What Happened to Sophie Wilder by Christopher Beha Read Free Book Online Page A

class.”
    Â 
    When I woke the next morning, I didn’t remember much of the night, but I knew that I’d wandered back to my room alone. I was surprised to find Max asleep on the couch.
    â€œHow was the rest of your evening?” I asked when he rose to find me reading and smoking out the window.
    â€œWe did important work,” he said. “It might have come too late for our own benefit, but future generations will thank us.” He picked a crumb of dry drool from his stubbled cheek and regarded it scientifically. “The most important part is no one got hurt.”
    I laughed grimly. “You make any new friends?”
    â€œYou may have to be more specific,” he said. “They’re all friends, really. I am for those who believe in loose delights. I dance with the drinkers and drink with the dancers. Or something like that.”

    â€œYou seemed to be after one delight, in particular.”
    Now he laughed. “The confusions of young Charlie.”
    â€œWhat do you mean by that?”
    He threw off his blanket and got up from the couch, wearing only his boxer shorts. He looked around the room for his jeans, which he pulled on before taking a cigarette from their back pocket.
    â€œHow well do you know that girl Sophie?”
    â€œLike I said last night, she’s in my writing class. Why?”
    â€œWell, good luck and all. As far as I can tell, she’s a dyke.”
    He sat back down on the couch and recounted the rest of his night to me. I’d left the basement angrily and without explanation—once he said it, this sounded plausible enough—and he and his friends had stayed out. They’d resumed talking to Sophie and the other girls, and when the house went off tap, they’d all gone back to campus to smoke pot and listen to music.
    â€œNot sure whose room it was,” Max said.
    He’d hoped to hook up with Sophie, he admitted, but he wasn’t sure how to play things without a place to take her.
    â€œSo at some point, I sort of lost my shit for a second. Seemed like a second to me, but I guess it was longer, because I come to, and the music is still playing, but I’m the only one in the room, and I’m very stoned. I figure I should head back here, but I thought I’d look around a little first. Do not go gently, and all. So I give a knock on one of the bedroom doors, and I hear some rustling inside. I go ahead in, and your friend and one of the other girls are there in bed together.”
    â€œSo they went to sleep in the same bed. Girls do that.”
    â€œSo they do. And in support of your theory, the other girl was still wearing all her clothes. But Sophie was most of the way toward bare. I wouldn’t quite say they were in
flagrante , but they weren’t exactly ex flagrante , either. At any rate, it’s a good thing we didn’t come to blows over her last night, which is where you looked to be headed, because the winner would have had a catfight on his hands.”
    â€œI think you might be experiencing a bit of psychic leakage,” I told him. “Or maybe just wish fulfillment.”
    â€œThe boy is incredulous. I guess they don’t teach Plato at this school. The sexes are three, because the sun, moon, and earth are three.” He dropped his cigarette into an empty beer can at his feet and went in search of a T-shirt. “Come on,” he said. “Buy me some brunch and I’ll tell you all about the birds and the bees.”
    Â 
    I hadn’t realized before Max’s visit how much this girl, about whom I really knew nothing, had taken over my thoughts. But the realization came just as the hope of acting on it was closed off. I was angry without knowing why, my anger both unjustifiable and out of my control, and so I kept to myself for several days. I didn’t go to workshop that week. Only when the afternoon arrived at the point when we might have been walking back to campus