A Sense of the Infinite

“I’ll meet you guys in the cafeteria,” she panted, waving us back out like little mice.

Steven built her this whole beautiful tray with a sandwich and salad and an apple he somehow cut into heart-shaped slices, but when she finally showed up it was one minute before the bell, and all she did was chug the water, coo over the apple hearts, wipe the sweat off her forehead, and ask if anyone had gum.

Now that Noe wasn’t coming to lunch consistently, Steven and I started hanging out in the bathrooms more. Our favorite one was the old-fashioned ladies’ room near the computer labs. It had nice acoustics, and Steven liked to sing in there. Other times we’d go to the theater wing to hang out with Steven’s friends and play card games. At first I couldn’t make sense of the rules, but Steven’s friends were patient, and pretty soon I started to get the hang of it.

One day, there were printed notices taped to all the bathroom doors informing students that anyone caught using the opposite sex’s facilities would be subject to disciplinary action. Steven was called into the office. He came back enraged.

“This school is stuck in the Dark Ages,” he said. “I try to end bathroom apartheid, and he treats me like a sex offender. ‘You think you’re pretty cute, McNeil. There’s nothing cute about being a pervert.’”

He was quivering with the injustice and humiliation. His hands curled and uncurled on the table. I imagined Mr. Beek towering over him, spit spritzing out of his mouth as he lectured Steven about respect and behavior.

“The world isn’t ready for pee parity,” I said. “All the great revolutionaries were once considered perverts. It’s kind of a rite of passage.”

“Noe is horrified, of course,” Steven continued, not ready to be consoled. “She thinks I should just back down. I think it was someone on the gym team who complained.”

Even though I knew about their recent friction, his tone still struck me. It was the first time I had ever heard Steven express frustration with Noe, or really anything except pure and unfettered adulation.

“I’m sure she’s on your side,” I said, but later that day I saw them arguing by the far trees, and after that Steven stopped wearing the PEE SISTERS headband I’d made him for Christmas and which he’d been wearing every day since we got back from break.

81

I TRIED TO RIDE OUT THE craziness by cocooning into myself.

I ripped the CDs that Bob had lent me and loaded them onto my music player.

The Stone King has not been seen for two hundred years, but holds the land of Riddlespoon captive through a silent reign of terror. Can Rae of Riddlespoon free her people from his grasp?

“What are you listening to?” said Noe.

“Nothing.”

“I was saying you should come to the YMCA on Sunday to work on your floor routine.”

I turned down the volume. “Okay,” I said.

The land of Riddlespoon used to be lush and verdant but was slowly turning to stone. The people were ruled by fear. Rae’s mother, Genewren, lay paralyzed by the Stone King’s curse, her once-strong limbs turned gray and cold.

“I will avenge her,” Rae swore, and set out for the Doom Crags.

“Want to go to the Java Bean?” Noe said.

I pressed pause. “Sure.”

The sidewalks were brown slush and flattened coffee cups. Shopping carts rattled unmoored across parking lots. Noe was wearing a pink-and-white knitted hat with a sparkly pom-pom on top, gloves to match. Her black coat was speckled with white lint.

When we got to the Java Bean, Steven’s mom—Darla—was in line getting a cappuccino. Noe sang a hello and they traded air kisses while I stood awkwardly by the donut case.

“Hi there,” Darla said, beaming down on me for a moment before turning back to ask Noe about her plans for spring break.

Her mouth was painted red and she was wearing a perfume you could smell all the way from the door, like a Mister Cookie outlet that pumps its odor of brownies and gingerbread a little too aggressively onto the sidewalk.

When Noe talked to Darla, she transformed. Gestures came out that I had never seen Noe do before, twirls of the wrist and rolls of the eye that mirrored Darla perfectly. They reminded me of the birds displaying their feathers in Planet Earth: tweet tweet, flap flap. A bizarre kind of mating dance, it unsettled me to observe.

“Do you girls want a ride home?” Darla said.

“Would you?” Noe cooed, clapping her hands together as if a ten-block car ride was the greatest treat on earth.

Darla paid for our drinks and we walked out to her very clean, very new, very white SUV. The radio was tuned to a Christian rock station.

“Have you been to this nail salon yet?” Darla said, tapping her finger at a pink-and-silver storefront on the corner.

“No,” Noe said. “We should totally go.”

I put my earbuds on and started Kingdom of Stones.

82

THE NEXT DAY, AT LUNCHTIME, I sat on the gym floor and watched Noe practice.

She was beautiful on the beam, fluid as water. She looked like the ballerina in a jewelry box, her black hair drawn up to a bun on the top of her head, her eyes focused, the grip of her toes determined. I sat on the floor with my knees drawn up to my chest. I couldn’t take my eyes away from her. Suddenly, the beam seemed so high and lonely it might as well have been a mountaintop. She turned lightly on the tips of her toes and my throat got so tight I thought I would cry. For some reason, I was remembering the time in tenth grade when Noe’s dog had died. She’d cried on my bed and I hugged the soft, rumpled heap of her, and thought to myself that Noe was the person I loved most in the world.

As I was having that one memory, all sorts of other memories started flooding into me until it felt like I was seeing a replay of every heartbreaking moment in my entire life. Suddenly, I was in front of Scott’s house again, alone in the cold twilight with a rock clenched in my hand.

“What?” Noe said.

I shook my head. When I blinked, the gym lights wobbled and swam.

“Are you sad?” Noe said, hopping down from the beam and walking over to crouch beside me. She ran her fingers through my hair like she always did when someone was crying or upset. It was one of her techniques. I bet she had read in a magazine that having your head scratched released endorphins or something. That was a very Noe thing to remember and put into practice.

She sat down cross-legged on the floor. Her fingernails were painted to match our gym leotards and she smelled different, more grown-up. I felt the secret tremble inside me like a butterfly beating its wings inside my hand, everything in me wanting to succumb to the comfort of telling Noe. So far I’d managed to avoid giving in to that particular temptation when it came to Scott.

“Poor thing,” Noe said. “Are you regretting it?”

It took me a second to realize that Noe was talking about Maple Bay, and not about throwing the rock at Scott’s window.

“No,” I said truthfully.

“Are you sure?” Noe said. Her voice was all sympathy, her eyes their wide familiar brown. It was so easy to talk to Noe when she was like this, to climb into the warm fuzzy nest of that voice and feel yourself completely understood. No wonder she knew everyone’s secrets. This time, however, I didn’t have a secret to confess—at least, not the one Noe was fishing for.

“Of course,” I said. “You think I secretly wanted a baby?”

Noe gave me a look. “Darla says all women want their babies unless they were, like, raped. It’s a basic human instinct.”

“I don’t think so,” I said stiffly.