ike me, someone who, to be absolutely honest, did not like herself, even though everyone who confronted me thought the exact opposite?
“So have you thought about the weekend?” Greg asked me now, turning completely so that his friends weren’t part of our conversation. “Saturday, I mean?”
“Not much,” I said.
“Well, tomorrow’s Friday. Maybe you can squeeze it in between Dante’s Inferno and Hamilton’s Federalist Papers.”
I gave him an impish smile. “James Madison and John Jay get credit, too.”
He held his smile a moment, then turned serious. “We’ll have a good time at La Jolla Beach, stay all day, make a campfire, listen to music, take walks by the surf, and have a picnic. You could tell me about the origin of life and explain how old a seashell is.”
I looked down, holding back on my own smile. A part of me wanted to just say yes, but that analytic mind of mine had to run it past the pros and cons. I was simply incapable of an impulsive decision. My yeses and nos were conclusions after thorough examinations of the facts, something that often annoyed my parents. Any other girl could easily give an answer when, say, her mother asked her to go shopping with her, but even at age four, I would come back with “When?” “Where?” “Why?”
“I’ll tell you tomorrow,” I said, without looking at him. If it were only Greg, it would be easier to decide, but his gang of buddies and their girlfriends would be there. I’d have to get along with more than just him, and I’d be the first to admit that my social skills left a lot to be desired. Unlike most people, I was as honest about myself as I was about others.
“I’ll bring everything we need, Donna. You just have to bring yourself. No books,” he warned. “It’s a day off.”
A day off? What was a day off? I wondered. Was there ever a day when I wasn’t reading and doing research on one thing or another? Just recently, Mr. Feldman had acquired some graduate-level textbooks in behavioral science and advanced nuclear physics for me, and I had consumed them the following weekend. He told me he was impressed with how I could compartmentalize subject matter and organize my day. As many times as he could, he sat and listened to me explain what I had just learned or what questions I had to solve.
The bell rang, ending lunch hour. I hadn’t finished eating, but that didn’t concern me. I didn’t move with the ringing of bells. Greg lingered behind his buddies. I glanced at him and looked at my new math text, which explained Fourier analysis of the difficulties in reconstructing arbitrary functions as infinite combinations of elementary trigonometric functions.
“I can walk you to the library,” Greg said.
The school had dedicated a room at the rear of the library to me. It had a small window, a desk, two chairs, and some shelves. Years ago, the librarian would put a student in the room and close the door to discipline him or her for talking too loudly. Since that was not permitted anymore, it was a perfect place for me.
I closed the text and rose. “The way I walk, you might be late to class.”
“I’ll take the chance,” Greg said, widening his smile.
Why did he like me, really? I was one of the shorter girls in the junior class—short with diminutive, in my opinion almost childlike, features. After practically twisting my arm at least once a month, my mother washed and styled my light brown hair so that I had the least to do brushing it every morning. She knew that if I had more to do, I wouldn’t do it. To paraphrase her, I’d look like some homeless person. She was always after me to “at least put on some lipstick once in a while.”
“It wasn’t so long ago when girls my age were forbidden to wear lipstick,” I told her once.
“Don’t give me a history of cosmetics lesson,” she warned. “Just . . . look after yourself, Donna. You’re a beautiful girl who happens to be . . .”
“Brain-heavy,” I said.
She laughed. At least occasionally, she had a sense of humor about me. Sometimes, especially lately, I thought my father was a little afraid of me. No matter what comment he made about what was happening in the news, he always paused to look at me to see if I would agree or correct him. Silence was my best defense. I was afraid I already had lost his love. He concentrated more on Mickey. I told myself that was what men did. They favored their sons. However, almost the nanosecond I told myself that, I followed it with an imaginary ding-dong and thought, Rationalization, Donna Ramanez, the route out of a facetious argument.
“Come on,” Greg urged. “Your future is calling.” That was one of his favorite things to say to me.
“What future?” I muttered, and joined him.
Despite the intensity of my thinking, I was never unaware of my surroundings. No one could call me an absentminded professor. If anything, my status in school and the image practically everyone had of me made me paranoid. Maybe that was because I didn’t have to look far to see resentment. It was splattered like egg yolks over the faces of the girls in Greg’s class. More than one of them obviously wanted his attention, and here I was, the one they probably thought the least attractive, capturing it.
“You know Mateo is really harmless,” Greg said. “He’s really very impressed by you.”
“Save your breath.”
“No, really. When you’re not around, he’s always asking me questions about you. He thinks you’re going to be very famous someday.”
“Well, then he’s smarter than I am,” I said.
We paused at the corner of the corridor. I was going in a different direction.
“He thinks I’m lucky,” Greg said.
“Why?”