“I’m glad you brought us here instead of over the bridge.” Joan waited while I unlocked Gwinn’s two locks.
“Why? What’s wrong with the bridge?” Lots of kids liked to hang out on the bridge. There are sidewalks on either side, and tall fencing the town council had erected after an attempted suicide three years ago.
She shaded her eyes and looked over the looming concrete structure. “Have you ever been terrified of something you couldn’t explain?”
“Sure,” I said.
“I’m like that with bridges,” she said. “I can’t stand them.”
Something about her words dislodged a memory … the last day of summer vacation, standing on the bridge, holding my proud middle finger in the air as Joan flew by, knuckles white on her steering wheel. Maybe she hadn’t been pissed off at Wade. Maybe what I saw on her face that day wasn’t anger.
Maybe it was fear.
* * *
The next morning, I got to church early because I’d promised Matt I’d help set up chairs in the youth area. They’d used the space for a kid’s birthday party over the weekend, and there were still scattered balloons and streamers to be cleared away. Matt ran the vacuum over the carpeted areas while I arranged chairs.
When Erin came in, the roaring of the Hoover eliminated the awkwardness of a forced conversation. She helped me with the chairs and, as I passed her to go to the little kids’ class, she reached out and touched my arm. The vacuum stopped. I paused, breathed in quick, kicked out hard enough to hurt my toe when my foot hit the wall, but I didn’t yelp with pain or mutter a curse word. I held it in, more worried about what Erin might want from me than what my foot was doing.
“We’re cool, right?” Erin’s thin lips were cracked, dry. “I mean, Friday night … I was drunk, and I was upset about Miles and—”
“Yeah, we’re cool.” I was relieved. That could’ve been bad.
“I saw you, yesterday, by the river with Joan Pearson.” Erin held me in place with one hand. My big toe throbbed. “You shouldn’t hang around Joan.”
“What do you mean, you saw me?” I jerked my arm from her grip.
She shook her head. “I was here, helping with the birthday party. You can see the bridge and all from upstairs, you know.”
Yeah, I knew, but we weren’t supposed to go upstairs.
“I was hung over. I needed to hide from Dad for a bit.” She twisted her hands together, the long fingers fluttering in my periphery.
“Why do you care?” I put my hand on the doorknob, ready to walk away.
“Joan’s bad news, Stephen. She’s always drunk, or worse, and people are saying she…” Erin’s face was crimson. She didn’t want to finish her sentence, but I wasn’t about to let her off that easy. If she wanted to warn me away from Joan, she better have more to say than “Joan drinks.”
“People are saying she what? Because you were plastered Friday night, and that means you can’t judge anyone else for drinking.”
Erin gritted her teeth before answering. “People are saying she’s a slut.”
“What in the world do you think you saw from the upstairs window? I can guarantee it wasn’t sex.” I opened the door but kept glaring at Erin, so self-righteous, standing there in the youth room, holding her hot pink Bible under one arm, such a good little church girl. “I’ve heard things about you too, Erin, about you at certain college parties with certain college boys who like to brag about what they can make a high school girl do once they get a few beers in her.”
I was lying. I wanted to defend Joan and made up stories about Erin to let Joan off the hook. My foot kicked out twice and I grimaced.
Tears sparked in Erin’s eyes. How do girls do that? Insta-cry. It’s a superpower.
“I’ve never…” She paused to wipe her eyes. “I’m a virgin. I’m waiting until I’m married, like you’re supposed to be.”
“Look, Erin, I get that, okay, but you can’t expect us all to feel exactly as you do.”
“What are you saying, Stephen? This experiment … are you just kissing all these girls? What would’ve happened if we hadn’t been interrupted in the tree house? I was drunk and emotional and you never should’ve kissed me. Would you have pushed it further if no one found us? ’Cause people were talking about you Saturday, and I chose not to believe them. I told them I know Stephen Luckie and he would never have sex with a girl at all, let alone in a mall bathroom.”
I shook my head. “Believe what you want.”
It is frustrating to say words that make sense in your head but have no one understand them. How many ways could I tell Erin to move on without being even ruder? I hate when I can’t make someone understand me, and I hate being stuck in a situation I don’t know the answer to.
So I left her there. Yes, I left a crying girl I had basically called a slut all alone. Well, not exactly alone. Matt was there. Her youth minister. The kind of person a teenager can talk to about anything. The kind of person a good Christian girl might tell when she’s scared the preacher’s son is in trouble.
My mind stayed on Erin long after I left the youth room. For the second time in a weekend, rage vibrated in my toes and moved through my body. My leg jerked and my shoulder followed suit. I didn’t go to the kids’ area of the church. Instead, I went straight home and into the garage, where my mother had hung a punching bag in seventh grade. I hadn’t used it in ages. When I threw the first punch, dust flew and I sneezed.
My mistake wasn’t leaving Erin to talk things over with Matt. My mistake was saying those stupid mean things to her. My mistake was letting her talk me into beer and kissing, the sour lukewarm taste of one confused with the other, making my hands sweat in the moment and at the memory.
I knew Erin had a certain image of me, and it didn’t matter if she didn’t even live up to that perfect Christian image herself. My mom was the pastor, and I was supposed to be perfect. It was an age-old cliché, the preacher’s kid who could do no wrong and also did everything wrong. My chest was tight with it, the certainty I’d screw up again, the fear of where my mistakes would take me.
I punched the bag hard, again and again, until my muscles ached and tears poured down my cheeks.
I pulled out my phone and texted Erin, I’m sorry.
But it was too late.
Chapter Thirteen
People looked at me differently on Monday. I walked through the halls with my leg jerking so hard I kicked lockers, and one teacher yelled at me to stop it before she realized who I was. She stammered out an apology, but whatever. It was kind of nice to get yelled at for my tics.
I know, that sounds stupid, but the truth is, my kicking things and shrugging twenty-four freaking seven is annoying. It annoys me, but I can’t do much about it. It annoys my mother. I watch her bite her lip sometimes, steeling her spine for the next twitch sure to follow, but she won’t say a word. Not since this one time, in sixth grade, when she snapped at me over a vocal tic that made me sound like a stuttering Spanish actor, constantly rolling my Rs.
People get annoyed by my flapping and flailing, but they’re too polite or compassionate or maybe too scared to say anything about it. So, despite the evil glare I tossed in the teacher’s direction, I wasn’t mad at her.
I was mad at Ballard.
He met me in the parking lot looking sheepish. I locked Gwinn to the bike rack and he tried to help me with the second lock.
“Don’t,” I snapped. “Just don’t.”
“I’m sorry, man. I was drunk.”
I popped the second lock into place and stood. “Not my problem, Ballard. If you can’t be a decent human being when you’re drunk, maybe you shouldn’t spend so much time getting drunk.”
“Sheesh, Luckie. Self-righteous, much?”
I didn’t answer, just pushed past him and headed to class. All of the way there, people whispered. Then there was the teacher who yelled, and I was in Chemistry, not looking at anyone and not talking, copying notes with my jaw set hard and my foot repeatedly kick
ing the leg of my desk.
At lunch, I figured I’d sit by myself, but it didn’t turn out that way. I avoided the table where Ballard sat, talking to Sylvie. Michael and Joel were there, and Andrew. It looked a lot like the circle on the lake house deck at the last party of the summer. I remembered the phone being passed around and me following Sylvie up the stairs into that bedroom, tripping over Barbies. It had been less than two months, but my life felt like somebody else’s.
“There goes the mad scientist,” Wade said when I passed his table. My spine stiffened, but I ignored him.
I was sitting in a back corner of the cafeteria, eating a brownie without even tasting it, when Joan sat down.
“Sure you want to be seen with me?” I asked.
“You already told me the rumors aren’t true.” She broke off a piece of the brownie in my hand, her fingers cool against my own. “Gah, this is delicious. Did your mom make these?”
I nodded. “I only said the sex in the bathroom rumor isn’t true. The stupid experiment is real, though it was Ballard’s damn idea in the first place.”
She licked chocolate crumbs off her fingers. I tried not to stare.
“Why aren’t you sitting with Wade? Or Sylvie?”
“Wade’s being an asshole and Sylvie’s occupied.”
I glanced at their table. “By Ballard, you mean? You and I both know he’s getting nowhere with her.”
“You may know that, but I don’t.” Joan took the rest of my brownie and popped it into her mouth. Bits of chocolate stuck to her glossy lips.
“You think Ballard has a shot with Sylvie?”
She finished chewing before she answered. “Not normally, but Sylvie’s acting odd lately. She broke up with her boyfriend and keeps talking about ‘living the high school experience.’ That’s where the kissing game app came in. But no one else knows about the breakup, okay? Don’t say anything.”
“Who would I tell? People are too busy talking about me to listen to me.” I handed her a napkin and she dabbed her lips. I watched, eyes glued to the motion of her mouth.
“Quit staring. It’s rude.” She stood.
“Sorry, I—”
“I’m kidding, Stephen. I have to go to the library. Wanna come?”
I bagged the rest of my lunch and followed her out of the cafeteria. We didn’t talk anymore, not about the rumors or Ballard or Sylvie, at least. We quizzed each other on notes for Tuesday’s Algebra II test, and she told me our bike ride had inspired her to pull out her old bicycle, but she’d outgrown it.
“I’ll keep my eyes open for a bike when I hit the thrift store this week. That’s where I found mine.”
“No way,” she said. “You thrift?”
Talk about embarrassing. Thrift shopping was decidedly uncool.
“I’m always in the thrift store downtown, but I never see you there. That place is my favorite. I find the neatest things. We should go together.”
Definitely not a date … not to the thrift store … but I liked the idea of hanging out with Joan and doing something I enjoyed. No parties. No beers. No being spied on from the church’s upstairs windows.
“I was gonna go tomorrow, after school,” I told her. “You can come too if you want.”
“Perfect. I can’t go right after, but I could meet you at, say, four thirty?”
“That’ll work.”
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I had a text from an unfamiliar number.
This is Pilar using Isabel’s phone. I’m not mad anymore, and I’m sorry for ignoring your texts all weekend. You are allowed to go to parties. I wish I could have gone with you.
Okay. What else was I supposed to say?
Can I see you soon? You could come here over the weekend.
I don’t know. I stared at the phone, unsure of myself. I knew I needed to end things with Pilar. I wasn’t as into her as she was into me. All of those conversations we’d had on iMessage, the things she shared and I shared back. We were acting like boyfriend and girlfriend, and stringing her along wasn’t fair. But I was scared. What if no girl ever liked me again?
My parents are visiting family in Georgia. I can’t go because I have to study. You could quiz me.
If I ignored the part about her parents not being home, it sounded innocent. If I went, then I could be honest with Pilar in person. You weren’t supposed to give someone bad news over text message, right?
Maybe. I’ll ask to borrow the car.
She sent back a smiley emoticon.
“Intense conversation?” Joan asked.
On Saturday when I talked to Joan, I hadn’t explained everything about Pilar. But it was quiet in the library, and the look on Joan’s face was interested but not smirky, like the kids whispering in the hall that morning.
“That girl I told you about, Pilar? She wants me to come over this weekend since her parents won’t be there.”
“The girl you didn’t call?”
I nodded.
“Nuh-uh, Stephen.” She shook her head, black hair dancing on her shoulders. “If you don’t want to be with this girl, tell her so. Going to her house when her parents aren’t home does not send a not-interested message.”
“I don’t want to tell her over the phone.”
“Sounds like an excuse to me. A horny boy making an excuse so he can get some before he ditches the girl.” Joan’s glare cut me open. I didn’t consciously plan to do that, but maybe it is what I was doing.
“Meet her somewhere else, somewhere public,” Joan told me. “Text her right now.”
“Sheesh, Miss Bossypants, hang on.” I unlocked my phone and suggested Pilar meet me somewhere to study, a coffee shop maybe.
She didn’t answer and the bell rang, sending Joan and me on our way to English, which we also had together.
“Text me when she answers, okay?” Joan slid into her seat near the front of the classroom.
“I will.” My feet were surer of their steps with Joan’s support and advice. I was going to do the right thing. If only I could channel that confidence into the report I had to give that afternoon. If I let my grades flounder, Mom and Dad would step in. Then the little bit of a social life I was beginning to build would crumble.
* * *
My oral report on Gatsby was due, and I had to stay after school to give it. My 504 plan allowed for that, so I didn’t have to talk in front of the entire class. I was still a nervous wreck.
As soon as I stood, my tongue did a flip. It’s my most hated tic, where my tongue flicks and it makes a spitty sort of sound. I look like a snake or a lizard when it happens, and it almost always happens when I’m in front of people.
If the tics continued this severely, I’d have to tell Mom and go to the neurologist. I’d put on enough weight since my last med change to possibly warrant a dose increase. I really hated trying new medications. Some had nasty side effects and made me feel like a zombie. I felt a little sick to my stomach thinking about another round of medication trial and error.
I got through the report only barely and left the classroom with my teeth clenched in an effort to end the tongue flipping. I was passing the entrance to Coach Curry’s office when the shouting started. I would’ve kept walking, but I caught a glimpse of Wade from the corner of my eye. I did a double take and took three steps back, so I could see through the window.
Sure enough, Wade was getting yelled at. His head was in his hands, but then he looked up, probably at Coach Curry, and I forgot to clench my teeth. Flick flick flick went my tongue, but the coach was screaming so loud, no way they heard it. I moved away from the window and paused by a locker to re-clench my teeth and process what I’d seen.
Wade Bond.
Crying.
No effing way.
Coach Curry’s voice rang through the door, so I left the school knowing full well why Wade was getting a new asshole ripped into him. He was failing a class. A math class. We need four math credits to graduate, so failing was bad. Not to mention, a failing grade next to Wade�
��s barely average GPA (according to Coach) meant he was about to sit the bench the rest of this season. And lose the chance at a scholarship, though that part didn’t seem like a big deal. Wade’s parents were loaded.
When the yelling stopped, I hightailed it out of there before Wade found me eavesdropping. I passed his silver Lexus in the senior lot on my way to the bike rack. I unlocked both of Gwinn the Schwinn’s locks and pedaled fast. No way did I want to be anywhere near when Wade made it to his car and drove home. He’d pass me on my bike, and I wasn’t up to taking the beating he wanted to hand to Coach.
When I walked through the front door, Mom was waiting at the kitchen table. Her face was drawn, her lips tight. Dad walked out of his office and sat beside her, motioning for me to take the chair across from them.
“Someone came to my office today, someone with an interesting story about you, Stephen. I wanted to not believe this story. It sounded nothing like the young man we raised. However, the source is reliable.”
“Erin,” I said. “Shit.”
“Watch your language,” Dad warned.
“Erin went to your office? During school?”
“No, she didn’t. She went to someone else and that person came to my office, but how the whole thing landed in my lap doesn’t matter. Since you know who told in the first place, I’m guessing I’m right to believe her.”
“No,” I snapped. “Erin accused me of some things Sunday, and they aren’t true. She got it wrong. She’s not some perfect angel like you think she is.”
“Erin was honest about her role in some of the activities. I know she was drinking with you at a party Friday night. Are you saying this is untrue?” Mom’s hands were pressed together hard.
My mother doesn’t lose her temper. Ever. But I can tell when she’s angry, because she trembles. She was trying her best to hide the quiver in her muscles, but I could spot it a mile away. And, once again, I was the cause of a mother-quake.
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