The Boy I Love (4 page)

It may have been getting dark, but I knew Allie well enough to know she was blushing. I had a feeling she felt exactly like I did—excited to be here, but also nervous. Of course the first thing Devon and Tim did was offer us some beer.

“We can't,” Allie said. She gathered up her courage and told them about the Breathalyzer.

“That's rough,” Devon said. Tim nodded in agreement. So far, one thing I had noticed about Tim, he wasn't much of a talker. Maybe he was shy, like Allie. “Look,” Devon said, pointing toward the skimmers who waddled on the shore. “The puffins are back.”

I kept myself from laughing at this. The skimmers, with their crazy orange bills, did look weirdly Arctic. But I had never heard anyone mistake them for puffins before. Allie had spent enough time with my dad to know exactly what those birds were called, and I waited, giving her a chance to impress Tim with what she knew. But she didn't say anything, so after a moment I said, “Those aren't puffins. They're skimmers.”

“Yeah?” Devon said.

He sounded slightly less friendly, like I'd annoyed him. I know I can be a little obnoxious that way, so I made my voice apologetic when I said, “My dad's a songbird expert for the forest service,” trying to make it sound more like an excuse for my bad behavior than information.

“Are those songbirds?” Devon said, all nice again.

“They're a kind of gull.” I didn't tell him the real order name, which is Charadriiformes. I may not be shy like Allie, but I'm not a total social idiot. Only a partial one.

“A songbird expert,” Tim said. “What a cool job.”

I shrugged like I didn't agree, but inside I smiled. Allie shifted next to me, and I felt bad that they weren't paying
more attention to her. Even though Allie wasn't talking, she kept staring at Tim in this way that almost looked like pleading.
Like me
, Allie's eyes kept saying to Tim.
Notice me
.

We all stood there, suddenly out of things to say. I wondered if there was anything to drink besides beer. Not because I was especially thirsty. It would just be better to have something to do with my hands. So I asked.

“Sure,” Devon said. He and Tim jogged off toward the keg, with Allie and me following a few steps behind. I tried not to trip in my sandals. It was getting dark, so there were only a few nonparty people on the beach—some of them walking hand in hand, and some of them letting their kids have one last beach romp before bedtime. I could just make out the outline of one couple, pressed together and whispering. Don't ask me why, but out of nowhere I suddenly imagined that being me and Tim. With Allie standing next to me, liking him so much, I felt an instant surge of guilt. Still, I imagined it. Or maybe just imagined imagining it, as, to be honest, it seemed almost impossible. Maybe that sounds immature for sixteen. But my parents had hardly ever let me out of their sight. I'd never been allowed to date—not that I really had a chance to challenge that rule, since no one had ever asked me out. Other than a few scattered games of spin the bottle, I had never even kissed a guy, and spin-the-bottle kisses don't count.

Devon opened up a cooler full of soda and bottled water.
Allie and I both asked for water. She kept on staring at Tim, her hair blowing around in the breeze and her face all shy and vulnerable. How could he not fall in love with her right on the spot?

“So,” Allie said. She sipped her water, and I knew it took every bit of confidence for her to start a conversation. “Are y'all going out for football?”

“Allie's going to be a cheerleader,” I said.

“Going to try to be one,” she corrected.

“I'm already on varsity,” Devon said. He clapped Tim on the back. “So was this loser until he decided he wanted to try out for the school play.”

“Hey, I'm trying out too,” I said, way too fast and way too excited. “I'm so bummed it's a musical. I can hardly sing at all.” This last was a lie, and as soon as it was out of my mouth, I wondered why I'd said it.

“She can too sing,” Allie said. “Wait till you hear her.”

By this point the sun had set. The water had gone dark but had a pretty shimmer on top of it from the moon, and lights from passing boats.

Devon said, “Yeah, it's always the girls who say they can't sing who have the great voices. But this guy.” He gave Tim a playful little shove. “I don't know why Tim wants to wreck a perfectly good winning streak so he can sing songs with a bunch of faggots.”

Allie and I both did double takes. At Cutty River, you
could get suspended for a whole week just for using a word like “faggot.” The teachers would've called it hate speech. I looked over at Tim like I expected him to melt right there on the ground. But he didn't, just took a sip of his beer as if Devon hadn't said anything at all.

I almost said something to Devon. I swear I did. But Allie was widening her eyes at me in a way that said
please, please, do NOT say anything
. So I kept my mouth shut. It was Devon's party, after all, and he'd been nice enough to invite us. And if Tim didn't care, why should I?

I looked over at all the kids crowded around the fire. It seemed like fifty more people had arrived just since we came to get our drinks. Some had brought guitars, so we headed back there, sidling our way through the crowd to stand right in front of the flames. There was a girl sitting with the guitar players, and she started singing along with them. I thought she was pretty good. I wondered if I would ever be that brave, to sing in front of all these people. I stood there for a second, imagining how it would feel to not only be at this party but be the absolute center of attention.

As this thought formed in my head, I had no way of knowing that in another moment I
would
be the absolute center of attention, but for a much less positive reason than singing a song. Because just then a group of three drunk girls pushed through the crowd to get close to the fire. One of them (I found out later it was Tim's old girlfriend, Caroline Jones)
tripped and reached out to grab me for balance. Maybe if I'd been wearing sneakers, or bare feet, I would have been less wobbly. Or maybe since I never saw her coming I wouldn't have stood a chance anyway. But what did happen was, I pitched directly forward. My water bottle flew out of my right hand. I saw the flames coming at my face. Later everyone said it happened in the blink of an eye, but to me it felt like slow motion. I reached out my left hand to catch myself. Unfortunately, the only place to put it at that point was straight onto the burning logs of the fire.

“Wren!” Allie screamed. “Oh my God, Wren!”

I thought at first it was her who grabbed the back of my dress and pulled me out of the fire. But it was Tim. One second later and probably my hair and head would have gone up in flames. In that moment, however, I could not appreciate my good fortune, because my hand hurt worse than I ever knew anything could possibly hurt in this world, and the only thing I heard was my own voice, screaming.

Screaming, screaming, screaming, plus blinding
pain. Plus other voices screaming, particularly Allie's. Someone told her to call an ambulance, and because I hadn't quite humiliated myself enough, I started yelling, “No! It's too much money! We can't afford it! We can't afford it!” For all my new classmates to hear.

The whole party had turned into total chaos. Allie had to fill me in later on some of what happened, like Devon and a bunch of his friends rushing off to hide the keg in the dune grass, and Caroline—the girl who knocked me into the fire—puking into the ocean and crying her eyes out from the guilt. Allie said she kept saying, “I'm so sorry,” and “Is she okay?” in between retches. I was not aware of any of this, because I was locked in a world of total pain. Tim grabbed my hand and held it up above my head (he told me after that he knew from Boy Scouts that it needed to stay above my heart).

“You should let us call an ambulance,” he said.

And I yelled back, “No, No, No.”

Tim could see it was no use, so he ripped off his T-shirt, doused it with bottled water, and wrapped it loosely around my hand. Somebody tried to get me to take a swig from a bottle of whiskey. My hand hurt so bad I would have tried anything, but at the first taste I just gagged and spit it out all over the sand. Everyone was shouting at us to stick my hand into the ocean, or put it on ice, but Tim kept shaking his head.

“Come on,” he said. “I've got my mom's car. I'll take you to the hospital.”

We were halfway to Williamsport before I realized we'd left Allie back at the beach.

“Don't worry,” Tim said. “Someone will give her a ride home. Let's just concentrate on getting you help.”

I couldn't concentrate on anything; my hand hurt so bad I almost wanted to die. He told me to keep holding my hand up over my head, and I finally quit worrying about Allie, and the money for an ambulance, and muttered about how I'd ruined the party.

“It's not your fault,” Tim kept saying.

“You're so nice,” I told him. He reached over and touched my knee. His face looked pale. Even his freckles had disappeared.

When we got to the hospital, they rushed me right past
triage and into a room, where they gave me a shot for the pain.
Thank you
was all I could say to that, and then everything became a blur. At some point I saw Holly's face hovering over me. I forgot that she'd already been in town, and so I decided I must be dying. My hand got wrapped up in a big, moist, gauzy balloon, and I thought how I wouldn't be able to play guitar and maybe I couldn't even try out for the play.

It seems to me that Tim was there for a quite a while—I have a memory of him wearing one of those blue scrub shirts, one of the nurses must have given it to him—but then he disappeared. I found out later that Allie was never there, but for some reason I thought she was, and in my fog I hoped she would get a ride home with Tim, because I knew how happy that would make her.

At some point my parents took me home, but I don't remember that. I just woke up the next morning in my own bed, with my poor hand throbbing away. You would think that burning your hand meant just that—a hurt hand. But I felt worse than if I had the flu. I was nauseous and my head pounded and I couldn't even see clearly. It was like I'd hurt my whole body instead of just my hand.

I yelled for my mom but she didn't answer, and I couldn't hear her moving around the house. Then I realized I couldn't hear her because the air-conditioning was on. My parents tried not to use the air-conditioning much; the fact that they'd turned it on made me realize even more
how bad I must be hurt. I got up and headed for the stairs, cradling my bandaged hand in the crook of my right elbow like it was a little baby. I felt just awful, and my plan was to holler for my mom again when I got to the landing. But before I had a chance to open my mouth, I saw a sight that almost made me forget the pain in my hand, at least for a second: Holly and James, standing inside by the front door. They were talking, but so quietly that I couldn't hear even the sounds of their voices. James had his hand on her shoulder, and Holly was nodding. My heart swelled up—I never knew I could feel so much hope for someone else.

I'm sure I didn't make a noise, but somehow they both sensed I was there as they turned their heads at the same time. James looked solemn. It must have been intense for him, being at our farm again. He'd decided very firmly never to set foot back here. And now he was here, going back on that decision, because—I was sure—of me.

Despite everything he must have been feeling, James smiled. “Wren,” he said. “I hear you had an accident.”

“Yes, sir, I did,” I said. Suddenly standing up became too much for me, and I sank down onto the top step. James removed his hand from Holly's shoulder and took the steps two at a time. When he got to me he sat down too. I automatically put my hand on his knee, and he unwound the bandage carefully.

Have I mentioned that James is the nicest person in the
world, his only possible competition being Holly? He looked at my palm, which was this terrible screaming pink color, with little yellow blisters all over it. My fingertips were pink too. I thought I would throw up just looking at that burn.

“Holly asked me to come over and change the bandage for you,” James said. He had this deep voice, like a radio announcer's.

“That was nice of you to come all the way here,” I said. And I meant it; it was more than a two-hour drive from Raleigh. He held my hand gingerly, looking at it like it could tell him something.

“It hurts a lot, doesn't it, Wren?”

I nodded. He said I'd have to take pain medication for a few days, and that it hurting so bad was actually a good sign. If it had been a third- or fourth-degree burn, I wouldn't have felt anything at all. He said it didn't even look like a deep second-degree burn, which meant that only the top two layers of skin got hurt—probably because Tim had pulled me out of the fire so quick. But because the burn covered my whole palm and the tips of my fingers, it was major rather than minor, so we had to take it seriously, keeping it clean and cool and watching out for infection.

“Can you . . . stay?” I asked James. “Just to keep an eye on it?”

I heard Holly's footsteps downstairs, walking away. I hoped I hadn't embarrassed her, and I also hoped that she
was going to get the pain medicine James had mentioned. I could barely sit still, my hand hurt so bad.

“I'll stick around at least for today,” James said. Holly came up the stairs carrying a glass of water, and then handed me two blue pills. I saw her smile at James, a real small smile, and I swallowed my pills thinking all the pain in the world was worth it if the two of them got back together again.

*   *   *

I slept most of that day and the next one too. Mom wanted me to stay in bed, so she kept the air conditioner blasting and piled blankets on top of me. It made me feel guilty hearing the hum of the air-conditioning motor, like all the nice cool air through the vents was actually dollars flying out of my parents' bank account.