“We were in love,” David said. He was on his third bottle of beer. He and Arno and Jonathan were still waiting for Mickey and not telling each other the truth about anything.
“If that’s true, then you’ll get back together,” Arno said. He kept looking at Jonathan as if to say help me, but Jonathan didn’t seem to want to.
“But she doesn’t want to!”
“If she doesn’t want to—” Jonathan cut Arno off. “This was supposed to be about Patch.” He had his arms folded. The three of them had gone down to the breakfast area in the Flood kitchen, where they were huddled around take-out Thai food—tom yum soup, spring rolls, roast pork pad Thai, and a lot of Tsingha beer. February Flood had come home with some people and taken over the parlor floor, where they were drinking flaming shots of Bacardi 151.
Arno’s phone rang. He took the call, smiled, and began to whisper into it.
David’s head was starting to hang down. He pulled his bowl of soup toward him and began to slurp it.
“You are the most miserable person to be miserable around,” Jonathan said. “I mean, you really wallow. At college you’ll end up living in a single with no friends but the hall adviser. I’m trying to help you, but man, where’s your balls?”
“I thought we were friends,” David said, and slumped lower.
“She’s coming over!” Arno said.
He actually got up from the table and danced. Someone who had come down on a beer run snickered and Arno whipped around.
“Get lost, you little fucker!”
Everyone looked and the snickerer was Adam Rickenbacher.
“Leave him alone,” David said. He nodded an okay to the freshman.
“I wonder what he’s doing here,” Jonathan said.
“Kelli’s bringing Randall Oddy, but she’s still coming.”
“We may leave before then,” Jonathan said. “We need to go look for Patch.”
“Look for him where?” Arno said. “He’ll turn up. He probably got some really good ice cream and stayed in the store. He probably fell in love with an ice cream flavor and went somewhere to live with it.”
“The Floods are coming back on Sunday. If we don’t find him by tomorrow night, we should go to the police.”
“Oh yeah,” Arno said, and hoisted his beer. “That’s a great idea.”
“Well—” Jonathan said.
Arno did a little shimmy. Kelli was coming! He’d already asked to visit her in St. Louis. He’d bought all of Nelly’s albums and found Missouri on the map. Who cared if he kept fooling around with other girls? When he closed his eyes, he felt her makeup against his cheek, her soft body against his hard chest…. She was definitely into him. It had to be.
“Arno!”
“What?”
“Stick with us. As soon as we find Patch, you can get back to fantasizing about Kelli.”
“But we haven’t even figured out who—” David stopped talking and looked up the stairs. “I need to go talk to that Rickenbacher kid. If he’s being cool because he got with Amanda …” He stood up and went after him.
“The only thing that kid ever gave it to is his pillow,” Jonathan said. He stood up and looked at Arno. “Now when are you going to tell David the truth?”
“Kind of. Unless you want your whole life to be a lie.”
The kitchen was pretty quiet now, except for the rumbles coming through the ceiling from upstairs. Arno thought about David. He didn’t mean him any harm. He’d spilled some soup on his suit pants and he slapped at the stain. He thought about how upset he’d be at Randall Oddy if he’d made out with Kelli.
“I’ll tell him later,” Arno said. “I just hope Amanda gets back together with him. I sure don’t want her.”
“That’s nice of you to say,” Jonathan said.
“Look, I promise I’ll never touch Liza again. I mean Amanda.”
“I just want us to be friends once this is all over. That’s all I care about,” Jonathan said.
“That’s nice of you to say,” Arno said. And then they were both quiet as they listened to David come back downstairs.
“Was it him?” Arno asked, with a trace of hope in his voice.
“No,” David said. “That was ridiculous of me.” He got another beer.
“Then what’s he doing here, anyway?” Jonathan asked. Arno watched, but for reasons he couldn’t follow, David wouldn’t say anything, or meet Jonathan’s eyes. Arno checked his watch. It was already past eleven. Jonathan went upstairs to see who else was around.
“I guess he’s got his own girl problems,” David said. “He’s not into Amanda, that’s for sure.”
Then they heard the front door bang open above their heads, and there was a kind of crying out that was similar to the noise an unhappy tiger makes, and they knew Mickey had arrived.