Love? Maybe. (11 page)

“I asked if you need me to pick you up tomorrow,” Charlie says. I pause, confused. “For the swim meet?” Charlie prompts.

“Are you sure it’s okay to fraternize with the enemy?” I ask.

“Um, Piper, it’s a swim meet, not war.” There is a big crash in the background and then a series of thuds.

“Charlie?” I ask.

“I’m here,” he says.

“Where are you?” I ask, surprised that he’s out somewhere. He has this four point ritual that he performs before each
meet. The first is sleep—at least eight hours. Two of the steps are food-related. Another involves ingesting as much coffee as humanly possible the morning of the meet.

“Listen, Pipe. I gotta go.” There’s more thudding, then a ripping sound.

“Charlie, is everything—”

“I’ll be in front of your house at seven,” Charlie says. The phone is dead before I can answer. I try to call him back, but it clicks immediately over to voice mail. I stare at my phone, not sure what to do. Part of me wants to find him—just to make sure he’s okay. If I knew where Charlie was or what he was doing, I’d figure out a way to get there, but his phone is off and I have no idea where to even begin looking for him. I try his home phone, hoping to get Frank, but it just rings and rings. Right as I’m about to hang up and call my mom to ask her to go over there, Charlie’s dad picks up.

“Hey, Mr. Wishman,” I say. “It’s Piper.” He doesn’t say anything. “From next door? I mean, I’m not next door right now…” I know I’m babbling, but I’m not sure exactly what to say.

“What can I do for you, Piper?” Charlie’s dad asks. His voice sounds thick and I wonder if I woke him up. Instantly, I feel guilty for calling. Frank tends to sleep weird hours. Charlie is forever telling me to keep it down when I’m over there.

“Listen, I’m sorry to wake you, but I just talked to Charlie and—”

“Charlie’s sleeping,” he says, cutting me off.

“Oh,” I say. “It was just that he got off the phone so quickly and I…” I trail off, unsure of what else to say. I start to congratulate him on the Umlaut thing, but he cuts me off again.

“If that’s it—” he says.

“Yeah,” I say. “Um, thanks and I’m sorry again—” But the phone is dead before I can finish. I look at the screen on my phone.
Charlie Home—Call ended.

“Piper?” Jan pushes the back door open and looks at me. I slip my phone into my pocket and smile at him. “You okay?” he asks. I nod, but don’t look at him. “You seem a little sad tonight.”

“No,” I say, “I’m good.” I know Jan doesn’t believe me. In addition to my cheeks turning bright red and my tic thingy in my left eye, it’s the words that give me away. Whenever I say
I’m good
, it means I’m anything but good. Thankfully Jan doesn’t say anything else. He just touches my shoulder briefly as I walk past him into the kitchen.

Jeremy is laughing so hard at something that he’s having trouble breathing. Claire and Jillian are both staring at him with their arms folded. He finally calms down enough to speak. “Let me get this straight,” he says. “You thought that by adding a bunch of herbs and spices and junk to some truffles, you could make people fall in love?” Jillian glares at him as he starts laughing again.

“You told him?” I ask. Claire nods toward Jillian, who manages to look slightly sheepish.

“It wasn’t one of our best ideas,” she admits.

Jeremy stares at the ceiling for a moment. “I think it’s brilliant. There’s just one major flaw,” he says.

“Oh and what’s that?” Jillian asks, her arms still folded.

“You were trying to make people fall in love, right?” Jillian nods impatiently. “I think that’s where you went wrong. Your goal should have been to make people
think
they’d fallen in love.”

“What’s the difference?” Jillian asks.

It’s Jeremy’s turn to be impatient. “Symptoms of love are easy to measure and manipulate. Dilated pupils. Elevated heart rate. Flushed cheeks. If you can find ingredients that manufacture enough of those indicators, I think you could convince someone that he’s in love.”

“You mean trick someone,” I say. Jeremy shrugs.

“But we wanted to make people
really
fall in love,” Claire says.

“That’s scientifically impossible,” Jeremy says. “Even if you overlook the obvious confounding factors, there’s no way to empirically prove the presence of something as nebulous as love.” I look over at Jillian expecting her to say something, but she’s just looking at Jeremy with this half smile on her face.

“What?” Jeremy asks, looking at her. She shrugs and starts folding more boxes. I am pretty sure this is the very first time I’ve ever seen Jillian at a loss for words.

I
hate to admit it, but this is good,” I say, taking another bite of the bacon truffle. Jan had a batch of bacon truffles put together and chilling in the deep freeze as soon as the bacon arrived. He insisted we try one as soon as they were ready.

“Jeremy, that is some serious praise coming from a girl who doesn’t like candy,” Jan says. We’ve been taking turns eating our sandwiches and boxing up truffles.

“Another thing I hate to admit,” I say, looking at my half-eaten veggie sub sitting on the desk, “is that Mike’s can make a mean sandwich.”

“Why do you hate to admit that?” Jan asks. I tell him about my mom and how Jersey Mike’s is making her plans for expansion impossible.

“The only other option is if Artie’s closes,” I say, mentioning the shop on the other side of hers. Jan smirks at me. “And
as much as I love my mom, the thought of a world without Artie’s Pizza is too horrible to consider.” This makes Claire laugh. I am a well-known Artie’s junky. They even gave me one of their tie-dyed staff shirts last year for free.

Jillian looks up from where she’s adding raspberries to the freshly made batch of truffle base. “It’s not the best location for a high-end flower shop, wedged between a pizza parlor and a sandwich shop. She should relocate.” I nod, remembering that I recently said almost the exact same thing to my mother.

“Speaking of expansions…” I say.

Jan sighs. He’s been talking about knocking down the wall between his shop and the empty one next door ever since the bookstore moved down to the end of the strip. “Maybe when things slow down,” he says. He’s been saying that for months, and every time he does, I point out that things are doing the opposite of slowing down. Jan’s is more popular all the time. “Maybe now that I have all this extra help,” he says, smiling at us. Then his face gets serious. “Listen,” he says. “I really do appreciate it.”

“We know!” Jillian says, then laughs. It’s the seventeenth time in the last hour that Jan has told us how much he appreciates our help. “You couldn’t do this without us, blah, blah, blah.”

“You’re welcome,” Claire says. “But it’s no big deal. It’s not like I had any other plans.” She sounds a little wistful when she says it and I know she’s thinking of how she
used to spend every Friday night with Stuart. She looks over at me for a moment and I can see the sadness in her eyes.

“I didn’t have anything else to do either,” Jeremy says before taking a bite of his sandwich.

“Duh,” Jillian says. I cringe a little, but Jeremy starts laughing.

I look at my watch. Almost eleven. “I’ve got to get home,” I say. I called my mom earlier, telling her where I was. “I have to get some sleep or I’m going to be a mess at the meet tomorrow.”

“Meet schmeet,” Jillian says. “You should be much more worried about your date with Ben Donovan.”

“You’re going out with Ben Donovan?” Jeremy asks. His voice is incredulous.

“Is it so out of the realm of possibility?” I ask.

“Well yeah,” Jeremy says, earning him three dirty looks, but he seems oblivious. “Why in the world would you want to go out with him?” Claire and Jillian both roll their eyes and look at me. I don’t know what to say. I guess I’d never thought about it all that hard. I mean, Ben Donovan asks you out and you say yes, like Pavlov’s dog and the ringing bell. It’s just the automatic response.

“Because he’s Ben Donovan,” Claire says, voicing my thoughts.

Jeremy looks at me for a long moment. I can tell that reason doesn’t float with him. “It’s your heart,” he says, lifting
a tray of truffles and sliding them into the open refrigerator. I don’t know what to say. It’s as if the whole world just flipped. Here I am actually giving a second thought to what Jeremy Gardner thinks about me going out with Ben Donovan. I shake my head, forgetting that I’m still wearing the blinking hearts headband. They start clacking together like mad, making everyone laugh.

“Okay,” Jan says, clapping his hands together. “This can all wait until tomorrow. Let’s get you kiddos home before your parents wonder if I’ve spirited you all away.”

“But what about …” I gesture to the empty boxes meant to hold truffles and the ones for the Consternation Hearts. They still need to be filled.

“Tomorrow,” Jan says, attempting to herd us toward the door and his car that’s parked out back.

“But I have the meet and then …” I trail off, not wanting to talk about Ben Donovan again. At least not in front of Jeremy. Jillian and Claire are also busy, Jillian with some family thing that she won’t elaborate on and Claire at my mom’s shop.

“I’ll be here,” Jeremy says. “I don’t have anything to do.”

“Again. Duh,” Jillian says. This time we all laugh.

“I can’t believe your car is a hearse,” Jillian says as we all pile into Jan’s car. I notice that Jeremy works it so he’s right next to Jillian. Jan just laughs. He told me once that he bought it from a funeral home that was closing down, and that it’s perfect for hauling big candy orders. He’s right; you
can just slide the boxes into the back along the rails mounted there. Creepy, but true.

Jan drops me off first. As I climb out, Claire and Jillian extract a promise that I will call them
immediately
after my date. Jeremy rolls his eyes. I wave as they pull away from the curb. I turn and start toward my house, where my mother has left the front porch light on. I look up at Charlie’s window. I can’t shake the feeling that there is something Charlie isn’t telling me, something that he’s hiding. I sigh and look away from his darkened window and walk inside. I peek in my mom’s room and whisper good night. The light from the hall falls across her face. She smiles at me, but doesn’t open her eyes.

I don’t bother showering, reasoning that in less than eight hours I’ll be in the pool. I lie awake staring at my ceiling, trying to force myself to sleep. But even when I finally start to drift off, I’m still listening for the loud thump above me that never comes.

It feels like I’ve only been asleep for five minutes when my alarm rings. I’m still half asleep as I pull on my suit, then my warm-ups, and heft my bag from where I left it by the door. Charlie is just backing his car out when I walk outside. I climb into the passenger side, resisting the urge to lie down in the backseat and get some more sleep. I don’t tell Charlie what I’m doing after the meet, just that I don’t need a ride home. He nods, not taking his
eyes off the road. He doesn’t say anything on the whole ride over to the pool. He’s still silent as we walk into the Natatorium. We enter the building and he turns toward the guys’ locker room.

I grab the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “Charlie,” I say. He looks at my hand on his arm, like he’s not sure how it got there, then at my face. “I want—” I pause, seeing the look in his eyes. He’s standing right there only a couple of feet from me, but the look in his eyes is far away.

“What is it, Piper?” he asks. His voice is flat.

“I just wanted—” Charlie keeps looking at me and as he does I can kind of see him in there. Kind of see the Charlie I know.

“Hey, Wishman!” A guy yells from the other end of the hallway. “Get your butt in the pool.”

Charlie doesn’t turn, just keeps looking at me. “I just wanted to say good luck,” I say finally.

“You too,” he says. He smiles slightly and then turns to walk away, but not before I see the look in his eyes. He’s pulled back again. I start to call out to him, to ask him something, anything. To ask him where he is and how can I get there? But he’s walking into the locker room and before I can say anything the door whooshes closed behind him and he’s gone.

The good thing about going out with Ben Donovan right after the swim meet is, I’m so nervous about not making a fool of myself in the pool that I don’t have time to be nervous about
our date. On the downside, the news of our date has gotten around to everyone on the swim team. I feel like in addition to being slightly freaked at the notion of actually being alone with Ben Donovan, there’s extra pressure for me to be smart and funny and beautiful. Otherwise, everyone is going to assume that Ben Donovan was suffering from temporary insanity when he asked me out and therefore cannot be held responsible for his poor judgment. Girls I barely know keep coming up to me in the locker room and telling me good luck. A few of them are excited, like maybe I’m some kind of hero, but mostly they seem sort of scared for me. Those girls freak me out—it’s like they are whispering good luck with my upcoming open-heart surgery.

The pool deck is a madhouse like it always is during meets. The Natatorium has four competition pools. It’s huge—part of the Olympic complex. Since it’s so much better than any of the pools the city schools have, or even the private schools, all the teams within driving distance have all of their meets here. Charlie likes to tease me about how my team’s slumming it when we compete against the public schools.

I step out onto the deck. I’m always surprised at how big everything is. Rows of empty seats climb up toward the ceiling on all sides, making me feel like I’m in the middle of a huge bowl. I drop my bag on one of the benches and slip out of my sweats. Jillian made me promise that I would not under any circumstance wear anything made out of sweatshirt
material on my date. Even I could figure that one out. I assured her that I would wear something nice. She wanted specifics. I described my outfit: a pair of my nicer jeans, a long-sleeved thermal with rhinestone buttons, and my purple flats. I pull my swim cap on and shove my hair up into it. I adjust my goggles, pushing them hard into my eye sockets to make sure they won’t leak.

“Hey, Paisley!” I turn and see Peter waving at me from the water a couple of lanes away. He hangs from the diving block and makes monkey noises. Several girls around me laugh. I just shake my head. It hasn’t gotten any funnier after the three hundredth time. Another swimmer pulls up next to him and yanks him down. Peter says something to him and he turns my way. I feel a flutter in my stomach as he smiles at me. Ben Donovan.
Well, Jeremy,
I think as I prepare to dive in.
There’s your answer.
But all through my warm-up, I can’t shake the question that floats through my brain. That flutter. Is that enough? Is that all there is?

Artie’s is packed when we get there. The line to order snakes away from the counter and out the door.

“Why don’t you see if you can find us a table and I’ll order,” Ben Donovan tells me. I start over to where I see one of the Artie’s workers wiping down a booth. “Piper!” I turn around. “What do you like on your pizza?” I tell him anything except olives. Olives freak me out. They look like eyeballs and taste like fish. Yuck. Someone snags the booth I was
heading toward, but I grab a table near the front window when it’s free.

A boy, not much older than Dom, keeps feeding quarters into the claw machine behind me. He’s on his last quarter and still hasn’t won anything. I decide to tell him the trick that Charlie figured out.

“If you wait until the claw stops swinging, you’ll have a better chance of getting that dog,” I say. The boy looks over at me, trying to figure out if I’m just messing with him. “Seriously,” I say, standing up and walking over behind him. “Better yet, go for that bear.” I point to a brown bear with a propeller hat near the back. “The ones that are lying down are easier to pick up.” The boy nods and feeds his last quarter into the slot and starts the claw moving toward the back. “That’s it,” I say, leaning around to look in the side window. “A little more.” He taps the joystick. “Perfect,” I say. “Now, you wait.” The timer above the claw counts down slowly.

The boy is getting antsy, but he doesn’t push the button to lower the claw. I’m hoping Charlie’s techniques will work. They don’t always, but I have a shelf full of cheap stuffed animals to prove that they do more often than not. The claw drops and slowly lowers around the bear and lifts it.

“Woo!” the boy yells. He reaches into the trap door and pulls out the stuffed bear. “Thanks,” he says to me. I smile as he starts toward the back of Artie’s with the bear held high over his head. I sit back down at our table just as Ben Donovan finishes ordering and starts making his way over to
where I’m sitting. The boy with the bear nearly collides with him as he races past.

“Hey,” Ben Donovan says, sitting down across from me. “It’s busy,” he says, stating the obvious. I nod, agreeing to the obvious. “Those things are a scam,” he says, nodding to the claw machine. “I never win.” I think about telling him Charlie’s techniques, but someone calls his name from the order line. I look up and spot Peter and Sarah, standing waiting to order.

Peter presses something into Sarah’s hand and walks over to us. He pulls a chair out, flips it around, and sits so he’s riding it like a horse. “Can we join you?” he asks. It’s not really a question, but I say sure anyway. Secretly I’m grateful. I know Peter will dominate the conversation as he always does. Which in this case is a good thing. Even though Ben Donovan and I have been together less than half an hour, we’ve already run out of things to talk about, having covered the usual: swimming, school, Montrose gossip, and even the Braves’ prospects for this year. I introduced that last topic, showing how desperate I was.

Sarah joins us a few minutes later. She hands Peter some change. I shake my head. I guess she should be glad that in addition to making her wait in line, he didn’t make her pay. Artie delivers our pizzas to our table himself. He barely has time to say hello before someone in the kitchen starts yelling his name. He waves and hurries back to the kitchen, where I can see the orders stacked up two and three deep on the clips.