Dedication (13 page)

“Craig, I’m not upset,” I mutter, getting upset.

“I know. I know.” He steps closer and I’m hit with a wall of Drakkar Noir. Lucky Jeanine.

“Craig, I don’t like you. I’m happy not to go out anymore, which is why I’m the one who brought it up. It’s fine. Really. If you had a Bible I would swear on it.”

“Of course, Katie.” He puts his lugging arm on my shoulder.

“Craig!” Jeanine screeches.

“Chick fight.” His friends punch the air and Leslie jumps to her feet, her green sweatshirt making her look like a Ninja Turtle about to blow.

“You guys, I’m fine! Jeanine, I’m fine! Seriously, if you guys want to go out that’s totally cool with me. I swear. I’m being completely honest. I just offered to say it over a Bible.”

“That’s really big of you, Katie,” Craig says solemnly because he is really, like, forty years old and already retired in there.

“Thanks, Craig. Jeanine. Leslie. Guys. Later.” I twist my palm in a half-wave at my shoulder, pivot, and continue on my way down the carpeted hall of the middle school, but not fast enough to miss Jeanine’s “I don’t know, Craig, she seemed
really
jealous.”

I sigh to my sandals and keep walking, following the relatively empty halls linking the two buildings toward the middle school pool. It’s weird, actually, the lockers look shorter, as do the drinking fountains and bulletin boards.

I pass through the double doors that lead to the sports area and am greeted by the muffled sound of whoops along with the not-somuffled stench of chlorine. I cross the hall and press my face against the mesh-wired windows to see what looks like summer camp free swim on a hundred-degree day.

“Katie.” I look around the hallway—no one.

“Katie,” his voice says again. I look to my right, up the staircase that leads to the darkened balcony and there he is, sitting on the landing in basketball shorts and water-spattered T-shirt, a striped wet towel over his head. My heart in my ears, I climb halfway up the flight of stairs until I’m standing on the same step his flip-flops rest on. “You were in there?” I ask, referring to the frothing pool.

“Yeah.” Jake drops his head back, the towel slipping to his shoulders, his brown hair tousled in a million perfect directions. “It’s pretty crazy. You going swimming?”

“Oh, yeah,” I laugh before realizing from his blank expression that the joke didn’t make it out of my head. “Because I don’t have a bag.” He just looks at me. “I don’t have a swimsuit or anything. So, no, I’m not going in.” Shut up! I lean back against the banister and study the grout grid of the wall tiles.

“So, you having fun?” I feel him still looking at me.

“Yes!
I’m having fun! I’m fine! I couldn’t be happier! God, I’m the one who broke up with him! I was just trying to be nice and let him save face and now I seem like some pathetic loser. It really pisses me off!”

“You and Craig broke up?”

“I’m sorry. I thought…Jeanine was telling everyone he dumped me. Didn’t you hear?”

He shrugs, clasping the ends of the towel with both hands. “Nope. Just wondering if you were having a good time. But thanks for the update.” He smoothes the ends of his shorts over his knees.

“Sure.”

“You don’t really hold anything back, do you?”

“I’m not sure how to take that.”

“And if you were, I bet you’d tell me.” He grins, his green eyes glittering as he slides his flip-flop across the stair next to my sandal, the tip of his toe touching mine. “What’s your deal, Katie Hollis?”

My breath quickens. “I don’t know…I guess I just think people should say what’s on their minds.”

He lies back on the landing, his face in shadow, his shirt riding up, revealing the ivory contours of his hip bone, the muscular indentation, the downy hairs running from his belly button into his shorts. Our toes touching. “So?”

“Yes?” I ask.

“What’s on yours?”

“Like, what specifically?”

“Like you and me,” he says into the darkness. I am rabbit-in-rifle-range frozen—the banister digging into my back—not moving a muscle—not wanting to startle him from this train of thought.

“Okay…” I say, willing him to guide me.

“There’s always this thing about you.”

“My good deeds?”

“Your good deeds.” He grins up at the ceiling. “And this intensity thing, how you take class so seriously and take all those notes or, like, you made that announcement about raising money for stuff in South America.”

“Central. Central America.”

“It’s weird. I don’t know, sometimes it really pisses me off. Sometimes…” He sits back up, flipping the towel down between his knees.

“Sometimes…” I prompt.

“What are you doing tonight?” He looks up, his eyes on mine.

“This. What are you doing?”

“Sleeping over at Sam’s.”

“Yeah, Laura’s coming over.”

“We should all leave together or whatever.”

I nod, willing to feel the pain of the metal railing digging into my spine if it means I can stay in this moment for the rest of my life.

“Now you’re not saying anything. That means you don’t have an opinion, I guess.” He bats my bare calf with the damp towel.

“I have an opinion.” I bend to grab the cool terry, my hair falling into my face, a thin wall between our lips. “Sounds like a plan.”

Then he reaches for the banister and pulls himself forward and up so he’s standing on my stair. “I mean, it sounds like you were having a totally fun night. I don’t want to get in the way or anything.” He looks down at me as my gaze flickers to the hollow of his throat. “We should do something together. See what happens.”

“So we’re not hanging out tonight?”

“We are. I meant like sometime, you know, go to a movie or something.”

I keep my eyes from widening at the significance here, letting the moment obliterate the lingering humiliation of making the same suggestion to him well over a year ago. “I can go to a movie.”

“So, we’ll go tomorrow.” His finger weaves into my hair and lifts it gently over my ear, his skin grazing mine. So close. Right here. In a haze of chlorine.

He inches closer—the edge of his damp shorts touch above my knee and I am paralyzed with the terror of this moment, standing an inch from my face. Of doing it wrong, of scaring him off. He leans in. “Jake.”

“Katie.”

“Let’s not. Let’s wait.”

He turns away. I blink at the wall—Oh God, rewind!
Please
give me another take. Instead, he lunges up to the landing.

“Jake,” I say, desperate to get the moment back. But he reaches into one of the ficus plants lining the turn in the stairs and tugs at something, unhooking something blue from the branches. He comes back down to my step to inspect it while I try to act natural. Like, this is totally natural, like me and Jake standing an inch apart in the near dark happens all the time.

“A Smurf.”

“It is,” I say confidently, trying to regain ground.

“It’s got glasses. Which one is that? The poet one?”

“Um, the poet one carried something like a pen or a quill or something.”

“Of course you know that.”

“What do you mean, of course I know that? You asked. It’s not like I sit around thinking about the Smurfs. I mean, that’s from when we were kids—that thing’s gotta be, like, eight years old or something—”

“Brainy!”

“Excuse me?”

“The smart one was Brainy. He always took everything so seriously.” He turns the figurine around and lifts my hand, enclosing it inside. “For you, Brainy.”

“I’m the big nerd, thanks.”

“Uh-huh. So, Brainy, what’s the deal? We gonna meet up?” I let myself stare up at him, into him, let him be the one to wait.

“We are.”

“Then, come on.” He jogs loosely down the steps, the
thwack
of his flip-flops hitting the metal echoing. I follow as he continues under the stairs to the side door.

“Wait, first I have to—”

He turns. “I didn’t bring a bag either.”

“Okay, but first I have to talk to Laura.”

“See?” he grins. I shake my head, not understanding, but brave enough to admit it. “The bag joke doesn’t work. I don’t have my stuff. I had to borrow a towel and swim in my shorts. I’m going to run back to my house and change, ’cause I’m rank.”

“Oh! Okay.” He reaches out and grabs my hand lightly to pull me forward, placing my fingers on the door. “But you have to let me back in, cool?”

“Sure.” I tense as he steps out onto the asphalt, my stomach telling me not to lose sight of him. He gets to the streetlamp where the football turf begins and turns back to smile like a little boy, and only then do I allow a return smile that overruns my whole face.

He takes off into the shadows, and I continue to beam into the night, relishing the darkness and the mild rain that begins to sliver into the ring of light where he was just standing.

I AM…WE ARE…THIS IS HAPPENING!!! Joy bounces through me like an electric photon—ohmygod—I have to tell Laura. Figuring, even if Jake sprints it, I have at least twenty minutes, I drop the door and take off running through the halls, past the pool, past stupid Craig and stupid Jeanine, down the long corridor of the high school.

“Laura? Laura? Laura?” I duck my head into each room. “Laura?”

“SHUT UP!” I’m shushed by the riveted pile of bodies lying beneath the screen where Batman is swooping onto the Joker.

“Sorry,” I whisper, “Laura? Is Laura in here?”

“Katie?”

I reach down, grab her up, and haul her out to the hallway over a chorus of hostility.

“What the hell? Are you trying to make me new friends?”

I throw my hand over her mouth. “No time. Ran into Jake Sharpe by the pool. We touched toes and he gave me a Smurf. He thinks I’m intense and say what I think and wanted to know what I think about him and me. Him and me, can you believe it?” She nods no. “I know. I can’t believe it. Wait, it gets
so much
better. He gave me a Smurf, wait—I told you that—anyway, he went to kiss me and I was all, ‘What’s the hurry?’ And we’re going to a movie tomorrow and I think going to be Going Out. So, here’s the thing, he wants us to hang out tonight with Sam Richardson, so please say that it’s okay.” I release her mouth.

“Sam Richardson?”

“Laura, I am asking this one thing. Just this one. Just put up with Sam for tonight. You don’t have to touch him. Just get him talking about the Packers, put up with him, and I will owe you forever. Any jewelry, any clothes, my parents’ clothes, I’ll do your Science homework, and your laundry.” I lift the turquoise necklace. “You can have this forever. Anything, just say yes, please?”

She narrows her eyes. “Sam Richardson?”

“Laura, please?”

“I’m taking the necklace.”

“Awesome! I love you!”

“Where are you going?” she calls after me as I race back toward the middle school.

“Jake had to run home. Got to hold the pool door for him to get back inside. I’ll find you!” I stop at the end of the corridor and turn back grinning.
“We’ll
find you!”

She throws up her middle finger as encouragement.

I lay by the door, my eyes long adjusted to the dim red glow of the exit sign, the nearby pool having grown still. Gripping the Smurf, I look out into the now pouring rain as it puddles in the field. I feel Laura softly touch my shoulder.

“Katie, it’s over. They’re closing up. My mom’s going to freak. I’m sorry, we have to go.” I shake my head. “I’m sorry,” she says again. “Really.”

I pull my bare knees into my chest and cry.