Kiss Crush Collide (17 page)

I hear the crack of a bat, and distant cheering fills the air. The smell of hot dogs sizzling on a grill drifts in on the breeze, then up and over the balcony of trees. A few parents float about in the sparsely populated pool, bobbing on the surface, lazy and relaxed. The little wild ones, the kids who usually fill the pool with shrieks and splashes, are across the road at the big park shelter, playing in a Little League tournament.

The sun is setting, and Troy turns on some classic rock. The first few notes, I think it’s an old Boston song, bounce across the water and melt into me, loose and comfortable. I slip down, resting my head against the back of my chair, and spy Troy in the pool office, playing air guitar like a demon.

He sees me, smiles sheepishly, and finishes up with a wild riff and the thrashing of his guitar against the cinder-block walls. I clap silently and wave an invisible cell phone over my head in tribute to our swimming pool rock god. Troy bows, walks out of the office, and climbs back up into his chair, all business again.

The familiar sound of flipping pages snaps me back to reality. I flail my legs and knock my ankle against the sharp steel of my chair. I sit up straight, fully expecting to find Valerie coming at me, a piece of great literature in her hand, saying something stupid like “It’s a great night to discuss verse,” or “I find myself lost in a midsummer night’s dream.” But it’s just a magazine that someone’s left out on the deck, flipped open and rustling in the breeze.

I scan the perimeter of the pool, looking for a vintage bathing suit and skinny legs. It appears that Valerie is not here. I do a double take, because I can’t fathom that she is not here, because this is the first time I have been at the pool
, all summer
, without Valerie at my side.

Nope. She is really not here. Hmm. She probably had to get those sunglasses and that halter suit back to the museum for carbon dating.

My brain lowers to a simmer. Without Valerie and her constant drone of facts and figures and historical statistics and plaguing questions, without that, for the first time in a long time, there is room in my head. I think I can actually think, but is that a good thing?

I know immediately, with a miserable slump of my entire body, that any vacancy in my brain right now is instantly going to fill with thoughts of Duffy or, more precisely, my lack of Duffy.

I flash forward to us together next year, dating, happy, and always on the move. We will be homecoming king and queen, because well, I’m me, and my mother and sisters all were homecoming queens before me. It’s tradition. And Duffy will be king. We will ride along in the parade perched up on the back of a convertible, smiling and waving at the crowds lining the streets. Except that Duffy probably won’t want to sit in the back and let somebody else drive.

And when we have our Friday night family dinners at the club, will he park our car first and
then
come inside to sit beside me, his hair dark and wild in a blond sea of shining glaze and spray?

I bet I can make him fit the mold, chisel him down a bit, and wear away the rough edges. The thing is, though, I like the rough edges. They make me feel raw, tingling, and alive. And I like that.

The sun dips behind the tops of the trees, the lights come up softly under the surface of the water, and the swimmers appear to glow. I can hear chatter from the ball game. “Hey, batter, batter. . . . Hey batter, batter. . . .”

Another song comes on the radio, one I remember hearing the day that Duffy and I went to the river. It’s slow at first, the guitar playing along quietly in the background, then it builds, thrumming with energy as we run toward the water, and suddenly it opens up, drums crashing, and the shock of the water hits us, cold and sharp, taking our breath away. A shiver runs down my spine when the song ends, the guitar trailing away, slipping off into the soft evening air like a metallic whisper.

I reach behind me, fumbling for the hooded sweatshirt I know is there, feeling for the softness. I pull it on, flipping my hair out over the hood and sliding the sleeves down over the tips of my fingers.

I resist the urge to pull the thick hood up over my head and think sad thoughts. What if I end up with no one? No Duffy, no Shane, and even no Valerie. At least when she’s around, I have someone to talk to at the pool.

She doesn’t bother me as much as she did in the beginning of the summer. I’ve built up my immunity. I am inoculated.

I guess there’s always Troy, but he’s never been much of a conversationalist. I watch him as the lights flicker to life around the fence line. His arms silently pound out the beat from the rock song on the radio, his knee bounces, toes working the bass drum, and I give up.

I stretch the sweatshirt out and around me, squeezing my knees into my chest, and build a tent. Arms wrapped tight, I rest my chin on my knees and gaze out over the nearly empty water.

A single swimmer glides silently by, lap after lap. A flutter of water follows him, then drifts away, absorbed by the surrounding stillness. It’s as if he had never been there, never passed by. He’s invisible, fleeting, a subtle shift, and then he’s gone.

I watch him pass by again and squeeze myself tighter into my warm fleece world, determined not to let Duffy go, willing him to kick harder. I will not let him just drift away.

Why doesn’t Duffy want to talk to me? Why did he disappear, poof, gone just as suddenly and mysteriously as he appeared? I thought he liked me, but I guess I was wrong. He never did. And I gave up everything for him—Shane, homecoming queen, guaranteed spot on the prom court, an easy senior year—all of it, gone, for nothing, and he can’t even bother to drive by and wave. Well, I would have given up[] everything for him anyway. It’s just that I never really got the chance to let him know.

“Last one out, pull the gate shut behind you,” Troy calls out onto the dark, shadowy pool deck from inside the office. I’m the last one.

I’m packing up my stuff, and the night settles down quiet and still all around me. The ball games have ended. The families are driving off in minivans and SUVs, their headlights disappearing up the hill as they head for the Keltie to celebrate with ice cream sundaes and triple-stack burgers.

I pull the gate shut, hearing the metal latch clank tight behind me. The office light glows warm and soft, reflecting a shimmering square on the water. I look back, see Troy in his Devils swim jacket and tight red suit, the old office phone cradled to his ear, and give him a wave.

I hear the crackle of tires against gravel when I reach the end of the slope, the blacktop path cool and far less sticky at night. I clear the last of the trees at the bottom of the path, anxious to see who is picking me up. It’s like the lottery, with my mother choosing the numbers. And Duffy’s number never comes up.

I pause, momentarily caught in the headlights. Shit. She sent Shane.

My mother is the devil, and my life is like one of those kiddie rides at the amusement park. Sure, the car looks great, all shiny and bright, but you can’t actually drive it. It’s on a track. You just sit there like a dope and smile all big so your parents can wave and snap pictures. At first you might think you are going to get a chance at the wheel, but then you discover it doesn’t even turn.

When you are little, it seems like fun, and maybe the hills you roll over feel big and scary and your stomach lifts a little bit each time. But now my stomach only sinks as I climb into Shane’s idling car and his hand lands heavily on my thigh.

I press against the soft leather, and I know this car goes nowhere. No more diversions, no discoveries by dashboard light, no more dashing, from place to place, from car to car. I’m stuck.

“Now, you have everything?” my mother asks for the billionth time as she rifles through my bag, not trusting my packing abilities.

“Yes.”

“Your dress, your shoes, all your . . .” She pauses to smooth out the lace underwear she has just refolded into a pink square. She stashes them along the side of the bag because apparently underwear doesn’t belong where I put it, on top of everything else.

She looks up, eyes stopping for a second right on my boobs before she continues. “Underthings?”

Yorke and Frederique got the family names. I got the jugs.

She waits for an answer, as if I could somehow forget to wear a bra to my sister’s wedding rehearsal. I haven’t been out of the house without these things strapped in and hoisted since I was twelve years old. She knows that.

I lean my hip against the counter, cross my arms, and breathe, “Yes.”

“I want to be sure. We can’t overlook anything.”

She digs through the entire bag again, down to the bottom.

“I can’t believe you have to work today, of all days. You and your father,” she huffs, flustered.

My dad is at work today, too. He left early this morning, having filled his travel mug full of hot coffee and driven off in his dew-covered truck well before the wedding insanity began.

“And you told them about the rehearsal?”

My mother seems to think there is a big corporation running the public pool, not just Troy and his clipboard.

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?” She pauses again and raises her perfectly penciled brows, questioning the contents of my bag one last time as her fingers hover over the zipper, afraid to pull it shut and zip up her last chance to fret and worry.

Believe it or not, I have packed a bag before.

“Yes, it’s all right there,” I say with a confident nod.

She finally zips it shut, and I pull the polished round bamboo handles from her grip and hook them over my arm.

“I am putting the bag into your trunk on the right side, near your golf clubs, and hanging the dress,
in the plastic bag
, in the back on the passenger’s side,” I say, reciting the directions back to her exactly as they were dictated to me when she found me fifteen minutes ago standing in the kitchen and realized that she was on the hook to give me a ride to the pool for my afternoon shift.

“And don’t, for any reason, get your hair wet.” My mother hovers behind me as we walk across the foyer to the front door, car keys jangling from her fingers, the quilted bag over my arm, backpack over my other shoulder, dress,
in the bag
, swinging from my fingertips.

“Even if somebody drowns!” Yorke yells over her shoulder as she disappears up the stairs behind us with rollers the size of soup cans in her hair. I pull the door shut on her with a bang.

“I just don’t know if this lifeguarding thing was the best decision for you,” my mother says as she bears down on the gas, hooking into the park with a sharp right. She looks over at me, eyes completely unreadable under her dark Jackie O glasses. “I don’t know what you and your father were thinking.”

I grip the seat, bracing myself for the descent downhill, knowing no reply is necessary. My mother is not the most attentive driver in the best of situations, but one day before her first daughter’s wedding? Forget about it. We are a white gold blur, whizzing past ten-speeds and strollers and dogs on the run.

“Did you talk to Shane today?” she asks.

“No.” I sigh.

I know what she wants. I can feel her pressing down on me all the time. The nonstop pro-Shane propaganda is not really necessary.

She wants me to put on my pink blinders and follow the path that she has planned for me. She wants me to pretend I didn’t see all those things and do all those things and
feel
all those things I felt with Duffy. Sometimes I wish I could. It would be so much easier.

“His tux should be ready,” my mother says, her sharp tone competing with the
bing, bing, bing
of her turn signal. “Remind him to pick it up early tomorrow. Did you remember his corsage? Did Roger get him a gift?”

The questions pop in my direction like maternal machine-gun fire as she revs the engine and makes the final turn into the pool parking lot, angling randomly across four spots, scattering a gang of big boys on tiny bikes. They roll away like Skittles, glaring at us from under the brims of their baseball caps.

I push at the door.

“He may only be an usher,” she continues, “but he is part of the wedding party after all. He’ll sit next to you at the head table. It only makes sense.”

I grab my bag and get out of the car.

“Someone will pick you up.” My mother waves at me, not waiting for my response. She is already turning the car away, driving off, flipping her cell phone open as she zigs away.

I glance through the links of fence on my way toward the pool, hoping for a light crowd, an easy afternoon, and maybe even a chance that Duffy might be somewhere on the shady side, resting on some hood, waiting for me.

No such luck.

Most of the middle school is milling around outside the fence. Towels draped around their necks like prizefighters, they wait for the gates to swing open.

Heat shimmers, waves of it rising off the empty concrete deck as I grip my bag up against me and swim against the Coppertone-scented tide, pausing on my way past the kiddie pool to let two little girls with water running in little rivers down their backs pick their barefooted way across the blacktop path in front of me.

They pass by carefully, balancing on their tippy toes while I push past a knot of boys in board shorts with sporadically hairy upper lips. So totally thirteen. I can feel their eyes trailing me as I sneak in the side door marked
STAFF
ONLY
in stenciled spray paint.

It’s so different to be here during the day after working a calm, quiet night shift. The water glares at me in the afternoon sun, blinding and bright. White caulk fills the cracks on the deck. It oozes up, warm and soft, like marshmallow filling in a concrete Pop-Tart.

Valerie is outside the gate, her skinny legs poking through the slit in a saffron sarong that could almost be in style if it didn’t look like it came straight from the Goodwill.

She is sitting with her usual perfect posture, her legs crossed at the ankles. She looks expectant, but not in a Yorke kind of way. I watch her licking at a melting Drumstick, the paper wrapper, next to her on the concrete, neatly folded like origami, and I am struck by her stillness. She looks almost beautiful from here, in a bony, brown-haired, bookish kind of way.