“It’s not your fault,” Catherine, across the room in my daybed, said. “I mean, you can’t help that you’re in love with Jack.”
I was curled up in my own bed, Manet snoring softly at my side.
“You met Jack first,” Catherine said through the darkness all around us. “What does David think, anyway? You were just supposed to wait around and not fall in love with anybody else until he rode up on his big white horse? I mean, it’s not like you’re Cinderella, or something.”
“I think,” I said to the ceiling, “that David kind of thought if I was asking him to some party that there was a possibility I might like him, and not some other guy.”
“Well, that was very old-fashioned of him,” Catherine said firmly. Now that Catherine had been on her first date, and it had turned out to be a successful one—Paul had kissed her good-night on my very front porch; on the lips, she’d informed me proudly afterward—she seemed to think she was some kind of expert on love. In between worrying that her parents were going to find out. Not so much about Paul, I think, as about the black jeans and the party.
“I mean, you are an attractive and vital girl,” Catherine went on. “You can’t be expected to just stick with one man. You have to play the field. It’s absurd that at the age of fifteen you should settle down with just one guy.”
“Yeah,” I said with a short laugh. “Especially one who is in love with my sister.”
“Jack only thinks he is in love with Lucy,” Catherine said firmly. “We both know that. What happened tonight was just evidence that he is finally becoming aware of his deep and abiding affection for you. I mean, why else would he have been so mean to David if it wasn’t for the fact that the sight of you with another man drove him into a jealous rage?”
I said, “I think he just had one too many beers.”
“Not true,” Catherine said. “I mean, that might have been part of it, but he was definitely threatened. Threatened by what he perceived as your happiness with another.”
I rolled over—disturbing Manet, who went on snoring, not at all—and stared at Catherine’s dim form in the darkness of my bedroom.
“Have you been reading Lucy’s Cosmo again?” I asked.
Catherine sounded guilty. “Well. Yes. She left one in the bathroom.”
I rolled back over to stare at the ceiling. It was kind of hard to tell what I should be thinking about everything that had happened that night when the only person with whom I could safely discuss it was spouting advice she’d garnered from the Bedside Astrologer.
“So did he kiss you good-night?” Catherine asked shyly. “David, I mean?”
I snorted. Yeah, David had really felt like kissing me after that whole thing with Jack and the Adams Prep cheerleading squad. In fact, he had barely spoken to me for the rest of the night. Instead, he’d gone around making the acquaintance of half the student population of my school. Evidently not by nature a shy sort of person, David hadn’t seemed to mind a bit being the center of attention. In fact, he’d looked like he was having a pretty good time as Kris Parks and her cronies hung on his every word, laughing like hyenas every time he made a joke.
It wasn’t until around eleven thirty—Theresa, who was baby-sitting while my parents were at a dinner party they hadn’t left for until after David picked me up, had given us a twelve o’clock curfew—that he finally looked around for me. I was sitting by myself in a corner, flipping through Kris’s mom’s copies of Good Housekeeping (who said I don’t know how to have a good time?) and trying to ignore the people who kept coming up to me and asking if they could have my autograph (or, conversely, if they could sign my cast).
“Ready?” David asked. I said I was. I went and told Catherine that we were leaving, then found Kris—I noticed I didn’t have to look very far; she was practically tracking David’s every move—and said thanks and good-bye. Then David and John and I headed back out to the car.
Cleveland Park isn’t really all that far from Chevy Chase, where Kris lives, but I swear, that ride home was one of the longest in my life. Nobody said anything. Anything! Thank God for Gwen, singing her heart out over the stereo.
Still, I noticed that for the first time ever, the sound of Gwen Stefani’s voice didn’t exactly make me feel better. The worst part was, I didn’t even know what I had to feel so badly about. I mean, okay, so David knew I liked Jack. Big deal. I mean, is there some kind of federal law that prohibits girls from liking their sisters’ boyfriends? I don’t think so.
By the time we pulled up to my house, however, the silence in the car (aside from Gwen) was oppressive. I turned to David—God knew I didn’t expect him to walk me to the door or anything—and went, “Well, thanks for coming with me.”
To my very great surprise, he opened his car door and went, “I’ll walk you up.”
Which I can’t say exactly thrilled me, or anything. Because I had a feeling he was going to let me have it.
And, halfway up the stairs to the porch, he did.
“You know,” he said, “you really had me fooled, Sam.”
I glanced at him, wondering what was coming next, and knowing I probably wasn’t going to like it. “I did? How?”
“I thought you were different,” he said. “You know, with the boots and the black and all of that. I thought you were really…I don’t know. The genuine article. I didn’t know you were doing it all to get a guy.”
I stopped in the middle of the steps and stared up at him, which was kind of hard, since the porch light was on, and it was burning in my eyes. “What do you mean?”
“Well, isn’t that it?” David asked. “I mean, wasn’t that why you asked me to the party, too? It had nothing to do with wanting to help your friend feel like she fit in. You were using me to try to make that Jack guy jealous.”
“I was not!” I cried, hoping he, too, was being blinded by the porch light. That way he wouldn’t be able to see that my cheeks were on fire, I was blushing so hard. “David, that’s…I mean, that’s just ridiculous.”
“Is it? I don’t think so.”
We’d reached my front door. David stood looking down at me, his expression unreadable…and not because I was being blinded by the porch light anymore, but because he really had no expression—no expression at all on his face.
“It’s too bad,” he said. “I really thought you weren’t like any of the other girls I know.”
And with a polite good-night—that’s it, just “Good night”—he turned around and went back down to the car. He didn’t even look back. Not once.
Not that I could blame him, I guess. Despite Catherine’s assertion that boys ought to know girls our age are “playing the field” (which sounds pretty funny coming from her, Miss I-Just-Went-Out-with-a-Boy-for-the-First-Time-Ever-Tonight), I imagine it might kind of suck to find out the person who’d asked you out really liked someone else—would rather have been out with that person, instead.
I don’t know. I guess I could see why David was kind of peeved with me.
But come on. I’d asked him to a party, not to marry me, or anything. It was just a party. What was the big deal?
And what was all that junk about being wrong about my being different from all the other girls he knew? How many other girls did he know who’d saved his dad’s life lately? Uh, not that many, I was willing to bet.
Still, the evening wasn’t a total washout. Some of my celebrity must have rubbed off on Catherine, because other people at the party finally started talking to her. She stood there beaming, Paul at her side, and had all of her popular girl fantasies realized. Someone even invited her to another party, the following weekend.
“You know,” Catherine, the new It Girl of Adams Prep, said from the daybed, “I really think Jack was jealous.”
I blinked up at the ceiling at this piece of information. “Really?”
“Oh, yes. I heard him tell Lucy that he thinks David is pompous and that you could do better.”
Pompous? David was the least pompous person I had ever met. What was Jack talking about?
When I mentioned this out loud, though, all Catherine said was, “But, Sam, I thought that was what you wanted. To make Jack realize that you are a vital, attractive woman, desired by many.”
I admitted that this was true. At the same time, however, I didn’t like the idea of anybody—even my soul mate—calling David names. Because David was a very nice person.
Only I didn’t want to think about that. You know, about David being so nice, and my treating him the way I had. I mean, that kind of behavior is all very well for readers of Cosmo, but I’m really more of an Art in America kind of girl.
Knowing that sleep was a long way off, but aware that Catherine, by the sound of her steady breathing, was no longer available, I got out my flashlight and opened the book the White House press secretary had given me, on the lives of the first ladies.
Top ten little-known facts about Dolley Payne Todd Madison, wife of the fourth president of the United States of America:
And the number-one little-known fact about Dolley Madison: