I shrugged. “Sure.” My crazy heart thumped like a bongo drum.
“Why did you let me take you around the track if you thought I was going to do that jump with you?”
That’s his big question? I chewed and swallowed. “You won our bet. That was the deal.”
“Do you trust me that much, or are you that ready to get hurt? Because I know you’re not an adrenaline junkie.”
I propped myself on my elbows and thought about it. “I guess I trust you.”
“How come?”
Deep breath. “You’ve never done anything to make me not trust you.” I looked down and away. “I mean, I’m not scared of you.” Anymore.
“I would never, ever hurt you.”
I looked across the counter and saw the same expression on his face that Drew had at the midway. “Really?”
His voice got low, and kind of grim. “You don’t believe me.”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“You don’t sound like you believe me.” He sighed and took a bite of his sandwich. “Okay. Your turn. Ask me anything.”
I remembered the voice from the championship: If you want to know, ask him yourself.
“Anything?”
He nodded.
How do I ask this?
Damon crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. The intensity in his eyes made it even harder to string a sentence together.
“Let me guess.” He scowled. “Juvie, right?”
I looked down at my sandwich, then back up at him again. “You said anything.”
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
“Anything,” I reminded him.
“Nobody else knows all this except Adam.” He rubbed the heels of his hands against his forehead. “I mean, I’m pretty sure Dad knows, but we never talk about it.”
I finished my sandwich and picked up my milk. My hands needed something to do.
“It was just over a year ago, not long after we moved back. Dad had us in private school, where Mom used to teach before Africa.”
“That’s why I never met you before.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Dad travels for work a lot, and he’d leave us by ourselves for a couple of days at a time. We were supposed to stick together, never go anywhere alone, you know.”
“You were in seventh grade?”
“Eighth. So Dad’s gone, and Adam wants to go to this party some senior was throwing. I told him not to be an idiot. He’d already been in trouble before, for drinking and other stuff. But I couldn’t keep him from going.”
My thumbs drew squiggly lines in the condensation on my glass. “And you went too?”
“I thought I could keep him out of trouble or something. Stupid, huh?”
“Optimistic, maybe.”
“Good word.” He smiled. “So there’s alcohol at the party, of course. Beer and coolers. Nothing harder, that I saw.” He took a deep breath and looked out the window.
I looked out too, and waited. And waited.
“I really don’t want to tell you about this.”
Maybe I didn’t really want to hear it. “You don’t have to.”
“Yeah. I do. You should know.” He pushed his plate away.
“Whatever it is, it doesn’t matter,” I told him.
The way he looked at me then—I’d never seen him scared before.
I reached across and touched his hand. He took mine in both of his and looked down at my fingers.
“I knew Adam smoked occasionally. He’d offered me weed a couple of times, but I never tried it. I thought it was stupid.” He shook his head and looked out the window again.
“It’s okay,” I said.
His eyes closed, and he took a deep breath and blew it out again. “I was mad that night, for a lot of reasons. Partly because of Mom. Some because of Dad. And some other stuff, I can’t even remember now. Then this older kid comes over with a joint and offers it to me.” He stopped again.
“And you took it.”
“And I took it. I smoked it, and wow. Man.” He turned to me. “Just don’t ever try it, okay? Promise me that?”
I nodded. “So what happened?”
“I’m all… not really there. And the guy tells me I can make a load on the stuff. Selling it at school. He shows me a fifty dollar bill and tucks it in my shirt pocket. An advance, he called it.”
His thumbs drew circles around the backs of my hand, but I barely felt it.
“Seriously, Julie. I was so high, I can’t even remember how everything happened. But all of the sudden there’s a cop in front of me and he pulls the money out of my shirt and three bags of weed out of my pants pocket, spins me around and cuffs me.”
“Oh my gosh.”
“I got charged with possession and intent to sell.”
“Holy cow.” I put my glass down and just looked at the table.
“Now you know.”
“Geez. Where was Adam?” I whispered.
Damon shook his head. “He couldn’t do anything.”
“But he’s still partying? Even after that?”
“He’s messed up.” He sighed, ran his fingers through his hair and leaned forward on his elbows.
I pulled my hand out and put it on top of one of his. “Adam said you’ve had to pay for his screw-ups. What did he mean?”
“He blames himself for that. For taking me.”
“Maybe he should.”
Damon shook his head. “It was my decision. I went. I smoked. My stupidity.”
“Still.”
“Anyway, in the end, it might’ve been the best thing that could’ve happened.”
“Juvie? How so?”
He exhaled and smiled. “That’s another story. For another time. And anyway, it’s my turn.”
“For what?”
“To ask you something.”
“When did we start playing Truth-or-Dare?”
“Who said anything about a dare? Unless, of course…”
“Go ahead. Ask.”
“You’ve seriously never kissed anybody?”
My stomach flipped. “I think I already answered that at the Olympics.” I didn’t need a mirror to know my face was bright red. “Okay. My turn. What about you?”
“Yeah, I have.”
My jaws and knuckles clenched up and I pulled my hand out of his. Both Amica’s and Mandy’s faces popped into my head. I tossed them out, but then my imagination painted a picture of some beautiful private school girl. I wanted to tear out her hair. Storm out of Damon’s house. Turn back the clock to before we started this conversation. Change the way things happened and kiss Drew just so I’d have some history of my own.
“When I was eight.”
Eight? “That doesn’t count!”
“Why not?”
“Seriously? Okay, then, who was she?”
“Akouvi. Our house helper’s daughter.”
“And how many times did you kiss her?”
“She kissed me, for the record. Just once.”
“Did you break her heart, then?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“So what happened?”
He paused a long time, and I wondered how much that kiss had meant to him.
“She died,” he said. “She got mad at me and Adam one time, and walked home alone at night. And we let her. And I’d rather not talk about how she died.”
My breath caught in my throat. “Geez, there’s a lot of death in your life.”
“There shouldn’t have been as much as there is.”
* * * * *
We sat on the couch and discussed what to draw for almost an hour before I picked up a pencil. Damon didn’t like most of my ideas: get even with Sweeney, get back at Drew, get revenge on Mandy.
“You have a lot of anger, Julie.”
His ideas didn’t inspire me. Make a tree appear in the yard. Change the color of his dad’s truck. Fix the new dirt bike they’d pulled out of a junkyard.
“I don’t even know how
an engine works. How would I draw it?”
“I could teach you.” He pointed to the paintings I’d carried on my lap when he rode me back to his place after school. “Can I see those?”
I nodded and he took them out of their bags.
“That’s Mark’s girlfriend?”
“Ex, unfortunately.”
“If you like her so much, draw them back together.”
“I like her too much to do that to her. Mark’s an idiot.”
Damon stared at me. So I told him about the Ferris Wheel. And I pointed out the ring I’d drawn on Ginger’s hand.
“Does she need a guy to be happy?” he asked.
“That’s a weird question.”
“No, it isn’t.” He put the paintings back in the bag.
I thought about it. “I guess not. But she’s really pretty. Gorgeous, actually. Guys are all over her.”
“Doesn’t mean she can’t be happy without one.”
“I guess.” I peeled a layer off the end of one of my fingernails. “But it was fun to draw it for her.”
He nodded. “Then maybe you could pick two people at school and put them together.”
“How do you mean? Like get them to go with each other?”
He nodded. “Two people you’d never put together in a million years.”
“Like Mark and Pam?”
“Exactly.”
My mind began to pair faces, but nothing clicked right away. I completely blanked for a few seconds, then two photos slid toward each other from the far edges of my imagination.
“How about Mr. Tollin and Miss Downey?”
Damon stared at me again. “Teachers? You want to put teachers together?”
“Why not?”
“Can you draw them?”
I reached into my bag for my colored pencils. “If I’ve seen it, I can draw it.”
“They completely hate each other, right?”
I laid the box on the coffee table. “Not for long, if this works.”
With a number two pencil I sketched Miss Downey’s doorway around the edges of the page. Then I did an outline of her profile where she leaned against the edge of the doorjamb.
“Don’t forget to talk while you’re drawing.” He scooted closer.
“Right. So I just describe it out loud?”
“I guess so.”
With two quick strokes I made the angle of her eye socket, positioned to look up at where Mr. Tollin would be. “I’m drawing Mr. Tollin and Miss Downey standing in her doorway. They’re falling in love.” My heart tripped a little on the word love. “Should I do them kissing?”
Damon’s eyes got really big. “You want to draw two teachers making out in the hallway?”
I giggled. “I don’t know. If we want them together, something in the picture has to show that, right?”
“Maybe just holding hands?” he suggested.
“That’s kind of boring.”
“Straight to second base, huh? You’re faster than I thought.”
My cheeks heated and my stomach fluttered. “I’m not the one who’s been kissing since I was eight.” I looked back down at the sketch and tried to ignore the ticklish sensation that feathered through my nervous system. “Maybe he’s touching her cheek. That’s pretty romantic.”
I erased a section of Miss Downey’s jawline and sketched in Mr. Tollin’s thumb. His other four fingers lay against her neck.
“Wow,” Damon said.
“What?”
He pointed at the paper. “That’s amazing. That looks just like a hand. Knuckles and everything.”
He’s impressed I can draw a hand?
“Mr. Tollin stares into her eyes.” I traced his profile above and to the left of Miss Downey’s, with his face tipped more toward her than against the door frame. Straight, heavy eyebrows gave his gaze an intensity that might look like anger, if not for the way his hand cupped her jaw.
With a softer gray I filled in their features, and used the side of the peach pencil to bring warmth to the skin.
“That looks just like them. How are you doing that?”
“It’s just in my head. I don’t know.”
“I have lots of stuff in my head, but I can’t make it come out my hands.”
Mr. Tollin’s brown eyes fell partway shut, while Miss Downey’s hazel eyes opened wide. “She’s surprised, but happy,” I said, and added her hand on Mr. Tollin’s forearm. I put down my pencil and looked the picture over. “There.”
“Very cool.” Damon picked up my sketchbook and looked at it for a few seconds. “Amen?”
“What do you mean?”
“Amen. ‘So be it.’” He shrugged. “It’s kind of like a prayer. You’re drawing something you want to have happen.”
“Okay,” I said. “Amen.”
He studied the picture for a long time. “That’s amazing.”
“Only if it happens,” I said and started to put my pencils away.
“Huh-uh.” He put the drawing down and reached for my hand. “It’s amazing you can even do that.”
He took my right hand in both of his and looked at it like he’d just discovered some freaky, alien creature no one had ever seen. One of his hands circled my wrist while his other thumb ran over the backs of my knuckles.
His two middle fingers rested against my palm and triggered this electric tremor in me that circled outward over the rest of my body, like ripples on the surface of water. Four of my five senses spun upside-down and inside-out in the rush of all his nearness, and my half-open mouth got drier with each breath my fluttery chest sucked in.
He turned my hand over and held it in his as he traced around the insides of my fingers and the crisscross lines in my palm.
My mind took me back to the midway, to Drew. I trembled at the warmth of Damon’s hand under mine and shuddered at the memory of Drew’s cold eyes when I wouldn’t kiss him.
Damon’s fingertips followed the tendons up my inner wrist, then stopped at the cuff of my sleeve. His eyes moved up my arm, over my shoulder and neck, to my face.
I swallowed. My hungry fifth sense wanted in on this. Bad.
He looked at me. “You’re breathing kind of fast.”
I looked at his mouth. “Uh-huh.”
He stared back.
Did he just lean closer?
“Are you okay?”
Okay? Are you stupid? I want you to kiss me so bad I think I’m going to die of it!
Footsteps pounded down the stairs at the same moment the front door swung open.
“Adam!” I said, and jerked my hand away.
“Dad!” Damon stood up and looked way more guilty than he had a reason to.
Adam landed at the bottom of the steps and stood there. He looked at me, then at Damon, then at me. He cackled. “Dad,” he said. “I think you and I have very bad timing.”
Mr. Sheppard looked back and forth between Damon and me, too. “Or very good,” he said, and closed the door behind him. He put his suitcase by the door and went to hang his keys on the hook beside the garage.
Damon sat down, a few inches farther away from me than before. Adam jumped over the arm of the chair at the other corner of the couch, flopped down and put his feet up on the coffee table. He sat there with a big, fat grin on his face.
Mr. Sheppard stopped halfway into the living room. He stared at me so long it felt kind of creepy.
Then he shook his head and sort of laughed. “This must be Julie.” He reached out his hand.
When I stood up, Damon did too. I shook his dad’s hand. “It’s nice to meet you, sir.” I totally sound guilty.
“‘Sir’?” Adam cackled again.
“Hey, Dad,” Damon said. “Welcome home.”
“Just… sit down,” their dad said, then took off his coat and hung it in the closet.
He turned around, took a big breath and blew it out again. Damon did the same thing on the rare occasions when he didn’t know what to say.
“Has everybody eaten already??
??
Damon said, “No,” and I said, “Yes.”
“I’m going out.” Adam stood up and headed for the door.
Mr. Sheppard checked his watch. “At almost eight o’clock? Kind of late, isn’t it?”
Adam grabbed some keys. “Nope.”
“Is it really eight o’clock?” I asked.
“Time flies when you’re having fun,” Adam said, then disappeared into the garage and we heard the overhead door swing open.
Mr. Sheppard looked at the table. My sketch of Mr. Tollin and Miss Downey lay there, wide open. I don’t think I could’ve been more embarrassed if he actually walked in on Damon and me making out.
“I probably need to get home,” I said, and gathered up my stuff.
“Don’t leave on my account.”
I shook my head. “No. I just didn’t realize what time it was.”
Damon’s dad looked at him. “I hope Julie getting here didn’t involve a bike.”
Out in the garage the motorcycle’s engine roared to life and drove out of the garage. Mr. Sheppard closed his eyes and shook his head.
“Just the mountain bike,” Damon told him.
“It’s getting too dark to take her home that way.” He went to the closet and pulled his and Damon’s coats out again. “I’ll drive you.”
I wanted to argue, but till right then I hadn’t given much thought to how I’d get home.
Snow drifted out of the night sky, tufts of pure white against an endless dark. We climbed into Mr. Sheppard’s truck and he clicked the wipers on to clear off the windshield. Damon put me in the middle, and I really wished he hadn’t. But he put his arm on the back of the seat behind me, and I scootched a little closer to him. The paintings that propped on my knees rested against the dashboard.
“You should show those to Dad,” Damon said. “Julie’s an amazing artist.”
“So I’ve heard,” his dad said.
Thankful for the darkness in the truck’s cab, I blushed and elbowed Damon. “I live on Busco Road.”
He nodded. “Out past the barn, right?” He shifted gears as we pulled onto the highway. “Either of you been to it yet? I saw they opened the haunted house again this year.”
“Not yet,” Damon said. “You want to go this weekend?”
A date. I think I just got asked out on my very first date. And Mark was right. I couldn’t have cared less what Mom or Dad thought about it. “Sure.”
We pulled up to my house and I thanked Mr. Sheppard for the ride. Damon opened the door and took the paintings for me while I got out.
“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said. I took my stuff.
We both glanced in at his dad. Mr. Sheppard stared straight ahead with his hands at the top of the steering wheel.
Damon stuck his hands in his pockets. “Yeah. Good-night.”