It’s Friday. It’s 5:30 p.m. I’m a nervous wreck.
Nate should be here in 30 minutes. I have gone through three outfits, two hairstyles, and four pairs of shoes. I’m still not dressed. I wish Livvy were here to help me. She would pick out the right clothes, with the right shoes, and fix my hair.
But Livvy isn’t speaking to me. No matter how many times I call and leave a message, she doesn’t call back. I’m on my own, and I don’t trust myself to be me.
After reviewing the choices laid out on my bed for the umpteenth time, I finally settle on a denim skirt, white cotton shirt, and tan sandals. I pin my bangs back from my forehead and decide I look like I’m twelve. I opt for the gold headband with the pink rhinestone flowers on it. I brush my eyelashes with mascara, and I even put a little blush on my cheeks. This is so not me. I brush my teeth for the third time today. My dentist is going to lose money on me this year.
The doorbell rings at 5:55, and I can’t decide if I am angry that I don’t have the extra five minutes or relieved that I don’t have to spend them worrying about what doesn’t look right. It’s too late now. Nate’s at the door.
“Mattie, Nate’s here,” my dad calls from downstairs. I take a deep breath and let it go slowly. I can’t figure out why I am so nervous. I mean, we went out two nights ago and it was fine. So what’s the issue now? Is it that this is like a public announcement that we’re going out? Is it that everyone and their dog will be at school? Is it because Livvy is the only person who won’t be there?
The universe can be very cruel to teenage girls. I try to calm myself down. Just think of it as another night without Donny duty.
“Wow, you look really great,” Nate says as I step into the hallway. He looks incredibly yummy himself. Denim shorts and a black golf shirt. There’s a gold chain around his wrist.
My heart has been replaced by the hummingbird again. I hope my knees don’t buckle and send me sprawling on the floor.
Dad looks out the door at the Mazda in the driveway. “You really did a nice job with the car,” he says. “Sounds like it’s running well.”
“Yeah. Thanks for your help. My dad is totally worthless at car stuff.” Nate gets that “awe, shucks” look on him, and I half expect him to kick at some invisible rock on the ground.
“Hey, anytime,” Dad says. I know he means it, too. A few weeks ago I would have cringed at his offer. Now I’m glad that my dad likes my date and my date likes my dad. Maybe the universe is trying to make up for the other stuff.
“Home by midnight,” Dad says.
I’m thinking I should scoop my jaw back up off the floor where it has fallen. Midnight? I’m not going to say anything because if this is a dream, I don’t want it to end.
Dad flips his wallet out of his back pocket and starts sorting through bills.
“Oh, no bother Mister James. I’ve got it covered.” Nate holds his hand up in protest.
“You’re sure?” Dad looks from the money in his hand to Nate, then back at the money.
“Yeah, really.”
Dad puts the wallet back, and there is a strange sense of relief that surges through me. I smile at my dad.
Nate opens the door and I turn to follow. I feel a hand on my wrist, then Dad presses a piece of paper into my hand. I look to see what it is. It’s a twenty. I look at Dad, smile and mouth “thank you,” then head toward the midnight blue Mazda. It’s empty.
“Where are Chris and Amanda?” I ask. Not that I really care.
“They’re meeting us at the dance.”
I’m technically on my first solo date, which isn’t supposed to happen yet. The guilt instilled in me by years of good parenting starts to rear its ugly head, and I wonder if I should go back and let my dad know. Then I wonder if that’s why he was checking out the car so closely, noticing that nobody else was in it, and that he knew it was a violation, but he let me get away with it anyway. I’m very confused. I decide that I will not say anything about it unless asked, and then I’ll tell them that we met up with everyone else at school. After all, it’s only a five-minute drive.
“So what do you say we go get something to eat before we go?”
Okay, maybe it’s going to be more than five minutes.
“Um, yeah, sure.” All the charm of a garden slug.
“Your choice,” Nate says. He looks over at me, shifting the car to another gear. “You really do look great.”
I’m blushing. I can feel the heat rushing to my cheeks, and I wonder if putting makeup on will actually make this worse.
“So, where do you want to go?” He reaches over and takes my hand in his.
“I don’t know,” I say. I really don’t. Suddenly I can’t think of the name of any restaurant or fast food place. I don’t know what’s close by. I don’t know what they serve. All I know for certain is that my face is getting warmer by the second, and I’m really not all that hungry.
“Is Roller Burger okay? They have great onion rings.”
Yes, good, a name. “Yeah, Roller Burger sounds great.”
We sit in the Mazda and wait for a blonde girl on roller skates to make her way to our window. She doesn’t look all that stable. On the skates, I mean. She gets the order, then repeats it back to make sure she didn’t miss anything. Then she skates off to the kitchen.
“I had a really good time with you the other night,” Nate says. He takes off his seat belt and turns sideways. He looks very good in black.
“I did, too,” I say. I wonder if I’m drooling.
“I’m really glad you said you’d come with me tonight. I thought maybe Livvy would try to talk you out of it.”
Livvy. My brain races. Should I tell him that she did try to talk me out of it? Should I blow it off like it was no big deal?
“Um, well . . .” I’m so not sure what to say here.
“She did, huh?” He isn’t so much asking as confirming. “I thought she would. She just doesn’t get it.”
Get what? I look up at the roof of the car. I look at my hands folded in my lap. I don’t look at Nate. I wonder if I have really lost my best friend over this guy. If so, is it worth it? I mean, so far I think it is, but so far is only three days. Compare that with—what—six years? But then, I’ve known Nate that long, too. Does that count, though? He wasn’t even aware that I was a member of the same species until just a week ago.
“Hello? Are you in there?” Nate waves his hand in front of my face.
“Sorry,” I say. “I got a little distracted for a minute.”
“Yeah, I guess so. I thought maybe you slipped into a coma or something.”
Ha ha—ouch—wait a minute. “Well, this whole thing has really shaken Livvy up, and I feel really weird about it. I mean, she’s been my best friend for, I don’t know, six years I guess.” Help, I’m babbling and I can’t shut up! “I know she wants me to be happy, but I guess she thought maybe she would be around to share in it, and when it didn’t happen the way we thought, it kind of freaked her out.”
It dawns on me that I probably would have understood this sooner if I hadn’t been so caught up in my own stuff. Maybe that’s why Livvy can’t be happy for me, because she’s caught up in her own stuff. We definitely need to sit down and sort through our stuffs before Monday. I can’t start the school year without my best friend being my best friend.
“It’s like I said,” Nate says, intruding on my thought process. “Livvy isn’t like you. She’s a total dork.”
“No,” I say, and I am surprised at how firm my voice comes out. “She isn’t a total dork. She isn’t a partial dork. There is nothing dork-like about her—except maybe how bad she has it for Chris. But if that’s what makes her a dork, then I’m just as big a dork as she is, because that’s how bad I’ve had it for you forever.”
Well, maybe Guinness will want this one for the Shortest Romance in History section.
Nate looks stunned. Literally. Like someone just dumped ice water down his shorts, and he isn’t exactly sure how to respond.
But I’m on some sort of self-destructive roll, and I can’t find the off switch, so I keep going. “You know, if you gave her half a chance, you’d see that she’s one of the coolest human beings on the planet. She’s the most creative person I know and one of the funniest, too. She is a genius when it comes to stuff like which shirt goes with which skirt. My little brother won’t have a thing to do with me, but he’ll kill or die for your sister.”
Nate’s eyes have gotten so big that I wonder if it’s possible they might pop out of his skull.
“I really like you, Nate.”
He stares at me. I think I’ve scared him.
“But if we’re going to go out, it means you can’t bad-mouth your sister around me. She is my best friend. I wouldn’t let anybody else bad mouth her, so I definitely won’t let you.” I take a deep breath, then let it out in a louder-than-expected sigh. “If that means you won’t go out with me anymore—well—then that’s what it means.” Nate leans against the door like a man who has been shot multiple times but still can’t believe it happened.
The blonde girl on skates comes teetering toward the car, a large tray balanced precariously on her shoulder. Nate doesn’t see her coming, and when she knocks on the window, he levitates at least six inches off the seat of the car. The blonde on skates is so startled that she starts to topple over, back, then forward, then—in a mighty tidal wave of sodas, onion rings, napkins and straws, the whole tray launches through the window, down Nate’s shirt, over the stick shift, and into a tidal pool on my denim skirt.
The blonde girl screams incoherently as she stumbles off in tears. Nate holds his arms up in a form of surrender, soda dripping down his neck.
Once again the universe has conspired against me, and the only thing I can do—is laugh. I slap a hand over my mouth and try to contain it, but there is no stopping the flood of giggles that has welled up inside.
Nate looks like a raging bull, ready to tear to shreds the first thing that gets in its way. He opens the car door and gets out, shaking his soggy shirt and brushing the gooey crumbs from his shorts. He stomps his feet and mutters something.
I open my door, giving in to the giggles that have become full-blown chuckles now. As I stand, the pool of soda splashes off my skirt into a puddle on the ground. Ice cubes swirl on the asphalt and begin to melt.
I steal a glance at Nate, expecting to see his face as red as the cherry that landed on the dashboard.
He smiles. He points at my skirt and starts laughing.
“Now what?” I ask when I can breathe again. I look down. It looks frighteningly like I’ve wet myself, and that makes me start to laugh even harder.
“Well, they better be buying our dinner is all I have to say,” he says.
“No way. It was your fault.”
Nate throws his head back in exaggerated shock. “What?”
“You scared the poor girl, and that’s why she dumped the tray on you.”
“She scared me when she banged on the window.”
“It wasn’t a bang, it was a tap.”
“Sounded like a bang to me.” Nate lifts one leg and shakes it, then the other. He is still laughing, and even though he is soggy, he still looks very good in black.