives and we’ll be really nice to it.”
“How?”
“What do you mean?”
“How are you going to be nice to Jimmy McKay’s uncle’s really tame cow?”
Oliver considers. “We’ll bring it treats.”
“Treats.”
“Hay or alfalfa or…sugar lumps! Don’t cows like sugar lumps?”
“Horses like sugar lumps.” I purse my lips. “Go on.”
“There’s this scientific thing about how cows can go up stairs but not down them. So all we have to do is get the cow up to the third floor. It’s way better than feeding it laxatives. It’ll just be stuck up there, mooing around. I bet they’ll cancel classes. At least in the morning.”
“Hey, Oliver?”
“Yeah?”
“Why do you think cows won’t go down stairs?”
Oliver’s forehead scrunches up. “Evolution?”
I whap him across the biceps (God, that’s hard!) and make a snort that sounds a lot like Itch. “It’s because they’re scared.”
“We shouldn’t scare the cow?”
“It’s mean to scare cows,” I tell him. “Even for tradition. Even for a legacy.”
“It’s mean to crush my hopes and dreams.” Oliver slumps in an overdramatic way that makes me laugh.
We’re both quiet for a while as the Violent Femmes (my one song, of course) play from the behemoth’s speakers. “This music sucks,” Oliver says mildly.
“You’ve mentioned.”
I watch as the trees flashing by are replaced by storefronts. I would prefer to engage in our now traditional sport of song bashing, or even to continue discussion of the senior prank, but my mind keeps going back to my conversation with Itch. Or rather, my lack of conversation with Itch. “I have a question,” I tell Oliver.
“Shoot.”
“Hypothetically speaking, let’s say that a person and her boyfriend made a decision to be free to date other people over a specific period of time. Say, a summer, for example.”
“For example,” says Oliver.
“Let’s say that this hypothetical person didn’t date anyone, exactly, but instead may have—one time only and with one person only—done some…” I pause, trying to figure out how to continue. “Done some things.”
“Things that are physical? Like the things commonly done between two people who are dating?”
“Correct.” I nod and then hasten to add, “But not all the things. Not even most of the things.”
“How many things, exactly?”
“Like one thing. Maybe one and a half.”
“Which particular things?” Oliver asks. “Be specific. Give details.”
“You’re heading toward Theo Land,” I warn him. If Darbs or Lily or Shaun was the one asking, I would probably give more information. That would be normal. But the idea of telling those same things to Oliver doesn’t seem fine or normal at all. It seems…
I can’t figure out how it seems. Mostly, it just seems like I don’t want to tell him.
“I’m an emotional detective,” Oliver says. “A therapist. I’m basically like a priest….Are you going to do that eye-rolling seizure thing again?”
“Probably.” I stare at his handsome profile and decide just to go for it. I want a straight-male take on the Itch Sitch, and at the moment, the only qualified person in my life appears to be Oliver. “It was one time, one guy, and it was no big deal. A little making out, that’s all.”
“You did say maybe one and a half things.”
“Fine, some over-the-shirt action. That’s all you get.”
“I can work with that,” says Oliver. “Go on.”
“I keep thinking about it,” I admit. “Not about the guy, but about what I did. Even though it was technically within my rights, I feel…”
“Guilty.” The word comes out of Oliver’s mouth fast. And with authority.
He’s right.
“Yeah, I guess that’s it. I feel totally guilty. And I never told Itch, but now I’m wondering if I should have when it happened. Or if I still should. What would you do if Ainsley kissed another guy?”
Oliver’s lips press together. “I don’t know,” he finally says. “Because I can’t imagine okaying that in the first place. What’s the point?”
Again, he’s right—which silences me.
Oliver gives me a gentle tap on the knee. “You should tell him.”
“I guess. Maybe. Probably.”
“You’re supposed to be honest with the person you’re with. Y’know?”
“I know,” I say, even though I don’t know anything anymore.
When we reach school, I pause before opening my door. “Hey, Oliver?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for the ride.”
“Anytime, Rafferty.”
“And for the talk.”
Oliver smiles at me. “You’re welcome.”
We’re out of the car and almost to the front lobby doors when Oliver nudges me. “Oh, by the way…”
“By the way what?”
“By the way, studies show that high school popularity is a determining factor in later-life financial security. Look it up.”
“What?” All that friendly conversation. Just Oliver lulling me into a false sense of complacency.
“Suck it, screamo,” he says. But then he grins and nudges me again. “Have a good day.”
He disappears into the crowd and—even though I’m mad about the song—I’m kind of bummed to see him go.
Itch and I are sitting on the swings at Cherry Hill Park, not far from my house. I asked if he would drive me home and he said yes, even though things have been a little tense since the weekend. We were quiet the whole way here. I was thinking about how to say it, and about what it would mean, and even about what I wanted it to mean. I kept going back to the thing Oliver had said, how things are supposed to be. How do I want things to be with Itch?
It sleeted this afternoon and now everything is gray and dank. The seat of the swing was spotted with water when I sat on it, but I already felt so damp that I didn’t care. Now I’m regretting that decision as the temperature drops even more and I’m shivery everywhere.
“So what’s up?” Itch says.
A nervous knot gathers in the pit of my stomach. Earlier, I thought of several ways to broach the topic but now I’ve forgotten all of them. “I have to tell you something.”
“Go ahead.” His voice is more even than usual.
I twist the swing to face him. “Remember how you said we should be open to dating other people this summer?”
“Yes.”
I suddenly have an attack of the nerves so strong that I have to jerk out of my swing and stand up. I squeeze my thumbs inside my mittens, take a deep breath, and spit it out: “I kissed someone.”
I wait. Itch digs his toes into the pebbles to bring his swing to stillness. He gazes up at me for a moment, a long moment during which I try to understand his expression, but I can’t find anything in it. No anger or sadness or jealousy. Either I don’t know how to read him, or those emotions really aren’t there. I can’t tell.
And then Itch’s mouth tilts up into his lopsided grin. “Is that all?” I nod and he gets to his feet. He sets his hands on my shoulders. “Me too, June. It’s okay.”
I freeze—what?—before pulling back. I’m not jealous but I’m…I don’t know what I am. I’m surprised. I’m something. “Who was she?”
A line deepens between Itch’s eyebrows. “Just a couple Florida girls.”
“A couple?”
“Maybe three. None of them meant anything.”
“Did you have sex?” I ask, and he shakes his head violently.
“Not even close,” he says. “I’m telling you, it was nothing.”
And I have to believe him. I have to understand, because that’s what it felt like with Ethan in the 7-Eleven parking lot. It felt like nothing, like it could have been anyone’s mouth and anyone’s hands. It was a time killer. A space filler. It wasn’t fair and I’m not proud…but that’s what it was.
Itch reaches out to me again, and this time I let him pull me in, let him wrap his arms around me and stroke my hair. “We weren’t together,” he murmurs in my ear. “Now we are. It’s all good.”
I nod against him, relieved.
And—somehow—also disappointed.
Oliver doesn’t even turn on the playlist when I climb into the car. He just pulls out into the street before flipping a look at me. “Did you do it?”
“Yes.”
“You told him?”
“Yes.”
Silence for at least a full minute. I know Oliver is waiting for me to talk, but there’s really nothing to say. Finally, he can’t take it anymore. “How’d it go?”
“Fine.” I scrunch down in my seat and stare out the window. “It went fine.”