Now he’s not either. “Nothing.”
“No, you just most definitely said something.”
“It’s just that . . .”
“It’s just that what?”
“When you’re like this . . . so open and laughing at stupid stuff . . .” He gestures at me impatiently. “It’s tough to believe that this is the same person who betrayed me.”
That, like so much else today, stings.
“You know what they say the sign of an intelligent person is?” I ask.
“I suppose you’re going to tell me?”
“It’s the ability to hold two seemingly conflicting thoughts in your mind at once. So you should be able to think, Wow, I’m upset about what she did, and Wow, she’s funny and she’s cute when she’s eating cheese steak, all at the same time without having your head explode. People are more than just one thing. Most people, Drew, are pretty complex.”
He opens his mouth and then shuts it again.
“Also,” I say, “it should make it easier for you to keep your head from exploding, since I never did anything wrong in the first place.”
Again, he opens his mouth. Again, he shuts it.
I decide that I don’t care what he has to say or has decided not to say as I take another healthy bite.
I am not going to let him spoil this cheese steak for me.
DREW
We’re waiting backstage in Tucson for the start of the third and final debate when it occurs to me that someone’s missing.
“Where’s Dad?” I say. “He should be here.”
He really should. My mom has been doing better in the polls lately, but if my dad’s not here for this, tongues are sure to start wagging again. That’s all we need.
“Don’t worry,” my mom says. “He’ll be here.”
And, true to her word—his too, I suppose—he is. At zero hour, he walks in with the twins and Clint. I guess they figure that, with it being the last debate and all, it’s more important to have a solid show of family unity than worry about the twins missing school.
We’re all hugging and greeting each other when Dad says to me, “Oh, and I have a surprise for you.” He goes to the door, says something to someone out in the hall, and a minute later there’s a familiar face standing in the doorway.
“Sandy!” I practically scream.
“Dude.” He’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt as he ambles over. When he reaches me, we do the guy hug thing.
“What are you doing here?” I say when we disengage.
“Your mom’s idea.” He gives a nod at her. “Hey, Mrs. Reilly.”
“Sandy.” She nods back before turning to me. “You’ve been so good about helping me with the campaign. And you told me how much you missed Sandy. So I thought I’d fly him out. Maybe tomorrow, you could spend the whole day with Katie, and Sandy could go too?”
“Yeah,” Sandy says, “how are things going with your . . . girlfriend?”
The word brings me up short and I have to remind myself what Sandy knows and what he doesn’t. He didn’t know I was seeing Katie in the first place. But then, when the rest of the world found out about us because of that photo—which Katie believes I leaked—he found out too. Then, I would have told him the truth, that Katie and I had broken up—well, I broke up with her—but my mom came up with her scheme for us to pretend-date in order to help the campaign and I decided it wouldn’t be safe to tell Sandy that.
Yeah, I think that’s everything.
“It’s fine,” I tell Sandy now. “Everything is going great.”
“That’s terrific.” Sandy opens his arms wide. “And who better to play the chaperone?”
Something about the way he says it makes me think: Did my mom really ask him here out of the goodness of her heart, for me, or is this just something she thinks will be good for the campaign?
In the end, I decide it doesn’t matter. Whatever the case, I’m just glad he’s here.
Then Ann tells my mom it’s time, and off she goes.
We stay in the backstage room, watching the debate on the monitor. I’ve seen two of these already, so you’d think it would be old hat by now, even boring. But the truth is, the suspense has been ratcheted up—it’s astounding to believe the election is just one week from today. Even the twins are silent, all eyes glued to Mom every time she speaks.
“She’s so good.” Sandy breaks the silence.
She is, isn’t she? I think.
Still, it’s hard not to feel insecurity creeping in.
“Do you really think so?” I ask. Because the truth is, it’s impossible to tell what the live audience thinks. They’re not supposed to clap or give any indication of support during the actual debate. So even though I think she’s good, who knows how it’s playing to everyone else?
“Totally,” Sandy says. “She’s got this thing.”
I hope he’s right. But again, who knows?
Because if there’s one thing I’m learning, it’s that the American voter is a very fickle beast.
And then, before I know it the final debate is over and it’s time for the family to go out on the stage and make all happy-smiley. It’s time for me to once again make it look like Katie and I are one ecstatic couple.
In the doorway, I turn back to Sandy.
“You coming?”
“Dude. I may be family, but I’m not that much family. Besides, look at me.” He indicates his T-shirt and jeans. “I’ll just watch the festivities on the monitor.”
After the festivities, as Sandy put it, and during the limo ride back, Sandy remains uncharacteristically quiet. But once we’re back at the hotel and we’re safely in our room, he turns on me.
“So,” he says. “You want to tell me what’s really going on?”
“What do you mean?”
“You and your ‘girlfriend.’ ”
He does the air-quotes thing, which is still so annoying.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.
“Come on. I’ve got two eyes. Maybe other people might be fooled but I’m not.”
“Still don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say, chucking a pillow at him. “Hey, you want something from this minibar? I mean, we can’t take any of the little booze bottles—they count everything—but how about a soda?” I pull a canister of something out of the fridge, shake it so it rattles. “Cheese curl?”
“I do not want a cheese curl, Drew.” And now, having said that, there’s no stopping him. “You and that chick—you’re not really a couple anymore, are you?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Suddenly, this is all I can think of to say, my answer to everything. And back to the minibar. I wave a candy bar at him. “Toblerone?”
He doesn’t even bother to respond to my offer of food products this time.
“The two of you,” he says, “you were holding hands and everything, everything looked good, but you didn’t say a single word to one another, and the way you had those tight smiles, the way you kind of glared at each other out of the corners of your eyes . . .”
“What did you expect us to say? With the whole world watching? Ooh, ooh, I love you?”
“No, of course not, but I expected something. Instead, it seemed to me like it was just for show. So I ask you again: You’re not a couple anymore, are you?”
He’s asking me? Sounds to me more like he’s telling me.
I feel myself wavering.
“Come on, Drew,” he says. “I’m your best friend. You can tell me anything.”
I’ve been keeping secrets about this from Sandy for so long, it’s become a habit. But his words remind me: no matter what my reservations, he is my best friend, always has been. I don’t know if it’s the late hour or the long days or just because it’s such a relief to finally be talking to a real friend after the past lonely weeks on the campaign trail, but I find myself telling him the truth. I tell him everything.
“Wait a second,” he says at one point. “Back
up. Katie was the one who told the press that story about your dad having an affair?”
I shrug. “Who else could it be? She’s the only one I ever told.”
We both wince. Neither of us say out loud that I clearly didn’t trust him.
“So then I broke up with her,” I say. “I mean, of course I did.”
“But how could you be sure it was her?”
“How could I be sure it wasn’t?”
“Did she confess?”
“Well, no. She said it wasn’t her. But of course she’d say that, wouldn’t she?”
“If she said she didn’t, though, and you really liked her, why didn’t you just trust her?”
The way he says it now, I start to wonder: Why didn’t I?
“Maybe you were wrong,” he says.
Could I have been . . . wrong?
“Maybe you should try to make things right with her,” Sandy says.
“But she’s the one—”
“You don’t know that!” he cuts me off.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say it wasn’t her who told the press. Even if that’s the case, she’d never go back out with me now.”
“How come?”
So I explain about the pictures from outside my house after the masquerade ball. I explain how Katie thinks it was something I staged to humiliate her.
“Oh.” An odd expression comes over Sandy’s face. “Dude,” he says, “I took those pictures.”
“You’re kidding, right?” I laugh nervously. “Why would you do such a thing?”
“Jealousy.” He says it so simply that I instantly know it’s true.
“But why? How? What did you have to be jealous of?”
“You weren’t telling me anything. For the first time since I’ve known you, you were unavailable. I’d call and you’d say you were busy doing homework or something—I knew it couldn’t be that. So then I started occasionally stopping by your house, you know, to see if I could find out anything. It wasn’t stalking but it just made me crazy, not knowing. That one night, when you were all dressed up as the Tin Man, I got lucky. But then I couldn’t believe who the girl you were with was.”
“That it was Katie?”
“Yes, Katie, the girl you were obsessed with when we were kids.”
“Obsessed with . . .” Huh? “What are you talking about?”
“Come on, Drew, you know.”
“No, I really don’t.”
“When we were four, we met her at that outdoor festival at the end of the summer. Her dad was campaigning there and you two, I don’t know, bonded over her bruised knees or something. And then, when we were eight, there was that picture of her in the newspaper, wearing that miniature pink Jackie O suit. You said, ‘She’s going to be my girlfriend someday,’ and then you cut that picture out and put it in your little Velcro wallet and kept it there until it practically disintegrated.”
“None of that ever happened!”
“How can you not remember that? Hey, I understand you forgetting the time we were four—I have trouble remembering much from when we were really little too—but the other?”
“I remember the Velcro wallet . . .” It had a Superman insignia on it.
And suddenly, the memories come crashing in. Everything Sandy is saying—it’s all true.
“How did I never remember this before?” I ask, stunned.
“I don’t know.” Sandy shrugs. “Maybe when you saw her again, all grown up, your mind refused to make a connection to the past, because the person you were seeing in front of you was the daughter of your mom’s political enemy and you weren’t supposed to like her?”
Seriously? All along, I’ve been a party loyalist?
Another shrug from Sandy. “The mind’s a funny thing. But I do know one thing.”
“Which is?”
“Katie Willfield, from the time you were small, has always been the girl for you.”
I’m still trying to digest all this when Sandy continues with, “I don’t know what I was thinking—I swear I wasn’t trying to break you up—but before I knew it, I’d posted the pictures. And then, when you said you and she were hitting the campaign trail together, I figured everything was fine between you. But now I come to find out that you broke up and part of the reason is me . . .”
I’m just dumbstruck, taking it all in.
“You should have told me the truth from the beginning!” Sandy says painfully.
“I didn’t think I could trust you with it,” I say. “And obviously, I was right.”
“But you weren’t! Because, if you had trusted me? If you had told me not to say or do something, I wouldn’t have—hey, I’m educable!”
Something about the way he says that last part—so SAT-prep word—makes me start to laugh. Soon, Sandy’s laughing too. Still, our laughter has a sad, trailing quality to it.
“You still like her,” Sandy says into the silence that follows our outburst.
As soon as he says this, I realize it’s true.
“Yes, but—”
“Don’t tell me again how she betrayed you, and even if she didn’t, it wouldn’t matter because she’s mad at you about the pics. Which we both know now is all my fault.”
Who needs to say anything when you have a best friend to do your talking for you?
In the end, I simply nod.
“I don’t know how I’m going to do it yet,” Sandy says, “but somehow I’m going to make it up to you.”
KATIE
The morning following the final debate, Kent and I are parked outside of Drew’s hotel, waiting for him. But when the opposite passenger side door of the limo opens, it’s not Drew who slides in. Instead, it’s some boy I’ve never seen before in T-shirt and jeans. I’m about to scream for help—Who is this guy?—when Drew slides in after him, shuts the door.
The guy holds out his hand to me. “Hey, what’s up?”
Reluctantly, I shake his hand and crane my neck around him to eyeball Drew. “Friend of yours?” I say.
“This is Sandy,” Drew says, “my best friend from home. My mom flew him in. She thought it would be a good idea to have him spend the day with us.”
At first, I’m appalled. But then I think: Why not? This is Drew’s and my last day together. This is the last time we’ll have to publicly maintain our charade, because after today we’ll go back to campaigning with our respective parents and then it’s just one short week until the election. Then this will all be over with. So why not have Sandy here? Maybe he’ll act as a buffer. Maybe with him here, it’ll be less awkward and we can just get this final homestretch over with.
“Yo.” Sandy reaches a hand over to the front seat. “Kent, right? Heard a lot about you.”
After shaking Kent’s hand, Sandy settles back, stretches his arms wide against the back of the seat, and puts an arm around Drew’s and my shoulders, giving us a squeeze. “So, kids. What’ve we got planned for today?”
I pull out my clipboard. “Well, first I was thinking—”
“Let me see that,” Sandy says.
He takes the clipboard from me and starts reading the items out loud. When he’s done, he says, “Yeah. No. We’re not doing any of that,” and hands the clipboard back to me.
Okay, I know he’s Drew’s best friend, but seriously, who is this guy?
“Then what are we doing?” I finally ask.
Sandy leans back, digging one hand into a tight jeans pocket and removing a piece of paper. After unfolding the many folds, he tries to iron it out with a palm on his knee. “I’ve got my own list,” he says proudly.
“May I see that?” I extend my hand for the crumpled mess.
“Um, no,” Sandy says. Then he leans over the seat again, points to a place on the page to Kent. “Yo, Kent. Can you find this spot?”
With Sandy still leaning forward, I have a clear view of Drew. I mouth at him: Where’s he taking us?
But Drew just shrugs back at me, helpless, like: What’s a guy
supposed to do?
You would think that being from Connecticut, wealthy, and a girl—not necessarily in that order!—would make me inclined to love horses. Well, I’m here to tell you, such is not the case. It’s not that I dislike horses, but I’m on the short side, I’ve never had the chance to ride before—too busy furthering my father’s political career—and, I’m a control freak. Even at the dentist’s office, I prefer to keep one foot on the floor. Also:
“A spider!”
I did mention that spiders represent the third greatest fear of humans, right?
Only it’s more than just an Eek, a spider! moment. This is the biggest, hairiest spider I’ve ever seen in my life, moseying its way across the desert floor.
The desert. For riding. Yes, this is the first stop on the magical mystery tour that Sandy is taking us on.
Sandy cocks his head at the tarantula, squinting one eye shut. “I’d say that’s a good argument for just getting on the horse, Katie.”
When he puts it like that, he doesn’t have to ask me twice.
But getting up on the horse—short girl? tall horse?—takes a combination of Drew pushing and Sandy pulling.
“Now what do we do?” I ask, once Drew and Sandy are on their horses too.
“I don’t know.” Sandy shrugs, looks at Drew. “You know how to ride?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
“Then what are we doing here?” I put in.
“I’ve always wanted to try it,” Sandy says.
Drew shrugs. “I can think of worse things to do.”
They click their heels against their horses’ flanks and they’re off at a slow pace.
“Shouldn’t we have a guide?” I shout after them.
They fail to turn around.
“No, really!” I shout, a little more desperate now. “Shouldn’t we have a guide?”
Still not turning around.
This really is the Wild West.
Thankfully the horses are old, and by doing what Sandy and Drew do, I’m able to follow.
When we return to the barn we got the horses from, an hour and a half later, I’m saddle sore and still brushing desert off my jeans from the two times I fell off. I’m also still laughing—at myself, us, at the absurdity of the whole situation.
Red Girl, Blue Boy: An If Only novel (If Only . . .) Page 19
