"How do you feel?" Gracella asked.
He nodded. "Fine. Great, in fact."
"I'm so sorry, Nathan." Shaking my head, I grasped his arm. "I don't know how to make it up to you."
"I do," he replied, grabbing and then pulling me toward him.
Gracella gasped, covering her mouth with her hands.
Before I could react, Nathan planted a kiss on my lips. But what began as a quick peck soon turned into a long smooch. The worst part—or the best part—was that Nathan used his lips like a kissing god. Who would have thought he had it in him? I tried not to be affected, but I couldn't help moving my lips beneath his. Almost as if I had no control over them, my arms wound around his neck and I clung to him as sparklers ignited in my brain. I could have lost half the gray cells controlling math prowess, and I wouldn't have cared.
Me. Clinging. Incredible.
I wanted my best friend's kisses.
Surreal.
Reality intruded. Nathan doesn't care about you. He's not attracted to you. It's that darn brown sprinkle that caused this. How could I take advantage of him like this? I didn't want him to kiss me just because he was under the influence of a love potion.
I pulled away from him.
"Oh no," I murmured.
"Oh yes." He grinned. "You're my girl now and you're going to the dance with me, not that jerky jock."
Standing in front of the school that night waiting for Ronny to show, I resisted the urge to put my head in my hands and tear my hair out. First, it would do no good to break down and go crazy. Second, if I was going to go crazy, I might as well do it with hair and make-up intact.
After the kissing debacle, we'd bundled Nathan into Gracella's car with the idea she would drive him out to her aunt's house in search of a cure. He'd protested.
"Cure?" he'd said. "I don't need a cure. I feel free. I'm free to finally show what I've felt since freshman year."
"It's worse than I thought," Gracella had responded.
"Please do it for me," I pleaded with Nathan. "Go to see Aunt Vandi."
Giving a reluctant nod, he'd stopped struggling and subsided into the passenger seat.
When I suggested going with them, Gracella shook her head. "No. You'll only make things worse. We should minimize the effects of this potion thing."
"What does that have to do with it?" I demanded.
"Having you around only accentuates its effects."
"I guess you're right," I said.
"Besides," Gracella leaned in to whisper as Nathan strained to listen from the car. "You can't stand Ronny up."
"I suppose." Suddenly, going to the dance with Ronny was the last thing I wanted to do.
Five hours had passed since Nathan and Gracella left, and I hadn't heard a thing from either of them. Neither of them answered their phones or responded to my texts. Was no news good news or just no news?
Fear clenched at my stomach. I should go after them, but how? With no car and parents who weren't going to loan me one, I had no options. Ride around on the bus? Hardly an effective vehicle for a widespread search.
After taking my cell phone from my purse, I examined the face. Still nothing.
"Ring you stupid thing," I shouted at it.
A footstep sounded behind me, and I heard Ronny laugh. "Is that the factory installed voice activation command or did you specialize it?"
"Ha. No," I tried to joke. "I'm just expecting a call."
As if on command, the face lighted and my ring tone played. A name displayed on the screen: Gracella.
"This is it!" Turning my back to Ronny, my fingers shook as I punched at the accept call button. "What's happening?"
"I lost him."
"What! When?"
"Two hours ago."
Issuing a noise I classified between a groan and a whine, I pounded the cell phone against my forehead. Nathan was out there wandering around in a drugged state. Anything could happen to him. Fear made me lightheaded...or maybe it was the blows from the cell phone.
Gracella was still talking, and I put the phone back to my ear. "I thought I'd find him again."
"Come get me and we'll look for him together," I said.
"No. Stay put. Before he jumped out of the car, Nathan said he had to get ready to take you to the Science Fair Fiesta. More than likely he'll come to you at the dance."
"If something hasn't happened to him," I choked, blinking back tears.
"Nothing's happened to him," Gracella replied.
"Have you at least located your aunt?"
"Not yet."
"Fantastic."
"I'll be there as soon as I can," Gracella said. "But I don't know if Aunt Vandi can do anything."
"We have to try. I don't want Nathan to love me because he's drugged."
"But you want him to love you."
"No. Yes. I don't know." Holding my head, I groaned. "What a mess. Just hurry."
I punched the end call button and turned back to Ronny.
"Is something wrong?" Ronny asked, concern shadowing his eyes. "Do you want me to take you home?"
"No." Gracella had been right. Nathan would come here. "No. It's no big thing. Let's go in."
"You look really great by the way," Ronny said. "Is that an Angelo Arguella dress?"
Blinking, I glanced down at the purple silk mid-thigh length dress I'd thrown on. "Is it? I'm not sure. I don't really know designers."
"I don't either. But my sister has one of his and makes a big deal of it."
His hand went to my waist, and he led me into the school and to the gym where the dance was already well under way. The place was packed. Who would have thought there'd be such a turnout for a science related event? Any excuse for a party, I guess.
Bruno Mars' It Will Rain played over the speakers as couples hung on each other on the dance floor.
We stood in awkward silence at the entrance until a couple of kids came up behind us. The guy stepped on my foot and hit my shoulder as he pushed past.
"Excuse you," the boy said in a nasty tone. He glared at us, before he walked away pulling his laughing girlfriend behind him.
"We should get out of the way," I murmured.
Ronny nodded, staring off across the room. "You wanna..." He cleared his throat before finishing. "Dance?"
"Sure. I guess."
He didn't even wait for my reply and was already heading in the direction of the swaying couples. I trudged after him.
Worry about Nathan ruined any enjoyment I might have had in the moment. And Ronny wasn't nearly as fun to be with as I thought he'd be. He didn't have that acerbic sense of humor I loved. By this time, Nathan would have made insightfully amusing comments about half the people in the room.
When we reached the edge of the dance floor area, Ronny took hold and pulled me to him. His hands rested at my waist, and mine lay on his shoulders as we moved with a six-inch gap between us. Our dance steps consisted of shifting the weight from one foot to the other.
The brownie sure didn't seem to be working. Not that I wanted it to anymore. I was so over this whole thing and now bitterly regretted I'd ever started it. However, if the love potion had worn off Ronny, could it have worn off Nathan too?
I couldn't think of anything to say, and the silence stretched. Finally, I recalled something Ronny had said earlier.
"So ummm. What did you want to talk to me about?" I asked.
"Oh yeah," Ronny said with a smile. "You're really great at math."
"Thank you." He'd asked me on a date to say that?
"And I'm really trying to keep my athletic team eligibility," he continued.
"Okay? But what—"
"I'm really bad at math. So I thought you might agree to help me."
"You want a math tutor?" If he hadn't eaten the brownie, I would have thought he'd only asked me to the dance to get my help to pass math.
"I'd pay you," he offered.
"Yeah. I'll tutor you. I already have a lot of other kids I tutor. What's one more?"
"Really? Great," he said, a relieved sigh escaping him.
Another slow song started, and we danced with neither of us seeming to make the conscious decision to continue. As we moved, the tutoring thing bugged me more and more.
"Is that why you asked me to the dance?" I asked. "So I'd be your math tutor?"
"Well..." Ronny stared at his shoes, his head hanging. "Yeah."
When I didn't respond he hurried to add, "Don't get me wrong, you're kinda cute. And you're very sweet agreeing to be my math tutor but I..." His eyes strayed to a guy standing at the edge of the dance floor. I knew him as one of Ronny's teammates, but I couldn't remember his name. I didn't know much about the guy except that I'd seen him with Ronny. A lot. Then, I remembered I'd never seen Ronny with the same girl more than twice. Like tumblers of a lock falling into place, the truth occurred to me.
"You're gay," I said. Obviously, the love potion couldn't trump sexual preference. No wonder it hadn't really worked on him. "I should have seen it before when you mentioned the dress."
"What? No," he protested, fear filling his eyes. "I'm so not gay. You can't believe I..."
"It's okay," I reassured him. "I won't say anything. I'm totally not into outing anyone."
"No one would believe you anyway," he said almost to himself.
"You're right. But, you know, there's nothing wrong with being gay."
"Don't say that." He pushed me away. "I'm not...what you said. Just because I'm not attracted to you, you get all insulting."
"Okay, okay. You're not...what I said. Just don't get so upset."
"I'm not upset!"
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a movement as someone approached us.
Nathan.
"Hey." Nathan grabbed Ronny's shoulder and whirled him around. "You better not be yelling at my girl."
"Your girl?" Ronny shook his head as if to clear it.
"Yeah, she's mine, and you better keep your jock hands off her," Nathan shouted.
"Whatever, man." Ronny held his hands up in surrender and stepped back. "You can have her."
"Just what do you mean by that?" Nathan demanded, taking two steps forward, his fists clenching. "Are you insulting her now?"
"No, dude. Chill."
"Let it go, Nathan," I pleaded, putting my hands on his shoulders and holding him back.
My best friend twisted around and smiled down at me. "For you, I will."
Taking me by the waist, he swung me further onto the dance floor. I fell against Nathan's chest, and my arms went around his neck, clinging. As we moved, I couldn't help noticing how different dancing with Nathan was. No awkward distance spanned between us. We were plastered together as we moved in rhythm with my head on his chest. And I wasn't bored. Even though the dance was slow, my heart pounded and my breath chugged in and out as if I was doing a tap routine.
Suddenly, I lifted my head so I could examine Nathan. Something I'd vaguely noticed during the altercation now became more important. "Hey," I said. "You look different."
Nathan was dressed in a blue sport coat over dress shirt paired with khaki pants. His famous mop of hair had been dyed back to its normal color and styled into a tamer version of itself. Instead of a nest of tight curls, his inch-long hair was a shiny mahogany wave decorating his head.
"You cut your hair," I observed. "And you aren't wearing glasses. Can you see without those things?"
His lips quirked into a wry smile. "Contacts. I had 'em at home but never bothered with them. But I wanted to look good tonight. For you."
He did look good. He looked great. This hottie version of Nathan overwhelmed me.
Oh Lord. Why couldn't he want to impress me because he wanted to and not because of some root doctor spell?
Flinching, I jerked out of his hold, pivoted and marched toward the exit.
"What's the matter?" he asked as he followed behind.
"What do you think? You ate the brownie. This isn't you."
Just outside the gym, I almost collided with Gracella and her Aunt Vandi.
"Thank heavens, you're here." I said to the older woman. "You have to do something about Nathan."
"I don't need anything done about me," Nathan protested. "Things are just fine."
"No—" I began and he interrupted by grasping my arm and pulling me to him for a quick kiss. I twisted in his grip, turning tear filled eyes to Aunt Vandi. "See what I mean?"
"Come on," Nathan said. "You like me. I know you do."
"Of course I like you," I replied. "You're my best friend."
"It's more than that." He gave me a little shake before placing a hand against my cheek.
My eyes rose to his and our gazes locked.
"You responded to my kisses," he said. "You enjoyed dancing with me. You like me like me. You don't just like me."
"Yes," I admitted. Tugging out of his hold, I felt my face twist in misery. "But you don't like me like me. You just like me. It's the brownie that likes me likes me."
"How can a brownie like you like you?" he joked. "A brownie is inanimate...except for those singing ones in the TV commercial."
"You know what I mean," I screamed in frustration. "The brownie made you like me like me when you don't really—"
"Before we's lost in 'like mes'," Aunt Vandi inserted. "I tell you nothin in dat potion I gave you 'cept cinnamon, mint and a few red pepper flakes."
We all fell silent at her words. A few shocked seconds passed before I fully realized the importance of what she'd said.
"Then Nathan wasn't drugged," I mumbled.
"Yeah," he said. "I already told you that eating that brownie only gave me the excuse I needed to act on feelings I've had since freshman year."
A happy bud of giddiness took root inside me. "So really, there was no magic at all involved."
"I won give powerful magic to the irresponsible hands of chil'en," Aunt Vandi said.
I couldn't really protest the irresponsible part. We had accidentally poisoned Nathan. Or we would have if the brownie had been truly tainted.
Aunt Vandi gave an enigmatic arch of her eyebrow and one side of her lips curved up. "But aint it nice you got zactly what you wished fo?"
I thought about it, and she was right. She'd said the love potion would get Ronny to take me to the dance and that I'd get love. Even though she hadn't given me an actual love potion, I couldn't help thinking the root doctor had done something magical. But anything she'd done had only nudged Nathan into admitting feelings he already had and had kind of made me do the same.
"You're right." I said. "I didn't get what I thought I wanted but I got what I really wanted. Thank you."
Aunt Vandi inclined her head. "You mose welcome, chile."
Nathan took my hand and dropped a kiss on my smiling lips.
"Come on, Istanbul. Let's go back and finish our date. There's a refreshment table to explore. Maybe they have my new favorite food: brownies."
"I think they're my new favorite too." Squeezing his hand, I went up on tiptoes and kissed him back.
***
P.R. Mason is the award-winning author of young adult paranormal romance and urban fantasy, including Entanglements, Fated Hearts, and The Banshee and the Linebacker. Pat escaped from the Midwest winters of her youth by moving, in 2001, to the strange and wonderful city of Savannah, Georgia. She now lives there, happily spending her days as the subject of her cat overlord's mind control experimentation. You can learn more about Pat and her work at her website, www.prmason.net.
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1:30, Tour Eiffel
By
Jennifer McAndrews
My name is Rachel Healy and I am not special. I have light brown hair that’s not quite blonde, an okay figure that’s not quite full, and a propensity for breaking out before any remotely formal event. I am not going to save the world, defeat the Big Bad, or lead a revolution. I will be lucky to pass my physics final. Just so you know who you’re dealing with.
This is my first
trip to Paris. Almost forty kids from the junior class at MacArthur High School arrived yesterday afternoon to spend spring break in the City of Lights, including me and my best friend, Stacy.
To be precise, Stacy and I were best friends, and we’re trying to be again. We had what people on television would call a “falling out” over the identity of the person who let slip the news Stacy lost her virginity to her boyfriend Mark. For a long while she believed that person was me. I finally convinced her otherwise, but it’s been a struggle getting back to the way things were with us.
Right now, she’s gazing at diamonds in the gem collection of the natural history museum in Paris, one of the educational stops on the trip. While Stacy fantasizes about a planet-sized engagement ring, I wander into a small side room drenched in darkness save for the small gem cases lining the wall.
Here, fluorescent lights bathe a selection of gems, showing off the secrets and potentialities within them, the spectrum of colors a stone will exhibit when subjected to unusual conditions.
“Now this is cool.”
I don’t have to turn toward the voice to identify the guy it came from, but I do anyway. Stacy’s boyfriend Mark has joined me in the small space.
“Don’t you want to look at diamond rings and tiaras with your future prom queen?” I ask, making no attempt at keeping the distaste from my voice. We have our differences, Mark and I. We make an effort to be civil whenever we’re all together, but when it’s just the two of us, there’s no point in pretending.
Mark scowls and gives an exaggerated shudder. “I’m not ready for that kind of permanence.”
“No, huh?” I say it to fill the space between us, to buy time to process this information. Mark and Stacy have been together since sophomore summer. He promised her he loved her, told her they were destined for forever. “Stacy know about this?”
“Come on,” Mark says, “I’m young. There’s a lot of life left ahead of me, you know?”
“What, you think Stacy’s going to lock you in a basement as soon as you graduate?”
“All right, I’ll put it another way,” he says, leaning closer, looking all serious. “There’s some stuff I want to explore.”
I loosen my lips to ask ‘like what?’ Before the words can form, Mark’s hand cups the back of my head, holds me in place so he can crush his mouth against mine. He wraps his free arm around my waist and hauls me against him.
The sweaty boy smell of him fills my nostrils. His hand on my head holds me immobile while his tongue invades my mouth. My responding protest sounds like a whimper.
Eternal Spring (A Young Adult Short Story Collection) Page 17