Reunited (18 page)

“Where?” Alice asked, her heartbeat swishing in her ears.

“At RISD. Rhode Island School of Design. That’s near Massachusetts, right?”

RISD was in Providence, practically right down the street from Brown. “Mm-hmm.” Alice nodded, trying to act casual. “So, you’re an artist?”

Quentin shrugged. “I try to be. If things go well at the summer program, it’ll help my chances of getting in when I apply to go to school there next year.”

Alice felt a flutter of hope beating its wings inside her chest.
What if she was at Brown and Quentin was at RISD?
It was almost too good to be true. Wait a minute. It
was
too good to be true.

“Why are you laughing?” Quentin asked.

“Oh, nothing,” Alice said. “I’m just amused by my own failure to not have expectations.”

They talked like this for hours, until the black sky brightened to cobalt blue, until they were yawning as much as talking. They were both lying on the floor now, the door closed all the way to keep out the chill of the predawn air. Their bodies were millimeters away from each other, but not touching.

“We should probably go back up,” Alice said, even though it was the last thing she wanted to do.

“Okay,” Quentin said, turning to face her, his mouth so close she could feel his breath on her chin.

Suddenly Alice’s brain was seized by the list of things she’d messed up today—how she’d forgotten to turn on her cell phone, to get gas for the van, how she hadn’t called her mother back, forgotten to even check whether or not Tiernan had called
her
mother. Of course, they’d never made it to Lexington.

“How do you not have expectations?” she asked, suddenly jumping back into their old conversation. “If you don’t anticipate certain outcomes, how do you ever plan where you’ll end up?”

Quentin smiled at her, then reached out and put his palm on her cheek. “Maybe you’ll end up right here.”

Then, he leaned in and kissed her—her cheek still in his hand as if he were holding on to something precious. Alice had kissed boys before, but never like this. Their kiss was a thing of their own invention—like a river flowing through every cell in her body, then out into the universe.

He pulled her in closer and she devoured his smell—a mix of pool chlorine and sweat that might have seemed unpleasant to anyone else in the world, but to Alice, it was delicious. His lips wandered down to her ear, her neck.

She let out a little moan, unintentionally, but she didn’t even think to be embarrassed until she felt him pull away. Had
her noise freaked him out? What other reason could there possibly be for him to interrupt this perfect moment? But when Alice opened her eyes, she saw the reason right in front of her, looking in through the window of the van. And her name was Mrs. Oldham.

“TOMFOOLERY”

I WANT TO LIVE LIFE LIKE VACATION

I WANT TO RUIN MY REPUTATION

GET OUT OF MY CAR

IF YOU DON’T LIKE THE STATION

ON MY RADIO.

BUT I DON’T WANT YOU TO GO.

—from Level3’s self-titled first CD

“OKAY, I’VE GOT IT THIS TIME,” TIERNAN SAID AS THE PEA POD
made a rasping sound, then stalled out.
Again
. Tiernan glanced at the clock. She’d been trying to make her “quick getaway” for the last three minutes. Not that getting the Pea Pod into gear was easy under normal conditions, let alone with an angry Southern Baptist giving her the stink-eye.

“Do you need me to drive?” Summer asked.

On the front porch, Mrs. Oldham scowled at them, sunlight glinting ominously off the gold cross at her neck.

“Look at her, glaring at us like we’re a bunch of Yankee hussies,” Tiernan whispered as she restarted the van. “It was just Alice!” she pretended to shout to Mrs. Oldham. Then she ever-so-gently hit the gas, and the van conked out with a spasmic sigh.

“Could you skip the commentary and just get us out of here?” Alice hissed from her hiding spot in the back. Only ten minutes had passed since she’d burst into the guest bedroom babbling incoherently and yanked Tiernan and Summer out of bed.

“All I’m saying is that the woman has anger management issues.” Tiernan paused to restart the van. “I can see the headline
now: Tennessee Mother Kills Three over Hickey.”

“We’re in Kentucky, bonehead,” Summer pointed out.

“And it wasn’t a hickey,” Alice chimed in.

Without knowing exactly how it happened, Tiernan realized she was moving, so she seized the momentum, gunning the Pea Pod turbo-speed down the Oldhams’ driveway and whipping it onto the road
Dukes of Hazzard
style.

“Thanks for your hospitality!” She waved liked Miss America out the window as the Pea Pod bucked and lurched down the street.

“Oh. My. God!” Alice screamed. “That was the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to me!”

“Think of how Quentin must feel,” Summer offered. “She’s
his
mother.”

Tiernan cringed. “Can you imagine getting caught with a boner in front of your own mom?”

“Not really,” Summer said.

Then all three of them busted out in silent hysterics. Tiernan was laughing so hard, she had to wipe her eyes to see the road.

“Do you even know where you’re going?” Alice asked, gasping for air.

Tiernan looked at the unfamiliar landscape, suddenly aware that she was driving. If Alice and Summer were in their usual moods, they probably would have yelled at her. But this morning, her cluelessness just triggered another round of laughter.

“I may not know where I’m going,” Tiernan began, her words coming out in snorts, “but I know where
you’re
going, Alice Miller—straight to
hay-ell
!”

“Ay-a-may-en,” Summer said in a bad Southern accent.

“Turn around when possible,” Coach Quigley offered.

Eventually they made it to civilization—or in this case, a Waffle House, which was about as close to civilization as things got in these parts. Over weak coffee and soggy bacon, they charted their course for the day. The plan was to drive until they made it to Nashville, Tennessee, and then chill out in the nicest hotel they could find. For under one hundred fifty dollars. With a pool.

“What about this one?” Summer asked, holding up her phone. “It has a spa, a fitness center, three swimming pools, and an indoor waterfall. . . .”

Since Alice seemed to be stuck in a permanent state of la-la land (at the moment, smiling at her French toast like she was about to French kiss it) Tiernan looked at the website first.

“You wanna stay at
the Gaywether
?” Tiernan blurted out, louder than she’d intended. “Summer . . . is there something you’d like to tell us?”

“Oh, calm down.” Summer snatched her phone back. “We don’t have to stay here. I’m just saying it looks pretty nice, and it’s not that expensive, considering.”

“What?” Alice looked up from her breakfast as though she’d just arrived on Planet Earth.

“This hotel Summer wants to stay at.” Tiernan raised her eyebrows. “It’s called
the Gaywether.”

Summer handed her phone to Alice. “Check it out—they have this whole indoor garden area with a waterfall and a river.”

“Hotel, or Epcot? You be the judge,” Tiernan said.

“What’s wrong with Epcot?” Summer asked.

“Nothing, if you like that kind of sanitized, generic family entertainment.”

In Tiernan’s opinion,
real
fun didn’t happen by going to places like Disney World. Real fun was something you stumbled into, by accident.

Alice scrolled through the website. “I think this looks nice. I mean, why not splurge a little? Maybe we’ll even be able to get a little R and R for once.”

“Okay. I’ll make the reservation right now,” Summer said, taking her phone back.

Alice turned her attention to Tiernan. “Hey, I meant to ask you . . . how did the conversation with your mom go?”

Tiernan pushed a bite of waffle around her plate, mopping up the leftover syrup. Could Alice just give it a rest already? It wasn’t like she was in any hurry to dial up
her
mom and give her the play-by-play of last night’s spit-swapping session.

“She wasn’t around,” Tiernan lied, licking syrup off her fork. No need to ruin the girl’s post-make-out euphoria.

“So, did you leave her a message?”

Tiernan shook her head in what she hoped was a remorseful way. “I’ll try her again today, okay?”

Three hundred and twelve miles
later, Alice was zonked out in the back (drooling all over the upholstery) and Tiernan still hadn’t made the call. Although as penance for
not
making it (a habit from the Catholic side of her family) she’d kept Alice’s cell phone in her front pocket so that it dug uncomfortably into her hip bone.

The weird thing was, Tiernan wasn’t sure why she
wasn’t
calling. Yeah, Judy was going to be tweaked. But a watered-down phone version of Judy’s bitch-slap was better than facing the real thing. And unless Judy was planning to track her down bounty-hunter style, Tiernan had another week before she had to face whatever punishment Judy was cooking up (though the heaping side order of guilt trip could probably be delivered via telephone).

“Okay, I have a good one for you,” Summer said. They’d been talking in stops and starts like this for the last five hours. At first, Tiernan figured it was just a way to pass the time while Alice slept, but somewhere in southern Kentucky, she’d actually started to enjoy their little trips down memory lane.

“Remember the time we ran away?”

“Of course.” Tiernan smiled. “We were such rebels back then.”

Their infamous running-away episode had happened at
Tiernan’s house at a play date. (That’s how young they were—their hangouts were still called play dates.) Something her mother had done set her off; Tiernan couldn’t remember what. Maybe they’d been caught watching an R-rated movie on Showtime, or maybe she’d decided to lead a revolt against Judy’s tyrannical two-Popsicle limit. Whatever the nature of the injustice du jour, nine-year-old Tiernan had the solution: running away.

Naturally, Alice and Summer had joined her in solidarity, loading up Tiernan’s little red wagon with canned goods (for nourishment), blankets (for warmth), and a dictionary (so they could continue their education on the road). Then, the three fourth-graders set out into the cold, cruel world. Cut to one hour later when Tiernan’s dad spotted them while mowing the lawn. They had made it as far as the next-door neighbor’s azalea bush.

“I love how we even remembered to bring a can opener,” Summer said.

Tiernan laughed. “As I recall, we actually ate an entire can of green beans.”

“With our hands,” Summer added.

The whole thing seemed pretty pathetic in retrospect. Then again, was it really any less pathetic than what Tiernan was doing right now?

She stuck her hand out the window, cupping the air with her palm so that it rose and fell with the wind. She was more
than one thousand miles from home—her most successful runaway attempt to date.

“I’m just so happy for Alice,” Summer said. “She and Quentin were so cute together.”

“I know.” Tiernan nodded. “She totally deserves it.”

“It was total love at first sight,” Summer went on.

Tiernan shrugged. “If you believe in things like that.”

“And you don’t?”

“I just think that most people do such a bad job making
themselves
happy, it’s completely ridiculous to think anyone else can do it for you.”

“So, you’re saying that you don’t believe in love?”

“Oh, I believe in love, all right,” Tiernan clarified. “But only as a temporary condition. Like insanity.”

Summer laughed. “Wow. That’s optimistic.”

“I think being in love’s the best feeling in the world. But that feeling never lasts.”

“Sometimes it does,” Summer said defensively.

“I guess it depends how much you’re willing to delude yourself,” Tiernan said, sounding harsher than she’d intended.

Tiernan wished she could take back that last part, but it was too late. She could already see Summer slipping into that distant mood she got in every time her cell phone rang, like a black-and-white print left in the developer too long—its details fading away until the entire sheet went dark. And once a photo was overexposed, it was too late to get it back.

Suddenly Tiernan was hit with this crazy urge to spill her guts to Summer right here and now. To finally tell her the truth about that night at the winter dance and just deal with the consequences. But the funny thing was, you needed guts to be able to spill your guts.