Strangely, I wasn’t a trembling, teary basket case as I walked with the other cheerleaders toward the oasis of light and movement in the corner of the parking lot nearest the stadium. My pulse hummed. I’d delegated most of the work of running the dance to adults, but as Aidan was fond of reminding me, ultimately the responsibility of making it successful rested with me. It was a burden I wouldn’t shake until the event was over. And two hours of cheering and dancing almost nonstop had left me a shell of myself, running on air.
That’s when I spied Sawyer in his regular clothes, standing at the entrance to the cordoned-off area of asphalt that served as the dance floor, waiting for me. Any blood that had been left in my brain seemed to leave it, and I actually felt dizzy as he closed the space between us.
“We can’t talk long with my parents around,” I whispered. As I said this, I glimpsed Dad trying to coax my mother into some kind of 1980s dance, even though the music blasting over the speakers was dubstep.
“We’re going to have a slow dance together at homecoming,” Sawyer promised me. “Keep your eyes peeled for an opportunity.”
The dance was already going full blast—and amazingly, almost everyone was dancing at the dance. There were a few outliers like Aidan, who stubbornly stood at the periphery, looking on, making snide comments to Angelica, and anchoring her there in his misery. But the majority of students, even the boys, were getting down. Probably this had to do with the fact that Will and Chelsea were in the middle of a dance-off rematch, and they were a positive influence.
Sawyer passed very close to me while I was in the middle of the Wobble with the rest of the cheerleaders. In fact, he smacked right into me, just like he always did on the football field, except this time there was no padding between us.
“I beg your pardon!” he shouted, catching me and holding me to keep me from falling over, which wasn’t really necessary. While I was still in his arms, he whispered, “Are you looking for our chance?”
“I haven’t seen an opening yet.” My parents had been watching me closely. Didn’t they ever pee?
“Tenacious boogers, aren’t they?” Sawyer commented.
“Yes, my parents are tenacious boogers,” I called as he let me go and disappeared back into the crowd. At least we could laugh about them while they made our lives miserable.
The next time I saw him, Will was trying to teach him to do the Dougie.
“I can’t do it,” Sawyer said.
With a glance at the edge of the crowd, I saw that my parents were talking to Ms. Chen. They would see us if they turned, but surely they didn’t expect me to pretend Sawyer wasn’t here at all. I said, “You do it in the pelican suit all the time.”
“It’s completely different in the suit,” Sawyer said. “For you to do this without the suit”—he held his hands up slightly—“you’d have to do this in the suit.” He held both hands straight up in the air. “Everything has to be exaggerated.”
“That sounds a lot harder than I thought,” Will said.
“It’s exhausting.” Sawyer looked exhausted, smiling with sleepy eyes. I wondered if he was skimming along his last wave of adrenaline, like me.
He turned to me. “Are they still watching?”
“Yes. Maybe later.” I moved on before my parents got suspicious.
As I brushed past him, he touched my hand and whispered deliciously in my ear, “Later.”
We had a few more encounters, but finally it was almost time for the dance to close down and we hadn’t been alone together. I was grumbling about this to Harper as she snapped photos of the tired crowd. “Normally my parents would both be all over a catered buffet, but their daughter gets detained by the police just one little time and they’re not hungry?”
Suddenly, from out of nowhere, Tia barreled into us. She swatted me with the end of one of her braids as she grabbed Harper in a tight hug. “My dad is totally hitting on your mom. Sis!”
Harper peered over Tia’s shoulder at their parents. “Or, she’s just trying to get a good price from him on redoing the exterior of the B and B,” she said, sounding strangled.
Tia let Harper go and held her at arm’s length. “And you don’t get only me in the bargain. You get Violet, and Sophia, and Izzy, and all their children and shitty boyfriends. Think what fun Christmas will be for you from now on!”
Harper looked decidedly uneasy. “They’re probably just talking.” Then her eyes widened. “Oooh, Kaye, don’t look, but they’re laughing with your parents. None of them are watching the dance floor. Now’s your chance.”
I clutched at Tia. “Will you alert Sawyer for me? Send him behind the stadium.”
She saluted me. “Ten-four,” she said, which I was pretty sure was not what people were supposed to say when saluting. She vanished back into the crowd. I headed for the buffet as if I needed a word with the caterer. I kept going, behind the DJ’s equipment and the caterer’s van, into the darkness.
Sawyer stepped from behind one of the concrete pillars that held up the stadium. “Finally,” he said.
I melted into his arms just as a slow dance started, the last song of the night. He made no move to kiss me. I didn’t ask. After a long night of watching my friends touch their dates without a second thought, all I wanted was to tuck my head underneath Sawyer’s chin and feel his arms around me. We swayed just like that until the final lyric.
“That’s it.” The DJ’s amplified voice bounced around underneath the stadium. “Thanks, everyone, and have a good night! Fight, Pelicans, fight!”
Languidly, like waking up from the best dream, I pulled away from Sawyer and looked up into his eyes. “Happy homecoming.”
He stroked a stray curl away from my face. “Everyone had a great time tonight. Against the odds, you did amazing work on all of this.”
“I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you.”
He kissed me for one long, perfect moment.
And then he let me go, already receding into the shadows. “I’ll walk this way. You go that way. We’ve fooled them all. Ha!”
I looked back at him making his way around the dark side of the stadium. At the same time, he was looking back at me.
We would see each other at school on Monday.
But at that moment, it felt like our romance was over, and I would never see him again.
As I stepped back into the cordoned-off area of the parking lot, I heard my mother call, “Kaye!” Most of the school was already moving toward their cars elsewhere in the vast lot. The crowd I’d intended to get lost in was gone. My mother must have seen me come out from behind the stadium, and she’d guessed what I’d done.
I wasn’t going to drag my feet toward punishment one more time. Standing firm in my strappy sandals, shivering a little in my light sweater against the cool night, I let her cross the dance floor to me.
She stood eye to eye with me, silently assessing me, before she said, “You have done an excellent job with homecoming.”
“Thanks,” I said without enthusiasm, trying to disguise my relief that she hadn’t seen me with Sawyer.
“Ms. Chen and Ms. Yates both sought me out to tell me how proud they are of you, and what strong leadership skills you have.”
“Ms. Yates?” I’d thought she hated me. It was amazing how people threw their support behind something after it had been a success and they hadn’t lifted a finger.
My mother glanced over at Dad, who was still talking with Tia’s dad and Harper’s mom. “Manuel says Tia’s throwing an after-party at their house.”
“She is,” I said bitterly.
“Why didn’t you ask me if you could go?”
“Because I’m grounded!” I hadn’t even wanted to think about the party, much less tell her about it. All my best friends would go, and Sawyer would be there, while I stayed home. The pain was too much to bear.
My mother gazed at me like I was the biggest fool on this earth. Didn’t I know I was only grounded when I displeased her? She told me, “You ca
n go.”
I walked away. I hoped she didn’t expect me to say thank you.
But secretly, my heart was beating a fast pattern that sounded like Sawyer.
I almost turned around and asked, “You do know Sawyer will be there, right?” But I would have said that out of anger, ruining any chance I had of seeing him again.
As it was, surely she suspected he would be at Tia’s party, as close friends as he and Tia were. It almost seemed as if my mother was giving me just enough rope to hang myself with.
A few hours later, I would find out how right I’d been.
* * *
I stayed later than anyone but Ms. Chen to make sure the DJ got packed up, the caterer was paid, and the chairs we’d set out were folded and carted back to storage inside the school. But I texted Sawyer that I was coming.
When I finally arrived at the 1910 mansion that Tia and her dad were bringing back to life, half the party seemed to be waiting specifically for me. Cheerleaders greeted me in the grand doorway and parted as I made my way inside. I caught a glimpse of Aidan leaning on the staircase railing, drunk, which bore investigating. But the crowd closed in, and I lost sight of him. Then I wanted to peer into the mermaid fountain in the foyer, which was Tia’s current restoration project. Instead, she took my hand, ignored my protests, and dragged me straight into the kitchen to say hi to her dad and Harper’s mom, who were sipping coffee.
After a polite chat with Other People’s Parents about the marvelous dance I’d put on, Tia shoved me out the back of the kitchen and closed the swinging door behind me. Harper waited for me in the darkness.
“Walk straight through,” Harper whispered. “Sawyer’s out back. My mom’s here, so he’ll take you over there to the B and B, and you can be alone. We’ll cover for you.”
Alarmed, I said, “I can’t ask you to lie. I mean, I could ask a lot of people to lie, but not you.”
“We’re not lying,” she said. “My mom and Tia’s dad just saw you here and can verify your whereabouts, see?” Then she put her hand on my arm. “It’s okay, really. I’m willing to lie if I have to, because your mom is wrong about this. Go. All of us will say you were here with us.”
15
SAWYER UNLOCKED THE HEAVY FRONT door of the B and B. “Take your shoes off, if you don’t mind,” he whispered over his shoulder.
“We’re sneaking?” I joked. “You’re not supposed to have girls in your room? There goes the neighborhood.”
“No. Everybody in the B and B takes off their shoes late at night so we don’t wake each other up.” He carefully closed the towering door behind us, picked up his flip-flops and took my sandals, and led the way up the ancient staircase. Even in the darkness, his blond hair shone like a flashlight.
He closed and locked the door of his room behind us. “Can I get you something to drink?” he asked. “I have water, water, or water.”
“I would love some water.”
“Good choice.” He disappeared into a bathroom.
My eyes wandered around the huge, high-ceilinged bedroom. Besides a massive four-poster bed, there was a carved dresser and a wardrobe with the door open a crack. Moving the door just a hair for minimal nosiness, I peered inside. Neatly pressed shirts hung there: his Crab Lab T-shirt, his Pelicans tee, a yellow polo, and the faded blue one. He was wearing the madras plaid, and that accounted for everything.
I snatched my hand away like I’d been burned as he walked back in with two plastic cups printed with the Crab Lab logo. “Something wrong?” he asked, handing me one.
“I guess I hadn’t expected your room to be so neat.”
“I cleaned up,” he acknowledged.
“You knew I was coming over?”
“I hoped against hope that we would find a way.” He sipped his water, looking uncomfortable. Now that I was here, he didn’t know what to do with me. I suspected it was all the baggage we were carrying around with us now, floating behind me like I was towing it across the Gulf.
Trying to break the ice, I set my cup down on the table beside the bed. I hopped up on the high mattress and examined the blown glass figurines hanging in the window. Maybe they belonged to the room, but I thought I’d seen all Harper’s mom’s kooky art collections over the years. These belonged to Sawyer.
He slid onto the bed from the other side. “My dad learned to make those in prison. He used to send them to me on my birthday. This is my third birthday.” He touched an orange fish. “This is my tenth.” His finger swept around a red octopus, sending a shaft of red light swinging around the window casement. Mr. De Luca had definitely improved over the years.
“I don’t keep them because of what he is to me now,” Sawyer said. “I keep them because of how they made me feel when I was eight. Like there was somebody looking out for me.”
“A guardian angel,” I suggested.
“One in jail, yes. My mom always claimed she didn’t have the money to take me to see him. Probably she didn’t want to take a little kid into a state prison, which was an uncharacteristic stroke of brilliance on her part. I never met him until I moved here. Before that, it really was like he was dead.” He didn’t look at me as he sipped his water again.
I sat back on my heels, watching his pensive face brushed by faint light through the window. In the past few weeks Sawyer had seemed more like family to me than my own family. I wondered if he felt the same way about me. I almost asked.
I stopped with my lips barely parted. I must have expressed some tenderness like that to Aidan very early. I couldn’t remember exactly, but I recognized the feeling of panic that washed over me when I was about to expose myself. I closed my mouth.
Sawyer turned to me, eyes hard, and deftly unbuttoned the first button of my blouse.
Something seemed missing here. The tenderness we’d shared last weekend at the beach had been beaten out of us by the police and my mother. But if I were to mention this, how did I expect him to respond? Wasn’t this what I’d come here for? After his talk of us still being together next May, what we had in front of us was one night, like his many single nights with different girls. I’d known what I was getting into two Fridays ago when Tia convinced me to place his head in my lap.
I scooted down on the bed until I lay flat, and I reached up to unbuckle his belt.
An hour later, between soft kisses, he whispered, “Do you want to?”
“Yes.”
He rolled out of bed. I clung to the sheets so they wouldn’t slide off and expose me. He had no shame, though. He padded naked into the bathroom and came back with a condom, taking his time burrowing under the sheets and warming my body again. “Are you on something? In case this breaks, I don’t want your dad to murder me.”
“Oh, he won’t murder you. My mother will have killed you already. But I have an IUD.” In fact, my mother had suggested I get it when she saw that Aidan and I were growing more serious. I’d thought she was being silly at the time. Aidan and I hadn’t done anything more than kiss. But the next summer, when he started to pressure me, I was very glad I had it.
As Sawyer opened the package and put the condom on, I tried to remember what I’d been thinking when I did this with Aidan. I couldn’t believe I’d taken that step back then. I hadn’t liked him nearly enough. I’d just thought I had, because I didn’t have anyone to compare him with. And now that I did, sex with Aidan seemed like a real shame.
Sawyer looked over at me. “What’s wrong? You seem sad, which is incorrect for this occasion. Maybe we should—”
I touched one finger to his lips to quiet him.
He nodded once, understanding. Then he rolled on top of me and settled his hips between mine, bracing himself above me on his forearms. His eyes roved across my face. “You look beautiful in nothing.”
“So do you.”
He smiled. “I never thought this day would come.”
I didn’t say “Me neither,” because that would sound insulting. But I thought it. In the two years I’d known Sawyer, and watche
d him, and lobbed back the insults he served to me, I couldn’t have predicted I would spend the darkest hours of homecoming night underneath him. Somewhere below me, past the foundation of this ancient building, under a layer of sandy soil and palm tree roots, past the ancient sea floor, deep within the earth’s core, hell was freezing over.
A chill ran through me, starting on my bare arms and racing down my skin to my toes, despite the fact that we were draped with sheets and Sawyer’s body covered mine.
He watched me, his blond hair tousled white across his forehead, his bright blue eyes just another tone of gray in the dusky room. He should ask me whether I was cold. But no, this was Sawyer, who knew exactly what made a girl shiver at a time like this. He should ask me if I was still sure I wanted to go through with this. But no, Sawyer wasn’t one to ask again to be absolutely positive after he’d already gotten the answer he wanted—
“Oh,” I heard myself exclaim as he moved into me. With a shuddering sigh, he set his forehead against mine and closed his eyes.
* * *
I didn’t want to turn on the bathroom light, because that would break the spell. In the shadows of midnight I looked at myself in Sawyer’s mirror and used my fingers to piece my curls back into place. The left side looked okay. The right was mangled, and there wasn’t much I could do about it until I washed it and re-set it. And I couldn’t see the back, but it felt flat. I’d have to tell my parents I’d driven around with my windows down. Not something I would have done a few weeks ago for fear of exactly this sort of hairtastrophe.
Something I definitely could see myself doing from now on.
Sawyer came in behind me and set his chin on top of my head. Normally I would have pushed him off me because this would cause more hair squashing, but his body felt too good behind mine.
“Do you have a second mirror, so I can see the back of my hair?” I asked.
“I seriously, seriously doubt I will ever be that sophisticated.” He focused on my hair and fingered the curls. “Wow, you look like you just had sex.”
“Do I?” I asked, heart sinking into my stomach.