What Are Friends For?

by Patricia McLinn

  “Your schedule for your three weeks in Drago, with all the times and places.” She set it on the table.

  “Schedule?”

  “Schedule, itinerary, whatever you want to call it. A listing of where and when you need to be for festival events. First—”

  “Stop,” he ordered with the voice she remembered from chem lab. The voice that said she was about to mix two chemicals together that should never reside in the same test tube.

  With a frown sharpening the angles, his face looked more the way she remembered. She used to imagine it as the work of a talented artist who’d sketched only stark lines—jaw, cheekbones, chin, brow bone. Time had finally painted in the rest—except for when he frowned like this.

  “I don’t need a schedule,” he said. “I’m going to be here at Ma’s getting work done in peace and quiet, and then show up to be Grand Marshal for the parade and Guest of Honor at some dance two weeks from Saturday. I can remember that without a schedule.”

  Not according to his assistant, Brenda, he couldn’t.

  Darcie didn’t say that out loud because Brenda had strongly suggested she not mention their alliance, forged over several phone conversations set up by Mrs. Z.

  “Think again, Zeke. You’re forgetting you’re head judge for the Lilac Queen finals. That means finalist introductions, then the judging rounds, official presentation of the court and eventually the coronation. Plus rehearsals, a meeting for parade participants, interviews and—”

  “Oh, my God.” His voice matched his frown.

  “Zeke, you know what a big deal the festival is for Drago, and we gave you all the details in the packet we sent.”

  “I didn’t read that.”

  His mother’s tsk stopped the admission. He flicked a look at her, then returned to Darcie, clearly considering her the easier touch.

  “Darcie, I’ll go to the dance and the parade, but all this other stuff…”

  The CEO of Zeke-Tech, the genius of the New Technology was shaking in his boots. She would have laughed, except she remembered the last time she’d seen him look this lost. The early October day in senior year when they’d buried his father.

  Now his eyes asked her to take this burden away. She was racked by the knowledge that not only could she not remove this burden, but she had every intention of doing her best to shove a whole lot more onto his shoulders.

  “Sorry, Zeke. You signed on for the whole deal. Starting this afternoon with being interviewed by the Drago Intelligencer at the Community Center, and then introductions to the contestants and preliminary run-through.”

  “This is impossible, this—”

  “You give me this schedule, Darcie,” Mrs. Z said. “Friends come to say hello soon, then I send him to the Community Center right on time. Don’t worry, Darcie, I keep Anton schedule ticking like bomb works.”

  Zeke groaned.

  “Can you look over here, Mr. Zeekowsky?” the young photographer from the Intelligencer asked.

  “Why?”

  The young man’s pimply face emerged from behind the camera. “To get a better angle.”

  “It would be the same angle if you stood in front of me and I looked straight ahead.”

  If the photographer had sense, he’d be snapping away, because Zeke’s face expressed the first flicker of interest in twenty minutes. Apparently the photographer didn’t have much sense.

  “Straight ahead puts half your face in shadow. Plus, turning your head angles the light across the eyes.”

  “Huh,” Zeke said, then lapsed into his zombie-in-concrete face.

  Darcie sighed from her seat ten feet away. She would give a lot not to be here in the Community Center’s main room. But here she sat, on duty, in uniform, assigned to stick by Zeke today, just in case.

  Just in case what, she had no idea. But that had been Chief Harnett’s orders when she’d started her shift at noon.

  She’d gotten out one word of protest—but—before being hit with the Harnett stare.

  She’d arrived at the Community Center at the same time as Zeke, who’d been spurred, no doubt, by Mrs. Z. Darcie had thought she’d seen pleasure in his eyes as she’d explained her assignment today.

  Then the young, attractive female reporter from the Intelligencer hooked on to Zeke like a native spearing a fish. In fact, Vicki Constable was so attentive to him that Darcie was beginning to doubt her gossip sources that the reporter was having an affair with her editor.

  While Darcie faded to the background, Vicki directed Zeke to a chair. She shed her jacket, showing off shapely arms improbably tanned for the last week of April in Illinois, and draped it over an extra chair. That left her photographer to dig gear out of a bag on the floor.

  Vicki demanded of her colleague, “Are you done?”

  “Not quite,” he mumbled. “Mr. Zeekowsky, could you, uh, smile?”

  “No.”

  Zeke’s flat refusal was drowned out by noisy arrivals at the far end of the long room.

  Cristina Wellton swept through the double doorway first, the acknowledged beauty of Drago. She’d been Miss Everything-and-Anything since she’d been old enough to say tiara, and was the hands-down favorite to be Lilac Queen. Sort of the Jennifer of her generation, Darcie thought, but without the brains or personality.

  Ashley Stenner’s gaze followed Cristina’s entrance with attention so rapt that Darcie half expected her to break into applause. Until last month, Jennifer’s daughter had barely known Cristina existed. However, ever since Ashley was named Junior Princess—a position once held by Cristina—the younger girl had developed a staggering case of hero worship.

  When Jennifer appeared, Darcie saw her gaze travel from her daughter to Cristina. Jennifer was worried, but treading lightly for fear that trying to wrest Ashley from Cristina’s shadow would make the girl cling even more tightly.

  Then the other four queen candidates, various mothers, festival officials and the two remaining judges filed in, with enough emotional crosscurrents to sink a battleship.

  Vicki touched Zeke’s knee to reclaim his attention, which had predictably shifted to the other end of the room when Jennifer entered.

  “I found yearbooks from your days at Drago High, and I must say, Mr. Zeekowsky, you—” the reporter chuckled “—have certainly improved with age.”

  Darcie bristled. Maybe Zeke hadn’t been a conventional hunk in high school, but anyone who had seen his intelligence, passion, sorrow and determination would have been a fool not to see how appealing he was. Besides, Vicki wasn’t helping their chances of winning over Zeke by reminding him of high school.

  “Your hair for one thing,” the reporter said.

  Okay, she had a point there. Zeke’s thick mop of medium brown hair had been tamed into an appealing, young-JFK-in-the-wind look.

  Zeke eyed Vicki with a distrust usually saved for dogs foaming at the mouth. From a strictly self-preservation angle, what he should have been paying attention to was the approach of Cristina Wellton.

  Ashley trailed her. Everyone else remained on the far side of the room. Cristina zeroed in on Zeke with a smile beaming so brightly that the photographer seemed blinded from the peripheral rays.

  Zeke glanced at her without a flicker of interest, then looked back to Vicki.

  Darcie perked up. Cristina had an ego big enough to swallow all the cornfields in Drago County. This might be an entertaining shift after all.

  “My assistant takes care of that,” he said replying to Vicki’s comment about his hair. “She gets this guy to come in.”

  “This guy? This. Guy!” Cristina surged forward. “Jon le Breque is an artiste, a miracle worker, a monumental talent.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I am Cristina Wellton.” Her tone and bearing would have worked if she’d declared, “I am the Queen of Sheba.”

  A flicker crossed Zeke’s gray eyes, and Darcie knew something had caught his interest. “How’d you know the name of the guy who cuts my hair?”

 
; The photographer, with a rare show of sense, urgently snapped away, as Zeke’s curiosity broke through his stiff mask of discomfort.

  “Everyone knows Jon le Breque cuts your hair. You are one of the few clients he takes on outside of Hollywood or New York. It’s in all the magazines,” Cristina said.

  Zeke frowned. Snap, snap, snap. “I’ve never read about Jon. What magazines?”

  “Vogue, Elle, People, Cosmo, Hairstyle—”

  “There’s a magazine about hair?”

  Cristina’s mouth dropped open, a distorted mirror of Zeke’s astonishment, like two aliens encountering each other for the first time. Darcie couldn’t help laughing.

  Every face turned to her. Vicki and Cristina glared—Vicki on general principal, Cristina because she expected adulation, not amusement. The photographer peeped over his camera, then dove behind it to click off shots.

  Zeke’s look was the hardest to untangle. There was something of the young Zeke the first time she’d talked to him—really talked to him—in class, when he’d looked as if he thought he might like a friend but didn’t really trust her. Also, yes, deep down, a hint he might like to laugh with her, even if he wasn’t entirely sure what she was laughing at.

  Darcie’s throat squeezed shut, strangling the laugh.

  The cause of her throat-squeezing switched in an instant when Ted Warinke, one of the other two Lilac Queen judges, plodded up on Zeke’s blind spot, clapped him—hard—on the shoulder and said, “Well, if it isn’t my old friend Zeke the Geek!”

  Ted wasn’t a bad person. Although, if he could have been arrested for terminal lack of sensitivity, he’d be serving a life sentence. Ted had been a Lilac Queen judge for years because his hardware stores sponsored the parade, not because he was fit to judge anyone’s social graces.

  Having recovered from the unexpected blow, Zeke looked from Ted’s extended hand to his face and said, slowly, “Do I know you?”

  Great, just great.

  First, Ted blabbed Zeke’s hated high school nickname, which would probably show up in the paper, reminding him why he’d never come back before. Then, Zeke used that I-have-no-interest-in-ever-knowing-you tone, which was sure to make Ted defensive, which would make him take verbal potshots at Zeke, which could make these weeks like leading two elephants through a minefield.

  “Zeke, this is Ted Warinke,” Darcie desperately filled in. “He was several years ahead of us in school. You probably don’t remember him.”

  “Yeah.” Ted guffawed. “We didn’t cross paths much.”

  “No surprise.” Zeke’s voice told Darcie he was about two seconds from adding, because I avoid idiots. Or something even less subtle. Something Ted couldn’t miss. Then Ted, of all people, saved the moment.

  “Yeah, I was buddies with this one’s brother. Isn’t that right, Jennifer?”

  Jennifer glided up, smiling graciously at everyone, including Ted, even as she sidestepped his attempt to wrap an arm around her waist. “You and Mark were friends.”

  “Damn straight. And Eric, even before he was the best quarterback Drago ever produced.”

  “Yes, well, you’ll have to excuse us everyone,” Jennifer said. “We need Cristina to join the other candidates, and let you continue your interview.”

  She took Cristina’s arm in an apparently casual gesture that Darcie admiringly noted got the girl moving.

  “Yes,” Vicki said, clearly none too pleased at Young Beauty and Mature Beauty, not to mention Old Jock horning in. “This is a private interview.”

  Ted was impervious to such snubs. Cristina’s unshakeable belief that everyone loved her as much as she loved herself deflected any and all barbs. So they departed with equanimity.

  As Jennifer led them away, collecting Ashley, too, Darcie heard Ted say something that included “Zeke the Geek” and “brain too big for his body.”

  But Cristina’s voice was clearer. “I thought he was supposed to be so smart? He doesn’t know anything!”

  Chapter Three

  “What are you going to major in?” Ted Warinke asked Cristina.

  Big surprise. He’d asked every finalist that question since becoming a judge thirteen years ago, after Darcie’s father had died, leaving the opening. Darcie had once speculated to Jennifer that Ted had used “What’s your major?” in college, the resulting pickup had become Mrs. Warinke and he’d stuck with the line ever since.

  “Oh, I’m not going to college,” Cristina said airily. “I can’t waste my best years in college. I’m going to model.”

  Ted blinked. The other judge, Mrs. Rivers, who had taught dance and deportment in Drago at least since covered wagons reached the area in the 1830s, sucked in a breath. Zeke’s brows contracted. Even Darcie, sitting as far to the side of the room as she could without leaving, straightened.

  “After all, international travel is the best education, and my modeling career will take me all over the world and get me started on my own business. Look at all the old, old models who have businesses. Like Tyra Banks.”

  Since Banks was about Darcie’s age, she did not appreciate old, old.

  “What kind of business are you interested in, Cristina?” asked Ted, apparently mollified that she wanted to be a business mogul, like him.

  “Oh, I don’t know that yet. Most of the models seem to go into developing their own clothing line or makeup. But there’s a lot of people already doing that stuff. I mean, lately, when you go to the mall, it takes longer and longer to go through everything that’s there. I want to do something different, something that says Cristina,” she said. “Maybe jewelry. I’m sure something will occur to me. It’s bound to when one is in the fashion industry. One would learn so much in that world.”

  “You can’t learn technology,” Zeke said flatly.

  “Technology? Why on earth would I—” Darcie practically heard the click when Cristina’s self-preservation instinct caught up with her mouth. “I, ah, technology, of course, is utterly fascinating. I feel such an affinity with you, such a deep, abiding connection with your work.”

  To Darcie’s knowledge, Cristina’s affinity with technology consisted of e-mail and shopping online.

  “No one could have success like you, though. Why you’ve gobbled up all the money and fame there is in technology, so what would be left to a small-town girl like me, Zeke?”

  She batted her lashes, looking deeply into Zeke’s eyes. She was really quite good, Darcie thought. Did she practice in front of a mirror?

  Most of the others—especially the three contestant mothers lurking just out of the judges’ sight—sucked in breaths when Cristina called him Zeke, but he stared back expressionless.

  “Somebody’s got to make the next great discovery,” he said, “push the envelope, create a breakthrough.”

  “You’re so right,” Cristina said earnestly. “Without that, why, fashion would just die.”

  Zeke’s head pounded. His shoulders ached. His throat was dry, despite the water he’d chugged during this break before they did something the schedule ominously called Court Presentation Ceremony: First Run-Through.

  He’d felt fresher after a seventy-two-hour straight blitz to streamline code on the Z-Org hot sync program.

  “Can you believe this?” He shook his head, sinking down next to Darcie on the steps to the stage at one end of the room.

  She gave him a look. For some reason the look reminded him that the woman carried handcuffs and knew how to use them. And not in a fun way.

  “What does that mean, Zeke?”

  “All this energy and time going into some beauty pageant. Why not do something worthwhile?”

  “The Lilac Festival is worthwhile. It brings in more visitors to Drago than every other event combined. That helps the businesses and increases donations to everything from the park to the library to the police department, including the Drago Chest to help our neediest families.”

  “Fine, great. It’s all about philanthropy.” How had they gotten so far off what he want
ed to talk about?

  Darcie’s dark eyes narrowed. “I thought you were cranky because Ted Warinke had brought up ‘Zeke the Geek,’ but that sarcastic tone makes it sound as if you’ve got something personal against the festival.”

  He opened his mouth to tell her “Zeke the Geek” hadn’t bothered him in years. If it had, he’d have killed his college roommate in the first few months of freshman year instead of having Quince become his closest friend.

  “It’s not personal,” he lied. “It’s concern for these girls’ futures. Without this festival they might have real ambitions—not silly dreams of modeling.”

  “Don’t blame Cristina on the Lilac Festival. It doesn’t stunt the girls’ ambitions and abilities. In fact, it’s supposed to reward them. I was a Lilac princess, and I didn’t do so badly.”

  That memory of watching the Lilac court’s float came again, but this time he saw Darcie sitting below Jennifer’s elevated seat, her head turned toward him as if their eyes could meet despite the distance.

  “Yet you came back here after graduating from Penn State. You could have gone anywhere. I don’t get it, Darcie. You have the ability. Why you never gave yourself credit for—”

  “I didn’t graduate from Penn State.” She looked away. He followed her gaze and saw that kid from last night at the police station. Wayne, Walt, W—something. He was fiddling with wires to a video camera they’d used to tape the candidates. Zeke was about to snap his fingers in front of her face when Darcie added, “I left in my sophomore year. When my father died.”

  He hadn’t been prepared for her words. Pain sliced him before he could stop it, pain of remembering his loss, imagining hers. He pushed it away. “Why didn’t you finish?”

  “Right, I’d go back to college and leave Martha Barrett dealing with life on her own.” Her sarcasm eased with her next words. “She’s not like your mother, Zeke. I had to take care of things for her. I came back, commuted to Mid-Northern and started working.”

  “She’s—”