I’m sitting on the roof of Mrs. Duncan’s car and I don’t see Steve anywhere. Charlotte’s lying on the hood, staring up past the towering streetlights at the night sky.
Charlotte’s mother lets her borrow the car one night a month, and tonight is her lucky night. Instead of driving somewhere, though, we’re parked at the Lot, and we’re studying French. Or we’re supposed to be.
This already feels like a routine for us, even though I’ve only known Charlotte a couple of days. She’s just so easy to talk to, and since her friend Ashley is gone for the summer, too, we’ve instantly become best friends.
I like the new routine, except for the Steve-not-showing-up part. He’s usually here with Mike Kyle, but I haven’t seen Mike’s Camaro yet tonight. Mike is one of Steve’s best friends, but I don’t know him that well. I just know they do everything together, but for some reason he won’t talk to me—I’m not worthy enough. I don’t really care what he thinks, except that if I knew him it might make it easier for me to hang out with Steve.
I have to be home by 10:00, so I’m running out of time here.
I’ve been waiting for Steve to show up since 8:00. Not that I know he’s coming, for sure, but everyone ends up here on weekend nights whether they want to or not. I’m wondering if the IHOP girl was just a temporary fling, the way I guess I was. Maybe they only kiss at work. Maybe it’s the allure of the blue vinyl booth. In any case, if Steve shows up by himself, I’m going to talk to him. It’s been decided. By Charlotte.
I’m not sure how this particular parking lot ended up being the Lot. I guess in part because, since Discount Mania closed, the warehouse-size building has been vacant and there are no merchants to complain about us.
Another reason is that the Lot’s a good turnaround spot for when people are cruising on Twelfth Street. The Lindville police have tried everything to stop the cruising on weekends, but nothing works. Every once in a while we all just have to drive up and down the same ten blocks, sitting and standing in the backs of pickups, or standing with our heads out of sunroofs, screaming at the top of our lungs. Usually it’s a sporting event kind of thing—we won, or we might win, or we should have won—but sometimes it just comes out of nowhere, this accumulation of a need to scream. Maybe because we’re stuck in Lindville and we can’t get out.
Charlotte’s wearing a pair of faded jeans and a tiny pink T-shirt that says Brooklyn on it. Her hair fans over the car’s hood and drifts in the breeze. “We have to be the only people here tonight even thinking of studying. Who studies in June? And on Friday night? Nobody.”
“You’re right,” I say.
“So is he here yet?” she asks.
“No,” I say. “You know what? Maybe we should quit talking about my love life and talk about yours instead.”
“Well, back in Springfield I was seeing this guy Austin kind of seriously. But then we moved,” Charlotte says. “He wanted to do the long-distance thing, but I said no way. So I thought I’d wait a little while and see if anyone here was worth going through all that again. Seriously depressing.”
“And? Anyone yet?” I ask.
“Yeah. There’s this guy at Shady Prairies.”
“Isn’t he a little old for you?” I ask.
“No!” Charlotte shrieks, and we both start laughing really hard. “He’s not a resident. He works there,” she says. “His name’s Ray—he’s seventeen. We hang out after work sometimes. He’s got really nice arms.”
“Arms.” I nod. “Well, okay.”
“Hey, you go crazy over a guy who makes pancakes, so I don’t want to hear about it,” Charlotte says.
“He doesn’t make pancakes. He serves pancakes,” I correct her, and we laugh. “And he has nice arms, too.”
“Yeah. So he’s not here yet?” Charlotte asks again.
I survey the Lot. “Nope.”
“He must have gotten stuck at work. Like in some syrup,” Charlotte jokes. She sits up and steadies herself by grabbing the driver’s-side mirror. Then she hops off the hood and straightens her T-shirt. “So should we walk around?”
“Definitely,” I say as I scoot to the edge. My short denim shorts nearly get caught on the radio antenna as I slide to the ground. I don’t know why I’m wearing shorts, because it really cools down at night here and I’m starting to shiver. Walking beside Charlotte, who’s about four or five inches shorter than me, I feel very conspicuous. Suzanne is slightly taller than me—she plays volleyball and basketball—and I’m more used to walking around with someone my height.
“I doubt there’s anyone here we even want to see,” Charlotte says, “you know? I mean, who is even here?”
“I don’t know,” I say. It’s different in the summer, because some people are away for the season; some are home. The thing we all have in common is that almost everyone seems bored.
Some people are running around, playing with a glow-in-the-dark Frisbee. Some are playing music out of their cars. Some people are smoking and some people are dancing and some are drinking.
“There’s a FEN,” I say as we check out a guy sitting on the tailgate of his pickup.
“A what?” Charlotte asks.
I laugh. “Sorry. FEN is the code word Suzanne and I came up with for new good-looking guys we haven’t seen before. It stands for ‘Further Evaluation Necessary.’ We need to know more about them before we can proceed,” I explain.
“FEN. I like it. Well, don’t worry. We’ll find out about him. We’ll definitely evaluate as necessary,” Charlotte says. “You know . . . maybe a physical evaluation.”
We laugh, and while Charlotte stops to talk to a friend, I suddenly see Mike Kyle’s Camaro, and Mike getting out and leaning against it. I walk toward him. Would it be rude for me to ask him to step aside so I can see if Steve’s in the car?
Mike stares at me for a second.
“Hi,” I say, feeling stupid because I’m by myself, and no one walks around the Lot by themselves. Also, Mike and I have talked all of three times before, and that was only because he was forced to acknowledge me because Steve was talking to me.
“Hey,” he says. “What’s up?”
“Not much. Really.” I peer past him, wondering if Steve’s back there somewhere in the clump of people getting out on the other side of the car.
“You’re here this summer?” he asks with sort of a nice smile.
It seems sort of obvious, but I nod. “Yeah.”
“I thought you went to camp,” he says.
“Me? No. That was Suzanne,” I say. Are we that interchangeable?
“Oh.”
He’s a sparkling conversationalist. But he looks good in a black T-shirt. That is something.
“Hey, Fleming,” a girl with short black hair says, coming over to us. She was in my Current Events class last year, but I can’t remember her name. “Savior” seems like a good name right now. She has about seven small earrings in one ear and one giant earring that looks like a metal bolt in the other.
“Hey,” I say, smiling. I step away from Mike and closer to her. “How are you? How’s your summer going?”
“It sucks,” she says, as she peels a layer of polish off her thumbnail. “I’m working at my mom’s salon. I sweep up hair.”
“Well, I pour coffee at the Gas ’n Git,” I say.
“Dead, disgusting hair,” she says. “Sometimes dandruff.”
“Okay, you win,” I say, laughing.
A guy near Mike moves, and I notice Steve and the IHOP girl, Jacqui, leaning against the back of the car. They’re standing so close that I can’t even see air space between them. And they’re kissing. Suddenly my good mood vanishes.
“So, Fleming, if you want to come by the salon, I can give you a free cut maybe—I’m learning,” the girl says.
“Hey, uh, thanks,” I mutter. “And if you ever want free coffee—you know where to find me.” I quickly run off and find Charlotte and tell her we’d better get going or I’ll miss my curfew.
“You look weird, Fleming. Your eyes are too bright or something. What just happened?” she asks.
“There’s Steve—and that IHOP hostess again,” I say, discreetly pointing in their direction. “And for some reason they have to kiss repeatedly in public.”
Charlotte narrows her eyes at them. “Pig. But don’t worry, you’ll get him back.”
“I can’t get him back,” I say.
“What are you talking about?” Charlotte says. “God, you’re a hundred times prettier than she is.”
I blush, hoping that’s somehow true. “No. I mean, I can’t get him back because I never had him in the first place,” I admit. It was one thing when he wasn’t seeing me, but he wasn’t seeing anyone else, either. Then I could come up with theories about how he was a free spirit. Now he’s happily chained to someone else.
“Oh. Well, that sucks.” Charlotte pops her gum. “Forget him, okay? We’ve got FENs all over the place here.”
“We’ve only seen one,” I point out.
“Come on! Where there’s one, there’s more,” Charlotte says. She puts her arm around my shoulders. “Let’s get out of here. We’re done studying. Right?”
“Considering that we never really started? Yeah,” I say with a smile.
“We can do it on Sunday,” Charlotte declares. “It’s not like we have anything else to do on Sunday.”
I think I’m supposed to go to a childbirth class with my pregnant mother on Sunday. Case in point.
“Anyway, if I don’t get the car back on time, my mom won’t let me have it next month,” Charlotte says as we amble back toward her car.
As we start to pull out of the Lot, Mike and Steve come up beside us and pass us, peeling out onto Twelfth with squealing tires. I can’t see if that Jacqui girl is with them. Maybe they ditched her, I think hopefully. Maybe Steve’s realized that she’s plastic, that he’s made a terrible, horrible mistake. I can dream, for at least the next few seconds anyway, until we catch up to them at the next stoplight and I see her blond head in the rear window.