UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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I throw my arm around Sam’s shoulder and in the process practically clobber him with the coffee cups I’m holding. “Guess what!”
He ducks, and some of the coffee spills through the little spout in the lid onto the pavement next to his car. “You’re not coordinated enough to hug someone while holding hot beverages?”
“Ha-ha. No. My mom’s feeling better. It was just a slump. She took more pictures of Megan yesterday. You should have seen her—she looked so different.” I sigh a happy, contented sigh, and grin until it feels like my face is going to fall off.
Sam’s face matches mine. “Hey, that’s awesome.”
“Right? Oh, here, I brought you a latte.”
“Thanks.” I hand him one of the cups and he starts to take a sip but then pauses. “Is this the skinny kind? Because you know I—”
“Yes, Sam. I know you’re a stud now.” I pinch at the nonexistent fat on his waist, and he sucks in his breath and twists away from my fingers with a sheepish expression. Oh. Maybe he’s still self-conscious about his body and it’s not okay for me to joke.
“So, how’s everything with Amanda?” I ask.
“Good.” He practically blushes, and it is kind of adorable. “We went to the movies this weekend. I really want to ask her to be my girlfriend, but I don’t know if it’s too soon.”
I shrug. “You could ask her on a couple more dates first. If she says she’s busy without suggesting another day for a date, that might mean she’s not interested. If she says yes, she probably wants to be your girlfriend.”
I can’t even believe I’m giving Sam tips on how to prolong his relationship with that drink thrower, but she’s different around him. She’s so nice it’s hard to believe she’s the same person.
“Cool.” He blushes again, and the first bell rings and we hurry inside before we’re late to homeroom.
A few weeks later, Mama asks me to go to Walmart with her after school. That’s right. She is voluntarily leaving the house to go somewhere other than group and she wants me to go with her. She still isn’t back to her old self—her old self would have required a full face of makeup and a flatiron before a Walmart outing—but I’m ecstatic.
We grab a cart and pick up some laundry detergent and vitamins before heading to the school-supplies aisle. On the way, I see Amberly restocking scented candles in her blue Walmart vest, and I wave. Mama is picking out some things for Libby, and I’m telling her about Sam’s new girlfriend, when I see two women from church—Mrs. Tate, who has blue hair and not in the cool way, and Mrs. Dorland, who has wrapped her cart handle in tissues and still looks uncomfortable touching it. Both of them cooked dinner for us a couple times after Timothy. I try to herd Mama toward the Crayola markers, but before we can get much farther down the aisle, I hear, “Yoo-hoo. Lily?”
I close my eyes. Here we go. There are two kinds of southern church ladies who come to your house in times of crisis. The first are kind-hearted saints, angels bearing casseroles. The second are like Mrs. Dorland and Mrs. Tate.
They bustle over wearing bobcat smiles. “I thought that was you, Lily,” says Mrs. Dorland. “I was just telling Arnette here, ‘I think that’s Lily Jenkins.’”
“She sure was,” says Mrs. Tate. “How are you doing, Lily?”
My mother’s smile in return is fragile. “I’m good.”
She was barely ready to come out in public. She certainly isn’t ready for Them.
“Lord, Lily, I can’t remember the last time I saw you out and about,” says Mrs. Tate.
“I know. We hardly even see y’all at church, since, well, you know,” says Mrs. Dorland.
Yes. That’s right. Throw it in her face that her son died and she hasn’t been handling it well. Heartless hag.
“Well, I guess that’s right. We, uh, we—”
I glance at Mama. Her chin quivers and she is blinking furiously.
Mrs. Tate attempts to pull her face into a look of concern, but her eyes are bright, and I can see exactly what she’s thinking. Lily Jenkins. Out in public. And crying. Isn’t this a juicy piece of gossip! I am this close to ripping out her blue hair.
I step in between her and Mama so I’m right inside Mrs. Tate’s personal bubble and then I glare at her, and at Mrs. Dorland too for good measure, for two long, uncomfortable seconds, because I want them to know that I know. With any luck they’ll spend their afternoons telling their friends about that angry Claire Jenkins instead of about Mama.
“We’re really very busy. We better get going,” I practically spit.
Mrs. Dorland puts a hand over her heart. “Oh, well, we’ll see y’all later then.”
I spot the door to the restrooms at the end of the aisle, and I somehow manage to get Mama inside before she breaks down. She retreats into a stall and locks the door behind her, but I can hear her sobs. She’s shut me out. All my hard work, the days of watching and hoping when she started taking pictures, when she started becoming herself again, all of it is about to unravel in the bathroom at Walmart. The door opens, and I turn, ready for a fight.
“What?” I say through clenched teeth.
Amberly looks at me with wide eyes.
“Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone else,” I mumble.
She moves closer so we can whisper without Mama hearing. “They’re still out there.”
“What? What are they doing?”
“Pretending to be interested in SpongeBob lunch boxes so they can look at the bathroom door every two seconds.”
I shake my head. Vultures. “I need to get her to the car.”
Amberly eyes the stall where Mama is still weeping. “I think I can create a distraction. Count to twenty and then leave?”
“That would be amazing,” I say.
She heads back outside, a determined look on her face. I turn back to the stall. What if I can’t get her out of there?
“Mama? Mama, let’s just go to the car, okay? I’ll drive home.” I hold my breath. She doesn’t answer, but the lock clicks open, and her tear-stained face appears. I put my arm around her and usher her to the door—I hope it’s been twenty seconds by now. Mrs. Tate and Mrs. Dorland and their carts are still there, but they’re turned in the other direction, staring slack-jawed at Amberly, who doesn’t appear to be doing anything more interesting than talking on her cell phone.
I get Mama out a back exit and into the passenger seat of our car without anyone else we know seeing us.
“Are you okay?” I ask. “It was horrible what they said to you.”
She nods. “I know. I don’t want to talk about it, sweetie.” She curls over and buries her face in her lap, and I put the key in the ignition because I don’t know what else to do.
There’s a tap at my window, and my breath catches in my throat, but it’s just Amberly. I get out of the car and close the door behind me. She holds out a bag.
“I didn’t know if you needed the stuff in your cart or not.”
“Thanks,” I say, checking the receipt so I can pay her back. “For everything. How’d you get their attention, anyway?”
She blushes. “Oh. I just made a fake phone call detailing my favorite positions for”—she makes air quotes with her fingers—“fornication.”
I giggle. “I wish I could have seen that.”
Amberly nods at the car. “Is she going to be okay?”
“Yeah. I mean, I hope so.” I fidget with the straps of the shopping bag.
“I know what it’s like,” she says. “Hiding things.” She hesitates. “I know you like to talk to Megan about everything, but you can talk to me too, you know. I’d understand.”
She’s frowning like she’s in pain, and I see the question behind her eyes, but I don’t have a good answer. Amberly’s my friend, but she’s my party friend, my talk-about-boys friend, my glittery-false-eyelashes friend. Megan is my serious friend. But then a million late-night conversations in Amberly’s bedroom come flooding back, and it hits me: Amberly’s serious friend is me. And she’s always offered up her secrets without ever asking for mine in return.
She touches my shoulder and smiles before heading back inside. “It’s not a big deal,” she says.
But it is, to me. I can’t stop thinking about it. Even in the days after, when I’m consumed with worrying about Mama, beating myself up over all the things I might have done differently to keep her from spiraling away from us again, thoughts about Amberly worm their way in. Why don’t I treat Amberly the way I treat Megan? Why isn’t she good enough to tell my secrets to? But I don’t like the way it makes me feel about myself to think about it, so I try to push those thoughts away.
Luke is moving with the speed of a three-toed sloth. He’s been flirting with both of us for weeks (weeks!) and still nothing. Last week was the homecoming game, and Megan got crowned queen, which means her half of the pact is going pretty well. Now if only I could get my half of the pact to cooperate. I mean, I get it, it’s high school, and a rejection would be a complete humiliation, but man up already. I can only handle so much shameless flirting.
I’m always tempted to bring up our trip, but we’re never alone, and the last thing I need is for Megan and the rest of the school to hear about it. Luke never mentions it either. Maybe it didn’t mean anything. I can’t help but wonder if he’s forgotten.
When I slide into my desk in AP English, Luke’s already there, bent over last night’s calc homework.
“Hey, what are you doing this weekend?” I ask, busying myself with rearranging the insides of my book bag so I stay casual.
“I’ll probably stop by Buck’s party tonight. You going?”
“Yeah. I’ll probably get dragged to that. I really want to see that new zombie movie, though.” Hint. Hint.
“Oh, yeah? I’m not big into horror movies, but let me know if it’s any good.”
Ugh. It’s been like this for weeks. I keep clubbing Luke over the head with hints, and he keeps missing them. Or maybe he isn’t missing them. Maybe he doesn’t like me. But he hasn’t asked Megan out either. He can’t not like either of us. Can he? I’m still pondering this when the bell rings almost an hour later. Whoops. Good thing I’ve already read Fahrenheit 451.
“I’ll see you at soccer on Sunday,” Luke says. “And, uh, I hope someone does end up dragging you to the party tonight.” He smiles at me for way longer than you’re supposed to if you just want to be friends.
Every time I think about giving up, something like this happens. Every freaking time.
“Elizabeth Jenkins, you come down here right now. You are way too little to be climbing trees that big.”
Libby doesn’t reply. She just grins at me from her branch at the top of Sarah’s peach tree, chirping and chattering like the squirrel she’s pretending to be. My parents get freaked out by the amount of time she spends in the fruit trees (well, they would if they were home more), but I understand. It’s a magical place. Not magical enough to keep me from getting irritated at her right now, though.
“C’mon, Lib, please. Dinner’s almost ready and . . . if you come down now, we can have a special dessert after.”
I regret my promise even as I’m making it, because I know there is no such dessert. It works, though. Libby’s ears perk up at the mention of sweets, and she shinnies down the tree like a little monkey. Her skinny legs wrap around my waist. Her arms hug my neck.
“Hungry,” she says.
“Me too.”
I wobble to the house with my five-year-old sister balanced on my hip. Something is wrong, and I can smell it even before I open the back door. Thick gray-green smoke billows from the kitchen. Libby and I hack and cough as we take in the disaster that is—was—tonight’s dinner. It is a split-pea-soup explosion.
Green slop shimmers in puddles on the floor, drips like tiny stalactites from the ceiling. The pressure cooker spews angry bubbles—its lid has been catapulted to a patch of linoleum by the trash can. The counter underneath it and the wall behind it look like a Pollock painting.
I am in over my head.
I call Megan. After the whole boyfriend-stealing incident in eighth grade, she and I became friends again pretty quickly. For forty-eight hours, she and Britney and Amberly and I paired off on opposite sides of the lunch table like there was an invisible line between us. Amberly sided with me because she can’t stand “home wreckers” (when she was seven years old, her dad ran off with the Piggly Wiggly checkout girl). Britney sided with Megan, but then she’d always been closer with Megan, so it wasn’t a big surprise.
Then Megan heard about what happened with my mom and Timothy. She was the best friend I could have had. Sam came to my house every day for the four months Timothy was in the NICU and tried to distract me with soccer and video games, but sometimes you just need to talk to a girl about stuff. And while Amberly is great with boy drama, Megan is better with problems of the life-shattering variety. She just showed up in my room two days after Timothy was born and said, “I heard,” and those two words opened a floodgate within me, and I told her everything while she hugged me tight. Eventually we got around to talking about Eric too, and she told me how sorry she was. Amberly told me I didn’t have to forgive her yet, that it was crazy for Megan to do what she did, and if I wanted to keep on ignoring her, Amberly would give her the silent treatment right along with me. But it suddenly didn’t seem as important as having my best friend propping me up while I tried to stand strong for everyone else.
When the casserole parade ended and my parents still practically lived at the hospital, cooking fell to me. Oh, sure, I could microwave Hot Pockets and do things like grate cheese and chop vegetables when my mom cooked, but I had no idea how to cook an entire meal by myself. I called Megan for advice, and sometimes she came over when things went seriously wrong. Like today.
When she arrives, she takes in the kitchen with a mixture of horror and amusement.
“What’d you do?”
“I just wanted to make split-pea soup. Something went wrong with the pressure cooker.”
“You think?” She only laughs at me a little before pulling out ingredients for chicken and pasta while I grab a mop.
“Is it just you and Libby or am I making enough for everyone?” she asks.
“Everyone, please,” I say as I scrub the mop against the ceiling while simultaneously trying to dodge falling globs of soup. “Mama and Daddy are on their way back from another doctor’s appointment at Children’s, but they got stuck in traffic.”
Megan frowns. “How’s he doing?”
“He has another cold.” I check to make sure Libby isn’t listening. “It’s pretty bad this time.”
“Poor little guy.”
Megan pops the chicken into the oven and boils tortellini on the stove.
“What about my dessert?” asks Libby.
Crap. I totally forgot about that. How come little kids have such a good memory when it comes to promises? Megan raises her eyebrows at me.
“I promised her dessert so she’d come down from Sarah’s tree and eat dinner,” I whisper. “But we don’t have anything.”
Megan’s eyes spark. She smells a challenge, or maybe that’s just the lingering odor of pea soup. “Do you have sugar and eggs?”
I nod.
“Then we can make meringue. Libs, you can be my meringue girl.”
“Okay!” Libby bounces with excitement while Megan sets her up on a stool with a mixer she has to hold with both hands.
“You have peanut butter,” Megan calls from where she’s rustling around in the pantry. “I’ll use that to make the filling. Now we just need a crust.”
This actually does present a problem. We’re out of flour. But Megan manages to overcome even that hurdle, whipping up a crust out of some butter and a half-empty box of chocolate-chip cookies. I’m telling you, that girl is the MacGyver of cooking.
Megan and I make plans for my birthday next week and then she goes home, and Libby and I are just eating our last bites of dinner at the kitchen table when I hear the front door open.
“We’re back,” calls my mom from the foyer.
“We’re in the kitchen,” I call back.
I put together a couple of plates for my parents as they make their way to the kitchen, my mother holding Timothy and my father trailing close behind with Timothy’s oxygen tank and apnea monitor. The monitor connects to a band around his chest with sensors to alert us if he stops breathing. A spaghetti-thin tube passes oxygen into the prongs under his nose, held into place by a stripe of adhesive tape on either cheek. That’s all people can see the first time they meet Timothy.
When I look at him, I see round, blue eyes like mine, Sarah’s contagious smile, and a shock of jet-black hair. He’s the only one of us who got my dad’s hair.
“Thank you for making dinner.” Mama looks around at the food. “I thought you were making soup.”
“Oh, we decided chicken and pasta sounded much better.” I smile at Libby, and she lets out a burst of giggles.
“Here, let me hold him so you can eat,” I say, trading her a plate for my baby brother.
“Tim Tam!” I squeal. That’s right. I nicknamed my brother after an Australian chocolate cookie. Grammy special orders them for us because she has a crush on Hugh Jackman. “How’s my boy? How’s my boy?” I touch my nose to his and make silly faces until he laughs his beautiful baby laugh. His chest catches in the middle of his next peal of laughter. His little upturned nose wrinkles, and he forces out a cough. A horrible, wet sound that makes me feel like I can hear things inside his lungs ripping.
“What did the doctors say?” I ask my parents.
Libby stops attacking her second piece of peanut-butter pie and waits for their answer.
“We have to keep him on the oxygen and the monitor all day while he beats this infection,” says my dad. “As soon as he’s in the clear, they’ll move him back to nights and feedings only.”
Libby and I sigh in unison. We’ve been dreaming of the day when we can pick him up without any equipment attached to him. When he can join us for our picnics in the fruit grove and help us spread the blanket so a corner points at each tree. Although you could hardly call Timothy’s a tree. We planted a Rainier cherry because Rainiers are Mama’s favorite fruit. They’re the sweetest, rarest, most delicate cherries, but if the temperature goes too high, or the wind blows too hard, or the rain rains too hard, they don’t make it. Their chances at survival can change by the hour. My parents think none of this matters, but I feel like I have to look after that tree. Like their fates are connected, like in E.T. or something.
“Well, that’s okay. You’ll be off the oxygen soon,” I tell Timothy. “Say ‘I’m tough. I’m tough.’”
He can’t say real words yet, but his grin shoots arrows through my heart.
“It’s time for his medicine now,” says Mama. She takes her empty plate to the kitchen. There’s a rustling sound as she searches for the right bottle.
I have a new level of respect for my mom. In the eleven months since he was born, she’s become an expert on his condition—he has bronchopulmonary dysplasia, which means his baby lungs look like they’ve got emphysema. She keeps the house hospital-grade clean so he won’t get sick. She keeps track of everything. His diet. His schedule of medication. His physical therapy. The never-ending string of doctors and specialists. She has dedicated her entire being to taking care of my baby brother.
Sometimes one thing can happen that makes everything else you think about someone shift. Timothy was that one thing for Mama and me. He made me see that she’s more than just some beautiful southern flower that Daddy picked. She’s tough and smart and she cares so much. And now, when she looks at me, I feel like she sees the things I am instead of the things I’m not. We’ve never been closer.
My mom comes back with the medicine, and I hand Timothy over so I can start on the dishes. With Sarah away at school most of the time, and Mama and Daddy always at the hospital, I have to be another grown-up in my house. I don’t mind. I would do anything for that kid.
“If I marry Chase, and you marry Corey, we’ll be sisters!”
Megan emits a high-pitched squeal and practically pulls my arm out of its socket to get me over to the seats Amberly and Britney have saved. Her other hand points toward second base, where the boy I’m supposed to marry is leading off.
“There’s just one flaw in your plan,” I say. “I’ve never even talked to him.”
“Like it matters. We’ll fix that after the game.”
We take our seats on the butt-numbingly hard bleachers, and Megan cheers for her boyfriend, a senior and one half of The Collins Twins. By dating one of them she has cemented her position as the most popular girl in the freshman class, and probably for the rest of high school. Corey is still single, and prom is approaching, which is why I’m watching a baseball game in a sundress instead of jeans. I feel like such a phony. But I’m not the only one. Girls in makeup, big hair, and what passes for trendy dresses in this town pack the stands so they can stalk, er, watch the team. They probably don’t even know what a shortstop is.
“I still can’t believe you’re dating Chase Collins,” gushes Britney.
Megan grins. “I told you. I can get any guy in this school.”
Chase Collins isn’t just any guy. He’s six feet, two inches of blond-haired, green-eyed daydream material. So is his brother Corey. Although, even though they’re identical twins, Chase is the hotter one. I think it has something to do with the semivacant look constantly plastered on Corey’s face. Chase slides into home and, after he slaps the red dust off his thighs, turns toward the stands and blows a kiss to Megan.
“He’s so romantic,” she says. Her voice is flippant like it always is, like Chase is a new handbag she’s showing off, but her eyes give her away. She watches Chase Collins walk to the dugout like her heart is straining with every step he takes away from her. I’ve never felt that way about anyone.
“So, what do you think of Corey?” Megan says, as if I’m supposed to be able to tell if someone is my soul mate by watching him play baseball.
“He’s all right.” I think back to earlier today, when this guy Tanner who sits across from me in math was tapping out a drumbeat on his desk. He winked when he caught me looking. “I kinda like this guy in my geometry class. Tanner Walsh.”
Megan taps on the side of my head with her knuckles. “Hello. He’s a band nerd. And besides, he’s a freshman. Freshmen can’t take you to prom. And I really, really want you to go.”
Band nerd or no, Tanner is hot. She’s right about prom, though. I don’t want to be the only one of my friends not going.
So a month later, here I am. In a pastel prom dress. Eating dinner at the Melting Pot with my two best friends (Britney didn’t get a date) and a guy I’ve only spoken to once before today. Corey, my date, sees a basketball hoop in every fondue pot. He lobs a strawberry across the table.
“He shoots . . .” Plunk goes the strawberry into a vat of chocolate. “He scores!”
He leaves his shooting hand hanging in the air, wrist bent, the way people do after sinking a ball. No one notices. Amberly tries to talk to her date, a baseball-player friend of The Collins Twins, but he seems more interested in checking his phone for sports updates. Chase and Megan feed each other bites of cheese- and chocolate-dipped food from the ends of their skewers. Corey is annoyed with the lack of spectators.
He beams his brother in the face with a brownie bite. “Dude. Stop being such a fag.” I wince at his word choice.
“What the hell, dude? I have a girlfriend,” says Chase.
Megan glares at Corey, then raises her eyebrows at me as if to ask, Is your date seriously throwing food in a nice restaurant?
I roll my eyes to say, Yes, I can’t believe he is so immature.
Amberly and her date miss the entire exchange because she finally manages to get his attention by licking chocolate off the end of a banana. As soon as dinner ends, we catch a limo to the hotel room (a suite, actually: two separate bedrooms), where Corey pops open the cooler to reveal Bud Light and Boone’s Farm. He tosses beers to the guys.
“We’ve still got an hour before prom. Drink up. Okay, ladies, who wants some . . .” He glances at the label. “Blue Hawaiian?”
“Me!” Amberly already has a plastic cup from the bathroom, unwrapped and ready.
“All right, Amberly! Way to be first to step up to the plate. Who’s next? Megan? What about you, Claire?”
I shrug my shoulders and accept a cup of Boone’s Farm, my first real alcoholic drink. It’s electric blue and tastes like candy. Just before it’s time to go down for prom pictures, Amberly, Megan, and I realize we have tongues the color of Smurfs, so we cram into the bathroom to de-blue ourselves, while Amberly fusses with our already-perfect hair and makeup.
The boys booked the suite at the same hotel as prom, so all we have to do is walk downstairs with our mouths full of Life Savers mints. In the darkened ballroom, a DJ presides over the floor while dancers get blasted with strobe lights and rap music. Megan walks in with her shoulders thrown back and her hand on Chase’s arm like it’s a freaking Hollywood movie premiere. The rest of us are close behind them, and we find a table for our clutches and jackets before making our way toward the sounds of DJ Beat Blizzard.
The actual prom part of prom is much more fun than I thought it would be, probably because Corey and I spend it dancing and not talking. It passes by in a blur, until I’m dizzy from the Boone’s Farm and the dancing. Then the official part is over. It’s time to go upstairs to our hotel rooms and hang out until Megan and I have to be at her house for curfew.
“Hey, we should do something next weekend,” says Corey. “We could go muddin’.”
“Mmm,” I say, nodding so it kind of seems like I’m saying yes.
muddin’ (noun)
1: The driving of a truck through fields, swamps, etc., generally by a person of hillbilly descent, until said truck is covered in mud (truck is usually falling apart and often sports a rebel flag and/or gun rack and/or camouflage bug guard).
2: Something Claire Jenkins will never do.
“Here, have another Boone’s.” Corey tries to push a full cup on me.
“Oh, um, no thanks, I don’t want to get sick off all the sweetness.”
“C’mon, Claire, get in the game.”
“I’ll take it!” Amberly grabs the cup and chugs like she spent prom in a desert.
Shrugging, Corey guzzles another few beers. I don’t know when it happened, but we’re all alone now, sitting side by side on the queen-size bed. At some point, Megan and Chase went to the other bedroom and locked the door. Amberly and her boy never came back from the bathroom.
“You look hot,” Corey says.
He lays a ham-like hand against my cheek and smushes his face against mine. The kiss is all wrong. His lips cover mine, stretching over my whole mouth and leaving a ring of saliva. His mouth tastes like beer. I know I should be ecstatic. I got to go to prom with a senior. I am currently making out with one half of The Collins Twins. Any other freshman girl would be memorizing every detail so she could tell her jealous friends at school next week.
Corey’s hands start to wander. Ewww. Don’t get me wrong. I totally want to do more than just kiss. But not in a hotel room at prom with a guy I barely know who has beer breath and hairy knuckles and speaks almost entirely in bad sports metaphors. I want to do all that stuff with someone special. Someone I’m head-over-heels in love with.
He shoves a clumsy, sweaty hand down the front of my dress, and it is my cue to get out of this situation. Now. I try to push his hand away, but he doesn’t let me.
I giggle uncomfortably. “Stop it.”
But he doesn’t.
“You know you want to. Stop teasing me.” His other hand slides down to my butt.
Ugh. What a jackass. This guy is seriously starting to piss me off. But then noises that sound suspiciously like sex drift toward me from the bathroom, and my annoyance shifts to panic. Is he expecting me to have sex with him?! I thought the whole sex-at-prom thing was only on TV. I don’t, I mean, I can’t, I mean, I’m not ready for this. Especially not with him.
“Corey, stop it! Seriously.”
He keeps grinding all over me. He’s really not listening. But he wouldn’t do that, would he? He’ll stop. He has to. But he hasn’t stopped yet. What if he . . . ? This could get ugly. My right leg is about the only part of me not pinned underneath his hulking body. I slide it outward and upward, my heel scratching against his hip.
“Oh, yeah,” he moans.
He probably thinks I’m trying to wrap my leg around him. I’m not. I rest the spike of my heel on his thigh. And then I give him one more chance.
“Please. Stop. Now,” I say through gritted teeth.
He responds by trying to wedge his hand farther between my dress and my boob.
“Huh!”
I kick into his thigh, concentrating on projecting every ounce of soccer strength down my leg and into that spike heel. Success! I feel cloth rip, his soft skin and hard muscle. Most importantly, I feel him retract his offending body parts. He scrambles off me with a howl and lands on the hotel floor, where he curls into the fetal position with one hand holding his thigh.
“You fucking bitch. I’m bleeding.”
I stand over him with my hands on my hips. “I told you to stop. Asshole.”
I need to get out of here. Fast. The anger is fading, and once it’s gone, crying is inevitable.
“What’s going on?” Megan and her date appear in the doorway, and Corey’s face changes. He realizes he’s about to be exposed for the Neanderthal he is.
“I can’t believe you guys set me up with this baby. She doesn’t even go to second base.” He runs a hand through his hair and stalks to the door. “I’m gonna see if Kirsten’s still pissed at her date. At least she puts out.” He turns back to me. “Call me when you’re ready for the big leagues, Claire.”
Then he slams the door. Megan’s at my side in a second.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Can we just go?”
“Of course. David’s supposed to pick us up soon anyway. It’s almost midnight.”
“What about Amberly?” I jerk my head toward the moans coming from the bathroom.
Megan frowns. “She told me she might spend the night here.”
So we go downstairs and we wait outside for her brother. I rub my hands up and down my arms and wonder if that’s what it’s always going to be like. If guys are always going to want more than I’m willing to give them.
David finally pulls up in his old Accord. He and Megan have the same golden hair and wide blue eyes, but the waif look isn’t as attractive on a boy. Since he’s a senior, he should be at prom instead of chauffeuring his little sister, but he wasn’t feeling up to asking any girls.
Once we’re both sitting in the backseat, it’s safe for me to bawl my heart out. I cry so hard I get the hiccups. I don’t bother holding back in front of David. We’ve been spilling everything in front of him for years now. He studies me with a mixture of curiosity and trepidation.
“Is she going to be okay?”
Megan nods and hugs me close. David cruises down the highway in silence. He’s as quiet as she is outgoing. And quiet is a really polite way to say he’s socially awkward to the point that people wonder if he’s autistic. People can never believe he’s Megan’s brother. And make no mistake, he is Megan McQueen’s big brother, not the other way around. She’s the girl every guy dreams about dating and every girl dreams about being (or tripping in the hallway), and he’s the nerdy genius kid who never talks. He’s much better when he’s around us, though.
I finally stop crying enough to speak. “I’m so stupid. I didn’t realize prom meant sex.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she says. “I didn’t have sex with Chase.”
“You didn’t?” Hiccup.
“I don’t wanna know,” says David. “Especially not while I’m driving. La-la-la-la-la.”
Megan cups her hands over his ears like earmuffs. “No. I just gave him a blow job.”
“Ah! I still heard that. I’m scarred for life.”
She rolls her eyes.
“So, that’s it?” she asks me. “He wanted to have sex and you said no?”
“Not exactly. He wouldn’t stop, so I had to kick him off the bed.”
“What! I can’t believe I set you up with that clown. I had no idea. Chase is so sweet.”
When I tell them the whole story, David is shocked and Megan is seething. “That asshole. I hope it leaves a scar,” she says.
“I hope you know you did the right thing, Claire,” David says gently.
His words make me cry all over again.
When we were in the hotel room, all I could think about was getting Corey off me. I reacted on pure adrenaline. But now, in the quiet safety of David’s car, I wonder if I overreacted. I mean, I did want to kiss him. Well, I thought I did.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I keep thinking, did I really need to kick him? I could have told him I would tell my parents. I could have screamed for help. I know you guys would have heard me and everything, so I guess I was safe the whole time, really, but it didn’t feel that way. For a second there, it felt like he was going do anything he wanted and no one and nothing was going to stop him and it didn’t matter that I didn’t want him to. And I panicked. He’s probably telling everyone I’m crazy right now.”
“Hey.” Megan grabs my hand and makes sure I’m looking her right in the eye. “David’s right. You did exactly the right thing. He’s the one that’s wrong for even putting you in that position.”
I nod, and even though I’m still second-guessing my actions, I keep coming back to the same point. No matter what I did, no matter how I handled it or how many alternate scenarios would have worked out better, I didn’t let him do it. I chose what happened to me. Not him. Nothing else is as important as that.
As soon as we pull into Megan’s driveway, a rap on the window startles me. It’s Sarah.
“Where have you been? I’ve been texting you for forty minutes.”
“Sorry, I—” I don’t really want to talk to Sarah about what happened with Corey. “But it’s not even one yet.” My first thought is I’ve been busted for drinking at prom. But I can tell from Sarah’s face it’s something much worse. “What happened?”
“It’s Timothy,” she says. “He stopped breathing a little while ago, and they had to rush him to the hospital. I’m supposed to bring you and Libby now that you’re back.”
“Do you want us to come too?” Megan gestures to her and David.
“It’s probably best if it’s just family right now,” Sarah says. “But in the morning?”
Megan nods. “We’ll be there. Call me as soon as you know anything.”
“I will,” I tell her. Then I bolt toward the house in my bare feet and sequined dress. “What’s wrong? Is he going to be okay?” I ask as Sarah runs alongside me.
I picture Timothy, his apnea monitor going off, his tiny chest still. We’ve had scares like this before. Everything always turns out fine.
“It’s too soon. They haven’t told Mama and Daddy anything yet. But. Daddy had to do CPR.”
“What? No.” I cup my hand over my mouth. He never had to do that any of the other times.
I change clothes as quickly as I can.
“I already put Libby in the car,” Sarah calls from the bottom of the stairs.
She drives like a woman possessed, but it still feels like an eternity before we get to that hospital waiting room. We find my parents holed up in a couple of garish purple-and-yellow patterned chairs. Coffee cups in their hands. Stricken expressions on their faces.
“How’s he doing?” I ask.
Mama shakes her head.
“We haven’t gotten an update yet,” says my dad. “They’re doing everything they can.”
It’s the most frustrating answer you can get. I feel powerless. I wish I could be doing something. Anything. When I was in that hotel room with Corey, at least there was something to fight against. My sisters and I squeeze onto a couch that has no business holding three people. There’s nothing to do now but wait and hope and pray. Sarah holds me, and I hold Libby, and we cry salty tears into each other’s hair.
Finally, a man in a white coat approaches my parents. I don’t like the look on his tired face.
“Stay here,” Daddy says quietly.
He and Mama follow the doctor to an alcove off the main waiting room, while Sarah and I watch anxiously. Libby doesn’t notice because she’s fallen asleep in Sarah’s lap. I can’t hear them from where I am, but I concentrate on the doctor’s lips, and the first words he says are “I’m sorry.”
Mama lets out a wail that makes people stare. Daddy has to wrap an arm around her to keep her standing.
“No.” I shake my head and repeat it over and over as the tears fall fierce and fast down my cheeks. Sarah sobs so hard her whole body lurches. This isn’t what was supposed to happen.
My parents come back to us as different people. Broken people. Mama can’t speak, so Daddy does his best to tell us why we’ll never get to see Timothy smile again.
“His lungs just gave out,” he explains. “With the infection . . . they were just too tired to breathe anymore.”
It’s like someone sucked all the air out of the room. It can’t be true. Timothy can’t be dead. But I know by the way the light has gone out of my parents’ eyes that he is.