Enthusiasm Read online

  “Landa, your standards are so low,” said her sister. “You think everybody’s kind of cute, even when they’re igsome. You should be slapping them yourself, so I don’t have to.”

  “I don’t know that Seth is igsome, exactly,” I said. “I just don’t Like him.”

  “The point isn’t whether he’s igsome,” said Ashleigh. “The point is that Julie’s affections are Otherwise Engaged.”

  “Oh, right, I forgot, you’re going out with Ned, right?” said Yolanda. “But I bet you could still go out with Seth too, if you wanted. How’s Ned going to find out? He doesn’t exactly get out much.”

  That raised Ashleigh’s fighting spirit. “Yolanda! How can you suggest such a thing?” she flashed out. “Julie would never be so false—she would never treat anyone with such disloyalty, especially not a noble being like Ned! Her love, like her nature, is pure and true!”

  “But I keep telling you, I’m not going out with Ned,” I protested feebly. I didn’t press the point, though. For one thing, it was useless—I knew I would never change Ashleigh’s mind. And her passionate words distracted me, filling me with guilt. Never false—incapable of disloyalty—my nature pure and true. This—from the girl whose hoped-for boyfriend I couldn’t get out of my mind! Ashleigh’s words would be far, far more fitting if she applied them to herself. How would I ever deserve my loyal friend’s praise?

  Chapter 15

  Holiday cheer ~ The baby’s birthday ~ Sweet Sixteen and Never Been Kissed ~ my First Kiss.

  The Christmas vacation arrived in a flurry of exams and term papers. The winter issue of Sailing to Byzantium went to the printer. Seth dropped off the disk; I used my last English paper as an excuse not to go with him. I rushed through my essay, repeating ideas from the previous one, but Ms. Nettleton didn’t notice.

  Yolanda’s sentence ended, but she got regrounded for cutting physics to hang out with Adam.

  Ashleigh and I exchanged our yearly Hanumas/Chrisukka presents. She gave me a CD of songs popular in nineteenth-century parlors—“What Jane Austen’s heroines would have listened to instead of musicals,” she explained. I made her a magic kit from unsold odds and ends in my mother’s shop: a bouquet of colorful scarves, a wand cut down from a broken walking stick, a stuffed rabbit. I was particularly proud of the top hat, which I fitted out with a false bottom and a hinged trapdoor on top. I hoped the gift would spark a new craze—but no. “How Jane Austen’s characters would love this!” cried Ashleigh. “Perfect for those long evenings at Pemberley. Hey, what do you think about doing a musical version of Pride and Prejudice? Wouldn’t this hat look great on Darcy?”

  The other major holiday of the season is, of course, my birthday: December 17. It fell early in the vacation, as it usually does. With his strict attention to his parental rights, my father insists on my spending alternate birthdays at each house; this year was his turn.

  I awoke to the sound of footsteps on the ceiling of my basement bedroom. The Irresistible Accountant was in the kitchen directly overhead, stomping and crashing breakfast into life. I buried my head in the pillow, but sleep had fled, so I put on my bathrobe and slippers and went upstairs.

  Amy handed me a plate of winter-squash frittata, herbed home fries, and sliced citrus salad. “There you are, sweetie,” she said. “Happy birthday.” Then she burst into tears and ran out of the room.

  As I stared after her, my father gestured at my plate with his fork. “Aren’t you going to eat your breakfast?” he asked. “Go on, eat it. You’ll hurt Amy’s feelings.”

  I took a halfhearted bite. “What’s the matter with her? Is my birthday such a tragedy it makes a grown woman cry?”

  Dad gave me a look of grave reproach. “How can you be so thoughtless? Don’t you know what day it is today?” he said.

  “Um, December 17th?”

  “Yes, to you it’s December 17th—but to Amy, it’s the baby’s birthday.”

  “What baby’s birthday? She doesn’t have a baby.”

  “That’s why she’s so upset,” said my father patiently. “The baby was due on December 17th. If she hadn’t had the miscarriage, today would be his birthday.”

  I did some arithmetic. “How can that possibly be?” I said. “She had the miscarriage in October. She didn’t even look pregnant. The baby can’t have been due for months and months.”

  “Not that miscarriage, Julie,” said my father with a touch of irritation, as if I had missed a very easy question on a quiz. “That was only the latest one. You don’t know how hard things have been for Amy. I’m talking about the first miscarriage, the one four years ago, when Amy and I first got together. After we lost that baby, she was devastated. Don’t you remember? She’s been very, very brave, but when we lost the new baby again two months ago, it opened the wound all over again for her. You’ll be kind to her today, won’t you? I know you will. It’s a very sad day for her, and she’s feeling very vulnerable.”

  With these words, my father finished his frittata, put on his coat, and went off to work.

  I stared blankly at the elaborate eggs congealing on my plate. After a while, I noticed that my brain had continued to do arithmetic all by itself. The sum it produced horrified me. If my father was telling the truth—and there was no reason to think he wasn’t—then Amy had already been pregnant for months before my father left my mother. All those weeks when my parents went together to marriage counseling, all those weeks when he swore to her—and me!—that he would start fresh: all of it lies. He had known all along he would leave. He hadn’t meant a word of it.

  Of course, I had no illusions that my father had succeeded in the new start he had promised to make. How could I? He had left us, hadn’t he? But it was another thing to learn that he hadn’t even tried.

  And another thing entirely to learn it on my sixteenth birthday.

  I abandoned my Familial Restraint Fund for good. No amount of imaginary money could ever compensate for this.

  My cell phone rang. I checked the number: my mother, doubtless calling to wish me a happy birthday. I decided I couldn’t deal and let the voice mail get it.

  Amy came back into the kitchen. “What’s the matter, sweetie?” she said. “You’re not eating. Don’t you like your frittata?”

  With the house already dank with Amy’s tears, I balked at adding mine. It was too cold out for long woodland rambles, however, so I took refuge in the Lius’ greenhouse next door. The conservatory, I called it in my head. But unlike the conservatory at Forefield—an elegant structure where cast-iron frets offered up crystal panes to the sun—the Lius’ version was small and practical, close cousin to a shed. Haichang had built it from plywood and sheet plastic to keep the worst of the cold off his orchids and Lily’s vegetables.

  It was chilly but bright in the greenhouse. The sun wavered in through the plastic and the thin winter clouds. Carefully moving aside two pots of hybrid phalaenopsis, I sat on a bench, breathed in the wet air, and gave myself over to self-pity.

  The worst of it was, I felt I had no real right to feel sorry for myself. I had friends, I had parents (two sets of them) who neither beat nor neglected me, I had good grades, acceptable looks, absorbing activities—all the trappings, I told myself, of privilege. I had my heart’s sister, Ashleigh. I even had a suitor, of sorts—not, alas, the guy of my dreams—just Seth. Imagine kissing Seth. Ig! But what if I couldn’t escape it? I was getting older and older, and Seth was the closest I had ever come to anything approaching a boyfriend. Sixteen years old already, of all pathetic things! What if my longed-for first kiss was with Seth?

  I began to cry in earnest.

  The wind ruffling the plastic, the hum of the heater, the gurgle of the humidifier, and my own snuffling sobs filled my ears, so I didn’t notice that I was no longer alone until I felt an arm around my shoulder.

  “Stringbean! What’s the matter?” said a man’s voice. Zach, home from college for the vacation. He used an ancient nickname that I’d hoped everyone had forgotten long ago.<
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  “Oh, Zach,” I said. “It’s my birthday.” I hid my face against his shoulder and sobbed harder.

  “But Beano, that’s a good thing. Happy birthday! Seventeen?”

  I shook my head, his sweater scratchy against my cheek. “Sixteen,” I said.

  “Even better! Sweet sixteen.”

  I sobbed still harder. “Yeah, right. Sweet sixteen and never been kissed.”

  “Oh, is that the problem? Have you really never been kissed? What’s the matter with that boyfriend of yours—that Foureyes boy? They’re all wimps at that place. Except my young sparring partner Parr, of course, there’s a kid with a spine—I bet he’s not leaving your little friend Ashleigh unkissed. Hey, easy there, Bean Cuisine, you sound like you’re choking. Just because your boyfriend is too scared to make a move, that isn’t any reflection on you.”

  “If you mean Ned, he’s not my boyfriend,” I said for the millionth time. “I know Ashleigh says so, but he isn’t. I don’t have a boyfriend. And I’m so tall, and I have stringy arms and stringy legs and stringy hair and a stringy face, and nobody ever wanted to kiss me except creeps and stuffy Seth Young, and even if they did, I wouldn’t know how.”

  “Wow,” said Zach. “That sounds pretty bad.” He held me in his scratchy arms and patted me a little too hard between the shoulder blades, as if he were trying to dislodge a chicken bone. I started to feel a bit better.

  “I could show you, if you want,” he said. “You could practice on me.”

  “What do you mean? Practice what?”

  “How to kiss. That way when the boy who isn’t your boyfriend finally gets off his ass and kisses you, you won’t worry about getting it wrong. And if he doesn’t—well, anyway, you won’t be sweet sixteen and never been kissed.”

  I took my face out of his sweater and looked at him.

  “But not if you don’t want to, of course,” he said. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  Quickly, before I could change my mind, I kissed Zach. Handsome Zach, heartthrob of the seniors, kind, vain, teasing, brotherly, out-of-my-league Zach.

  The first kiss—the one I launched—landed hard and sudden, off center. I didn’t quite know what to do with it. “Mmmm,” said Zach tactfully when it was over, taking my face in his hands and moving in with gentle expertise.

  “That’s the way,” he said when he was done. “Another?”

  I nodded. This time our mouths came open a little. Alarmed, I felt myself fluttering. Something bumped, something seemed to tangle.

  “Easy, now,” said Zach, pulling back. “Relax.”

  I nodded again. After the next kiss, it began to feel almost natural—more like a dance, and less like two people trying to push through the same swinging door from opposite sides. I found I could even breathe while kissing; I considered opening my eyes. Before I could, however, I felt a crash judder through Zach’s torso, bumping his teeth into mine. “Ow!” he said.

  Simultaneously, I heard Samantha yell: “Zach! You creep! Leave her alone! What are you doing?”

  I opened my eyes. Sam was hitting Zach with a bag of potting soil. I had never seen her so angry.

  “Julie! Are you okay? Zach, what do you think you’re doing?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” answered Zach, brushing soil off his jeans.

  “It’s okay, Sam,” I said, mortified. “I kissed him.”

  Samantha looked at me for a moment, then turned back to Zach. “How can you be so irresponsible?” she said. “What about Jenna?”

  “Calm down, Sam. You don’t need to throw dirt around. I’m not cheating on Jenna, it’s just a kiss. Julie and I both know what we’re doing. It’s her birthday and she was feeling lonely. Nobody’s going to get their heart broken. Julie’s in love with that Forefield boy, anyway.”

  Samantha put the bag of potting soil down. “Get out of here, Zach,” she said. “I mean it, go on.” Zach gave me a sheepish look, brushed off more dirt, and left. Sam turned to me. “I apologize for Zach—he’s an idiot,” she said. “Are you all right?”

  Was I? I had no idea how I felt—thrilled, terrified, shaken? I needed to go away somewhere and figure it out, but first I needed to calm Sam down. “It’s okay, Sam,” I said. “I’m not going to do anything stupid like fall for Zach. Don’t worry about it, okay? He caught me crying and he was comforting me. That’s all. He wasn’t taking advantage of me. I kissed him.”

  “If you say so,” said Sam. “But if you need me to kill him, tell me. In fact, I might just do it anyway. Oh, and happy birthday, by the way.”

  Chapter 16

  Paperwhites ~ Hothouse flowers ~ The Great White Way ~ Parr’s house ~ Footprints in the snow ~ A Third sonnet.

  When I got home, I found someone had slipped into my room and cleaned it up for me. My bed was made, my clothes neatly straightened, my collection of shells, stones, bones, and fascinating bits of broken china carefully dusted and arranged on their shelf. The floor gleamed, as if someone had mopped it. There wasn’t a cobweb in sight, not even in the farthest reaches of the roof peak, where a displaced spider had begun to spin new tether lines. Even my desk was free of dust, the books and papers arranged in the exact order I had left them in, but with their corners straightened, all at right angles. A bowl of paperwhites bloomed on my windowsill, filling the room with their sweet, slightly gasoliny fragrance.

  This, I realized at once, must be Ashleigh’s birthday present to me. She knew she was the only person who could get away with touching my things.

  Sure enough, her curly head popped up at the window. “Open up,” she said. “It’s starting to get icy out here.”

  Looking at my sparkling room and my grinning friend, I felt ashamed of myself. What did I have to complain of, compared with what I had to be thankful for? I pushed the window up and gave Ashleigh a hand in.

  “Happy birthday,” she announced with satisfaction, taking off her sneakers so as not to track bark dust on the gleaming floor. I noticed that she was wearing jeans, without any regard for the visibility of her lower limbs. “How was it? Did anything earth-shattering happen?”

  “Actually, yes,” I said. I was tired of keeping secrets from Ashleigh. This, at least, I could tell her. Perhaps she could help me figure out what I had done and why.

  “Wait, let me get this straight,” said Ashleigh when I was done. “You kissed Zach Liu? Four times?”

  “Yes—well, technically, I only kissed him once. The other times he kissed me.”

  “But Julie, I had no idea you felt that way about Zach. Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I don’t feel ‘that way’ about him. If you mean am I interested in him, no, I’m not. That would be idiotic. He’s way out of my league. All the girls at Byz have a crush on him, and he knows it. He’s in college, for God’s sake. He has a girlfriend. I’m barely sixteen.”

  “Then why did you kiss him? What about Ned?”

  “What about Ned? Ash, come on! I keep telling you. I’m not interested in Ned. I was never interested in Ned. He’s a nice guy, but I’m not interested in him. And he’s not interested in me, either. He sure as hell never tried to kiss me.”

  “I see,” said Ashleigh. “I wish I hadn’t interrupted you guys in the trophy room that time, before he had a chance. I wish I’d just tiptoed out without saying anything! I would have, but I thought I was rescuing you from Chris. Well, I guess I can understand it. You get tired of waiting for the one you love to kiss you, so you go and kiss someone else.”

  I sighed. She was right, although not the way she thought. “Do you realize I’m sixteen years old and I never kissed anyone?” I said. “Ned never wanted to kiss me. That’s not what we were doing in the trophy room. Nobody ever wanted to kiss me—unless you count Seth, maybe, which I’d rather not. I didn’t really know what I was doing when I kissed Zach. I wanted to see what it was like. I guess I was afraid that if I waited, Seth would somehow get me to let him kiss me, with that stubborn persistence of his, and then that wo
uld be my first kiss. At least Zach is someone I like.”

  “So he is someone you like!”

  “Not Like—just like. He’s a nice guy, he’s really good-looking, he’s Samantha’s big brother, and he’s a college student, away in college, where he has a girlfriend. He’s not going to be after me to go out with him like Seth is. Anyway, why do I have to Like someone before I can kiss him? Are you in love with Ravi? You kiss him every week—twice a week, or more.”

  “But that’s different—I have to, for the play. I wouldn’t if I didn’t have to.”

  “Why not? Doesn’t Ravi kiss well?”

  “I don’t know—he’s fine, I guess—but I’m not interested in him.”

  “Well, have you ever kissed Parr, then?” I asked. As soon as I said it, I wished I hadn’t.

  “No, of course not, you’d know if I had. I would never keep such a thing from you,” she said impatiently. “So what was it like?”

  “What—kissing Zach?”

  “Yes.”

  “It was—nice. Surprisingly nice. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

  “You’d kiss Zach again?” said Ashleigh, shocked. “I thought you said he has a girlfriend!”

  “Well, maybe not Zach—Samantha would kill me. Anyway, she’d kill one of us. And there is that girlfriend. But somebody, yes, I’d definitely kiss somebody, if it was the right guy.”

  The likelihood of kissing the Right Guy, however, seemed so distant that I allowed myself to wish, for a moment or two, that Zach was unattached, that he wasn’t in college, that he wasn’t the son of my father’s partner, wasn’t as far above me as the reindeer on Ashleigh’s roof, and would kiss me again, this time without a dirt-throwing sister to interrupt.