Blue Is for Nightmares (15 page)

Physics exam?

"I'm up," I say, finally, "because some sicko likes to call girls in the middle of the night and freak them out. I think I'll call Amber and force her to be up with me."

"I could come by," he says. "I mean, since we both can't sleep and all. No sense bothering Amber. Besides, maybe you could quiz me for the test."

I smooth a hand over the back of my hair and stand up to look in the mirror. "Do you think that's a good idea? I mean--

"Well, you did say Drea wasn't coming home tonight, right?"

"Yeah?"

'And you're getting all these prank calls. You shouldn't be there by yourself.-

I swipe the bangs out of my eyes and chew at my lip. I have no idea what to say to him. Am I supposed to wait another three years to see if things work out between him and Drea, or is it time to take charge of my own fate? I dull

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the horns and pointy tail I feel I'm beginning to sprout by reminding myself that Chad is my friend too. Why should I feel guilty every time he walks into a room?

"Well?" he says. "Say something."

"Okay. But just to study"

"What else?" he asks, a smile in his voice. "I'll be over in a few."

I hang up before either of us has the chance to say goodbye or change our minds. And as much as I remind myself that this isn't a social call but a chance to cram for physics, I decide dark and baggy sweats are probably not a good look. Instead, I slip into a pair of pink and white pajama bottoms, compliments of Drea's dresser, and a white tank top that's mine. I drain the sink, wring out the sheets, and stuff them into a fresh laundry bag.

Less than fifteen minutes later, Chad is knocking at the window I unlock it to let him in, then whisk over to sit on my bed, purposely cluttered with physics notes, lab reports, and old quizzes--zero space for him and therefore zero temptation for me.

"You've been busy" he says, shutting the window back up. He glances around my bed for someplace to sit. But the only vacant spots are on the floor, in between clothing piles, or on Drea's bed.

"So, how long have you been studying?" he asks, opting for Drea's bed.

I pretend to be engrossed in the notes from last week's lecture on velocity and mass. "Not long enough," I say, peeking up at him. I can't help it. He just looks so completely perfect. A baseball cap, like he just crawled out of

bed. A cuddly cotton sweatshirt that I could just wrap myself up in. Tiny black wire-rimmed glasses. He smiles at me and I can't help but stare at his mouth. Those lips. His teeth. The way the bottom teeth overlap in the front when you look just close enough. I shake my stare away and focus down on my notes. "I guess you could say my grades have sort of taken a dive in the dunk tank this quarter."

"Ditto." He pulls a stack of mangled papers from the inside covers of his textbook and adds it to the collection I've got going on my bed. "What chapter is the test on?"

"Seven. I think."

He readjusts his baseball cap, sending a curl of his scent just under my nose. It smells like sticky sweat on skin, like worn-out cologne expired over the day, like pasty musk deodorant mixed with green-apple shampoo. A smell I want to bottle so I can open it up at will and wash it all over me.

"So why do you think your grades have slipped?" he asks.

"I don't know," I say. "I guess I just have other stuff on my mind."

"Oh yeah?" He closes his book. "Like what?"

I flip the pages forward and back in my textbook, my eyes scanning down the review questions in chapter ten, even though the test is on chapter seven.

"If there's something bothering you, you can tell me," he says. "Did you get another prank after we hung up?"

"Relax, then. He's not calling now, is he? Maybe he knows I'm here."

"Why do you say that?" I ask.

"I don't know. Maybe he only wants to call when you're alone. Or at least when it's just girls around. Maybe a guy would intimidate him."

I feel myself swallow. Chad's eyes travel over my neck to notice the gesture.

"I wish he
would
call while I was here," he says. "Why?" I ask.

"Because at least you'd know for sure it wasn't me." Yikes! A huge allegation, but I can't object.

"Is that how you think I feel?"

He shifts from Drea's bed to mine, plunking down atop a bunch of papers, making me scoot over to avoid hip touchage. "I don't know. How
do
you feel?"

I focus down on my notebook, on the three-dimensional trapezoid scribbled near the spiral. I can't look at him. I can't answer what he's asking me--the same question that's been looming over our heads for the three years we've known each other.

I flip a page in my notebook to stall. "How do I feel about what?"

I feel him get all frustrated. He swivels his baseball cap around so that the visor sticks out in back. 'About me?" he says. "How do you feel about me?"

I can't believe he's actually saying it. Actually asking it in real, live, verbal language. I look around the room for something, some idea to segue myself out of this line of questioning. There, sticking out from beneath his left butt- cheek, is one of my lab reports.

"You're sitting on my nanoclusters," I say.

"Huh?"

Did I really just say that? I motion with a nod at the report beneath his perfectly rounded butt cheeks, and he slides the thing out, all mangled from sittage. Still, the newly formed butt-indentations in the soft white paper almost make me want to frame it.

"Just tell me," he says--his face completely serious. "I need to know"

"You want to know if I think you're the one who's been stalking Drea?" I feel so dumb talking this way, asking questions that purposely skirt the real question, but I just can't bring myself to admit it. Not until I know for sure it's over between him and Drea.

"Okay" he says. "To start with.
Do
you?"

I look into his eyes and really consider the question and how I feel. I think about the dream I had of him at the window. How his jersey disappeared from our room, but then he was the one to show up wearing it, claiming that someone left it in his mailbox along with one of the notes.

I think about how he tried to scare us with the hockey mask, how he's always calling at just the right time, and how we saw him on the pay phone in front of the library just minutes after one of the pranks.

I think how it kind of makes sense, how it would be the perfect way to get Drea off his back. Or just punish her for playing so many mind games over the years.

And then I think how disappointed I'd be if it really was him.

I study his face for some flinch or falter, anything that might give me some sign that it isn't him, that he isn't involved. But I just can't tell. I just don't know

"Well?" he asks.

'Are you the one?"

"I wish you didn't have to ask."

"Is that a no?"

He shakes his head and lifts my chin with a finger, the minty smell of his toothpaste filling the air between us. He moves in toward me, stopping just inches from my mouth, so close that I can see the tiny points of baby-blond that surround his upper lip.

"Wait, is that a yes? I have to know, Chad."

I hate myself for asking, for being so loyal, for having to know the truth, for caring either way.

He moves even closer, so near that the skin of our lips touches. Soft and moist and hot-tea minty.

It makes me want to burst out crying out of mere frustration. But I don't. I keep my eyes from fluttering closed, my lips from quivering against his. And wait for the answer.

"It's a yes," he says, finally. "I am the one." He closes his eyes and presses his lips fully against mine. At first I don't know if I should kiss him back, but then my mouth just does. A full-lip, tongue-twirling, tingle-all-over kiss.

When we break, my eyes remain on his mouth, almost afraid that if I look up into his eyes, I'll wake out of the most blissful sleep. He touches my cheek with the nubs of his fingers and then brings my lips up for one more taste.

"I've been waiting to do that since the last time," he says.

"Really?" I try to stop the smile on my face.

"Remember?" His eyes shift from my mouth to my eyes. "The last time?"

I nod.

He moves in for another kiss, but my words pause hum. "When you said that you were the one, you didn't mean you were
the
one, I mean the one who's after Drea, did you?"

"What do
you
think?"

"I don't think you are." And I
don't
think he is. But I sstill want--need--to hear him say it.

He smiles at me, relieved, and leans in for that kiss. "What about Drea?" I say, stopping him again. "I mean, what about how she feels about you?"

"She doesn't really feel anything about me." He sighs and draws his mouth away from mine.

"She just
thinks
she does. If I wanted to ask her out again and I don't, but if I did--she'd say yes, enjoy the victory for a few days, and then want to break up. It's always been like that with her, like some game."

"Do you think that maybe you still have feelings for her'?"

"Sure, I mean, we've grown up together. I care abolut her. A lot. Just not the way she thinks she wants." He takes my hands and sandwiches them between his own, sendinig warm and sparkly tingles up and down my back. "Me and Drea get along much better as friends."

"Is that why you want someone else?"

"Don't you get it? I don't care about someone else."

Our eyes lock and I'm not sure what comes over me, id it's the way his eyebrows furrow, begging me to understami him, the way his lips sit, begging to be kissed, or pure unadulterated, all-American hormones, but all of a sudden, I'm on him. My hands, my mouth, my lips, my heart.

We kiss--a long, soft, pulpy, winter-under-the-blankets-by-the--

fire kiss. But then I push him away. We can't," I say, all out of breath. "We can't do this. I mean, want to, but...

Chad wraps his arms around my oulders and holds me to his chest. I listen to the rhythm o his heart beating and give up on saying anything more. I ctly want to cry.

There is no way any studying is going to get done now. I'm sitting on my bed, flipping pages back and forth between chapter summaries, running my eyes over the columns of meaningless physics terms, but my mind is not absorbing anything at all.

-Maybe we should get some fresh air," Chad suggests, closing his book.

I nod, relieved to change the scenery, hoping the cool night air will shake me out of this funk.

And as if by some celestial force, we end up at the tree where we first kissed, though neither of us points it out. Instead, we just walk by it, flashlights in hand, beyond the lawn and into the woods, making awkward small talk about hockey schedules and Chinese food, about things that don't even seem to matter right now.

The woods smell sort of musky tonight, like salty skin and perfume mixed, like hot and sticky summer nights in a tent. I breathe the scent in, hoping it will linger on my clothes and in my hair so I can savor it later on.

"I'll be right back," Chad says. "Nature calls."

I nod and look away while he disappears behind a clump of trees. I wait for several minutes before getting concerned. "Chad?" I call. "Is everything okay?" When he doesn't answer I make my way toward the cluster of trees where he headed. I find myself lifting branches and swiping brush from in front of my eyes, walking farther and farther, expecting to find him.

But I don't.

Instead, I arrive at a clearing. I peer between two long and leafy branches sticking out in my path and see a large, wooden structure of some sort, highlighted by the moon.

"Chad!" I shout. "Come out, now!"

The structure is almost houselike--naked wooden planks like right out of a lumberyard, boards nailed together to form a giant, square base, and individual planks sticking up straight like walls.

Did Chad bring me here on purpose? Does he think this is funny?

"Chad!" I shout toward the structure. "You're scaring me."

I go to take another step, but then stop. Listen. Someone's following me. I can hear. them. Can hear their footsteps crunching down against the fallen leaves and twigs.

Pain bubbles up in my stomach. I have to pee. Now! Out of the corner of my eye I spot one of those portable bathrooms, the mint-green kind you see at amusement parks. I squish my inner thighs together and walk as best I can toward it, using the light of the moon to guide my way.

But before I know it, my foot has stepped into a ditch, and I'm on my way down, my left cheek smacking hard against the powdery dirt.

A light shines on from somewhere inside the house in response. I lift myself out of the ditch and sit back on my heels. There are letters dug into the ground. Long, straight letters, at least a foot long. They spell out DREA.

I step around her name and head for the porta-john, still several yards away. I need to know if anyone is in that house. If they are the ones who turned on the light or dug Drea's name in the dirt. If Chad is the one following at my heels, trying to scare me out of my wits. But first, I have to pee; there's no contest.

My stomach aches with each step. But I make it, and turn the handle on the door. Locked.

-Chad? Are you in there?" I smash my thighs together; hear myself whimper like a pup. I wait a few moments. Nothing. Silence. A dark, lonely, nighttime silence.

Someone is inside.

I back up, feel my chest heave in and out, my breath almost independent of me. Chad would answer me. He wouldn't joke for this long. He knows how scared I got about the phone calls.

I glance toward the doorlike openiring of the house and run inside. A spotlight meets me with

-h a clunk against my

forehead. It hangs from a support bearrm, just below the partial roof, and lights up the whole area!a. I rub the spot and look around. Boards have been erecte(

ed to create one long

hallway with adjoining rooms to the le eft and right.

A ripping sound, like heavy tape, is s coming from somewhere down the hallway. "Chad?" I call