In Too Deep (3 page)

I turned on my CD player and put on some broken-hearted love songs, the kind you like to listen to when you feel that the people who wrote the sad lyrics are the only ones who have ever even come close to understanding how you feel. Except, of course, you know full well you feel worse than anyone in the whole world ever has.

So, my Friday evening was spent flopped on the bed, staring at the ceiling and singing along with the sad songs at the top of my voice. By the second song I was crying and almost enjoying it in a strange way.

I wondered if it was possible to die of a broken heart. Suppose I just lay there and expired from the sorrow — how would Greg feel then? He'd probably realize his horrible mistake and spend the rest of his life devoted to my memory, never dating anyone else again as long as he lived. He'd have to become a hermit and live alone in the woods, in a shrine he'd build in my honour.

I got a bit of satisfaction imagining that, but then it occurred to me that it wouldn't be much fun for me. Besides, I was checking carefully to see if there were any pains in my heart that might mean it was about to give out, and there was nothing.

Since my heart was apparently too strong to succumb to a pain even so great as this, I let myself drift off into a fantasy about how Amber would be really awful and disgusting on their date. I started imagining her at dinner, burping loudly, chewing with her mouth open, and other rather uncomplimentary things. I envisioned Greg's embarrassment and his sense of relief when the date was over and he knew he never had to see her again. He'd be begging me for a date after that!

That was more fun, but after a while I reminded myself that it was only fantasy. For all I knew they could be having the most wonderful date in history, fall in love, and get married some day.

I opened a second chocolate bar and put another mournful song on the stereo.

It was raining when I got up on Saturday, which perfectly fit my plan for moping around the house all day. I meandered out to the kitchen, where Mom had just set a pan of bread to rise.

“Morning, dear,” she said brightly, drying her hands on a tea towel.

“Morning,” I mumbled without enthusiasm. It would be a real pain trying to maintain my gloom with Mom around. You know what parents are like. They can't just let you enjoy that kind of thing. Oh, no, they have to “get to the bottom of it” and then drive you insane trying to cheer you up.

“Did you not sleep well?”

“I slept okay.”

“You seem a bit out of sorts.” She looked at me closely, as if an explanation for my mood might be written
on my face or something.

“I'm fine.” I got a slice of whole wheat bread out of the bag and popped it into the toaster. “What kind of bread are you making?”

“Oatmeal brown bread. Are you sure you're all right?”

“I'm sure, Mom.” I tried to keep from sounding impatient. “I just have a lot of homework this weekend and I was thinking about how long it's going to take to do it all.”

That seemed to satisfy her for the moment, and it wasn't exactly a lie. I did have a lot of schoolwork to get done, though that wouldn't normally put me in a bad mood.

“Well, you can be excused from your chores today if you have that much to do.”

I felt guilty right away. Mom and I usually go through the house and do all the floors and dusting on Saturday mornings. We launder the bedding too, but I knew she'd probably leave that until Monday since she likes to hang the sheets out for a really nice fresh smell.

“No, I have time to help around the house,” I said quickly. “I can always finish my lessons tomorrow if I don't get everything done today.”

She came over and gave me a hug and told me I was a good girl as I stood waiting for my toast to pop. That
sort of irritated me too; I figure at my age I'm a bit too old to be referred to as a “good girl.”

I wasn't hungry at all, especially after eating junk food the night before, but I sat down dutifully and ate my toast anyway. Mom would never let me get away without eating breakfast, and I guess there's sense to it. I remember her lecturing Betts about it one time, when she'd slept over and didn't want to eat in the morning. She said she never ate breakfast because she wanted to lose a few pounds.

Mom had launched into a big explanation about how if you don't eat in the morning your metabolism drops and your body doesn't burn calories efficiently all day because of it. She insisted that if Betts ate something sensible in the morning it would help her lose weight and that skipping meals could actually defeat the whole thing.

I'd been kind of embarrassed, the way I always am when my mom drags one of my friends into her “talks.” Still, it turned out there was something to it. Betts had actually been really interested in what Mom was saying and started eating breakfast every day after that. The really weird thing was that she lost almost ten pounds over the next six months. Since that was the only change she'd made in her eating habits, it seemed Mom had been right.

Betts looked at her as something of an expert after that and often asked questions about nutrition and
stuff, which, of course, pleased Mom to no end. She just adores an interested audience, and I don't always fit that description. But then it's hard to be attentive all the time since I'm pretty much at her mercy, a built-in guinea pig trapped in a perpetual lecture zone.

I cleaned up the kitchen after I'd eaten, moved everything off the counters and washed them down. I swept and mopped the floor too and greased the bread pans, since by then the dough was pushing up against the towel Mom had laid over top of it. I punched it down, formed it into loaves, and put them into the pans, covering them so the tops wouldn't dry out. I love the smell of baking bread and could hardly wait until it went into the oven.

I'd just finished my work in the kitchen when there was a knock at the door. When I opened it there was a young man there holding a long, white box.

“Shelby Belgarden,” he said. I wondered how he knew my name, since I didn't recognize him at all.

“Uh huh,” I answered.

“Oh, you're Shelby?”

Then I realized he'd been reading my name off a piece of paper stuck to the box. I nodded, confirming who I was for the second time, which seemed to satisfy him.

“Then these are for you.” He passed the box over and asked me to sign a slip to show I'd received it. I
thanked him and then we wished each other a nice day, the way you do to be polite to people you don't know. I guess no one really cares that much if the other person has a nice day or not, but it still seems the right thing to say.

Once he'd left I opened the box and was astonished to find a beautiful bouquet of pink and white carnations. For me!

“What's that, dear?” Mom must have heard me talking to someone and come to investigate.

“Flowers,” I found myself smiling. “Someone sent me flowers.”

“Why, they're lovely,” Mom enthused. “Who are they from?”

“I don't know.” I looked at the slip from the flower store, but there was no name on it.

“There should be a card in the box,” she said.

Sure enough, I discovered a tiny white envelope with a card inside. I pulled it out eagerly and found the heading “Thinking of You” with a printed message underneath.

“From your secret admirer,” I read aloud.

“Well, isn't that sweet! And romantic.”

“But I still don't know who sent them!”

“I'm sure that whoever it was will make himself known soon enough,” she smiled. “In the meantime, you can just enjoy the mystery.”

I have to admit that the unexpected delivery changed the way I was feeling. It suddenly didn't seem all that appealing to wallow around in misery, and I found myself humming and happy as I finished my chores and got started on my homework.

Mom had found a vase for the flowers and I carried them from room to room as I went about my tasks. They smelled so nice, and I couldn't resist going over to admire them and inhale the scent often. It was the first time I'd ever received flowers, and it made me feel pretty special. There were ten in all, five pink and five white.

I spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out who might have sent them. It had to be one of the guys at school, but which one? If I had an admirer, he sure hadn't done anything to let me in on it.

A few possibilities came to mind, but I dismissed them all. The few guys who might be interested in me didn't seem the sorts to send flowers. If I'd received them a week ago, I'd have been sure they were from Greg, but since he had just started dating Amber I had to reluctantly rule him out.

Well, he'd be sorry when he saw that some other guy was madly in love with me and trying to sweep me off my feet by sending me flowers!

At dinner that evening Mom dropped a bomb on my happy thoughts by announcing that we were invited
to the Taylors' place the next day. My folks have become friends with Greg's dad, Dr. Taylor, and we visit back and forth once in a while.

It was the worst possible timing, but I couldn't think of an excuse to avoid going there so I was pretty much trapped. The thought of listening to Greg talk about his new girlfriend was galling beyond description, and I dreaded the idea of having to smile and act as if I didn't care through it all.

Of course, I could always mention the flowers I'd received from a secret admirer. That perked me up a little, but mostly I felt confused by all the different emotions running amok inside of me.

“Shelby, would you take this recipe over to Mrs. Carter? She's having company tomorrow and needs it before then.”

We'd been getting ready to head over to the Taylors' place for dinner when the phone rang, and I'd held out a momentary hope that it was going to be Dr. Taylor calling to say he had to cancel for some reason. From Mom's request, I knew it had to have been Mrs. Carter asking for a recipe instead.

I took the paper she held out, slipped on my spring jacket, and headed out. Mom had explained that Mrs. Carter lived two streets away, in a green bungalow across from the bus stop. I had no trouble finding it and reached her place in a few minutes.

She ushered me inside despite my protests that I had to hurry back home, insisting that she had something
she wanted to send back to my mother to thank her for all the trouble she'd gone to.

“It was no trouble,” I pointed out. “All she had to do was copy out a recipe.”

Ignoring my remark, Mrs. Carter disappeared into the other room, where I could hear her chattering on while I stood in the entrance feeling foolish. Her son Tony is my age, and I was afraid he was going to come along and think I was there to see him. He's a nice enough guy and all, but I never hang out with him.

“Here we are then,” she said brightly when she finally returned. “This is chutney that I made last summer. You give it to your mother and tell her I appreciate her trouble, I do so. My grandmother, rest her soul, always made this preserve and it never fails. Why, my husband is crazy about it. I'm surprised we even have any left. I suppose that's because the boys don't care for it so much, although they love everything else I make, yes they do.”

I took the jar from her, said thanks, and turned toward the door, but she wasn't finished. In fact, she went on so fast that it seemed she hardly had time to take a breath between words.

“You must know my boys, Raymond and Tony. Well, Raymond is older so you probably don't know him, but you and Tony must be close to the same age. What grade are you in? Tony is in tenth grade; would you be in his class?”

I told her I was in grade ten too, and that Tony was in two of my classes.

“Is that right?” she asked, as though she suspected I was lying. “Two classes? Only two? Now how does that work? When I was a student someone was either in your class or they weren't.”

I explained that there were different students in each class, depending on the subjects each person was taking.

“Is that so? Well, well, I didn't know that. Tony doesn't tell me much about those things. He's away this weekend, gone over to Veander to spend a few days with his brother, Raymond, who's taking a course in computers at the community college there. The boys used to fight like cats and dogs, but they've gotten close in the last few months, and now Tony goes there every weekend he gets a chance. For goodness' sake! I just realized that he should be back on the bus any minute now. It's very handy, having the bus stop so nearby. Just walks across the street, he does. Why, maybe you'd like to come in and wait, and have a little visit with him when he gets home.”

Half frantic to escape I blurted again that I really had to go, thanked her for the preserves, and rushed out the door before she could get going on some other subject. It struck me on the way home that Mrs. Carter could probably talk for a whole day without saying anything of much interest to anyone.

Most of the students who go on to the college in Veander after high school come home every weekend, since it's only about an hour's drive. I wondered if the fact that the Carter boys seemed to prefer spending time away instead of at home had anything to do with the fact that their mother prattles on that way. My mom talks a lot too, but at least she says something.

My folks were ready to leave for the Taylors' place when I got back home. I practised looking totally nonchalant in case Greg brought up the subject of Amber. Picturing myself being incredibly brave and saying things like “that's great” and “I'm really happy for you” (though I knew I wouldn't mean a word of it) cheered me a little. As long as I kept him from realizing how hurt I felt I could at least save my pride. It would be awful if he ever guessed just how miserable I was that he was dating someone else.