Edward and Seth both laughed a little. “She’s probably right,” Edward said. “Every style eventually makes a comeback.”
“Yeah but is she going to live that long?” Seth asked with a raised eyebrow.
Another playful slap. But this time, he caught her hand and held it. A good sign that they would stay on good terms and at least try to get some studying done tonight. I didn’t want either of them to fail.
We walked toward Edward’s car on the far end of the parking lot. Nothing but the best for Edward: a great car and a great parking space. Only the upper-class kids had parking spaces in the little lot behind Washington High. The rest of us peasants parked on the streets in the surrounding neighborhood, generally upsetting the owners of the one-story boxes who liked their street quiet and devoid of teenagers.
“You think it’s gonna rain?” Seth asked, glancing up at the gray sky. “I’m so sick of the rain. I gotta start biking to work to save money on gas.”
Tricia wrapped her arm in his. “It’s going to rain every day you have to work. All summer.”
“That’s the meanest thing you’ve ever said to him,” I told her with a laugh. Edward’s hand found mine and squeezed it tight. I felt a little surge of warmth spread across my body. I looked up at him. He was a foot taller than me, a good six inches taller than Tricia and she was five-ten. He could have been on the basketball team. I told him that. He would always respond: “I’d rather spend time with you.”
Dreamy, eh?
In the car, Seth sat up front and controlled the radio dial with calculated fury, making sure we were never tortured by any commercials. Edward had one of the nicest cars but he drove in control and always used his turn signals, even as he was pulling out of the parking lot.
“You’re such a weirdo,” Tricia told him when he made a complete stop before pulling out of the parking lot. “Not even one squealed tire? Really?”
He laughed and gave a little shrug, turning on the wipers as a small sprinkling of rain started up. “I like to be safe. It’s a nice car, if you haven’t noticed. With some nice ladies inside, too.”
“Where?” Seth asked, looking around.
I kicked the passenger’s seat. “Be good.”
“I bet if we were wearing low-cut blouses he’d be nicer,” Tricia said with a smile. We were on 85th street now, heading away from the city of Milwaukee and toward the little suburb of New Berlin. “Remember two years ago when we didn’t have chests? I don’t even think Seth ever even talked to me in the hall.”
“I never talked to anyone in the hall,” Seth muttered. “Especially girls without chests.”
“I bet I’d still have talked to Alice,” Edward said, glancing at me in the mirror. His dark eyes narrowed deviously.
“Probably not,” I told him.
Tricia laughed. “Yeah Eddie, she really wasn’t much to look at when she was a frosh. See how straight her dark hair is now? It used to be much frizzier. I had to teach her how to use hairspray. And this face? Zits. Tons and tons of zits. She needed a lot of help.”
“It’s true,” I murmured. I’d smoothed out some of the rough edges over the past two years. My skin was clearer (although I didn’t tan well) and I’d filled into a slight hourglass shape. My bright brown eyes seemed brighter now than when I was younger—or maybe I’d just gotten used to them. I used to hate them. Now, I loved how they complimented my indigo-friendly wardrobe.
“Every high school student needs a lot of help,” Edward said with a smile. “Me included.”
“Yeah I think one of your pecks is smaller than the other,” Seth said, giving Edward a poke in the ribs. Edward flinched, smiling, but said nothing.
Suddenly he braked, forcing my body against the seat belt. I looked out the windshield and saw the car of Joey Harrington pass us.
“What an ass,” Tricia said. “Who passes someone on a residential street?”
“Joey Harrington,” the rest of us said at the same time. Joey lived in our neighborhood, too. He kept to his clique of popular students inside the lunchroom and played football and hockey. He didn’t talk to us, but he didn’t pick on us either. We were the in-betweens—not quite popular, not quite outcasts who were the target of bullies. But we had friends in the outcast cliques, and so Joey and his friends’ taunts affected us too.
After Edward started dating me and word had spread, Joey was even nice to me in the hallway. Not overly nice, mind you … but he’d say hi. And it was hard not to enjoy it.
“You should cut him off,” Tricia said.
“I’d love nothing more,” Edward responded. “But not today.”
“Not today,” Seth scoffed. “You always say that. You’ve got, like, the coolest head in the school. And I mean that in a bad way, dude.”
“Yeah,” said Trish, “what happens when you get caught in some drama? You’ll have to take a side. Joey and his friends and those cool girls are obsessed with making drama.”
Edward just shrugged. It didn’t get to him. At least, I don’t think it did. He was cool. He looked cool—calm, I mean. His short dark hair and square jaw made him look like someone out of an old black-and-white detective film, one of those guys who’s always thinking one step ahead.
As we headed farther west, the houses and properties began to spread out. No more small boxy World War II-era homes … now, everything was getting bigger. Bigger homes. Bigger front yards. Bigger cars. We passed Southridge Mall, and then our rival high school. The street widened into four lanes to accommodate more traffic.
Edward turned right at Cherokee Drive, weaving around bends in the street. The houses in this small patch of neighborhood were crowded with pine and maple trees. Everything was green. Summer was here.
“Your stop, my friends,” Edward said, pulling into the driveway of a long two-story house with brown siding and wide windows overlooking the road. This was Seth’s house. You couldn’t see it from the front road, but in the back yard was one of the most amazing swing sets out there, complete with a climbing tower and monkey bars. As kids, Seth and I had logged hundreds of hours on that jungle gym.
Tricia opened her door, then reached out and grabbed Edward’s shoulder. “So you’ll pick us up tomorrow, right?”
He laughed. “I promise.”
“Please,” she said. She turned to me. “Don’t either of you forget. I can’t miss that exam.”
“You need to focus on passing the exam,” I told her sternly.
“I will.” She smiled her pearly white smile, then blew me a kiss.
Edward gave a wave to Seth, pulling out of the driveway and heading back toward 86th Street. On the way, we passed my house. My parents were both home, their twin Toyotas sitting in the driveway. Our house was narrower than Seth’s. Taller, too—our house had two floors. The paneling outside was dark blue and the windows much, much older. Drafty. Edward had never been inside my house, but if he had he would have first noticed the draft coming in through the windows. Everyone noticed that first.
We were quiet for a while. Edward didn’t talk much. I thought it was sexy; it reminded me of the hunks that always showed up in the books that all the girls in school read during Study Hall. The hunks were always silent. Always mysterious. Like Edward. Why he’d zeroed in on plain Alice was the subject of many guesses.
“Are we going to prom next year?” I asked him suddenly.
He turned right on 86th Street. “Of course.”
I leaned back. I wished I’d gotten in the front seat to be closer to him. I wanted to be close to him suddenly. To make sure he didn’t disappear.
“What made you think of that?” he asked.
“I just got this, like, real weird feeling run over me,” I said. “Like, we’re not going to be together next year or something.” Give me reassurance, I thought. There were prettier girls in school. They all liked Edward. They talked to him in class. They tried to make him laugh because he had a nice smile. OK, I’m being modest. A lot of them downright fawned over him. I pre
tended not to see it, but in reality we’re talking more than a little anxiety. He’d made friends so quickly—that was what happened when you joined track. The runners were popular.
He didn’t answer at first. Not exactly what I was hoping for.
“Seriously?” I asked. “No answer?”
“Of course we’re going,” he said finally.
“But you hesitated.”
“A lot of things happen over the course of the year, Alice.” He shrugged. “I’m game if you are.”
“But what?” I asked. “You think I might not be up for it?”
He didn’t answer. The downside to having a mysterious boyfriend was sometimes he was mysterious in an annoying sort of way. The popular girly books never prepare you for that.
“You OK?” he asked finally.
I touched my forehead. “Yes. I think. I’ve just been having some weird dreams.”
“What about?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember them well. But I keep waking up in a cold sweat. I know they’re scary, though. I remember them being scary.”
“Don’t eat pizza before bedtime,” he offered. “It causes nightmares.”
“Thank you, doctor. That’s really wonderful advice.”
Farther out at the edge of the suburb were the much larger houses. These houses were less social than the ones in my neighborhood: each one had a wrought iron gate and expansive yards and high fences that acted as a buffer between their neighbors. Each house was secluded and that, I think, was the way the owners liked it.
They liked their yards, too. Edward’s neighbor had put in a number of massive green shrubs that had been cut to resemble animals. Edward’s parents had “installed” maple and ash trees around the edge of the property to give their mansion—a thick, two-story monolith with off-white paneling and narrow prison-like windows—the feel of a cabin out in the woods.
A really, really big cabin.
He stopped the car at the gate, running his keycard across the little sensor box. The gate opened and he drove up the asphalt driveway, parking at the side of the house. Up close, the house looked more “middle class” and less “Super Filthy Rich.” There was a small door that presumably led to the basement and two green garbage bins that always seemed to be overflowing. Rain water had stained the red-brick foundation with ugly black streaks.
“Ugh,” I said, stepping around the garbage bag sitting on the grass next to the overflowing bin. Food wrappers and empty orange juice cartons were leaking out. “The raccoons got to it. Don’t your parents tell you to take out the trash?”
“Every week,” Edward said with a smile. “I hate doing it. It’s a long walk from the house to the street, if you haven’t noticed.”
“I’ve noticed,” I said. “You could almost have your own bus line from the street to your house.”
We walked up the concrete steps to the front door. Edward pulled out his keys and unlocked it.
“No parents?”
“What do you mean?” he asked with concern in his voice.
“I thought you said they might be home today.”
“Tonight,” he said. “Later tonight. Much, much later.”
We walked into the house. The front door opened into a massive living room. Near the front door were two blue couches and a large flatscreen TV smushed against the wall. Over the beautiful dark gray floral pattern wallpaper. That idea had to have come from Edward’s dad, I thought. No sane woman would hang something over such beautiful wallpaper.
Beyond the living room was the kitchen and a bathroom, the only other two rooms—beside his bedroom upstairs—that Edward said we were allowed to hang out in. The first floor had three more rooms, each one filled with things teenagers weren’t allowed to touch. Edward had shown me one afternoon when he was sure his parents wouldn’t show up. The first room was full of tall marble statues. Old, old statues. Statues of goddesses and ancient soldiers and plain-looking figures who had the curly hair and wardrobe of philosophers.
The second room was full of paintings, which hung on the wall and were held in place by solid metal frames whose intricate designs were almost as interesting as the paintings themselves. Lots of cherubs. Edward’s parents had a thing for cuddly little angel babies, I guess.
The third room led to the staircase and the bedrooms upstairs. This room was simpler, with tall solid wood bookshelves that tempted me every time we snuck upstairs. Books so old just looking at their delicate broken spines might cause them pain. Books so old the writing on the covers looked as if it had been inked in a different language entirely, the font so obscure you had to squint and remember back to your cursive lessons to figure out each letter. It was beautiful.
We went in there now on our way to his bedroom. I stopped as I always did, exploring one of the bookshelves nearest the large staircase pressed against the far wall. My bare toes sank into the soft red carpeting as I ran a finger along the middle row. This was the only room with carpeting. It looked old, too, as if it belonged in an earlier generation.
“Fairy tales,” I murmured. “God, there must be dozens of books of fairy tales.”
“They’re important,” Edward said. “Don’t you think?”
“I guess.”
“They are important,” Edward said. “Children need to believe in happy endings.”
“And Prince Charming,” I added. I looked up at him. “Right? Prince Charming is real, isn’t he?”
He smiled and kissed me on the forehead. “Of course, my love.”
“What’s this?” I asked, grabbing a flat wooden box sitting on one of the shelves. There was glass over one side and when I saw what was inside, I nearly dropped it.
“Careful,” Edward said, taking it from me. “They’re just butterflies.”
“Dead butterflies!” I exclaimed, wiping my hands on my pants. “Stabbed with needles!”
“That’s how they’re displayed.”
“Well, it’s gross. Almost as gross as spiders.”
He seemed offended, sliding the box back into the bookshelf between two books. “I have a lot of these, all over the house, so you might as well get used to them. I collect them. Every butterfly species is different. They’re all beautiful in their own way.” He looked at me and smiled devilishly. “I bet spiders can taste the difference, too.”
My stomach lurched. “Oh that is so gross. Please stop.”
He put an arm around me. “If you insist, my love.”
We went upstairs. I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong: I didn’t sleep with him. In fact, I’d never slept with him. It was strange, especially since we’d been dating for more than half a year, but I was having doubts about whether we should go that far at all. He seemed so much more mature than me. He didn’t laugh at Seth’s ridiculous jokes—he just smiled. He didn’t get excited at the hockey and basketball and football games we went to—he just clapped. He didn’t goof around with his track mates in class.
If we were going to have sex, I wanted to make sure it meant something. And I still didn’t know Edward, not really … I mean, what about that butterfly collection? What was that all about? Was he going to work in a museum or something? And I hadn’t even met his parents yet! Always so busy, running around making money.
We necked. There was nothing wrong with that, right? His bed was soft. His dark blue sheets felt silky on my bare toes. His lips pressed against mine, then made their way down to my neck. This is nice, I thought. This could be every night for the rest of my life and I would be happy.
His hand crept lower. I let it happen until he reached my waist, then pulled it back. “Not now,” I said.
“When,” he whispered into my ear. I could sense the longing. It was hard not to give in. Still, I felt something was wrong about this moment.
“Soon,” I said. “I promise. I turn eighteen on Monday, remember?”
He rolled back, sighing. His tight shirt had rolled up a bit and his strong abs were visible now. I had to fight the urge
to run a hand along them. Gawd, I was fighting a lot of urges.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “Really. You’re wonderful. Almost too wonderful. But I want to wait until I’m eighteen.” There. A little lie, yes, but it would buy me some time before I had everything figured out. Plus, I’d be a thousand dollars richer, too.
“It’s OK,” he said, staring up at the ceiling. “It’s OK. This just feels so right for me, that’s all.”
Yeah. Right. I bet it did, Edward. I didn’t think any of that at the time, though. At the time, I felt nothing but shame. Like I’d done something wrong for saying no. Like I should feel bad because I wasn’t ready to have sex with him. Why wasn’t I? He was one of the coolest guys in school. He was dark. He was mysterious. And he was mine.
He drove me home in silence. I fought the urge to apologize. Be tough, I told myself. Be tough. You didn’t do anything wrong. Just because a lot of the kids in the cool clique talked about sex all the time didn’t make it cool. Or right.
I made it past the kiss goodbye. I made it past the kitchen, where my mom was sitting at the table reading a magazine. I made it to my room. Then I cried. I felt as if I’d done something wrong saying no. I felt as if I was supposed to sleep with Edward.
Mom came into my room without knocking. Her soft hand rested on my back and stayed there while I let it all out.
“It’s hard,” I said into my pillow.
Mom—ever the understanding one in these moments—simply affirmed my outlook on life with a quiet “Mmmm-hmmm.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because,” Mom said, “that’s just the way it is. Life isn’t a fairy tale. It has a lot of ups and downs.”
I sighed, dry-hiccupping. The tears were gone. If Dad was up here, he’d call this a “woman thing” and maybe he was right. My cycle had begun acting less on time for the last six months, ever since I’d started dating Edward. It was nothing spectacularly big—a couple days early, then a couple days late—but it was incredibly strange given how rigorous my cycle usually was. I didn’t want to mention that to my mom. Those types of topics had a tendency to lead to “sex talks,” and I’d had enough of those. Really, just one or two is enough, Mom.
The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 1 Page 2
