by Lisa Super
His voice was more upbeat than his posture. “My parents want to tow the car back to L.A. The bad news is we’re both gonna be grounded until we’re twenty. Good thing I’m older than you.”
“And the good news?”
“I found us a ride.”
“Who?”
“Penny Layton.”
“I’m still waiting for the good news.”
He decided, wisely, not to take the conversation any further. “Let’s move this beast.”
Daphne switched seats and pulled on the steering wheel with all of her weight, guiding the car into a parking spot as Oliver and two kind recruits pushed. Pinpricks of sweat dotted her forehead when she shifted into park. She climbed out and slammed the door so the draft would blast her face.
“This is the first time I’ve seen you drive,” Oliver observed.
“I hope it’s the last.”
Oliver chuckled. “Come on. Let’s get some coffee. We have a few hours to kill.”
He put his arm around Daphne, guiding her toward a small cafe on the next block. Electricity shot into her shoulder from the charge in his hand. She wondered if he felt anything beyond the cloth of her shirt or the curve of her bones.
“Did you tell your mom what happened?” He asked in that genuinely caring fashion that made her resent him even more.
“Yeah, and I don’t want to talk about it,” she said. His arm against the back of her neck felt so natural, she didn’t want it to ever leave. Just the thought of it going away scared her, so she brushed off his hand when they hobbled through the doorway of a small cafe.
“Geez, you’re cranky when you don’t get enough sleep. It’s like poking a bear.” He prodded her shoulder. “Poke.”
She shouldn’t have touched him. But returning his poke in the shoulder was more cause and effect than calculation. Oliver retaliated by poking her abdomen, to which she poked his bicep and sides. Twice. The game quickly escalated to a poking frenzy accompanied with spastic giggling. Their limbs collided against each other in attack and defense until Oliver, in his haste and laughter, misjudged his finger’s trajectory and poked her square in the left boob. She recoiled, cursing her reflexes before she could stop herself from shrinking back.
Oliver’s face deflated like a popped balloon. “I’m so sorry.”
Daphne’s body continued to betray her, cheeks flushing against her will. “It’s okay, I think I got your boob a few times in there.”
He forced a square smile into the round hole in his face.
“I could give you a titty twister if you think that would even it out.” Daphne turned her fist in the air, pantomiming tweaking his nipple.
He laughed, self-consciousness gone, and Daphne laughed with him. She’d redeemed the situation and was grateful, but not as grateful as Oliver. He pulled her close and wrapped his arms around her, hugging her tightly. Her muscles went rigid with surprise before melting into exactly where she wanted to be. Her ear nestled against his neck, his pulse surging through her entire being. In that moment, she would’ve given up Berkeley to reach up and kiss him. She gritted her teeth, knowing the hug would end momentarily, bracing for the sting.
“Shall we get a coffee?” Oliver loosened his arms.
Daphne studied him. Maybe the moment hadn’t ended. Maybe there was still time. She only had to press her mouth into his. It could be so easy.
“Yeah. Sure.”
He turned to the counter, and she let him go. She settled her weary bones into a booth. The cushions wheezed under her legs, and something in the sound made her realize that she was always going to want to be more than friends with Oliver Pagano. He would have to wound her in some unfathomable way to change this.
Daphne moved in further to avoid the sun’s glare. With the squeak of the vinyl against her hands came an even worse realization. He could only hurt her to that degree from a place deeper than friendship, and that was never going to happen. Daphne was stuck between the Oliver Pagano rock and the hard place of her own heart. She receded into the blind-striped morning shadows and pretended to be tired. Oliver didn’t notice anything unusual when he returned to the table with two mugs full of coffee.
Seven cups of caffeine later, Penny arrived. Oliver chivalrously held open the door to the front seat, which Daphne declined. She slid into the backseat, her rightful place as the third wheel, and Penny ordered Oliver to shotgun.
Daphne wanted only music and sleep. She put in her earbuds and discovered, in keeping with the theme of the day, that her iPod was dead as the blackened tree skeletons on the fire-stricken hills surrounding her. She kept the earbuds in so she wouldn’t have to be part of Penny’s thrilling conversation and could judge invisibly from the backseat: a gruesome basketball injury (nightmare material), the soon-to-be-legendary rager that Oliver had missed last night (greatly exaggerated, certainly, but Daphne could hear uneasiness when Oliver shallowly described last night’s campfire), Ava Franklin’s pregnancy scare (friends who talk about their friend’s pregnancy scare to nonfriends are not friends), and vague allusions to prom (at which point it became difficult to not ask Penny to pull over under the guise of car-sickness). Daphne prayed for sleep that wouldn’t come.
Daphne’s fingers were already gripping the handle when the car pulled into the Bowman driveway hours later. But the ominous shadow behind the front door of her house kept her from pulling the lever. Instead, Oliver opened his door, much to Penny’s surprise.
“Thanks again for the ride, Penny. You’re a lifesaver.” He climbed out of the car.
“Oly, I can take you home,” Penny practically begged.
Oly. If Daphne started calling him Oly, would he want to make out with her? It worked for everyone else.
“No, I’m gonna walk. I want to enjoy my last breaths of freedom.”
Penny, inexperienced in the department of being rebuffed by boys, did a terrible job of keeping her composure. “Okay. Well, call me. Wait, you’ll probably be grounded and won’t have a phone.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Oliver said.
Penny opened her mouth to argue, but her voice was stolen by the disturbing scene taking place behind her. Daphne had rolled down her window, drawing all of Oliver’s attention. He gave her a little wave. Daphne returned a small salute.
Oliver leaned down to her eye level. “I had a great day yesterday. And night. If I had to go out…”
“You’re not going anywhere, Pagano.” Daphne rolled her eyes. “And you think I’m dramatic.”
He playfully grimaced at her and began the long, solitary march home.
Daphne pulled on the door handle. “Penny, thanks for the—”
Penny cut her off. “Are you and Oliver…together?”
Daphne bristled at the dismay in Penny’s voice; at how badly she wanted to prove Penny wrong. “No. We’re not.”
“Are you hooking up?”
“Penny…” Daphne wanted Penny to cut her off again so she could leave it as ambiguous as possible, but Penny let the question hang until it dropped to the ground at Daphne’s feet, forcing her to answer. “No.”
“You’re taking overnight trips and…nothing?”
Whatever pride Oliver had bestowed upon her with his goodbye, Penny had erased and subtracted extra with the pity in her eyes.
“Thanks for the ride,” Daphne muttered. She tripped over the mat on her way out of the car.
“Hope your mom goes easy on you,” Penny sympathized, the child of one crazy mom to another.
“Doubtful.”
Daphne opened and closed the front door quietly, out of habit. She stepped into the dining room, where her parents waited. They took hesitant steps near the table, unsure of whether to sit or stand. Daphne hadn’t seen them in the same room for weeks. Her delinquent behavior was bringing her family closer together. It was almost sweet.
Daphne spoke first. “I’m sorry.”
Her parents both jumped a little. The surprise keyed up her mom even more, an unexpected effect.
“Daphne. You went to Joshua Tree. With a boy. Without telling anyone?”
“I told Janine.”
“This is not the time to be a smart ass,” her mother hissed.
Her mom was more embarrassed that her daughter had a life she didn’t know about than she was angry at the actual crime. Since Daphne wasn’t cowering in apology, her mother’s embarrassment frothed into anger. Any controlled plan of attack disintegrated on the spot. Her mom hurled questions at Daphne, who didn’t know whether to dodge or absorb the blows.
“Did you have sex?” Her mom skipped straight to the big one.
A combination of laughter and shock coughed from Daphne’s throat. She appealed to her father for rescue, but his eyes shifted down to the uneven grains running through the dining room table. Maybe he was thinking of all the dinners the Bowmans had eaten there, happy times when they were a unit of four. When Emily still stuck peas up her nose when their parents weren’t watching, goading Daphne into spitting out her milk. Their mom and dad gave halfhearted lectures as they struggled not to laugh themselves.
A thin layer of dust now settled on the chairs. The echoes of laughter reverberated only in Daphne’s imagination. Her dad was lost in something beyond memory. Bound by the present, her mom continued pressing for a confession.
“You can tell me, Daphne. I won’t be mad. We can still take you to the pharmacy…”
Daphne regained her breath. “No. There is a zero percent chance that I’m pregnant.”
Her mother didn’t take this reprieve for granted. “Oh, thank God.” She offered herself up to Heaven in gratitude. Daphne noticed the cracks in the ceiling.
Her mom retrained her focus on Daphne. “But you’re seeing this boy?”
“No. We’re just friends.” Daphne’s own voice mocked her. How many times today was she going to have to declare that she and Oliver were in no way romantically involved?
The trial appeared to be over. Her sentence would be handed down, and she would be sent to her room for the foreseeable future. It was then that her mom’s hand jerked into her scrubs pocket and pulled out a square of paper. Daphne’s breath halted at its worn lines and slovenly folds, her and Emily’s invisible fingerprints all over it.
“What is this?” Her mother snapped at Daphne like a whip, more accusation than question.
No wonder Emily had hid the list in Daphne’s room. Apparently their mom discarded all notion of privacy when attempting to mother. Daphne closed her eyes. Behind her eyelids, she cursed herself with every profanity in her vocabulary for not moving the list to a more secure location than under the floorboard it had rested beneath, solemn and undisturbed, for so many years.
Now, new evidence had come to light. The Exhibit A portion of this trial would be long and arduous. First-degree murder questions would be asked. DNA-level explanations would be given. With Emily involved, the death penalty was always on the table, the chance of parole denied from the get-go.
Maybe it was the utter physical and emotional exhaustion the sunny day had rained down on her. Maybe it was the deep injustice of this woman getting to play her Mom card three turns too late. Maybe it was her dad’s inability to speak. Something inside Daphne failed, the way sanity can momentarily lapse in a normally well-behaved person. She needed to act crazy for five minutes, and everything would return to normal.
Her feet started moving. One step backward, two steps, three steps, she didn’t stop.
“Mom, I’m sorry…I have to…go!” Daphne zoomed out the front door.
Wordless sounds gurgled from her mom’s throat.
Her stuttering dad was forced to call out in her mom’s stead. “Daphne!”
“I’m sorry! I’ll be back in five minutes, I promise. And then you can ground me adequately!”
Daphne raced down the street, turned the corner, passed the school. She spotted his ambling body three blocks ahead and ran faster, pushing through the stiff pain in her legs, until, finally, her sidewalk met his.
He turned around with his warm Oliver grin. “I could hear you puffing behind me for a block.”
Normally, she would return the joke. But this wasn’t her usual sidewalk. She wasn’t aiming for the familiar road.
“I forgot something.”
He opened his mouth, but she didn’t give him time to ask. She stepped into him and kissed him with the force of a small, strong girl who’d waited her whole life to tell Oliver Pagano that she forgot something. And then she ran.
Daphne didn’t see his reaction, and hope burned in her veins. He had kissed her back. Maybe that was something, maybe it was mere courtesy. But she had felt the soft roughness of his tongue. It had met hers and never receded.
It was the most foolish thing she’d ever done. It was her greatest accomplishment.
Own a Pair of Designer Shoes
No. He shook his head. That did not just happen. The birds stopped singing. Passing traffic carried no roar. The grass and flowers of the neighborhood desaturated to varying shades of gray. The air held no temperature or scent. His mind drained into an infinite funnel, his senses numb to everything except Daphne Bowman.
He spent the rest of the journey home floating in a daze, impending punishment forgotten. His parents greeted him as though he’d come home from school. They sat him down to dinner and gave him a stern sermon about taking them for granted and love and second chances, neither raising their voice. He listened without hearing, nodding once in a while to humor them. The tactic worked—every time he nodded his mother responded with a satisfied, elongated blink.
As soon as he was released to his bedroom, he dug out his tablet and stylus. He drew the campfire. The stars. The gooey marshmallows. A pair of lips in the sky. And a heart. A heart. Not an anatomical heart—a feminine, lovestruck, accidentally-not-a-circle heart doodle. Erase, erase, erase. He tucked the tablet under his bed and turned on the TV. Eight hours of video games later, his eyeballs dried open, Oliver made up his mind. He was going to pretend like it never happened. Daphne had snuck up on him. He was unprepared and on little sleep, and a simple moment of weakness had led to a large lapse in his judgment. She had poured herself into him and he had drunk her up. He hadn’t known he was thirsty until she was a block away, scampering back to her house. A drive-by kissing, the wound of which throbbed inside of him.
It was bad enough that the time they spent at Joshua Tree had conjured magic in its hours. Somewhere between the Hollywood sign and the desert, Daphne Bowman had become a magnetic force. He couldn’t stop touching her. Putting his arm around her after the gas station, the poking match in the cafe, the hug that he’d ended even though he’d wanted to keep holding her.
Oliver had played out all the scenarios in his mind, and the only way it ended well was if he became Daphne Bowman’s boyfriend. That was not going to happen. She knew it couldn’t—he’d been crystal clear through the campfire smoke.
He envisioned Daphne in Katrina’s place. Katrina wasn’t so dumb once Oliver got to know her, right before he disposed of her, and Daphne had a noticeably higher percentage of brain function than Katrina. Within a week of holding Daphne’s hand and making out under the bleachers, she’d probably be able to convince him to paint the “b” word all over his forehead. Even more disturbing was what all of this might say about him.
He didn’t want to think about that. He needed to do something drastic, game-changing, to prove—whether to her, or himself, he wasn’t sure—that he still had the upper hand in the situation. He picked up his phone. The muscles in his arm tightened, a final warning against dialing the phone. His dialed anyway.
The cheer in her voice filled him with dread. “Hey! You still have your phone.”
He took a deep breath. “I have a question for you…”
• • •
School resumed, the home stretch of senior year. When the final bell rang on Monday afternoon, a sixth sense pulled Oliver into the chapel on his way to the parking lot. She wouldn’t be there—he knew she was grounded—b
ut he sensed her presence. Sure enough, a hot pink Post-it was attached to her pew: Any ideas for #6?
He pulled out a pen from his backpack and wrote on the back of the note: Yes. When?
The next day, a yellow Post-it rippled against the pew from the draft of the open door: Saturday. Meet me at Sweetie’s at 4 p.m.
He wrote back: I feel like a spy.
Wednesday: With a fluorescent paper trail? I can’t believe the CIA hasn’t recruited us yet.
Speak for yourself. I’m sworn to secrecy.
On Thursday, the pew was empty, and the room was cold. He searched the surrounding rows, considering the different possibilities. Maybe Father George or a nun had been in the chapel when she stopped by. Hiding the note would be more Daphne-like than scrapping it altogether. Gritting his teeth, he ran his hand under her pew. Gum, gum, gum, and more gum.
Father George strode into the room and opened the windows. “Hello, Oliver.”
How did Father George remember his name? He’d had little interaction with the man during his four years at Sacred Heart, avoiding him whenever possible, which was most of the time. “Hi, Father George.”
Oliver expected some unsolicited guidance related to his extended absence from the chapel, all in good humor but patronizing nonetheless. It didn’t come.
“How are you doing on this beautiful Thursday afternoon? Almost Friday, right?” Father George flashed a wide grin.
“Yeah. But it’s not like you get the weekend off. Sunday’s your big day.”
“Sunday’s the best day of the week.” Father George beamed. He meant it. “Come to service, and you’ll see why.”
“Okay, I will.” Oliver wanted to mean it. If he was morally comfortable with fibbing to Father George, his soul was surely condemned. Oliver cleared his throat. The question caught on his teeth and stalled on the way out. “Father George, did you find a Post-it note on one of the pews?” He wanted the question to sound less ridiculous than the possibility that the note didn’t exist.
“The second pew from the back? Yes.”