Love Drugged Read online

  “It’s for Spring Break. We’re going to Mexico—the Yucatán. I don’t know why he has that brochure. We always rent the same hacienda. It’s nowhere near the beach, but it’s got a nice pool.”

  “It looks amazing.”

  “Have you ever been to Mexico?”

  I shook my head. “We went to Florida once. That’s about it.” My family’s one big vacation had taken place years ago, before my dad lost his print shop. I’d been too young to appreciate it. All I remembered was chasing tiny lizards around the lava rocks in the motel parking lot.

  “Florida’s cool,” she said. “Okay, Inspector, so where do we begin?”

  “Internet?”

  “I Googled her already—nada.”

  “Maybe we need to go through the university.”

  “I tried that, too. The switchboard said she doesn’t live on campus.”

  “Let’s try another department then. Do you have, like, a phone book?”

  Celia pointed. “Center drawer.” She leaned against the kitchen counter, her bare arms folded. “Are you hungry?”

  I nodded. “Sure.”

  She opened the huge stainless steel refrigerator. “How about soup?”

  “Soup is good.” I found the university in the phone book—a long list of departments and offices—and reviewed the various options. My finger stopped on one that seemed promising.

  Celia removed the lid from a plastic container. She dumped its contents into a saucepan, a solid block of shiny orange. She fired up the gas burner and then stood at the stove, stirring. “Ginger carrot,” she said, as if I’d been looking at it funny. “My dad made it.”

  “Your dad cooks?”

  “Yup, always. Even, you know, before my mom died.”

  The comment floated in the space between us. It seemed like an invitation to ask questions, but I didn’t know what to say. So I picked up the phone and dialed.

  Celia whispered, “He has a certificate thingy from the Chicago Culinary Institute. He worked as a chef when he was in medical school.”

  “Cool.”

  A woman’s voice answered the phone. “University switchboard.”

  “Hi, can you please connect me with the Jobs Placement Office?”

  “One moment please.”

  Celia gave me a doubtful look, and I held up a finger as if to say, Just wait.

  “Jobs Office,” a young male voice said.

  “Good afternoon,” I said, dropping my voice an octave. “My name is Roger Johnson. I’m trying to contact one of your students. Amanda Lynn Hampton? I received a résumé from Amanda Lynn a while back—a very strong résumé—but when I called the number today, it said the line had been disconnected. Would you happen to have up-to-date contact information for Amanda Lynn?”

  Celia’s hands flew to her mouth. She leaned closer to listen.

  “Who did you say you were?” asked the man on the phone.

  “I’m Robert Johnson,” I said firmly.

  “Didn’t you say Roger before?”

  “Yes … uh, well, Johnsonville Furniture,” I said.

  “You own the business?”

  “That’s correct, and I’m very, very busy. I’m just looking for Amanda Lynn’s contact information.”

  “Have we placed students with you before, sir?”

  I glanced at Celia. “It’s possible. I … couldn’t say.”

  The man’s breathing was steady and patient, as if he spent all day on the phone with boneheads like me. “Hold on a sec.” There was a click at the end of the line, then music. Really bad, smooth jazz.

  I covered the mouthpiece. “I’m on hold,” I whispered.

  “Mr. Johnson, I am impressed.” She kept her eyes on me as she stirred the soup.

  I swallowed. “I should have rehearsed.”

  “You do sound a little bit constipated.”

  I held my stomach. “I may be!”

  The man on the phone returned. “Mr. Johnson?”

  “Yes, this is Roger Johnson.”

  “Listen, sir, I can’t give contact information about students over the phone.”

  “Really?” A moment ago, this had seemed like a done deal. “But as I told you, Amanda Lynn already sent me her résumé. I’m only following up.”

  “If she’s interested, I’m sure she’ll contact you again.”

  “But the job—”

  “Sir, if you like, I can take your information, and when she comes in, I’ll be glad to give it to her.”

  I stared at the receiver. “That won’t be necessary. Thank you.” I hung up.

  The only sound was the soup bubbling on the stove.

  “Damn,” I said.

  “You were awesome,” Celia said, clapping her hands.

  “We were so close!”

  “It’s okay. We’ll try another department.” She poured the soup into white bowls with elegant gold rims. Then she set out heavy round spoons—real soup spoons, the kind you get in restaurants. The soup wasn’t watery like my grandmother’s potato soup. It was thick, like gravy.

  “Ginger carrot,” she said, setting a bowl in front of me.

  “You said that already. Your dad made it.”

  Our faces were close and she was staring up at my eyes—again, not casually. For the first time since I’d known her, she didn’t look confident or strong. She looked … willing. With her eyes cast upward, the difference in our heights became apparent, suddenly significant. The moment for our first kiss had arrived. She was waiting for me to make a move.

  Something stopped me. “Where’d you say your dad was?”

  Her eyes registered a sting as she looked away. “What does it matter?”

  When I didn’t say anything, she took a step away from me, then got out two coffee mugs and set them on the counter. “Thirsty?”

  I nodded and tasted the soup. I had expected spicy, but it was sweet.

  She opened the refrigerator door again. “Ah, here we go.” She pulled out a half-full bottle of white wine. It might have been a bomb, the way it startled me. I must have flinched.

  “Did you think I meant apple juice?” she asked.

  “Well, no—it’s just …”

  “No pressure.” But she had already removed the cork and held the bottle over the mugs.

  “Wait!” I said, cringing. “You know what? I don’t drink alcohol.”

  She lowered the bottle. “You don’t?”

  I shook my head. “My parents would, like, murder me if I drank.”

  “Okay.” She returned the bottle to the refrigerator.

  I leaned against the counter, breathing deeply. “Man, I feel stupid now.”

  “Forget about it.” She shrugged, and her smile was guilty. “Okay, to be honest, I don’t drink, either.”

  “You don’t?”

  “I saw it in there and thought I’d bring it out for us to try. It was a sudden impulse.”

  “Really?”

  “Split-second impulse. A bad one. Sorry.”

  “No big deal.”

  “Gah!” she said, but not angrily. “Maybe I’m trying to be something I’m not. Weird. I swear I’m never like this.”

  Welcome to “Acting for Beginners.”

  “Celia, forget about it.” I reached for her arm. “Just be yourself.”

  When I touched her, she groaned, almost laughing, and fell gently toward me. She’d learned her lesson once. She wasn’t going to wait for me this time.

  Here goes nothing.

  She kissed me. Her lips were soft. When my eyes closed, my hands seemed instinctively to know where to go—roaming her sides, holding her, pulling her close. She rested her hands on my chest, north of center, in a place nobody in my life had ever put their hands before.

  I observed the experience as much as participated in it. We were like characters performing on a teen TV show or in a movie. I braced myself for the meat cleaver, but then remembered to focus. I must have learned something somewhere along the way, because at one point Celia w
hispered, “You surprise me, Mr. Johnson, with your most excellent kissing.”

  “Come down to the furniture warehouse sometime,” I said. “I’ll find a job for you.”

  “Hmmm, really?”

  We kissed again.

  Maybe I am a natural. Who knows, maybe I’m not so gay after all?

  Maybe what the old songs said was true: Falling in love takes time. Let the record show, I was willing to give it all the time it required.

  Next to us, the soup cooled. We didn’t make any more phone calls. Our exploration didn’t go beyond kissing. As long as we stayed in the kitchen, standing in the safe zone at the counter, this was all fine with me.

  I warned you at the beginning, it’s a confusing story.

  seven

  In my defense, it can be difficult for almost anyone to tell the difference between a friendship and a romantic relationship. Especially in high school. In the case of Celia and me, after the spontaneous kisses in her kitchen, things developed as any new friendship might.

  As a friend, I lent her my DVD copies of Halloween and Nightmare on Elm Street—eager to hear what she thought.

  In return, Celia made me a dozen chocolate-chip cookies, just as any thoughtful friend would, and we ate them in the park after school, taking turns pretending we were Cookie Monster.

  As a thank you for the cookies, I burned a CD for her called “Even Better Than Cookies,” because I wanted my new friend to know that my taste in music was rock solid.

  Within days, we developed the habit of meeting as friends in the Commons each morning before the first bell. Celia picked up free coffees for us at the Bound & Ground, and I brought chewing gum to obliterate the bitter aftertaste. As the area filled with students, we sat alone in our favorite corner, partly hidden by the mascot knight, and finished our homework. At times, Celia was more easily affectionate than I felt comfortable with. She’d lean against my shoulder when she helped me with Algebra.

  “Hey, I get it!” I said one morning. “You’re like my coefficient. Up close next to me.”

  “Will you be my variable?” She fluttered her eyelids.

  She let her fingers play in my hair and advised me about product and styling. Sometimes she’d close her eyes and then collapse dramatically onto my lap, pretending to sleep right on top of my textbook. When the first bell rang, we kissed each other’s cheeks before going our separate ways.

  Other kids may have noticed, of course. Our morning frolics had an unspoken aspect of performance. Was it important to Celia that people saw us as a couple? I did like the way being with her in public made me feel about myself. But when I gave it any real thought, I felt a hole growing in the pit of my stomach.

  We are friends. We can never be more than just friends. And we both know this, right?

  One morning, out of the blue, Celia presented me with a shopping bag. Inside was a pair of designer jeans.

  “Celia! You shouldn’t buy me clothes.”

  Her face beamed with a combination of anxiety and pride. “I wanted to.”

  How would I explain expensive new jeans to my parents? “Wow, this is beyond generous. Thank you.” I kissed her on the cheek, and her smile widened.

  I held up the jeans, feeling grateful but wary. They looked small.

  “They’re perfect for you,” she said. “I promise. Enough with those baggie Levi’s, old man. These are sexy. They were made for your ass.”

  At home I tried them on. The legs were narrow-cut and the back pockets hugged my butt like nothing I’d ever worn before. The waist felt too tight, but I had to admit, they did make me feel sexy. I decided to wear them to school.

  The next morning, I tried to sneak out unnoticed. My mistake was to go to the kitchen to get a glass of orange juice. My grandmother and my mother were sitting at the kitchen table.

  “Hey, Elvis Presley,” my mother said. “Where’d you get those hip-huggers?”

  I hesitated at the refrigerator with my back to them. Turning, I smiled. “And good morning to you, ladies.”

  “Answer the question.” She blinked calmly over her coffee mug.

  Not from my girlfriend, that’s for sure.

  I drank. Very slowly. “From Wesley. The jeans didn’t fit him, so he gave them to me.”

  “They don’t seem to fit you either,” my grandmother said. “Too tight.”

  “They’re designer. They’re supposed to be tight.”

  She turned to my mom. “If he starts to feel light-headed, maybe he can undo the top button or something.”

  “Thanks for the tip,” I said. I rinsed the glass and left it in the sink.

  “Don’t forget,” my mother called. “Dentist appointment today after school.”

  “Crap,” I said under my breath.

  On the bus, the inseam on the jeans pressed uncomfortably against my balls. I wasn’t sure sexy was worth it.

  “They look awesome!” Celia said when I saw her in the Commons.

  I turned in a circle so she could appreciate them before my digestive system shut down. “I feel like a different person in them.”

  “Oh, say, I have your DVDs.” She pulled them out of her bag and handed them over. “Scary movies … turns out? Not my thing.”

  “Did you watch them both?”

  “I started one, but turned it off.”

  “Celia, they’re fun!”

  “For you, maybe. But they’re really misogynistic.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “They’re anti-women. The images they show … girls screaming and crying and running from a maniac with a knife? Not so cool.”

  I felt personally wounded, which made me defensive. “So that’s it? You reject the whole genre? You dismiss acknowledged masterpieces of American cinema just because a woman is the main character?”

  “If she’s being victimized, pretty much yeah,” she nodded. “Tell you what. Show me a scary movie where it’s a guy who’s getting into trouble that’s not even his fault? And just when he’s trying to escape, half his clothes start falling off his body? Maybe I’ll watch that.”

  “OK, I’ll keep my eyes open,” I said.

  “I said maybe,” she added.

  A cold winter rain fell all afternoon, streaking the windows of the dental office with oily gray squiggles.

  Dr. Connor did his usual song and dance, stretching open my mouth for what seemed like an hour while he yammered on about his son, the “gifted” fullback who played college football in Wisconsin. Grateful I didn’t have to respond, I closed my eyes and pictured Dr. Connor’s son, who was displayed prominently in photographs in the waiting room. He had shiny, coppery hair that fell around his face, past his ears in long strands like a Roman soldier. The style reminded me of Ivan’s hair. But Ivan’s was lighter, golden, the color of buttered oatmeal. I imagined tough, sensitive Ivan as my dentist, delicately placing his big fingers into my mouth.

  Quit it! I turned my attention to each painful scrape of Dr. Connor’s instruments. I punished myself by focusing on the sharp tools cutting into my gums and forced myself to taste the blood. My hands clenched into fists.

  You can stop thinking that way, and you will stop it.

  Outside the window, another downpour. Minutes crept by while the office speakers emitted slow Beatles instrumentals.

  After the oral agony, Dr. Connor’s assistant handed me my backpack and I went downstairs and out onto the sidewalk. Free! Puddles spread across the pavement and water from the alleys flowed toward the street. I stayed close to the apartment buildings to keep dry. Rubbing my sore jaw, I decided to call Celia as soon as I got home. She said she wanted a grisly, terrifying tale with an innocent male victim? Now I could tell her one. This thought cheered me.

  I found myself smiling whenever I thought of Celia—until I remembered that the relationship could never last. The whole thing was crazy. How long could I fool this sharp girl into thinking I could be an ordinary boyfriend? Sooner or later, things would escalate. Certain physical behavi
or would be expected. Sex would enter the picture. And just like that, I would lose her.

  Even short-term success with Celia, I knew, depended on me avoiding any boy I might be attracted to. Including Ivan. At my locker, I faced the opposite direction whenever he was at his. I needed to transmit a key message to my brain: This door is LOCKED to all blue-eyed locksmiths.

  The rain fell faster and harder as I walked toward the bus stop. I paused in front of the Bound & Ground. Now the windows were steam-filled, almost opaque. I pulled open the front door and went inside to wait out the downpour. The rest of the neighborhood must have had the same idea, because the place was packed. Standing room only.

  I looked for Celia’s aunt behind the counter, but didn’t see her. A college girl in a shabby black cardigan worked the register.

  “Decaf mocha,” I said, when I got to the front of the line. “Smallest size, please.” I had only a few dollars in my wallet but figured I could justify the expense if I used the time to get homework done. The thought of mucking up the dentist’s hard work with chocolaty coffee made the drink even more decadent and delicious. I scanned the room for a free seat.

  “Jamie?”

  Celia’s father waved at me from a table. In a dark suit and silk tie, he was the only formally dressed person in the café. His eyes and teeth had the conspicuous shine of a film actor. Smiling, half standing, he extended his hand in greeting. “This is a good surprise.”

  “Hi, Dr. Gamez. Taking a sick day?”

  “Myself, I am never sick,” he said. “And I love my work too much to waste an afternoon. No, sometimes I come here to get away from the lab and really think. Work through problems. It can be difficult to hold my concentration at the lab. Too many distractions.” He had a stack of files on the table, which he pushed to the side. A white cup and saucer sat empty, long dry. “Will you join me?”

  Kindness opens more doors than the village locksmith.

  “I don’t want to interrupt. You were just saying—”

  “Please do. Look around, your options are limited. Take it before I offer it to someone else.”

  I sat, wondering what on earth we could talk about. It didn’t seem polite to take out my Biology textbook. I took a long slow sip on my drink.