“Come on, Val,” coaxed Larry. “Kim needs you more than they do. She’s stuck with taking her stepsister to see Twilight tonight for the fifth time. The kid’s a brat, and she’s driving poor Kim up the walls. I thought you and I could give her some moral support.”
That threw a different light on the situation. A group of four was not the same as a twosome. Besides, with the current atmosphere at home so unpleasant, the thought of an evening away from the house was enticing.
“All right,” I said. “I guess we can’t let Kim down. Do you want to meet at the theater, or do you have wheels?”
“Kim’s stepdad’s letting her take the car,” Larry told me. “The show starts at eight, so we’ll pick you up around seven thirty. Where do you live? Information didn’t have your address.”
“We’re on Lemon Lane,” I told him. “It’s not easy to find. The house is set back in the trees and can’t be seen from the road. It’ll be on your right, and the mailbox in front says ‘Jefferson.’”
“I know the place,” said Larry. “I’ve been to parties there. Kim used to date Pete Jefferson before the family moved to Tampa. We’ll be by for you in about half an hour.”
I had not realized it was already so late. Hurriedly I excused myself from the table to take a quick shower and change from shorts into jeans. By the time I had combed my hair and applied some lipstick, Kim’s car had pulled into the driveway, and its headlights were staring in through our living room window like a pair of dragon eyes.
A moment later Larry was at the door, and Jason was racing across the room to open it.
“Hi!” he said. “Are you my sister’s new boyfriend?”
“Jason!” I gasped in horror, but Larry looked pleased.
“Not yet,” he said, “but it might be something worth considering.”
“Mom, Dad, this is Larry Bushnell,” I said quickly in an effort to ward off further remarks from my brother. “Larry’s the friend I play tennis with every morning.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” said Dad, extending his hand.
Mom said, “We’re so glad Valerie’s found another tennis buff. From what she says, you must be an excellent player.”
“She’s pretty good herself, for a girl,” said Larry. “The coach at school’s going to flip when he sees her serve. Tennis is a big deal here in Grove City. With Val on the team, I bet our girls make it to Nationals.”
He and my parents chatted a few minutes longer, and then Kim beeped her horn to tell us to get a move on.
“Your parents seem cool,” Larry said as we descended the steps and crossed the weed-infested yard to the car. “And your brother—when I first saw him, I couldn’t believe it. I’ve never seen a kid with different-color eyes before.”
The realization struck me like a fist in the stomach. Jason had not been wearing his contacts!
“Don’t mention his eyes to anyone,” I said hastily. “He’s self-conscious about them and usually wears contact lenses.”
“Whatever you say,” Larry said. “I thought they looked awesome.” He opened the door of the car, and the dome light popped on.
“Hi, Val,” said Kim. “I’d like you to meet my stepsister. Abby, this is a friend of ours, Val Weber.”
The girl who was seated beside her turned to peer back at me, and a second punch in the stomach all but finished me.
“Why do you call her that?” asked Abby Keller. “That girl isn’t named Val Weber, she’s April Gross.”
CHAPTER 10
Of course, I did what I had to do. I bluffed. I stared at the girl as though I had never seen her before and asked in feigned bewilderment, “What are you talking about?”
She returned my stare with narrowed blue eyes, not in the least intimidated by my reaction.
“Gross,” she said. “You’re the girl with the ‘gross’ last name.”
“Abby, please, don’t be rude to my friends,” Kim said. “How would you feel if somebody said that about your name?”
“That’s not what I meant,” Abby said. “She knows what I meant. She sat with me on the plane coming down from Richmond. She told me her name was April Gross and that she and her Mom were going to Sarasota. Why is she pretending to be somebody else?”
“You’re mistaken,” I said firmly. “You may have sat next to somebody who looked like me, but my name is Valerie Weber. I’ve never been to Virginia, and I’m certainly not staying in Sarasota. My parents and brother and I are from North Carolina.”
“That’s not true!” Abby insisted. “I always remember people. I never make mistakes about things like that.”
“Anybody can make a mistake,” Larry said. I could tell he was struggling to control his temper. He motioned me into the back and climbed in after me. “Come on, Kim, let’s get moving or we’ll miss the start of the movie. You know the line’s always eight miles long on for the discount show.”
That statement proved to be only slightly exaggerated. When we arrived at the theater there were at least two dozen customers lined up in front of the ticket window, and by the time Kim had parked the car and we had walked back across the width of the parking lot, the line had almost doubled in length. Most of the people attending the movie were teenagers, and almost all of them seemed to know Kim and Larry. In a few minutes’ time I was introduced to Sandi and Heidi and Erby and Fran and Amy and Scott and Jennifer and finally started losing track of names. The girls in particular looked me over with interest, and the one named Sandi acknowledged the introduction in such a chilly manner that I was sure she had more than a casual interest in Larry.
When we finally reached the ticket window, Larry paid for both of us, and in the lobby he insisted on buying us popcorn. Then, since Kim and Abby had bypassed the refreshment counter and been swept along with the crowd into the theater ahead of us, we ended up finding seats several rows behind them. Suddenly, without my wanting it to happen, Larry and I were not a part of a group, but a couple.
That evening was definitely not the best of my life. The theater was small and insufficiently air-conditioned, the seats were cramped and uncomfortable, and the volume of the sound track was turned up so high that my ears felt ready to blow, like overloaded speakers. Even the movie itself was a disappointment. After gazing at the screen for a couple of minutes, I realized to my dismay that the handsome, pale-skinned boy with the bedroom eyes was a vampire. I’d had an aversion to vampire movies ever since a fourth-grade slumber party when I’d become hysterical with terror watching an old DVD of The Lost Boys.
I would have liked to get up and walk out, but I was trapped. In the process of having my ticket and popcorn paid for, I inadvertently had become Larry’s date. He made that very clear when, as a coven of bloodsuckers welcomed an insipid girl named Bella into their midst, his arm went snaking along the back of my seat and then slid down to settle around my shoulders.
There was something about the gesture that was so possessive that I felt like leaning forward and dumping the arm off me. It was as though he were staking a claim and with such self-confidence that he didn’t even glance over to gauge my reaction. I didn’t want to blow the thing out of proportion, so for about ten minutes I sat there under the weight of the intrusive arm, munching popcorn I hadn’t wanted in the first place, watching a movie I hated, and feeling miserable. Finally, when Larry’s fingers started sensually massaging my upper arm, I whispered that I needed to find a restroom and hurried up the aisle and out into the lobby.
Once I had gotten that far, I was tempted to keep on going. Our house was within walking distance of the theater and the thought of being outside in the soft air of evening was enough to destroy the best of my good intentions. So strong was my desire to escape that I actually had my hand on the exit door and was trying to think of an excuse to offer later for my rudeness, when I looked out through the glass, past the light that spilled down from the marquee, and saw that rain was coming down in such a deluge that I couldn’t even see past the curb to the street. Well, so muc
h for that, I thought. I’m here for the evening. I stood for a while, gazing out at the torrent of water crashing down from above like Niagara Falls. Finally, in an effort to further postpone my return to my seat, I went back across the lobby to the ladies’ room.
There was nobody else in the restroom when I entered it, but as soon as I had stepped into one of the stalls, I heard the sound of the door to the lobby bang open and a sudden shrill burst of animated voices.
“…supposed to be a tennis whiz,” a girl was saying.
“Kim says that’s the whole attraction, but I don’t believe it. We’re sitting right behind them, and from the way he’s hanging all over her, tennis is the last thing he’s got on his mind.”
“Kim’s so naive, she still believes in Santa Claus!” a second girl responded with a giggle. “Since when does her macho cousin pick girls for their muscles? Besides, she doesn’t look all that athletic to me. I bet she doesn’t even go out for the team.”
The doors to the stalls on either side slammed shut, but the fact that the girls could no longer see each other did nothing to decrease the babble of conversation. They simply raised their voices and continued to gossip unself-consciously as though oblivious to the fact that the center stall was occupied.
“Did you notice she’s strutting around in Seven jeans? Where do you suppose she got those, a secondhand store? Everybody can see the family’s dirt poor. Her dad drives an old beat-up Plymouth and works at Zip-Pic, and my aunt, who’s a checker at the store where her Mom buys groceries, says she gets all the cheapest brands of everything. If they’re that hard up, you wonder why the woman isn’t working.”
“Maybe she didn’t finish high school or something.”
“You don’t have to have a diploma to work in the Groves. What is it about that girl that’s got Lover Boy drooling? It certainly can’t be the hairdo. She looks like she was attacked with a pair of garden shears.”
“She’s somebody new in town, and our Larry likes a challenge. Sandi’s problem is she makes everything too easy for him. He knows whenever he calls, she’ll be sitting by the phone.”
Again, the doors to the stalls slammed simultaneously and a moment later I heard the sound of running water. The girls continued to chatter as they repaired their makeup, hashing over poor Sandi’s dilemma and making more speculations about Larry’s “new conquest.” I considered embarrassing them by stepping out of the stall but decided I was the one who would suffer if I did. It was going to be hard enough to start a strange school in my senior year without deliberately antagonizing my new classmates.
So I stayed holed up in my ridiculous hiding place until the two of them had finished making themselves beautiful. When they left, I emerged from the stall and washed my hands, so outraged by their gossip I was shaking all over. I longed to run after them, shouting, “We are not poor! Back home we have a big home and two new model cars! My mother’s an author, and my father used to work for an airline! Not only are we just as good as you are, we’re a whole lot better!”
The frustration I felt at not being able to stand up for myself was so intense, it was making me literally nauseated. At least there was one nasty statement I’d be able to disprove—“She doesn’t look all that athletic… she won’t go out for the team.” No matter how disdainful the kids in Grove City might be of my family, they would have to stand up and take notice when they saw me on the tennis court.
As I rinsed my hands at the sink, I averted my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at myself in the mirror. It came as a shock every time I caught sight of my hair. Since arriving in Florida I’d had it evened at a salon, so it wasn’t quite as dreadful as it had been originally, but instead of Rapunzel, the Princess in the Tower, the short-cropped style made me look like Peter Pan.
I shook the water from my hands and thrust them under the air dryer. Then, accepting the fact that I couldn’t forestall the inevitable indefinitely, I returned to Twilight and to Larry.
“What took you so long?” he whispered as I slid into my seat. “You missed a lot of good stuff. Bella’s so in love with that guy she wants to be a vampire too.”
I gave a spontaneous shudder, which Larry misinterpreted.
“It is pretty cold in here with the air-conditioning so high.”
“I’m not cold at all,” I whispered, to no avail. Larry’s arm came plunging down onto my shoulders as though it had been hanging suspended the whole time I was gone, and there it remained like a lump of lead throughout the rest of the movie.
It was after ten by the time it was finally over. When we left the theater it was no longer raining. There were puddles on the sidewalk and the street was filled with water, but the sky was clear and lighted by a pale, young moon.
“An hour ago it was pouring,” I commented in surprise.
“That’s how Florida is in the summertime,” Kim said. “There’s not a cloud in the sky, and a few minutes later, rain’s coming down by the bucketful. Summer storms don’t usually last very long here, but while they do, they’re torrential.”
“Was it different back in Virginia?” Abby asked slyly.
“Like I said before, I’ve never been to Virginia,” I told her.
I was grateful the drive to our house was not a long one. Even though Larry didn’t try to put any moves on me in the car, I was uncomfortably aware of his presence in the seat beside me and the fact that our relationship had been subtly altered. Even worse was being enclosed with Abby. Having her turn out to be Kim’s stepsister was the sort of ironic coincidence that I would have thought was impossible if I’d seen it in a movie. I vowed that I’d never again disclose anything to anybody. You never knew when your words would come back to haunt you. The impossible did sometimes happen, and Abby was proof of that.
By the time we turned onto Lemon Lane, the ditch at the side of the road had become a fast-flowing river, churning white with foam. It poured through the culverts that ran under the driveways leading back to unseen houses and emerged as wild sprays of froth, leaping high in the moonlight like demented ghosts. Kim pulled the car carefully into our driveway and around the bend between the high banks of bushes, bringing it to a stop in front of the house. Back in this pocket of shadows, trees shut off the light from the sky as effectively as the undergrowth cut off the sight of the road. Darkness lay dense and heavy on either side of us, but the beam of Kim’s headlights cut a path to the porch, and lights could be seen behind the living room windows.
“Don’t bother to get out,” I told Larry as he reached for the door handle. “It’s only a couple of yards, and I can see fine. Thanks for the movie and popcorn, and thanks for the ride, Kim.”
“We were glad to have you,” Kim said. “Abby’s a movie freak, so I guess we’ll be seeing a lot of them this summer.”
I opened the door, and the dome light snapped back on. Abby had turned in her seat and was staring back at me with her sharp, blue eyes both knowing and filled with questions.
“The only movies they ever get here are old ones,” she said deliberately, in the exact same tone she had used when she made that statement on the plane. “They’re all so old they’re already out on DVD. But April—I mean Valerie—knows that already.”
“We all know that already,” Larry said irritably. “As far as we’re concerned though, they’re first-run here.” He turned to me. “Would you like to go to the beach tomorrow?
“I don’t think my parents would go for that,” I told him. “They’re into doing family things on the weekends.” I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do about Larry. I had no desire for our personal relationship to accelerate. On the other hand, our tennis games were so important to me that I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize them.
“Try to convince them,” he said. “I’ll call you in the morning.”
“Fine,” I told him, grateful to be spared a decision right then. “Goodnight, everybody, and thanks again for everything.”
When I entered the house I knew at once that Dad and Mom ha
d been arguing again. There wasn’t a fight in progress—they both had their noses buried in books—but the air was thick with echoes of voices recently raised in anger and of unpleasant statements and shrill-toned accusations. I stood in the doorway, thinking how strange it was to see my parents seated at opposite ends of the sofa in a room filled with silence. Perhaps it was the harshness of the overhead light, but they both appeared older to me than they had back in Norwood.
Dad’s face had always been gentle and remarkably boyish, making his receding hairline seem a comical afterthought. Now, however, there was a haggard look to his features, and frown lines made shadowed trenches at the corners of his mouth. Mom looked tired and glassy-eyed and spacey, and was sipping from her ever-present glass of orange juice.
It was apparent they were waiting up for me, because as soon as I came in they both laid aside their books. Mom spoke first, enunciating carefully, as though she were afraid her tongue would become tangled.
“Your father has something he wants to discuss with you. I don’t agree with his reasoning, but it seems my opinions don’t count for much anymore.”
“What is it?” I asked nervously, social problems forgotten.
“Larry said something this evening that bothered me,” Dad said. “I gave Tom Geist a call to get his take on it, and he thinks—and I agree with him—that it would be better if you didn’t go out for the tennis team when school starts.”
“Not go out for the tennis team?” I exclaimed. “I don’t get it. Why shouldn’t I play tennis?”
“I didn’t say you can’t play,” Dad assured me hastily. “Just don’t play competitively. If you do, you’ll rank high at the tournaments, and that could be dangerous.”