Karen stood there with her mouth still open. I took the wallet and put it in the bag.
“I don’t even have something that expensive,” Karen moaned.
I felt like I should suggest I’d give this one to her and take one of hers.
“You just get what you need and put it in that wallet,” Ava ordered me.
“I don’t see why the lipstick you gave her is so much better,” Karen said, folding her arms under her breasts.
“I know you don’t,” Ava said sadly. “Despite everything I’ve taught you.” She turned to me. “Go on. Do what I said. Get your things. Your uncle is waiting for the two of you downstairs in the den. Your curfew is eleven thirty, Karen.”
I hurried out, smiling at Karen, who was still glaring at her mother. In my room, I transferred money and my ID from Mazy’s father’s old wallet to my beautiful new one and zipped it closed. I put it in the purse along with my new phone, dressed, and put on my new jean jacket. Then I took one last look at myself with the purse off my shoulder. My appearance did excite me. I hurried out. Karen silently joined me on the stairs. At the foot of them, she turned.
“When we get there, I’ll introduce you to the ones I think you should talk to. Don’t start talking to anyone unless I’ve introduced you, especially any of the boys, no matter how they look or smile at you. I’ll try to be at your side as much as possible.”
I couldn’t laugh at her tone of superiority. Maybe I wouldn’t recognize the dangers. I had so little experience with boys, and yet something inside told me Mazy had shaped my instincts well, so well that they were much better than Karen’s.
“Thank you. You look very nice,” I said.
She grunted. “Not as nice as my mother thinks you look. DADDY!” she screamed, squeezing her hands into fists at her sides and closing her eyes with the effort. “WE’RE READY TO GO.”
My father came up the hallway. He appeared tired, even a little shaken, more like how he was the night I had arrived.
“You guys look great,” he said. “Remember, no—”
“Drugs or alcohol,” Karen recited. “We’re the Saddlebrooks. We can’t be seen doing human things.”
“Your name is Anders, not Saddlebrook,” Daddy told her sharply. He glanced at me, looking like he was afraid I might say something about my name.
“Yeah, well, I know that, Daddy. You need to remind Mommy,” she said, and turned to go out to the garage.
Daddy stepped closer to me. “You really do look nice, Saffron. But you’d better keep your eye on her,” he warned.
He started toward the garage.
Why was I suddenly the adult in the room? I thought. A whole new list of responsibilities and things for which I could be blamed rolled out ahead of me. I got into the rear of the car. I wondered if I would ever sit up front with my father again if Karen was with us. I was always to be the girl in the back, the unfortunate relative searching for crumbs of love and kindness.
“What did you do at Grandpa’s so long?” Karen asked him as we drove out of the garage. She could so easily sound like her mother, demanding answers, not asking questions.
He looked at her, surprised. “Business,” Daddy said. “Why?”
“Didn’t he want to know about Saffron? Isn’t that why he summoned you?”
“Summoned me?”
“That’s how Mommy says it. So?”
“Of course he wanted to know about your cousin. Tomorrow night’s dinner is going to be special,” he added. “To help make her feel like part of the family. Don’t forget about it.”
“How could I? Mother will probably be kneeling beside my bed tonight while I’m sleeping and whispering in my ear how I should behave and dress.”
There was a long moment of silence, and then Daddy laughed and laughed, hard. Karen turned back to me, revealing how surprised she was at his reaction. I had no idea why he was laughing. He was behaving as if he had drunk too much alcohol or something. Maybe my going to this party was making him more nervous than it was making me. Or perhaps there had been a great deal more to his meeting with Amos Saddlebrook concerning me.
I smiled back at Karen, but inside I was really shaking as we continued on. This party would be a bigger test than my going to a new school. There would be eyes on me the way there were at school, but there would be no respite, no bells ringing to break up the day and give me a chance to recuperate and review some of the things I had said. It was funny how I thought, maybe feared, that kids my own age would see through all the fabrication faster and more easily than Ava or Dr. Stewart. My hope was that most of Karen’s friends would be like Karen… more interested in themselves.
If that was true, I’d be safe.
As soon as Daddy slowed down and turned, I knew this was going to be quite the special place. All the houses on this street in this part of Sandburg Creek were quite big, with most having private gates. We paused at the entrance to the driveway of one, and the gate, as though it had eyes, began to open.
“Margaret Toby’s father is president of the Sandburg National Bank,” Karen told me. “They’re even snobbier than we are.”
“We’re not snobby, Karen,” Daddy said. “We’re just…”
“Snobby,” she insisted.
Another car had just parked, and Tommy Diamond and a slightly shorter but much stouter boy, with hair down to the base of his neck that was so blond it gleamed in the front lights, stepped out and started toward the front entrance. As soon as Daddy stopped, Karen opened her door and shouted to them. She slammed the door behind her.
“Hey!” Daddy shouted. “Wait for your cousin, Karen.”
“Hurry up!” she shouted back at me.
I opened the door.
“What happened at Mr. Saddlebrook’s? Did the chief of police tell him anything?” I quickly asked.
“No. Everyone believes everything we’ve told them. The police chief isn’t about to stir up a family problem for the Saddlebrooks. No worries. You’re doing great. Have a good time, Saffron,” he said.
I looked at him. He was so casual about this. Why was he so confident in me? Didn’t he understand how hard all this was for me?
“Be careful,” he added, just as I closed the door behind me.
Careful?
I watched him drive off and then joined Karen to meet up with Tommy and his friend, a boy named Chris Loman who was also on the basketball team.
“You guys look great,” Tommy said.
Karen stepped a little in front of me. “My mother and I have been helping Saffron with her clothes and makeup and stuff.”
“Good work,” Tommy said, smiling at me and not looking at all at Karen.
“Well, she came here with practically nothing,” Karen emphasized. “I had to help her buy what was in fashion and choose what to wear tonight.”
I looked at her. She hadn’t, of course.
“Lucky she had you,” Chris said. His words hung in the air as both Karen and I were trying to decide if he had been serious. “You’re such a fashion expert.”
He laughed, and Karen punched him.
“Hey, that’s a foul,” Chris moaned, rubbing his shoulder vigorously, exaggerating how hard she had hit him. Both he and Tommy laughed and went ahead to open the front door for us.
“Queen Karen,” Chris said, with an exaggerated theatrical bow.
“This is probably what you’ll do after high school,” she said. “Doorman.”
She smiled at me, and we entered, but as I passed closely, I glanced at Tommy and saw how hard he was looking at me. It wasn’t exactly a chill that it sent down my spine; it was more like a hot flash that settled around my heart and had me rush ahead as if I was afraid he’d read my thoughts or feel the slight trembling in my body.
“Everyone’s in the basement,” Adele said when we entered the hallway. She was waiting for us at the door to the stairway. “Margaret’s parents just left, but her brother is up in his room, and we’re supposed to check on him every hour. Hi,” she
said, as though she just realized I had come with Karen. Before I could respond, she saw Tommy and Chris, who had entered but were talking softly to themselves, probably about us. She yelled to them. “Down here!”
“Hi, Adele,” Chris said.
Karen raised her eyebrows and leaned in to whisper. “He likes her, but she can’t stand him.”
I saw Adele’s smile and didn’t think it was that false. Karen seemed jealous of everyone. I wondered how she kept any friends or, as Aunt Ava had suggested, if they were really her friends. We all started down the stairs, the music and laughter flowing up at us.
The basement was large. It looked like it ran the length of the house, with a bar, tables, and chairs. The walls were all in a dark paneling, and the coffee-white floor consisted of wide wood slats. There was an actual jukebox on the far right and funny vintage late-twentieth-century posters on the walls. One wall had plaques of some sort and a small glass case with some trophies in it. At the moment, there looked to be about fifteen other kids. Four boys were playing darts on the left side of the basement.
Tommy stepped up beside me as I looked toward the case of trophies.
“Margaret’s father was a star quarterback on his college football team.”
“Oh,” I said. I didn’t look at him. His lips were so close to my ear I would swear he kissed the words to me.
Karen seized my left forearm to pull me away and start introducing me to girls and other boys I had not yet even seen at school. Her introduction began with “This is my cousin from California who had to come here to live.” Some began to ask where exactly I was from and how I liked it here. I started to answer, but if they showed interest, Karen pulled me to meet someone else. I didn’t resist. In my mind, it was working in my favor.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw boys ripping beer cans out of a case and handing them out to anyone who wanted one. Margaret, Adele, and Vikki waited for us to make the rounds. They were sipping something suspicious from paper cups.
“My parents won’t return for a good three hours,” Margaret told us. “You’d better sample the punch now so you can sober up in two and a half hours. And no one better throw up!” she shouted over the music.
There was lots of laughter. Some of the boys poked and pushed each other, obviously accusing them of not being able to not throw up or reminding them of some previous occasion when they had. I had no really accurate way to judge them, but I thought they were all acting a little immature. When the beat of the music changed, a few kids started to dance, and voices grew louder.
“You’d better not tell my parents about the punch,” Karen warned when I refused a cup Margaret offered.
“Maybe you’ll tell her yourself,” I said.
“What?” She looked at Adele, who shrugged. “Why would I do that?”
“Maybe you won’t be able to help it.”
The other girls laughed. Karen smirked and gulped the cup of punch she had. She turned to get another. The moment she stepped away from me, the girls began their questions. They sounded like Karen had dictated their dialogue.
“Why weren’t you ever here?”
“How do you like our school?”
“What was it like where you were?”
“Did you ever see movie stars?”
They were asking so many, so fast, I barely got out an answer to the first question. Rather than bring up the fiction of my family feuds, I told them we didn’t have money to travel. More of the partygoers were drawn to the circle around me. I could feel the panic pooling in my chest, especially when Karen poked her head in to reveal that my mother and her father didn’t get along.
“They didn’t talk to each other for years, but we’re trying to make her feel comfortable. I mean, she has no one else, really.”
Their looks of pity actually made me feel sick. I resisted the urge to charge up the stairs, call Ava, and go home.
Suddenly, I felt someone grab my right hand and pull me away. Tommy wanted to dance.
I had never danced with a boy, of course, except in my imagination. When I could, I played music in my room and, following the way kids my age and a little older danced on television, imitated their steps and moves and, I thought, became better and better at it. One night, Mazy watched without my realizing she was standing there. When I finally did, I stopped as if I had been caught doing something illicit. She stared at me a moment, and then she smiled.
“You’re very good,” she said. “When the time comes, you’ll stand out for sure.”
Her comment had surprised me, but because I no longer felt that I was doing it in secret, I danced more, occasionally getting up while we were watching television together and dancing to the music. She smiled and clapped and then grew very sad.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It’s almost time for you to be out there,” she said, nodding toward the front of the house. It was a good year or so before she would enter me in the public school, but I never forgot the look on her face, a mixture of joy, pride, and deep fear.
Well, I was out there now. Would her fears be realized?
Tommy was a very good dancer. I stood there practically not moving when he began.
“I’m not very good,” I said.
“Then I’ll get you to be better,” he replied, and tugged me to step out farther, away from the others. I glanced at Karen. She looked like she wanted to rip out my heart. She was sipping the punch quickly, more like gulping the second glass, too.
Maybe I was simply tired of seeing her jealousy; maybe I just wanted to feel free, loosen up, and forget about the image and the story Daddy had created for me. Something clicked inside me. Tommy’s eyes were electric, daring. I slipped into the rhythm and the music like someone stepping into a lake or a pool to swim. In seconds, I was fully submerged, my body moving as if it had a mind of its own, all caution scattered like grass seeds in the wind. I could hear the cheers and encouragement and saw the look of delightful amazement on Tommy’s face. After a few more moments, I didn’t look at anyone else. No one else dared to join us. It was as if we had risen above them. I no longer heard anything but the music. When it ended, everyone except Karen applauded. Now they were pouncing on her to get more information about me.
Tommy reached for my hand.
“C’mon,” he said. “Let’s get something cold and soft to drink.”
“You don’t drink beer or loaded punch?”
“I’m an athlete,” he said. “A serious athlete. I have a good shot at a scholarship. We don’t need the money,” he added. “I want the acknowledgment.”
“That’s great, Tommy.”
I noted that he had to make the point about his family being well-off. Around these kids, I guessed that was quite important.
At the bar, he poured us both glasses of a fruit soda. Our dancing had encouraged others. We sat on the stools and watched them. I saw Karen was talking at her friends rather than with them. Chris was teasing her.
“What do your parents do?” I asked Tommy. I didn’t want to add, since you don’t need college money, but it was clearly underlying the question.
“My father’s a corporate attorney, and my mother is a family doctor,” he said. “I have two younger brothers, twins, eleven years old.”
He waited, expecting me to tell him about myself, but I said nothing. He sipped his drink and smiled.
“I like it that you’re a mystery,” he said. He leaned toward me. “All the other girls are open books, especially your cousin.”
Oh, Karen wouldn’t like to hear that, I thought. She and Adele and Vikki were heading toward us.
“Uh-oh,” Tommy said. “The Three Musketeers.”
“Everyone is asking me where you learned to dance so good,” Karen said. I was going to say, Dance so well, but I might as well light a stick of dynamite between her legs, I thought.
“In my room,” I said casually.
“You said you didn’t know who Ed Sheeran was,” she said.
I
looked at the other two and some of the kids who drew closer to hear. Why was she doing this to me? She had promised to keep everyone from picking on me. Ava had really driven a wedge between us, I thought.
“We had this CD player and my mother’s discs, which were mainly music from the seventies, eighties, and nineties. It was her collection. You know I didn’t have a cell phone, so I didn’t download any up-to-date stuff.”
“Didn’t you ever go to a party?” Adele asked, her eyes wide with amazement.
Everyone around us was waiting for my answer, especially Karen. I had been hoping to concoct something in private so she would help me avoid this moment in front of the other kids. But right now, I no longer trusted her anyway.
“Because my mother and I traveled and lived in many different places, I didn’t make friends as easily as you all have.”
“So you didn’t go to parties?” Adele pursued like a trial attorney.
“No,” I said.
“You had a computer,” Karen charged, her face lighting up with the clue. “You could listen to music on that.”
“I just got it recently,” I said. “One of my mother’s boyfriends bought it to get her to like him more. It didn’t work. She dumped him a week later, but I kept the computer.”
They all stared, ironically amazed at what appeared to be my honesty. Karen sipped her drink. She was struggling with what to say next. Everyone’s looks turned from amazement to sympathy.
“Maybe you’ll help me get more up-to-date now,” I told Karen.
“Good idea,” Tommy said. They were all nodding as if his words dropped down from the god of happiness or something.
“I’ll send you some good links,” Vikki said. “What’s your email?”
“Oh, I haven’t set that up yet. Karen will help me,” I said, smiling at her. “Right?”
“Right. Let’s get something to eat,” she told Adele, and the three walked to where the food was spread out on a table.
“Well, that was like walking on hot coals for you,” Tommy said.
I shrugged. “I’m not looking for their sympathy. My life was harder than all theirs, but I’d rather not dwell on it.”
Out of the Rain Page 16