The October sun feels warm, and we ride with the windows down. We drive past a speed trap, but Cyn doesn’t take her foot off the gas. I say, “Wow, that was close.”
She says, “I’m not speeding. Trust me, I do not speed in this car.” She checks the rearview mirror and then grins. “Someone got caught though.”
I look behind to see the lights flashing on the cop car.
She says, “Plus, I figured cops would be there—I’ve seen them in that spot. People drive fast on this highway. One time a car blew past me and by the time I got to the speed trap, his car was
hooked to a tow truck and on its way to impound.” She shudders. “Very bad day for that guy.”
She plays great tunes, and we talk music, and it is so easy, like we do this all the time.
We cross the border and pull into a Discount gas bar. She says, “I’ve got to go inside and prepay. You want something? A Pepsi?”
“No, I’m good.” But I should probably buy her a Pepsi. I try to remember how much cash I have on my debit card—a few bucks maybe. “I’ll come in with you.”
The gas is cheap, but Cyn wants a Malabar, whatever that is, and it takes forever. First the worker says they’re out of Malabar. Then Cyn asks him to check in the back. So we have to move the car off the gas pump and park in the gas station’s one stall, right under a sickly tree shedding its leaves, and go back
in and wait. The guy finally emerges looking like he’s been crawling under stacks of boxes to get the Malabar.
Back in the car, Cyn rips into the wrapper and snaps off a corner of the bar. “Here.” She leans close and presses the chocolate onto my tongue. I feel the tip of her finger brush my mouth. “Don’t bite it. Just let it melt.”
I try to be amazed, but it tastes pretty ordinary. But what she does next amazes me. She kisses me. Her lips take mine, gently at first, then her tongue finds every nerve ending in my body. I am almost out of breath when she releases me. “Mmm,” she says. “Malabar is even better this way.”
I try to stop blinking.
She says, “It’s always worth waiting for the Malabar.”
I sit there, stunned, thinking about her kissing me, as Cyn drives to a block of big-box stores. I follow her into the
Marshall’s. In the shoe department, Cyn’s a shark. She moves past rows of shiny heels straight to the runners. She scans the display and selects her style. She pulls the box, size seven, and takes it to a bench. She tries them on, jogging in place, jumping lightly, then goes to the mirror. She turns one foot to the side, checks it out, nods and says, “These will do.” The whole shoe-shopping process takes about ninety seconds.
“That’s it?” I say. “You don’t want to try them in another color even?”
She looks at the shoes. “What’s wrong with this color?”
“Nothing. It’s just that when I shop with my sister, she has to try on everything in the store.”
Cyn places the runners in their box. Her sock has a small hole in the toe. Her toenail looks like a pink pearl. “I always buy this kind of runners. I know what I like.”
I go to a shelf of high-heeled sandals my sister would go nuts over. I select a pair with a slender ankle strap studded with crystals. I mimic my sister’s reaction. “Oh my god, these are so cute!”
She laughs. “They are—not that I’d ever wear them.”
I find her size and pass her the box. She looks at me. “You want me to try these on? Do you have some kind of weird foot thing?”
“Maybe.” Maybe I have a weird thing for all of her. “Try them.”
She says, “I actually hate shopping.” With an exaggerated sigh she peels off her socks and slips her feet into the sandals. I kneel down to do up the straps for her. I let my thumbs linger a moment, and I feel a tiny pulse throbbing on the top of her left foot. She examines the shoes in the mirror. “These are definitely cute shoes.” She slips the straps off and steps out of the sandals,
tipping them back into their box. “But I don’t wear shoes I can’t run in.”
I follow her to the checkout. “What about for work?”
“I wear flats. I’d wear runners if I could get away with it.”
“Or to go out?”
She stops and turns to look at me. “Like on a date?”
My throat wants to stick together. “Yes, like a date. I’m not asking you out. I mean, I’d like to ask you, but it’s probably too soon. I mean, you wouldn’t want to go out. With me. I mean, if we were going out maybe you’d want to, but we’re not going out. Are we?”
I sound like an absolute idiot. But she kisses me. It’s a jolt of a kiss, quick and perfect, like a burst of match flame on my lips. I’m sure my eyes bug out. She says, “You should ask me out. I’d say yes.”
Today I had Bio, a course I could grow to like because I can watch Cyn all class. During class she smiled at me a couple of times but didn’t come over to talk. Maybe she doesn’t want to be seen with me at school.
But tonight, I’m in a dead sleep and my phone wakes me up. I try to blink
the sleep from my vision and reach for the phone. It’s a text from Cyn.
Meet me at Meridian Park at one
.
I text back,
As in tonight?
Yes.
The house is quiet. I pull on some jeans and a hoodie and close the door softly behind me. I put my shoes on outside. The night air feels cold. I jam my hands in my pockets and walk fast to keep warm.
The lot at Meridian Park is empty. I stand in a circle of light.
She’s not there. Wind creaks in the trees. I check the time—1:00
AM
. Where is she? I hear a car and step back into the shadows, imagining a guy with a chainsaw. But it’s her.
She parks, jumps out of the car and gives me a hug. “I hope it’s not too late for you.”
I lie. “I was just doing homework.”
She takes my hand and pulls me through the darkness to sit on a bench a short distance from the parking lot. A light over the bench makes a yellow island in the night. There’s enough light that I can see her, but it feels private. Cyn is wearing the same clothes she had on at school—jeans and a little T-shirt. I take off my hoodie and wrap it around her. I’m not sure it’s the right thing to do, but I put my arm around her too. She smiles and snuggles in close to me. She says, “I couldn’t wait a whole night to see you.”
With what she is saying, and how she presses herself against me, the cold night air is gone, and all I feel is heat. I can’t trust my voice, so I just nod. She pulls me closer. I shift a bit so she maybe won’t feel what she’s doing to me. She reaches up and runs her fingers against my lips. Her touch courses through me. I kiss her before I can think about it,
before I can doubt that she wants to kiss me. And she kisses me back.
Her lips are soft and firm at the same time. She tastes like honey and salt. When we finally stop, she says, “I’ve been thinking about doing that since the first time I kissed you.”
“Me too.”
I don’t know how long we are on the bench, but it’s like no amount of time is enough. She pulls away first. She says, “You probably need to get home.”
If anyone knew I was out this late with school tomorrow, I’d hear about it. But no one knows. I wonder how she gets away with being out so late. I say, “No, I’m fine.” But the night feels suddenly cold, and I shiver.
She laughs. “Come on. I have something for you.”
We walk to the car. She reaches
into the backseat and pulls out a
shopping bag. It’s from the same store where she bought her runners.
“You went shopping again? I thought you didn’t like shopping.”
“I like shopping for you.”
I must look like I’m stunned, because she says, “It’s okay, Daniel. Look in the bag.”
It’s a jacket—a nice jacket, the kind you wear on a date.
“Wow.” It’s all I can think of to say. It looks expensive.
“Put it on.”
The jacket is lined with satin that slides over my arms. The sleeves fall to exactly the right length on my wrists.
“It’s perfect on you.”
I find my voice. “You shouldn’t spend your money on me.”
“It was a deal. Plus I’ve been making great tips at work,” she says. “I tried to buy a dress, but they didn’t have my size. They’re bringing one in from
another store.” She strokes the front of the jacket with her hands. “You look drop-dead gorgeous in it, Daniel.”
I feel my face flush with her compliment. “It’s way too much.” I go to take off the jacket.
“You tell yourself whatever you like.” She pulls the jacket back onto my shoulders and hands me the bag. “But I’m not taking it back. And anyway, you gave me your hoodie, so it’s fair.”
I didn’t actually give her my hoodie, but if she wants it that makes me really happy.
She drops me at home, and I creep to my bedroom. Using just the light from my phone, I check out how I look in the jacket. It is a great jacket. It makes me look different. It makes me look good, almost. The price tag, though, makes my heart stop. Even at the sale price, I have never, ever bought something this expensive. I don’t even want to think about my
mother’s reaction when she sees it. And my sister’s. There is no way I’m going to tell them Cyn bought it for me.
I carefully take off the cardboard part of the price tag, leaving the plastic string that attaches to the jacket. Then I find the price tag from the T-shirt I got at the thrift store. The tag is stamped
New
. At seven bucks, the T-shirt was a good price. It is unbelievable that the thrift store would price such a nice jacket that low. But I have to hope it’s believable enough for my mother and sister. I thread the thrift-store tag onto the jacket and hang it in my closet. The shopping bag I roll up into a ball and jam in the bottom of my pack. I’ll get rid of it at school tomorrow.
School. I yawn. I am going to be so tired. But then I think about seeing Cyn, about how I will put my arm around her in the hall, how I’ll kiss her and she’ll
kiss me, how everyone will know we’re a couple. When you have a girl like Cyn, everything feels possible.
I don’t see Cyn before classes start. I hang out near her locker, but she doesn’t show. I check my phone about a hundred times in case she texts, but there is nothing from her. When she’s not at Bio, I drag myself to the lab station I share with Maxwell. He gives me a shove and says, “Don’t be all needy, my friend.”
The girls at the next lab station laugh. Is it that obvious? It’s just that with Cyn, I don’t know if it is real, what we have. I want to think it is real. I just need to see her again. To hold her. To know.
And then she is there, walking into the classroom. She tosses a late slip on the teacher’s desk and slings her book bag down at the lab station with the girls. She’s wearing my hoodie.
Maxwell flips his book open to the instructions for the experiment and starts to read. “What?” he says, rubbing his chin. “We’re supposed to do what? With what?”
Cyn’s hair is pulled back. Tiny strands of hair curl at the nape of her neck.
One of the girls, Mila, says, “Could there be more cops in the school today?”
Cyn’s hands pause on her textbook, but she doesn’t look up.
Another girl says, “I know! It’s like they’re interrogating us.”
Mila says, “It’s like they think we’re
all
criminals.”
Cyn closes her book and slides it down the table. She moves to where Maxwell and I still haven’t started the experiment. “Okay if I join you guys?”
One of the girls mutters something. Mila says, “Whatever.”
Cyn smells like the outdoors, like the morning air has followed her in. I feel my face grow warm. Maxwell looks at me and rolls his eyes. When I don’t say anything, he turns to Cyn and says, “You can absolutely work with us. But full disclosure—we suck at Bio.”
The girls seem to watch us, their heads together, talking softly. I move closer to Cyn. I don’t know why, but I feel like I need to protect her. Cyn focuses on setting up the experiment. She actually knows what she’s doing.
Maxwell says, “Oh! That’s what that gizmo is for.”
She laughs. “It’s called a pipette.” She points to the diagram in Maxwell’s textbook. “You just have to set up the experiment exactly like in the book. Then it should work.” She watches as Maxwell assembles the equipment. “That’s perfect,” she says.
Maxwell smiles. “Thanks.”
“Just be careful with the iodine,” she says. “It will stain your clothes.”
Maxwell works through the steps of the experiment. I don’t have to do anything but watch Cyn, which is fine with me. I like how she moves so sure and confident, how when she makes notes her handwriting slants backward, as if the letters are caught in the wind.
The girls at the other station are still talking about the cops.
I look at Maxwell. “So what’s with the cops?”
He nods. “Because of the shooting at Meridian Park last week. They’re interviewing people in case anyone saw something.”
I say, “If someone saw something, they would have already reported it.”
Maxwell says, “You’d think so, especially when people are getting shot right in our parking lot. I’m glad the cops are all over this.”
One of the girls says, “So what if a drug dealer gets shot? It’s one less drug dealer.”
Maxwell says, “It doesn’t sound like he was a big player. Poor bastard might have owed the wrong guy money.” He calls over to the girls, “You want the cops just to let them shoot each other in our parking lot? What if one of us gets caught in the crossfire?”
Mila says, “Maxwell is right.” She smiles at him. Maxwell stands up tall and puffs out his chest. He looks at me
as if to say,
Can you believe this?
Mila is pretty, which makes it all the more amazing that she knows his name.
I feel Cyn’s hand on my waist. Her touch is light and so brief that I’m not sure she meant to touch me. But then her fingers slip under my shirt and trace the top of my jeans. I glance at Maxwell, but he’s busy watching Mila’s butt as she bends over the work station. The rest of the classroom blurs as Cyn tugs my waistband. She says, “Walk me to my next class, okay?”
The bell rings and Maxwell slams his notebook closed. “That experiment was so easy!” I realize I haven’t made a single note, and I don’t even care. I grab my stuff and follow Cyn out of the classroom.