Walk Me Home (9 page)

Carly walked closer, noticing the beginnings of a small, round bald spot near the back of the top of Teddy’s scalp. His hair was always so shaggy and long that the spot had never been noticeable before. Besides, he was tall. How was Carly supposed to see the top of his head?

“You need a haircut,” she said.

Teddy jumped a mile and grabbed the ladder with both hands, dropping the tangled mass of lights.

“Geez Louise, kiddo! You trying to kill me?”

“Sorry. Didn’t know you’d be so jumpy.”

“I thought there was nobody in there. Where’s Jen? She was here a minute ago.”

“She bailed. She’s studying her history in my room. She says you were distracting her.”

“I was telling her some jokes.”

“Jen hates jokes.”

“It was my best material.”

“That explains why she left, all right.”

Teddy looked right into her face. Carly examined the little crinkly laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. The way they deepened when he was amused.

“You’re getting to be more like your mother every day. And I don’t mean that in a good way. Talk about a chip off the old block…”

“And I’m telling her you called her an
old
block.”

“Only if you want to see me speed-pack my bags.”

And, on that line, nothing was funny anymore. A couple of months ago, it might have been funny. But since Carly’s mom had been working longer hours, staying out late, acting like she had better things to do than Teddy…hanging out with that guy…

“I don’t want you to go, Teddy,” Carly said, shifting the whole energy of the conversation.

“I was kidding. It was a joke.” Again with the broad smile, the laugh lines.

“Right. I knew that.”

“I’m going down for my lights.”

Carly walked to the window and watched him climb down. Watched the way the smile faded from his face the minute he thought no one was watching.

She waited, expecting him to untangle the lights before climbing the ladder again. He didn’t. He just threw them over his shoulder and marched back up.

“You didn’t forget about my driving lesson. Right?”

“Driving lesson. No. Did not forget. Why do you think I’m already drinking so early in the afternoon? Getting ready for your driving lesson.”

“So…today?”

Before he could even answer, Jen shouted in from the other room. From Carly’s room.

“Not today!”

“Why not?” Carly shouted back.

“Because I have that soccer game.”

“Oh,” Teddy said. “That’s true. I have to take Jen to her soccer game.”

“Why is her soccer game more important than my driving lesson?”

“Because soccer games have dates and times. Soccer players have to show up when all the other soccer players show up. Driving lessons are anytime.”

“True,” Carly said, more than a little resentfulness bleeding through in her tone. True, but it didn’t kill the feeling that Jen was always the priority in this house. “But you shouldn’t drive her. Because you already started drinking.”

“One beer.”

“Three.”

There had been two more empty bottles down on the kitchen table. Carly had recycled them for him.

“I bow to the beer counter,” Teddy said with a sweeping gesture of one arm. Christmas lights swung from his hand. Clattered against the siding on the house.

“Let me drive us to the soccer game.”

“It’ll be dark. You can’t drive after dark on a learner’s permit.”

“Not on the way there, it won’t. Let me drive there.”

“If your mom says it’s OK.”

“She won’t be home from work yet. She won’t even know.”

Teddy frowned. Pinched his lips in a weird way. Then he threw her one end of the string of lights. Tossed them right through the open window.

“Here, help me untangle this. OK, fine, you can drive there. But if she finds out, you have to tell her
you
told me you were sure it would be OK with her. And
you
can take the heat from her. I can’t take too much more heat from her, Carly. Any more and I’ll have to get out of the kitchen.”

That cooled the conversation. They untangled the lights without another word spoken.

“Oh. My. God,” Jen said, stopping in her tracks in the driveway. “Tell me this isn’t happening.”

“Sorry,” Carly said, slipping behind the wheel of Teddy’s car.

The passenger’s side door was still hanging wide open, the seat tipped forward to allow Jen to climb in the back. Which Jen was still refusing to do.

“
Teddy
…” Jen whined.

“It’ll be fine, Jen. Just get in.”

“Great. I have to choose between missing a soccer game or ending my own life.”

“You’re such a drama queen,” Carly said.

It was different when you were behind the wheel. The inside of the car looked different. The words you said to your kid sister sounded different. Everything changed when you got to drive.

“
Teddy
…”

“She’s half right, Jen. You
are
a
little bit
of a drama queen. Now are you coming? Or should Carly and I just go to your soccer game and cheer for everybody else on your team?”

“Aren’t you the goalie?” Carly asked. “Won’t the other team score an awful lot of goals?”

Jen sighed and plunked herself into the backseat with an over-blown sigh. “Goalkeeper,” she said.

She slammed the seat back into place much harder than necessary.

“No destroying my car,” Teddy said.

“Goalkeeper,” Carly said. “Right. My point exactly.”

“You said goalie.”

“Which is short for goalkeeper.”

“You don’t call them goalies in soccer.”

“I’ll write that on my hand. That way I can never make such an earth-shattering mistake ever again as long as I live.”

Carly started the engine. And all was right with the world.

“Put your left-hand turn signal on,” Teddy said. “And look in the side mirror before you pull away from the curb.”

“Wait!” Jen shouted. “I have to put my seat belt on. It’s all that’s standing between me and death.”

“I know to put on my signal, Teddy,” Carly said. “I know to look in the mirror. You think I wasn’t paying attention on my first two lessons?”

“Well, you obviously don’t need me,” Teddy said. “So I’ll just take a nap. Shut up, Jen. Don’t say what you were just about to say. It was a joke.”

“Hmm,” Jen said. “I’ll have to remember that. ‘Shut up. Don’t say what you were just about to say.’ I think I’ll use that next time you decide to go over your corny joke routines.”

Carly shifted into drive and pulled away from the curb. Fairly smoothly.

“Stop sign at the end of the block,” Teddy said.

“Right. Because I’ve only lived on this block for three years. I only walk past that stop sign every day.”

“Those jokes are my best material,” Teddy said.

When Carly pulled into the parking lot of the middle school, near the athletic field, it was almost dark. But not quite. And a couple of guys from her school were there. Popular guys. Dean Hannish and Jerry DeVries. Which was weird because…well, this was a soccer game for twelve-year-olds. Why would they want to see it? Carly wouldn’t have been caught dead at the middle school if it hadn’t involved a chance to drive.

Dean Hannish looked at Carly. Looked right in at her. Carly’s face immediately went hot, which probably translated to beet red.

Dean waved.

Carly waved back.

She barely knew Dean.

He peeled away from Jerry and walked right in her direction as she settled the car into a parking space.

Carly hit Teddy on the arm, harder than she meant to.

“How do you roll down this window?” she whispered.

Teddy said nothing at all. But it was the look on his face. The hint of a self-satisfied grin. He reached over her and pressed a button, and the window powered down.

“Shut up, Teddy.”

“I didn’t say a word.”

“Dean,” Carly said. Too loud. And definitely not smoothly enough. “Hey.”

He was more clean-cut than most of the guys Carly found herself crushing on. His hair was short enough to get him into the military. Blond and barely long enough to lie down flat. Which was a minus. But the piercing light-blue eyes were a plus. Along with that huge, blocky jaw.

“I didn’t know you drove,” Dean said.

It struck Carly for the first time that he was impressed. By her. She casually leaned her arm on the edge of the open window. No words came out of her mouth, though. But maybe he would think she hadn’t intended any.

“This your car?”

“Uh…” She might have said yes, if the owner of the car hadn’t been two feet away and staring at her with his laugh lines crinkling. “No. It’s Teddy’s car.”

It could have been worse. She could have had to say “my mother’s” or “my father’s.” But Teddy was just Teddy. She didn’t even have to say who he was to her. She could have adult friends for all Dean knew. Besides, her mother’s car was a dorkmobile. Teddy’s car was ten or fifteen years old, but it was a Firebird. Firebirds were always cool, as best Carly could figure. The older they got, the cooler they got.

Dean leaned down and peered across her to Teddy.

“Nice ride, man.”

“Thanks.”

Just then Jen kicked the back of Teddy’s seat, hard, with the bottom of both feet, rocking the whole car.

“Let. Me. Out,” Jen said.

“OK, see you in there,” Dean said.

He turned and wandered off again.

Carly sat there, watching him walk away.

Next thing she knew, Jen was standing in front of the open driver’s window, snapping her fingers in front of Carly’s eyes as if to release her from a trance.

“Earth to Carly.”

Carly didn’t even tell Jen to shut up. She was just happy enough with the moment that she didn’t need to.

It was nearly halfway through the game, and Jen hadn’t allowed one single goal to get past her.

Now it was Jen’s fourth and most dramatic block. The kind that forced her to throw her whole body up into the air and sideways to get in front of the ball. But get in front of it she did.

Teddy leaped to his feet, belting out a chorus of whooping noises.

Jen picked herself up, dusted off her uniform, and glanced over her shoulder uncomfortably. In Teddy’s direction.

“What was
that
?” Teddy asked Carly, plunking himself back on the bleacher seat again.

“I think that was Jen’s ever-so-tactful way of saying you’re embarrassing her.”

“You’d think she’d appreciate a little enthusiasm.”

“You’d think.”

“She’s just such a hell of an athlete. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Seriously? You never saw Pelé? Or David Beckham?”

“I didn’t mean that. I meant for someone her age.”

Then Carly felt a tiny but very distinct sting on the back of her ankle. She pulled her foot up reflexively. Rubbed the spot. Then, not knowing what else to do, she put her foot back down again.

Not three seconds later, it happened again. This time on the back of the other calf.

She bent over at the waist and peered under her seat, between tiers of the bleachers. Dean and Jerry and some other boy she didn’t know were under there. In the dim. Toward the back. In the shadows created by the bleacher seats, hiding them from the stadium lights. Smoking cigarettes. Dean was winding up to throw another pebble at her.

At first she thought he was being mean, and it twisted into her stomach, the way it did when boys teased her at school. But then he made a hook with his index finger and beckoned her. He was trying to get her attention, she realized. He was trying to get her to come down.

“I’ll be right back,” she told Teddy.

Teddy gave her another one of those looks. Then he bent down to see what Carly had just seen. He straightened up and gave her the look again.

“Try not to come back pregnant.”

“Ha ha.”

“That was
not
my best material.”

“Which explains why that one was actually funny.”

Carly didn’t wait for him to answer. She just trotted down the bleacher steps, along the aisle, ducked under, and joined the three boys, nursing an unfamiliar feeling. Like actually being part of something.

“Hey,” Dean said.

The other two boys just stared into space. Stared and otherwise pretty much ignored her.

“Hey,” Carly said back.

Carly sat with them, cross-legged in the dirt. They formed a sort of ragged circle. Carly heard a sudden cheer come up from the crowd, and she wondered if Jen had committed another act of amazing athleticism.

“Want a smoke?” Dean asked, extending the pack in her direction.

“No, thanks,” Carly said. “It just gives me a headache.”

Then she realized how incredibly stupid that must have sounded. And how she should have just taken one. Let it burn in her hand. Or, better yet, she should have said she’d just take one hit of Dean’s. That would have been…well…better. She couldn’t fit the words to how much better it would have been and why. But it would have been more like they knew each other. Maybe almost more like…boyfriend and girlfriend.

Then it dawned on her. It wasn’t too late.

“I’ll take a hit of yours, though,” she said, sounding more confident than she felt. “I won’t get a headache from one hit.”

Dean smiled. It was a smile she felt in a low place in her gut. Scary but nice.

He held the cigarette in her direction. Their hands touched when she took it from him.

“Thanks,” she said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but…what are you doing here?”

“My dad’s the coach.”

“Seriously? Your dad coaches my kid sister?”

“Which one is your sister?”

“The goalkeeper. Jen.”

Imagine if she’d said “goalie.” How humiliating would that have been? Every now and then, things worked out.

“Oh. Jen. Yeah. My dad says she’s his best player.”

“So…you go to all his games?”

The other two boys snickered, and Carly didn’t know why. She took a hit off the cigarette. Barely inhaled, so she wouldn’t humiliate herself by coughing the smoke up again.

“Naw, I almost never do,” Dean said. “But we’re trying to get my dad to let us go up to the cabin. So I’m playing the model son.”