by Liz Czukas
“This is not the kind of help I’m looking for, thank you very much!” He raised his voice at the end so they’d hear him outside.
There was some giggling and a thud on the lid in response.
“They’re not going to let us out,” I said.
“Yeah, I got that. Thanks.”
“Why are you being so rude to me? I didn’t get us locked up in here.”
“Neither did I.”
“You’re the one who’s been acting like a complete pain in the ass all night. They never would have done this if we hadn’t been arguing.”
Beside me, he shifted angrily. “You’re the one who ditched out on our plans. This never would have happened if you had just come along with everyone like you were supposed to.”
“Yeah, and maybe I would have if I’d known you were going to be a complete baby about it when I didn’t.” Ugh. I would have so loved to cross my arms and give him my best evil-child-with-fire-starting-powers glare, but I couldn’t even really get one of my arms free.
“I am not being a baby.”
“Ha! Could have fooled me.”
“You’re the one who went crying to your friends about it.”
“I wouldn’t have had anything to cry about if you’d just been nicer to me.”
“Am I supposed to be grateful that you didn’t want to go to prom with me?”
“You never asked me!” I shouted.
He sucked in some air, but no snappy retort followed.
Outside the trunk, more laughter confirmed that everyone was listening to us. Wonderful. I lowered my voice. “You never said a word. How was I supposed to know you wanted to go with me? I didn’t even know you . . . liked me.” I hated to say it like that, and I grimaced in the dark.
“Well now you know. Happy?” he asked.
“No.”
“Yeah? Me neither. I’m so glad I told you.”
My pulse pounded in my ears, and my stomach filled with mutant butterflies from Mars. These were not the gossipy kind of butterflies. These things had anger issues. It was now or never. I stretched out my pinkie until it touched his arm, which probably doesn’t sound like much, but trust me, took a lot of courage. “I’m glad,” I whispered.
He stiffened. “Because now you can avoid me?”
“No,” I said quickly. “I—I don’t know what to do about it, but I’m glad you told me.”
“God, I’m so stupid,” he muttered. “Why did it have to be you?”
I withdrew my pinkie in full retreat. If I could have, I’d have fled for the nearest hill. So much for courage. “I’m . . . sorry?”
“You’re, like, the least available person I know. Why did I have to fall for you?”
The Martian butterflies chewed at my stomach. Best to fall back on my classic strategy of humor and sarcasm. Always a safe bet. “If it makes you feel any better, I can’t seem to get over Johnny Depp. Talk about unavailable.”
“That’s not even—you’re such a dork sometimes.” There was a subtle undercurrent of laughter in his tone, and the Martian butterflies paused their war dance.
Summoning every drop of courage I could find, I stretched out my pinkie again, seeking his arm. When I found it, I brought my other fingertips to rest on his sleeve. “If I’d gone with the group as planned, would you have said anything?”
“I . . . don’t know. I wanted to. I thought maybe—I don’t know.”
“If it’s any consolation, I probably would have freaked out.”
“Great.” He sighed. “That makes me feel tons better.”
“It wouldn’t have been personal.”
“I know, I know. Your damn policy.”
“I’ve been informed that my no-dating policy may be a touch on the screwed-up side. Potentially.”
Silence.
I chewed on my cheek, waiting for him to speak.
Finally he did. “I see. By who?”
“Oh . . . just . . . you know . . . everyone I know.” I shrugged, though only one shoulder could go anywhere.
“What’s the story with that, anyway?”
I sighed, and told him the background on my mom. It was weird to think he didn’t know, but it wasn’t something I talked about.
I didn’t even think of her all that much. I certainly never thought of myself as someone to be pitied. Except for my name, of course. I didn’t see myself as someone who lost her mom, because I never remembered having one. All I’d known my whole life was that I didn’t want to do the same thing to my kids. But I viewed it the way I imagined everyone saw their parents. Like Lisa, who didn’t want to be a teacher after seeing how hard her mom worked. Or Cassidy, who thought her dad was nuts for being into math and numbers so much he’d become an accountant. Like, on purpose. For me, it was just a little bigger. Don’t start a family before you’re ready, or you might end up running off to become a flight attendant. It seemed so simple. But maybe I’d gone too far with it.
“I’m sorry your mom left,” Schroeder said when I was done. “That sucks.”
“I don’t miss her, or anything,” I said, curling my fingers around his arm. “I swear. It’s not like that. I’m not all damaged and heartbroken—”
“It’s okay if you are.”
“I . . .” My words stuck in my throat. “I’m not. I just want to do better. I know I can do better than she did.”
“Well, obviously.”
“I’m going to start by giving my children completely normal names. Like Mary and John.”
He laughed. “I like your name.”
“You call me Spleen.”
“You call me Schroeder.”
“Heart is a terrible name, trust me.”
“It suits you. You’re not meant to be a Mary.”
“What about a Marilyn?”
“No. Maybe a Lung . . .”
I pinched his arm, which made him laugh, and then his other hand came over to cover my fingers. My toes curled, scrunching into the fuzzy wall at my feet, and my pulse tripled in an instant.
“Anyway, that’s the whole reason for the no-dating policy. Just making sure I don’t end up like my mom.”
“So, as far as you’re concerned, there’s nothing in between No Dating and Having Two Kids Before Age Twenty?”
“Yeah, that’s the part people don’t understand.”
“Count me as one of those people.”
“I just figured it would be easier to avoid the whole thing than worry about how serious I was getting with someone. You can’t get pregnant if you don’t even have a boyfriend, right?” I swallowed hard, grateful for the dark so he couldn’t see how embarrassing it was to talk about this stuff with him.
“You know that’s not exactly how it works, right?” On top of my hand, his fingers curled and fidgeted.
“I was a lot younger when I came up with this policy, okay?”
He laughed.
It was time to change the subject before he started investigating my lack-of-dating history. “So, what’s your story? Why didn’t you say something to me sooner?”
“You mean besides the fact that you made it completely clear you weren’t interested?”
I tried to pull my hand back, but he kept his fingers pressed over mine and even stretched out the fingers of his other hand until they brushed against my leg. Warmth spread through me from that point like I’d been touched by sunlight.
“I, uh, was kind of a big loser until high school.”
“Huh?” I couldn’t imagine him as anything but what he was.
“Let me put it this way—girls in middle school are a lot less impressed with a guy who can do ballroom dancing than girls in high school.”
I smiled into the blackness between us. “Why did you learn, then?”
“My mom owns a dance studio.”
Understanding dawned on me. “And she made you.”
“Exactly.”
“How did I not know this?”
“It’s not like I go around telling people. I don’t k
now what your dad does.”
“He sells and installs carpet and flooring. It’s pretty much the most glamorous job ever.”
He laughed a little. “That’s why he’s got the van, huh?”
That feeling of vertigo swept over me again, and my ears rang. I squeezed my eyes shut, as if the darkness in the trunk wasn’t already absolute.
“Yeah,” I whispered when the feeling eased up. I didn’t think sensory deprivation agreed with me.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” I opened my eyes, but there was still nothing to see. “You were saying about your mom?”
“Right. She swore I’d thank her someday. But some of the girls in my class took lessons there—jazz and contemporary and stuff. They didn’t keep it quiet. Let’s just put it that way.”
I could imagine exactly the kind of torture they’d put him through. Middle school was not the time or place to be different. As someone named Heart, I was kind of an authority on the subject. It was weird the way you could be friends with someone but not really know the ugly parts of their lives. We all had our secrets, I supposed.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Frank Blanchard was particularly unkind.”
“Oh.” And here we were in his house. Er, his driveway. No wonder Schroeder was crabby about the party.
“Add to it my piano lessons, and I wasn’t exactly the most popular guy. I learned to keep a low profile.”
“But now, you’re . . . you.” I rubbed my thumb against his bicep. “I think you’re . . .” Why was it so freaking hard to give a genuine compliment? I could never think of a word that didn’t sound fake or inadequate. “Well, you’re . . . great.”
“But not great enough to violate your policy,” he said with certainty.
My heart pounded in my ears and my hand shook. I licked my lips twice before I managed to speak. “I don’t know. I wouldn’t say that.”
His fingertips pressed hard into the back of my hand. “What?”
“I think—” I gasped in a noisy breath as my heart threatened to burst through my ribs. “I think maybe you’re worth a change in policy.”
He shifted, rolling onto his side to face me, forcing me to bring my knees closer to my chest with his pressed beneath mine. “Are you serious?”
“But you have to promise me some things.” Spots danced before my eyes from the rush of my pulse.
“What?”
I laughed in a weird, gasping way, but it was all I could manage with all my breath gone. I had never been so scared in my life. “You have to promise you won’t be such a pain in the ass.”
His hand bumped once into my shoulder before landing on the side of my neck. Warm and not sweaty, like usual. Buzzing, electric heat ran through me, up to my head and down to my toes. “I really was being a jerk tonight. I’m sorry.”
“And you have to promise we’ll take it slow.”
“Slow.” His hand started to lift away from my neck, so I brought it back down with my own. I didn’t want to lose contact. Even crammed together as we were, I needed the anchor of skin against skin to keep me tied to what was happening. I would have given anything to see his face.
“How slow?”
Blanking, all I could think of was my mother. I blurted out, “Well, like, let’s not have kids anytime soon, okay?”
He let out a bark of laughter. “No problem!”
“Was that too much? I’m sorry, I have no idea what I’m doing. I didn’t mean— I shouldn’t have—”
“Heart.”
My nerves subsided at the sound of him saying my name. “Yeah?”
“You’re fine.”
“Okay. I’m sorry. I’m probably going to be really bad at this, just so you know.”
“It’s okay. We’ll take it slow.”
For a long, heart-pounding moment, neither of us spoke. I was convinced he could feel my pulse beating against his palm.
“Can I ask you something?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“Have you ever kissed anyone?”
I blushed. “Um, yeah. Remember earlier?”
“No, I mean, like, a real kiss?”
In seventh grade, before I decided to avoid all romantic entanglements, I’d been sent into a closet at Sophie Middleworth’s birthday party with a passably cute boy named Dylan. It was Seven Minutes in Heaven, the most awkward kissing game in the long history of awkward kissing games. I vacillated between complete terror that we’d stare at each other and do nothing for seven minutes, and complete terror that he’d want to feel me up before the timer ran out. Eventually, he asked me if I wanted to kiss and I said yes, and we spent thirty strange seconds locked at the lips. He was more like a leech than a boy, sucking at my face like he was trying to extract my lifeblood. I was thrilled when the timer ran out.
Since my disgusting first kiss, I’ve shared two stage kisses with guys from school, one of whom was Neel, and once I failed to heed the warning signs of an impending kiss from an overeager dance partner at the homecoming dance as a freshman. Until tonight, that was it.
In answer to Schroeder’s question, I said, “Um . . . define real.”
He didn’t speak, but pulled me close and found my lips in the dark. There was nothing leechlike about his movements as he kissed me. My eyes slipped shut when he tilted his head, changing the angle of his mouth against mine. It was soft, warm, and made my fingers and toes tingle. Without a clue what I was doing, I parted my lips. He tasted like something sugary.
So this was what all the fuss was about.
I pressed one palm into his chest and fisted my other hand into the loose fabric at the side of his shirt. I wanted to pull him closer than our cramped quarters would allow. My breathing wouldn’t slow down, and I dimly wondered if that was normal, but I found I didn’t care enough to stop.
Finally he pulled back and tried to gather me into his arms, but our knees were still jammed between us. “We can stop,” he said. “Slow down.”
“No,” I said. “Not that slow.”
He laughed, and kissed me again, and I dissolved into it.
A mechanical wheeze and a click announced the trunk was about to open again, and we broke apart, both gasping in the cool air that rushed into the gap as the lid lifted.
Though it was the middle of the night, the ambient light outside was startling compared to the oblivion in the trunk. I blinked up at the semicircle of faces peering down at us.
“You guys okay?” Lisa asked. “We couldn’t hear you anymore, so we thought you’d passed out.”
“We’re okay.” Schroeder grinned at them, and I smiled and pressed a hand against my hot cheek.
“Soooo . . . what?” Neel prompted. “Do we need to lock you in there for a little longer, or are you ready to play nice?”
“Close it up,” Schroeder said.
Cassidy sighed, making a move to close the trunk.
“Wait!” I held up my hand to block her from shutting us in again. “It was a joke.”
They all looked expectantly as Schroeder. “Yeah, it’s pretty stuffy in there. We want to get out,” he confirmed.
“Sooo . . . ?” Becca was the one prompting us this time as I extended my hands to get assistance out of the trunk. “You guys are friends again?”
When both feet were flat on the blacktop, I turned to watch Schroeder climb out. My heart beat loudly and happily even as the Martian butterflies pirouetted nervously in my stomach. “We’re good,” I confirmed.
“Everything’s all worked out,” he agreed as he swiped his hands down his clothes, straightening them.
Everyone stared at us expectantly. I blinked back at them. “What?”
No one spoke.
I kept my eyes on them but leaned closer to Schroeder to stage-whisper to him, “I think they’ve gone into some kind of trance.”
“Come on, Heart.” He held out his hand to me, and I wove my fingers through his, smiling. “Let’s get out of here before we catch whatever it is.”
<
br /> He walked swiftly, making me trot alongside to keep up, my bare feet making soft slapping noises against the pavement. Then, when we were only about four cars away, he stopped suddenly and pulled me into his arms to kiss me.
The cheering from our friends didn’t stop, even after we did.
29 On the subject of naked women and juvenile pranks. And kissing.
The party, which had been confusing and crowded and annoying when I’d navigated through it earlier, now seemed almost inconsequential as I held Schroeder’s hand and maneuvered through the backyard toward the pool. The No Drama Crew was at our heels, not that we’d told them to follow us.
Cassidy ran up next to me and smacked my shoulder with the back of her hand. I turned to shoot her a nasty look. She just went wide-eyed and pointed at Schroeder. “Oh my God!” she mouthed at me.
I tried to look angry, but a smile ruined my attempt. There was just no room for anger with all the darn giddiness rampaging through my system like a squirrel on Pixy Stix.
When we got to the pool deck, there were already a handful of people in the water, most of them in their underwear. I wasn’t about to go skinny-dipping, or even underwear-dipping, but soaking my feet seemed like a great idea, so I stepped down onto the first step of the underwater stairs in the corner. My eyelids slipped shut of their own accord, thrilling at the cool sensation on my feet, which had been through so much tonight. Too long in strappy heels, and too long barefooted on the various paved surfaces of Frank Blanchard’s compound.
“Ooh, me too!” Lisa said, stepping into the water. With her shorter dress on, she was able to stand on the second step down without getting wet. Soon Ally and Cassidy were in there with us, while the boys sat on lounge chairs. Schroeder was the only one to take off his shoes and roll up his pants legs.
Before he could join us, Cassidy linked elbows with me and yanked me down to speak in hushed tones to the other girls. “Are you seriously going to go out with Chase?” she asked.
I looked over my shoulder at him, my heart hammering. “I think so. Yeah.” It was all I could squeak out.
