Just Friends (3 page)

Sal groans. “Man, you really are a young fogey, Carver. You must’ve been born middle-aged. No wonder you’re already thinking about going bald.” Now in crumbs and pieces, the pretzel falls to the floor, but Sal doesn’t notice. He leans towards Carver. “If you ask me, it’s a lot more normal to have the hots for someone than it is to act like you’re some kind of monk and above all that stuff.”

“I’m not acting like anything,” says Carver. “I’m just saying that I’ve decided not to even think about getting involved with anyone until I’ve at least done my Master’s. Get the important things out of the way first.”

“Yeah, right,” says Sal. “Who are you kidding? You know damn well that high-school girls aren’t turned on by guys who talk about nothing but greenhouse gases. You have less chance of getting a date than of stopping climate change.”

“Women can be very distracting,” says Carver. Environmental science is no place for someone who isn’t stubborn. “You have to get your priorities right.”

“What about your biological imperatives?” demands Sal. “You going to put them on hold till you get your Master’s?
Hang on, millions of years of evolution, I just have to get accepted to a PhD programme and then we’ll be good to go
.”

“There are ways of dealing with biological imperatives.” Carver winks. “As I’m pretty sure you know.”

“Excuse me,” interrupts Josh. He is not the first person in mankind’s history to wish he’d never said anything. Maybe he’s the one who should be a monk; in an order that takes a vow of silence. “You don’t mind if I rejoin the conversation, do you? I mean, you forgot that I wasn’t talking about sex. Or infatuation, or feelings. All I said was, what if you’re not sure about asking someone out? None of what you’ve been yakking about has anything to do with where we started.” At least now he knows what the “bull” in bull session refers to, and it isn’t the chromosome make-up of the people having it. “Would you ask her out if you didn’t think she was guaranteed to say yes? That’s all I was wondering.”

“Yes,” says Sal. “Absolutely. If you think there’s a chance.”

“But that’s just the point. You don’t know if there’s a chance. She could laugh in your face. Or tweet to all her friends and have half the school laughing at you in a matter of minutes. What then?”

Sal obviously hadn’t thought of any of that. He’s silent for a few seconds, imagining a moment decades from now when he steps up to collect his Best Director award and the presenter says,
Aren’t you the Armando Salcedo who made a fool of himself in high school by asking out the wrong girl?
“Oh, man, it’s tricky, isn’t it?” He shakes his head. “But I still think it’s better to say something, not take it to your grave with you.”

“I disagree,” says Carver. “No way. Unless you’re at least ninety-eight per cent sure she’d think it was a good idea. Or not the worst idea she’s ever heard in her life.”

So now we know why Carver has so many principles
, thinks Josh.
He’s afraid of being rejected, too
.

Josh’s
other closest friend is Ramona Minamoto. Sal recently asked him if he was interested in Ramona, and it was such an unexpected question that Josh had to ask for clarification. “You mean as a girl?”

“No, as a chess partner.” Sal sighed dramatically. “Yes, as a girl. I don’t see why you’re acting so surprised. She is a girl. And you are pretty tight with her.” He fidgeted with the silver bracelet he always wears. “You spend a lot of time together.”

“Have you and I ever met?” asked Josh. “Christ, you know Mo and I are just friends. She’s like my sister.”

Sal said Josh wouldn’t say that if he actually had a sister. “Carver has it the worst,” judged Sal. “He has three of them. But, believe me, one’s plenty. She never lets up.” Always shouting, bickering, criticizing, nagging and blaming. She once even yelled at him because it was raining. “Tell you one thing, I wouldn’t want to be on trial and have her on the jury, because, guaranteed, she’d recommend hanging.”

But Josh has known Ramona almost as long as he’s known Carver. Their mothers are best friends, so they’ve pretty much grown up together. Family vacations. Shared babysitters and sleepovers when they were little. He’s almost as close to her as he is to Carver. It was Ramona who rescued him by shouting “Bruno! Stop!” when the Polos’ boxer chased him onto the roof of their SUV – and Bruno, who up until that second could easily have been mistaken for the Hound of the Baskervilles, stopped. Ramona had to help Josh down. Which was only slightly less embarrassing than the afternoon he sprained his ankle and she carried him home. She was also there the time he ill-advisedly tried to give Charley Patton a bath, and he was there the time she hennaed her hair and her head swelled up. She’s practically one of the guys – the breasts and the six earrings notwithstanding.

Today is Sunday. On Sunday mornings Josh and Ramona go to yoga together. Josh has been playing both chess and the guitar since he was five; his mother thought it was time he took up an activity where he moves more than his fingers. Carver climbs and kayaks (brawn as well as brains), and Sal runs and plays golf (because that’s what movie people do). Josh, however, isn’t interested in any activity where he might drown, be hit by a car, be bored to death, or break something, especially his hands. When he was younger he was clumsy and had so many broken bones and black eyes that his doctor asked him what extreme sport he did. Josh said, “Walking.” It was Ramona who suggested her yoga class. Core strength and spiritual depth – what could be wrong with that?

“Not only is it indoors and the chance of injury fairly minimal,” said Ramona, “but you’ll like it. Plus, super bonus, you’ll be the only male.” She gave him a wise-guy grin. “Give you a chance to see what it’s like to be really popular with women.” What a sense of humour.

Two of Ramona’s promises turned out to be untrue: in the summer they often hold the class in the garden (where he seems to be allergic to the grass); and he isn’t the only one who has hurt himself doing an asana (although he is the only one who lost his balance in
kakasana
and bit his own tongue).

And two have turned out to be true: he does like it; and he is the sole male. The token male. Ramona’s the only other person his age, but he still enjoys being surrounded by women who like him and aren’t his mother. It does make a nice change.

Today the added benefit of the class was that he was concentrating so hard on demonstrating partner poses with Ramona – an example of two sets of hands and feet not making things easier – that he didn’t think of Jenevieve Capistrano even once.

And he isn’t thinking of her now as he and Ramona leave the studio together. She lopes beside him, almost as tall as an NBA player, her long hair streaming behind her. Josh is nearly trotting to keep up.

“Oh God, that is so funny!” gasps Ramona. “Trust Burleigh to remember you were involved in the science explosion.”

He’s been catching her up on some of the major events of his week. Though not all of them.

“I can already tell it’s not going to be a good year,” says Josh. “He calls everybody else by their first names, but me he calls Mr Shine.”

She glances over at him. “Why? What else did you do?”

“Nothing much.” This is what he means about her being like a sister: she knows him really well. “We did kind of have some words.”

“Oh God, Josh. School’s just started.” This is another thing that makes her like a sister: she’s always quick to get on his case. “What kind of words?”

“You know…”

Ramona rolls her eyes. Oh, yes, she knows.

The first difference of opinion was when Josh wanted to read a novel not on the course list for the term (Mr Burleigh’s sardonic response caused general hilarity). The second was when Josh challenged one of Mr Burleigh’s handed-down-from-heaven-on-a-stone-tablet rules of grammar and proved him wrong (nobody laughed at that, least of all Jake Burleigh).

“It’s your own fault,” says Ramona as they cross the street for their after-class tea at the Laughing Moon Café. “What is it with you and authority? You never know when to keep your mouth shut.”

“Don’t start, Mo. You know if you’d been there you’d’ve been on my side.”

“But I like to save my ammunition for major battles. I wouldn’t’ve made a federal case out of something like that.”

“Okay, I admit I was pushing it wanting to pick my own book, even if it was thematically in line with what we’re doing.” The truth is that Mr Burleigh irritates Josh as much as Josh irritates him. He could only be more supercilious if he were twins. “But with the grammar thing, he was totally in the wrong.”

“Oh, please… Seriously, Josh? You corrected Mr Burleigh in front of the whole class? Your common sense must still be on vacation.”

“But he was mistaken, Mo. He’s supposed to be giving us an education, not dictation.”

“This is Burleigh we’re talking about, Josh, not Socrates.” The philosopher Socrates believed in asking questions of his students; the high-school teacher Jake Burleigh believes in providing the answers and having his students repeat them.

“I can’t help it. I have a highly developed sense of right and wrong.”

Ramona laughs. Possibly at him, not with him. “Yeah. Like at the sanctuary that time.” Their class had an outing to a bird refuge. The birds were all raptors – hawks and falcons, eagles and owls – and though most of them were in large cages, some were displayed on outdoor perches to which they were tethered, and made to do tricks. Josh thought this was cruel, and exploitative – as if they were toys. He made quite a scene.

“Oh, come on, Mo. That was in second grade!”

“They almost threw us out!”

“But it wasn’t fair the way they treated the birds. Somebody had to say something.”

“Have you noticed that it’s always you?” The bird sanctuary wasn’t the last time something like that happened. “I swear, I’ve lost count of how many places we’ve been asked to leave because you couldn’t keep your mouth shut.” Her hair brushes his face as she shakes her head. “You wouldn’t last ten minutes in any self-respecting dictatorship. Somebody like Kim Jong-un would have you for breakfast.” She yanks open the door and waves him through. “Which I guess is one of the things I … like about you.”

They get their teas and go to their usual table in the corner – neither of them likes to sit in the window like a mannequin. Ramona puts her cup down and plunks herself into an armchair. Josh takes the seat across from her.

“Wow, that was a great class, wasn’t it?!” Ramona stretches her legs under the table, accidentally kicking his foot. “I really feel energized.”

“I’m glad you feel energized,” says Josh. “I wasn’t sure I’d make it across the street. That double downward dog nearly cut my young life tragically short.” Her feet placed not on the ground but on his back. He was terrified he was going to bring them both crashing to the floor. In which case she’d probably crush him – or at least crack a couple of ribs.

“Oh, please… It was great and you know it.” She kicks him again, this time intentionally. “You’re a walking contradiction, you know that, Shine? You’d correct God if you thought He’d made a mistake or something. But you always think you can’t do things you can do – usually really well. I don’t know why you’re like that.”

“I lack confidence and have a poor self-image when it comes to anything physical. Except playing the guitar.” He carefully scoops the teabag from his cup and squeezes it against the spoon. “I thought you’d know that by now.”

“Oh, I know it.” Ramona pulls her bag out by the string and chucks it at the side of the saucer. “I just try to ignore it.” She takes a packet of brown sugar from the bowl on the table. “Anyway, everybody else was really impressed even if you weren’t. I can’t wait to see Mayana’s pictures.”

Mayana is their teacher. She changed her name from Mary when she got the yin-yang tattoo on her ankle and the crescent moon stud in her nose.

“I can. I’m not really at my most photogenic when I have you balancing on me.”

“You’re too modest.” She shakes the sugar into her cup, scattering grains over the table. “Mostly all anyone’s going to see is the back of your head, and that is your best side.” She stirs her tea. “Anyway, I’m really glad we have the yoga even if you think it is life-threatening. I’ve hardly seen you since school started. Not to talk to for more than a couple of minutes. We don’t even have the same lunch period. Yoga’s all we have left.”

“Our loss is the post-postmodernists’ gain.” Ramona’s other friends and lunchtime companions are artistic types, all eccentric clothes and personally decorated portfolios.

“Not so. I still have Zara to eat with, but the rest of them have been shoved around by the bureaucratic powers, too.” She’s still stirring. “I miss you.” If she doesn’t stop stirring she’ll put a hole in the bottom of the cup. “Zara never gripes about meat-eaters and she’s crap at Name That Tune.” Two activities at which Josh excels. “And even if you and I didn’t always eat together, at least we saw each other every day and had a chance to do more than wave across a corridor.”

Josh takes a sip of his tea. “I didn’t know you cared.”

Ramona’s spoon falls to the table; her laugh jumps. “Don’t worry, Shine, I don’t care. It’s more like missing a headache. I guess I got used to hanging with you in the summer.” He’s wondering if he’s tasting liquorice or fennel and doesn’t respond. “You know,” she persists, “when we went up to the lake?”

Her tone makes him look up. “For Christ’s sake, Mo, it’s only September. Did you think I forgot already?”

She picks up her cup, tea sloshing over the side. “Well, you didn’t say anything.”

“Sorry. I got distracted for a second. Of course I remember the summer. This’ll amaze you, but it almost feels like yesterday.” Carver was away protecting some trees, Sal was taking a film course and Josh’s band had broken up for the summer, so he got talked into spending a couple of weeks at the Minamotos’ cabin in the Adirondacks. Summer is a busy time in the world of botanical medicine and Mr Minamoto was away, too. As Josh’s mother put it, it was “Just us girls.” Just us girls and Josh.