Disclaimer: not my characters
Summary: Paris and Tristan. From there, it gets complicated.

History
By Megan Reilly
Eponine119@worldnet.att.net
March 28, 2001

"Penny for your thoughts."

I raise an eyebrow, ready to inform the interloper that my thoughts are certainly worth more than that, but then I see it's Tristan and the harsh words die, instantly evacuating from my mind. Along with them go all the other thoughts harbored there, so all I can do is look at him blankly.

"Don't think I'm good for it?" he teases, fishing a dirty copper penny out of his pocket and giving it a turn between his thumb and forefinger.

I've thought of something to say. "There's a big test in World History tomorrow and I'm studying and --"

--and why the hell did I say that?

"I get it," he says with a shrug of his shoulders. He starts to slink off.

"No, wait." My words are enough to get him to pause. "You wanted something."

"Notes," he says.

I don't let people borrow my notes. In second grade, I was doing everyone's homework for them. Everyone. In the whole class. Tristan knows this. But I just sigh and open my notebook, pulling them out and handing them over.

He doesn't even look surprised. He's used to getting what he wants. "Thanks," he says belatedly, and is on his way.

What was I supposed to say? "Not a problem"? It is a problem. I don't lend people my notes. And now how am I supposed to study without any notes to refer to? The notebook slowly closes in my hands. I just won't study then. I'll have the whole afternoon free. How about that.

I'm not sure when the whole liking Tristan thing started. It wasn't when I met him. I was five. He was five. We were going to kindergarten in a school that had gargoyles. There were much more interesting things to think about. Besides, when you're five, the opposite sex doesn't even exist for you.

Six, seven, eight...not then, either. Cooties shots were not unknown, even in a stuffy school like Chilton. Boys were icky. I never exactly thought that they were, because there was always some part of my head capable of rational thought that understood that boys and girls were basically the same. No reason to consider an entire portion of the species icky simply because they had a separate bathroom. Now Trudie Sassenby, with the hygiene problem, she was icky.

I pay the cashier at the ice cream store here in the present, smiling to know how very much my mother would hate it if she knew I was going to sit down and have a cup of chocolate ice cream. Not only does it have milk in it, it's chocolate. Hard to decide which would make her more upset -- the fat content, or the pimple-producing prospects of chocolate.

My mother must be so disappointed that I'm what she got.

Eighth grade. That's when it happened. Tristan sat in front of me in math class. One hundred fifty days sitting in the desk directly behind his. Looking at the back of his neck. Watching as he got taller and his shoulders got wider. At some point I realized he smelled good. We walked into the classroom children and walked out at the end of the year something else. Not adults. Not quite yet.

Kids who go to Chilton, contrary to popular belief, are not perfect little learning machines bioengineered by the government to sternly take orders and never misbehave. Last day of school, kids screamed and jumped and ran. Papers flew everywhere, coating the floors and lawn outside. Even if summer was going to be filled with horseriding camp or language lessons, it was summer.

I cleaned out my locker, deciding which notes to keep, which to throw away. As the notebooks and final projects piled up in my backpack, the halls fell quiet around me. Everyone had gone home. I closed the metal door and twirled the lock, then wondered why since there was nothing left inside to steal.

He was there. "What are you doing still here?" I demanded.

"Nothing. What are you doing still here?"

"I was cleaning out my locker."

"Well, me too."

We glared at each other and then I tried to pick up my backpack, stuffed to zipper-bursting. Tristan walked over and picked it up, no problem. "Why are you keeping this stuff?" he asked.

"I might need it later."

"You won't," he said.

"You never know."

"I know."

"How do you know?" I challenged.

"You never forget anything," he told me, carrying the backpack to the nearest trash bin and opening it up. I watched everything tumble out - papers, my pencil case, my extra uniform sweater. Then he handed the bag back to me. Watching. Waiting for me to make a grab for my stuff. I didn't. "You're all right."

I nodded, and we walked out of the quiet school together. "You never did tell me what you were doing here," I said.

"Don't want to go home."

"Why not?"

"I've got the whole summer to listen to them fight," he said. Instantly, awareness flashed across his face that he shouldn't have said that. Then he masked it, like he didn't care.

"My parents fight all the time, too," I said as we started down the sidewalk, away from school. Walking so slowly it took three or four steps to cross each square of cement. I'd never said it to anyone before. No one else had parents who fought. Sometimes other kids came back from summer vacation or winter holidays with a new stepmother or stepfather, their tans dark from spending time on the new parent's yacht, but there was never any emotional anguish.

"It bothers you," he said.

"I guess."

"I didn't think anything bothered you," he said.

"I didn't think you thought about me," I replied.

"I don't," he answered.

"Oh." We kept walking.

"You're not like other kids," he said. "Like Louise or Madeline or Sherry."

"I should hope not." Sherry had won the informal poll for most likely to marry down and drive carpool.

He started to take the footpath through the woods. The shortcut. No one ever went that way. It was dangerous. Everyone knew that. I followed him.

"What are you going to do when you grow up?" he asked me.

"Nuclear physicist sounds nice."

"You're not joking, are you?"

I shook my head. No. Not joking. "What about you?"

"Follow my grandfather's footsteps."

"Oh, right," I said, remembering his grandfather was some sort of business bigwig. "That what you want to do?"

"No, but it's what I will do," he said.

"What do you want to do?" I asked.

He shrugged. No answer. Or not telling. "Have you ever kissed anyone before?"

"What?!" My mother had warned me about taking the shortcut, but did I listen?

"Didn't think so," he smirked.

"Neither have you," I snapped.

"You want to?" he asked.

I didn't say anything. What was I supposed to say to that, anyway? It didn't matter, because he kissed me without waiting for an answer. It was a stupid eighth grade kiss, awkward and utterly unexciting, except for the fact that it was what it was. A kiss, with a nice boy I'd known all my life, in the woods where no one could see us, on the last day of school.

When he finished kissing me, he looked at me like he wasn't sure what he'd done. Or why. And then he ran away.

The last day of eighth grade was the best day of my whole damn life.

I've thrown away my ice cream cup and I'm at Tristan's house. The front gates are always open. It's that kind of neighborhood. I march determinedly right up to the front door and pound on it, deciding what to tell the maid when she opens the door.

It's not the maid. It's Tristan. His eyes are dark. "I want my notes back." I declare.

He turns away from the door. I stand there, arms crossed, figuring he's going to get them to bring them to me. Then he stops. "What're you waiting for?"

"My notes."

"You're not coming in?"

"Well, if you put it like that." I step into the front hall and he closes the door. I've been here before, for birthday parties. My mother makes me go to them. Everyone's mother makes everyone go to them. I never noticed how quiet or how cold it was before. It's like my house. Like my house was, before my dad ordered the furniture sold to determine the value of the settlement and the decorators ripped up the rugs.

I follow Tristan, because what else am I going to do? He goes up the stairs and at some point I realize we're going to his bedroom. Which is only strange if you're me, I guess. For some reason my heart is racing.

He pushes open the door and goes inside without a word to me, or a glance. It's a stark room, with dark antique furniture. My room's pink. I didn't get to choose. He throws himself on the bed and then looks up at me. Standing there. Waiting for my notes. "I have a question for you," he says.

"What?" I'm expecting something about Queen Maria Therese of Austria or the Russian Revolution.

"Why do you like me?"

"Pardon?" My mother would call that good breeding. Instead of saying "Huh?" or the more classic "What the fuck does that mean?"

"Why do you like me?" Tristan repeats, as though that's going to make the question more clear.

"I don't know."

He sits on the edge of the bed, and I can't help noticing there's a spot next to him, empty, just waiting to be sat in. I want to be like Louise and Madeline. Hell, Rory Gilmore, for that matter. None of them would have even a second thought of going to some guy's bedroom and sitting on his bed.

"Why would you even ask me that, anyway?" I demand, because someone's got to say something.

"Because I'm not the kind of person you should like," he tells me. I frown, wondering what that means. "I'm not very smart, and I'm not very nice. And I'm lazy. And mean."

"You are not."

He looks at me like I'm sadly deluded.

"You're not any of those things."

"What am I then?" he asks. Why does he look so sad? If he's teasing me, why doesn't he smile? This is all some joke, it has to be.

"You're...you. Tristan." I'm usually more articulate than this, I swear. But for what he's asking me, there aren't words for that. How can you explain to someone why you like them? I can't even explain it to myself, and trust me, I've tried to figure it out.

"But what does that mean?" he asks.

"Is this a philosophical question?"

"No." He blinks and I note, not for the first time, that his eyelashes are both long and blond. "Come over here."

"Why?"

"I was hoping for some study help." His eyes are as flat as his tone.

"Oh. Of course." What else would it be for? I sit down. The mattress is hard, and the bedspread is real Irish lace. Pure white. "Is this really your room?"

"Yeah."

"It's just so...sterile."

"I know."

"Not what I pictured. Not that I was picturing anything. Especially not your room. What did you want to know, again?"

"Paris." His voice is really soft. I'm sure, in the many, many years we've known each other, he's said my name before, but hearing him say it now, I'm not sure how that can be true.

"What?"

"Be quiet for a minute."

"Why?" I'm like this. You wouldn't think, if you'd just met me, that I was a talkative person, but I get like this. I want to know things. And I hate people who don't answer my questions.

Tristan picks up the lock of hair that's over my shoulder and pushes it back.

"What are you doing?"

"This." It's barely a whisper, because he's leaned across the space between us. Kissing me. Not like in eighth grade, either. A real kiss, from someone who's done it before. But there's something sweet about it. Someone who's had as many girlfriends as Tristan has, you wouldn't think there would be any sweetness in his kiss. But there is.

"You want something."

"God, Paris, will you shut up?" he demands. Exasperated. And he grabs my hair this time, and kisses me harder. He definitely wants something, but it's not any of the things I thought he wanted. I thought he wanted a paper topic, or a book report. That's not what he wants at all. And because it feels so good, I have to shove him away, and I have to ruin this.

"What, my name was next on the list?" I yell at him. "Working your way through our class? How do you decide who's next? Alphabetically?"

"No."

"Then what is it, then, because it makes no sense to me."

"You like me," he says.

"I think we already went over this. No need for a review." Why am I shaking? Then I look at him, and I get it. "Tristan, I'm not the only person who likes you. Half, if not all, the girls in our class, like you. And maybe some of the guys." How many times can I use the word "like" before being granted automatic citizenship in California?

"They don't know me. It's easy to like me if you don't know me."

Perfect Tristan statement. He's not questioning his desirability. Although if that were all this was about, he could just go back to kissing his mirror and everything would be just fine.

"I think I should go." But I don't move.

"You probably should." He doesn't even look at me now. "Wouldn't want to do anything to mess up our friendship."

"What friendship? You hold me in the highest disdain." Which really only made this all that much more confusing.

"We're friends," Tristan says, like he's surprised.

"Yeah, well, friends don't just go around kissing friends for no reason," I snap, confirming that my life has become a John Hughes movie.

"I'll keep it in mind."

"Do." I get up from his bed and stomp out of the room. Out in the cold silence of the hallway I wonder why I would do such a thing. It certainly isn't rational. But I break into a run, down the stairs. The door slows me down, because it's got some kind of ornate lock, but I figure it out.

Footsteps crunch behind me and I turn. "I thought you wanted your notes." It's Tristan, with the notebook he grabbed from me earlier. I reach for them, and he yanks them out of my reach. That's normal for him. "I'm surprised you handed them over in the first place."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I don't reach for them again and he obediently hands them over, as fits our strange, contrary relationship.

"You don't lend your notes to anyone. No one's forgotten how you went postal on Susie Longstraet for even suggesting such a thing in fourth grade."

"Then why did you even ask me," I sigh. I'm tired. It's been a long day at school and I don't have the energy for much more through-the- looking-glass type nonsense. I have homework to do.

"I was testing you."

"Did I pass?"

"Have you ever failed a test, Paris?"

"You know I haven't."

"Maybe you should try it someday."

"Why?" I demand, and he looks at me like the other kids do. Like I'm some pathetic thing, who doesn't get it, and never will.

"Why not?"

And I just look back at him, wondering how he could even ask me that. I have to pass the tests. I have to get into Harvard. I have to Be Something.

"Come back inside," Tristan invites.

"Why?"

"You ask a lot of questions," he points out.

"You don't answer many of them."

"Because I asked you to."

"You don't need help with the test, Tristan. You know the material. You'll do fine."

"I'm not worried about the test," he says.

"Then why --?" I stop, because he's shaking his head. There will never be an answer.

"Do you want to come inside?" he asks.

"Yes."

He gestures to the door. Waiting for me to go inside.

"But I can't."

He doesn't ask me why. Just looks me straight in the eye and nods. He understands. All too well. Goes inside. Closes the door. And now, standing outside, alone, with my stupid history notes in my hand, the only thing I want is to have gone back inside with him.

Which is why I didn't.

- end -

I'm not sure I'm done. There may be more. Meantime, send feedback.