“No. Sorry. Some of them are like that, I suppose.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know, Ellie. I really don’t keep any list in my mind.”
“But surely Shayne Allan,” she said, nodding. “You still hold that opinion of him, right?”
When I didn’t respond, she smirked and was quiet for a while. I just wasn’t going to get into the same old argument about him. The truth was, Brayden had washed him right out of my head. Despite what I told Ellie, I used to think about Shayne often. It wasn’t something I would ever admit to her or anyone, but since I’d met Brayden, Shayne had rarely entered my mind.
From a half mile or so down the road, we could see that the whole house was lit up. Set on the crest of a hill, it stood out against the dark night sky. Even the stars looked intimidated.
By the time we arrived at Charlotte’s family home, there were at least two dozen kids there already. The music was pretty loud. We could hear it as we were approaching. One thing Charlotte didn’t have to worry about was neighbors complaining. The nearest ones, because of the amount of land her parents owned, were more than a mile away on either side. Charlotte’s father personally had designed their sprawling two-story house, built with natural stone. It had oversize rooms and slate marble floors, and black walnut floors. Mom and Dad had been to a New Year’s party there, and they talked about the beautiful mahogany and knotty alder cabinets, the four fireplaces, the very large kitchen with top-of-the-line appliances and slab granite countertops, and all the rich imported furnishings throughout the house. The Wattses had many paintings, both watercolors and oils, but Mom said that Fern Watts chose her art not on the basis of artistic value but for how it fit in with her décor. I wondered if they would ever buy a painting by Brayden’s mother. “Can you imagine a Rembrandt reduced to wallpaper?” Mom had asked Dad the morning after that New Year’s party.
“Wow. I bet half the school is coming to this party,” Ellie said as we got out of the car.
The house had a faux front in the sense that when you came through the front door, you entered a courtyard that had a small pond, some decorative benches, rich-looking grass, and an assortment of flowers. The actual front door was wide open.
The rear wall of the living room consisted of three sliding glass panels that could be drawn apart to open the whole house, so that once we entered, we saw through to the rollicking group of partygoers dancing. All of the lights were on at the rear of the house.
After you crossed the sprawling slate patio that was nearly the width of the house, you came to the large, oval-shaped Pebble Tec pool. It had a diving board and enough chaise longues around it to make it look like the pool at a small hotel. There was a cabana and two fairly large whirlpools at one end of the pool. Charlotte’s father had put up lanterns that looked like torches everywhere. Who could not be impressed with it all? I wondered how Brayden would have reacted to all this, although with his worldly travels, he had probably seen far more impressive homes.
Because it was an unusually warm night, the party was being conducted completely outside. That way, Charlotte could at least keep the kids from wandering through the house, and maybe, with a little luck, nothing would be disturbed enough for her parents to get too upset. She and some of the others had set up a few tables for the food she ordered in. From the looks of it, she had gotten something from a few different restaurants. Off to the right, some of the boys were already setting off cherry bombs and firecrackers. Sparklers were everywhere. It did seem like a big July Fourth blowout. To keep up her pretense, she even had a large American flag pinned over the sliding doors leading out from her parents’ bedroom.
“Is that really you?” Charlotte asked me when we entered. She looked at Ellie and smiled. “What happened to Prudence Perfect?”
“She couldn’t make it,” I said. “She had homework left over from last year.”
Ellie laughed, but Charlotte just froze her smile and then let it sink into her chubby cheeks. She looked disappointed. I imagined she had invited me to ridicule me with some of her closer friends.
“Shayne Allan isn’t here yet,” she told me, regaining her impish amusement.
“How will we survive?” I asked, and Ellie laughed again.
“Well, just come in and have a good time,” she said. She made it sound like a military order. She stepped back, and Ellie and I continued to the rear of the house.
Maybe Shayne had told her he was coming, I thought, but wouldn’t show, or if he did show, it would be quite late. He and his entourage of lackey friends would generously grant their presence, holding back to make a grand entry. Why the other girls in my class weren’t put off by his arrogant behavior puzzled me. Many were so obvious when they approached him it nauseated me.
Bobby Harris hurried over to us when we stepped out, yelling to Ellie, but as he approached, his eyes were glued to me. She realized it.
“I’m over here, Bobby,” she said when he continued to stand there staring at me and not even looking at her.
“Yeah, sure. Hi, Amber.”
“Hello, Bobby.” I looked past him. I could see that I was attracting a lot of attention. One boy I did like at school, Curtis Lambert, looked a little lost, so I went right over to him, said hello, and pulled him onto the dance floor. I was just as surprised as he was about how aggressive I was being, but I didn’t show it. He was slow to get into it, but I was dancing as if I had been locked up for years. Maybe I had been, but if so, I was my own jailer, I thought. Soon Curtis was moving with as much abandon as he could. Other boys howled, and some of the girls shouted their encouragement and surprise. I’d kill Prudence Perfect tonight or else, I thought.
Even Ellie was shocked at how I was carrying on.
“What’s come over you?” she asked with a wide smile. “Did you take something before I picked you up?”
“Yes, vitamin E.”
“Huh?”
“Get on the dance floor, and stop making a big deal of it,” I told her. Bobby stood next to her with a wide grin on his face. She took one look at him and pulled him away to dance.
It didn’t matter whom I was dancing with. I was like everyone else, lost in my own world. I laughed to myself, thinking how Dad would react, claiming that I was in my own movie again or I was getting to be more and more like the girls with nose rings and multicolored hair. I didn’t avoid talking to anyone who wanted to talk to me. Whenever I took a break to get something to drink, I had a group of boys around me. I flirted with them all and watched them manipulate themselves to get a chance to dance with me. It really didn’t matter to me. I suddenly realized that in my mind, I was dancing with . . . with Brayden.
The face of every boy who stepped in front of me metamorphosed into Brayden’s face and wore Brayden’s smile. Whether they were as tall as he was or not, they suddenly resembled him. Was I losing my mind? I hadn’t drunk anything alcoholic, nor had I accepted any of the pills that were being passed around like candy. I closed and opened my eyes to see if his image would disappear, but it didn’t. In fact, he seemed to be everywhere I turned. The vision made me dizzy. I had to stop dancing to get a cold soft drink.
Charlotte and Ellie had spread the word about Brayden, and some of the other girls asked me about him after I came off the dance floor. No one was satisfied with my answers, so the topic died a quick death. I was glad of that. Despite all I was doing to try to distract myself from thinking about him, his kiss, his smile, the way he touched me, and the sound of his voice in my dream, everything about him hovered over me. Maybe I wanted to see his face in the faces of other boys looking at me with such interest. Maybe I wanted it to be his voice when I heard a boy call to me. I wanted it so much that I had made it happen. It was a wild idea.
Thinking about it so hard, I felt as if I had fallen into a trance, despite all of the noise going on. Occasionally, I would realize that someone was talking to me and try to get back into the conversation, but I could see by the way the other person looked at m
e that he or she thought I was either high on something or ignoring them.
More fireworks were set off. There were a few rockets, too. I thought about mentioning the danger of starting a fire, but I knew no one would be interested in anything that in any way smothered the excitement, and besides, that would be something Prudence Perfect would mention.
“I can see you’re having a good time,” Ellie said. From the look in her eyes and the way her lip seemed to dip when she spoke, I knew she had taken something. Bobby didn’t look much different. It was as if she had thrown a collar around his neck. He was following her that closely.
“Yes. Great party. You look like you’re doing just fine, too,” I said, nodding at Bobby, who still had his eyes focused on me.
“Trying,” she said. “I’m not so sure this was a good idea,” she added in a lower voice, nodding toward Bobby. “As you say, the jury is still out.”
Nevertheless, she pulled him back onto the dance floor, and I retreated again to get another soda. Twice I was offered something hard to drink. I avoided that and the offer of Ecstasy.
“Don’t need it,” I shouted. “I’m high already.”
Some of them weren’t too sure that I wasn’t. I could see that I had become the big subject of discussion. Then, finally, as I had expected, Shayne Allan made his grand entrance with three of the other boys who were on the league-winning baseball team with him. As always, it was as if the king had arrived. I was probably the only one who deliberately headed in the opposite direction, deciding that it was a good time to get something more substantial to eat.
I filled a plate with some Chinese food and found a chaise longue as far away from it all as possible. I watched the others laughing, getting more and more into some hard liquor, passing around some X, and beginning to pair off and find privacy somewhere nearby. Charlotte had made a number of announcements forbidding anyone to go into any other place in her house but the bathrooms. There was the large cabana, however.
I looked for Ellie, but she had dragged Bobby off somewhere, too. Neither was in sight. I feared that I was going to have to find another way to get home, but I wasn’t thinking about it just yet. I certainly had tried to participate in everything I could. I was as friendly as I could be. No one could say I was antisocial tonight.
“Bored?” I heard, and looked up to see Shayne standing there, his arms folded across his chest. I couldn’t help it. I laughed. “What?” he said.
“You remind me of the statue of the Indian outside of McKinley’s hardware store.”
He unfolded his arms quickly, but to my surprise, he laughed, too. “To tell you the truth, I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said, pulling up another chaise.
“I didn’t expect to see you, either.”
“Is that right? Why not?”
“I thought you surely had something better to do.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Brush your hair, try on clothes, whiten your teeth.”
“Very funny. I like your hair up like that, and I like what you’re wearing.”
“Well, now that you approve, I might wear my hair this way again,” I said.
He stared at me a moment. “You’re different tonight,” he said, narrowing his eyes suspiciously.
“Since I don’t remember seeing you much at night, I don’t know how you could make that conclusion.”
“You want to dance?”
“I’ve been dancing all night while you were circling the wagons.”
“What? What’s that mean?”
“Deciding when to make your grand entrance.”
“Why don’t you like me?” he asked with an impish smile on his face. He was as good-looking as any movie star, I thought.
“I don’t want to waste my time and effort.”
“Why would that be?”
I knew he was just waiting to tell me that if I revealed that I liked him, he would tell me he liked me. “I figure that you like yourself so much you don’t need anyone else to.”
“Right. Prudence Perfect,” he said, his eyes revealing that I had gotten to him, pierced his confidence and his armor of egotism. “Like you don’t act as if you’re God’s perfect little female creation.”
“You mean I have to act like it? I can’t just be it?”
He started to turn away, but then looked back at me and laughed. “Okay, okay. Truce,” he said, holding up his hands. He looked out at the others. Some of the boys were acting imbecilic already, having had too much liquor or too much Ecstasy.
“I feel the end is near,” he said.
“There’ll be some regurgitation.”
He turned and stared a moment.
“What?” I said when I thought the silence had gone on long enough.
“You want to stay here to watch it?”
“Or?”
“Let’s get out and just have some coffee or something at the diner.”
“That’s it?”
“Maybe a piece of apple pie.”
“What about your devoted followers?”
“They’ll find their way. I’ve trained them well.” He waited.
Was this it, the inevitable rendezvous with destiny that Ellie said most of the girls expected for me?
Unlike what had been happening to me on the dance floor, I didn’t imagine Brayden’s face anymore. Shayne Allan was filling up my screen.
Go on, I told myself, get them all clacking. Go off with him.
“I like peach,” I said.
“What?”
“Peach pie.”
“Oh. You can have whatever you want,” he said, laughing.
I hesitated and then rose. When I looked past him, past the lights, past the others toward the last round of fireworks going off, I thought I saw Brayden for a moment when the illumination washed away a pocket of darkness. I had been imagining him all night, but this time, he wasn’t standing in anyone else’s place. It really looked as if he was there. I think I gasped.
“You all right?” Shayne asked, reaching for my arm. Had I been swaying?
“What? Yes.”
“You didn’t take any garbage, did you?”
“No, nothing.”
“Let’s go,” he said with a more commanding tone. Ordinarily, that might have turned me off, but right then, I welcomed someone else taking charge.
As we walked past everyone, I gazed back toward the place where I had seen Brayden. When it was illuminated again, he wasn’t there.
Shayne took my hand, and we hurried out as if we knew that in a few minutes, the place would be raided. Most of the other kids had literally frozen in place to watch us leave.
“You make a grand entrance, and you make a grand exit,” I said as we passed quickly through the courtyard.
“Only because of you,” he said. He pulled me closer, and I didn’t resist.
Poor Prudence Perfect.
I had left her behind, all alone.
6
Shayne
“So what brought you over to speak to me?” I asked Shayne as we drove off to the Echo Lake diner.
“An irresistible force.”
“Yeah, right. What, did some of my friends whisper in your ear? Did they tell you I was dying for you to come to me or something?”
I now felt more certain that this was the major reason both Charlotte and Ellie were intent on my attending the party. They had decided to play Cupid, but in this version of the myth, I was going to get a mortal lover. If anything did happen between Shayne and me, they, especially Charlotte, would claim credit for engineering the whole thing. Why was it that girls who had trouble finding romance for themselves tried so hard to create romances for other girls? Was it their intention to live through them, have vicarious love affairs?
“What’s more complicated than the mind of a teenage girl?” Dad would often ask. He had become an experienced diamond cutter and compared trying to understand teenage girls to the geometric precision cutting of a precious diamond. Do it w
ell, and you’d catch more brilliance. “Understand a teenage girl, and you’ll save your sanity.”
Mom and I would laugh, but I wasn’t going to disagree with him. I knew what he was talking about. I was having trouble understanding myself.
“No. I don’t need anyone to tell me what to do,” Shayne said. “I’m not kidding. When I first saw you tonight, I was very attracted to you. At first, I didn’t know who you were. You looked that different, and I don’t mean just the way you’re wearing your hair and the way you’re dressed. I saw something different in your face. There was like a glow around you.”
“A glow?”
“Well, something,” he said, struggling to explain. “Something made you stand out in the crowd. How’s that old song go?” he asked, and then started to sing, “Some enchanted evening . . . .”
Laughing, I said, “Yes, well, all right, I guess we are like strangers. We can both probably count on our fingers how many words we have actually spoken to each other.”
“It’s not my fault,” he said quickly. I gave him a look that said, Please, spare me. “Well, maybe it is somewhat,” he quickly corrected. “But you scare me, Amber.”
“What?” I started to laugh. “I scare you?”
“No, I’m serious.”
“Okay, I’ll bite. How can I scare a big, strong boy like you?”
He looked forward.
“Well, how?” I followed up more firmly when he didn’t appear to want to answer.
“Give me a chance. I’m trying to figure out how to say this so I don’t sound too egotistical.”
“What a challenge for you.”
“There!” he said, pointing at me. “That’s exactly it.”
“What?”
“You’re the only girl in this school, the only girl I’ve met, who isn’t afraid of putting me down, of getting me to dislike her. That makes me feel a little insecure. I’m like a prizefighter whose manager has set him up with weak opponents, and finally, he has to fight someone who can fight back. Know what I mean?”
I remembered thinking I was like a prizefighter when it came to Brayden, a prizefighter who couldn’t land a blow.
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