My late night call wakes Jana up.
“I need to talk to Nat,” I tell her.
“Nat who?” she murmurs into the phone, her voice slurred by sleep.
“The tattoo guy. Nat’s Tats. Maybe the jacket belongs to one of his customers. You know, a first-timer who wanted my mom’s initials on his bicep. Something tasteful.”
“Oh, Nat,” Jana says, suddenly alert. “Can we talk about this tomorrow?”
“I’m going to Nat’s. Tonight. He’s open seven days a week until midnight. Or, at least that’s what this business card says.”
“You shouldn’t go to a tattoo parlor alone,” she mumbles, yawning big.
“Right. You’re absolutely right. See you tomorrow.”
“Sadie, don’t—”
I press the end call button on my phone.
***
For the first time ever, I sneak out of my apartment. Mom isn’t home, anyway. Sunday is Bon Jovi night at The Green Lagoon Pub. Now that I think about it, she hasn’t been home much at all lately, but I’d been too busy myself to notice. I switch on the side lamp in my room and close the door, hoping she’ll think I’m studying.
My stroll through downtown Harmony takes less than twenty minutes. Even in the emptiness of night, I feel the calm embrace of my hometown. Along the side streets, I recognize the names on most of the mailboxes.
Nat’s Tats is located on the first floor of a rickety old house crammed between a bunch of questionable-looking businesses. A red neon sign flashes “Open” in the dark window. Good to know Nat keeps to his publicized hours.
Inside, the sound of snake charmer music floating in from another room greets me. A bell sits on the counter, and my fingers hover, about to hit the ringer, when a loud voice says, “Don’t even think about it.”
I drop my hand and jump back from the counter. Along the back wall, crushed red velvet curtains part, exposing a doorway to another darkened room. If I don’t die tonight, Jana will kill me when I tell her about coming here alone.
A guy who looks like the Incredible Hulk, minus the green skin, smashes through the gap in the curtains. My mathlete instincts kick in, and I find myself estimating the circumference of his upper arms and comparing them to tree trunks. Possibly something in the giant oak or redwood family.
“Need something, kid?” he grumbles. Geez, do I look that young? I should have worn my high heeled boots.
“Is Nat here?” I ask, my voice sounding squeaky, like Colette’s.
“Yo, NAT!” The force of his voice shakes the black and white images of inked body parts hanging on the wall.
“WHAAAAT?” replies a strange voice. Strange, because it’s not what I expected to hear.
A huge woman rolls through the curtains. Seriously. Like Bertha the amazing land-whale.
“Another underager?” Beady eyes peer out from mountains of tattoo-covered flesh. “Ya got parental permission?”
“Are you—are you Nat?” I stammer, thinking I’ve found the perfect Audrey II.
“Yeah. Who are you?”
“Sadie Matthews. I found your card in my mom’s jacket, and I thought you might be her … friend.” Not exactly Mom’s jacket, but it was in our apartment, so close enough.
“Are you Kathleen Matthews’ daughter?”
“Yes, I am.” Apparently, Mom’s famous in the tattoo circuit.
Nat roars. “Gah! Didn’t know she had a daughter. But ya look just like her.”
“When was the last time you saw my mom?”
“I see her around. Green Lagoon sometimes. She never comes here for tats, but she used to hang out in the shop once in a while. Then she went all legit and got a real job. Too highbrow for the tattoo parlor, that snooty pants.” Nat—actually Natalie, I guess, busts out in a chest-cracking laugh. I smile. Mom and I are not highbrow by any stretch of one’s imagination.
“So, what do you want? A swan? Princess tiara? That’s what most of the young girls ask for.”
“Oh, no. Mom would kill me,” I rush to say. “I just found your card, and wondered …”
“If your ma’s hiding a tattoo?” Nat breaks into a grin, revealing a mouth three teeth short of being full. “Naw, she’s a preppie. Totally gag me with a spoon. That’s what we used to say when we went to school together. Don’t know what Scotty Drum sees in her.”
***
Mom and Mr. Drum? My mom, who spent the last seventeen years warning me to stay away from dangerous boys, is dating the most supreme example of a bad boy all grown up.
After Nat’s stunning revelation, sleep is no longer part of my nighttime agenda. I lay in bed, wide awake, waiting for a Monday morning that cannot come fast enough. Slipping into the leather jacket, I set off for school at an ungodly early hour, intending to stop by and see Mr. Drum before I completely lose my nerve.
After surviving the torture of Driver’s Ed, descending into the depths of the basement auto shop feels like reentering the gates of hell. Only the distant whine of a drill disrupts the tomb-like silence. When no one answers my knock, I enter the shop and nearly barge into Mr. Drum, who reached the door the same time I did.
“Miz Matthews, can I help you with something?” He steps away and grabs a greasy towel dangling from the lecture podium to wipe off his hands. The scent of motor oil burns inside my nostrils. My clothes are gonna reek for the rest of the day.
“Um,” I say, sounding completely brain dead. My stomach clenches hard to prevent a Greek yogurt uprising. “How are you today, Mr. Drum?”
He looks me up and down, once again taking in the sight of my leather jacket. “I’m alive. It’s better than the alternative,” he answers.
“Why, are you dying?” I ask, horrified. Just Mom’s luck.
“No. Not as far as I know.” He laughs a deep, gravelly laugh, picks up his drill, and pokes a large metal spike into the end. “Hey, didn’t I give you an A in Driver’s Ed?”
“Yes. Um, thank you for that.”
He shrugs his enormous shoulders. “Don’t thank me. It wasn’t a gift. I would have given you an A-plus if you had come up with a better list of driving distractions.” Thankfully, his face is buried in the engine of a car as he says this.
“About that …” I start to say, but Mr. Drum holds up one hand to stop me.
“Did you have a driving question or are you here to sign up for another class? Just for the fun of it?”
“No. No more classes,” I rush to say. “But I thought we might–I wanted to ask …” I can’t do it. Cannot summon the courage to ask him the most personal of personal questions.
So, I swallow hard and back up until the door knob presses into the small of my back. “Sorry, Mr. Drum. I have to go.”
He gives a low whistle. “Nice jacket, Miz Matthews. I had one just like it, but I seem to have misplaced it.”
Information overload! An alarm blares in my head and the world tips sideways. I maneuver around the pesky door knob and out of the auto shop. When I glance back to make sure Mr. Drum hasn’t followed me, I bash up against Andy and Sidh, on their way to the lower level computer lab.
“You okay, Sadie?” Sidh asks, latching onto my arm to prevent me from hitting the floor. “You look kind of–green.” Andy is silent, but I notice his head bobbing back and forth between me and the open auto shop door.
“I’m fine. Gotta go. I’m late for—I’m just late.”
***
Over lunch, I update Jana on my conversation with Mr. Drum. A better description might be lack of conversation, accompanied by rude gawking, but I keep that part to myself.
“He’s so dating your Mom,” Jana says. “He recognized the jacket. I knew it couldn’t be the tattoo guy.”
I munch on a carrot stick to avoid explaining Nat’s inability to be my mother’s guy.
“I can’t believe my mom attracted such a—hunk, for lack of a better word.” I shake my head.
“I can think of better words to descr
ibe Mr. Drum, but given this morning’s events we can’t use them without sounding perverted. Who would have guessed that our Driver’s Ed teacher is shacking up with your mother?”
“Do you think he’ll give me free driving lessons?”
“Mr. Drum understands your driving potential better than anyone else on the planet. I bet he never gets into a car with you behind the wheel.”
“You know what? I’ll take that bet. We can add it to our list of achievements. Sadie gets Mr. Drum to teach her how to drive.”
“Seriously? You think he would be able to just sit there and watch you run a stop sign?”
“This may sound crazy, but I do. It’s funny how I sat in his class for months and it never struck me that we had a connection.”
“No offense, Sadie, but picturing your mom and Mr. Drum in a romantic situation is just plain weird.”
“Totally. Maybe the tattoos threw me off, but I always thought that if my mom met the love of her life, he would be some wrinkly, old guy who wears sweater vests and works in an office.”
“And birds would sing, and the three of you would instantly be a happy step-family.”
“I guess no one gets a fairy tale. And now I have to ask my mom if she’s hot for my teacher.”
“Later. Forget about your mom’s love life until you sort out your own dating catastophe. I passed Andy in the hallway before lunch, and Melinda Banner was all over him. Again.”
I glance at the senior boys’ lunch table and sure enough, Melinda’s talking to Andy, shaking her perfect long hair over her shoulder, waves of auburn flowing down her back. She leans forward as she speaks, allowing him the opportunity to gaze longingly at her chest if he so desires. But clueless Andy aims his eyes at his text book, oblivious to her flirting.
Observing from a distance, I’m forced to admit Melinda and Andy make a perfect couple. In addition to her popularity credentials, she’s decently smart, although she’s apparently met her match in pre-Calculus.
“They’re probably just comparing calculators,” Jana says, following my gaze.
“Yeah, and with her bosoms blocking his view of the rest of the world, he’ll never notice me. I don’t know why I thought I had a chance with him. He barely talks to me anymore—all because I kissed someone else.”
“Wouldn’t you be mad, if it happened to you?” Jana asks, a bit too rationally. “If Andy kissed another girl and then kissed you—at the same party?”
“Snogging two boys at the same party was never my idea of fun. I was trying to be wild. Different. Someone I’m not.”
“Andy likes who you are, not who you were trying to be.”
I sigh and press the heel of my hand into my forehead. “Crazy isn’t it?”
“Totally. After twelve years—”
“Eleven and a half—”
“Right. Chica, I’m sorry. I would never have encouraged you to kiss him if I knew you two really liked each other. But you always complained about him. And he acts dorky around every girl. I didn’t realize he was being an extra big moron especially for you!” Jana waves her hands in the air as she rants, the way she always does when she get really worked up about a particular topic.
“I know. I totally get it. I have no one to blame but myself.” I sigh and dunk my spoon into a fruit cup. “Do you think if I apologize to him, he’ll like me again? Maybe ask me to the prom?”
“If you apologize to him, and truly mean it, I guarantee he will forgive you. But will you get a prom date out of it?” Jana shakes her head and gives me a sad smile. “I’m not sure. Andy’s shooting up the Harmony High datable guy charts these days.”
***
Resolving to make one final attempt with Andy, I wait by his locker after school, but he’s nowhere in sight. After running down a mental list of his usual haunts, I check Mrs. McCaffrey’s room, even though mathletes are off today.
“Looking for someone, Sadie?” Mrs. McCaffrey pushes aside the stack of papers she’s grading when I poke my head in the classroom.
“Sorry, Mrs. McCaffrey. I thought I might find, um, Jana, in here,” I lie.
“Oh. Because I was going to say, if you’re looking for Andy, I saw him walking into the library.”
Of course he was. Harmony High geek paradise.
“I wasn’t looking for Andy,” I insist, weakly.
“No problem. I believe you. But, if you wanted to accidentally run in to him, I would check the study area on the second floor. He might be tutoring this afternoon.”
“Thanks, Mrs. McCaffrey.”
“I’m rooting for you, Sadie,” she says before shooing me out the door.
Sure enough, I find Andy squirreled away with Melinda Banner in a deserted area of the study section, their heads bent so close their foreheads almost touch. Hiding behind the bookshelves, I hear the breathy waves of Melinda’s laughter, followed by Andy’s deep, Muppety heh-heh.
I roam around the study area until I happen to pass by their table, for about the fifth time. When Andy manages to tear his eyes from his study partner, he looks like he wishes I would just disappear.
“Hi, guys,” I say, forcing a friendly smile.
“Hey, Sadie,” Melinda answers in an annoyed voice. Andy tilts his head in my direction.
“Andy, do you have a minute? I need to talk to you about our group project.”
“What group project?” He stares me down from behind a new pair of slick black frames.
“You know, the one we’re working on. As a group.” I lift my chin, refusing to kiss his ass in front of an underclasswoman.
Andy tosses his pencil on to the study table and huffs loudly. Melinda shoots me a killer glare when he raises his long body out of a miniscule plastic chair. I lead him to the closest aisle of bookshelves, and just like that we’re lost in the depths of nonfiction. Obviously, not a popular library area, because the air is thick with dust and the books look like they’ve morphed together after decades of abandonment. Behind Andy’s head, I spy biographies of famous people whose last names begin with K. Don King. Larry King. Martin Luther King. Stephen King.
I inhale a deep breath and try to refocus.
“What’s up?” Andy asks, with the same tone of annoyance he’s directed at me every time we’ve spoken since he read my list of apparently not so awesome achievements.
“I wanted to apologize about what happened at Dom’s party.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you care?”
“Um, because you thought I was just using you for my list?”
A muscle jumps in his cheek. “So it’s true, then. You kissed me because of some stupid list you and Jana made up?”
“Well, it’s kind of a funny story.” I manage a shaky laugh. Andy’s expression remains rockish. “Um, Jana thought I should kiss you because if we didn’t seize the moment, we might not have another shot at that particular accomplishment. I didn’t think it was a good idea, but I agreed to try. And then, the situation didn’t work out exactly the way I thought it would.” I raise my hands, surrendering to the anger he’s about to direct at me.
“You kissed me twice.”
“Come again?” I ask, directing my eyes away from a decrepit-looking Billie Jean King autobiography.
“Why did you kiss me twice?” he asks in a low voice, leaning closer. Survival instinct kicks in and I flinch back, slamming into the shelves behind me. My shoulder blades scrape the wall of books, and I yelp.
“The way I read your list, you wanted to kiss two different guys, but only one kiss per guy, correct?” he continues, ignoring my pain. “Or did I misinterpret something?”
“No. I mean, no, you didn’t misinterpret anything. I kissed you twice because I kind of, um, liked doing it.”
Behind the black frames, his blue eyes squeeze shut. “Did you kiss Dumbchuk twice?”
“Geez-us, you should be a lawyer, you know that?” I smack myself in the forehe
ad. “Who is Carole King?”
“What?” He glances side to side, confused.
“Nothing. Sorry. No, Andy, to answer your question, I did not kiss Dominic twice. Once was way more than enough.”
A heh-heh rises from Andy’s chest. He bows his shoulders, straining for self-control. I interpret this as a positive sign.
Resting his chin in his hand, he ponders my answer. “One kiss could be viewed as a simple anomaly.”
“Okay, sure. Whatever.” Like I know what an anomaly is. Standing this close to him for the first time in weeks, my brain isn’t equipped to process fourth grade vocabulary, let alone Andy-speak. “So, can we be friends again?”
“Yes. Friends.” He offers me his hand.
“Good. Great. I’ll let you get back to your study date,” I say, keeping my fingers wrapped around his.
“Not a date,” he rushes to correct me. “Melinda has a test tomorrow and she’s hit some sort of mental block with the theorems.”
Sure she has. “Oh, right. Enjoy that then.” I release my hold on him and turn to go. As I stroll down the K aisle, I need to physically hold back from kicking up my heels.
I kissed Andy twice.
He isn’t dating Melinda.
My prom dream is alive.
Fill It In – Random List
10 Reasons Why I Still Might Nab the Prom Date of My Dreams
1. He smiled at me in homeroom. A real, happy Andy smile.
2. He isn’t dating Melinda, even though she’s a hotter, younger chick.
3. I kissed him twice. Plus, the anomaly thing.
4. Andy initiated the second kiss, so he must have enjoyed the first one.
5. We’ve known each other forever, so it would be nice to celebrate the end of twelve years of side-by-side learning at the senior prom. Together. With more kissing.
6. His Mom likes me. At least she used to like me. I hope he didn’t tell her about the party at Dominic’s house.
My Senior Year of Awesome Page 16