“Only if you keep up the maintenance,” Keke said. She parked the Datsun in the street because Brandon’s driveway was too small for two cars. “Flirt hard.”
I turned to Lila for verification. She shrugged. “We’re just saying.”
This was not exactly the pep talk I needed. But Brandon had already stopped scrubbing and turned his muscled trunk toward us, wondering who might emerge from the somewhat crusty Datsun 280z. I gave myself one last glance in the side mirror. It seemed my makeup was still caked nicely over the bruise. But I got only a glimpse. I didn’t want Brandon to catch me looking at myself, like I cared too much. From my angle stepping out of the car, most of my face was hidden by the words OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR.
“Hey, baby!” I called.
“Hey!” he called back, and he did not glance ever so briefly at Stephanie Wetzel’s house. I did not see that. Keke had put that idea in my head, and how could I tell anyway, with the bright sunlight glinting off his pecs?
I walked toward him. He threw his soapy sponge onto the hood and met me halfway, just like he was supposed to. He wrapped me in his muscular arms, squeezed me, and let me go, running his damp hand down my arm.
I said, “We were just on our way to the swim meet” (and took a detour several miles out of our way) “and I stopped by to tell you I had a wreck last night!”
His eyebrows shot up. “With Doug?”
Someone had told him about Doug and me in the emergency room! Only . . . if that were true, Brandon wouldn’t have been rubbing his thumb back and forth across my forearm. Maybe he’d heard a less incriminating version of the story, and I could still pass the whole incident off as what it was: lust induced by brain damage. I punched him playfully in the shoulder. “You heard already and you didn’t call me!”
He stared at me for a moment with his mouth open. “I didn’t hear you were in a wreck. I heard Doug was in a wreck.” Now he looked over the top of my head, toward Stephanie Wetzel’s house. This was not my imagination.
It crossed my mind that he was lying about something. I knew he lied. He’d lied to every single girl he’d had sex with over the summer. But I was the one he told about the lies. I wasn’t the one he lied to. Of course, that meant I wouldn’t know what he acted like to the girl when he was lying to her. He might very well be lying now.
No, I was just paranoid about everything today. Because of our history, Brandon’s relationship with me was different. We were good friends, and we could trust each other. I saw there was more to him than beachy-clean good looks and a buff body. I told him about swerving to miss the deer and hitting Mike and Doug.
While I talked, he continued to stare toward Stephanie’s house. I thought he wasn’t paying attention to me. He verified this by asking, “So, you’re not mad about last night?”
He didn’t seem very concerned about my wreck. He hadn’t lifted my bangs to peer at my bruise. But he must have reasoned I couldn’t be too bad off if I was here, talking to him. Right?
Then I realized he was unwittingly about to tell me what happened last night. I asked carefully, “Mad? Should I be?”
“Definitely not.” He frowned down at me, blue eyes looking straight into my eyes. “I told you not to come to the party.”
“You did,” I agreed. That much I remembered.
“I missed you, though.”
I heaved a satisfied sigh. He hadn’t told me what I’d been up to last night. But he had told me what I hadn’t been up to. If he’d missed me, we hadn’t spent a lot of time together. Probably we’d had a big argument about me crashing his man-party.
“You could make it up to me,” I said, stepping closer to him again. My flip-flop was inside his big bare foot, my thigh inside his thigh. My neck hurt, standing this close to him and looking up—which reminded me of doing the same thing last night at the football game with Doug.
WRONG ANSWER.
“I want to see you,” I said quickly. By see you I meant get down and dirty with you in the back of the Buick. Or whatever car was handy. He stared blankly at me, so I wasn’t sure he got it. I clarified, “I want an encore of Monday night. But I’m still feeling a little dizzy from the wreck. I don’t think I should drive tonight. Could you borrow a car and come see me after the swim team gets back from the meet? We could go to the beach park again. Shirt optional.” I giggled as I slid my fingers across his chest. I noticed the fingernail polish was smeared on my pinkie.
“Mmmmm,” he said. At first this seemed like a purr of approval at my touch. But no, it was a rejection of the encore idea. “My parents are going out in their car.” And not a single one of my hundred friends on the football team can lend me his wheels. Say it!
“How about tomorrow?” I persisted. “I’m sure I’ll feel better by then, and I can drive us in my dad’s Benz.”
He looked toward his house. “Tomorrow’s a school night. I have to study. My parents have been on my shit about my grades. I already flunked an algebra test.”
It seemed to me that he could go out with me tomorrow night if he studied now rather than sudsing a broken Buick. But Lord knew parents were weird. I didn’t want Brandon’s parents to think I was pushy because I’d forced the issue. “Then maybe you could come to my swim meet on Wednesday at six?”
“Mmmmm,” he said.
“School night?” I asked. It came out bitter and I could have kicked myself.
“School night,” he agreed.
“Could you catch up on your studying before then, since you have so much time to plan for it?”
“Mmmmm,” he said.
At this point I think I was about to tell him to stuff it. But that would be crazy. Brandon was my friend. He had legitimate issues with seeing me. He was not screwing me over. He would not do that to me.
“Yeah, maybe I could make that,” he finally grumbled. “I know it’s important to you.”
“And maybe I could take you out after? I’ll let you drive the Benz.” I was under strict orders from my dad not to let anyone drive the Benz. Too bad. He should have installed an onboard ClydeCam. This was important.
“I’ll try.” Brandon put his heavy arm around me. His skin was warm from the sun. He had put his arm around me a lot during the summer, inducing friendly tingles. Though I didn’t want to be his girlfriend back then, he was hotness incarnate, and I loved it when he touched me. Now that I was his girlfriend, I should have felt positively giddy with his arm around me, a little taste of the next time we went parking.
Instead, I felt the slightest bit nauseated, like on Monday night. This was because our relationship was so new, and sex was so new to me. I would work on this.
Never mind. He gripped my hand in his big hand and popped my knuckles one by one. When he’d tried to do this during the summer, I’d squealed and jerked my hand away. Now I should have let him do it because feeling so vulnerable, I welcomed any show of affection from him. But with the dizziness and the headache, I simply couldn’t stand him popping my knuckles. I pulled away and was surprised at how easily my hand slipped out of his.
6
“Tardy!” Ian hollered as I stepped through the sliding door onto the swim team van. Other boys chuckled and echoed, “Tardy!”
“I have a minute to spare.” I checked my watch to verify this, then laughed like I didn’t care. Part of my job as team captain was surveying and closing up the women’s locker room before we left. Keke had offered to take over for me today, but I didn’t want Coach or the team to think I was down for the count, which would be bad for morale. I made sure the faucets in the locker room were turned off and the heavy doors were locked. Naturally I was the last one out.
But after the whole hullabaloo with the team complaining that Doug was tardy, and me telling Coach yesterday, and Doug dissing me at the game last night, and me turning down Doug for a date this morning, the likes of which you did not see around here every day, I did not need a tardy joke erupting every time I made an appearance, like those pop-up
prompts suggesting keyboard shortcuts whenever I sent an email. Zoey’s here = tardy joke. The tardy joke would remind Doug ten times a day that he was mad at me. Of course, I didn’t expect him to be on the van now, but he’d show up at school in a few days to a chorus of tardy jokes. I shivered at the very thought of those cold green eyes burning a hole through me.
I shrugged it off and rolled the van door shut behind me. I just wanted to blend in, sink into a seat on the van, and play my electronic sudoku for the forty-minute drive to Panama City. I scanned the van for an empty place. Usually there was just enough room for all of us. I got along with everyone, so being the last one on the bus wouldn’t be a problem unless I was stuck next to Stephanie Wetzel—whom I had no real reason to dislike, I reminded myself. She lived across the street from Brandon. It made perfect sense for her to give him rides.
Seventeen of us plus Coach in the driver’s seat filled the van. A Zoey-shaped space should have remained on the second or third bench. Today the first three rows were packed—more than packed, with girls sitting on top of boys and giggling about it. The backseat was empty. There must be something wrong with the seat to drive people away. Something dark and dirty. I peeked over the third row to find out what the problem was.
Doug.
He stretched across the entire seat, asleep. His leg in the splint was propped up on his backpack. His crutches lay on the floor beside him.
To allow him to have the whole seat, the team must have figured it had taken a lot for him to drag himself to school for the trip when he couldn’t compete. Or they were shocked senseless by this show of team spirit from him.
Or they were afraid for him. Lila shrieked as Mike tickled her. Doug didn’t flinch at the noise. His face was smooth, slack, his eyes hidden beneath heavy lids and long black lashes.
Had anyone checked his vital signs?
Doug was not dead. Doug had not overdosed. If he were that bad off, he wouldn’t retain the muscle tone to clutch the prescription pill bottle in one hand. This was what I told myself so my teammates couldn’t see that my heart strained in my chest and I was back in my mother’s bedroom, trying to fix everything. I slipped off my backpack, crouched near Doug in the aisle, and tilted my head to read the label on the bottle.
“Touch my Percocet and you’re dead.”
I started at the rumble of his voice. His bright eyes pinned me to the floor.
And then I found my legs and escaped back up the aisle, hurrying before Coach started the van. The argument with Doug this morning was too fresh. I didn’t want to continue the same argument all the way to Panama City, trapped in the backseat with him.
I stepped around Gabriel sprawled across an armrest and reached Coach in the driver’s seat. Coach examined a map of the area even though he’d grown up here and had probably driven to Panama City one billion times. Ian had snagged the seat next to Coach, but he had earbuds in so he couldn’t hear me. I bent to whisper in Coach’s ear, “Doug shouldn’t be here.”
“He should be here. He should not be broken . Next time, hit the deer.” Coach gazed up at me and used one finger to brush my bangs away from my forehead. Apparently I hadn’t done as good a job with my makeup as I’d thought. Or he could see things Brandon couldn’t. “You shouldn’t be here either.”
“Yes, I should.” I needed to find out where I had been last night. Anyway, even on a healthy day my biggest contributions to the team were cheerleading and keeping records, and I could do that with a concussion. Probably.
He shrugged. “We need to get going. Roll Fox out the door into the street if you want to, but you take responsibility for that. I don’t want to meet his padre in a dark alley down by the waterfront.” He threw the map at Ian, who jumped out of his music-induced trance and spilled his Gatorade. Coach started the engine.
I had no choice. Knowing Coach’s driving, if I stood my ground I’d go through the windshield, taking out another rearview mirror. “While I’m up here, I’d like to say something to the team about the party we went to last night. So don’t drive until I’m done, okay?” I bent down and looked Coach in the eye to make sure he’d heard me.
He eyed me right back. “What kind of party? Were there bad things going on at this party?”
Beats me. “I assume.”
“I don’t want to hear about it.”
“Cover your ears.” After Coach had gamely covered his ears with his hands and relaxed against the driver’s seat for the duration, I called out to the van in general, “May I have your attention, please.”
“Speeeeech,” said several boys.
“Right,” I said. “I just want to thank all of you for going to the party with me last night.”
I paused, waiting for the comments under boys’ breath that would give me hints about what really happened. For once, the van was silent. Every member of the team (except Doug) gazed at me, rapt, waiting for me to continue.
“It was such a memorable party,” I ventured.
They stared at me, unblinking, chewing their cud like deer.
“Though it didn’t end well,” I finished.
“The van’s about to wreck!” Connor yelled. “Quick, Doug, save me!”
“Doug, the van’s exploding! Carry meeeeee!” pealed more boys. Doug’s hand popped up from behind the last seat back, giving them all the bird.
I had lost their attention. “Anyway, thanks for going to the party with me.” So much for finding out what had happened. I pulled one of Coach’s hands away from his ear. “The coast is clear.” I turned and made my way down the narrow passage between the door and the seats, holding on tightly to each seat back as I went. Coach was not the safest driver. Sure enough, he swung around the high school sign at full speed and erked to a stop just short of the highway through town, tossing everything on the van to the left, including me. My grip on the seat back slipped, and my bruised ribs found out just how solid the edge of the seat back was. “Fuck!”
“What did you say?” screamed Keke and Lila.
“Zoey!” squealed the junior girls.
“First tardy, now this,” mumbled assorted boys.
“I beg your pardon.” I rounded the last seat back to face Doug.
“Language,” he said with one eyebrow raised. “I’ve never heard you cuss before.”
“You’re a bad influence.”
“Fucking A.”
With growing suspicion that I was stuck here with him for the whole trip, I tried to lighten the mood. “Must be the brain damage.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this morning? That explains everything.” I should have known he’d come up with a nasty one-liner. Or two. “I think the brain damage actually happened Monday night, when you did it with Brandon.”
I knew he was in pain, but this was too much. He couldn’t insult what I had with Brandon. I tried to stomp my foot in the aisle in frustration, but my flip-flop stuck to the floor seasoned with a decade’s worth of spilled Coke. “Bitter much?”
“Oooooh,” said Connor and Nate, leaning over the seat back to watch us, like they were a couple of deer watching the road. Slowly they sank down, and Doug and I were alone again. Relatively speaking.
But Doug had closed his eyes. I was dismissed.
I watched him for a few seconds more. Then I gazed at the floor. Dared I sit down there? The corrugated rubber for traction showed darker stains with scraps of paper and grains of sand embedded in them, which meant double-sticky with unknown substance. Coke was optimistic. But it wasn’t the sticky that turned me off so much. It was my teammates watching me sit in sticky. Down on the floor, below them, like a nut job. Because Doug Fox wouldn’t move over for me.
“Doug,” I said. “Scoot. You can’t take up a whole seat.”
“Yes, I can,” he said without opening his eyes. “My leg is swollen and I’m supposed to keep it elevated. Head or feet? Pick one.”
I looked doubtfully at his splint and his free foot, both of which seemed reasonably clean. His battered flip-flop must be
somewhere on the floor. Again, I wouldn’t mind having his feet in my lap so much. It was the idea of other people seeing his feet in my lap. A sane girl with high self-esteem wouldn’t allow this to happen.
But I hadn’t forgotten the strange way Brandon may or may not have acted when he mentioned Doug in the wreck. Did he suspect Doug and I had gotten lovey-dovey in the ER? Was he jealous? If I held Doug’s head in my lap for forty miles, Brandon would find out.
The van braked hard.
Every girl screamed. I caught the seat back with both hands so I wouldn’t fly up the aisle. Doug wasn’t as lucky. The length of his body hit the seat back all at once, and he fell onto the floor on top of his crutches.
“Coach!” everyone yelled.
“Damn deer in the road,” Coach yelled. Actually we were at a stoplight.
“Point taken,” I hollered. “Enough already.” I slid across the seat and held out a hand to help Doug, who eased up from the floor. “Are you okay?”
“Thank God for Percocet.” He ignored my hand. But he asked, “Are you okay?”
“This time.”
“Well, we’re almost to the four-lane. Sit the hell down before Coach kills you.” Doug crawled back onto the seat. He was precisely as tall as he’d been before he fell down, and there was just as little room for me.
So I edged along the seat back with my backpack ahead of me, trying not to step on his crutches. When I drew even with his head, I gently slid my arm around his shoulders and eased him forward. He didn’t resist, but he didn’t help either. He was heavy. I slid onto the seat, crossed my legs under me, and laid his head in my lap.
I walked a fine line here. I trusted Brandon, but what if Stephanie Wetzel really was after him? I didn’t want to give her any ammunition to help break up Brandon and me.
On the other hand, I wanted Doug to like me. As much as he could like me now that I’d apparently seduced and then jilted him in a twelve-hour period. He knew way too much about me and my problems, and he was too much of a loose cannon to be allowed out into the world with a grudge against me. Everyone would expect me to take care of him while he was hurt. That’s how I functioned. And as long as he’d kept our secret, no one knew what had gone on between us at the wreck or in the hospital.