Major Crush (10 page)

When the buses parked at the high school, Drew was burning up again. It had been about four hours since he took a pill. I dug more of the clarinet stash from my pocket and gave him a drink out of my cooler.

Clearly he was in no shape to drive him-self home. I would ask Luther to give him a ride. But by the time we climbed down the stairs of the empty bus, almost all the cars had left the parking lot.

A nd then I had a better idea. Dad was on call, which meant that he might be at the hospital delivering a baby. If he was home, though, he could start Drew on antibiotics. Drew would still be sick tomorrow at 8 a.m., but at least he might be on the road to recovery, with the edge taken off the fever. Not stupid-sick like he was now, and getting worse.

A llison was asleep in the passenger side of my car. Without arguing with me, Drew stretched out on the backseat, and I drove to my house.

When I parked in the driveway, A llison got out of the car and wandered over to her house without saying good-bye or taking her stuff. Her bags and boots and sequined leotard and tiara sat in the passenger seat like a pool of melted majorette. Drew didn’t wake up.

Inside the house Dad dozed on the couch with the Weather Channel on. I pinched him a little harder than necessary, and he started up. I explained the situation with Drew.

“I can’t just give him an antibiotic,” Dad said. “He has to take a strep test first.”

“Do you have one on you? Come on, Dad. They’re my germs. It’s my fault if he gets a three-twenty on the critical reading.”

I followed Dad as he grabbed a flashlight from a drawer and walked out to the car. When he opened the back door, Drew still didn’t wake up.

“Drew,” Dad said gently.

Drew opened his eyes and sat up. “Hello, Dr. Sauter.”

I wondered how Drew knew Dad. Of course, most people did. Dad and A llison’s dad were well known. They’d delivered half the town.

“Open your mouth and say ‘ah,’” Dad told him. He used the flashlight to peer into Drew’s throat. “Good news,” he said, clicking the flashlight off. “You’re not pregnant.”

I was horrified at Dad for the stupid joke. It was bad enough that he was an obgyn. He didn’t have to go around reminding people.

But Drew laughed. A nd laughed. A nd laughed. He was really sick.

Dad rolled his eyes and closed the car door. “Does he live across town? You can’t take him home. Let him borrow your car. Your mother will take you to get it tomorrow.”

“I don’t think he should drive, Dad. He’s comatose.”

“Well, you’re not driving him. It would be past two before you got home.”

“Can you drive him?”

“Hell, no. I’m on call.” Being on call made him testy. “He can stay in the guest room.”.

“What about the antibiotic?”

“Maybe. I’ll call his mother.”

How embarrassing. “You don’t even know his mother.”

“She’s my patient. I just saw her yesterday.” He went into the house.

I opened the car door again. Drew had fallen asleep sitting up.

“Drew,” I said.

Slowly he opened his eyes and turned to me. His expression changed. I recognized that dark-eyed look. It was the same look he’d given me last Tuesday at practice, when I accused him of being innocent.

I understood what the look meant now. Drew wasn’t innocent. He was anything but.

Ever so briefly, I thought about what it would be like to make out with a feverish Drew in the backseat of my car.

I might have tried to find out, too, if Dad hadn’t been just inside the house, on the phone with Drew’s mother.

“Come on.” I took Drew’s hand and pulled.

He didn’t budge. Instead, he pulled me, and kept me standing beside the car.

I thought he might pull me into the car. He couldn’t quite decide.

He swallowed, and winced.

“You’re sick,” I whispered.

He slid off the seat and let me lead him across the driveway, into the house, and onto the living room couch. When we sat down next to each other, I released my grip on his hand.

But he didn’t release his grip on mine.

A nd then he moved his thumb up to the tip of my thumb and down the other side.

A chill washed over me.

He reversed direction and moved his thumb to the tip of my thumb again, down into the sensitive hollow between my thumb and finger. Up to my fingertip and down the other side. Up to the next fingertip and down the other side. Over and over, all the way to my pinky, where he reversed direction and did it again.

I stared at my hand open to his hand. I glanced up at him once, but he was watching our hands too. So it wasn’t some kind of feverish spasm. He knew what he was doing.

I could hear Dad still talking on the phone in the kitchen. I willed Dad to stay on the phone for a really long time. I stopped breathing every time Drew s thumb neared my fingertip. A nd each time his thumb dipped into the hollow between my fingers, a new chill washed from my face, down my neck, down my arms, and all the way to my toes.

A beep sounded as Dad hung up the phone. I jerked my hand back into my lap.

Dad walked into the living room. “It’s a go,” he said. “Drew, you look better.”

A nd just like that, it was over. Dad found Drew an antibiotic, and I gave him a glass of water. Then I prodded him toward the guest bedroom. He stretched out on the bed without looking back at me, and without pulling down the covers. He was already gone. There didn’t seem to be much point in suggesting that he take off his Vans. I found another blanket in the closet, covered him, turned off the light, and left the room, closing the door behind me.

A nd stood there staring at the closed door. I was like an amputee who still thought her missing leg was there. I could feel his cheek on my thigh and his hand on my knee and his thumb tracing up and down the outline of my hand.

I should have hated him for his snarky comment when we first got on the bus: If it weren’t for you, there wouldn’t be a problem. I should have hated him for making me feel like Mini-Me. I knew he just had a fever, he was out of his mind, he wanted some lovin’, and I was convenient. If he really liked me and wanted to date me, he would have broken up with the twin by now.

I knew all this. A nd he still had me lit up like the Fourth of July. In September.

I went to my room and changed into pajamas. Then changed into different pajamas. A ctually stood in front of the full-length mirror to see what I looked like in pajamas. I was going crazy.

Then there was the bra. I couldn’t wear a bra to bed. I’d suffocate in my sleep. But what if Drew got up and needed something during the night? I couldn’t let him see me without a bra. Finally I put on my bra and left it unfastened.

I curled up on the couch in the living room, with the guest room door just down the hall. Drew’s cheek still burned a hole through my thigh, his hand through my knee. His thumb crested my fingertips and sank into the hollows between my fingers. The Weather Channel and the threat of a turbulent front on the way lulled me to sleep.

The shower in the hall bathroom woke me. My mouth was wide open. Drew had walked across the hall from the gueşt room to the bathroom. He’d probably looked in here and seen me snoring.

I jumped to the mirror above the fireplace to make sure there wasn’t any drool on my face, at least. Then I passed my hands across my cheeks and fingered my hair down where it stuck up in back.

I never wore makeup, and my hair was short and easy to fix. There was no reason for me to worry about Drew seeing me when I first woke up. I didn’t look much different from how I looked at school. I worried anyway. I even thought about running to my room and changing into a tight T-shirt and jeans. But that might make it seem like I cared.

Mom flowed downstairs in full makeup, with her hair already coiffed. My friends bought their mothers flowered robes and fuzzy high-heeled slippers for their birthdays as a joke, to wear when they broke out the toning masks and had spa day. My mother bought this stuff for herself and wore it every day, no joke. Every day was spa day at Chez Sauter.

I followed her into the kitchen, set the table, and helped her start breakfast. Soon Dad sat down in his business clothes and a tie, ready to go to the hospital to make rounds.

Then Drew, looking pale under his tan. He pushed the SA T book across the table to me. He must have gone out this morning and fished it from the car. Or maybe he’d retrieved it during the night and slept with it stuck to his forehead on the off chance some of it would seep into his brain.

“Ignominy,” I said, crunching bacon.

“I don’t know that one,” Mom said.

“Dishonor,” Drew said.

I flipped through the pages. “Nefarious,” I said.

“I don’t know that one,” Mom said.

“Wicked,” Drew said.

“A trocity,” I said.

“I don’t know that one,” Mom said. For being crowned Miss State of A labama 1982, Mom won a full college scholarship. She dropped out of college to get her Mrs. degree and work to put Dad through medical school. Since then, reading Vogue was the only exercise she gave her poor cerebrum. Possibly she only looked at the pictures.

“A savagely cruel act,” Drew said. “Or something in shockingly bad taste.”

I glanced up at him. He was eating, and answering these definitions without thinking. I examined the book closely to find a word that was both difficult and appropriate. “Opprobrious,” I said.

“Disgraceful or shameful,” said Drew. “I thought we’d called a truce. You’re fighting with me with SA T words again.”

“She’s not doing it for your benefit,” Dad butted in. “She’s doing it for mine.” He reached across the table, jerked the SA T book from my hands, and thumbed through it. “A ha. Vendetta.”

“A long and bitter feud,” Drew said.

“You know this stuff cold.” Dad handed the book back to me without looking at me.

This time I had a word in mind. I’d thought about Dad when I came across it in English class. I looked it up, then read, “Mountebank.”

“A quack who isn’t what he seems to be,” Drew said.

Dad got up and took his half-full plate to the sink.

Mom protested, “You’re not going to eat?”

“Not hungry,” Dad grumbled, walking back upstairs.

My mom gave me a disapproving look, but she didn’t say anything. She’d always stayed out of the fight between me and Dad, even though it had everything to do with her.

Drew stared after Dad, then wisely changed the subject. Waving at a shelf full of trophies and sashes and pictures of me wearing makeup, he asked, “A m I hallucinating?”

“No,” I said. “I was Miss Junior East-Central A labama 2004. I tried to throw all this stuff out, but Mom commandeered it and displayed it in her kitchen to spite me.”

Mom said, “You don’t want to throw out all those good memories just because you’re going through a phase.”

“See?” I said. “My mother is the one hallucinating.”

Mom huffed out a dainty sigh and stood, putting her manicured hand on Drew’s arm. “I’ll make you some coffee.”

“What!” I exclaimed. “You don’t let me drink coffee.”

“Drew is older than you,” she called from the kitchen.

“He’s seventeen!”

Drew smirked at me.

“It’ll stunt your growth,” I told him.

“I’m six foot two. So, you don’t get along with your dad?”

“Perspicacious,” I said.

“Having keen insight.”

I glared at him.

“Oh,” he said. “You mean me.”

“I liked you a lot better when you had a fever.”

The doorbell rang, probably Drew’s father. Dad came downstairs again to answer the door. Mom floated in and handed Drew a travel mug.

He thanked her so much for her hospitality, blah blah blah.

A s he walked toward the door, Mom held me back. “He has very good manners. He seems like a nice boy,” she whispered, like I’d intended to bring him home to meet the parents.

Of course he seemed like a nice boy. Mom would think Eminem seemed like a nice boy compared to Walter. Walter had perfectly good manners too, but Walter lived in a bus. It was hard for people to get past the bus.

Out on the front porch Dad and Drew talked with Drew’s father. He must have come straight from the night shift at the mill. He was covered in a thin white film, and larger clumps of cotton stuck to the back of his hair and his work shirt.

Drew motioned to his dad s car, and I followed him. He bent his head down close to me and said quietly, “Thank you.”

“For what? Strep throat?”

He frowned. “Why won’t you let me thank you? What s happened? A re you acting this way because I asked you about your dad?”

There was no way he’d forgotten about what he was doing with his hand the night before. If I’d felt what I felt, he had to have felt something, no matter how out of it he was.

I folded my arms on my chest. “Good luck.”

He looked at me like he wanted something else from me. But I didn’t have anything more to give him just then. Except the SA T book.

Dad,and I watched the car climb the brick driveway. Little cotton fibers hung in the bright, still air and glinted in the sun.

“He seems like a nice boy,” Dad said.

“He is not a nice boy. He just acted that way this morning because he’s delirious.”