Dream Boy (5 page)

I wasn’t cold anymore. Martin’s lips lit something inside me and I felt only heat. When we kissed, it was as if I’d known him forever. But there was an itch I couldn’t quite reach, somewhere on my spine, maybe, reminding me that I hadn’t. I’d known him for thirty minutes, not counting dream time, and I wasn’t sure how to count that anyway.

I could hear a rational voice whispering:
Be
careful, Annabelle.

But I’d been careful forever and where had it gotten me? A life sentence in my hometown. Plus six months with Daniel Kowalski for bad behavior.

Martin’s hands ran up and down my back. I could feel his fingers making little swirls on my skin that matched the swirling in my brain. Somewhere through that swirl, I felt my insides tilt and I thought about how he’d been on the boat—so intense and sexy and sweet. It was like he was programmed for this. A prepackaged romantic dream.

He lifted his lips from mine. “I’m not programmed…”

I looked up, dazed.

“…and I’m not packaged,” he finished.

“But you are a—you’re a dream, right?”

He didn’t seem sure how to answer.

“Was,” he said finally.

“That’s the same thing.”

“Not even close.”

“But you
were
a dream.”
A
superhot dream,
I thought, remembering the way the muscles in his back flexed when he dove into the water.

He grinned and gave a slow, sexy nod, and I knew he knew what I was thinking. My cheeks grew warm. “I thought you weren’t going to get into my head,” I said.

“It’s hard not to when we’re close.” He dropped his hands to his sides and took a small step back.

I looked up. The morning light had an uncertainty to it, as if even the sky hadn’t made up its mind about what kind of day it was going to be.

“My mom’s probably wondering where I am,” I said finally. “We should go back.”

“Okay.”

We turned together and walked away from the rushing water, without skipping even one rock. At the edge of our driveway, he took my hand again. “So, should I meet your mom?”

“You’ve had a lot of experience meeting parents, then?”

“Nope. None.”

I started laughing, that nervous laugh that comes out when your body can’t think of anything else to do. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s just…
this
feels like a dream.”

“I’ve been in your dreams, Annabelle,” he said. “And this isn’t like one at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, for one thing, you weren’t so worried in your dream. For another,” he leaned over and whispered, “if this had been a dream, we would have gone swimming.”

He was right on both points. “What would you even say to my mother, if you met her?”

“That I’m new here?” he considered. “It’s true. As far as it goes.”

I was going to say “not a good idea.” I was going to tell him to go home. But I was afraid that if I did, he’d disappear back into the ether or wherever he came from. Anyway, my mother stepped out on the porch and made the decision for me.

She folded her arms over her bathrobe, which she must’ve forgotten she was wearing. “That was a long minute,” she said.

I dropped Martin’s hand and started to walk toward the house. He touched me, lightly on the back, like a blind person, following along.

Nick came out on the porch, too. “Hey,” he said. “The bike dude.”

Martin reached out his hand toward my mother. “Hello,” he said. “I’m Martin Zirkle.”

“Hello, Martin,” my mother said. “Nice to meet you.” She gave me a funny why-didn’t-you-tell-me-about-this-guy look. I didn’t know what kind of look to give back.

“Nick,” Nick said.

“Martin,” Martin said.

“I heard,” said Nick. “Do you live around here?”

“We just moved into the old Lucas place,” he said.

“Oh, I’d always hoped someone would see the potential in that house,” my mother said. “I’ll bet you have a lot of fixing up to do. Tell your mother I know the name of a good contractor, if she needs one.”

“Thanks,” Martin said. “But we’re good. My mom has a couple of crews working on it already.”

“Already?” my mother said. “I went by there last—”

“Hey!” yelled Nick. “It’s Will! Hey, Will!”

At first I thought Nick was saying it just to mess with me. Correction: I
hoped
Nick was saying it just to mess with me. I wasn’t ready for Will, the King of Logical Thought, at this particular, deeply illogical moment. But the distinct putt-putt of his Jeep got louder and then stopped.

I turned and waved and pretended I was glad he’d stopped by.

Martin watched me, concentrating.

“He’s a friend,” I blurted out.

Will slammed the car door and walked toward us. “Hey, Annabelle,” he said. But he was looking at Martin. He was the usual Will, wearing his old jeans. Today’s T-shirt was emblazoned with C
8
H
10
N
4
O
2
, which I happen to know is the chemical formula for caffeine. The reason I happen to know is because Will told me, but that hardly mattered. What did matter was that Will and his shirt and his rational, piercing mind were all standing on my porch with my bathrobe-ensconced mother, my annoying brother, and the boy of my dreams.

“Hey,” I said.

“I tried texting,” he said.

“I didn’t have my phone,” I said. “Oh. This is Martin. Martin, this is Will.”

“I saw you at school yesterday,” Will said.

“Really?” Martin said. “I didn’t see you.”

“Hey, Mrs. M,” Will said. “Nickel breath.” Will’s adopted and doesn’t have any brothers, so sometimes he borrows mine. Nick likes it, because it gives him practice hurling insults. Not that he needs it.

“Geek fart,” Nick said, grinning.

“Is that all you’ve got?” Will said, at the same time my mother said, “Nick!”

“He started it.”

“There is a difference between breath and…that other,” she said. “Apologize.”

“Sorry,” Nick said.

“No worries,” Will said.

Martin looked cold, but not because of the weather.

Will looked at me, finally. He seemed to be waiting for something.

“Nice sweatshirt,” he said.

I glanced down at the blue sweatshirt I was wearing. The shoulder seams hung down to just above my elbows and the sleeves were bunched where I’d pushed them up so they wouldn’t hang over my hands. Obviously not mine. Obviously Martin’s.

“I still have some French toast left,” my mother said. “If anyone’s interested.”

“I’m always interested,” Will said.

“I’ve never tried it,” Martin said.

“Well, come on in, then,” my mother said, like it wasn’t odd that someone had never tried French toast. “You’ll love it.”

“They must not have had that in Egypt,” I mumbled to Martin, when the others had gone ahead of us.

“They didn’t,” Martin said. “They had figs.”

Will sat in the empty chair at the end of the kitchen table, where my dad would have sat if he’d stuck around. Martin sat in my seat. My mother set out clean plates. “So, Martin, what brings your family to Chilton?” she asked as she lifted the skillet off the warming element at the rear of the stove and forked out slices of French toast.

“Well.” Martin stared at the exposed eye of the stove with apparent fascination. “We’ve always wanted to live in a place like this. You know, good people…” He gave me a meaningful look. “The mountains. The river. It’s a great place to live.”

“That’s what Dad always said,” Nick piped up. “‘A great place to live, but I wouldn’t want to visit.’”

Some
of
the
“greatness” must have worn off for my dad,
I thought.

My mother ignored Nick and poured glasses of milk for Martin and Will. “Let me know if there’s anything we can do to help you settle in. I’m sure we’ll see you around.” She picked up her purse off the counter. “Come on, Nickie. Get your shin guards on,” she said as she ushered my brother out of the kitchen. “I need to get ready, too,” she added, fingering the belt of her bathrobe. “I can’t cheer you on in this. Annabelle, you can see to your guests?”

Martin was eyeing his plate with a perplexed expression, head tilted, hands by his side.
Oh
hell,
I thought,
he
can
run
around
on
a
football
field, no problem—but he doesn’t know how to eat with a fork.

Okay, Martin,
I thought LOUDLY—trying to transmit brainwaves in his direction.
If
you
are
still
listening
in, pick up the bottle of syrup and pour a little on the toast. Then take the fork…

I wasn’t sure if he heard me or started watching Will and mimicking his gestures. I suppose it was possible he knew all along. At any rate, Martin finally started eating—and enjoying—the French toast. If he was in fact copying Will, I was just relieved that Will didn’t decide to do his belch-as-a-compliment-to-the-chef routine. Will says it’s acceptable in China.

It might have been easier if Will
had
been
in China, instead of watching Martin saw away at his food like someone who had never used utensils. A big chunk of syrupy toast shot off his plate and stuck to the pantry door.

“So, Martin, you play football?” Will said. “That must take a lot of coordination.”

I gave Will a
smart-ass
nudge on my way to the sink for a sponge. As if sensing my irritation, Martin threw Will a hard look. “That’s right.”

Will returned the look. “So how is it you know Annabelle?”

The air in the room sparked. It was like one of those westerns where Gary Cooper is out in the middle of a town’s deserted main street, staring down an outlaw at ten paces.

“We’re close,” Martin clipped. “And you?”

“What do you mean
me
?” Will looked genuinely pissed—which was almost as strange as everything else that was happening. I could count on two fingers the times I’d seen him really angry: When Mr. Wilkenson accused him of plagiarizing a science fair project, because he thought no fifth grader could truly discover which type of fuel burned the cleanest in a combustible engine; and when he got into a shouting match with Daniel Kowalski after a history class debate. He said it was about politics. I didn’t believe him.

“I mean,” Martin said, “how do
you
know Annabelle?”

“If you were close you wouldn’t have to ask that question.”

Martin grabbed my hand and pulled me onto his lap. “Close enough?”

Okay, forget the western. It was more like that thing where dogs pee on their property as a message to other dogs.

I pushed Martin’s hands away and stood up. “I think breakfast is over,” I said. I waited for them to leave, but neither of them moved, so I gave them both disgusted looks and went out on the back deck.

The sky looked worn out now, like a secondhand dress. Across the fence, Miss Kallan’s flowerbed, which had bloomed profusely all summer, had gone to seed, except for a few last airy purple blossoms. I exhaled and knocked a few leaves off a plastic lawn chair. I waited another minute, giving Will and Martin time to leave. But when I returned, they were sitting where I’d left them, as if a witch had cast a spell, freezing them in ice.

“Annabelle,” my mother called from the door. “I’m taking Nick to his game.”

“Wait up.” I ran into the hall. “I’m coming, too.”

I used to go to all of my brother’s soccer games, but once I hit high school, my mom gave me the option of staying home. Since most of the games were at eight o’clock on Saturday morning, I skipped them more often than a respectable big sister should. But this wasn’t an early game and suddenly nothing was more appealing than watching a bunch of eighth graders chasing a ball around.

“You’re
coming
?” Nick asked.

“Love those Tornadoes!” I said.

“We’re the
Hurricanes
.”

“Go ’Canes!” I said. “Just give me one minute.”

I returned to the kitchen. “I have to go to my little brother’s soccer game,” I said. “So you’ll have to leave. But I’ll see you later.” I said that more to Martin than to Will, but I meant it for both of them.

“How about lunch tomorrow?” Martin asked. He grabbed my hand, like tomorrow was an eternity away.

“Okay,” I said. “Pick me up at noon?” I wriggled my hand loose and shrugged out of his sweatshirt. “Here.”

“You keep it.” Martin tried to hand the sweatshirt to me, and I would have taken it just to hold onto that pecan cookie smell, except I felt a little weird with Will around.

“That’s all right.” I pushed it back and slipped on a sweater that was draped over the back of my chair from a few days before. “Come on.” Both Martin and Will followed me out of the house.

Nick and my mom were already in the car. I got into the backseat and rolled down the window.

“See you soon, Annabelle,” Martin called.

Will didn’t say anything. He didn’t even wave.

My mom hummed along to the radio and Nick sat in the front, tossing his soccer ball up, then head-butting it into the windshield.

“Stop it,” my mother said. “Do you want me to have an accident?”

Nick put the ball on the floor, but he jerked around every so often, heading an imaginary ball. He looked like he was at a hardcore show instead of sitting in the car, listening to classic rock.

We arrived at the field. “Manning!” the coach yelled, before we’d even opened the doors. “Get over here! Take a knee.”

I followed my mother to the sidelines and helped her stretch out a beach towel.

“So,” she said when we sat down. “Martin seems nice.”

“He does, doesn’t he?”

“What can you tell me about him?”

“He’s
nice,”
I said.

“I got that part.”

“He lives in the old Lucas house.”

“Have you met his parents? What do they do?”

“How should I know?” I said.

My mother made a dramatic flourish with her wrist, like a Shakespearean actor. “And that, my friends, is a conversation with a teenager.”

The coach had finished talking to the team and Nick was on the field, ready to play.

“Darn,” my mother said. “I like it when he plays offense better.”

“Maybe next half,” I said.

“Will didn’t look very happy.”

“Mom, come on!”

“I’m sorry. I’m just relating what I saw.”

“Will’s fine,” I said.

She raised an eyebrow and turned back to the field as Nick booted a ball away from the goal.

“Way to go, Nickie!” my mother yelled, and I could see Nick cringe. He hated to be called Nickie in front of his friends.

I started clapping. As long as I was there, right?

“He’s a good-looking boy, I’ll say that for him,” my mother said.

I didn’t know for a minute if she was talking about Nick or Will or Martin, but the way she was smiling at me, it had to be Martin. I couldn’t help it. I smiled back, then looked away, down the sidelines.

Some of the moms were gathered together, drinking coffee and not even pretending to watch the game. But most of them—and all of the dads—had their eyes glued to the field. Well, except for Mr. Muncy, who was stuffing an entire Happy Meal cheeseburger into his mouth and watching Mrs. Muncy. They were separated, and he wanted to reconcile, but she was having a secret thing with a married fireman. Except in Chilton, nothing’s a secret, so even my mom stayed on top of gossip. She didn’t repeat it to anyone but me, though, because when my dad left, she was gossip herself.

Mrs. Muncy came over and stood behind us. “Did you see someone is fixing up the Lucas house?” she said.

My mother got to her feet. “I just heard something about that.”

“Gorgeous,” said Mrs. Muncy, who was in real estate. “Bob and Lynn Zirkle. They got it for a steal, but I’ll bet they’ll spend seventy thousand fixing up the outside alone.”

“It’ll help the neighborhood,” my mother said. “I always hated seeing that house empty. What do you know about the Zirkles?”

I put my head on my knees just in case my face turned red.

“He’s a writer. She’s an architect. They have a boy about Annabelle’s age.”

“Really?”

“Go Nick!” I shouted, because I had to shout something.

“Business is good?” My mother tried to continue the conversation, even though it felt over.

“Steady,” said Mrs. Muncy. “These past few years we’ve seen a real upturn in the market. Chilton is
thriving
. Everywhere else around here, even Roanoke, is Deadsville. I can’t explain it. Must be something in the water.”

My phone buzzed and I pulled it out of my pocket.

“It’s Serena,” I told my mom, standing up. “I’ll be right back.” I walked up the hill where I wouldn’t be overheard and sat down in the cold grass. The day had grown brighter, but it still wasn’t warm.

“So, did anything happen?” she asked. “I’ve been dying to know!”

“Everything happened,” I said.

“Details!”

I paused a second, for dramatic effect. “He came over,” I said.

“He did?!” She squealed.

“He was riding his bike in front of my house when I got up—you know, like circling the block.”

“That is
so
romantic. And then you came out and fell into his arms and the music swelled and you looked deep into his eyes—”

“Not exactly,” I said. “But we went for a walk.”

“Was he just like you’d imagined?”

“He was great,” I said. “
Is
great.”

She squealed again, as my phone beeped. Talon was checking in. “I’ll call you back,” I said.

“You can’t leave me hanging!”

“I’ll call you back. I promise.”

I switched lines.

“Well?” Talon said.

“He came over.”

“Dream Boy?”

“Yup.”

“Get out!” she practically screamed through the phone. “What happened?”

“Well, I shouldn’t kiss and tell…” I said.

“You
kissed
him?” Talon said. Emphasis on
kissed
.

“I—”

“You kissed an alien!”

“Shut up,” I said. It was just like Talon to turn this into a tabloid headline
.
“Martin is—”

But I didn’t have a good idea of what Martin was. I was working on an answer, when a shadow blocked my sunlight.

Will.

He had a strained look, like the time he swallowed an entire pack of Bubblicious, even though everyone says that gum takes seven years to digest. I don’t remember why he did it—maybe to prove that it
didn’t
take seven years—but I do recall that afterward I put my ear up to his belly and it made a strange gurgling sound, like a mating whale.

“I gotta go,” I said into the phone. “Will’s here.”

Talon started to protest, but I cut her off.

“Really,” I said, “I’ll call you later.” I turned my phone off and slipped it in my back pocket.

“Hi,” I said, in a softer tone than he deserved. “What’s up?”

He sat down. “I don’t really know.”

“Oh.” I looked out at the game. Nick was on the sidelines, but some kid on his team was dribbling the ball furiously down the field and the parents were screaming like it was the World Cup. He was almost to the other team’s goal before some tank of an eighth grader got a foot in there and kicked the ball out of bounds.

“So, how were the Pacers?” I finally asked.

“Great,” Will said, “but I guess you were…” He trailed off.

“I was out with Talon and Serena.”

“Yeah. Right,” he said.

He drummed his fingers against his leg. “So.” He paused. “What’s the deal with that guy?”

“Well, I guess he’s…He’s new in town.”

“Yeah.
Very
new.
I meant, what’s the deal with you and him?”

I twirled my hair around my finger, tight enough to stop the blood flow. I tried to think of something to say that would be simpler than the truth. “I guess he likes me.”

Will didn’t say anything, waiting. Patient, right?

“And I like him.” I looked in his eyes. They were what you would call hazel, a sort of mixture of green and brown, but today they seemed flecked with gold. “I want you to like him, too.”

Will was still quiet; he just sat there like a tree someone had carved initials into.

“What was that crap this morning, anyway?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Will finally spoke. “I thought he was kind of a prick.”

“No,” I said. “I mean all that crap from
you
. All that ‘How is it you know Annabelle?’ stuff. You’re not my dad.”

“Clearly.”

“Then why were you acting like it?”

“Is that how your dad acts?”

I could tell he regretted saying those words the moment they were out. He, of all people, knew how I felt about my father. When my dad took off, it was like he couldn’t get far enough away from us. “Nick, Bellie, I have to follow my bliss,” he’d said. What he didn’t say was that his bliss would lead him to
Alaska
. So we get a postcard with a picture of glacier and a polar bear and a note that says it’s too expensive for him to fly back and see us at Christmas.

“I’m sorry. I don’t want to fight with you. It’s just, you didn’t even know him yesterday and now you’re…” He trailed off, like he wasn’t sure how to finish that particular sentence. “It’s like he appeared out of thin air or something.”

“I know Martin better than you think,” I said. It seemed I kept walking that line between something true and something not true, real and not real. “Give him a chance, okay?”

Will looked at me as if he was about to say something important. Then it passed. “Okay, sure.”

“You have to like him,” I said. “You’re my best friend, right?”

“Right. Of course. What else?” He looked past me, toward the soccer field. “Halftime,” he said. “You want me to go or should I stay and watch the rest of the game?”

“Nick would be psyched if you stayed.”

“Go, Nick,” Will said, but his voice was kind of off. I looked at him. “What? This is my cheering voice. You just don’t recognize it because I never cheer.”

“That must be it,” I said.

He tried a smile.

I thought about telling him what was really going on. That Martin wasn’t…But I couldn’t even be sure
what
Martin wasn’t. Real? Human? My boyfriend? I mean, we’d kissed, but that would only qualify as a marriage proposal in a Jane Austen novel, and I wasn’t sure those people even kissed; they just wrote letters. And as for the human part…well, I wasn’t sure what I thought about that, either.

I lay back on the hill. The few clouds were just clouds—not rabbits or fire trucks or seashells. And one was a tiny, perfect button. Will lay beside me.

“Cold?” he asked.

“A bit.”

He reached over and rubbed my arm for warmth.

After a minute, I said, “Look, none of this really means anything.” I was talking about Martin, but Will’s hands stopped moving.

I looked up at his face. Not movie-star perfect like Martin. Ms. Sage had talked about the Greek ideal of male beauty in art class. It was all symmetry, proportion, harmony. Not to mention some serious beef. Like there was a cookbook recipe for the ideal man. Will’s face, with its uneven cheekbones and crooked smile, could be considered good looking in an unconventional way, but it was far from ideal. Still, there was something in that face I liked. The way it told me things. My favorite was that bright look he’d give me when he’d just said something really funny and was waiting for me to laugh. Right now, he had a look I didn’t see much—a tightness around his jaw, like he was holding something back.

“Hey.” I rolled to my side and chucked his chin. “What’re you thinking?”

After a second he said, “You know, when we were kids, anything seemed possible. That’s what everyone told us: we could be whatever we wanted. If we could dream it, we could be it, right? But we had to grow up first. We had to do what they told us to, read what they told us to, think what they told us to. So we go along, doing, and reading, and thinking, just like they said. And every year that we get bigger, the world gets smaller. Until all those things we’ve been telling ourselves were possible—all the things we’ve been thinking were maybe already happening—they don’t even make a blip on the radar anymore.”

I propped myself up on one elbow so I could look into his eyes again. “I don’t know,” I said. “I think things can still happen. Things we never expected.”
Things
like
Martin.
“You’re the one who said I could wake up and everything could be different, right? Well, maybe it is.”

“When’d you get so perky?” he said.

“When’d you get so pessimistic?”

“Probably around the same time. Yin and yang and all that. The balance of the world.”

We heard cheers then, but not for us, and not for the Hurricanes, either. The tank from the other team had scored.

“Tough break,” Will said. He started cheering for Nick for real then.

I yelled, too. It didn’t seem likely to make much difference, but we kept at it. Who knew what a little yelling might do?