Sparks

by S. J. Adams

  “Hey, sorr-ee,” said Nate. “I wasn’t trying to be offensive or anything. That Norman guy just told me Debbie was into that sort of thing.”

  My vision got blurry and my head began to spin.

  Fourteen

  A few minutes later, we were in a booth, the one I’d

  run to the second Nate mentioned that Norman told him I was into girls. I’d shut myself down for a second—sitting down, huddled up in the fetal position, in that mental place where you’d be crying except you just feel so drained there’s not enough energy to cry.

  When Nate said that, it was like someone was holding a vacuum cleaner up to my ear to suck everything out of my head. There wasn’t much I could do anymore besides rocking back and forth.

  “It doesn’t mean for sure that he read the note,” said Emma.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “He’s going around telling random people that I like girls. He must have read it.”

  “Maybe he just guessed that you might be gay because you’ve never had a boyfriend, and started telling people.”

  “He would,” I said, remembering his gossip about Gia Van Atta. “And if he tells Lisa he thinks I like girls, she’ll probably say he’s nuts at first, then slowly realize it’s been obvious the whole time.”

  I heaved myself up and leaned against the window, so at least I’d be upright.

  Tim arrived with a tray piled with cheeseburgers and fries. “These are on the house,” he said. “I think Nate was worried we’d tell his manager that he tried to pay you to kiss. Dig in!”

  “The five dollar bill lives!” said Emma.

  “I’m going to have to tell Lisa before he can,” I said. “I have to. Before she goes into a theater with him, where he can tell her and make her want to go all the way to prove she’s not like that. We’ve got to get to the theater.”

  I started to count to twenty-five, but it didn’t do a thing. I needed something else to focus on.

  “Are these for anyone?” I asked, as I pointed at the fries.

  “Eat!” Tim commanded.

  I did.

  “Did Norman say anything about what time the date is?” asked Emma.

  “It’s what, 5:30 now?” I asked. “He said he’s picking her up at Jennifer’s house in a few minutes. Maybe we can catch them on the way in if we just head to the theater.”

  Emma nodded. I picked up a cheeseburger and held it up. “Can I have this, too?”

  “EAT!” Tim ordered.

  I ripped off the paper and started eating—partly because I was still starving, and partly because I knew I was going to have to get my strength up. You can’t go around declaring yourself when you’re low on blood sugar. I’m not diabetic or anything, but I do get all shaky if I don’t eat for a long time and my blood sugar gets low. And I would be shaking enough as it was. I didn’t want my guts to turn into a milk shake.

  In between bites, I tried to call Lisa again, but her phone was still turned off.

  “Hang on a second,” said Emma. “Gotta pee.”

  She got up and headed for the bathroom, leaving me alone with Tim. We looked at each other for a second, sort of awkwardly.

  “You wanna know a secret?” asked Tim.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I’ve never had a drink in my life,” he said. “I just said that I did as an excuse to hang out with Emma.”

  I shook my head back and forth like I was trying to get water out of my ears. Now that was something else I could focus on!

  “You like her?” I asked.

  He nodded and blushed a bit. “She drives me insane half the time, and she needs to be in real therapy instead of just seeing the school shrink once a month, but she’s incredible.”

  “Oh my God!” I said. “You have to tell her. She’s totally into you!”

  “Oh, I have told her,” he said. “But she thinks I’m just trying to make her feel better about herself, and I don’t think I can possibly change her mind. It’s pathetic of me to keep hanging around with her, but I can’t stand the thought of her sleeping with other guys just for a self-esteem boost. As long as I keep her going on this Church of Blue stuff, she keeps her pants on. And keeps eating three meals a day instead of just eating one and puking it back out.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” I said. “I’m kinda used to pretending to be a member of a religion for a girl.”

  “Oh, I’m really Bluish,” said Tim. “It’s a pretty awesome religion. It’s part of what I love about her. Plus, I get to see her naked sometimes on holy quests.”

  “I think she puts nudity into the goals as an excuse to see you,” I said.

  “She probably does. The whole thing is so stupid. It’s like one of those dumb movies where there are two friends that everyone knows should be together except the two of them until they figure it out in the last ten minutes. Only the problem is, we both know we’re perfect together but she just won’t believe I like her back. She doesn’t always process information rationally. People with body issues are like that.”

  “So I hear,” I said.

  “That’s part of why I gave her the blue Buddha instead of getting, like, a Yoda or something for a good luck charm. He’s fat as hell, but he still seems happy. I worry that it’s sacrilegious for Buddhists, but they don’t seem to mind old women rubbing his belly at Chinese restaurants, so I don’t think they’d mind this.”

  He sort of nursed a french fry for a second or two and then looked out the window.

  “I’m just glad she made up a religion like Bluedaism,” he went on. “Not one of those ones where you pray to the Goddess of Bulimia to keep you from eating.”

  “People do that?”

  He inhaled and nodded. “It’s fucking scary. She was never half as bad as some of those girls, really, but she could have easily gotten sucked into that crap.”

  “But instead you guys made up a religion that keeps her healthy and productive and awesome.”

  He smiled. “There’s no one else like her.”

  I looked through his glasses and into his eyes. He looked miserable. And I knew just how he felt.

  “You wouldn’t ditch Emma for Heather Quinn, would you?” I asked.

  Tim laughed. “Hell no,” he said. “What would she want with me?”

  “It could happen,” I said, trying not to clue him in so much that Emma would kill me. “Girls like that fall for guys like you sometimes. Maybe she just made up the thing about you being gay to scare other girls off.”

  “No one’s that crazy,” said Tim. “That’s like dressing up as a ghost to scare people away from the warehouse where you’re counterfeiting money. It might work on TV, but not in real life.”

  “Everyone still thinks you’re gay, right?” I asked.

  Tim just shrugged. “Even if she did like me, she hangs out with the preppy kids. She probably goes to parties where the beats are so loud you can’t talk to anyone. You’d never catch her interviewing bowlers to find one who’s bowled a 300. Why the hell would I want to go out with her?”

  “Well, her friends are popular, right? And she’s kind of hot?”

  He looked at me for a second, then started smiling. “I get it!” he said. “It’s the Full House thing!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “On TV, the geeks always spend all their time trying to figure out how to be popular, right? Or how to get the head cheerleader to go out with them?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “In the real world, we have this thing called geek cred,” said Tim. “Most of the guys who hang out down at Comics Castle or in the back of the Ice Cave wouldn’t be caught dead with a cheerleader, because they’d lose geek cred. Dorks are just as into status as everyone else.”

  “So, none of the guys who play role-playing
games would sleep with a cheerleader if the chance came up?”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” said Tim. “Some of them could probably be talked into sleeping with one, but not all of them. And they wouldn’t want to stick around to cuddle after. They wouldn’t have anything to talk about. That’s why geeks think places like Dragoncon are good places to get laid. It’s not that the girls there are sluts, it’s just that those cons are full of people they want to sleep with.”

  “So that’s why you wouldn’t go out with Heather?” I said. “Geek cred?”

  “Partly,” he said. “That and the fact that I have nothing in common with her. She’d probably want me to buy all new clothes before she could be seen with me. And I’d rather be with Emma. We bring out the best in each other.”

  “Complementary Sparks of Blue,” I said.

  “I guess,” he said. “I just wish Emma would at least stop saying Heather’s fat. I mean, I work my ass off trying to keep her from thinking gaining a pound is such a bad thing.”

  I remembered Emma scowling earlier when Tim said Heather looked good. He was just trying to make her feel better about body issues, but she thought it was proof that he liked Heather.

  Like Moira said: What a mess.

  “Damn,” I said. I tried to make the word sound as bad as she did, but I don’t think I nailed the smolder.

  “Look,” he said. “I’m not going to witness to you or anything, but I’m really glad you came with us tonight, and I hope you’ll come on another quest over spring break. We needed something to shake things up, like a new member. We can’t go on like we are forever.”

  Before I could reply, Emma came back from the bathroom and Tim started coughing like he was choking on his cheeseburger and pointing out the window.

  Heather was walking across the parking lot, toward the door, and looking right at us through the window.

  “Christ,” said Emma. “Doesn’t she have anything better to do?”

  We quickly started gathering up all the food to get out of the place, but we weren’t fast enough. Quinn stormed in through the doors and looked at Tim like he was an animal she’d been hunting.

  “Where the hell did you come from?” Emma asked.

  “Through the door, dumbass,” said Heather. “I’m not small enough to get in through the vents. I wish I was. I know you understand all about wishing you were smaller, right?”

  “Go to Nebraska,” said Emma.

  “Huh?” asked Heather.

  Emma was acting tough, but I could see she was starting to panic. If something didn’t happen fast, things were going to get ugly.

  I don’t think I even thought about what I was doing. I just did the first thing that popped into my head.

  I grabbed a cup of Coke from the table, took off the lid, splashed it onto Heather’s face, and shouted.

  “Run!”

  Fifteen

  Heather was too shocked to move for a second. While she processed the fact that I’d just attacked her with a Coke, Tim grabbed the bag of food and the three of us bolted for the door. I managed to avoid looking anywhere near Hairy Nate as we ran through the glass doors and back out to the car, though I thought I saw Mr. Ward give me a disapproving glance.

  “Drive!” Tim shouted. “Head into the old part of town and do some bootlegger turns!”

  Emma fired up the engine and burst out of the parking lot so quickly that it was a wonder she didn’t crash into six or seven cars along the way. After a block on Cedar, she made a sudden turn toward the school, then a couple more, and we ended up back at the janitor’s house.

  Emma pulled into the garage, put the car in park, and breathed a huge sigh of relief. It took Bluddha a while to stop bouncing around.

  “I think we lost her,” Emma said.

  “Let’s hear it for Debbie,” said Tim, “whose quick thinking and deadly accuracy facilitated our miraculous escape!”

  “I can’t believe I did that,” I said.

  “You’d think that would have been one of the holy quest goals,” said Tim. “Getting Heather wet and sticky.” He looked down at Emma, who was slumped against the steering wheel. “You okay?”

  Emma nodded slowly, then leaned back against the seat.

  “That was awesome, Debbie,” she said. “Thanks a million. You really saved my ass.”

  “Our ass,” corrected Tim.

  “I hope she doesn’t, like, sue me for assault with a carbonated beverage,” I said. “She probably can, can’t she?”

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” said Tim. “You know how many times she could have sued us for assault with shaving, sour, or whipped cream?”

  The door that connected the house to the garage opened, and Jim the janitor poked his head through.

  Tim rolled his window down. “Hey, Jim,” he said.

  “Oh,” said Jim. “It’s you guys. Holy quest?”

  “What else?” asked Tim. “We’ll be out of here in a minute.”

  “Praise Blue,” he said with a chuckle, and he went back inside.

  “Is he Bluish?” I asked as he closed his door.

  “No, but he’s kind of amused by the whole thing,” said Tim. “He keeps wanting us to make him the patron saint of something besides mopping floors.”

  “Danny Tanner should be the patron saint of that, anyway,” I said. “If everyone else on Full House is the patron saint of something.”

  “Good call,” said Tim. “Maybe Jim can be patron saint of hiding places.”

  Emma sat back, took a deep breath, and shook her head violently back and forth a few times, the same way I did when Tim told me he’d made up the thing about being a drunk. She seemed to have recovered from the shock a bit, but she was still upset.

  “So, can we head to the theater now, please?” I asked.

  Emma turned back to me.

  “Norman and Lisa won’t be there for a while,” she said. “Can we hold off long enough to throw Quinn off our scent? The theater’s not that far away from the Burger Box.”

  I sighed—I really didn’t want any delays. But I also totally understood how badly she wanted to stay away from Quinn.

  “Tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t we go get my car? She won’t be able to track us in that, and the tank is about half full.”

  “And not half empty,” said Tim.

  “Good thinking!” said Emma. “Where do you live?

  “Down on 72nd, off Venture.”

  “I’m on it.”

  She revved the engine and I reached into the bag of cheeseburgers—I was so hungry I could have eaten them all. “Anyone else want another?” I asked.

  “Hell no,” said Emma. “I’m never touching another one as long as I live.”

  “Eat!” Tim said to her. “Bluddha commands you to eat a cheeseburger.”

  “No,” said Emma. “He can eat mine himself.”

  “Is this because of that crap Heather was saying?” Tim asked.

  “She’s right,” said Emma. “She’s totally right. I’m the one who should have my picture in the dictionary next to ‘fat.’ ”

  “I’ll shove a burger down your throat if I have to,” said Tim.

  “You look fine, Emma,” I said. “Everyone needs food.”

  “Maybe later,” she said.

  Tim let out a frustrated sigh.

  I wondered what Emma’s parents were like, what they made of all this. Whether they’d helped her get help when she was having trouble. Maybe they couldn’t afford therapy other than the school shrink, or something. The Church of Blue was certainly better than nothing; I smelled a lot of different things in that car, but none of them were the smell of puke. So she wasn’t puking up her food in there, at least.

  I pointed her in the direction of my house. The house
s along the road got smaller and smaller until we pulled into my neighborhood, the land of tiny houses and dirty lawns.

  “This is where you live?” asked Tim. “You could walk to Sip Coffee from here!”

  “I guess,” I said. “I never really go there, though.”

  “It’s the best coffee shop in Cornersville Trace,” said Emma. “Way better than Wackford’s. If you want a really good coffee, you usually have to go clear to Java Joe’s or something closer to downtown, but Sip is fine for the burbs.”

  “There’s my car,” I said. “The white one.”

  My car was always kept in the street. So was my mom’s, for that matter. We only had a single-car garage, and we used it for storage.

  As we pulled up to my car, I started digging in my backpack for my keys—and couldn’t find them.

  “Crud,” I said. “I don’t think I have my keys!”

  “Did you check your pockets?” asked Tim.

  I patted myself down, then started to go lightheaded. I ran my hand around the seat, thinking maybe they’d fallen into Emma’s car, but if they had, they’d probably already been eaten by some sort of garbage monster or something.

  “I’ve done this before,” I said. “They always fall out of my pockets into Lisa’s car. They’re probably in her front seat.”

  “Shit,” said Emma.

  “Shit,” I agreed.

  I walked up to the front door, but it was locked, too. Half the people I know at least leave the back door unlocked, but my mom always gets all paranoid about break-ins. Like there are that many burglars in Des Moines. And like we have anything one of them might want.

  “I guess I’ll definitely have to talk to Lisa now, just to get my keys back,” I said.

  “I guess that’s the bright side,” said Emma. “No chickening out now.”

  “Let me try to call her,” I said. “Just to make sure she has them, and I didn’t lose them in the church or something.”

  I really wasn’t ready to talk to Lisa, but if all I had to do was ask if she had my keys, I could handle it. I pulled out my phone and dialed her number, but it went straight to voicemail again. I hoped she wasn’t, like, avoiding me because I annoyed her. I always worried that I annoyed her. That’s probably where the dreams about sneaking into her house came from.