Odd One Out: Chapters 11–15

A Sesquipedalian Search for a Simplified-Science Savant

A Sesquipedalian Search for a Simplified-Science Savant

Exhibit A: Rae Chin, veritable home invader, wide awake in a paisley-wallpapered guest suite across the hall from Courtney Cooper’s bedroom.

It’s one thing for him to humor my Carousel Carl shenanigans, but this? This is a push past plausibility.

His eyebrows pull together and I have to look away because...well, I’m a little embarrassed. About being here. In his house. Because he basically rescued me.
Jupiter would have a conniption.

He doesn’t move. Just stares at me. It’s giving me heart palpitations.

“Does she know I’m here?”
It’s out of my mouth before I can stop it, and part of me feels asinine for asking, because it really shouldn’t matter: we’re in his house.

It’s just that looking around this room and at this beautiful boy standing in the doorway, I feel like I’m encroaching on something sacred. Something definitively hers. And while I can’t say I know her that well, Jupiter Charity-Sanchez doesn’t seem the type to take kindly to encroachments upon her territory.

It makes me wonder just how much Courtney told her. Hope he didn’t mention my faux-joviality...

Clearly I did, because here I am at his kitchen table with the fragrance of an omelet smothered in some kind of tomatoey-oniony-garlicky sauce tickling my olfactory epithelium.

Knowing Courtney Cooper’s aware of the truth about me and my duplicity is one thing.

But the more time I spend with her at school, the more I realize that pretty much everyone gets inarticulate around her—guys, girls, teachers, administrators, janitors, librarians, classroom pets.

She laughs. It’s nothing short of pure resplendence.

There’s something refreshing about a beautiful girl’s use of “profanity” after living in the land of Southern Etiquette and debutantes for so long.

“Come onnnn. You know you wanna.”
Capitulation is inevitable.

So we each did, but I might have also potentially snuck into the kitchen to imbibe a glass of that mojito stuff Papi makes.

Within said bedroom, Jupiter is at her desk on her laptop, likely putting the finishing touches on tomorrow’s community service outreach, Courtney is reclined in his special chair watching a black-and-white film featuring a middle-aged white man who talks funny and appears to have a penchant for younger women...

...and Rae is lying prone on Jupiter’s bed, reading the cover story in a magazine entitled Feminist Monthly...

Rae doesn’t understand the purpose of such brazen self-exposure, but it does bring another question to the tip of her tongue....

“Wow, um...” Jupiter rubs her nose ring. Seems to be her apprehensive tell. “That was kind of out of nowhere, Rae.”

Is it me, or does she sound a little perturbed?

“Well, they’re kind of nice to look at, and it’s a little confounding..."

“How much did you drink, Rae? I’ve heard of ‘lowered inhibitions,’ but this is a lot, baby girl,” Jupiter says.

But of course there’s still a grande fête at the quarterback’s lake house.

Courtney whispers something in Jupiter’s ear, and she tosses her head back in riotous laughter.

Thanksgiving night, I woke up in Jupiter’s bed at 3:47 a.m. because my bladder was on the verge of paroxysm, but when I came out of the bathroom, I accidentally went to the guest room, where I normally sleep when I stay over.

They’ve been friends for an eon, and technically, I’m the interloper, so no big deal.

“We’re going to find some water,” Jupiter says, taking Courtney’s hand but turning to me. “You good, baby girl?”
Courtney beams down at me, too.
So they are cognizant of my existence.

Like she’ll give me a certain look, or she’ll say things that seem a bit coquettish.

I’m trying my best to suppress all attractions because I don’t want to upset the preexisting equipoise, but HE makes me feel accepted and secure, while SHE makes me feel beautiful and powerful, like there’s nothing I can’t conquer.

“So what’s up with you? Wanna talk about it?”
“Indubitably" is how I’d like to respond, but I can’t seem to get the word past my lips.

That I’ve come this close to asking Jupiter about it on a number of occasions—especially when I think about some of the mortifying stuff she told me I said while under the influence?

That this Carl Conundrum jaunt is actually meant to be a distraction from all that, but it isn’t working?

Why did that give me vertigo?

Britain and I are at our regular table in the school library having our final lunch-hour SAT study session before holiday break when I hear him say: “Rae-Rae, you good? Lookin’ a little lachrymose over there, girl,” and see him grin in a very self-satisfied way.

"I mean, we’re mutuals online so there are intermittent likes and comments on posts—” More from her than me, now that I’m thinking about it. “But as far as why we don’t communicate in real life, I’m not really sure.”

As flippant as it might sound, I feel like I’ve dealt with that part enough for it to no longer be debilitating.

“Ready for the next word?” I say, holding up an index card with the word aberration written on it.
“Aberration,” he says. “A state or condition markedly different from the norm.”
Go figure.

As melodramatic as it likely sounds, they’re both so beautiful it makes me want to cry. Well, that combined with their kindness/goodness/purity of heart and garnished with my certitude that this glorious triad I somehow finagled my way into is definitely, definitely temporary.

“You sure you’re okay, Sprinkles?” he says, eyes narrowed.
“Mmhmm!” I nod. Way overzealously.