The Last Boy and Girl in the World (7 page)

The rain began to come down hard enough that Morgan's wipers could barely keep up. She turned them off to save gas or her battery or whatever. After that, we could barely see anything. Morgan reclined her seat as far back as it would go. The navy fabric ceiling had begun to sag away from the roof. The airy pockets looked like an upside-down circus tent. She dragged her fingertips across them and made them flutter like sea waves. The car was old. It was her father's. It was the one thing he'd left for them after taking off last year.

Morgan wasn't having fun. That much was clear from the way she'd keep sighing or checking the radar app on her phone. She wasn't the only one. My phone lit up with whiny, complain-y texts from girls in our homeroom about how bad this whole situation sucked. How over it they were. By that point, we'd been waiting for more than an hour.

So I took it upon myself to keep things fun. Keep everyone's energy up, keep us excited and primed for a good time. I took a bunch of pictures of Morgan and me and traded them with Elise and other school friends stuck in other cars in other rows of the parking lot. You really couldn't see anyone's dresses, so it was mainly us showing off our hair and makeup to each other, but it was something. There weren't many chances for people to get dressed up in Aberdeen. Basically just church, which my family didn't go to.

Next, I got everyone to tune their car stereos to the same station so we could pretend we were in the gym together. We seat-danced as best as we could for a couple of songs, but the commercials and breaking weather reports got annoying, so we eventually turned it off.

Then I spotted a feather from my down parka stuck in the daisy lace of my dress. I got Morgan to blow it back and forth across her car with me like a game of Ping-Pong. We got to six passes, but seven seemed impossible, so we quit without trying. I pulled my hands into my coat sleeves to warm them back up and tried to think of some other way to pass the time.

A big crack of lightning lit up the parking lot. Everything glistened for a second.

“I hope we'll be able to get home,” Morgan said nervously. “Also, touch up your lipstick. It's fading.”

I'd never worn something so bright, but Morgan had insisted I borrow it. I loved the color. It reminded me of the pink azalea bushes that bordered my house. There should have been blooms by then, but there weren't even any buds on the branches. The cold and rain did weird things to our spring that year. It basically never happened.

I was carefully tracing the corners of my lips when my phone dinged. Before I could check it, Morgan took it and said, “Finish what you're doing first.”

I quickly smeared the rest on. “Is it him?”

“Mmm-hmm,” she said, but handed me a tissue instead of my phone. “Now blot.”

I snatched the tissue and the phone from her, laid the tissue across my bottom lip, where it stuck, and checked the text.

Ahoy matey.

Morgan carefully peeled the tissue away while I typed back,
Arrrrrgh. Where ye be?
I pressed Send before Morgan could veto it, because I knew she'd forbid any sort of flirting done in pirate-speak.

Look out yerrrr window
.

I used my hand to wipe away a porthole in the condensation from the glass. Jesse's car occupied the next parking spot over, full of other senior guys on the soccer team. I think he had five crammed in the backseat. I couldn't tell for sure because the windows were steamed up, all except for his, which looked freshly wiped. Someone made the car rock and shake like sex. Jesse rolled his eyes like they were idiots.

I smiled sympathetically and tried not to look nervous.

He wiped the glass free of encroaching steam with his sleeve and then blinked a few times, taking me in.

Would he think the makeup looked good on me? Would he see how hard I was trying for him? A different type of trying than how I'd acted down at the river, before I'd dared to have any expectations, when I would have said anything to make him laugh. This kind of trying felt way more obvious, way more embarrassing.

Jesse smiled a crooked smile. Then he pressed his pink tongue against the glass and gave a big fat sloppy lick of the window, aimed right at me, like he was a damn golden retriever.

Before I could stop myself, I pressed my tongue to the glass too, fake-licked Jesse back, but just for a second, because Morgan pulled me away from the window, shrieking, “Eww! Keeley!”

My heart was pounding.

Morgan pulled more tissues out of her pocket pack. “Please wipe your cooties off the window!”

I was about to when Jesse texted me,
Hey, was that our first kiss?

And then
:P

I felt prickly all over. It was the flirtiest thing he'd ever said to me. I didn't need Morgan or Elise to spell it out for me.

BRB in big trouble,
I managed to write back, because Morgan was swatting me with the tissues, telling me I owed her a car wash.

He answered back,
Me too. Zito just farted.

I laughed out loud.
Eww! Kick him out of your car!

“Keeley, what's he saying?”

And let him drown in the school parking lot? What kind of crap friend do you think I am?

“Crap” is the right word,
I wrote back.
You guys are going to smell like Zito's ass smog. Keep away!

So you're not going to dance with me tonight? :(

Morgan shook me. “Don't ignore me,” she pouted.

“Okay, I'm sorry! Just give me a second!”

I was trying to work on a cool response when he texted,
Yo. I think we're gonna head back to Zito's. Send me a video of your best running man if you ever make it inside.

“Wait. What just happened?” Morgan asked. “Why are you making that face?”

I turned to her, tried to contort my mouth out of the frown. “Jesse's leaving,” I said, stunned.

She shook her head back and forth, faster than her windshield wipers on high. “No! No, no, no! Keeley! Make him stay!”

Encouraged by her confidence that this was possible, I wiped my clammy hands on my bare legs and quickly typed back,
Seriously?
When Jesse didn't reply right away, I added, desperate,
You losers just got here.

I ain't about to die in this gas chamber waiting to get into a school dance.

Thunder tumbled through the air. We were already almost an hour and a half into Spring Formal. Jesse was going to leave, and if he did, Morgan would definitely want to bail too, because she was here mostly for me tonight. We couldn't wait out here forever. Eventually they would cancel the dance.

I happened then to catch my reflection in the visor mirror. I knew there wouldn't be another chance like tonight. Jesse was a senior about to graduate and go off to who knows where. I'd heard a bunch of rumors, everything from a soccer scholarship to him moving out to California to become an actor. Our friends didn't mix with each other, and toward the end of the school year, the seniors mainly stuck together.

But mostly I felt I wouldn't ever look as beautiful as I did right then. This was my best night. Some people might be depressed by a revelation like that, but not me. I was glad I was self-aware enough to know it. That's what gave me the courage to do what I did next. The storm, and everything that happened after to Aberdeen, forced us all to be brave in different ways, over and over again.

This was the first time.

“I've got an idea.” I pounded out a text to Jesse, a few friends, and Morgan.

Her phone dinged in her hand. She read my text aloud.

Making a run for the gym at exactly 8:26 p.m. Who's in?!?

She turned to me, wide-eyed. “Okay, wait. That's not what I had in mind.”

“I think the rain's slowing up!” As I said it, another rumble of thunder cracked overhead.

“Are you crazy? If anything, it's raining harder now than before! You heard Elise. Trees are falling! People are losing power. Plus the thunder and the lightning and the water on the ground. We could be killed!”

I squeezed Morgan's leg. “Wouldn't that be a cool way to go, though?”

“Electrocuted in a puddle? That would be a terrible way to go. Like, maybe the worst, Keeley.”

We both glanced at the dashboard. The clock read 8:25 p.m. before the screen went dark, because I shut off the engine and pulled Morgan's keys out of the ignition.

She sighed. “Why are you always getting me into these situations?”

I sucked in a breath and glanced over at Morgan, wondering if that was a dig, a jab for my part in what had happened between her and Wes. But it wasn't. She was smiling as she flipped the hood of her rain poncho up and set her hands on her umbrella.

We were all good.

I pulled my hood up too and tried to tuck up the bit of dress that hung past my parka, in the hopes of keeping it protected.

“On three,” I said, and then grinned. “Three.”

“You are the worst!”

I swung out the passenger door and opened my umbrella over the frame to make an awning. But the rain was wild. It blew sideways into the car. Morgan screamed, and so did I, but it was too late for us to do anything other than get out, shut the door, and run as fast as we could for the gym.

We took off like two deer across the parking lot. The wind made my down parka ripple tight against my chest. Morgan's poncho lifted and snapped behind her like a plastic flag. I kept looking back, trying to see if Jesse and his friends had gotten out of his car, but I'd have had better luck trying to see through a waterfall.

Maybe he'd already left for Zito's.

I gripped my umbrella tight, wrestling as the wind tried to rip it out of my hands, and took careful but quick steps. Even still, there was no avoiding the puddles. I sank into a few that were ankle deep. My rain boots leaked water, rain blasted my parka from every angle.

Then, finally, I heard Jesse and his friends whooping and hollering behind us, and a couple of them chanted my name. Jesse's voice was the loudest and it sizzled inside me like a downed power line falling into one of the big fat puddles.

Teachers positioned themselves at the gym doors, flabbergasted by our stunt, shouting at us to be careful. The cars we ran past were full of people staring out of their windshields like we were crazy. It did feel crazy. We were all screaming and laughing at how absolutely crazy it was.

And then someone pulled me to a stop.

“Dance with me, Keeley!” Jesse screamed into the wind, a steady stream of water dripping off the tip of his nose. The dummy didn't have an umbrella or a coat. His white button-up was already see-through and clinging to his chest, his gray pants darkened to black up to his knees, his brown boat shoes squishing like sponges.

There was nothing goofy or comedic about his outfit. He'd dressed up for real, just like me.

I tried to pull him forward, angling my umbrella so it would cover both of us. “Come on, you lunatic! We're so close to the doors!”

But he grabbed me under the arms and lifted me up off the ground and began twirling me. The water splashed around us in hundreds of drops, liquid fireworks, because he stomped his feet so hard. A gust of wind caught my umbrella and blew it straight out of my hands. It tumbled across the parking lot until it hit the chain link fence of the athletic field.

“Keeley!” Morgan shouted from a few feet away. The wind flipped her umbrella inside out but she was still smiling, as happy as I was, before she turned and ran into the gym.

Everyone who'd made it inside filled up the doorway to watch me and Jesse, pointing and clapping as he twirled me. Cars in the parking lot honked their horns and flicked their high beams on and off.

Jesse dipped me backward like a rag doll and the rain pounded my face.

Needless to say, I was completely soaked. And I almost screamed at him to stop, to put me the hell down. But when he pulled me up from the dip, when we were nose to nose, his eyes bright and his smile so freaking big and his skin slippery and sparkling, I threw my arms around him and told him to spin me again, faster, faster, faster.

It was really happening, me and Jesse, no joke.

Saturday, May 14

EMERGENCY BROADCAST SYSTEM ALERT:
A Severe Thunderstorm Watch is now in effect, through midnight, for the following areas: Aberdeen County and the entire Waterford City Metro Area. Heavy rainfall is expected to continue through the night, with possible wind gusts up to 20 mph.

Everyone stepped aside as Jesse and I walked into the gym, applauding us as if it were our wedding reception. He and I were holding hands and laughing our asses off. The DJ immediately cranked up the volume of the music and a few girls bounded out on the floor to dance.

We had started the party. Officially.

I turned to tell Jesse that, but I slipped. Coach Dean grabbed me and saved me from falling. “Easy there, Keeley. The whole floor is wet.”