a girl with skin that didn’t need to be covered and a body that didn’t induce shame, whom no one knew came from a blue-collar family and had never kissed a guy. A girl who wanted to be noticed.
_ _ _
In one of those rare moments in life that work out as they should, Adam Kipling and his friends had returned. Skeat was trying his luck this time, and he took two wobbly, lunging steps before he pitched off the side onto the ground. I resisted the urge to spring out from my hiding spot behind Perkins to help him, but his friends were laughing.
“You fat fuck,” Park cackled.
Skeat pushed himself off the ground with a groan. “Let’s see you do it then, you skinny motherfucker.”
Adam Kipling watched with his hands stuck in his pockets, amused.
He seemed like the embodiment of a buoyant male presence I lacked in my life, the sort of jokey, arrogant, entitled boy who everyone loves and hates in equal amounts. The kind of boy who, I imagined, would make even a trip to the grocery store into some grand adventure, would make every moment lighter and funnier, would make you feel lighter and funnier yourself. Squatting there in the grass by Perkins, watching Adam Kipling sling insults and take jabs, I couldn’t help but smile; I felt part of the joke, even if he didn’t know it.
Later on I’d confess my stakeout to Kip, and he would laugh, telling me what I did was weird, fucked up. I should have been relieved that Kip thought it more funny than freaky, but still his reaction disappointed me, as though what I’d done was voyeuristic rather than merely curious, somehow more wrong than I meant it to be.
Park pulled a cigarette out of his pocket. “Whatever, jerkoff.”
Without prelude, Adam began to chant. “Tug it, tease it, slug it, squeeze it—”
His friends chanted their response in unison. “Jerk, jerk, jerk it off!”
“Stroke it, pat it, beat it, bat it—”
“Jerk, jerk, jerk it off!”
The boys did not laugh afterwards or even acknowledge the interlude; they continued as though the moment had not been broken, the chant apparently as routine to them as their insults. Adam leaned back against a tree. Skeat bent to brush the dirt off his knees. I felt witness to a secret handshake or a complicated door knock, something you might miss if you blinked, and even if you did catch it, would never be able to recreate yourself. It was immature, and I felt hearing it should have made me feel disappointed in Adam, in all the boys of Vandenberg, but I didn’t. Like when I caught notes passed in class and overheard the lewd whispers in chapel, it tickled me somehow that the boys of Vandenberg weren’t nearly as prim and straight as they appeared in the pamphlets. I was witness to this secret side of the student body, this darker side, and it was as exciting as the celebrity tabloid magazines I leafed through at the grocery store—actors scooping dog shit from the sidewalk, starlets with cellulite.
Park brought his still-unlit cigarette to his lips. As he went to light it, his eyes caught mine, and he jumped.
“Whoops!” I stood, brushing off my knees. “Oh. I’m sorry. I—” My hands shook. I felt culpable, though I wasn’t quite sure of what. They stared at me, as though waiting for me to perform, and I turned to walk away.
“Hey, hold up.” I knew it was Adam Kipling who spoke. It felt strange knowing his voice when he didn’t even know my name; perhaps that’s what I felt guilty of, of knowing too much. I heard him jog up behind me.
I faced him and found myself at eye-level with his lips. “I’m sorry,” I said again.
“Why are you sorry?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Have you ever done parkour?”
“Done what?”
“Parkour. You try to get from point A to point B in the most efficient way possible, using only your body and your surroundings for momentum.” Gone was the belching boy I’d seen last night and even the singer of the jerk-off song from moments before; he stood before me poised and sure, a parents’ dream.
“Dude, how is this parkour then?” interjected Skeat. “Like, how in the fuck is crossing a rope the most efficient way to get between two trees? Couldn’t you just, I don’t know, walk?”
“Shut up, Skeat. My brother’s in the parkour club at Yale, and they do this all the time.” Adam Kipling turned to face me again. “Want to try?”
“What?”
“Try it. Going across the rope.”
“I’ll fall!”
“No, you won’t.”
We stared at each other. I was making a decision greater than deciding to cross the rope, and we both knew it. To join them would be to shrug off my authority, to close the gap between rank and age and sex. To fail as a Vandenberg School for Boys Teaching Apprentice. But in crossing the rope, I would be one of them, however briefly. I hesitated a moment. Then I held out my hand.
He took it with surprising force. My heart seized. I couldn’t remember the last time someone held my hand. He led me to the rope. “Climb on.” I did. He steadied me as I shimmied up the tree trunk, and then he took my right hand in both of his. “Ready? I’m going to lead you across.”
Together, we edged from one tree to the other. He gripped my hand tightly, offering words of encouragement along the way. “You’re doing just fine. You’ve got this.” His hands were warm and soft and damp with sweat. Strangely, I didn’t fear for a moment he would let me go, that he would fail me. I didn’t even hear Skeat or Park; for all I knew they had left, and it was just the two of us. I just kept my eyes on the toes of my sneakers, putting one foot in front of the other, hovering precariously above the ground below. The rope was slack, not rigidly taut as a tightrope would be, and it stretched and swayed beneath me like a long narrow waterbed. I closed my eyes. I was walking on water—no, on air.
“Stop. Hey, stop.”
My eyes popped open. I had nearly walked into the opposite tree. I looked down at him. “You did it!” he said. He grinned wildly.
Using my free hand, I held on to the tree and stepped back onto the ground. It wasn’t the dizzying relief I usually felt descending from heights; I felt powerful. I laughed, perplexed and unsteady from the ridiculousness of the moment, and we stared at each other, wondering what was supposed to happen next.
He made the first move. “Adam Kipling,” he said, offering his hand. “But just call me Kip.”
I took his hand, resisting the impulse to say, I know. “Imogene Abney.”
“Now, Imogene,” he started, mock serious. Park and Skeat snickered behind him. I wished my name were something other than Imogene, and that my fleece zip-up didn’t have dried ketchup on the front pocket. “I can’t help but inquire as to how a female wound up on the campus of an all-male institution at this hour on a school night. Are you on the run, or are we safe?”
I could have lied. Maybe, that night, I could’ve been anyone I wanted to be. Maybe I’d never have to see him again—but I wanted to. The words spilled out before I could stop them.
“I live here, actually. I’m, well, kind of a teacher here, actually.”
Kip’s mouth opened slightly before he regained his composure. I’d caught him, the unflappable Adam Kipling, off guard.
“In that case, then,” he said, recovered, “may I walk you to your sleeping quarters?”
_ _ _
Even while earning mediocre test scores (I’d be too distracted by the loud wobbling of my desk when I used my eraser and the fear that I was bothering my neighbors and the certainty that everyone was looking at me, all while the clock ticked away) and failing to participate in extracurricular activities (I had no interest