I look at her like, Why did you say that? because I play pool about as well as I embroider. Marissa pulls a face back at me, which means HELP! so what can I do? The ball's already in motion—we're going in.
The rec room wasn't the Edge of the World. It was more like the shore of the Edge of the World. People were playing pool and darts, and along one wall there were old video games like Pac-Man and Space Invaders. There were a few beer cans, but Holly's nose wasn't twitching, and we weren't choking on smoke.
Taylor's still got his arm around Marissa, and when we step down into the rec room, who's sitting on a saggy leather couch with a beer in her hand?
Heather.
And I don't know what cooked her carrots more, the sight of me at the party or Taylor's arm around Marissa. She ducks the beer behind the couch like we're her parents, then snaps out of her seat and struts over to us.
Taylor tries to be casual about it, but the fact is that one minute his arm's around Marissa, and the next minute it's not. He says to Heather, “Where's Tenille?”
She looks at him like she's a rotisserie and he's one bald and basted bird. “She had to pee.”
He says, “Be cool, Heather. Be cool,” but she's not about to turn the heat down. She pulls him aside and says, “I can't believe you let them in!” and then sizzles and spatters until finally he puts his hands up and says, “Look, they're here now, so just deal.” Then he sees a guy come in through the sliding glass door with a cigarette in his hand. And even though the guy's got whiskers where Taylor's still got fuzz, Taylor calls, “Hey! Outta here with that! No smoking in the house.”
The guy calls, “Hey, dude, where's Karl?”
“He went to get supplies.”
“Dude! I hope he doesn't take as long as he did last time—he was gone for like an hour, dude. We're dry out here!”
“He'll be back…Now get out of here with that, man!”
The minute he's gone, Heather's little sidekick Tenille comes stumbling down the steps. She's wearing a dark blue stretch skirt that's shrunk way up her legs and heavy black shoes with platform soles. She takes one look at us, then turns to Heather and cracks up. And as she clomps her way over to Heather, she says, “Tell me I'm dreamin',” only it sounds more like one long, seasick word. Then she starts laughing.
Now this is not a pretty sight. I mean, Tenille doesn't exactly come off as a multi-linguist when she's sober, but this was like taking a muzzle off a mule. And hearing her hee-hawing was embarrassing.
Tenille, though, thought she was being smooth and suave. She stands by Heather and says to Taylor, “I guess every picnic has its ants…the question is, how to get rid of them?”
Heather says through her teeth, “He invited them.”
Tenille says, “Oh-ho-ho!” and then brays some more.
Finally, I say, “Look. Could I just get my skateboard? Then we'll make everyone happy and get out of here.”
Taylor looks at me. “What's the rush?” Then he turns to Marissa and says, “Can I get you something to eat? Something to drink?”
Of course the person Heather's really mad at is Taylor. But does she take it out on him? Or even Marissa? No. She turns to him and says, “I really don't think this is the kind of party you want to invite fourth graders to,” and then glares at me.
Taylor says, “Heather…” but she's only warming up. She points to me and says, “You know what a narc that girl is, you know she's sneaky and nerdy and just…just… weird. Why stop with her? Why not invite the geeks off the street? Why not just open your door and say, ‘Hey! You ugly and annoying? Come on in, destroy my party!'”
Then all of a sudden from behind me this voice says, “Cool it, Heather! Either get back in your cage or get out of here!”
I knew I'd heard the voice before, but when I whipped around and saw Taylor's friend with the baggy pants, I couldn't quite believe it. He gives me a smile that's really half a scowl and says, “Not that I don't think you can hold your own.”
Heather does back down. Fast. And Taylor's looking pretty relieved, let me tell you. He rubs his hands together and says, “Well. Why don't you guys shoot some pool or play darts or something? I'll get some munchies.”
Taylor zips off to the kitchen, leaving the rest of us standing there like tortilla chips in bean dip, none of us wanting to be the first one scooped.
Finally, Marissa says, “I think I'll go play Pac-Man,” and Dot and Holly say, “Me, too,” and look at me like, Well?
But I don't want to play Pac-Man. I don't want to play pool or darts. I want to get my skateboard and get out of there. So I say, “You go ahead. I'll be right there.” They hesitate for a minute, but I shoo them off, and when the three of them are gone, I turn my back on Heather and say to Baggy, “Could you please get Taylor to give me my skateboard? That's the only reason we're here.”
He looks at me like I'm speaking French. “Your skateboard? You still on about that?”
“Look, he called and told us to come to the party so he could give us the skateboard. Do you know where it is?”
Now he doesn't say, Oui, oui! but we do seem to be talking the same language. “I can't believe Jake's giving it back after all of that.”
“Jake's Snake, right?”
He hesitates, then kind of grins and nods.
“All I know is Taylor told Marissa that they'd scraped off the paint and realized it was mine after all. Is Snake, uh, Jake even here?”
“Oh, he's around here somewhere.” Baggy Boy looks over one shoulder, then the other, and he's about to say something else when Heather butts in. “Aren't you going to turn into a pumpkin or something if you're not home by midnight?” She looks at her watch and sneers, “Better hurry.”
I snap, “Well, who put a Stupidity Spell on you? Can't you see I'm trying to get out of here? You think I want to be in the same room as you and the Witless Wonder?” I eye Tenille and mutter, “Like she had any brain cells left to kill off.”
Heather turns to Baggy and says, “She's gonna narc,” but he's not looking too worried. He's standing there cracking up. She gives him a one-hand shove to the chest and says, “Do you hear me? She's gonna narc!”
He's still laughing. “A Stupidity Spell…the Witless Wonder…!”
She shoves him again, this time with both hands. “Stop it! I'm serious!”
He just ignores her and says to me, “C'mon. Let's go find Jake.” And as soon as we round the corner out of the rec room, he does something no guy has ever done to me before.
He turns around and smiles at me, then reaches out and takes my hand.
TWELVE
I tried to yank my hand back. I mean, I didn't even know the guy, and here he was, holding my hand. But he smiled at me and just held it tighter. “C'mon, Sammy. Relax!”
“Relax? Excuse me, but I feel like I'm in the middle of some adolescent ambush. Heather's here, there's beer everywhere, there're boys as big as grizzlies out there smokin' dope, and you're telling me to relax?”
And what's he do? He stops, looks at me, and laughs. “Adolescent ambush? Are you always this funny?”
I just stare at him. I mean, there he is, holding my hand, telling me I'm funny when, in fact, I'm never funny around boys. Ever. What I am is tongue-tied. But apparently my tongue has taken this opportunity to unravel, because it can't seem to stop flapping. I say, “I'm not funny, I'm serious! And how'd you know my name, anyway?”
He pulls me out of the way of a girl heading down the hallway. “How'd I know your name?”
“Yeah. I never told you what it was, and I don't think anyone even said it. This morning or now.”
“Well, I've known your name. You're…uh…kinda notorious.”
“Notorious? How am I notorious? What's that supposed to mean?”
He grins and says, “At school.”
“You go to William Rose?”
“Never noticed me, huh?”
I shake my head.
“Well, I've noticed you.”
I
can feel myself turn red. I mean, I'm not sure if he's making fun of me or not. Then he adds, “And Heather talks about you.”
Oh yeah. Heather. “Well, if you're so tight with Heather, why are you holding my hand?”
That startled him. And it kind of startled me, too. And for a second there I thought he was going to let go, but he decides to hang on. “First of all, Heather and I are not tight. Second off…I don't know”—he shrugs and grins—“I like you.”
I pull my hand away. “I don't even know your name!”
He laughs and says, “Hey! Well, I guess you don't. But I can fix that.” He crosses his arms, looks up at the ceiling, and says, “My name's Casey, I live at 782 Golden Oak Circle, I'm in the eighth grade at William Rose Junior High, I like skateboarding, mountain biking, skiing, and baseball. My favorite color's green, and if my dad would let me, I'd eat macaroni and salsa for dinner every night.”
“Macaroni and salsa?”
“It's god-like.”
I laugh and say, “I'll have to try that sometime. Macaroni and cheese and salsa? Or just macaroni and salsa?”
“Gotta have the cheese.” He grins at me and says, “But we were on a quest for your skateboard, weren't we?”
I nod. “So where's Jake-the-Snake?”
He laughs. “Don't let him hear you say that. Jake's fine, Snake's fine, but Jake-the-Snake is like The End. And I don't know—he's got to be around here somewhere.”
So off we went, hands safely in pockets, cruising the halls for Jake-the-you-know-what. But after checking every room in the house and looking in the backyard, Casey says, “Well, you know…it might still be in Ben's truck. I saw it there earlier.”
So we go out to the driveway and there, looking like a big steel elephant squeezed up alongside the fence, is the same primer-gray paddy wagon that had rounded up Taylor and his gang that morning. The hood's warm and the truck's making little tinging and pinging sounds, settling in, and while I check out the bed of the truck, Casey tries the doors.
The cab's locked up tight, and there's nothing in the bed except a nearly bald spare tire, a couple of quarts of oil, and some leaves and twigs. Then Casey looks inside and calls, “There it is! On the floor.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I thought it might be. I saw him put it up there this morning after Ben brought us back from town.”
“You mean it's been there all day?”
“I don't know. I guess so.”
“Has Jake been here all day?”
Casey shrugs and says, “You got me. I had to take off. But Taylor kinda wanted Jake to stick around so his mom wouldn't blow too bad. Anyway, I think Ben had to work today, so if it's in there now, it probably has been all day.”
“And if it's been in the truck all day…”
He looks at me and he knows exactly what I'm thinking. He mutters, “…then nobody's scraped off the paint.”
“Exactly. And nobody's planning to give me back my skateboard.”
He says, “We don't know this. Maybe they did and…they put it back in here. Maybe…” and while he's reaching for an answer, I'm looking at him like, Right. So likely.
He knows it's sounding kind of weak, so he throws his hands up and says, “I don't know! Why would he tell you that if it wasn't true?”
“The reason's name is Marissa.”
“Marissa?” The answer clicked like the right key in a padlock, but you could tell he didn't want it to fit. “Naw…” Then he gets a bright idea. “Hey! Ben stashes a key somewhere around…” He dives down and looks at the underside of the truck, but he never does say “here.”
So I figure I'll get down and help him look. I squat, then crane my neck around, not exactly knowing where you'd go about stashing a key under a car.
Casey says, “It's gotta be here…unless Karl didn't put it back.”
“Karl? Does he drive?”
“Just got his license. Ben about has a meltdown every time Karl takes the truck, but Ben's like that.”
Casey lies down on his back and scoots under the car just in front of the wheel, so I ask, “Wouldn't the key just fall off if you put it under there?” He doesn't answer, so I lie on my back and scoot under the car, too. “Wouldn't it?”
He looks at me and laughs. Not mean or anything. Just happy laughing. I kind of laugh back and say, “What? I'm sorry. I just don't get it. Where would you hide a key in this mess?”
He's still smiling. “In a key keeper. A little tin case about the size of a matchbox with a magnet on one side.”
Now I get it. So I start looking around for a little tin case about the size of a matchbox that's sucking up to something metal, only when I happen to look over at Casey, he's not looking at the car. He's looking at me. He laughs and says, “What are you doing down here?”
I look at him like he's got spaghetti for brains. “I'm looking for the key…?”
“You must really want that skateboard.”
Well, I do, but to tell you the truth, I wasn't really thinking about the board at the moment—I was just hunting for a key. And I'm about to tell him so when something goes splat! right on my cheek.
Now if you've ever wrestled yourself under a vehicle in the middle of the night to find a key that doesn't belong to you, you know that the first thing you're going to do when some strange fluid drips on your face is jerk your head up and bang it. Hard.
Casey says, “Oh man, are you all right?”
I scoot out from under the truck holding my forehead. “I'm fine.”
“Are you sure?”
I sit there on the ground and say, “Yeah. But I think they could build a ski resort around this bump on my head.”
He tries not to laugh, but he can't help it. “You're a mess!”
I get up and look in one of the elephant-ear mirrors, and sure enough, I'm a mess. Not only is Mount Everest erupting on my forehead, but it's smudged black with oil and grime. And then there's the splat, which has nicely run all the way down my cheek to my jawbone, leaving a faint pink trail. I wipe off some of the splat with my fingertips and rub my thumb against it, trying to figure out how a truck like that could possibly contain anything pink, when Casey asks, “Is that tranny fluid?”
I wipe off some more and say, “I don't know.”
So he comes right up, swipes my cheek with a finger, rubs it against his thumb, then holds it up to his nose and smells it. “Yup. Tranny fluid.”
I take a whiff, too, and it does smell different. Kind of sweet. “Is that from the transmission?” “Yeah. Ben's truck leaks all kinds.” He stretches the sleeve of his flannel shirt over his palm and cleans my cheek with it, but I still feel greasy and grimy. “Thanks, but I think I ought to wash this stuff off. Is there a bathroom I can use?”
“C'mon, I'll show you.”
As I'm following him back to the house, I notice that his flannel's got dust and little pebbles stuck to it, so I say, “Hold still,” and swat off his back. He does the same for me, only I guess I'm a bigger mess than he was because he starts swatting off my sleeves, too, and before I can stop him, he whacks my sore arm.
I jump away with a yelp, and he says, “What? What? Did I hurt you?”
I pull up my sweatshirt sleeve and show him my bandaged arm. “From this morning…?”
“Oh yeah…! Sorry.” He grins and says, “You've had a real couch-potato day, haven't you?” then leads me into the house.
I lock myself up in the bathroom, get the water really hot, then scrub my face down. And as I'm drying off, I realize that the voices I'm hearing through the wall aren't party voices—they're angry voices.
I scoot up close to the wall behind the toilet, but I can't make out any words. Just muffled, angry sounds. So I put my ear smack-dab against the wallpaper. And now I can make out bits and pieces, but nothing that makes any sense. And after a minute of this, I tell myself I'm being stupid. I mean, why do I care what they're fighting about? If it's not about my skateboard, then it's none of my business, right? So I a
rrange my bangs over Mount Everest, then switch off the light and head out.
And who's waiting for me in the hallway?
Nobody.
Then I notice the heel of a boot sticking out from around the corner at the end of the hall. And I stand there a minute trying to decide whether I should go down the hall to see if it's Casey or back to the party to find Marissa.
I wind up inching down the hall, and when I get close enough, I see that it's Casey, all right, and he's positioned like a sprinter, leaning way around the corner with his ear against a door.
He sees me and snaps upright, boing! then tries to act casual. “Looks like you got it all off.”
I nod and ask, “What are they arguing about? I could hear them clear through the bathroom wall.”
Casey shakes his head. “You got me, but you're right— they're raging in there.”
“Who is it? Taylor and his brother?”
“No, it's Karl and Ben. I got that much.” He snorts and says, “And I don't think now would be a very good time to ask either one of them for the key!”
The door flies open, then slams shut. And even though no one came out, it felt like the hall had been blasted by a blowtorch of angry words. Casey whispers, “Let's jam,” and we hightail it out of there.
When we get to the rec room, Casey spots Taylor playing Pac-Man with Marissa and says, “Hang back for a minute. I'm going to straighten this with Taylor. This whole thing is getting really stupid.”
Holly and Dot are off in a corner, looking at a gallery of team pictures hanging on the wall, so while Casey goes to talk to Taylor, I zip over to Holly and Dot. Right away they attack me with, “Where have you been? We were starting to think you'd left!”
I toss a look in Casey's direction and say, “We've been trying to get my skateboard back.” Casey pulls Taylor aside, so I wave Marissa over and say, “But I don't think it's going to happen.”
Dot asks, “Why not?”
Now I'd have answered her right away, only as I turn to tell her, I notice someone in a picture on the wall, right over her shoulder. He's standing by a swimming pool with a great big grin on his face, holding up one end of a trophy while Karl Briggs holds up the other. And I know it's him, because I'd recognize him anywhere—bundled in ski clothes or streaking in Speedos—it's Marissa's cousin Brandon.