Inside the Mind of Gideon Rayburn

^{inside the mind of gideon rayburn}

^{inside the mind of gideon rayburn}

_{Sarah Miller}

m
ST. MARTIN'S GRIFFIN
m
NEW YORK

INSIDE THE MIND OF
Gideon rayburn.
Copyright
© 2006 by Sarah Miller and Alloy Entertainment. All rights
reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be
used or
reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

ISBN: 978-1-4299-3243-1

for eric

^Contents

acknowledgments

Who am i?

Where am i?

tiny dancer

cullen and nicholas

the yellow thong

the bet

more girls, more guys

sneaking out

skinny fat

of the buffalo mcgarrys

of the bahia blanca benitez-joneses

may be not zero game

sleepover

crates aren't inhumane

antifreeze

it's fiona's party, and you'll come if she wants you to

vicodin makes you love yourself

upstairs

bonding

pork butt

impulsive gid

hero

and the other one dies

image rose

totally playing the dog

give me an a

first base

surprise indeed

really okay

tick tock

the yellow ghost

sour november

it's not the bet

please don't talk about love tonight

the gueen city

happily ever after

^{acknowledgments}

First and foremost I am grateful to everyone at Alloy Entertainment and St. Martin's Press for the opportunity to write this book, and I single out the following individuals: Josh Bank, Bob Levy, Les Morgenstein, Sally Richardson, and
Jennifer Weis.

Thanks
also to Peter Lopez.

Clearly, I am most indebted to Jennifer Rudolph Walsh at William Morris.

Thanks to Joy Gorman, my manager and beloved friend, who makes sure i don't do anything too stupid, and to
Tom McGrath, my
Men's Health
editor, who makes sure I don't starve to death.

Thanks to Mike Abssy and my parents.

The following is a list of people who either read this book in various incarnations or provided general goodwill
and support: Nancy
Bell,
Phil DAmecourt, Colin Dickerman, Jennifer Doyle, Melissa Kantor, Liz Kinder, Martha
Lucy, Heather Lukes, Jennifer Lyne, the real
Molly
McGarry, Michael James Reed, Anna Reich,
Bill
Stavru, Kim
Stenton, Nancy Updike, and Valerie Van Galder.

Last I
thank Ben Schrank. Many people helped with this book, but Ben was the one constant. There are a lot of
things I could say about him, all nice, but I'll just say the only one that matters: I could not have written this book
without him.

^{inside the mind of gideon rayburn}

_{Who am i?}

Like most girls, I want a lot. Fame and fortune. Equal rights. Shoes no one else has. But I'd trade all that in for the
Perfect Guy. (Don't tell me there's something wrong with that. I don't know of a single person who doesn't spend
most of her time thinking about love.) Anyway, ever since I could think, I have been imagining and reimagining the
exact sort of boy I want to love and who would love me back. Basically, I imagine someone who has all the good
attributes of the male species and whose bad ones wouldn't ruin my life.

I never thought it would be a guy like Gideon Rayburn. He's not gorgeous, not overwhelmingly brilliant, not all
that great at sports. Jesus. Why am I bothering to explain to you why he isn't stereotypically crushworthy? Trust me,
you'll see for yourself soon enough.

The point is, he's so not the kind of guy I ever thought I would fall for. But then again, how would I have guessed
that I'd be seeing what goes on inside his head? That my eyes and thoughts would go with him everywhere? When
you know someone like Gideon this well, it's kind of impossible not to fall in love with him. And when I say I know him
well, understand: As I tell you his story, as it happens, I not only know what he's doing, I know what he wishes he
were doing, what he thinks he should be doing, and what he would wish he were doing if he were just a slightly better
person. (Don't get me wrong. Gideon's amazing. But he's a boy. He's fifteen. And he's a typical American kid from
the suburbs. My point: He's got a lot working for and against him.)

By the way, Gideon has no idea I'm inside his head. Guys are cute, but they're not very observant.

My feelings, though perhaps passionate for someone of my age and experience, are pretty normal. But my
situation
—that is unique, and that's what puts me in a position to tell you everything. I mean it. Everything you've ever
wondered about what guys think (and feared about what they want), I'm going to tell you. You are going to learn what
boys say when girls are not in the room and how they feel when they're on top of one. I will, for now, leave out one
very crucial thing: who I am. I'm in this story too, and not just inside Gid's head. But there are a lot of girls—and
women—in this story. Which one am I?

_{Where am i?}

The first thoughts I hear that are not my own are disjointed, weird, and uncertain. That should have been my first clue
that something was wrong. They are: Do I like this place or do I want to go home? I'm just a simple kid from the
suburbs of Virginia. What do I know about how to act at a prep school? But I'm not a total idiot, right? Hmm. Or
maybe I am. Oh, God. And these boxers...the seam is stretched so uncomfortably against the left side of my nut
sack. What earthly reason is there for my not having thrown them out?

Like everyone else, I am used to hearing my own thoughts. These are not my thoughts. I would never refer to
myself as simple. I am not from Virginia. I am not remotely an idiot, even at my most self-hating. Naturally, it is
nut
sack
that throws me like an earthquake up against a very hard wall.

Thoughts keep coming: Don't be scared, everything's going to be fine. Yes, prep school's a little alien to you but it's not literally alien. I mean, it's not as if I have left this world. Some of the same rules must apply. And then:
Don't let Dad know you're scared, because he'll just make it about him.

Then I start to see and hear things that I am not actually seeing or hearing. I mean, I am actually seeing and hearing them. But I am not in the place where these things are being seen and heard. I do not know how I got here.
But I am in someone else's head.

The boy whose head I'm in is looking out the window of a car. He (we?) is in the passenger seat. He swings
his head to the left. What I am seeing, through these eyes that are not mine, in this place where I am not, is a man I
don't know, about fifty years old, and he's driving a late-model Ford Silverado. He fiddles with the radio and settles
on an Eagles song, "Lyin' Eyes." (For those of you not familiar with their repertoire, this song's about a guilty but
incorrigibly unfaithful woman.) The man nods through the chorus, a faraway look in his eyes, then starts to twist an
unfashionable and graying mustache.

A new thought accompanies this not terribly pleasant image. It is: God, I hate this song, because this song
reminds me of Mom. Except that it's so seventies and Mom is so nineties. I see a flash of hair with very obvious
chunky highlights, a brightly colored yoga bag, a dark pedicure inside a pair of lime green slip-on wedge open-toed
mules, and finally a matching New Beetle.

This, I take it, is his mom. Nice to meet you.

And suddenly...no thoughts. Just...buildings. The prep school. The source of anxiety, the major one at least.

I see brick dormitories around one end of an academic quad and in the middle of it, a statue of a man on a
horse. On the other end is a very old building
—a tiny-windowed wooden two-story colonial—and a considerably
more imposing building with a clock tower. There are a few graceful stands of maple and ash trees, the tips of their
branches just starting to redden and yellow. At the far end, past the quad, is a chapel, made of stone as well. Its
stained-glass windows glow blue and violet through a web of foliage.

On a patch of grass in front of the clock tower building is a wooden sign reading:
Midvale Academy.

A question: Does Gideon know I'm here? I guess not, because then we would be having a conversation.

He/I/We won't stop looking at the chapel. Why? Is young Gid interested in stained-glass? No. I wonder if this chapel would be a good place to...The thought trips on itself. First it is, a good place to have sex. Then, holy fuck,
which one?

I laugh out loud, forgetting that I am with friends, who look at me like I am crazy. I think about sex, but never like
this, never with a twinge of ashamed panic, like, Oh God, I'm thinking about sex again.

Now this: That chapel would be a good place to hook up with a girl if I were the kind of guy who could get girls to
hook up with me. Do I like this place or do I want to go home? The grass here is so green. I feel like it's laughing at
me.

The boy who owns this mind is very vulnerable. And rather sweet. He has been on the road since dawn. He is
hungry and craving root beer. He's holding in his hands a glossy black-and-red folder that reads
Midvale
ACADEMY:
NEW STUDENT
Information.
He opens the folder, and the first sheet of paper is addressed to Gideon Rayburn,
989 Christmas Park Circle, Fairfax, Virginia.

The Silverado has stopped in front of a brick Georgian-style dorm called Proctor. This person, this Gideon
Rayburn, knows he's going to have to get out of the car eventually, but he's not ready. A glance inside the windows
of this building, his new home, is not at all heartening. On the first floor, a kid with floppy blonde hair hangs a Bruce
Lee poster above his bed, then goes to the closet and lovingly hangs up a white
gi
with a brown karate belt. On the second floor, a lumbering sort in a baseball hat and overalls conducts a symphony (Schubert) with a plastic spoon.

Gid's reaction to them is both surprising and cute. He thinks, Fuck these guys. Okay, he knows he's partly
jealous, but he's also heard how everyone at Midvale is good at something, and confronted with it for the first time,
he kind of wants to puke. Why, he wonders, does everyone have to be talented?

I am sympathetic to what Gid sees as an insidious moment in history, one where everyone has to be a star.

Appealingly, he seems to lack this drive. He doesn't lack ambition altogether, but even though we've just "met," I can
safely say he seems most invested in being a well-liked person. It's just a hunch. A warm hunch.

Gid enjoys a righteous moment of feeling just regular, decent. He looks in the mirror and for the first time, I can
see his face. This feels extremely weird because up to now, when I looked in a mirror, I saw me. Instead I see a boy
who does a handsome job of regular. I like the squareness of his mouth, and the way his nut brown eyes and wavy
hair match. His hair isn't creepy, run-your-hand-over-it wavy, it's loose, cute, beachy wavy. A little too long. Anyway, looking in the mirror, what Gid sees is a guy who
—despite his anxieties about this place—really, really doesn't want
to go home. And the reason is sitting right next to him.

Jim Rayburn. Gid's mind isn't quite sure where to start on this, and neither am I, but here goes. Jim Rayburn, born 1959, Newport News, Virginia (Pisces, Dog). He is a contractor. He was dumped about two years ago by Gid's
mother. (Capricorn, Pig...What a terrible match. That is my thought, not Gid's. Boys don't know anything about
astrology, although, Gid's dad being a perfect example, they really should.) Wendy Rayburn
—a carefree spirit in her
lime green mules if there ever was one—fell in love with Gid's middle-school science teacher, Mr. Soames. Gid
thought Mr. Soames was gay. He now has proof (some of it, unfortunately, audible) that this is not true.

Gid's dad spends a lot of time tugging his mustache, smoking Carlton 100s, and looking at Gid with a forlorn
expression that says,
Don't make the same mistakes I've made.
Jim is a weird combination of emotionally clueless
and needy. He never asks Gid a single question about anything
—school, girls, visits to his mother—but he's real big
on things like hugs and punching Gid on the arm, lots of forced bonhomie.

They say a boy needs his father. And i would never say that Jim Rayburn is a terrible person. But it's probably
good that Gid's getting away, for both of us. Because Gid needs to figure out who he is. And if I'm going to be
spending a lot of my time inside Gideon Rayburn's head for a reason that I do not yet understand, there are a lot better things to think about than why Gid and his dad don't have a perfect relationship. For example: I understand
that Gid is unclear about when and if he will be having sex in the chapel, but how, exactly, can he be unclear on
whether or not he's a virqin?