Hex - Rebecca Dinerstein Knight Page 0,12

little buttons, and beneath them his absolutely fine dick, a dick I would have been happy to babysit, or feed, forever, as if it were a well-behaved cat.

“Joan is rather something,” Tom said just then, terrifying me because I couldn’t tell how he’d connected the dots between his dick and you, a dot path I’ve traced countless times.

I bought myself about forty seconds of recovery time by going to get my backpack from his room. When I came back, he’d sat up on the bed and I began packing the floss gun and its various wires.

“How would you feel if I described you as rather something?” I said instead of saying anything.

“How could you? It’s exactly what I’m not.”

“So it’s a compliment?”

“She’s magnificent.”

“How would you feel if I described you as magnificent?”

“How could you not? It’s exactly what I am.”

“You think Joan sees you that way?”

“Can Joan see? Sometimes I think she and Homer exist in trans-time mutual blindness where they can only see each other and no other idiots.”

I felt a little nauseated because I could tell he was going to know you very well.

“She even hates Mishti, number one non-idiot.”

“I heard. Mishti has never been hated before.”

“I haven’t either,” Tom said, as if asking himself whether that could be true.

“I hate you,” I said reassuringly.

“Ah,” he said, reassured.

“You’re not even in Joan’s department, she’s hosting you—”

“What do you care? I need a little botany for the Netherlandish analysis.”

“I’m saying you’re her guest, you’re not even doing the problem sets, you’re a pain in her side, so leave her alone”—did he know I was begging?—“attention makes her angry and you aren’t her type.”

“Hey, have you seen Mishti’s new type?” He was suddenly jolly.

“The Earl of Argentina?”

“A specimen!” Tom made himself snort. I admired the way Tom admired other paragons with such innocent and unenvious glee. “He gives me goosebumps.”

“But what does he give Mishti?”

“Also goosebumps.”

The floss gun, sweater, and snacks filled my backpack to the drawstrings. I tightened them and buckled the top. I was, rather cleanly, ready to leave the snow globe.

“I’m going to make Joan like me,” he declared, staring into the eyes of a porcelain basset hound that lay mournfully across his mother’s mantel. “People like me, that’s all I’ve ever had.”

“And you had a great girlfriend, for a while.”

“But I don’t anymore, and you don’t even go to this school anymore either, which is fine, because you monopolized Joan anyway. Rest in peace, Rachel Simons.”

“Make Mishti like you.”

“I’m a lost cause with Mishti—look at me, I can’t even multiply fractions. Carlo can do the spreadsheets.”

“The spreadsheets? What do you know about Carlo’s spreadsheets?”

“He came to pick her up from class yesterday and he was, like, holding them.”

“Holding spreadsheets?”

“Joan just missed him but I bet she would have found him, if not her, rather impressive.”

“Stop saying rather. You’re all hanging out now?”

“You could have tackled Rachel, peed on her thallium, and thwarted this woeful destiny—”

I thanked Tom for letting me get my things and buzzed the call bell for Frankie. I could always rely on Frankie to receive my distress signals and the light starting rising at once from L through 2 3 4. I watched the numbers light up and go dark. Tom hadn’t bothered to walk me out and he hollered something from Veronica’s room I couldn’t hear—I caught the word old. The 10 glowed and faded. My guardian cherub peeled back the rusting grate and welcomed me into his chariot.

OAKS

The park felt weirdly extra wide that afternoon and who knew a water flosser could be so heavy but I came to see you right away because hearing your name in Tom’s mouth had totaled me.

You were locking up your office. I took your keys out of your hand and walked in. I don’t know why I wanted to start with you mad.

“I have somewhere to be.”

“I don’t!”

“Nell why don’t you do something, work on something again—your original note on phylogenesis was inane enough I could have sent it to Bioinformatics. I guess I could still send it to Bioinformatics.”

“Trees are boring.”

“If you publish something now, you stand a chance at reapplying somewhere else. Barry won’t have ruined you completely.”

You forced me to say the name, “Barry?”

“Well, no, not just Barry. That would have been uncomfortable. Barry and the whole committee. Mendelson. Thompson. Peterson. The club of sons. They’ve made your life difficult, but how couldn’t they? At least you hung on to your life.”

I replayed their whale tones, their groaning, Be-gone. I hadn’t