All the more reason to say no to this party. Plus, O’Dell’s is a big old hunting lodge out in the middle of nowhere. It’s famous for out-of-control parties and I’m not fond of anything that’s out of control or of driving in the dark.
What about knee?
Crutches work. What say you?
I say NO! Say it, Nora, SAY IT!
Do I have to?
Need someone to hold my crutches while I play beer pong.
I don’t respond.
It will be fun. And driving test coming up.
Again, I’m silent, trying to figure out how to stand my ground.
Come on. Senior yr.… YOLO, babe. Amirite?
Okay. Get some sleep weirdo. don’t call me babe.
God, I’m the weakest of weaklings.
The next night, Eli hobbles out of the house on the arm of his mom who helps him limp toward our garage. My mom comes out, too, almost giddy. She’s so happy I’m being more social that it’s freaking me out. I still haven’t told her I’ve been driving, just like Emory feels like it needs to stay a necessary secret, for now. Not that I’m afraid of her reaction. I just don’t want to rock the boat when it doesn’t need to be rocked. I feel the same about telling Eli. Keep the waters calm. Put on the lifejackets only if needed.
“You sure you’re okay to drive, honey?” my mom asks Eli.
He beams at my mother, liberally spreading that Eli charm like fertilizer. “Yes, ma’am. Right leg works great. Haven’t taken any painkillers today, so I’m safe to operate large machinery.”
Mom laughs, completely snowed by him.
Mrs. Costas looks worried. “All right, you two, have fun, and be careful, Eli. I really think this is too soon.”
“Mom, I’ll be fine, trust me.” She isn’t as easily charmed, though. I wonder if the Costas charm comes from his father and between the two of them, his mom has been on the receiving end of it long enough to be immune.
I wonder if I’ll ever be immune to Eli.
She frowns. “Absolutely no drinking, Eli.” She winks at me. “You’ve got precious cargo with you.” They still treat us like we’re eight.
He grumbles. She bends in through the car door and gives him a kiss on the cheek. “God, Ma, I get it. I’ll be careful.” His jaw tenses as he starts the engine and backs down the driveway.
He adjusts the rearview mirror. “I guess it doesn’t qualify as ‘precious cargo’ when it’s just me?” he says.
“She’s got another son,” I say. “You’re easily replaced.”
“Sadly true. They like him much better anyway.”
I snicker. “Can you blame them?” As he backs my car out, and our mothers wave good-bye to us—which we don’t acknowledge—I smooth my hair and try to calm my nerves. I’m nervous about everything—about driving, this party, being with Eli. “How’s the knee today?” I ask.
He hesitates. “It’s fine. Just sucks, you know.”
I do know—I hate that this has happened to him. “Yeah.”
“Hey,” he says. “You look nice tonight.”
I keep my eyes forward out the windshield. What’s with him and making comments on my clothes? I pick at the shirt I’m wearing. “Oh.” It’s just a lightweight button-down top with jeans shorts, because it’s still so hot out. I almost ask what he really means by that, but then I realize that this is a compliment, and I should be able to take a compliment from a friend.
I sit up straighter. “Thank you.”
Eli pulls into the Mermaid and parks. I don’t want to drive, but that’s the main reason I’ve agreed to go to the party in the first place. Plus Caleb’s supposed to be there.
That doesn’t stop a lump of fear from forming in my throat when I get behind the wheel. My hands start to sweat and my stomach churns. Clear your mind, Nora. It’s fifteen miles to O’Dell’s. That’s three sets of five miles. You can drive five miles with your eyes closed. A trickle of fear crawls up my spine. Driving with my eyes closed would be a bad idea.
“All right,” Eli says, way too excited. “Let’s go!”
I put the car in reverse…and that’s about it.
He leans in, close to my ear. “Go!” he whispers firmly.
I swallow hard, my mouth is doing that tingly pre-puke thing. I hit that woman’s leg in the dark. Maybe I should just not drive at night?
Fifteen miles. Fifteen miles. Fifteen miles. “Okay,” I say, “backing up now.” I pull out of the spot slowly, too slowly judging from the depth of Eli’s groan.
“Stop with the noises and talk to me,” I say, and he does. In fact, he starts and doesn’t stop. He talks about the homework he’s missed and the movie he took Ari to this week, and the fact that the CSU coach didn’t even show up at the game Tuesday like he was supposed to. The Highlanders lost, he tells me, but not by much. He was there, on his crutches, cheering them on, although he hated being on the sidelines, not in the action.
He keeps chatting and before I know it, we’re three sets of five miles out in the middle of the country, parked along a dirt road with about a hundred other cars.
“I did it,” I say, mostly to myself.
“You’re definitely getting better. You feel more confident?”
My pulse is at a normal range. I’m not about to hyperventilate. I take the keys out of the ignition. “Yeah. I think so.”
“You need more practice, but don’t worry, you’ll get there.” He opens his door. “Let’s do this.”
Now I feel my pulse start to race. I open my door. “Let’s get it over with.”
We have to walk a while to reach the house, and the crutches slow us down. On the way in, we merge with a few small groups of kids who are also arriving, most of whom I know. They all greet Eli in a variety of ways—a pat on the back, a shaken hand, a flirty look, a hair flip. They’re polite to me, but he gets the full celebrity treatment. Everyone asks about his knee and if he’s going to play this season.
I need to lighten his mood, which I can tell is turning sour. “You wanted to come for the sympathy flirting, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. It’s awesome.” His voice is pure sarcasm. I hold the door open and he and I move into the cavernous front room. It’s decorated in hunting-lodge chic with stuffed animal heads all over the walls, and it reeks of beer. A basic nightmare.
“Can I just remind you,” I say to him, “you said we didn’t have to stay long.”
“We don’t. Just promise you’ll try to have fun, okay?”
I check out the crowd. So many people. “Okay, just don’t disappear on me.”
“I won’t. But you’ll try, right?”
He wobbles on his crutches and I reach out to grab his arm. When I do I feel a spark. We both jump and I squeak. “Static,” I explain.
He gives me the smile. Adds in the dimple. “Electricity.”
“Dude!” I hear Koviak before I see him, plowing toward us through the crowd. “What’s up?” He gives Eli a man-hug and then turns my way. “Nora, haven’t seen you at one of these in a while. Welcome.”
He’s smiling, and I almost actually believe that he’s being sincere.
“Oh my God, Nora!” Someone yells. I turn to find the source and see Abby waving at me from the kitchen. She waves me over. “Come here!”
I go to “here,” which is where the keg is set up. Abby’s standing in a puddle of beer, filling a red plastic cup.
Her eyes trail behind me and I know she’s looking at Eli. “What are you doing here?” Again, she looks over my shoulder and grins. “You came in together. It finally happened? Did you two finally hook up? Mmm-hmm. I knew it!”
I can’t believe her. She never stops. “No! Abby, we’re not here together, okay? We drove, together, that’s it. Why are you here? Aren’t you still grounded?”
She drops the tap and screws up her mouth. She won’t look at me.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
She scratches the side of her face, holds out the beer. “Here, pumped it just for you.”
I watch her, wondering why she’s acting so weird. “What’s going on, Abby?”
“So…I might have told my mom that I was at your house.”
“You did? Why?”
She’s swaying a little, like she’s already had too much to drink. “Because when it comes to you, Mom totally doesn’t question anything.” She leans into me. “I don’t know what it is, but don’t ever lose it. At least not for the next five months.” She tugs the bottom of my shirt and winks. “I might need to use it again.”
Anger bubbles up inside of me. Abby and I had so much in common, once, but I wouldn’t do that to anyone, especially a friend. Plus, she could have invited me to this party. Instead, she used me as a cover story. Maybe that’s all I am to her.
She steps back. “Oh God, are you mad? No! NO! Stop it, Nor, I love you, you know that. You and me, we’re like sisters from a different mister.” She moves closer, tilts her head toward mine. “Like, you and I are smarter than the rest of the school put together. Right? I would go insane without your brain.” Her rhyme cracks her up, and she takes the beer out of my hand when she sees I’m not drinking it. “You just don’t like to party, which is fine, no judgment. But I wanted to come, so I needed to give Mom a name.”
“My name?”
She screws up her mouth. “Yes. I really didn’t think you’d mind, Nora. It’s not like it’s hurting you.”
It does hurt, though. “I gotta go, Abby.” I take the beer out of her hand and I walk away.
“Don’t be like that, Nor!” she calls after me. I ignore her and keep walking, feeling terrible, like I don’t have one real friend at this party, except for Eli and he’s disappeared. That didn’t take long. I want to leave already, but we’ve been here for less than ten minutes and most of that was walking from my car to the front door.
I wind my way through some hallways jammed with people, and look for a place to hide.
I open one door—a powder room. Another door—a packed closet. The last door opens into a laundry room—no bodies in here. I step inside and close the door behind me. A minute later, I hear a familiar voice on the other side. Veronica? She was actually nice to me at the beach.
“He’s so hot,” she says.
“So hot,” another voice echoes. “Do you think they’re together?”
“No. They’re neighbors.” That’s Veronica talking. “He has to drive her around because she’s banned from getting a license. He couldn’t wait to get away from her when they got here. Did you see that?” She laughs like a witch.
“Why’d she even come?” the other voice says. “She hates us.”
“And God, what’s with her hair anyway? Does she actually think it looks good?”
“I’m sure she does.”
Now they both laugh.
Now. Now I’m ready to leave, except there’s no way I’m walking out there, right through them. There’s a door on the other side of the washing machine, hopefully an exit. I open it—the garage. Its dark in here, but I don’t care. I light up the space with my phone. There’s an old car with no tires that, like the rest of this place, looks like it hasn’t been touched in decades. It’s unlocked, so I sit sideways on the driver’s seat and text Eli.
I’m ready to go I type, but don’t hit send right away, knowing he’ll give me a hard time about leaving so soon.
I look at my phone, at pictures of this party that are spreading online like wildfire. There’s Veronica Peele’s Snapchat story, featuring her face in a series of selfies with just about every boy in school. Veronica who was once my friend, back in middle school. Why does she think I hate her? She hates me. And was that true, what she said? Could Eli not wait to get away from me? I have no idea where he is right now, or what he’s doing. He could be drinking. He could be having sex.
I hit send on the text. A few seconds later, I get a response.
Where are you?
Garage
I never should have come tonight. I brush the concrete floor with my shoe—I know it’s my theory that’s gotten me to this place, hiding in the dark in the middle of a huge party with people who used to be my friends. Proving a hypothesis doesn’t always make you popular, but I’m committed to it, no matter what the cost.
Chapter Sixteen
Eli
I flip a switch that turns on a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. “This is what you call trying?”
She’s sitting sideways in the front seat of an old red hatchback, her feet hanging out. “I did try,” she says. “It didn’t work out.”
I rock back and forth on my crutches. “Wow. You gave it a whole five minutes.”
“More like fifteen—but yes.”
I maneuver the perimeter of the garage, which isn’t easy. There’s a workbench piled high with old tools. Next to it, an ancient green refrigerator. “Hey look,” I say, “just like eighth grade. Heh. Wonder if there’s a Coke in here.” I pull it open. Empty. “Don’t worry,” I close it again. “We won’t relive the past. Fridge smells like death.”
“Great. You’re going to make fun of me, too? And thanks for not disappearing.” She pulls her legs into the car and slams the door.
Dammit. She’s right. I told her I’d stay close, then she walked away, and then I saw Tex and was trying to keep him busy, away from her.
She’s got her head down in there. I hope she’s not crying. I hate when she cries. I hoist my lame self around to the passenger side. It’s some old Chevy, a model I don’t recognize, rusty and falling apart. I open the door, hop inside, and fling my crutches to the floor.
“I wasn’t making fun of you.”
“I don’t want to talk,” she says.
“Okay, let’s not talk.” I close my door.
She sighs and then makes a growling sound. “I hate my life.” She digs in her purse and pulls out a hair thingy, starts to gather up her hair. Without thinking, I snatch it out of her hand.
“What are you doing?” she says. “Give me that.”
I pass it to my right hand, out of her reach. “No.”
She scowls. “It’s mine. Give it to me.”
I shake my head. “No. I like your hair down.”
She turns forward and grips the steering wheel. “Why do you keep bringing up my hair? It’s weird.”
I don’t get it, either. “Yeah, it is. I have no explanation.”
She turns to me again. Honestly, I’m a little scared right now, but I push forward. Now’s not the time to be a chickenshit.
I lean my body toward her, just an inch or two. “Why do you hate your life?” I ask.
Her lips press together and she shrugs. “I don’t know? Because it sucks. I have no friends. Mom’s a mess. Gigi. And…college.” She freezes, and I think, now, now she’ll tell me.
I stare at her. “What about college?”
Her body shifts forward again. “Nothing.”
That’s it. Enough is enough.
“It’s not nothing, Nora. You got accepted to Emory, and it’s one of the best programs in the country.”
Her eyes almost bug out of her head. Gotcha.
“What?”
“Yeah, I know. I saw that printout that Chaffee gave you. The scholarship thing.” I slap a rhythm on the dashboard. “Ha! I’ve known all along.”
She’s silent for a few second, lowers her head. “I haven’t gotten any scholarships.” Her voice is soft. “That’s why I didn’t tell you.”
It’s close in here, to the point of distraction, but I have to focus. “Whatever. I just figured maybe we’ve gotten to the point where we’re not gonna tell each other everything anymore.” My voice sounds sad and I’m working that Costas charm, keeping my eye on the goal. “It’s okay. Doesn’t mean we’re not friends.”
“No.” She gulps. “That’s not it.” There’s a beer in the cup holder between us and she taps its rim with her finger. “It wasn’t our plan and I didn’t want to say anything. I don’t even think it’s going to happen.” Her gaze comes back
to me. “I should have told you. Please don’t be mad.”
I nod, recognizing that I need to proceed with caution. “No, I get it. I mean, I was pissed at first. Then this week, when I was just lying around, I went to my favorite internet source, Wikipedia, and learned all about the Emory Eagles. That place is a big deal. Also, hard to get into. Like twenty-five percent acceptance rate. You know what that means?”
She exhales, maybe she’s relieved? I can’t tell, but her eyes are definitely doing that sparkling thing that they do.
“Yeah, I do.”
“That means, that for seventy-five percent of the kids who apply, Emory is all like, nah, you’re stupid. Get lost.”
The corners of her mouth are turned up slightly. “I might not get any scholarships. It’s really expensive, and if I don’t get enough money, I can’t go. I haven’t told Mom, either. It’s not worth worrying her yet.”
“Do you want to go?” My stomach turns over. I don’t know if I want to hear the answer.
She pushes back her hair. “I don’t know. I’m worried about leaving Mom and Gigi. Ari. Marie. Home…”
It’s a long list and I’m not on it.
“Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine.” I tilt my head, hit her with the smile, and throw in the dimples as a bonus.
She does that thing, lowering her eyelids, slowly, like they’ve got weights attached. It’s sexy.
“No,” she says, her voice going an octave deeper like it does when she’s serious. “And you. I’d miss you.”
I suck in those words like they’re oxygen and I’m about to drown. “You would? Really?”
Her eyes drop again. “Yes. Really. Of course.”
“Huh.” I turn away, peer out into the dim garage.
“What?”
I brace myself. It’s time to make my move. I face her again. “Maybe it’s being in a garage with you again. It’s messing with my head.”
Anger flashes in her eyes. “Why do you have to bring that up?”
Shit. This whole plan of mine, it feels like a dance. I’m trying to get the steps right, but I think I’m always about to fall on my ass.
The First Kiss Hypothesis Page 10
