“So was that guy your boyfriend or something?” asks Evan later, as we’re pedaling home.
“No.”
“Maybe he wants to be,” says Lainie.
“Did he used to go out with the lifeguard?”
“You mean your girlfriend?” I tease.
“Shut up, Irene, she’s not my girlfriend,” says Evan. “And she’s outrageous. If he for-real went out with the lifeguard, there’s probably no chance that he likes you.”
It’s the truth, but it still hits like a sledgehammer.
“Irene would be the number-one girlfriend of anyone, because she makes up so many fun games,” says Lainie with such absolute confidence, I could have jumped off my bike and hugged her.
“I’d take hotness over games,” Evan answers, equally sincere.
“You’re a teenager and Starla is a teenager,” muses Lainie, “and that guy from Shady Shack is a teenager, too.”
“Yep.”
“I can’t wait to be a teenager,” Lainie bursts out in a fit of passion.
“I’ll be thirteen in one year, nineteen weeks, and two days,” says Evan. “But you won’t be a teenager for a long, long time, crybaby Lainie.”
Lainie presses her lips together in a colossal effort not to weep from the unfairness of it all. It makes me feel sorry for her, especially since I remember the Teenager Countdown like it was yesterday.
“C’mon, Lainie,” I say. “Race ya to the stop sign.”
Intrigue
THAT AFTERNOON, I ask Judith to let me off in town at Organic Fields.
“You sure you want to walk home from here?” she asks. “It’s kind of a trek. Longer than from the library.”
“It’s no problem. I’ve done it a thousand times,” I lie.
“I’ll wait in the parking lot and take you home if you want,” she persists. “Door-to-door service. Can’t beat that.”
But I shake my head. I’m already embarrassed that Judith is dropping me here, since I’m sure it will open up another Prior family debate about how Roy’s departure has caused Mom to unravel to the heartbreaking point where I’m now in charge of feeding us.
Because Mom isn’t unraveling. She’s just sad. That’s why I want to make her a special dinner.
At Organic Fields, I get half a pound of Gruyère cheese plus fresh bakery bread for gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches. I poke around for the greenest, firmest bunch of asparagus, and I ask for a close-up on three different apple tarts, Mom’s favorite dessert. This is a noble gesture on my part since I am more of a chocolate person. I pay with my Food Chicken money. Guilt money, as I’ve come to think of it. Best to spend it on a good cause.
At home, I set the table with the blue willow plates that we rarely use, and I write out two little menus, using my calligraphy kit to make the presentation look more restaurantish. Then I yank up a healthy bunch of dandelions growing outside by the stoop and I set them in a pewter beer stein. It doesn’t look too elegant, but “A weed is a plant whose virtues have not been discovered,” I remind myself with one of my favorite Bartlett’s.
The phone rings just as I’m forklifting the asparagus out of the steamer.
“Bella and Marianne and some of the other girls all want to do a ladies’ poker night.” Mom’s voice is more cheerful than I’ve heard in days. “So I’m gonna tag along with them. Can you handle your own dinner?”
I look at the table. “I was going to make us special grilled cheeses. And I bought an apple tart.”
“Oh, honey.” Then, silence. She wants me to let her off the hook.
“I guess you can have the tart for breakfast, though.”
Her relief is audible in her exhale. “That sounds great. And we might go to Smokes after. I’ll be late, so please don’t call the police to find out about road accidents.”
“I won’t.”
“And put yourself to bed at a reasonable hour. Hey, and honey?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for thinking of me, okay?”
“Sure.” After I hang up, I skip the grilled cheese and eat an all-asparagus dinner as I read my book. Even inside her insane asylum madness, Nicole Diver’s beautiful hair makes my fingers itch. Where-where-where is that notebook? It has to be in my room.
Has to be.
I jump up from the table, full of renewed searching vigor.
In my room, I paw though boxes, toss things from my closet, yank the folders out of my hanging file. I look in ridiculous places, too—my Paul Pelicano envelope and in my underwear drawer and behind my shoe tree. Every second that I can’t find it, it’s harder for me to stay calm.
When I’m all out of places, I stand there in the middle of my ransacked room, my hands gripping my head, my face and armpits sweaty and angry.
Then a sudden, prickly apprehension hits me with such force that I can’t move.
Somebody is outside.
My feet are glued to my rug. Without moving my head, I switch my gaze to my window, into the purplish twilight darkness that soon will be black. Now I can just make out the yew hedge that divides our house from the Binkley property. I stare, paralyzed and unblinking. My eyes adjust to pick out the boxy edge of the Binkleys’ station wagon and their rooster weather vane with the broken-off rooster beak.
There, a car is parked out at the edge of our lawn.
Slowly, I sink to all fours and crawl, inch by inch, to the wall light switch. I reach up and snap off my bedroom light. In the dark, I squat on my haunches. My nose itches but I don’t dare to scratch. There’s no sound except for the steady chirrup of crickets.
Then, from the kitchen door, a knock. My heart leaps. But burglars wouldn’t knock first, would they? In a plunge of reckless bravery, I race to the kitchen, and through the window I see the shadowy outline of Drew Fuller. He is standing on the steps outside the kitchen door. He knocks again. I duck again. Oh my God. How can I let him see me like this, so damp and flustered?
“One second!” I yell. Quickly, I scurry to the bathroom, where I click on Mom’s makeup mirror. I splash cold water on my cheeks, then find a tube of crusty mascara and apply a coat. I work some Vaseline over my lips, and I fluff out my hopelessly non-heroine hair.
Then I stroll to the kitchen door, breezily snapping on lights. When he sees me through the window, Drew smiles and mouths, “Hi.”
I open the door. “Hey, what’s up?”
He holds up a copy of
On the Road
. “You’ll blast through this,” he says. “One of those ‘seize the day’ kinda books? Makes you feel like you can do anything. Me, anyway.” He’s wearing faded jeans and a white T-shirt. His tan looks extra dark, his hair extra shiny in the kitchen light. I hope my blasé expression is working as I take the book.
“Thanks.”
“Since I was driving through the neighborhood already and the book was already in the car, I thought I’d see if I remembered where you live, and then, if I passed the test and got the house right, I’d say hey and give it to you. To keep. Actually, I’ve got to go pick up my brother Jake at work. He’s older, we share the car so that I’m Tuesday and Thursday, he’s the other days, and I only have a junior license anyhow, so he gets to drive more, and I’m kinda running late as it is.” Drew is speaking fast and slightly out of breath. “It was an impulse thing,” he finishes.
“Oh.” I step aside to let him in. “Do you want anything? Like, water or—I have apple tart. Gourmet.” I regret the offer immediately, it seems desperate, like I’m trying to seduce Drew Fuller with my private stash of high-end food.
“No, thanks. Jake’s not so chill about waiting.” Drew frowns as he stares at me. “There’s all these black crumbs on your eyelashes.”
“Oh, that.” My cheeks re-blush. “My mom was trying out makeup products on me. She owns a beauty parlor.”
“I know,” says Drew. “I remember back when you were in fifth grade, you got your mom to put red stripes in your hair for Halloween. In the library, girls kept coming up to you, asking about it.”
I’d forgotten that. “I was Raggedy Ann.”
“Uh-huh. It looked wild,” says Drew. “Good wild, I mean.” There is something about the way he is staring at me that makes me feel as if he’d stared at me back then, too. I imagine myself, lovely and oblivious, sitting at one of the round, blonde-wood library tables, dragging a hand through my red streaky hair as Drew watched me from afar in a quiet agony of longing.
He shifts from foot to foot. “So . . . ,” he says.
“So.”
“Yeah, it’s a good book.”
“Oh, right. Thanks . . .”
My voice stops as Drew’s fingers reach up suddenly and brush against the outer corner of my eye. I am so startled, I go still. All I feel are his fingertips, friendly, warm, slightly callused. In the back of my head, I hear Starla.
When you let someone do things to you, and he has all this information
. . . But in the thrill of the moment, I push the voice away as Drew drops his fingers to hold my shoulder, his other hand cupping my chin as he lifts it, and in a movement as clear and graceful as anything I’ve read in any Epic romance, but ten times better because it’s happening for real, in my real, true life, Drew leans down and kisses me. His lips meet mine and push, his mouth is open, dry, and when my own mouth opens in half-surprise, half-response, his front teeth click against mine. The reverberation spirals up inside my head and changes everything.
Then we’re just staring at each other, and through my surprise I wonder if that was such a good idea. Isn’t there supposed to be more that happens before the kiss—like going to a party or the movies, or at least one deep and meaningful conversation about Life, just so that you know you’ve got a couple of important things in common?
Unless Drew kissed me to get back at Starla. Oh, no. Maybe I’m just a rebound kiss.
“Why’d you do that?” The question is a toad jumping out of my mouth. Starla would never have made such a mood-kill comment.
“Sorry,” Drew answers. “I dunno. I better get going,” He looks shy.
“I didn’t mind,” I say quickly.
“Okay.” Now he looks mortified. “See you tomorrow?”
“I guess.”
Drew pushes open the door, then turns back. “Another impulse thing, I guess. Okay?”
“Sure.” He must read something that’s better than okay on my face. When he smiles, his eyes twinkle like green glass, as he lets himself out and shuts the door behind. I listen to his feet drumming down the steps, then crunching the gravel. Then I listen to his car drive off. After a few minutes, I open the door and breathe in the warm summer air, which for once doesn’t feel too close and steamy, but fragrant and delicious.
Then I run back to the bathroom to examine myself in the mirror, to see if the imprint of Drew’s kiss has made me look any different.
The Irene who looks back at me is definitely someone new, the object of somebody else’s fascination. I picture myself in my Halloween streaks, and I shake my head from side to side, letting the ends of my hair brush back and forth against my collarbone. I add some more Vaseline to my lips, smooth my eyebrows, and I tip my face up to an invisible Drew, reliving his kiss in slow motion. The longer I look, the more the image of my reflected self seems secretly tantalizing. Even if Drew had called it an impulse thing, he must have planned it just a little bit. Maybe he’d even been wanting to kiss me since I was in fifth grade, before a kiss from Drew Fuller was even a thought in my head.
Well. I am thinking about it now.
Preoccupations, New and Old
THE DEAFENING ORCHESTRAL
Soundtrack of My Life
makes sleep impossible. After more than an hour of flipping around and kicking at my sheet, I get out of bed and log on to Starla’s journal.
STARLAMALLOY ’S JOURNAL
Today I Learned that my Witness is a Traiter. My Witness has been Holding Secret Meetings with D, where they Talk Secretly and Make Plans.
Witness, if you are Reading this, I Spit on You.
Once Betrayed
This Heart You Frayed
Betrayed Twice
This Heart You Slice
If a bad poem makes you feel rotten, does that mean that on some level, it’s good?
For the hundredth time, I reach for Drew’s copy of
On the Road,
which I’d placed on my bedside table. I flip through its soft pages, then bring it to my nose and sniff. I spread my fingers over the pulpy paper, imagining Drew’s sun-browned hands on my shoulder again. The book makes me jittery, as if Drew himself is standing in my bedroom.
Sister’s e-mail is dull. Little scrips and scraps of her day. She goes on too much about the weather and politics. I can read between the lines that she is sad about Sister Maria Martinez. She doesn’t even ask how I am enjoying
Tender Is the Night
. Not that I have been able to concentrate on a single word of the story since Drew left.
I move on to Whitney.
Attention Delinquent!
This means you Irene Morse! Guess what ? Five sentences do
not make a letter. Can I remind you that you pulled this same silent treatment trick on me last summer when my parents took me to England for three weeks? Let me refresh your memory. First you made a big dumb point of reading like nine thousand books by British authors so that you knew thirty thousand things about the U.K.—just to show that the less-deserving person was the one who got the plane ticket. Then from the day I left it was nothing but radio silence from the USA. In the beginning I figured Dad’s international cell was just one of his dud “I-got-a-deal-on-a” deals. Next I decided my e-mails must be collapsing on a giant technical glitch midway across the ocean. Finally I decided (hoped!) you were going back to ye olde days of paper and doodles like those notes we passed in Phonics and I got all repsyched thinking about the four or five via airmailed letters I’d be getting all at once.