He just waves as I hurry away. In the sky, bright red-white-and-blue stars flutter down. Dorothy holds out her hands and tries to catch them.
By the time we get to the booth and find Mom, Dad is there, too. “What happened?” he asks as he picks up Torvill and hugs her and tries to calm her down.
“That really loud one scared her,” I say.
“Where were you? Why didn’t you just wait here with your mother?”
“Um . . . because I have a life?” I say. Or at least, I’m trying to.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing.” I crouch down so that Dorothy can climb off of my shoulders. “Anyway, I’m late—I’m going to meet Charlotte. See you at home!” I rush off up the hill, eager to get back to Steve. We can still have our moment. This time, there won’t be kids, there won’t be Jacqui or Mike, there won’t be . . .
Steve’s not at the statue anymore.
“Sorry. Couldn’t stall him long enough,” Charlotte says, coming up to me. “He told me you were here but you had to run off after the kids. Sorry I’m late; it took me forever to get here.”
“Traffic?”
“No. Slow vehicle,” she says.
“Wait a second. I thought it was the car-of-the-month club night.”
“Yeah. Well, Mom changed her mind. She said there are too many accidents on holidays.”
“So, how did you get here?” I ask her.
“How do you think? The golf cart.” She grins. “I mean, le cart de golf,” she says.
I laugh. “I think you mean la cart,” I correct her. “Wait—that’s it. We’ll travel à la cart.”
“Oh, wow. That’s so perfect.” Charlotte and I both step back and look up at the fireworks lighting up the sky.
With each explosion of fireworks I scan the crowd, looking for Steve. Where did he go? How could he vanish so quickly? And why do I care, when he so clearly does not? I see faces bathed in red, white, and blue. But not his.
“Look—there’s Mike,” Charlotte says. She points across the lawn. Two figures are heading our way.
“And Ray’s with him,” I observe.
“I don’t want to see Ray,” Charlotte says. “I’m not really sure if that’s how I want to spend my evening. You know?”
“Well, I don’t want to see Mike,” I say. “It’s going to be weird. You know? And I just . . .” I get this really nervous, sick feeling in my stomach, like I shouldn’t have kissed him the other night, because I’m still too hung up on Steve, but if I see him again I’ll probably do the same thing.
Charlotte and I look at each other for a second.
“It is Independence Day,” I say.
“My mom is picking me up at Shady Prairies later—she could give you a ride home. Do you need to go tell your parents you’re leaving?”
“No, I said I’d meet them at home,” I tell her.
“Then let’s go!” she says. I follow Charlotte, and we race toward where she’s parked the cart a few blocks away. We laugh as we dodge people, coolers, picnic baskets, dogs, kids. We leap into the golf cart, and Charlotte jams it into forward gear. We come out from underneath a clump of bushes like we’re superheroes on a mission, except that we have bristly needles stuck in our hair and our vehicle only goes ten miles per hour.
As we go down an alley, trying to beat traffic and stay unseen, we nearly run into a man who is taking out the trash. He shakes his fist at us as we buzz on down the alley, doing our impression of an exciting getaway.
When we pull into Shady Prairies, Charlotte starts driving around the retirement-home property, giving me the grand tour.
“Shouldn’t we just park?” I ask.
She doesn’t respond. She heads up a sidewalk to the pool in the center courtyard, between all of the buildings. We hear a car honk a few times, and look at each other, panicked. “Security!” Charlotte whispers. She jerks the wheel to the right to turn around.
But she makes the turn too fast, and the pool deck is slick with evening dew. The cart suddenly tilts awkwardly to the right. “No!” Charlotte gasps as the cart tips all the way over onto its side, and we land sideways in lukewarm, chlorinated water.
I push myself out of the cart and swim to the surface. Actually I don’t have to swim—I can just stand up. We careened into the very shallow end, and it’s lucky we didn’t hit our heads when we landed in the pool.
I grab my backpack from the submerged cart. Charlotte is already wading to the steps to climb out. She looks over at me and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. How did this happen? How did we end up here? We are so dead.
“We’ve got to get this thing out of here,” she says, and we try to drag the cart out of the pool, but it’s impossible.
“No, we’ve got to get out of here,” I say, “before anyone sees us.”
We run from the pool, shaking ourselves like wet dogs, trying to dry a little before her mother comes to get us. The night is so hot that it shouldn’t take long.
“All right, Fleming,” Charlotte says as we sit on an unlighted bench out front. “Start thinking of a story for when someone asks. Because they’re going to ask.”
I nod, wringing out the bottom of my T-shirt. “A story. Sure.”
She’s Uncomfortable
“I’ve only got a few minutes to do this,” my father says when we sit down at his desk on Friday morning. He’s home briefly, between final practice and a house closing, and my mother’s upstairs, because she just started her maternity leave. My father jiggles the pencil cup on his desk. “So. Let’s see what you’ve got.”
I hand him a check. I’m glad he doesn’t have much time. After what happened last night, I don’t want to be around my parents too much. I might feel guilty, crack under the pressure, and tell them everything.
“Another hundred. Very good, P. F.” He makes a note on the sheet of paper titled P. F.: Personal Loan, then looks up at me. “But I thought you were giving me one-fifty this week.”
“I was. I meant to,” I say.
“Okay. Tell me what happened.” He looks me straight in the eye.
I panic for a few seconds. Is he talking about everything? “Well, I sort of forgot to budget—”
“P. F. The truth,” he says.
I open my mouth, not even sure what I’m about to confess, when the phone on his desk rings, saving me. He answers it and then hands it to me.
“Fleming! Oh, my God. I have to talk to you,” Charlotte says breathlessly.
“Oh . . . hey, Charlotte,” I say. I glance across the desk at Dad. “Charlotte,” I mouth to him. “Just be a minute.”
He looks at his watch and then taps it to remind me he’s in a hurry.
“Is this a good time?” Charlotte asks. “Can you talk?”
“No.”
“Oh. Your dad’s right there, huh? Well, someone from work just called with this incredible story—I’ve got to tell you.”
“Mm-hmm,” I say, afraid of what she’ll say next.
“So at six-o’clock breakfast they opened the blinds in the dining room, and there was this really bright metal thing glinting in the sun, beaming right back into the dining room, hurting everyone’s eyes. It was the cart. The sun was reflecting off it in the pool. So far everyone thinks it was some resident who wandered out of the Alzheimer’s nursing-home division—we’re cool. Talk to you later!” She hangs up, leaving me with a racing pulse and a lot of questions.
“Okay, bye, see you at class—and thanks!” I place the phone back into its holder.
“P. F. It’s Friday,” my father says. “You don’t have class today.”
“Oh.” I slump a little in my chair, hoping this isn’t the beginning of my unraveling.
“So, let’s see, we subtract a hundred, and your remaining debt comes to four hundred. Wow, P. F. You’re doing very—”
Suddenly my mother lets out a loud, hysterical shriek, and then shouts, “Come quick! Come quick!”
We both jump up and run for the stairs. The kid
s abandon their Lego sculpture in the living room and follow us. “Oh, no,” my father says. “This is not the day to have the baby.”
“What are you talking about?” I say. “I’m the one who has to—has to—” When I start thinking this is the actual delivery we’re talking about, I can’t talk. I can’t breathe normally. I’m almost hyperventilating.
Mom is propped up on their bed watching TV. Her feet are on a pillow, and she’s sipping water from a bottle cradled in her arms.
“Look!” she says as we skid into the bedroom. “Isn’t that where Charlotte works?”
A reporter is wrapping up a story from Shady Prairies. This is big because Lindville is never on TV, unless there’s severe weather. It takes a tornado, or at least a gale-force wind, for them to send out a satellite truck.
There are dozens of senior citizens crowded around the pool. The reporter is saying that there has been a head count and that one person is missing from the complex. They seem to think the missing person and the flipped cart are connected.
“Gee, I hope nobody got hurt,” Mom says as the kids climb onto the bed with her. “What if someone hit their head?”
“Did Charlotte tell you about that just now?” my father asks.
“No.” I shake my head. “She hasn’t gone to work yet—she works nights,” I say. That, and the fact that she didn’t have to tell me about it, because I was there.
“Hmm. Well, I’ve got to run, or I’m going to be late,” my father says.
“Peggy, you’re going to help me clean the house today, right? While the kids nap?” my mother asks after my father kisses her good-bye and rushes down the stairs.
“I am?” I say. I thought maternity leave meant I was now off the hook—not more on it.
“Yes. I was hoping we could do some relaxation exercises, too. This heat is really making me uncomfortable,” she says as she shifts position on the bed. “So what on earth do you think happened at Shady Prairies?”
Her. She’s uncomfortable.
Love among the Pancakes
I’m restocking the napkin dispenser Saturday night at work when Ray’s truck pulls up outside at the pump. I stare out the window at the truck, wondering what Ray is up to tonight. I really hope he isn’t going to come in and punch Denny for giving Charlotte some CDs. Denny’s nose is already crooked, and we both know he’s not the best fighter in town.
Ray gets out to pump the gas. The passenger-side door opens and Mike gets out. He peers at the gas station, and there I am, staring right out at him. He waves and then jogs toward me, looking happy to see me.
“So, Fleming. Where’ve you been?” Mike asks when he walks into the store. He’s wearing his usual red flip-flops.
“Around,” I say, feeling nervous.
“Around, huh? What have you been doing?” He comes up really close to me and when I look in his eyes, I start remembering the car wash.
Behind me, I hear Denny humming. I wish he’d turn up the radio so that he can’t eavesdrop.
“Well, I’ve been busy. Really busy,” I say as I fidget with my stupid apron. “My family . . . and the job . . . and the new baby coming . . . and . . .” I shrug. “You know.”
“Yeah. I’ve been busy, too. You wouldn’t believe how many people order pizza during a heat wave,” Mike says. “It was insane on the Fourth. So do you have a break or something coming up?”
“Um . . .” I’m about to say no when for some reason I look right at Mike’s mouth, and I remember how kissing him was sort of thrilling, the feel-good movie of the summer so far. Without another thought, I hang up my apron, ask Denny to cover for me for a couple of minutes, and Mike and I head out back. Denny glares at me the entire time it takes to walk past him. It’s like having an extra father around.
“Is this okay with Ray?” I ask as we go out the back door.
“Sure. He’s cool,” Mike says.
I prop the door open with an empty container of 10W-30 motor oil, then turn to find Mike. In the dark, I stumble over some discarded cardboard boxes on the ground and Mike catches my arm. He puts his arm around my waist and pulls me close, right up against him.
“Careful,” he says. “You’re as bad as me trying to Rollerblade.”
“That bad? Really?” I tease him.
“Hey, not all of us are born skaters, okay?” Mike smiles, and in the deserted area behind the store, I notice how white his teeth are. I haven’t been back here except to toss trash bags into the Dumpster. It smells horrible. I try to close off my nose, to stop breathing, to stop absorbing the noxiousness.
“A born skater? Interesting,” I say, glancing down at my feet.
His hands are on my hips and he pulls me toward him again and kisses me. His lips don’t feel the same as they did that night in the car wash—they’re dry, maybe a little sunburned or windburned. Then again, it’s hard to kiss while I’m also holding my breath to avoid Dumpster smells.
“You know what’s bizarre?” Mike pauses to look at me. He runs his fingers up and down my bare arms. “Gropher is, like, the biggest liar in the world. I mean, usually nothing he says is true.”
“Oh, yeah?” I say. “Really?” I hadn’t thought of him as a liar before.
“Are you serious? The dude has made up almost everything,” Mike says.
“Like what?” I challenge him.
“Like all that stuff about gambling and being an addict and all. He’s never lost big at gambling. He’s played poker like twice in his life, and he sucked at it,” Mike says. “I beat him. My father beat him.”
“Really?” I ask. I can’t believe it. Everyone at school thinks he’s on his tenth step.
“That scar he says he got from jumping off a roof? Okay, he fell off his bike or something. Going down a hill and turning too fast. I mean, he’s just . . . he takes stuff and he makes it sound like something else.”
“Really?” I say again.
“He’s supposed to be saving all that money from waiting tables for his road trip? Then explain how he owns like a thousand CDs and DVDs. You know what I mean?”
My heart starts to sink a little—no, a lot. Or maybe it just didn’t have that far down to go.
Steve was supposed to take French, but he didn’t. Maybe all his talk about getting out of Lindville is just that: talk. Because if you look at it one way, it does seem as if maybe he’s working really hard toward being the IHOP manager here, instead of toward escaping town.
Mike moves closer to me and kisses my neck. “Anyway, that’s beside the point. Because even though he lies? The really cool thing is, everything he said about you is true.”
“About me?” I step back from Mike. “What about me is true?” I ask him, and at the same time I don’t want to know.
Mike kisses my neck again. “He said you were a really good kisser. He said even though you weren’t his type, he just felt like he had to kiss you again, after the first time.”
I stare at him, this awful burning in my throat. “Oh, yeah? I’m not his type? When did he say that?”
“I don’t know. Who cares? The point is, he was right,” Mike says. He tries to kiss me again, and I shove him away, nearly knocking him against the Dumpster.
“What? It’s a compliment,” Mike says.
I go back inside, tossing the plastic oil container aside, and I close the door behind me, which locks it. Then I realize that anyone, even Mike, can walk into the front of the store as long as it’s open, so it doesn’t matter whether I close that door or not.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I say before Denny can ask. Headlights flash against the windows and I glance out and see Mike and Ray driving away.
I take some bleach and cleanser and start scrubbing the sink, one of the chores Jamie left for me. I can’t stop thinking about how I was so stupid, how this whole thing got so ridiculous. I kept thinking that Steve and I had this connection, because of the way we met and the things we talked about. I thought we were . . . soul mates or something. I figured he was on
ly with Jacqui because they worked together and that kind of stuff happens when you work with someone. Or so I’ve heard. It isn’t happening here at Gas ’n Git, which is fine by me.
Anyway, it turns out Steve never meant anything he said, that he’s so shallow he believes in “types,” and that he liked kissing me—enough to tell Mike about it—and that’s it. He made out with me and then reported on it. Which I would have thought was really beneath him. But now I guess it’s obvious that I don’t know him at all.
Now I know two things I didn’t want to: that Steve isn’t interested in me, even though he likes making out with me, and that Mike probably only came after me because of what Steve said about my kissing . . . skill, or whatever you’d call it. I guess I can’t be mad at Mike, though I am. I only went out with him because I wanted to get to Steve.
We’re thwarted all around.
Denny walks over and puts a fruit drink on my counter. “With my compliments,” he says. “That is, if you can drink anything after inhaling all those bleach fumes.”
I laugh, and for a second forget how angry and upset and furious I feel.
“So the guy’s a loser. You realize that.”
“He’s not the problem,” I say. “There’s this other guy—his best friend, Steve. I sort of used to . . . I don’t know.” I can’t say I ever dated him, can I? “Anyway, he’s going out with this other girl now. They both work at IHOP.”
“Love among the pancakes,” Denny says dryly. “How romantic.”
“I have to leave work a little early tonight,” I say. I flip open the phone book and look up Taxi.
“Okay, I’ll tell people we’re out of coffee. But be careful.” Denny looks at me and I can tell he knows what I’m about to do. “Don’t slip on any butter pats.”
Back When I Was Delusional
Lindville Limousine drops me at IHOP precisely at 11:00 p.m. I’m not in a limousine, I’m in a green van, but the driver assures me that she can make my arrival look fancy if I want, not seeming to notice that I’m wearing a T-shirt and jeans, which is not even a good outfit for what I have planned. The driver keeps a red carpet in the back, she tells me, for just such occasions.
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