Stag: A Story by Ben Monopoli Page B

the stairs two at a time.
     

 
     
    In biology class I had been thinking about my
suit, thinking that if I didn’t wear the jacket to the dance—if I
only wore a shirt and pants—it might not seem so official, when a
finger poked my spine. It was a poke full of intention, as though I
were being summoned from a lower floor. I pretended not to feel it.
I knew Amy Langley was sitting behind me. I looked toward the
blackboard and closed my eyes. One, two, three one two—
    “Oliver,” she whispered, and after hesitating
I turned a little in my seat. “Hi,” she added.
    “Hi.”
    “Are you going to the Grad Dance?”
    “... Yuh.”
    “Are you going with anyone?”
    I shook my head slowly, slowly, like a person
trying to outwit quicksand.
    “Taylor wants me to ask if you’ll go with
her.”
    “Oh.”
    “She really wants a flower, even just a
little one.”
    “Oh. OK.”
    “Good! I’ll tell her.”
     
    I faced forward, almost dropped forward. My
fingers were leaving wet dimples on my textbook pages. What had
just happened? What was happening? Why had I not told her about
stag, wielded it like the weapon it was?
    After a few seconds with my eyes shut tight I
felt another poke. When I turned Amy pointed to the far corner of
the classroom. Taylor, blushing, looked up from her doodling,
glanced at me, smiled.
     
    At the end of the day when we were all in the
hall putting on our backpacks she came over to my locker. She
seemed to peek out from behind her brown bangs and long
eyelashes.
    “I’m excited we’re going,” she said. She
looked happy. I couldn’t fathom why. I wanted her to leave me
alone. Why was she doing this to me? What had I done to her? “I
heard Jessica was going to ask you, but then she decided to go
alone instead.”
    “Oh.”
    “So.”
    “Yeah.”
    “So like do you want a ride to the dance?”
she said. “My mom could pick you up?” She was biting her lip,
clicking her Jelly-shoed heels together awkwardly.
    “My mom’s already driving me. So.”
    “Well... maybe your mom could pick me up,
then?”
    “We don’t know where you live, though,
so....”
    “Oh. OK.” She wasn’t stupid, she was deciding
not to press it. “So.” Her heels stopped moving. “We’ll meet up at
the dance?”
    “Yeah I’ll just see you there, I guess?”
    I hated her for making me act like a jerk but
I didn’t know what else to do. Was being a jerk better than
pretending to want this? I knew only those two options: lead her on
or scrape her off. The truth was too much. It was too much; I was
thirteen. No one in this school was like me. No one in this town,
as far as I knew, was like me. Bad people were like me. Dead people
were like me.
    “What was that?” Boyd Wren said after she’d
walked away.
    His voice made me realize there were other
people around, people who were knowing. This was already
happening.
    “Not stag anymore?” Boyd added.
    “She asked me, I didn’t know how to say
no.”
    “She’s cool,” he said casually. He scratched
at my locker with his thumb. “Me, I figure I’ll still go stag. I
don’t like to be tied down.”
     
    *
     
    This was the opposite of Jessica. I was
afraid to tell the other guys about Taylor. The reason Taylor was
so devastating was that she would’ve been, should’ve been, exactly
the girl for me. Cute. My height. Perfect. But when you’re hiding,
like I was, the sweetest girl is the most dangerous. Her perfection
was like a looming spotlight three steps behind an escaping
prisoner.
     
    When the guys found out about her they found
out through Boyd. I volunteered it to no one, including,
especially, my parents. It felt like a secret, a perilous secret
wrapped in a much bigger secret. It hadn’t occurred to me that
getting a fake girlfriend could be a good disguise. I was too
afraid that if I tried playing a role I would fail so spectacularly
that my secret would be laid open and made obvious to the farthest
reaches of any audience. Better not