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  The second elephant-sized problem was that I still hadn’t told Julie I loved her, and still didn’t know if she wanted to be with me. So my first problem could be a moot point.

  Mum didn’t want me to tell Julie we were cousins, not yet; not until some undefined point in the future when she was “ready.” And I could easily enough keep from doing that, I thought. But I didn’t know how much longer I could coexist with Julie and not betray the way I felt about her. And since I wanted so much to be with her…wouldn’t it work out better anyway if she didn’t know we were cousins? Wouldn’t she be a lot likelier to dump Patrick in favor of me, that way?

  Christ almighty, Daniel, don’t go thinking like that.

  Too late.

  Bad idea? Absolutely. But I knew myself pretty well by now, and I knew that once an attractive bad idea had been let out of its bottle, I couldn’t catch it and stuff it back in there. I had been moderately dishonest to get what I wanted before (hasn’t everyone?) and would probably do so again if I wanted something badly enough. Which right now, God help me, I did.

  There is no way that relationship will end well, my conscience scolded.

  No, probably not. But how well did relationships ever end? Was I likely to become celibate just to avoid the drama?

  I snorted. We all knew the answer to that one, didn’t we?

  ONCE AGAIN, I held onto a little bit of hope that the problem would simply go away on its own. Maybe when I next saw Julie, the chemistry would have vanished. (Though it certainly hadn’t in my dreams.) Maybe this cousin thing would have the effect of euthanizing my desire for her, when we actually met again.

  If that was to be the case, then why did my breath catch and my heart start pounding in my throat when I answered the phone on the first of January and heard her voice?

  “I’m still in New Mexico,” she said. I could hear people laughing and talking behind her. “I wanted to tell you, it’s looking like we’re staying a little longer, so I won’t be driving back to Eugene till the morning of the first day of classes. If that works for you, you can wait for me, but if not…”

  “Oh, it’s all right. Don’t worry about it. I’ll be able to get a ride over myself.”

  “Are you sure? I don’t want to strand you.”

  “No, no, I’ll be fine.”

  “Okay. Thank you. I’ll see you back at the dorms, all right?”

  “All right. See you.” We hung up. I was more relieved than disappointed. The car ride, three hours alone with her, would have been highly charged with tension – at least on my part. I might well have confessed things I shouldn’t yet confess. I would benefit from settling back into the university atmosphere first.

  Not that I was looking forward to classes, exactly. My marks from autumn term had not turned out the best: an A- in Italian, B in Intro to Leisure Studies, C in History, and C- in Trig. I knew very well (and so did my parents) that this was below my usual performance. I ordinarily managed good-without-being-a-nerd marks – the B/B+ area, in the American scheme.

  “The first term’s always the hardest,” Dad said, as he drove me to Eugene. “Getting accustomed to being away from home, and all that.”

  I nodded. “Had a lot on my mind.”

  “I suppose we contributed to that. Sorry we worried you the way we did. As you see, things really are fine.”

  “Yeah.” Yes, Dad, they’re just terrific. By the way, I had another hot dirty dream the other night about my new cousin. Want to hear it?

  Chapter 13: Other People’s Problems

  “HI, SINTER.” I walked into our dorm room, and breathed the familiar scent of stale cloves and leather.

  “Hey, man.” He was sitting on his bed with a book, and lifted a hand to me, which I slapped in passing. “How was break?”

  I put down my bags with a sigh. “Oh, kind of awful. Never mind. How about you?”

  “Same.”

  “You must have missed Clare.” She lived in Calgary, Alberta, and had gone home for the vacation.

  “Yeah. She’s due back pretty soon.” He closed the book. “God, I was bored. And my parents drove me insane.”

  “Mine too, in their way.” And it’s a gift of insanity that keeps on giving. Had to stop dwelling on it. I sat on my bed, and decided to focus on Sinter’s problems. “What were your folks hounding you about?”

  “Oh, the usual. They don’t like that I’m a theater major, they don’t like the eyeliner – oh, and they think I’m gay, and they don’t like that either.”

  “Really? Don’t they know about Clare?”

  He shook his head. “It’s easier not to tell them. They’d just want to meet her, and…well, Clare’s not exactly the kind of girl you take home to your uptight banker parents.”

  “Hah. Suppose not.”

  “They would see she’s an inch taller than me, probably stronger, wears no makeup, and they’d think, ‘Ah. Sinter really does want to date a man.’”

  I laughed. It felt good after the tense week I had just been through. “So they think you’re gay? Just because you haven’t brought home any girls?”

  “No, it…uh…” He picked up his lighter and started playing with it. “Remember that guy I mentioned, from high school? The one my parents thought was a bad influence? Started my whole rebellion thing?”

  “Your worst experience ever.”

  “Yeah. Andy. He, uh…” Flame on, flame off. Sinter’s eyes focused on it. “He was my best friend. Totally responsible, normal guy. Then one day when we were fifteen, he told me he was gay.”

  “Oh.”

  Sinter flicked his finger through the flame. “And that he liked me.”

  “Oh.”

  “And even though I said I didn’t like him the same way, he asked if I could do him one favor, and then he’d never bug me about it again.” The flame went out; he rubbed soot off his thumb. “He asked me…if I would kiss him.”

  “Oh.”

  “So I did, and he kind of held me there, and…that’s when my parents walked in. We jumped apart, but they knew.”

  I winced. “Crap.” His reluctance to talk about his first snog was making more sense now.

  “I guess I could have sold him out. Could have told them it was all his idea, he was forcing himself on me, I wouldn’t hang out with him anymore, whatever. But I didn’t.”

  “Good for you,” I said. “Your best friend, after all.”

  He nodded and threw the lighter onto his desk. “Life pretty much sucked after that, though. At least as far as the parent-child relationship went.”

  I pulled my schedule book out of my knapsack, and batted it between my palms. “You know, despite what they say about English schoolboys, I’ve never actually kissed another bloke.”

  Half his mouth curled in a smile. “Hey, no coming on to me. I’m spoken for.”

  I threw my schedule book at him.

  He caught it and flicked it back. “So now you know. I’m even more twisted than you thought.”

  “Hah. Er, no. I hardly have the right to call anyone else twisted.”

  “I wouldn’t say you’re twisted. A little ‘pervy’ is all.”

  “Right, that’s because you don’t know…” I shook my head. “I shouldn’t tell you this. But – fuck, I have to tell someone.” I sat forward on my bed. Looking intrigued, he did the same. “Okay,” I said. “So over the holidays, my mum tells me about this sister of hers, right?”

  I gave him the short version in ten minutes. His black-lined eyes were wide, and his hands were stifling shocked laughs throughout.

  “Holy shit,” he said. “Holy shit. Oh, my God. That sucks. So – Julie knows, right?”

  “No! No. I don’t think so. She’d have said something by now, wouldn’t she?”

  “Probably.”

  “We can’t tell her. My mum doesn’t want me to ‘approach’ their family.”

  “But you have. Approached her, I mean.”

  “Not as her cousin. Anyway, I didn’t tell Mum I knew her.
Or that I…well…”

  “That you were crushing on her,” Sinter filled in.

  “Yeah.” I put my head in my hands.

  “Man, that sucks. I guess that’s over, huh.”

  “Er…I don’t know. Not exactly.”

  “Dude.” Sinter laughed. “She’s your cousin. You can’t go out with her. It’s incest.”

  I lifted my head. “No. Legally, it’s not. The state of Oregon defines incest very specifically, and it involves a whole lot of relatives, but not your cousin.”

  “Oh, my God. You looked this up.”

  “Apparently one in a thousand couples in America are first cousins. That’s more than I expected.”

  “Yeah, and they’re probably all in Louisiana.”

  “Actually, no. The states that allow first-cousin marriage are pretty widely scattered. They’re not all in the South, and in fact some of the states in the South don’t allow it.”

  “It’s kind of scaring me how much you researched this,” he said.

  “And it’s legal in my country. Everywhere in Europe, in fact.”

  “Okay, so it’s legal. But – come on. Say you get together with her – assuming she doesn’t mind sleeping with her cousin – and then you break up, and you have to live the rest of your lives seeing each other at family reunions, and knowing you did…incest-type stuff.”

  “True. Whether or not we work out as a couple, we’ll always be cousins. I’ve thought of that. But – well, look at you, for example.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t mean you’ve done anything with your cousin.”

  “That’s good, because I haven’t.”

  “I mean, look at the way you get on with your parents. Or don’t get on, rather. You’ve had a big row about something, and you still aren’t the best of friends, and you probably won’t be for a while yet.”

  “If ever,” he muttered.

  “If ever. So what I’m saying is, people dislike or detest members of their family for lots of reasons. Having one of my cousins be an ex-girlfriend wouldn’t be any worse than that. In fact, I tend to be very tactful about breakups, and I’m still on good terms with nearly all my exes.”

  “I believe you, but…you’re not serious? You’re not really going to keep chasing her, while at the same time failing to tell her she’s your cousin?”

  “Well…” It did sound evil when he said it like that. “It depends how everything goes. When will my mum say it’s okay to tell her? And so forth.”

  He fell back, resting his elbow on his pillow, and crunched some of his gravity-defying hair against one hand. “Okay, yes, you win the ‘twisted’ award.”

  Someone knocked on our door, then opened it. Clare walked in, flopped onto Sinter’s bed, and hitched an arm around him. “Hey, dork.”

  “Hey.” He kissed her. “Just walk right in, huh? What if Daniel had been changing?”

  She regarded me casually. “Then he’d just have to add me to the long, long list of girls who’ve seen his knickers.”

  “They’re only ‘knickers’ on girls,” I corrected.

  “What are they on boys?”

  “Pants.”

  “Then what are these?” Clare grasped the black cloth at her knee.

  “Trousers.”

  “Glad we got that straightened out.” Clare kissed Sinter again. “So what are you pants-wearers up to? Hear any good gossip over the holidays?”

  “Uh…” Sinter’s gaze darted to mine. I gave him an urgent, discreet headshake. “Nope,” he lied, turning sweet and innocent blue eyes to his girlfriend. “I mean, except that we were making out before you came in here.”

  “Yeah? Sounds hot.” Clare leaned on him so they slid toward the horizontal.

  They clearly needed some time alone. I got up. “Think I’ll go out for some groceries, darling. Need anything?”

  “Pop-Tarts,” Sinter said. “I brought a toaster back.”

  “You did?” Clare sounded excited. “Seriously?”

  “Yep.”

  “That rocks! We can steal bagels from the dining hall. And bread. And, like, those waffles…”

  I paused at the door and caught Sinter’s eye again, while Clare was continuing her rhapsodic list of stuff that could be stolen from the dining hall and toasted. I gave him another headshake and a zip-the-lips gesture, and begged at him with both hands clutched at my chest. He reassured me with a blink of smudgy eyelids and a ripple of fingers.

  Off I went to buy Pop-Tarts and other toastable items, leaving Sinter and Clare to their little reunion. I trusted him; we had exchanged dirty secrets and all that. But I couldn’t help feeling uneasy. What if he did tell Clare about my newfound relative? And what if Clare told Julie? As I trudged along in the chilly darkness of an Oregon January, toward the luminous red and white lettering of the Safeway, I prayed I hadn’t made a mistake.

  Not that it would be my first.

  I KNEW Julie was returning to the dorm on Monday morning. I looked up at her window when I returned from my 10 a.m. Western Lit class, but couldn’t see her. Should I ring her? Drop in? Given how cozy we had been before the holidays, would it seem strange if I didn’t drop in?

  I decided I would let her or fate make the first move. No sense actively pursuing my own cousin, as Sinter had reminded me. (Yeah, but it’s legal! Mostly! Go on, what are you afraid of?)

  Fate, or rather Clare, orchestrated our meeting. I was having breakfast with Sinter and Clare on Tuesday, holding a floppy round waffle in my fingers and talking to Sinter about the possibilities of toasting it in our room, when Clare waved her long arm in the air at someone. “Yo, French,” she called. “Over here.”

  At the name, my stomach (and the waffle) dropped. I looked up and saw Julie approaching us with a tray. A new blue jumper I hadn’t seen before showed off the curve of her breasts. Tight khaki trousers did the same for her backside. Her hair was damp and loose, more red and wavy than usual from the shower. She gave a bit of a smile at Clare. Her gaze met mine and flashed away – or maybe it was mine that flashed away.

  She slid onto the padded bench beside me, as it was the only place for her to sit.

  “Hey, guys.” She shook a packet of sugar, tore it open, and sprinkled it into her mug of tea.

  Tea. Very English. Thinking of me, maybe?

  Fuck, Revelstoke, get over yourself.

  “Hi,” I said. My voice sounded froggy.

  She glanced at me. “See you got back all right.”

  I trolled my spoon around in the cereal dish. “Yes. No problem. Thanks.” I couldn’t eat. My throat was closed up. Christ.

  “What class do you have this morning?” Sinter asked her.

  “Art history.”

  The other three talked about classes a while. I calmed down just enough to swallow some grape juice and eat a few crumbs of waffle. I even said a word or two about my own classes. Could barely look at Julie, though, or at least not without panicking.

  Maybe she sensed something was up, for she didn’t try to talk to me much either. I hoped she didn’t think I had decided to dislike her, or anything. Or – an even more depressing thought – maybe she had decided over the holidays that she disliked me, or at least liked Patrick better. I couldn’t decide whether that would be for the best or not.

  At least the torture couldn’t last; we had to get up and go to our classes. We all walked together, as we were going the same general direction, but Julie and I traveled opposite edges of the pavement, with Sinter and Clare between us.

  Then Sinter and Clare split off from us, toward the science buildings, leaving Julie and me together. Sinter gave me an anxious smile over his shoulder as they walked off. I finally had to look at Julie. She looked at me too.

  I cleared my throat. “Where’s your class again?”

  “Gilbert. Yours?”

  “Chapman.” Right across the street from Gilbert.

  “Ah.” We kept walking. “Cold,” I remarked. “Does it snow down here?”


  “Sometimes. A little.”

  “Mm.”

  Onward we went, kicking through damp leaves under bare trees, dodging other students and their knapsacks. Total agony.

  “So you had a good Christmas?” I asked, though we had covered this at breakfast.

  “It was okay. You were right. New Mexico is pretty this time of year.”

  I tried to smile. Huge failure. I looked away.

  Chapman Hall loomed ahead. “Well,” I said. “This is me.” Me, an utter wreck, thanks to fate and to you.

  She nodded. “See you later, Daniel.” She crossed the street to Gilbert Hall, and I lost sight of her in the river of students.

  Chapter 14: Theater

  “DO YOU think anyone could take me seriously while I said, ‘You are all light, I am all shadow, how can you know what this moment means to me?’” Sinter asked. He was lying on his bed, with a slim paperback open under his hand.

  “It really all depends on the context.” I took off my coat. It was Wednesday and I had just returned from this term’s least favorite class: biology. “Any reason you ask?”

  “I’m thinking of auditioning.”

  “For what?”

  He held up the paperback so I could see its cover: Cyrano de Bergerac.

  “Think I know that one,” I said. “Bloke with the nose, right?”

  “Bloke with the nose,” Sinter confirmed.

  “Bet your parents couldn’t object to that. It’s a classic.”

  “They still think it’s gay.” He turned a page.