Going Vintage (28 page)

“I’m tired because I was up all night working on a paper. I used your computer, by the way. Ginnie took mine as a joke. Hope that’s okay.”

“How’d you know my password?” Mom asks automatically, then tries to smile to cover up her worry.

“I remembered it from before. Really interesting stuff on your browser history, by the way.”

“Why are you checking my browser history?”

“Just looking for some good deals. That
Totally Hot! Totally Thrifty!
site taught me a lot, especially about myself.”

Mom blushes, and the face coloring is almost more incriminating than her Internet secret. I don’t know why her blog makes me so mad. I should be grateful I have a mom, that we’re not Grandma and Candace, that we have a place to live and Ginnie’s home-cooked food to eat. I should be able to see all that, but right now all I can focus on is the blog post she wrote about me. I see the way she sees me and it hurts. And I don’t know why she can’t let her own family know who she really is when she’s sharing all of our life dramas with the rest of the world.

I grip her car keys, resisting the urge to throw them. Instead, I say, “I’m taking your car. I don’t know when I’ll be back.”

“Mallory, do you have a second to talk?”

“Not with you. I’d be too worried that you’d blog about it.”

I hurry out the door. She’ll change all her passwords now, I’m sure, try to cover up that piece of her. I don’t know what
I’m going to do with that truth, if the blog would bother Dad like it does me, if this will compound their problems or if the fact that she’s making money will solve everything. And I’ll have to tell Ginnie. She’ll be relieved it’s not an affair, but maybe not that relieved when she reads the post Mom wrote about the first time Ginnie got her period.

Once I’m in the car, I realize I have Oliver’s address, but no directions. Just my mom’s navigational system, which is the only thing I’ve ever used to find a new location, besides, of course, my cell phone. I slam my hand against the steering wheel and see Oliver’s string on my finger, blue and frayed. He wouldn’t be reacting like this right now, all road-ragey.

I take a second to catch my breath. My mom’s choices are my mom’s choices. There is no use getting worked up about it right now, when I’m freshly glossed and perfumed and on my way … to a school function. Yes, a school function. So I do what any girl would have done in 1962. Drive to the gas station and ask for directions. Written directions.

Oliver’s house is in the Old Towne District of Orange, which I think is one of the largest preserved historic districts in the country. The churches, library, post office all have the same look they did decades ago. Chapman University is nearby, so some of the homes are rented to students, but they’re kept nice with shady trees and manicured lawns.

Oliver’s house is gray with red shingles—Craftsman, my Realtor dad would call it. What it lacks in size it makes up for with charm. Our tract house is bigger, but it also looks like every other house on the block.

Oliver is sitting on his front porch in, I kid you not, a rocking chair. He’s fiddling with something and my heart stops because I think it’s wood and he must be whittling and I’m fixing to shuck some corn right now and join him in this old-fashioned, Main Street existence. Except it’s not wood. It’s string. And then I realize something else.

I’m at Oliver Kimball’s house. Alone.

He’s resurrected his orange STAFF shirt, except he’s added PEP in black Sharpie above the peeling print. He’s grinning at me, just waiting for me to ask about it. So of course I don’t. “I didn’t picture you living here,” I say.

“It’s a rental. My mom wanted small and quaint when my parents got divorced. I’m pretty sure there’s a large rodent living under the house, but she’s all about the neighborhood and her garden.”

“Sometimes I drive by my own house because my neighborhood is so cookie-cutter.”

“But you have a garage. We have a shed.” Oliver leans against the top step. Even his slouch is confident. “Your cheeks are pink.”

I touch my face. “It’s from road rage. I had a tough time finding the place.”

“Really? You’ve lived here for how long and you don’t know this area?”

“I’ve always had directions,” I say. “So I’ve never paid attention.”

“Well, didn’t it show up on your navigational thing?” He chuckles and shakes his head. “You don’t use navigational things, do you?”

“Not presently.”

“But Friendspace last night was okay.”

My cheeks go from pink to red. “That was a momentary relapse.”

“Are you sure you’re not sick?” He actually sticks his hand over my forehead. It’s surprisingly cool against my hot skin. Hot from embarrassment, hot from his touch. But not sick.

I push him away. Touching. Not a good idea. “I’m just having a long day.”

“It’s only one fifteen.”

“I know. A lot can happen in a morning.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

I shake my head. Of course I do. I just found out my mom has an online coupon empire and I met my aunt I never knew existed. But that’s not what he means, that’s not what he wants. We are still new friends, and I’ve had enough meltdowns in front of him. I don’t want him to know these problems.

I guess I can understand Jeremy’s reasons for holding back. What I want Oliver to see is the normal girl underneath all these worries. I don’t want my issues to define me.

“I made you something.” Oliver opens the fist of his other hand to reveal a piece of string. Three strings, actually, orange, black, and white twisted into a braid. “It’s, uh, a school-spirit string. For your finger. For you know, what we talked about in the car the other day. Remembering. Or forgetting. Whatever.”

What do you say when someone gives you the one thing you need, even if you don’t know it until you have it? How can I possibly communicate what my heart is doing right now, breaking and exploding at the same time? “Thank you.”

He helps me tie the string around my finger. I bite off the other thread and stick it into my pocket. Oliver motions to the gate to the back. “Come on, then. I’ll show you Bessie.”

“Bessie”? I rub my hands together. “Is Bessie your pet rodent?”

“It’s our float.” Oliver shakes his head. “See what happens when you miss a meeting?”

He pushes open the wood gate. The backyard goes farther back than I’d thought. There’s a humble vegetable garden on the left, a small blanket of grass, and a slab of concrete with a rusty, oversize storage shed. Oliver leads me into the shed, which really could be categorized as a garage if I weren’t so worried about it falling down on me. He leaves the door propped open and clicks on the one lightbulb dangling from the ceiling.

And behold. There’s our little trailer in all its peppy glory. The orange tinsel skirt covers the wheels, and he’s painted the wood bottom black. There’s a butcher-paper sign in girl’s handwriting. “PEP CLUB! CHEERING FOR A BRIGHT FUTURE!” He’s propped up a wood backdrop, which is painted with stars. Foam “planets” dangle from a wire mobile.

He folds his arms across his chest, appraising his creation like it really is a prized cow. “She’s great, huh? Nothing fancy, but it’ll be a good debut for the club. Vance’s mom is making the costumes—your sister is the wife, Jane; Paige is the hot daughter, I don’t remember her name. Sorry, maybe you can be Astro the dog.”

“And take the honor away from you?”

“Oh, I’m George Jetson. Main guy. There’s the robot maid.”

“Only if there’s a costume head to cover my face.”

“Great idea. We wouldn’t want that face of yours messing up this perfect float.”

I give Oliver a quick punch on the shoulder. As much as I wanted to be a part of this float creation, I also love this grand reveal. Bessie isn’t too elaborate or flashy. The float of a club that formed just a week ago. A float just like the one in Grandma’s yearbook. This thing is so classically All-American, we could ride it over to Watson’s ice-cream shop down the street and dance to a jukebox. It’s like Oliver knew the reason I wanted to do all this and tried to channel that quest for wholesome simplicity into an eight-foot-long flatbed trailer. “Bessie is beautiful,” I say.

Oliver kicks at the wheel, ducking his head to hide a smile. “She’ll do. I never did all this school spirit stuff with ASB before, not with Blake running the show. It was actually fun.” He points his finger at me. “Don’t you dare tell anyone that.”

I hold up my hand. “Your school spirit is safe with me.”

Oliver digs through a bin of supplies and tosses me some glitter garland. “We still need to loop this around the handrail. Make yourself useful.” We didn’t buy this garland together, which means he went out and got it himself, or had someone else bring it, and it shows that he really put a lot of work and thought into this float. I like that he’s the kind of guy who sees something through, even if it goes against his self-made brand.

We work for half an hour, making little jokes every once in a while, laughing—real laughing—but mostly concentrating
on the final touches. Sometimes his shoulder brushes mine while we’re hanging something up, and of course I’m aware that we’re alone in this shed, and he’s a boy and I’m a girl, and we’re both, well, single. But that’s not why we’re here, and that’s not what I want, not now, not really, not mostly, not … maybe a little.

And it’s while I’m twisting the garland that I remember what my sister said. That she was here, working on the float, and that Jeremy and Oliver got into a fight. I’m not sure how to ask, or if I should, but I do want to know what happened. Obviously.

“So, who else came to work on the float?” I ask.

“I was waiting for that. Ginnie told you about the fight, huh?” Oliver rips off a piece of crepe paper. “It was nothing. Stupid family stuff. You know how it is.”

I don’t. I’ve never seen them fight. I almost never see them talk, only if they happened to be at the same place. This wasn’t an accidental get-together. Jeremy didn’t come to work on the float because of his pep. “We can talk about it if you want. But you don’t have to.”

“Jeremy came here so he could see you. And he was mad about what I wrote on Friendspace.” Oliver’s features are hard, and it’s the first time I’ve seen anything close to a temper from him. “I mean, if you want to talk to him, you’ll talk to him. But there were only five people here, and so no matter what, it’s going to be awkward, and that’s not fair to us, or to you.”

“You’re right,” I say. “I already talked to him yesterday at school.”

“Yeah, he told me. That you’re going to homecoming together.” Oliver’s hands ball into fists. “Which, hey, isn’t any of my business. Nothing between you two is. I mean, part of it is the challenge for him, I hope you know that. He wanted you back because he couldn’t have you.”

“He doesn’t have me.”

“… don’t know why I got so mad, but it’s like he was coming after me and he said …”

“What?” I whisper.

“He said I only joined this club so I could be with you.” Oliver hops down from the float. “Which is … malarkey.”

“‘Malarkey’?”

“Yes, echo. Malarkey. Not true.”

“I’m not going with him to homecoming,” I say.

Oliver doesn’t seem to hear me. “My mom can’t even afford a junior college and I don’t play school sports, so I
need
to be involved in all these stupid clubs and volunteer organizations. I don’t even know what my future is, but I know I won’t have one if I don’t go star student every chance I can. So that’s why I joined this club, and it wasn’t because of you.”

“I never said it was.”

He pauses. “You’re not going to homecoming?”

“I am. But not with Jeremy.”

“That’s the thing. It shouldn’t matter. Nothing you do should matter to me. Not like it does.” Oliver holds out his hand and yanks me off the float with surprising force. His grip is possessively tight. “Maybe this was a bad idea.”

“What, finishing the float?”

“No. Yes. Just … being here.” He starts to pull me toward the shed door. “We shouldn’t be alone.”

“It’s not a big deal. We’re just working.” It’s a boldface lie and we both know it. The tension between us is something I can smell, something I can taste. When did pep club become so
hot
? “Why are you freaking out?”

Oliver fixes me with a stare that pummels every other thought or worry in my head and heart until my whole universe is just that look. “I’m freaking out because every second I’m with you, all I can think about doing is this.”

And he’s pulling me again, but this time it’s toward him, so our bodies are touching—arms and stomachs and shoulders and legs—and mouths. Mouths smashing into each other, nothing delicate about it, mouths that knew that this is what they wanted to do from the very first second he talked to me about pep club. It feels so good to have his body pushing against mine. Not just any body, but
Oliver’s
body, who laughs for me when he doesn’t laugh for anyone, who gave me a string so I’ll remember to forget, who I like, who I
want
, and he wants me. I want so bad to be wanted, all of me, every piece.