"Mike has a date," Lila called, walking over from the bleachers while toweling her hair. "With me."
"Okay," I sang, attempting to hide my shock at Mike going on a date, Lila going on a date, and Mike and Lila going on a date. "Have fun--"
"Go ahead and ask Zoey for what you need, Mike," Keke yelled from the locker room door. "She has a whole discount club�sized box of condoms." The door thudded shut behind her.
I'm not sure whether the rest of the team milling around the pool got Keke's dirty joke, but I got it. And Mike got it. His sunburn transformed to well- done for a lobster. And Lila got it. Going on a first date--not just a first date with a particular boy but a first date ever --was awkward enough. But to have your twin sister joke that you needed a condom because you would have sex on the first date? How humiliating.
Wait a minute. I had had sex on the first date with Brandon. But at least I didn't have a sister joking to the boy about it! Lila, avoiding our eyes, frowned at the fluffy clouds scuttling across the blue sky. "Excuse me," she muttered, scampering for the locker room in her bare feet, towel clutched around her. A second later we heard screams through the school's hurricane-resistant brick walls.
"I can't give you a condom," I told Mike. "I left my condoms in the Bug." I pulled myself onto the deck, pried off my swim cap and goggles, and dripped my way over to Doug.
I caught him. He'd been watching me, and when I walked toward him he didn't look down quite fast enough. I sat right next to him on the bleachers and scooted against him, soaking the hip of his shorts and leaving a bright red patch on the side of his faded red T-shirt.
He was busy writing something on the top sheet. I decided to be obnoxious and lean my wet head on his shoulder to see what he was doodling. A heart with B.M. + Z.C. inside.
"You shouldn't start fights," he said. "It's bad for team morale."
"Give me that," I muttered, snatching the clipboard from him. When I had trouble taking another breath, I realized how tired and how stressed I was. With effort I breathed as deeply as I could through my nose and let out a long sigh with my eyes closed. "I really want you to come with me to the junkyard," I said. "And I really think we shouldn't spend any more time together."
I didn't know what to do. I needed him to come with me so I could find out about the wreck. And I'll admit, even if I'd figured out everything there was to know about the wreck, I would have invented an excuse to spend more time alone with Doug.
I opened my eyes and told him the truth. "I'm dating Brandon--"
He slid his wallet from his back pocket, slipped out an imaginary card, and tried to hand it to me.
I thumped at his fingers with mine. "But sometime in the future, if things didn't work out between me and Brandon . . . I don't want to say you'd have a chance with me, because that sounds like I'm some pink and orange stuffed animal at the county fair that you'd pay a dollar fifty to throw darts at."
He rolled his eyes. Then he reached for me. The rest of the team had flowed into the locker rooms by now The pool deck was empty. No one saw
. him run his middle finger across my forehead, tracing what was left of the bruise. All my hair stood on end as he tucked one wet strand behind my ear and whispered, "That's good enough." 10 I walked yet another slow circle around the Bug, then another circle around the Miata. Examining the diagram of the wreck I'd drawn on the clipboard, I leaned back against the Miata. I leaped up again when it groaned and shifted under me. "So, I saw the deer and jerked the wheel to the left." I held the clipboard in front of me and turned it left like a steering wheel.
Doug shrugged as well as he could while leaning on his crutches in the weedy junkyard. He slapped at a mosquito.
"Mike, headed the other way, simultaneously visualized said ruminant and relocated the steering device leftward."
"I am listening," Doug insisted.
I put my hand gently on the crushed front panel of the Miata. "Seems like both of us would have turned right automatically. As a driver, you'd try to crash on your side rather than the passenger side, since you're the one responsible."
"Let's not go there," Doug said, shaking his head. "It was dark, it was raining, the roads were slick. There was a f**king deer, for God's sake. Y don't
ou remember the wreck, so you have to trust me. I do remember it and I couldn't even tell you who turned the wheel where. It happened so fast. Deer, bam, and it was over."
Deflated, I let the clipboard sag. And not just because Doug couldn't give me details about the wreck. I wanted details about him, too, and he thwarted me at every turn. One of the few things I knew for sure about him was that he and Mike hated each other. Whenever they found themselves sitting next to each other in the swim team van, they made someone else move so they could get away from each other. And now it sounded like he was defending Mike.
"What's this?" he asked, hobbling over to the car next to the Bug, this one protected by a canvas. He peeled back one corner of the cover to reveal the sparkle of red metallic paint. "Holy fuck, it's a 1987 Porsche 944."
I ventured closer. "I thought you didn't know anything about cars."
"But I am male, and I recognize a 1987 Porsche 944 when I see one."
From the reverence in his voice, I could tell this car was something special. It didn't look like much, though. "That's some paint job."
"Y eah, that's probably part of the reason a Porsche is sitting in a junkyard. That color is definitely not found in nature." Then he grinned at me. "Wanna go parking?"
"Ha ha ha," I said nervously.
He snapped his fingers. "Y told Mike you left your condoms in the Bug. Did you want those?"
"Ah, right," I said, moving to the front of the Bug (the engine was in the trunk). I turned my key in the lock, but the hood didn't pop open--not surprising since the front right fender was demolished. I pushed it, pried it. "Thanks for remembering my condoms," I said as I struggled. "Do you have plans?"
In answer, he let his crutches fall, prodded me aside, and threw his whole weight into forcing the hood open.
"Don't hurt it!" I pleaded.
He looked at me.
"Okay, you're right," I admitted. The Bug was toast.
With a groan from both Doug and the car, the hood popped open. I blinked back tears at the sight of my pristine trunk, which I'd covered in fresh carpet from the remnant store a few weeks before. The inside space was concave. Poor Bug.
The vat of condoms had slid to the back wall. I reached in for it and half fell into the trunk. Doug put his hand on my lower back to steady me.
The vat of condoms was suddenly just out of reach and strangely hard to grip. Doug's warm hand burned through the skin of my lower back.
When I couldn't draw it out any longer without being painfully obvious, I grabbed the big box and backed out of the hood. Very slowly. Doug's hand smoothed up my back, under my shirt, all the way to my bra.
I turned to him.
He gazed down at me with absolutely no expression on his face while tracing his fingers down my back, out of my shirt. "What?" he asked innocently, daring me to mention Brandon again.
"I guess I should get all the stuff out of my car before it's crushed into a metal cube and lost forever." Dropping the box of condoms at his feet, I ducked away from him and ran to the driver's door, which opened easily. On the floorboard and under the driver's seat, there was nothing. I had trouble wedging my head into the space between the bashed-in passenger side dashboard and the seat, but once I did, I saw nothing. The glove compartment, permanently popped open with the force of the crash, was empty. None of this surprised me. I kept a very clean car, unlike Keke and Lila's Datsun, which was knee-deep in candy wrappers. I folded the seat forward and slid into the back.
Doug pushed the driver's seat into place and sat down, grunting a little as he hoisted his cast into the car. "Looking for something?"
"I was half hoping I'd find my diamond earrings in here," I admitted, my voice muffled against the carpeted floor. I righted myself and brushed my hair out of my face. "I was wearing them the night of the wreck, and I haven't seen them since."
He reached in front of him and popped open the ashtray in the dash. Diamonds glittered inside.
"Eureka!" Leaning through the space between the front seats, I scooped the diamonds out. My fingers hit an unexpected bump, and I leaned forward to look. The ashtray had caved in with the dash. One of the earring posts was bent. The same force that bent a platinum earring post had also done a number on Doug's leg over in Mike's car. It was a wonder he still had a leg at all. But Doug didn't need to be reminded of that, so I swallowed my nausea and smiled. "How'd you know my earrings would be in the ashtray?"
"In old cars with ashtrays, everyone puts everything in there." He looked at the earrings rather than me and held out his hand for them. I placed them gently in his palm, my fingertips caressing his skin so briefly before coming away.
He cranked down the window and tossed the earrings outside.
"Doug! Move!" I shook his seat back so he'd let me out. "I may need to replace the settings, but I'm sure the stones are okay."
"Y mean they're real ?" His voice cracked as he opened the door and half fell out.
"Of course they're real." I stepped over him and scanned the sandy ground. Luckily they hadn't disappeared beneath the Porsche. I scooped them up from the sand and turned.
He sat in the driver's seat again with the door open, foot and cast on the ground outside the car, looking pale and sick.
"Y look like you just saw a ghost. Percocet treating you okay? Or--Here, I found them." I held out the earrings for him to see, in case he envisioned
ou paying me back for losing them. I would never make anyone do something like that.
He pressed his middle finger hard along his eyebrow like he was the one with the headache. "I just had an idea. Y think you could get a couple
ou thousand bucks for those? Because you could sell them and use the money toward a newer car your dad would approve of."
"That's a great idea," I admitted. "I can't do it, though. My parents gave me these earrings." I dropped them into my pocket.
"They wouldn't let you sell them? Even to get something you need more? I couldn't make that kind of logical argument to my dad, but I'll bet you could make it to yours."
"I mean, they're the last thing my mom and my dad gave me together, before they separated last summer." I was pulling on both earlobes, which made me seasick. I put my hands down.
He frowned at me. "Why haven't you been turning the world upside down looking for your real diamond earrings?"
I shrugged. "I figured they'd turn up. Like my virginity."
He laughed. I laughed with him, but mostly I wanted to watch him laugh. He blushed like a real boy and wiped tears from the corners of his eyes like a real person. I couldn't step closer because Brandon was my boyfriend. But I wanted to laugh with Doug, hug Doug. A little part of me wanted to be Doug.
Over his laughter I said, "Tell me about losing yours. Was it with that girl from Destin?"
The sun shone into his eyes so the green seemed transparent, like looking into the shallow water and watching the sand shift underneath. He stared over my shoulder at the Porsche, but I knew he saw the girl from Destin. He took her hand and they splashed into the ocean together. He put his arms around her and held her body loosely in the warm water as the tide came in. Late in the afternoon they dried off and walked into town, wandering the tourist trap gift shops and marveling at the wondrous sculptures of pirates that could be crafted out of coconut shells nowadays. He bought her a hamburger and they shared a milk shake at the Grilled Mermaid. Trying to act carefree and beachy, she'd been foolish enough to walk the hot sidewalks barefoot. She cut her toe on a shell in the pavement. He carried her piggyback to his Jeep in the dusk. They drove to the city beach park and made love. It was the first time for both of them, they were in love with each other, and it meant something.
He blinked and looked straight at me.
I swallowed and tried to say smoothly, "What happened to her?"
"Mike told her I'd been to juvie."
I nodded. "That's what I heard, but I never heard why he did that."
He shrugged. "I guess he liked her or some shit like that. Can't talk to a girl himself so he has to steal somebody else's."
I nodded again, as if I was a good listener. Not as if I was a highly interested listener pumping him for information. "Up until then you and Mike had been close friends, right?"
"Right," Doug said carefully. He knew I was up to something.
"And since then, you've hardly spoken to each other?"
"Until after the wreck, yeah."
Depending on what had happened Friday night, asking my next question might expose that I had amnesia. I was running out of options for finding out the truth. I chose to trust him. "Then why were you riding in Mike's car?"
He stared at me. Not a mean stare burning a hole in my head or a vacant stare over my shoulder, but a big-eyed stare in surprise. With his eyes so deep green and his black lashes so long, he'd never looked more hot. And I'd never felt further from him, because he'd just figured me out.
Or not. "When we wrecked?" he asked, like he'd been momentarily confused rather than bowled over.
I stamped my foot. A cloud of fine sand rose around my flip-flop. " Yes, when we wrecked."