Fear and Laundry (14 page)

“You alright over there?” he asked when we’d started down the street. I hadn’t said a word since we’d left the porch.

“Mm-hm,” I said, fidgeting with my backpack zipper. The nervous motion and zipping noises were grating even to me, but I seemed helpless to stop.

“You seemed surprised to see me,” he said. Keeping his eyes on the road, he smiled just a little.

“I was expecting Lia.”

“Thought we talked about this Saturday night. I said I’d pick you up.”

“I thought you were joking.”

We coasted to a stop at the corner and he leaned across me again, this time to pull a cassette out of the glove compartment. He pushed it into the tape deck on the dashboard. Music filtered through the speakers and he fiddled with knobs, adjusting the volume, before proceeding through the intersection.

“So, what teachers do you have this year?” he asked. “Anyone I’d remember?”

“Doubt it. I’m not in any AP classes.”

“Because you don’t want to be.”

“Not you, too,” I said. When he asked what I meant by that, I explained that my mother, the school guidance counselor, Lia, and it seemed just about everyone else I knew, constantly accused me of “not applying” myself.

He looked at me briefly and I thought I saw something like sympathy in his eyes, maybe even understanding.

“What’s this music?” I asked. He said it was the band he’d been in, back in Austin. I told him I liked it, which seemed to please him, and we spent a few minutes discussing what we’d both been listening to lately.

“You know, I really appreciate this,” I said when there was a lull in the conversation. I told him I couldn’t imagine why he’d get up so early just to drive me ten minutes to school, though.

We stopped at a light and he rested his elbow on the window, his head on his hand. “I like to be out of the house early,” he said. He wanted to avoid running into John before he left for work. “That way I don’t have to listen to him bug me about looking for a job. Or going back to school.” He could evade Elyse, too, he said, and not give her the chance to press him into volunteer service.

“So you spend all day out of the house?” I asked. “Doing what?” He told me he’d run into Caleb Mendez, Burro Bruto’s original bassist, and the two of them had decided to work on a project together. So now Jake was effectively in two bands. That took up most of his time.

I wanted to ask for more details, but he’d made the final turn of the drive and the school building was coming up on the right. I was never eager to arrive at CHS, but today the ride seemed even cruelly shorter than usual. He pulled up to the side entrance, telling me Lia would take me home in the afternoon. I thanked him again and got out, going up the steps and not looking back until I’d heard him pull away.

***

“S
o my brother
can
read,” said Lia when I sat down next to her at our Biology lab table. “I had my doubts, you know. And I’d have felt so bad if you didn’t show up this morning.”

“What?” I felt light-headed.

“I wrote your address and directions down for him,” she explained. “’Cause it’d been so long since he’d been to your place.”

“Why didn’t you tell me you weren’t picking me up?”

She looked surprised. “Jake told me you guys worked this out the other night. Sounded good to me. I know you didn’t want to hear it from me about being late and, you know, he’s just sitting around being useless anyway....It’s okay, isn’t it?”

Okay
? I thought.

“Yeah. It’s fine.”

Mr. Liddell came in and started class then. Lia took out a sheet of paper, scribbled a note, and slid it across the table to me.

“I’ve had three people ask me about the Clyde interview this morning,” she’d written.

“Crap,” I wrote back.

***

M
onday night’s rehearsal went a little smoother than Sunday’s, but I was still unhappy. My seat behind the drum kit afforded me a perfect view of Paige flirting relentlessly with Jake all night. At one point she broke a bass string and actually pretended to need his help fixing it although she could easily have done it herself.

Then, during a break, Paige sat right next to Jake on the Mlinarichs’ living room couch and played with his hair, telling him she could cut it for him for free. She was in the Cosmetology program at school and they had their own salon. He just needed to drop by some afternoon. He told her he’d keep it in mind.

***

T
uesday morning I was ready early and waiting on the porch when Jake pulled into the driveway, got out and opened the van door for me. Soon after we were on our way, he took something from the dashboard.

“That’s for you,” he said, holding out a Memorex cassette tape. “It’s the demo you said you liked, and a few other things I thought you might be into.”

I took it and turned it over, reading the song titles scribbled on the insert in his cramped, slanted handwriting. “You made this last night?”

“Told you I don’t sleep much.”

I thanked him and slipped the tape into my book bag.

“It’s nothing,” he said.

I believed him. Even so, all day I was hyper aware of the cassette, burning like an ember in my backpack pocket. Its very presence seemed to make the insults of the day more bearable. In Spanish class, when Penny passed by and knocked my books off my desk, I just smiled and picked them right back up. When Alex walked me to my locker afterward, I felt strangely relaxed and able to chit-chat with him at ease. And when, back at home, Mom told me George wanted to take us out to a movie and another dinner tomorrow, I told her I couldn’t wait.

***

P
aige turned up at Tuesday night’s rehearsal with gossip. A girl in her Cosmetology lab had told her there was a new venue opening up in the back room of a hamburger place across town called Scout’s. I knew the place, vaguely. Other people hung out there. Not Lia or me or anyone either of us considered a friend. The Racket and some other bands, Paige informed us, were already booked to play there.

“Sounds like it’s going to be a pretty nice place,” she said. They’d have a real stage and lighting, a professional sound system. And all the furniture would reportedly match.

Lia turned up her nose. Real music fans didn’t care about anything as superficial as lighting or “pretty tables and chairs,” she declared. I hoped she was right, but for the first time all day, my optimism flagged. I couldn’t help worrying that competition from this Scout’s place posed yet another challenge to Lynch’s already questionable ability to stay open.

***

T
hough I was annoyed at having to miss another band practice (I would already miss Thursday’s because of my date with Alex), I was still in a good enough mood on Wednesday to try and enjoy the night out with Mom and George. Unsurprisingly, neither of them had wanted to see my movie pick,
Natural Born Killers
, but we’d compromised and agreed on
Clear and Present Danger
.

“Violent enough for you?” George asked me when we’d exited the theater. His mostly-bald head shone under the fluorescent lamps in the parking lot. His thick eyebrows wriggled when he talked.

“Hm?”

“Your mother said you like the really gory stuff.
Halloween
and all that kind of thing.” I hated that smile Mom’s boyfriends always gave me: nervously ingratiating, desperately screaming for “the kid’s” approval. Any other week, I probably would’ve pointed out to him that
Halloween
wasn’t really all that gory just to make him feel stupid. But tonight I just smiled and nodded.

The movie theater was in a shopping center. We followed the sidewalk to an Italian place a few stops down, where the door stood propped open with a chunk of concrete and a few people waited in line. George ducked inside to get us on the list while my mother and I waited outside under a green, white, and red striped awning that snapped from time to time in the breeze. The sun had gone down, but the temperature was still bearable – cool, but not yet uncomfortably so.

My mother eyed me. “You’re in a good mood,” she observed. I realized I was still smiling, seemingly without cause.

“That okay?” I asked, putting my hands in my jacket pockets and rocking back and forth on my heels.

“Sure. I’m just wondering if there’s any particular reason.”

I looked up, pretending to think about it. “Nope.”

George came back. “What’d I miss?” he asked cautiously, picking up on some sort of tension between my mother and me.

“I’m trying to figure out what’s got Veronica in such a happy humor,” she told him.

“Ah,” he said. “You do seem chipper for someone whose bicycle was trashed. Your mother said you’ve been having trouble with bullies.”

I looked at Mom. She knew I hated it when she talked about me behind my back, especially to someone I considered pretty much a stranger. “It’s no big deal,” I said. “Really. I can handle it.” I’d already been through this with Mom, convincing her not to march into the principal’s office to complain or, worse, contact Ridley’s parents. She’d relented when I pointed out I didn’t have any proof it was Ridley’s doing anyway, only speculation.

“You know, I used to cycle as a hobby,” George went on. “If you let me have a look at your bike, I can tell you if it’s fixable. What’d you do with it?”

The bike had been so compacted, Lia and I’d managed to squeeze it into the trunk of her Dart. We’d driven it to my house where it now rested in peace, twisted and forlorn among the weeds beneath the car port. I told George this, adding I appreciated the thought but really doubted anything could be done for the heap. I should probably throw it out or donate it for scrap.

“You know, Pumpkin, I’ve been thinking,” my mother said. “You were so helpful at the hotel recently, and have done so well with your driving practice...maybe we can work something out so you can take the car some mornings, drive yourself to school?”

I stared at her, scarcely able to believe the awfulness of her timing.
Now
she wanted to let me use the car? She would. “That’s okay, Mom,” I said. “I’ve got a ride.”

“So I noticed,” she said wryly.

I’d been too slow getting outside that morning. When Jake showed up early and came to the door, Mom pulled him into the house and made him sit on the couch and answer questions for what was probably ten minutes but felt like an hour. He’d been really nice about it, of course, but it’d humiliated me.

“Jake Mlinarich wouldn’t have anything to do with the improvement in your disposition, would he?” she came right out and asked.

Despite the cool wind picking up, my face warmed. “Please,” I said.

“Who’s Jake Mlinarich?” George, like it was any of his business, wanted to know.

“Veronica’s best friend’s brother,” said Mom.

“Younger or older?” asked George.

“Older,” she answered. “
Too
old, probably.”

“Oh?”

She nodded. “He’s in college.”

“Freshman?”

“Junior.”

George’s wriggly eyebrows climbed his forehead. “Really.”

“Mm-hm. But he’s not in school right now.”

“Why not?”

Good lord, it was like I wasn’t even there.

“He’s just taking a break,” I interjected.  “And you
know
he’s not that much older than me,” I rebuked my mother. Then I turned to George. “He graduated early,” I told him, hating how high and defensive my voice sounded.

“Must be a smart guy.” George gave me the anxious smile again, maybe worried I’d been offended.

“Not that it matters how old he is. There’s nothing going on,” I continued. “He’s just being nice.”

“Would you
get up early to take a girl to school just to be nice?” My mother asked George, her tone suggesting she couldn’t believe what a dummy she had for a daughter.

I didn’t wait for George to answer. “I’m going out with someone else,” I blurted.

Mom turned to me.

“His name’s Alex and he asked me to a football game tomorrow night and I’m going.”

“You’re going to a football game?” I heard the laugh in her voice.

“Veronica, don’t you think juggling
two
boys might be a little too time-consuming for you?” asked George, trying to be funny. “I mean, with your grades, I’d be worried about wasting valuable study hours.” This time my mother laughed outright.

I was beginning to wonder if there was anything that could come out of my mouth that wouldn’t just exacerbate their teasing, when the hostess mercifully called George’s name. Our table was ready.

The pair of them had almost managed to wreck my mood. But by the time I tucked into my fettuccini, they, thankfully, seemed to have forgotten all about me, droning on about work and the weather and the futility of voting Democratic in a traditionally Republican stronghold. I was able to eat in peace and concentrate on my own thoughts.

Mom and George’s comments had bothered me. I knew they’d mostly been joking but...I did seem to be spending a lot of time thinking about guys lately. About Jake, if I were honest.
Talk about futility
, I thought, twirling my fork in the pasta.

I’d spent more time alone with him recently, but Jake’s behavior toward me hadn’t changed much from before he’d left for college. He’d always been nice to me, occasionally teasing and even flirting with me. Before, I’d always been smart enough to realize he was just playing around and ignore it. So why couldn’t I now? As for his seeming protectiveness, his interest in whom I was dating, even taking me to school...well, I’d hung around with Lia for so long, he probably just thought of me as another little sister he had to look out for. Didn’t he?

By the time our server brought out the check, I’d decided George was right. I had other, bigger problems to deal with right now. I needed to nip this deluded crush, or whatever it was, in the bud. Jake was a good friend, but that was all. And if I insisted on squandering attention on a guy, then it should at least be the one who was blatantly interested in me. I vowed to approach my date with Alex tomorrow night with an open mind. And to stop thinking about Jake so much.