Tell Us Something True (7 page)

ME: Duh. I mean, what does UR mom do?

HER: Housekeeper

ME: What R UR siblings names?

HER: Maria, Miguel, Claudia, Roberto

ME: Thx. G-night Daphne

HER: G-night boy w/ the unforgettable name

When I met Will at the beginning of freshman year, with his high voice and long hair and short-shorts, I'd never have imagined the senior-year version, the Will to whom girls, grades and great parking spaces came effortlessly.

But back to the shorts. When I say short I mean
really
short. I mean an inch away from sharing your balls with the world short.

We were getting ready for PE. I hadn't noticed Will at the locker next to me, but once I saw those shorts, it was hard to look away.

It wasn't until a few weeks later, after we'd started hanging out, that I said, “Dude. Those shorts. They need to go.” We'd just run laps.

He looked down. “These? Really?” And then he took off for one final lap, which we later called “the lap of shame.”

I didn't see those shorts again until my birthday months later. I was surprised he'd brought a wrapped gift to school. Even a card.

Dear River—to mark the occasion of you turning 15, here: something that says how much you mean to me better than words.

I unwrapped it. The shorts.

Over the years we'd found ways to give them back and forth. I'd leave them in his car or his backpack. He'd sneak into my room and put them in my drawer. I sent them to his summer camp in a care package. But no one ever wore them.

Until he walked into my kitchen that Thursday morning.

“Hurry up, River. I'll drive you to school.”

Will had grown since freshman year so the shorts had reached a whole new level of…inappropriate. Mom stared, openmouthed.

“What is it, Deb?” He spun around. “Is there something in my teeth?”

“William Parker,” she said. “What on earth are you wearing?”

He slung an arm around her shoulder. “Deb, River needs cheering up. And these shorts bring joy to the world.”

“If it wouldn't make us late,” I said, “I'd make you take a lap of shame.”

I dragged him to my room and threw him a pair of my jeans. We laughed most of the way to school.

My good mood lasted until right before sixth-period study hall, when I practically tripped over the table where Penny's best friend, Vanessa, sat with a box of cash and a pile of printed purple tickets.

“Hey, River—how
are
you?” She asked this like she'd ask
How are you since someone ran over your puppy?
Or
How are you since your face got disfigured?
“Going to the dance? It should be super fun. Penny is going.” She held up a single ticket. “The theme is Purple Rain.”

I couldn't think of anything to say. My mind was a blizzard of thick, soft snow.

That night at Jonas's party Penny and I took a walk around the block together and I grabbed her hand and told her I was going to kiss her and she said:
What are you waiting for?

I leaned in close. I put both of my hands on her cheeks. We were standing out on the street, under a tree, in front of a house where the lights had just gone out. She was chewing that blue sugar-free gum she loved.

I can't say that the kiss was perfect. I'd liked her since freshman orientation and I was having a hard time just being in the moment because my brain kept screaming
I'M ABOUT TO KISS PENNY BROCKAWAY
. But the kiss was good enough that afterward she pulled back and bit her upper lip. It was the first time I made note of her habit. She smiled at me. “Let's go someplace and do more of that.”

I dropped my jaw in fake shock.
“You little tramp!”
I said. “Do you think I'm that easy?” Then I leaned in again and gave her a short peck, the kind you give someone you've been kissing forever, not the girl you've only kissed once a minute ago. But it already felt like I'd been kissing Penny forever, not in the way that you're bored with doing it, more in the way that it felt like second nature.

We walked holding hands for three more blocks to a park I took Natalie to sometimes.

We sat on a bench away from the lights and we kissed until we both had red rashes around our mouths. I felt drunk. My hair was a mess from the way she ran her hands through it. Penny always did love my hair.

I wondered what it would be like at school the following Monday. Would I know how to talk to her? Would it be awkward? Would she want to sit with me at lunch? But all of a sudden we were a couple. It was easy. I never worried where things stood with us until the afternoon I pedaled her out to the middle of Echo Park Lake.

“I can't go,” I said to Vanessa.

“Why not?” She sounded genuinely disappointed.

“I'm busy.”

“Too bad.” She put the ticket back into the box. “I guess I should let you know that Penny is going with Evan Lockwood.”

Snow. Falling hard inside my head.

“Don't tell her I told you, okay? I don't want her to be mad, but…I feel like it's only fair if you know.”

Before I knew what I was doing, I was opening my wallet and buying two tickets.

“Are these for you and Maggie?” she asked. Vanessa knew Maggie and I were just friends.

“No.”

She counted out each dollar and flattened it.

She handed over the tickets. “See you and…whoever there.”

I was late to study hall, and I slid into my seat next to Luke, who stared at the tickets in my hand like I'd just walked in carrying a rubber chicken or a hamster.

“The dance?”

I shrugged.

I'd avoided school dances like…well, school dances. I'd never been to one until I started going out with Penny. She liked getting dressed up, picking out an outfit for me, walking around clinging to my arm, and pulling me close for a slow song. The rest of the time she'd dance with her friends—that was more fun for her and also more humane, because nobody needed to see me dance. It wasn't pretty.

Luke never went and Will had only been to one dance because a girl he didn't like that much caught him off guard and asked him and he didn't have the heart to say no. Maggie went sometimes with other girls, mostly just to spy on people. But now that we were seniors, regular dances seemed especially stupid because the year was going to end with a prom anyway.

“I guess I just thought maybe we should go.”

“Are you asking me to the dance?”

“Sort of.”

“Dude. Have you completely lost your mind?”

“Shhhhh­hhhhh­hh.”
Mr. Baumgarten, our study hall proctor, looked up from his pile of papers.

Evan Lockwood played basketball with Luke. Maybe Luke knew that Evan had asked Penny to the dance, or maybe Vanessa had her facts wrong.

Luke took out a sheet of paper and wrote:
Get a grip. Don't go to the dance to stalk Penny.

Solid advice, but instead of tearing up the tickets I put them away in my wallet.

I didn't do any work. I just tried to erase the image of Penny pressed against Evan Lockwood during some cheesy Bruno Mars song.

For the rest of the afternoon those tickets burned a hole in my wallet. What if I went to Penny's house with those tickets and got down on a knee even, and said something like:
Penny Brockaway, will you do me the honor of going to the Purple Rain dance with me?

Would Penny fall for a gesture like that? Part of me thought she might, judging from the number of romantic comedies she'd made me sit through. When we'd watch those movies—a bowl of popcorn, my arm around her shoulder, her legs draped across my lap, Nuisance curled up next to us on the couch—I felt like she was trying to teach me about how to be the dreamy boyfriend, the one who always does and says the right thing, and when he doesn't, he makes it up to his girlfriend in just the right way.

Guys in those movies wouldn't sit by and let Evan Lockwood take their girlfriends to the Purple Rain dance without a fight.

“I need a ride,” I said over dinner.

“Where to?” Mom asked.

“Penny's house.”

“I thought you broke up.” Leonard said this without making eye contact, like it was no big deal, like you'd say
Nice weather we're having.

“They did,” Natalie chimed in. “But Penny and I can still be friends.”

I smiled at her. “At least there's that.”

“So are you two patching things up?” I loved Mom. I really did. But sometimes her expressions were just so old person-y.

“I hope so.” When nobody said anything I added, “I bought us tickets to the dance.”

“Tickets to the dance.” That was a habit of Leonard's: repeating something I said when he didn't like what I was saying. Like when I mentioned I wanted to drop precalc because why torture myself when I'd already fulfilled my math requirements.
Dropping precalculus,
he'd said.

“Yes, I thought I'd go over tonight and ask her to be my date to the dance.”

“Oh, honey.” Mom patted my arm. “Why don't you just give her a call? You don't need to go over there so late at night.”

“It's only seven-thirty.”

“Yes, but…”

“But what?”

“But…maybe you should give her some space?”

This was not what the guys in the romantic comedies did, they didn't give space, but I couldn't tell Mom this. She wouldn't understand. Over the last two years Mom had gently tried—many times—to tell me that I focused too much of my attention on Penny, that I should back off a little, not let my relationship be the center of my universe. But I ignored her because she was my mother. What did she know?

“Buddy.” This was Leonard's signal that he was speaking with authority, about something beyond the realm of Mom's expertise. I never minded when Leonard played this part, even if I didn't always agree with him. Leonard meant well, and he was often right. I still wish I'd dropped precalc, though.

“Maybe it's better to let her realize what she's missing? You could even ask someone else to the dance. You know what they say about fish in the sea and all that.”

“Yeah, they're full of mercury poisoning.”

I was starting to feel sort of pathetic, and I didn't want to make it worse by begging them for a ride, so I just excused myself and went to my room.

But those tickets. The image of me on one knee with them fanned in my hand, looking up at a surprised and delighted Penny. It wouldn't leave me alone.

Penny's house was a thirty-minute walk, twenty-five if I hustled. I didn't want to take all those minutes because now it was starting to get late, and I didn't want her to be in pajamas or anything. That wasn't how I imagined it all going down.

I climbed out my window. I'd done this lots of times, often when I wasn't even headed anyplace but the backyard. Sometimes it was just nice to come and go without getting noticed.

Leonard's truck was in the garage and the keys hung on the hook. He'd taken me driving a few times. I was pretty sure I could make the trip to Penny's without causing a multivehicle pileup, but the last thing I needed was to do something illegal. I didn't want to give Mom and Leonard any more cause to worry about my judgment.

Natalie had gotten a new bike for her birthday a few months back. She was in between frame sizes so Leonard bought her the next size up to grow into. Her feet barely touched the ground when she sat on the seat and this made her spooked about riding it, so she hadn't yet.

I took it on its inaugural ride, pedaling standing up the whole way because I couldn't sit without knocking my knees into my chin. My overall appearance on this bike wasn't helped by the fact that it was hot pink. I looked absurd. But it was dark. And I was on a mission.

As I approached Penny's block I hopped off the bike and stashed it in the tall hedges of a neighbor's front yard. I caught my breath. Wiped my palms on my jeans and slowed to a casual walk.

I found Juana in the driveway, dragging the black garbage bins out to the street.

“
Hola,
Juana.”

I'd startled her. She jumped and put her hand to her chest, but then didn't seem all that relieved to discover it was me.