Cherry Money Baby (8 page)

Leroy meant it as a joke, but Cherry felt a ripple of panic. The actual
wedding
hadn’t occurred to her. She’d pictured herself with Lucas, an endless stream of days in his company. She now struggled to imagine a dress, a band . . .

Oh, God.
The Funky Chicken.

“Maybe we’ll elope.”

Leroy laughed, crushed his soda can, and tossed it into the basket. “Certainly cheaper that way.”

She found Lucas in the main hall, dragging the wet mop behind him. They both held their arms out as if to say,
Where the hell were you?
She kissed him and grabbed his ass.

“Hey! PDA much?”

She grinned. “This is mine now. I get to grab it as much as I want. Hey,” she added, “where were you at lunch? I thought I’d see you.”

“Dad needed help. I have to stay after, too.”

Cherry withdrew, her excitement spoiled. “I wanted to take you for a spin in my new whip.”

“Yeah, I heard you made quite an entrance this morning. Hermann got you a sports car?”

“Not exactly,” said Cherry. “And P.S., your dad shouldn’t make you clean puke during the school day. You’re still a student.”

Lucas shrugged. “He’s getting old, and I don’t mind helping. He wants me to start working for him right after graduation.”

“Oh.”

“Uh-oh,” said Lucas. “What is it?”

“No. It’s just . . . I thought we’d have a summer together before you had to work a full-time job.” Plans Cherry hadn’t known she’d made evaporated like ammonia off a boys’ restroom floor. Ninety days of uninterrupted sunshiny bliss, the last summer before work and adulthood.
Nope. Sorry!

“Dad works through June,” Lucas said, his tone an apology. “Closing everything down. So that means I work, too.”

“That really sucks. I’ll never see you.”

“You can come visit. Dad won’t care.”

“I guess. . . .” A thought tickled her. “We could hook up in the classrooms.”

“On the teachers’ desks?”

“Exactly.”

He kissed her forehead, totally insufficient; Cherry pressed her lips to his. Someone cleared his throat. It was Principal Girder, heading for the door with briefcase and trench coat. They hadn’t heard him coming. The guy moved like a ninja.

“Surely, there are better places to do this,” he grumbled. It wasn’t a question.

“Sorry,” Lucas said, backing away from Cherry.

She snaked an arm around his shoulder, pulling him back. “It’s cool, Mr. Girder. We’re getting married.”

Girder looked at them over his spectacles.
“Mazel tov.”
He shuffled away, mumbling to himself. “We’ll hold the reception in the auditorium.”

Vi was buckling her seat belt, one of Nurse McKinley’s free lollipops jutting from her mouth. It rolled and clacked against her teeth in a way that made Cherry wince and run her tongue against her own.

“I can’t believe Girder said that.”

“He’s a cranky old fuck.” Cherry let the car’s growl soothe her. The Spider loved her. The Spider understood her pain.

“This car is epic,” said Vi, stretching across the leather seats. “I feel like a Bond girl.” She fiddled with the stereo, which had been modified with an iPod adapter. She plugged hers in and cranked Cynthia Sundae, a shared obsession.

“‘He’s got that superb ass . . .’”
Vi sang through the open window.
“‘Sup-sup-superb ass-ass-ass.’”

Other kids in other cars lined up to exit the parking lot, their booming stereos jostling for dominance. Loud music playing on a sunny afternoon and kids’ voices — all a reminder that summer was gearing up and soon school would be over for good. The idea that Cherry alone would be hanging out in the humid, dark halls of Aubrey Public through the swimming-pool months was a serious bummer.

They pulled onto Sturbridge Street, the Spider bucking against the stop-and-go traffic, which was heavier than usual. At their turnoff, a kid in an orange vest waved them past, the street blocked by sawhorses, a white truck, and something that looked like a black umbrella on complicated rigging.

“Oh, shit. Not again.”

Cherry slowed and rolled down the window.

“You gotta go around,” the kid said. The script on his T-shirt was partly visible through the opening in his vest:
IVE AND UNMA.

“What’s going on?” Vi asked.

“We’re filming.”

“Who’s
we
?”

“The film crew,” the kid deadpanned.

“Is this Ardelia Deen’s movie?” Vi turned to Cherry. “It must be, right?”

“I can’t talk about the talent,” the kid said, turning demurely and opening his vest. The movie’s title was written in cheap iron-on lettering:
ALIVE AND UNMARRIED
. “But yes.”

Vi clacked her Blow Pop. “Cherry, you wanna go say hi to Ardelia?”

“You know Ms. Deen?” The kid cocked an eyebrow.

“Oh, yeah, Cherry’s like her bestie. She saved Ardelia’s life.”

His eyes went wide. “You’re
that
girl? Holy shit!” He stepped back. “Isn’t this her car?”

“It was a gift!” Vi said.

“All right,” Cherry said with finality. “Where’s the detour?”

“Up Carlton Street,” said the kid. “Hey, can I give you my résu —?”

Cherry pulled away. “Carlton Street, seriously?” She was fuming. “It’ll take us forever to get home.”

“Why would anyone want to make a movie
here
?” Vi asked. “Though Squawker said it’s a remake. The one about the guy who founded Cane Cola. Are they filming at the bottling plant? I bet that’s it.”
Click-click-clack-clack
went her lollipop.

“You keep clacking that thing against your teeth, and I’m going to throw it out the fucking window,” Cherry snapped.

Click.

Clack.

“Sorry,” said Vi.

As the week wore on, a few more kids said something to Cherry about her web celebrity. Commenting online was one thing; saying something in real life apparently required a grace period of seventy-two hours. Cherry ignored the new Facebook friend requests, many of which turned out to be reporters and bloggers looking for inside info. On Wednesday an envelope bearing Paramount’s blue insignia arrived for Cherry. Inside was the title and paperwork to Cherry’s new car, along with a note written on soft, feathery stationery in Ardelia’s immaculate hand:

By Thursday the fervor over Cherry’s celebrity had died down, and then Tina Needle, a rock star everyone expected to die of an overdose, was hit by a bus on the way home from the organic market, and people stopped mentioning the Cherrdelia story entirely.

Things weren’t mentioned at home, either. Pop didn’t bring up the marriage, and neither did Cherry. She and Stew held a few late-night conferences in Stew’s room, Cherry calling Pop controlling and
vicarious
— a word she’d picked up from TV — and Stew getting stoned and somehow always guiding the conversation back to a favorite song lyric or the universe or the unconscious.

In the evenings she saw Lucas. Watching movies, going for long drives, and hanging out at the park hadn’t changed, a fact Cherry needed to verify constantly. She was nervous that “engagement” would somehow alter their relationship. She didn’t want Lucas to start acting “husbandly” any more than she wanted to be his “little woman.” She wanted them to go on being best friends exactly as before. An engagement was a promise that nothing would change and no one would ever leave. She’d hoped it would ensure her present happiness would last forever. Instead, it was all about planning for the future and the least happy topic of all: money.

“I have some savings,” Lucas said Wednesday evening. They were lying on their backs in the gazebo in Aubrey Park. It was sunset, but some little kids were still making the miniature merry-go-round go ’round. “Maybe enough for first month’s rent on an apartment.”

“I mean, we can’t live at home,” Cherry said. “Right?”

“I don’t think it works that way.”

She closed her eyes, imagining that the conical roof of the gazebo was focusing her thoughts and shooting them into space.
This will all be all right. This will all be all right. This will all be all right.

As an alternative to thinking and planning and worrying, she and Lucas made out. Like, a lot. More than usual. A car meant mobile privacy. The Spider’s hard leather seats were inferior to the Gremlin’s spacious, cushiony rear, which was the only thing the old girl had over her prettier little sister. Cherry hadn’t planned to save herself for marriage, but since they’d be tying the knot so soon, wasn’t it better to wait and make it Super Special? In the meantime they were trying some new stuff, exploring new territory, at her pace and her insistence. Lucas was affectionate, but Cherry discovered she preferred to be the one in the driver’s seat. She was less comfortable when the focus was on
her
body. She didn’t like being the center of attention. She was much better as
caretaker,
making sure a good time was had.

He offered to go down on her more than once.

“Verboten,”
she said Thursday after her German quiz. They were parked in a secluded corner of the Aubrey High lot, behind the outbuildings.

“But I want to,” he said. “Believe me, it’s hot. I’m into it.”

“No. It’s weird and it’s gross.”

“Would it be gross to go down on me?”

From anyone else, that would have sounded like a request. But her boy was more concerned with her comfort than his own pleasure.

Cherry couldn’t keep the smirk off her face.

“No,” she said, letting the word linger in the corner of her mouth. “And maybe
that’s
something I can give you for your birthday.”

“What about
your
birthday?”

“Ice-cream cake,” she said, kissing his neck. “And
you, you, you.
”

Fridays and Saturdays Lucas was a late-shift busboy at Willie’s family restaurant, so weekend nights were Vi territory. The girls had barely seen each other since news of the engagement. Vi answered her phone with, “Who is this? The name Cherry sounds familiar, like someone I used to know. But it’s been
soooo
long —”

“Har-har,” said Cherry. “You want to do something?”

“Yes, I do.”

They caught an early movie, another romance-zombie mash-up called
A Walk to Dismember,
and cruised the main “strip” in the Spider, enjoying attention from Worcester college boys and guys in lowriders who whistled and wanted to drag race. They buzzed Shabooms, and Vi pointed out that some of the kids in line were dressed too fancy to be local. Cherry wondered whether the movie people might actually deign to visit Aubrey’s only nightclub. They didn’t see anyone they recognized.

Around ten they stopped for eats at Mel’s Diner. Vi swirled her fries in some mayonnaise (a gross tic she’d picked up visiting her cousin in Montreal). “So, where are you and Lucas going to live?”

Cherry stared at her plate: a mountain of hash browns with a pool of ketchup on top like a crater of lava. Usually Hash Browntain was her favorite late-night snack, but she’d lost her appetite. It was all this future talk.

“I don’t know. We’ll get an apartment, maybe.”

“Yeah, but . . .” Vi repeated the swirling motion, this time heavenward. “How are you going to support yourselves? Will you work?”

“Jesus, Vi. Do you have to be such a bring-down?”

“What? I’m just asking a totally reasonable question. You guys aren’t gonna live at
home.
”

“Yeah, I know that,” said Cherry. “I’ll figure it out. I don’t have to think about it right now.”

The SweetWear T-shirt page flashed in her mind.

I DON’T THINK
.

Dudes stumbling out of Shabooms swaggered past their window. A chach in white chinos licked his lips.

“You wish!” Cherry shouted. They probably couldn’t hear her through the glass.

“Okay, change of subject,” Vi said. “How was it?”

“What?”

“The sex!” said Vi. “Hello?”

“We haven’t done it,” said Cherry. “You know that.”

Vi blinked with exaggerated slowness.
“Quoi?”

“We didn’t do it.”

“You got
engaged
and you didn’t
fuck
?”

A woman in the next booth scowled in their direction.

“No,” said Cherry. “But there was stuff. I mean, new stuff.”

“Did you . . . ?” Vi made a fist, bulged out a cheek.

Cherry laughed. “Not yet. I’ve actually never done . . . that. Not even with Deke.”

“Well, you should,” said Vi. “Dude puts a ring on it — he should get
something.
”

“Well, technically there was no ring, so . . .” said Cherry.

There was a tap on the window, which they ignored. The tap came louder, and Cherry put her middle finger to the glass, not wanting to bother with more douches in chinos. Vi’s eyes turned to dinner plates.

“Cherry, look!”

Cherry looked. Ardelia was standing on the curb. She waved and made a
Why?
gesture. The blond girl from Burrito Barn was with her, texting.

Sorry!
Cherry mouthed, and leaped up. She tripped past the
ding-ding
of the diner door and ran into Ardelia’s hug.