The Madness Underneath. Maureen Johnson
want to keep people in the dark.”
He scraped the rubbery sole of his shoe against the library floor. It made no noise.
“I don’t think that many people in the government actually know what happened.”
“Oh, they know,” he said. “Thatcher and her kind always know.”
“It’s not Thatcher anymore,” I said.
“Might as well be. They’re all the same. Liars.”
I heard footsteps approaching. The library wasn’t very populated during the day, and not many people made a point of coming to this corner of the second floor. This is why Alistair liked it. It was the literature corner, full of works of criticism. It was also a bit dim and cold.
Whoever was coming seemed to really want some criticism, because the footsteps were sharp and fast. The person hit a switch, waking up the aisle lights, which reluctantly flicked on one by one.
“I thought you might be here,” he said.
I recognized Jerome, obviously, but there was something very strange, something almost a little foreign. His hair had gotten just a touch shaggy and was falling into a center part. His tie was a bit loose. He seemed about an inch taller than I remembered, and slouchy shouldered. And his eyes were smaller. Not in a bad way. My memory had screwed everything up and adjusted all the measurements.
“Oh, God,” Alistair said. “Already?”
I’d gotten used to not being around Jerome, and strangely, this had made us closer. We’d definitely gotten more serious in the last two weeks, but we’d done it all over the phone or on a screen. I’d grown accustomed to Jerome as a text message, and it was somewhat unsettling to have the actual person sliding down the wall to sit next to me. Unsettling, but also a bit thrilling.
“Welcome back, stupid,” he said.
“Thanks, dumbass.”
Jerome shifted a bit, moving closer to me. He smelled strongly of Wexford laundry detergent. He looked down at my hand, which was resting on my thigh, then reached out and touched it, gently tapping the back of my hand with his fingers. We both looked at this gesture, like it was something our hands were doing of their own accord. Like they were children putting on a show for us, and we, the indulgent parents, were watching them.
“On the way here, I saw someone pissing on a wall,” I said. “It reminded me of you.”
“That was me,” he replied. “I was writing a poem about your beauty.”
“I hate you both,” Alistair said, from his side of the dark corner.
I ignored him as Jerome brushed my hair away from my face. When anyone touches my hair, I basically turn to slush. If a friend does it, or if I’m getting my hair cut, I fall asleep. When Jerome did it, it sent an entirely different sensation through my body—warm and wibbly.
The lights in the aisle clicked out. They did that automatically after about three minutes. I flinched. Actually, it was a bit more than a flinch—it was a full-body jerk and a small, high-pitched noise.
“It’s okay,” Jerome said, raising his arm and making a space for me to lean against him. I accepted this offer, and he wrapped his arm around my shoulders.
Here’s something I do that’s really great: when I get nervous, I tell completely irrelevant and often very inappropriate stories. They just come out of my mouth. I felt one coming up now, rising out of whatever pit in my body I keep all the nervous tics and terrible conversation starters.
“We had this neighbor once,” I said, “who named his dog Dicknickel . . .”
Jerome was somewhat familiar with my quirks by now, and wisely took my chin in his hand and directed my face toward him. He nuzzled me with the tip of his nose, drawing it lightly against my cheek as he made his way toward my lips. The wibbliness got wibblier, and I craned my neck up. Jerome kissed it lightly, and I let out a little noise—a completely involuntary and small groan of happiness. Jerome rightly took this as a signal to kiss a bit harder, working up to the back of the ear.
“How long are you two going to sit there?” Alistair said. “I know you’re not going to answer me, but if you’re going to start kissing, can you leave?”
The only reason I opened my eyes was because Alistair sounded a little too close. This turned out to be a good call because he was, in fact, standing over us—I mean, right over us. Many people would be put off of a good make-out session by the sight of an angry ghost looming directly overhead, all spiky hair and combat boots. What terrified me, though, was the fact that Alistair was just about an inch or so away from my foot. I immediately yanked my legs away from him. In the process, I very nearly kneed Jerome in the groin, but he reflexively tucked and covered the way guys do.
“What is the matter with you?” Alistair said.
It looked like he was going to come even closer to see why I was convulsing.
“Stay back!” I said.
“What?”
Honestly, I have no idea which one of them said it. Could have been either. Could have been both. Alistair backed off a bit, so I achieved my immediate goal of not killing one of my friends. By this point, Jerome had crab-walked back a bit and then scrambled to his feet. He was scanning the aisles and generally looking freaked out. I had just yelled “Stay back!” pretty loudly. Anyone nearby would come and check to make sure I wasn’t being assaulted in the dark of the stacks. It’s one thing to have a girlfriend who gets startled by the automatic lights and then cuddles close to you for a kiss. It’s another thing entirely when said girlfriend curls up like a shrimp in a hot pan when you try to kiss her, nearly nailing you in the nuts in the process. And then to have the aforementioned girlfriend scream “Stay back!” . . .
The moment, to put it as gently as possible, had passed.
“I’m sorry,” Jerome said, and he sounded genuinely alarmed, like he’d hurt me. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry . . .”
“No!” I said, and I forced a smile. “No. No, no. It’s fine. It’s good! It’s fine.”
Alistair folded his arms and watched me try to explain this one away. Jerk. Jerome was keeping toward the wall, in a stance I recognized from goalkeeping—knees slightly bent, arms at the sides and ready. I was the crazy ball that might come flying at his head.
“I . . . didn’t sleep much last night,” I said. “Not at all, actually.” (A massive lie. I’d slept for thirteen hours straight.) “So, I’m like . . . you know how you get? When you don’t sleep? I really did not mean to do that. I just heard a noise and . . . I’m jumpy.”
“I can see that,” he said.
“And hungry! It’s almost time for dinner.”
“I know how you are about dinner.”
“Damn straight,” I replied. “But . . . we’re okay?”
“Of course! I’m sorry if I—”
“You didn’t.”
“I don’t want you to think—”
“I definitely do not think,” I said. And that was the truest thing I’d said in a long time.
“Dinner then,” he said. “Everyone will be excited to see you.”
He relaxed a bit and moved away from the wall. Jerome took my hand. I mean, it was a grip. A grip of relationship. A statement grip. A grip that said, “I got your back. And also we are, like, a thing.” The incident was over. We would laugh about it, if not now, then by later tonight.
“You have the whole campus,” Alistair called as we left. “The whole city. Do you really have to keep coming here to do that? Really?”
The sky was a particularly vibrant shade of purple, almost