The Boy I Love (5 page)

Allie called, but my mom wouldn't let me have my phone. “You need to rest,” she said. We didn't get to talk until Monday afternoon, when my mom finally gave it back to me. There were a couple of messages from Tim, too—he must have got the number from Allie. He wanted to check up on me. Southern guys are polite that way.

When Allie and I finally spoke, I told her I was sorry we'd left her at the party.

“Oh, don't worry about that,” she said. “I got a ride with some girls.” Then she told me all the details I didn't know about when I got burned, and she asked me all about my
hand, and when I'd be back at school. I told her maybe Thursday, because by then I wouldn't need the pain medication.

“But I have to wear this bandage for three entire
months
! You know what that means? No guitar lessons. And what if it keeps me from getting a part in the play?” I felt a rush of anger, and now, thanks to Allie, I knew who it was directed toward: Caroline Jones.

“Oh, I found out for you,” Allie said. “Auditions are next Monday, so you're okay. The play's called
Finian's Rainbow
.”

Well, that was good. I felt relieved that at least I'd be able to try out. I wanted so badly to be up on that stage.

Allie told me all about cheerleading tryouts, which she'd just gotten back from. “I hope you'll be back on Friday,” she said. “They're posting the team, and I need you for moral support. What if I don't make it?”

“You'll make it,” I said. I wasn't just being nice telling her this. Other than her parents not letting her model, I could hardly remember a single instance of Allie not getting something she really wanted. Plus, she used to be so good at gymnastics. When I'd asked her how tryouts went, she didn't put herself down at all, just said that she thought they went pretty well.

Then she took a deep breath. “So tell me,” she said, “what about the ride with Tim?”

“You mean to the hospital? There's not a whole lot to tell.
He drove fast. My hand killed like you wouldn't believe. That's pretty much the whole story.”

“I about died when he took his shirt off,” Allie said.

“He's a quick thinker.” I don't know why, but I felt kind of protective of Tim. Like he'd been so good to me it didn't feel right to gossip about him, even if the gossip was saying he looked good without his shirt.

Allie let out a little breath, almost like she'd been holding it, and said, “I can't believe that on top of being so hot, he's smart and nice, too. I like him so much, Wren. Can you believe what a hero he was after you fell? I almost wished it was me that burned my hand.”

Now that might sound ridiculous to you, but one of the things I loved about Allie was that she would come out and say something like that. It's what I said before, about just admitting you're jealous, even over something like a major second-degree burn.

“You sure won't wish that when you see the mitt I have to wear for the next three months,” I told her, then made a joke about how at least I wouldn't have to do so much manure shoveling for a while.

My mom came in and told me to hang up so I could get some rest. After I said good-bye to Allie, Mom sat down on my bed, and I told her the name of the school play. She laughed and said her high school had done that play too.

“Did you have a part?” I asked her.

“I was in the chorus. But I remember the songs. I can teach you.”

She sang this real pretty song called “How Are Things in Glocca Morra?” Mom has a great singing voice. There were some high parts, so I felt pretty glad to have extra days at home to practice.

*   *   *

By Tuesday afternoon I felt well enough to get up and walk around a bit. I watched a couple of movies downstairs and ate lunch in the kitchen. I wanted to go out to the barn and sit in the stall with Pandora, but Mom said it was too soon and the barn was too dirty. It was true my hand still hurt, but my body didn't feel quite so connected to it anymore. So I resigned myself to lying out front in the hammock reading
Invisible Man
for English. And you will never guess who came pedaling up our driveway, as if there not only wasn't an alligator in our river, but like he'd done it a hundred times before. Tim Greenlaw.

Mom was out at the barn with Daisy, so luckily, he did not have to contend with the Hellhound. I didn't get out of the hammock, just shaded my eyes with my book and watched Tim lay his bike in the grass. As he walked over to me, his hands in his pockets and his hair flopping in his eyes, I felt bad that he was turning up at
my
house when Allie liked him so much. At the same time I felt this happy little flutter in my gut.

“Hey,” Tim said. He reached out and gave the hammock a gentle push. I wished I was wearing something nicer than old pajama shorts and a UNC T-shirt.

“Hey,” I said.

“How's your hand?”

I held it up, the white bandage looking so big and round you could have drawn a map of the world on it. “I'm sorry I didn't call you back,” I said. “My parents have been rationing phone time so I can rest up.”

Mom chose this exact moment to return from the barn. When Daisy saw Tim, she started barking like crazy and charged at us. Tim froze and put his hands up in the air like a SWAT team had just drawn their rifles on him.

My mother came running up to grab Daisy's collar. “I'm sorry,” she said to Tim, and then she scolded Daisy. Daisy lowered her barking to a rumbling growl, but she didn't look convinced. Neither did Tim. All the blood had drained from his face.

“Dang,” he said, as Mom dragged Daisy away.

“I know,” I said. “She saves us all kinds of money on burglar alarms.” Tim laughed, but he still looked uneasy.

Mom slammed Daisy into the house and came on back to us. Tim recovered enough to say, “Hello, Mrs. Piner.”

“Hello,” Mom said. She looked a little confused, so I told her that he was the one who'd driven me to the hospital.

“You?” Mom said to Tim, like I wasn't a completely reliable
source of information. “You drove Wren to the hospital?”

“Yes, ma'am,” Tim said.

Mom threw her arms around him. She had to stand on her tippy toes to do this, and I could see Tim smiling as he hugged her back with one arm. My mother is not the most domestic person in the world, but the day before she had made a strawberry rhubarb crumble on account of my injury. She went inside to warm some up, and pretty soon Tim and I were sitting at the outside table under the live oak, eating warm crumble with vanilla ice cream on top while Daisy barked her head off in the kitchen. By now she sounded less protective, and more insulted that she couldn't join us.

“Caroline Jones asked me for your number,” Tim said. “She feels terrible.”

I told Tim it wasn't Caroline's fault, even though it absolutely was. “You can give her my number if you want,” I said. “But she doesn't need to call. I'm not mad at her.” Of course this last bit wasn't entirely true, but I thought it made me sound like a nicer person. Funny how sometimes pretending can lead to really feeling a particular way, because as soon as I said it, I started to feel less mad. It'd been an accident, after all.

“She'll feel better when I tell her that,” he said. He sounded so caring it made me wonder if they'd gotten back together.

Tim asked a lot of polite questions about our farm and the horses. I pointed out Pandora, who was grazing in the west field, along with my mom's favorite horse, Sombrero. I wanted to invite Tim back for a ride, but then I thought of Allie, and anyway it would probably be a long time before my mom would let me. We talked about the play, and the different parts. Tim said he wanted to play the leprechaun.

“You'd be an awful tall leprechaun,” I said. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I hoped they didn't sound like flirting. “Do you feel like you'll miss football?” I added quickly.

“Yeah,” he said. “I wish I could do both. My dad's disappointed, but truthfully, my mom never liked my playing much. She always worried I'd crack my head or injure my spine.”

“She sounds like my mother,” I said. It was so easy to talk to Tim I decided I had nothing to feel guilty about, Allie-wise. Around Ry, for example, I always found myself all nervous and tongue-tied. The fact that I didn't feel this way around Tim clearly meant I had no crush on him whatsoever.

But still, as I waved good-bye and told him to watch out for our alligator as he biked down the road, I found myself feeling sad that he was leaving. I decided it would be better if I didn't mention his visit to Allie. She had enough on her mind worrying about cheerleading.

My mother, on the other
hand, strongly disagreed with not telling Allie about Tim visiting. I had to mention it because Allie came to sleep over on Thursday night so we could go to school together on Friday. My mother didn't want me to go to school at all, but I couldn't let Allie find out about cheerleading without me. She would need someone to celebrate with her, and before that she would need someone to calm her nerves. So as Mom and I sat out on the front stoop waiting for Allie's mom to drop her off, I said, “You know that guy who came by the other day?”

“Tim?” Mom said. She has an excellent memory for names.

“Uh-huh,” I said. “Could you please not say anything about him when Allie's here?”

Mom gave me one of her sharp looks. “Wren,” she said, “what's this about?” That's Mom—she always gets right to the point.

I sighed. “It's not
about
anything,” I said. “Allie likes him, that's all, and it might make her feel bad if she knew he came by to see me.”

“She'll feel worse if she finds out you're keeping things from her.”

“It's not a big deal, Mom.”

As these words came out of my mouth, they sounded a little like a lie. Because would you like to know how many times a handsome boy has bicycled up the driveway to visit me? Zero times, that's how many. Until Tim Greenlaw. Which felt just the teensiest bit like a big deal, all by itself.

But apparently I'd convinced my mother, even if I hadn't convinced myself. “Then why not tell Allie about it?” she pressed. She loves her moral high horse.

“I will eventually,” I said. “But Allie's not quite herself lately. You know how her parents won't let her model. And then the beginning of school . . . I don't think it's exactly what she expected.”

Mom studied my face carefully. Then she smiled a little. “Allie was born in the wrong place, wasn't she? She'd probably do better where I grew up. Allie's awfully exotic for Williamsport.”

“Part giraffe,” I said, and she smiled.

“It's hard being different in high school,” Mom said. “It's the only time in your life when being normal really matters.”

“Am I normal?”

Mom looked at me and frowned, but it was a frown that had a good deal of smile to it. “You can pass for normal,” she said. “But you're not really. Thank goodness.”

“Well, does that mean I was born in the wrong place too?”

My mother reached out and pushed a strand of hair off my forehead. “I don't think there could be a wrong place for you, Wren. You've always been comfortable in your own skin. And I hope you always will be.”

I thought I'd rather be comfortable in Allie's skin but didn't get a chance to say so because the Hacketts' car came rumbling up our driveway. By this time I didn't have to ask Mom if she'd say anything about Tim. I knew I had converted her to my way of thinking.

*   *   *

That night in my room, Allie told me she'd had a secret talk with her grandmother who lives in New York. “She says that I can come live with her after I finish high school,” Allie said, “and she'll help me try to be a model.”

“What about college?” I said.

Allie flopped back on my bed and let out an exasperated sigh. “You sound like my mom,” she said. “They have colleges in New York, you know. But Grandma said maybe I could take a year off and live with her, and just try out for things. Then if it doesn't work out, I can go to college later.”

I decided not to say anything about how Allie's parents
would strangle her grandmother if they knew about that conversation. The two of them weren't adjunct instructors, like my dad, but bona fide, tenured PhDs. As you can imagine, education was pretty important to them. Both of them were pretty normal-looking. Allie's older brother was normal-looking too, and so was her little sister. Allie must have just lucked into some wild-card gorgeous gene.

“Maybe you can come to New York too,” she said.

“Oh, sure,” I said, and laughed. I had been to New York twice, and no modeling scout ever handed me a business card. The most exciting thing that happened was accidentally eating one of those tiny red peppers at a restaurant in Chinatown. It was so hot that I blacked out. One minute my teeth crunched into it, and the next thing I knew I was standing on the curb with Dad holding my head while I puked into the gutter. I reminded Allie of this story and she laughed too.

The next day at school it was like the alligator all over again. From the moment Allie and I stepped onto the school bus: CELEBRITY. Everyone knew about the accident and wanted to hear my version of events. They wanted to hear how bad my hand hurt, and how long I'd have to wear the bandage. When did Tim finally get a shirt at the hospital? Was I just
so
mad at Caroline Jones? At school Allie stood off to the side in her latest out-of-character, fully planned outfit, holding both our backpacks and listening. It may have been
my imagination, but I thought she looked relieved when we had to say good-bye and head off to first period.

Later, on my way to lunch, I saw Caroline Jones for the first time. Honestly, I wouldn't have known it was her, since I'd only seen her in the dark, and so much had been happening. In calm daylight she was extremely pretty and grown-up-looking, with long brown hair and carrying herself like she was balancing an invisible book on her head. That morning someone told me that she was a dancer, which, when you think about it, was kind of ironic. My one experience with her had not been very graceful.