met him there, but I had the freedom to show or not show as I pleased. Nate wasn't possessive that way. That was a good thing, wasn't it? And even when I laid into him, it's not like he'd dumped me or said he didn't want to see me. He told me I should come over and study. When I looked at it that way, Nate actually came closer to passing my test than failing.
Maybe testing Nate wasn't the best way to find out if he really cared about me. I still thought asking it outright was awful and lame and worthy of the kind of are u mad @ me? notes friends passed around in seventh grade. But maybe there was a subtler option. Maybe I could just ask about him, about his mom, about his dad or his brother or his life. Then he'd ask about me, and we'd talk and I'd know there was actually something real between us, and I wouldn't feel so hollow about everything else we were doing.
So after school I went to his place to study.
"Hi," I said, and before Nate could even try to offer me a smoke, I added, "I was hoping today we could talk."
"About what?"
"I don't know ... anything. About you. Maybe about your mom."
Nate grimaced like he smelled a skunk. "Ouch. Buzzkill."
"Well, yeah, but—"
Nate was no longer listening. Instead he was lighting up.
Okay, Mom was too painful. I could respect that.
"How about you decide what we talk about," I said. "It doesn't even have to be about you. You can ask me something. Anything. Anything you want."
Nate smiled and put his hands on my waist, slipping his fingers under my shirt.
"Anything I want?" he said.
His fingers traced up my body toward my breasts, both of which had clearly turned treasonous on me, because they were screaming for Nate's hands to keep climbing.
I stepped back.
"I'm serious," I said. "I don't want to fool around. I want to talk. It's important to me."
Nate opened his eyes wide, tilted his head back, and made a groaning sound like a giant garbage truck stuck between gears.
What was he doing? Had I pressed his self-destruct button? Who made noises like that?
Finally Nate pulled himself back from whatever brink he was on. He smiled and nodded, like he'd just solved a mystery.
"Ooh," he said. "I get it."
He took my hand and pulled me close. He kissed my neck, then whispered in my ear. "You're raggin' it. It's cool; it doesn't freak me out. I have my red badge of courage."
That was it.
"I gotta go," I said. I pulled away and darted to the door, already dialing Claudia on my cell.
"Beast with Two Backs Hotline," she answered. "You're calling early."
"I just broke up with Nate," I said.
Claudia's voice screamed into my ear with the impact of a major collision. "You WHAT? "
Chapter Nineteen
As I drove, I told Claudia everything. When I was done, she took a huge dramatic breath and slowly let it out. "Do not scare me like that again, Cara. I was afraid you actually broke up with Nate."
"I did."
"You walked out on him," she clarified. "Neither the word 'break' nor 'up' was ever specifically stated. Hence your place on the Ladder remains secure."
"Very nice. So even though I now feel completely horrible when I fool around with Nate, I'm supposed to keep doing it so I don't lose my place on the Ladder."
"Yes, Cara, I'm pimping you out," Claudia said. "No! Don't fool around with him at all! Just don't break up with him. Not until you've found a Penultimate for your next target."
"I can't not fool around with him. It's what he expects us to do."
"Gee, Battered Wife, I guess if he expects it, then it's what you have to do."
"I'm just saying, I doubt he'll want to stay together if we're not fooling around anymore."
"Not forever, no. But we're talking about a few days—enough time for you to find a target and focus in. And the timing's perfect. You have finals next week, right? So it's totally normal that you'd be too busy studying to go 'study.'"
"Okay, but what about at school? What if I'm hanging out with him on the rock and he wants to fool around?"
"Tell him you have a cold! Tell him you have a sty! Tell him you have herpes! No, wait, don't tell him you have herpes. That'd get around the school and ruin everything."
"Oh, good, thanks for clarifying. Because I was totally ready to