My Life Next Door

  He slides the window open and slips out. I close my eyes, lift my hand to touch my throat where he kissed me.

  I’m a virgin. Apparently Jase is too. I’ve heard the Sexual Congress lecture in health class. Seen R-rated movies. Listened to Tracy brag about how many times a day she and Flip can do it. Read books with steamy scenes. But there’s so much I still don’t know. Does instinct just take over? Is it good right away or do you have to acquire a taste for it, the way people say you do for wine or cigarettes? Does it hurt like anything that first time? Or barely at all? Does this mean I have to buy condoms? Or will he? The Pill takes forever to be safe, right? I mean, you have to take it for a month or more first, right? And I’d have to go to my doctor to get it—my doctor who’s in his early eighties and has a handlebar mustache and nostril hair and was my mother’s pediatrician too.

  I wish I could ask my mother these questions, but imagining her face if I tried is scarier than not knowing the answers. I wish I could ask Mrs. Garrett. But…he’s her son after all, and she’s only human. It would be weird. Very weird. Even though this is something I know I want, I start to panic a little, until I remember the person I trust more than anyone else in the world. Jase. And I decide he’s right. We’ll figure it out together.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  When I get home from Breakfast Ahoy, with sore feet and smelling like bacon and maple syrup, the only sign of Mom is a Post-it note: Vacuum living room. A task I blow off. The lines from the last vacuuming are still visible. The phone rings, but it’s not Mom. It’s Andy.

  “Samantha? Can you come over? Mom’s sick and Daddy isn’t home yet and I have, well, I’m going to see Kyle and…would it be okay if you babysat until Jase gets back? Duff isn’t good with diapers and Patsy has this major rash? You know, the kind you need a prescription cream for? It’s all over her bottom and down her legs.”

  I, of course, know nothing about diaper rash, but say I’ll be right over.

  The Garretts’ house is unusually hectic. “Mom’s upstairs, sleeping? She really doesn’t feel good.” Andy fills me in while trying to apply eyeliner and put on her shoes at the same time. I redo the eyeliner for her and French-braid her hair.

  “Has everyone eaten?”

  “Patsy. But the other guys are really hungry? Even though I gave them all Lucky Charms. Alice’s out with Brad or something? I can’t remember. Anyway”—Andy peers out the door—“Mr. Comstock’s here. Bye.” She dashes out, leaving me to Harry and Duff and George, who are practically brandishing forks, and Patsy, who smiles confidingly up at me and says, “Pooooooooooop.”

  I start to laugh. “This is what comes after boob?”

  Duff opens the refrigerator. Discouraged, he sighs. “Guess so. Mom’s really gonna have to get creative with the baby book. We got nothin’ here, Samantha. What’re you making for us?”

  In the end, the Garretts’ dinner that night consists of English muffin toaster pizzas, boxed macaroni and cheese, and my mom’s lemonade and broccoli/sun-dried tomato and pecan pasta salad (less than a success), which I send Duff over to my house to get, explaining about the special ice cubes.

  While I’m giving Patsy and George a bath, there’s a commotion from down the hall. Voldemort the corn snake has escaped again. I hear Duff’s footsteps thundering around, and Harry shouting excitedly, and then see this slim shape squiggling into the room, trying to coil itself into George’s dirty Transformer sneaker. I’m so proud of the way I reach out, scoop up Voldemort, and calmly hand him over to Duff. Without even screaming when Voldemort, evidently stressed, does what corn snakes will do, and defecates all over my hand. “Pooooooop!” Patsy shouts delightedly as I go over to the sink to wash it off.

  Half an hour later, Patsy’s asleep in her crib, with the five pacifiers she insists on holding in her hands—she never puts them in her mouth. George stretches out drowsily on the couch, nodding over Animal Planet’s Ten Most Startling Animal Metamorphoses. Duff’s on the computer, and Harry’s building what looks like the Pentagon out of Magna-Tiles when the door slams. In comes Alice, whose hair is now a deep auburn with an inexplicable blond streak in front, and Jase, evidently fresh from delivering lumber, sweaty and rumpled. He lifts his chin when he sees me, his face breaking into a broad smile. He heads toward me but Alice blocks him.

  “Shower before you smooch, J,” Alice says. “I rode in the Bug with you and you’re officially disgusting.”

  While he’s upstairs, I fill Alice in. “Mom’s asleep?” She’s incredulous. “Why?”

  I shrug. “Andy said she felt lousy.”

  “Crap, I hope it’s not the flu. I’ve got three tests coming up and no time to play stand-in mom.” Alice starts taking the dinner dishes off the table and dumping leftovers into the disposal.

  “Samantha’s done here now.” Jase, returning to the room, picks up a yellow plastic backscratcher that is on the kitchen counter, along with a pair of dirty socks, an empty Chips Ahoy! box, five Matchbox cars, Andy’s eyeliner, and a half-eaten banana. He taps the backscratcher on each of Alice’s shoulders. “You’re now officially Mom until Dad gets home. Samantha and I are going upstairs.” And he takes my hand, dragging me after him.

  But all that urgency is apparently more about getting away from the chaos downstairs than about luring me to his bed, because once we get up to the room, he just loops his arms around my waist and leans in for a leisurely kiss. Then he tilts back, surveying me.

  “What?” I ask, reaching back out for him, wanting more.

  “Here’s what I was wondering, Samantha. Do you want to—”

  “Yes,” I respond immediately.

  He laughs. “Here’s where you need to hear the actual question. I was thinking, a lot, about what we talked about this morning. How do you…? Do you…want to plan it all out or—”

  “You mean like the date and the time and the place? I think that would make me too tense. Like some sort of countdown. I don’t want to plan you. Not that way.”

  He looks relieved. “That’s how I feel. So I was thinking we should just make sure we’re…well, uh, prepared. Always. Then see when things move there so we’re both…”

  “Ready?” I ask.

  “Comfortable,” Jase suggests. “Prepared.”

  I give his shoulder a little shove. “Boy Scout.”

  “Well, they didn’t exactly have a badge for this.” Jase laughs. “Though that one would’ve been popular. Not to mention useful. I was in the pharmacy today and there are way too many options just in, uh, condoms.”

  “I know.” I smile at him. “I was there too.”

  “We should probably go together next time,” he says, picking up my hand, turning it over to kiss the inside of my wrist. My pulse jumps, just at that brush of his lips. Wow.

  In the end, we go to CVS later that night, because Mrs. Garrett wakes up and comes out of her room, rumpled in a sapphire bathrobe, to ask Jase to pick up some Gatorade. So here we are, in the family planning aisle with a cart full of sports drinks and our hands full of…“Trojans, Ramses, Magnum…Jeez, these are worse than names for muscle cars,” Jase observes, sliding his finger along the display.

  “They do sound sorta, well, forceful.” I flip over the box I’m holding to read the instructions.

  Jase glances up to smile at me. “Don’t worry, Sam. It’s just us.”

  “I don’t get what half these descriptions mean…What’s a vibrating ring?”

  “Sounds like the part that breaks on the washing machine. What’s extra-sensitive? That sounds like how we describe George.”

  I’m giggling. “Okay, would that be better or worse than ‘ultimate feeling’—and look—there’s ‘shared pleasure’ condoms and ‘her pleasure’ condoms. But there’s no ‘his pleasure.’”

  “I’m pretty sure that comes with the territory,” Jase says dryly. “Put down those Technicolor ones. No freaking way.”

  “But blue’s my favorite color,” I say, batting my eyelashes at him.

&nbsp
; “Put them down. The glow-in-the-dark ones too. Jesus. Why do they even make those?”

  “For the visually impaired?” I ask, reshelving the boxes.

  We move to the checkout line. “Enjoy the rest of your evening,” the clerk calls as we leave.

  “Do you think he knew?” I ask.

  “You’re blushing again,” Jase mutters absently. “Did who know what?”

  “The sales guy. Why we were buying these?”

  A smile pulls the corners of his mouth. “Of course not. I’m sure it never occurred to him that we were actually buying birth control for ourselves. I bet he thought it was…a…housewarming gift.”

  Okay, I’m ridiculous.

  “Or party favors,” I laugh.

  “Or”—he scrutinizes the receipt—“supplies for a really expensive water balloon fight.”

  “Visual aids for health class?” I slip my hand into the back pocket of Jase’s jeans.

  “Or little raincoats for…” He pauses, stumped.

  “Barbie dolls,” I suggest.

  “G.I. Joes,” he corrects, and slips his free hand into the back pocket of my jeans, bumping his hip against mine as we head back to the car.

  Brushing my teeth that night, listening to the sound of a summer rain battering against the windows, I marvel at how quickly things can completely change. A month ago, I was someone who had to put twenty-five unnecessary items—Q-tips and nail polish remover and Seventeen magazine and mascara and hand lotion—on the counter at CVS to distract the clerk from the box of tampons, the one embarrassing item I needed. Tonight I bought condoms, and almost nothing else, with the boy I’m planning to use them with.

  Jase took them all home, since my mom still periodically goes through my dresser drawers to align my clothes in order of color. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t buy the “supplies for a really expensive water balloon fight” excuse. When I asked if Mrs. Garrett would do the same and find them, Jase looked at me in complete mystification.

  “I do my own laundry, Sam.”

  I’ve never had a nickname. My mother’s always insisted on the full Samantha. Charley occasionally called me “Sammy-Sam” just because he knew it bugged me. But I like being Sam. I like being Jase’s Sam. It sounds relaxed, easygoing, competent. I want to be that person.

  I spit out toothpaste, staring at my face in the mirror. Someday, someday not too far away, Jase and I will use those condoms. Will I look different then? How different will I feel? How will we know when to say when?

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Two days later, Tim’s following my directions to Mom’s campaign office for an interview. He looks like a completely different person than the one at the wheel for the Bacardi run to New Hampshire, neatly clad in a khaki suit with a red and yellow striped tie. He drums his fingers on the steering wheel, lights a cigarette, smokes it, firing up another the moment he’s done.

  “You feeling okay?” I ask, indicating that he should turn left at the four-way intersection.

  “Like shit.” Tim tosses the latest cigarette butt out the window, punching the lighter down again. “I haven’t had a drink or a joint or anything in days. That’s the longest that’s happened since I was, like, eleven. I feel like shit.”

  “You sure you want this job? Campaigning—it’s all show—it makes me feel that way and I’m not even drying out.”

  Tim snorts. “Drying out? Who the hell says that? You talk like my frickin’ grandpa.”

  I roll my eyes. “Sorry I’m not all down with the current slang. You get my point anyway.”

  “I can’t stay home all day with Ma. She drives me up the frigging wall. And if I don’t prove that I’m doing ‘something valuable with my time,’ it’s off to do hard time at Camp Tomahawk.”

  “You’re joking. That’s the name of the place your parents want to send you?”

  “Somethin’ like that. Maybe it’s Camp Guillotine. Camp Castration? Whatever the hell it is, it doesn’t sound like anyplace I’ll survive. No way I’m gonna have some epiphany about how I need to apply myself to life while living on roots and berries and learning how to build a compass out of spiderwebs or whatever the hell they have you do when they drop you in the wilderness by yourself. That shit is just not me.”

  “I think you should go for the job with Jase’s dad.” I point to the right as we come to another intersection. “He’s a lot more relaxed than Mom. Plus, you’d have your evenings free.”

  “Jase’s dad runs a goddamn hardware store, Samantha. I don’t know the difference between a screwdriver and a wrench. I’m not Mr. Handyman like lover boy.”

  “I don’t think you’d have to fix anything, just sell the tools. It’s this building, right here.”

  Tim skids into the driveway of campaign headquarters, where the lawn is plastered with huge red, white, and blue GRACE REED: OUR TOWNS, OUR FAMILIES, OUR FUTURE posters. In some of them she’s wearing a yellow Windbreaker and shaking hands with fisherman or other heroic, salt-of-the-earth types. In others she’s the mom I know, hair coiled high, in a suit, talking to other “movers and shakers.”

  Tim hops out and walks up the sidewalk, yanking his tie straight. His fingers are trembling.

  “You going to be all right?”

  “Will ya quit asking that? It’s not like my answer’s gonna change. I feel like I’m about an eight point nine on the Richter scale.”

  “So don’t do this.”

  “I gotta do something or I’ll lose what’s left of my mind,” he snaps. Then, glancing at me, his voice softens. “Relax, kid. When not too blasted to pull it off, I’m the master of fakin’ it.”

  I’m sitting in the lobby flipping through People magazine and wondering how long this interview will run when I get a call on my cell from Jase.

  “Hey, baby.”

  “Hey yourself. I’m still at Tim’s interview.”

  “Dad said to swing by when you’re done if he wants to interview here. Bonus, the guy on staff kinda has a thing for you.”

  “That so? And how is this guy on staff—is he running the four-minute mile in army boots on the shore yet?”

  “Actually, no. Still coming up short. I think he was kind of distracted by the girl timing him, last few times he ran.”

  “That so? He should probably work on his focus, then, shouldn’t he?”

  “No way. He likes his focus right where it is, thanks. See you when you get here.”

  I’m smiling into the phone when Tim stomps back out and shakes his head at me. “You two are fuckin’ nauseating.”

  “How’d you know it was Jase?”

  “Gimme a break, Samantha. I could see you quivering from across the room.”

  I change the subject. “So how’d you go over with Mom’s campaign manager?”

  “Who is that officious little dude? He definitely gives the words ‘pompous dickhead’ a new dimension. But I’m hired.”

  Mom emerges from the back office and puts her hand on Tim’s shoulder, clenching tight.

  “Our Timothy is an up-and-comer, Samantha. I’m so proud! You should spend more time with him. He really knows where he’s going.”

  I nod icily while Tim smirks.

  Once we’re out on the sidewalk I ask, “What exactly did you do to deserve that?”

  Tim snorts. “Hell, Samantha. I would’ve been kicked out of Ellery years ago if I hadn’t learned how to suck up to the powers that be. I wrote a paper on the Reagan years last winter. In there”—he indicates the building behind us—“I just plagiarized a bunch of phrases from the Gipper. The little dude and your mom practically had orgasms—”

  I hold up my hand. “I get the picture.”

  “What’s with you and Nan? Damn, you two are uptight,” Tim says. He drives—too fast—for a few minutes, then says, “Sorry! I feel like I’m gonna jump out of my skin. All I really want to do is get spun.”

  Hoping, ridiculously, that this will distract him, I tell him about Mr. Garrett’s offer.

  “I’m de
sperate enough to fill my time to try this. But if I have to wear a frickin’ apron, there’s no way I’m taking this job.”

  “No apron. And Alice drops in a lot.”

  “Sold.” Tim lights up once again.

  When we get to the store, Mr. Garrett and Jase are behind the counter. Jase has his back to us as we walk in the door. The way Mr. Garrett is leaning forward, resting his elbows on the countertop, is the same way Jase relaxes against the kitchen table at his house. He’s huskier than Jase, more like Joel. Will Jase look like him when he’s in his forties? Will I know him then?

  Mr. Garrett glances up, spotting us. He smiles. “Tim Mason—from Cub Scouts. I was your troop leader, remember?”

  Tim looks alarmed. “You fu—er—remember me and you’re willing to interview me anyhow?”

  “Sure. Let’s go in the back office. You can take off the jacket and tie, though. No point being uncomfortable.”

  Tim follows him down the corridor, looking uncomfortable anyway, sensing that plagiarizing Ronald Reagan won’t help in this situation.

  “So, was your dad always a hard-ass?” Tim asks, driving us home an hour later.

  I’m automatically defensive, but Jase seems unperturbed. “I thought you’d think so.”

  I watch Jase’s profile in the passenger seat of the car, his hair flipping in the wind. I’m in the back. Tim’s again working his way through way too many cigarettes. I wave my hand in front of my face and open my window a little further.

  “Helluva condition for employment.” Tim tips the sunshade down so the packet of Marlboros falls into his lap. “Not sure it’s worth it.”

  “No skin off my back.” Jase shrugs. “But is it any worse than now? Can’t see how, really.”

  “It’s not that it’s worse, asshole. It’s that it’s not a choice.”

  “Like you’ve got so many,” Jase says. “Worth a try, I’d say, man.”

  I feel as though they’re speaking in code. I have no idea what is going on. When I lean forward to look at his profile, he seems elusive, not that boy who kisses me good night so sweetly.