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THE SECOND TIMEIzzie kisses me, we're sitting in her car, parked on the side of the street in front of my house. I've just gotten out of cross-country practice, and Izzie-who often stays after school on Tuesdays to have long, post-class conversations with Harrison-has offered to drive me home.
We haven't talked at all about the conversation we had at Sharice's party. We also haven't talked about what happened after the conversation we had at Sharice's party, after she cut me off midsentence, after she leaned in, and in, and in to-
I try to focus on the actual words that Izzie is saying instead of the way that her lips move when she talks. The only time when that's possible is when I'm not looking at her at all, so instead I turn my gaze out the windshield-at the dark brown leaves carpeting the ground, the washed-out gray of the sky.
"What I really like about Harrison is that he's not just interested in my thoughts about the class," Izzie is saying. "He asks me a lot about life in general. My family. My plans for the future. I'm going to ask him to write one of my letters of recommendation for Brown."
She pauses, and I take the moment as an opportunity to steal a secret glance at her. Unfortunately, my secret glance proves to be not particularly secret, because she is looking right at me.
We make forceful, fleeting eye contact for three seconds, which, of course, immediately floods me with mortification. I jerk my gaze back straight ahead, where it lands on the thorny, bare branches of what used to be Mrs. Holloway's rose garden.
"You okay?" she asks. "You seem nervous."
I force myself to turn my head and look at her. "I'm not nervous," I refute.
She nods. "Okay, then. You're not nervous."
"I don't really get nervous," I explain. "I'm not really a nervous person. I think it has to do with the fact that I've pretty much surrendered myself to the fact that no matter what I do, my life will be universe will always be against me, and once you've accepted that as an inevitability, well, there's not much reason to be nervous anymore."
Oh God. I'm doing that thing again, that thing that I do when I get tense. Babbling. I'm babbling.
"How very existentialist of you. Sartre would be proud."
Izzie is smirking. Which makes me tense. Which makes me defensive. Which makes me babble more.
"Yeah, I can't say that I really get Sartre, Izzie. First of all, I can't fucking pronounce his name. Second of all, Being and Nothingness was a doozy. And third of all, while I haven't actually read Nausea yet, even you have to admit that it's not a very promising title."
