Swoon at Your Own Risk (5 page)

He's probably afraid it would end up in the newspapers, forever tainting his political legacy like that Kennedy guy who crashed with a girl on a bridge way back when.

Another driver beeps his horn, swerving quickly into the other lane. "Polly? Please."

"Okay, fine. But no peppermint gum."

Next to me Hayden lets out a way too dramatic sigh of relief. "What was that about gum?"

"Nothing."

He walks to the passenger side of the car to open the door for me, but I brush him away. "I can open the door for myself, thank you."

Hayden's car smells new even though it's two years old. He turns on the engine, holds his hands in the correct ten and two o'clock position, waiting for a break in traffic. I realize that I smell like dust and exhaust fumes. Maybe walking home was a stupid idea. Hayden signals, checks over his shoulder twice, and pulls on to the highway.

As we pull in to my driveway, Hayden reads his odometer. "Eight miles."

Sitting in the dark, I calculate that it might have taken me two hours to walk home.

Hayden pops several pieces of gum into his mouth at once and chews them:
chomp, chomp, chomp
. His hands go back to gripping the steering wheel.

"Um, so, yeah, eight miles. Guess I should say thanks. For
the ride. It's getting so late that if you hadn't come along a vampire might have gotten me or something."

He doesn't laugh.

"Polly, look. Having a fight with Jane doesn't justify harming yourself. Am I glad that I saw you on the road? Yes. Because I feel fairly certain I prevented you from coming to harm, with possibly fatal consequences. But I'm also tremendously disappointed. You're a smart young woman, Polly. But the lack of judgment you've displayed tonight, well..."

"Oh God, Hayden. Give me a break. It's not that dire."

"Let me finish."

"Fine."

"Well, it's just that I'm concerned that you lack the judgment required to serve responsibly on the student council."

"As in planning the senior prom?"

"Our budget is more than most couples spend on their weddings."

The front porch light blinks on, and I see Grace's face in the front window. Why isn't she at Amy's house? Mom can't keep leaving her alone—she's only ten years old!

I open the car door a crack, and the overhead lights blink on. As I open my mouth to mumble another apologetic thank-you, I notice the vein pulsing on Hayden's temple. "Hey, don't stress," I say. "Everything turned out fine."

Hayden turns away, shrugging. "That was completely reckless."

I reach out to touch his shoulder, but pull my hand back as he faces me again. He looks as pissed off as when his favorite city council candidate lost the primary.

"Don't worry. We'll still have the best prom ever."

"Yeah, okay. But that's not—"

Grace watches from behind the curtains. Poor kid. "Look, I've gotta go. Thanks again for the ride and everything."

As I step out of the car, Hayden grabs my hand. "Don't do that again..."

His expression is way more intense than it is even when he's taking an essay exam, studying chemistry formulas, or trying to convince me to agree with some obscure ballot measure.

"Yeah, okay." I rub the goose bumps on my arms. "So ... Okay, bye!" I jump out and run toward my house, forgetting to close the car door.

Oh God. I'm a mess. Grandma will be here in just seventy-two hours. Let Operation Rescue Me from Myself begin.

Dear Miss Swoon:
My girlfriend and I agree on almost everything. Mushrooms don't belong on pizza. Squeeze the toothpaste from the
top. Vacations mean sunshine. But we disagree about politics. Can an elephant live with a donkey?
—Political Uproar

Dear Political:
I'm not sure I can deliver a speedy solution. You can't brush away these kinds of problems. But they will rain on your paradise. Looks like you need to talk more, argue less.
—Miss Swoon

Not Shakespeare's Sonnet!
Blond Count: 0.5 (a fifth-grader felt me up) HOOK-UPdates:

• Confirmation that Kipper Carlyle shared her lip-gloss with a certain football player at last Saturday night's bonfire.

• Precocious Lass
invented
the bikini incident (see
Swimming With Skanks
here). Watch out, honey; you're not in junior high anymore. You're playing with the big girls now.

• Polly Martin, you're not as dumb as you like people to think you are. Maybe you can give us lessons on how to get a hot guy to read your butt like Braille in order to score cushy, non-gropefest work assignments?

It's only six in the morning, on a Saturday, in the summer, but I'm thinking positive. Moving into Grace's room gives me the opportunity to purge unpleasant memories. I'm going to eliminate everything that reminds me of junior year: photos, newspaper clippings, school assignments, gifts from various ex-boyfriends, and a significant portion of my wardrobe. Why did I have to wear my blue hoodie around so many guys? I put it in the giveaway pile, along with a pair of PJs in which I'd had a
way
too vivid dream about Gareth.

I roll a Matchbox car back and forth across the carpet. Kurt stuck it in my locker with a ticket to a stock car race. And even though I hated all the roaring engines and the fumes in the air, I loved sitting in the stands listening to Kurt talk about different engine parts. Okay, so automotive technology completely
bores me, but Kurt looked so cute and passionate. And he had complete knowledge of various kissing skills. If only he hadn't wanted our entire relationship to go from zero to sixty quite so soon, things might have worked out. I roll the car over to my trash can.
Clink.
I make an explosion sound deep in the back of my throat.

"And relationship number one crashes in an inferno—okay, wrong word." I crawl over and
thunk
the car into the trash can. "It crashes and dies when he calls me frigid for not wanting to go all the way after the Homecoming dance."

That and he didn't approve of the way I let my car go too long between oil changes. (Given my engine's age and my driving habits, every five thousand miles
is
entirely acceptable. Ask any expert.) But I'm done with automotive maintenance now, no matter what my check-engine light says. I pull several glossy copies of
Road & Track
magazine out from under my bed. I subscribed (which
did
benefit Grace's school) so I could whisper sweet automotive nothings to Kurt. Instead we argued about the new Audi's front/rear torque split.

Mom peeks into my room. "Nice to see you making so much progress," she says. "Maybe you'll inspire me to go through my room. Or my office or my classroom ... or my brain!" She laughs. "You have no idea how hard it is to memorize the names and ingredients of twenty different hamburgers. And I thought my master's thesis was difficult!"

"Whatever, Mom. Maybe just make sure those bills are paid?"

"Oh, look who's grumpy." Mom walks into my room and sits down on my bed, messing up my neat piles of un-ex-contaminated T-shirts. "Grace says that Hayden drove you home last night? Does that—?"

"No."

"So, you haven't rekindled?"

"Absolutely not."

"Oh, I thought maybe that's what inspired you to get rid of Car's—I mean, Kurt's—"

I shoot her a
don't-even-go-there
look. Mom saw my six-week relationship with Kurt as an opportunity to polish up all her automotive jokes. The low point: knock, knock. Who's there? Cargo. Cargo who? Cargo beep beep. She said it every time he honked for me in the driveway.

"No. I'm getting rid of it all. But I'm going in order. And I only let Hayden give me a ride home because Jane was acting completely selfish and immature." I find the Homecoming dance photo in the pile, but just as I'm about to rip it up, Mom snatches it from my hands.

"You looked so pretty that night, in racecar red." Mom laughs. "Zoom, zoom."

"Yeah, well." She has
no
idea! It was more like stoplight red.

"Don't rip up the photos. You'll want these memories someday."

"Uh, no. I won't. Why would I want to relive the pain and agony?"

Mom looks at her hands. "It won't seem so painful in the future, honey."

"Oh. So, explain to me again why you bashed your golf clubs against the driveway until they bent like paper clips?"

"That's different. I only took up golf because of your father—seeing those clubs made my stomach turn every time I pulled my car in to the garage."

I wave a newspaper clipping in front of her face. "Well, this brings back bad memories for me." Sawyer took me to the state basketball championships, and our picture ended up on the front page of the newspaper, plus the reporter interviewed us—but only quoted
me
in the article. Maybe Sawyer shouldn't have used a hockey reference while talking about basketball! He totally overreacted.

"Hey, you sounded so intelligent in that article! And you look adorable." Mom grabs the clipping from my hand, reaching down to scoop the rest of the detritus into her arms. "Why don't you just let me keep these away from you?" She smiles. "I mean
for
you—for a few years?"

"How about a few centuries, millennia, eons..." I shake my head. "Mom, the last thing you need shoved in your closet is—"

"You leave my closet to me, okay?"

"You and the health department." Mom crams her closet with all kinds of papers and boxes of old crap—pretty much everything except clothes. She keeps those in the middle of her floor. She's been on a laundry-folding strike since the divorce seven years ago.

"Very funny.
Not!
" Mom cackles at her own stupid joke, but at least she leaves me alone.

I sift through my school papers and toss them into the trash.
Take that, Gareth! I'm not going to recycle.
I find a trail map from the spring break trip and crush it into a ball. I spent six months of baby-sitting money on all that outdoorsy clothing—and those pricey boots still gave me blisters. I pluck
The Guide to Western Wildflowers
off my shelf. Who cares about the difference between golden pea and lupine? All those weedy plants inflamed my allergies. I toss the book next to my blue hoodie. Let some other fool memorize wildflowers to impress a guy.

The only thing I keep is a piece of ripped-out notebook paper that has a hand-drawn smiley sun above the word
you.
Sawyer passed it to me in class on a snowy day right after our first official date. It had made me feel he liked me for
me
and not just for liking the same stuff he did. (For the record, I didn't start watching ESPN with Sawyer; I used to watch it with my dad. Mom and Grace just don't remember.)

Two hours later a Tibetan monk could have moved into my room—if he had a thing for pink curtains, floral wallpaper, and rock posters. Ex-ex-ex-ex Jack listened to every single one of those bands, and since we spent a lot of time at the mall's music store, I ended up with quite a few mementos. I like Linkin Park.
Not!
(That's for you, Mom.)

I walk another armload of stuff into Grace's room; she doesn't have any space for more posters on her walls. I'll be living among puppies, kittens, and horsies, all espousing logic that sounds remarkably similar to the stuff Grandma writes in her columns. I'm all for it—how can I go wrong with the advice to
hang in there
scripted above an adorable kitten? I especially love the "Back Off If You Know What's Good for You" poster of a spiky little hedgehog. I look around Grace's floor; that might be the only stuffed animal species she
doesn't
have. My move to Grace's room is displacing an entire phylum of
critters that used to live on the spare bed. I toss an armful of Webimals off my bed.

"But these meat eaters can't live with the plant eaters," Grace says, holding up a stuffed moose, a deer, and a skunk. "You're ruining my system!"

I shove a fluffy blond doggy the color of Sawyer's hair onto the floor. "Well, I'm not sleeping with that! I didn't before and I'm not going to now."

I still get twitchy when I think about how I attempted to push things forward with Sawyer in
that
way only to avoid talking about difficult subjects. Talking = bad. Making out = good. Besides, how could sharing my feelings with Sawyer make my mom less depressed? Or stop my dad from dating a series of interchangeable Bank Teller Barbies?

I glance at Grace's bunny poster:
Just Relax
. I take a deep breath, close my eyes. Good advice. Early morning sunlight streams through the window, warming my face. And then I hear that zipper sound.

Gliding down the street on his skateboard: Xander Cooper. His body leans into the curves, so graceful. He's not wearing a shirt, and I stand in the window gawking at his smooth dark skin. Muscles. I don't move a single one of my muscles. I don't care that he can probably see me if I can see him, but he doesn't
look up. He takes wide turns across the steepest part of the hill, effortless. After he passes the window, T-shirt hanging from the back pocket of his pants, I close my eyes again, listening to the sound of his wheels unzipping the asphalt.

Grandma will be here in how many hours?

"Why is your face all red?" Grace looks up from redistributing her sea animals under her bed, which has now become the "ocean zone."

"What? It's not." I shove the handful of underwear I'm holding into my shirt drawer. I'll sort it out later: the skateboarder and the tees. Not that I'm a
tease.
Jack was so wrong about that. I hung out at the mall playing video games because I was interested in improving my hand-eye coordination, not just to see him. It's not like playing video games together is the same as actually dating, even if you do end up fooling around a bit. He really doesn't count; I was simply confused after breaking up with Kurt. Plus, I could walk to the mall from my house and avoid driving my car, which, you know, reminded me of Kurt. I only played for like three weeks—long enough to get the high score on Donkey Kong. And win a series of posts on Sonnet Silverman's blog: Polly Martin Scores Again (and Again) (and Again).