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: : : MONDAY EVENING MEGAN'S MOM—Mrs. Laner—meets him at the door. —Hi there, she says, extending her hand. —You must be Tim.
—Uh, yeah, Tim says. This is the kind of crap he's so bad at. He hurriedly jams his skateboard under his arm and rips his gloves off so he can shake her hand. —Hi.
—Oh, your hands are freezing! says Megan's mom. —Why don't you come inside where it's warm?
—OK, Tim says.
He follows her in. She takes his coat and directs him to put his board in the corner, next to Megan's. She also has him take his boots off. —Because of the floors, she says.
—Oh, Tim says. —Sure.
While he's sitting there on the floor unlacing she keeps talking to him. —So you're also a skater? she says. The last word sounds awkward coming out of her mouth.
—Yeah, says Tim.
—Megan just loves skating. She started back when she was—back when we were out in Houston; she must have been, oh, eleven or twelve? It was the funniest thing, to see this little blond girl trying to balance on this board—
—Hey, says Megan, sticking her head around the corner.
—Hey, says Tim.
—I was just telling Tim about when you first started skating, says her mom.
—Ugh—why?
—He actually seemed very interested.
—I'm sure he wasn't.
They both look at Tim, who has no idea how to respond in this situation. —It was— he says. —I mean, yeah, I was interested, sure.
Megan raises her eyebrows skeptically. —Okaay, she says.
They sit at the dining room table and go over some of the Physics material. Megan has this review sheet with six different formulas on it; she passes the sheet to him and makes him check while she recites all the formulas. She can do all but one without looking. Tim can't recite any of them. The sheet looks brand new to him. He either never got it in the first place or he got it and lost it.
Mrs. Laner brings them cups of tea. —She won't let me drink coffee in the evening, Megan explains, —sorry.
—It's OK, Tim says. He sips the tea. It tastes awful. He sets it aside.
She shows him how to enter the formulas on his calculator. She makes him work through a homework assignment that he never finished.
—You can borrow my review sheet if you need to, she says.
—Thanks, he says, but he stares down at it and it's just a jumble of letters. Even if he memorized it before tomorrow—which isn't likely—he still doesn't have any good conception about which parts of the word problems are supposed to fit into the different parts of the formulas. She keeps stopping him when he does something wrong—no, no, like this—and although he can see that the way she does it is different from the way he does it, he doesn't really know what makes her way right and his wrong.
At around nine Mrs. Laner says —Why don't you think about taking Tim home sometime soon?
Megan makes an exasperated noise. —We're in the middle of something?
—Actually, Tim says. The problems have gotten him frustrated, and he doesn't want her to see that he can't do them; he doesn't want her to know that he's dumb. —It's probably a good idea for me to get home.
Megan gives him the same skeptical look she gave him before. He knows why: the last million times she's heard him talking about home it's been about how little he wants to go there. —You're just Mr. Surprises tonight, aren't you?
—No, Tim says. —It's just— and he can't make up a good excuse so he says —It's just I need to get home is all.
She borrows the keys from her mom and he throws his skateboard in the back of the Range Rover and they start out driving. They don't go straight home; they drive around the neighborhood for a bit. He looks out the window at gas stations and car dealerships. He looks out the window at the Target parking lot; thinks of Matt and Nick.
—I can't wait to get out of here, Tim says, as they're waiting at a stoplight.
They get back to his place and pull up in the driveway. He looks at the house and frowns. She kills the engine and shuts the light off. For a minute neither of them do anything. He leans back in his seat and picks absently at a tear in the fabric that covers the ceiling.
He can feel her looking at him.
—What? he says. He's afraid of what she's thinking. He thinks that she's going to tell him that she doesn't want to hang out with him anymore; he thinks that she's reassessing him, now that she's seen that he can't do physics problems.
—Do you want to kiss me? she says.
—What? he says, startled. He turns to stare at her and she looks away, out her window.
—Never mind, she says.
—No, what'd you say? he asks.
—Forget it, she says.
—But I want to know, he says.
—I asked if you wanted to kiss me, she says. —But if you don't just forget it.
—No, Tim says. —It's not that I don't—it's—
—Forget it, she says. —Just—just get out of the car. I need to get home. My folks are going to be wondering why I've been gone for so long.
—Okay, Tim says. —But—
—Would you go? she says.
—Okay, he says, and he gets out of the car. She starts it up and pulls out of the driveway. He stands there on the front porch and watches her go, telling himself goddamnit. Telling himself you're a fucking idiot. She's out of sight before he remembers that he forgot to get his board out of the back.
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