The guy waved him off with one hand. I let out a big breath.
As we walked back to the car, Cam grabbed my arm. “Are you okay to go home with these guys?” he asked me.
Conrad whirled around and said, “Who is this guy?”
I shook my head at Cam and said, “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry. I’ll call you.”
He looked worried. “Who’s driving?”
“I am,” Jeremiah said, and Conrad didn’t argue. “Don’t worry, Straight Edge, I don’t drink and drive.”
I was embarrassed, and I could tell Cam was bothered, but he just nodded. Quickly I hugged him, and he felt stiff. I wanted to make things okay. “Thanks for tonight,” I said.
I watched him walk away, and I felt a stab of resentment—Conrad and his stupid temper had ruined my first real date. It wasn’t fair.
Jeremiah said, “You guys get in the car; I left my hat inside. I’ll be right back.”
“Just hurry,” I told him.
Conrad and I got in the car silently. It felt eerily quiet, and even though it was only just past one, it felt like it was four in the morning and the whole world had gone to sleep. He lay down in the backseat, all of his energy from before gone. I sat in the front seat with my bare feet on the dashboard, leaning back far in the seat. Neither of us spoke. It had been frightening back there. I didn’t recognize him, the way he’d acted. I suddenly felt very tired.
My hair was hanging low, and from the backseat, all of a sudden, I felt Conrad touching it, running his fingers through the bottom. I think I stopped breathing. We were sitting in perfect silence, and Conrad Fisher was playing with my hair.
“Your hair is like a little kid’s, the way it’s always so messy,” he said softly. His voice made me shiver, it was like the sound of water when it pulls off the sand.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even look at him. I didn’t want to scare him off. It was like the time I had a really high fever, and everything felt gauzy and dizzy and unreal, it felt just like that. All I knew was, I didn’t want him to stop.
But he finally did. I watched him in the visor mirror. He closed his eyes and sighed. I did too.
“Belly,” he began.
Just as suddenly, everything in me was alert. The sleepy feeling was gone; every part of my body was awake now. I was holding my breath, waiting for what he would say. Ididn’t answer him. I didn’t want to break the spell.
That’s when Jeremiah came back, opened the door, slammed it shut. This moment between us, fragile and tenuous, snapped in half. It was over. It would do no good to wonder what he was going to say. Moments, when lost, can’t be found again. They’re just gone.
Jeremiah looked at me funny. I could tell he knew that he’d walked in on something. I shrugged at him, and he turned away and started the car.
I reached over to the radio and turned it on, loud.
The whole way home, there was this strange tension, everyone keeping quiet—Conrad passed out in the backseat, Jeremiah and me not looking at each other in the front seat. Until we pulled up the driveway, when Jeremiah said to Conrad, in what was a harsh tone for him, “Don’t let Mom see you like this.”
Which was when I realized, remembered, that Conrad really had been drunk, that he couldn’t really have been responsible for anything he’d said or done that night. He probably wouldn’t remember it tomorrow. It would be like it had never happened.
As soon as we got inside, I ran up to my room. I wanted to forget what had happened in the car and only remember the way Cam had looked at me, on the stairs with his arm touching my shoulder.
chaptertwenty-four
The next day, nothing. It wasn’t that he ignored me, because that would have been something. Some kind of proof that it had happened, that something had changed. But no, he treated me the same. Like I was still little Belly, the girl with the messy flyaway ponytail and the bony knees, running after them on the beach. I should have known better.
The thing was, whether he was pushing me away or pulling me toward him, I was still going in the same direction. Toward Conrad.
Cam didn’t call me for a few days. Not that I blamed him. I didn’t call him either—although I thought about it. I just didn’t know what to say.
When he finally called, he didn’t bring up the party. He asked me to go to the drive-in. I said yes. Right awayI worried, though—did going to the drive-in mean we were going to have to make out? Like, crazy make out, steamed windows and seats all the way back?
Because that was what people did at the drive-in. There were the families, and then there were the hot and heavy couples toward the back of the lot. I’d never been part of a couple before. I’d gone as a family, with Susannah and my mother and everyone, and I’d gone with the boys, but never as a couple, like on a date.
Once, Jeremiah and Steven and I went and spied on Conrad on one of his dates. Susannah let Jeremiah drive us, even though he only had a permit. The drive-in was three miles away, and at Cousins, everyone drove, even kids on their parents’ laps. Conrad had been furious when he’d caught us spying on him. He’d been on his way to the concession stand when he saw us. It had been pretty funny—his hair was all messed up as he yelled at us, and his lips were rosy and they had a glossy sheen. Jeremiah cracked up the whole time.
