Page 104 of Bad Words

Absolutely not. Five sprained knuckles and a broken wrist.

Wow. How do you sign your books? With a solid punch?

I began to smile, even as the embarrassment and disappointment compacted into a painful little stone in my chest.

Uppercut-right hook combination, I said. It’s good luck.

I don’t think you need luck, Parker. You have something much better: months of rage-fueled publicity.

How does our truce factor into the rage-fueled publicity?

I was wondering the same thing. If you’d like to write another insulting short story, I can edit it for you this time.

Very sneaky, I said. You know, a couple of my friends asked if our initial fight was staged.

Ha. Why?

They thought I was too mild-mannered for it to be real.

It’s like they don’t even know you, she said, and for some reason I imagined her low, amused voice saying the words directly into my ear, and I turned over in bed with an aggravated noise.

This was seriously bad. It was obvious to anybody with eyes that Selina was beautiful, but until now, she’d seemed so distant, so untouchable—too far away to envision any of this.

But now some floodgate had broken, and some part of my mind had realized that the idea of touching Selina Chan was thrilling and transgressive, the hottest and most confusing thing I could possibly imagine. As we texted, I battled image after image. Selina pressing me hard against her friends’ plate-glass window, her lips ghosting over mine. The idea of gripping her waist, lifting her onto my kitchen counter, sliding my hands up under her dress. Selina touching my chin to keep my eyes on hers, wearing her heels. Nothing but her heels.

It was long past midnight by the time I managed to get my imagination under control. As exhaustion dimmed the fire of my thoughts, I thought back to the bookstore, to what Selina had told me about her parents.

Did your parents ever email you back? I asked.

I wondered if she’d dodge the question, but she said, Yes.

Then: They were upset by my posts online and asked, for roughly the millionth time, whether I regretted picking the wrong career path yet.

You didn’t pick the wrong career, I said.

She didn’t say anything. I added, Selina, I might never have met another person who’s more obviously in the right career.

Thank you. That means a lot.

After a moment she went on, I try to imagine doing anything else and it’s like trying to imagine living in somebody else’s body.

When did you start writing? I asked.

In high school. You won’t be shocked to know that I was a weird kid. We joke about my not having friends, but that was pretty much true back then.

I hesitated. When I’d probed in California, she’d pulled away, but this seemed even more like an opening than her reference to City had been then.

When you say ‘back then,’ I said, you don’t mean your entire childhood, do you?

For a moment, no response, and I thought I’d struck the wall again, some barrier of privacy that she’d never allow me through.

Finally, an ellipsis appeared, and a minute later, the message:

Well, the experience wasn’t as dramatic as that sounds. I was a borderline silent kid with weak social connections that didn’t transfer over between schools. In high school, I was on the periphery of a group for a while, but I discovered after a couple of years that they’d spent a lot of time privately making fun of me. Which at the time was upsetting, but pretty soon felt unsurprising more than anything else. It wasn’t as though I ever felt in step with any of them.

I sat with this message for a minute, trying to pick apart the swirl of scenes it conjured. Then anger rose in me. Jesus, I said. Selina, you don’t have to describe that like it’s acceptable. They sound terrible.

They weren’t, though. They were just normal high schoolers pointing at the nearest abnormal thing. Tale as old as time.