I elbowed my way through the partygoers, determined not to lose sight of Jennifer. The output of effort required to stay within range drove home the reality: I was pursuing her. I was after her. If there was still ambiguity in our relationship by the end of the night, it was not going to be for lack of trying. It was only then that I admitted to myself that our brief wrestling match in the Beamer Wednesday afternoon had been very much on my mind ever since.
The living room was a wild scene. The dancing was fevered, driven, the music so loud that the vibration of the bass had knocked crooked every single picture on the walls. At the kegs, a beer war was in progress. Intrepid soldiers were spraying each other from the taps, while their lieutenants kept the pumps going and the pressure up. Still others argued angrily that squandering this precious resource was a crime against humanity.
I could see some of the Fitz kids now. In fact, most of the regulars were here. They were just hard to spot among the hundreds of newcomers. Some of the Broncos had the curtains down and were tossing cheerleaders, hammock-style. Melissa was one of the tossees, but the men in her life, Nelson and Todd, were still nowhere to be found.
I’d almost caught up to Jennifer. Reaching ahead, I grabbed her by the arm and spun her around. If she was surprised to see me tailing her, she didn’t show it. Without missing a beat, she pulled me onto the dance floor, which was easy, because everywhere was sort of the dance floor. I did my best to gyrate along with the tight crush of people, but my attention kept wandering to the picture window over Jennifer’s shoulder.
Out on the street, hundreds of headlights just hung there, unmoving. As packed as the party was, things were going to get worse. These were potential guests, waiting for parking spaces to open up. It occurred to me that if anybody left this house and drove away, there was going to be a fifty-car pileup out there as the whole world pounced simultaneously on the single open spot.
Jennifer frowned. “What are you looking at, Ricky?”
I was transfixed by a single headlight, growing steadily larger and brighter. It was an illogical thought, but the image that appeared in my mind was an express train, bearing down at top speed, about to flatten the Garrett house.
The roar of machinery drowned out the music—something I would not have believed possible. The door burst open, sending pieces of the lock and frame skittering across the floor. A big Harley exploded into the front hall. Kids dove out of its path, the contents of their drinks sloshing in all directions. The driver swerved left to avoid a tall rubber tree plant, and lost what little control he had. He went flying, and the chopper, now on its side, skidded across the tile floor and crashed into the newel post at the bottom of the stairs.
I wasn’t exactly sure how I got there, because I don’t remember running. Most likely, I was carried by the tide of people rushing to see if the driver was dead.
He wasn’t. He shook off his helmet to reveal shoulder-length blond hair, bloody nose, and rapidly swelling lips.
I was the only person with the brains to reach over and turn off the Harley’s motor before the carbon monoxide killed every single one of us. The roar sputtered and died just in time for us to hear the guy’s “explanation” of what had happened:
“There’s no place to park out there!”
Oh, that was reasonable. If you can’t find a spot, your only alternative is to drive your motorcycle up the front walk, through a closed door, and into a roomful of innocent bystanders.
I waited for the crowd to fall on the driver and beat his stupid head in. Instead, they acted like it all made sense to them. A bunch of kids hauled him to his feet, dusted him off, and escorted him to join the chaos. He went, too, without so much as a casual glance at his disabled Harley, its ruptured tank leaking gas all over the tile floor.
Well, that was just peachy. A houseful of smokers and a big puddle of gasoline.
“Hey!” I called to the dispersing group. “We’ve got to clean this up!”
Jennifer looked at me as if I’d just suggested she dredge the harbor. “It’s not my bike,” she shrugged.
I dipped two fingers in the spill and held them up to her nose. “Take a whiff.”
She sniffed and wrinkled her nose. “Seagram’s?”
“Exxon! It’s gas! One spark could put us all on the moon!”
She thought that was hilarious. But when I grabbed the roll of paper towels from the pizza table, she accepted a few sheets and went to work alongside me.
We scrubbed and sopped until we ran out of towels. We finished the job with a couple of rolls of toilet tissue from the bathroom where Todd and Melissa had first begun the extracurricular activity that was probably going to bring us all down, and soon.
I watched in horror as Jennifer started to cram the gas-soaked paper into an overstuffed garbage can.
“No!” I exclaimed, digging out an armful. “Someone could toss a lit cigarette in there!”
I looked around. The place was a mob scene. It wasn’t exactly ideal for HAZMAT disposal.
I headed for the open front door. There were almost as many people out there as in the house. Points of light hovered about like orange fireflies—glowing cigarettes, each one a potential explosion. They fluttered all over the lawn. No way could we dump the stuff outside.
“I know,” said Jennifer, who was treating this whole thing like it was some kind of parlor game—Flammable Pictionary. “Let’s flush it down the toilet.”
“Are you going to pay Jake’s Roto-Rooter bill?”
But she had a point. The only safe way was to get the gas-soaked paper in water.
My eyes fell on Budweiser Central—the four gleaming kegs and, more important, the two wading pools full of ice cubes and slush. Perfect.
It took a few trips, but pretty soon we had all the towels and tissue in the melted water around the silver canisters.
“Hey, cross-bite, what are you doing to my property?” Marty Rapaport lurched over, his arm around the waist of one of the stars of the girls’ volleyball team.
Shouting to be heard over the music, I explained about the motorcycle crash and the gas cleanup.
He brayed a laugh right in my face. “You two better get in there with it. You smell like a Mobil station.”
I gave my sleeve a sniff. He was right. One spark, and I was cremated. Jennifer had the same problem.
“We’d better wash up,” I decided.
The downstairs bathroom was locked tight as a drum. From the inside, you could hear the most horrible groaning and retching.
“Technicolor yawn,” Jennifer reported. “We’ll have to go upstairs.”
Navigating the staircase wasn’t easy. There were Slinky races in progress, and the betting was heavy. When I accidentally knocked one off course with my foot, I thought the owner was going to kill me. It took three of his friends to wrestle him to the floor, which was the only way to hold him back from throwing a punch at my face. Jennifer made a point of grinding her heel into his hand as we passed by.
We were lucky enough to catch the second-floor bathroom open. We slipped in and locked the door behind us.
I wet a washcloth and started sponging at the front of my shirt. I looked down and noticed that Jennifer was doing the same—only her sweater was spread out on the bathmat!
I dropped the cloth. At that moment, I wouldn’t have noticed if my shirt was soaked with sulphuric acid that was eating my flesh down to the bone. The cleanup operation, for all intents and purposes, was over.
As turned on as I was, I didn’t have the guts to make the first move. Instead, I stood there, waiting for her to notice me noticing her.
She kept on sponging, pretending this was a regular occurrence, and that she socialized in a black lace bra all the time.
And then I was down there with her. To this day, I couldn’t tell you how I got there. It’s entirely possible that I fell.
But the timing was perfect. I rolled to her, she rolled to me, and that was the start of a whole lot of rolling.
&nbs
p; My lips, still swollen from their collision with a row of lockers, stung as I kissed her. I didn’t care. I pressed my mouth to hers, grooving on the pain—confirmation that we were close and getting closer. My head banged against the side of the bathtub. Her elbow knocked over the laundry hamper. My mother, the real estate agent who sold this house, obviously knew nothing about the dimensions required for good maneuverability.
“Ricky, you’re such an idiot,” she murmured in my ear. “What the hell took you so long?”
I never knew being insulted could be so sexy. Jennifer and Rick, thrown together since forever, explored each other for the first time. And every touch, every sensation was supercharged with seventeen years of anticipation.
Funny, at this most adult of moments between me and her, I sank into a flashback that carried me to her sixth birthday party, eleven years before. We had played Pin the Tail on the Labrador retriever—Jennifer didn’t like donkeys. And when it was time to go home, I was the last to leave. I remember being so proud about that. It marked me as special. I got to stick around while Jennifer took an inventory of all her loot. There was one present—some kind of Barbie doll, the one with the surfboard. She didn’t even open the package before tossing it disdainfully into the wastebasket.
“What did you do that for?”
“Liam gave the same Barbie to Kelsey two weeks ago,” she said righteously.
“So?” I knew nothing about dolls. “Maybe it’s a good one.”
“If he wants to come to my party, he can’t give me the same thing he gives everybody else!”
I had to hand it to her. She was tough. Even at age six.
At the time, though, I was mystified. “But why?”
“Because it’s all about me.”
Wait a minute. She couldn’t have said that. Not then …
The flashback popped with a peal of laughter from Jennifer—today’s Jennifer.
“What?” I murmured. Maybe I was short on technique, but no one ever laughed.
“Look!”
I followed her gaze to the overturned laundry hamper. Among the tumbled boxers and sweat socks lay a white T-shirt, size Jake. On the front was written: MATHLETES DO IT BY THE NUMBERS, and in smaller letters: MCKINLEY MATH TEAM, 2001.
“I guess Jake needs another deadbolt,” I mumbled, and reached for her again.
“Nerd alert!” she giggled.
“It’s his shirt, Jen, not his mission statement.”
“No, really,” she insisted, her hot breath tickling my ear. “Didi told me. She finally ’fessed up. That’s why she never gave Jake the time of day at McKinley. The guy was a wedgie looking for a place to happen.”
“Give me a break—” But even as I protested, the pieces were coming together in my mind. The honors classes, college papers, chess trophy, math tutor …
“It’s not so crazy, you know,” she reasoned. “Around her friends, Didi had an image to maintain—prom queen, supermodel, who’s who in Who’s Who. But in front of Jake, who was nobody, she could be herself.”
“And she started to like him,” I concluded.
“He was the only person she could really talk to.”
“How long did they go out for?”
She glared at me, exasperated. “They went out for zero, that’s how long. This wasn’t the Jake you and I know.”
“She liked him,” I persisted.
“Look,” she said. “Cool people can have uncool friends, and it’s fine so long as they don’t expect to get invited to the same parties, and hang with the same crowd, and date the same level of person. Jake was sweet, but life isn’t Revenge of the Nerds. She hadn’t thought twice about the guy until two weeks ago.”
No wonder Jake was so mixed up. Always thinking he had to buy my friendship with fancy lunches or catered breakfasts; feeling he had to have something to offer, like just being himself wasn’t enough. It certainly hadn’t been enough for Didi Ray.
“Kind of lousy,” I mumbled.
“What was she supposed to do?” Jennifer argued. “Chuck everything for her math tutor? He had potential, sure. But Didi’s never been much of a creative thinker. Caterpillars aren’t her type. She’ll only go for a finished butterfly.”
“Maybe life is Revenge of the Nerds,” I said thoughtfully.
She nodded. “He almost pulled it off. But he couldn’t keep his mouth shut—bugging Didi to dump Todd. Like that’s ever going to happen!” She climbed over me, straddling my chest to look straight down into my eyes. “Poor Jake. The whole thing’s so pathetic, I almost care.”
That ended it. If she’d offered up a truckload of gold bars along with herself, I still would have said no.
The decision brought seventeen years of gradually building sexual tension down to earth with a dull thud. Don’t get me wrong—I didn’t owe it to Jake. If the tables were turned, he would have sold my soul to the devil for five more minutes with Didi. I almost understood it, too. After what had happened to that poor guy two years before, it was easy to see how Didi was more than a girlfriend to him.
She was the ultimate affirmation, a megaphone blaring: I’m as good as you! Don’t I have the girl of everybody’s fantasies right here in my arms? It must have been enough to erase years of teasing that had surely been directed at an exceptionally bright kid.
“Way to go, Jake,” I said aloud.
Jennifer frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
My departure was slowed by the fact that I was half dressed and on the bottom. I climbed out from beneath her, buttoning my shirt.
She was mystified. “Ricky, what’s wrong?”
I could have, and probably should have told her that she was under Jake’s roof, buzzed on his champagne, stuffed with his pizza, and fooling around on his real estate while bad-mouthing him. But if she had to ask, she didn’t deserve the explanation.
She was getting angry now, covering herself up with her damp sweater. “What is your problem?” she snapped.
“You were right the first time,” I told her. “It’s all about you.”
I walked out, slamming the bathroom door behind me.
chapter fourteen
I WENT DOWNSTAIRS to find the party careening along at an appalling pace. The noise was up to the point of pain, and looking down from above, I couldn’t spot one inch of floor. It was wall-to-wall people. At the foot of the stairs lay the motorcycle, now a piece of the Garrett house’s topography. Everyone accepted it as they would the living-room couch. There was even a guy using one of the mirrors as a cup-holder.
The decision to go home was already set in my mind. I reversed myself, though, when I saw Todd Buckley slip in the broken door. There was no way I could leave without giving Jake a heads-up that there was trouble brewing. But before I could begin what was looking like an impossible search, Todd went into action.
He strode to the center of the living room. It was something to see how the crowd parted to let him through. I knew the Fitz kids would make way for royalty, but how did Throckmorton Hall and all these strangers know this was the great Todd Buckley?
Maybe he just had an air of command, because he went where he pleased, right up to the stereo, and yanked out the plug. The sudden quiet was as jarring as a bomb blast. All conversation ground to a halt. Jake’s house, this boiler factory, this cacophony, was as silent as a tomb.
“Garrett!” Todd bellowed. “Get in here, Garrett! I’ve got something to say to you!”
There were a few wisecracks from the college kids, but they petered out in a hurry. It was pretty plain that whatever was happening, it was dead serious. I noticed a few of the Broncos shuffling closer to be near their captain at his big moment.
“Gar-rett!”
“Right here.”
Our host entered from the hall that led to the laundry room. I was surprised to see the Jake smile on his face—and not a fake one, either. Maybe it was because he had Didi by his side, and that was all he’d ever wanted or cared about. A face-off with Todd had alway
s been a part of the deal. He was ready, even happy to do this, if it put him a step closer to her.
It’s hard to explain, but I was proud of him right then. Every fold of his J. Crew cottons was perfect, even though he had to squeeze through the sweat-soaked crowd to make his appearance. He didn’t have a hair out of place, and his lithe, graceful gait reminded me of the first time I’d met him in this very room three weeks before. Back then I’d remarked on his poise under pressure. After all that had happened, now I was thinking, that goes double for tonight.
I began to push my way through the clammy bodies.
Marty Rapaport grabbed me and held back my progress. “Hey, cross-bite, what’s going on? What is this, the O.K. Corral?”
I heard Jake’s greeting to Todd. “Glad you could make it, baby. What’s up?”
For a second there, I toyed with the possibility that he could brazen it through, that his sheer faith in who he’d become might do the job for him. This wasn’t the old Jacob Garrett. This was Jake, reinvented. But as soon as Todd started talking, I knew the battle was lost.
“When I was at the recruiting seminar, I ran into some old friends of yours from McKinley, Jake—or should I say Jacob? Funny thing—the Jake Garrett they remember is a lot different from you. They told me about a nerdy little shrimp with giant glasses on his snot nose and a protractor sticking out of his butt.”
Jake’s voice remained calm, but his face was reddening. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Maybe that’s because you spent so much time stuffed into your locker by people who were sick of hearing about your science-fair projects and math trophies,” Todd sneered. “And don’t forget the chess club—you practically owned it, didn’t you? Answer me this—how come a total loser at McKinley is suddenly all that at Fitz?”
Jake tried to stem the onslaught. “Listen, baby—”