Jack looked down at her as if noticing her for the first time. “But,” he said, “Luce, this guy started it.”
“Right,” Lucy said, pushing Jack backwards towards a door that seemed to lead into the backyard. “Sure he did. Let’s just step outside and get some air. How many beers have you had, anyway?”
Then they were gone, leaving David and me alone. With Lucy’s cheerleading squad.
David looked down at me and went, “What’s with that guy, anyway?”
Still looking after Jack—whom I could see through the screen door, gesturing wildly to Lucy as he explained his side of the story—I murmured, “He’s not so bad. He just, you know. Has the soul of an artist.”
“Yeah,” David said. “And the brains of an orangutan.”
I glanced back at him, sharply. I mean, that was my soulmate he was talking about.
“Jack Slater,” I said, “happens to be very, very talented. Not only that, but he is a rebel. A radical. Jack’s paintings don’t just reflect the plight of the urban youth of today. They make a powerful statement about our generation’s apathy and lack of moral rectitude.”
The look David gave me was a strange one. It seemed equal parts disbelief and confusion.
“What?” he said. “Do you like that guy or something, Sam?”
Lucy’s friends, who were listening—and watching—closely, tittered. I could feel colour rush into my cheeks. I was hotter now than I’d been back in the restaurant.
But it was weird. I couldn’t tell whether I was blushing because of David’s question, or the way he was looking at me. Really. Not for the first time that night, I was having trouble meeting those green eyes of his. Something about them ... I don’t know . . . was making me feel really uncomfortable.
I couldn’t tell him the truth, of course. Not with the entire Adams Prep varsity cheerleading team standing there, staring at us. I mean, the last thing I needed was the whole school knowing that I’m in love with my sister’s boyfriend.
So I went, “Duh. He’s Lucy’s boyfriend, not mine.”
“I didn’t ask you whose boyfriend he was,” David said, and I realized with a sinking heart he wasn’t going to let me off as easy as all that. “I asked if you like him.”
I didn’t want to, but it was like I couldn’t help it. Something made me lift my gaze to meet his.
And for a minute, it was like I was looking at a guy I had never met before. I mean, not like he was the President’s son, but like he was a really cute, funny guy who happened to be in my art class and was into the same kind of music I was and happened to like my boots. It was kind of like I was seeing David—the real David—for the very first time.
I had opened my mouth to say something—I have no idea what; something lame, I’m sure; I was pretty freaked by the whole thing, most especially by how sweaty my palms had got all of a sudden, and how hard my heart was beating—but I never got a chance to. That’s because somebody behind the cheerleaders called out, ‘There you are!“ and Kris Parks came bearing down on us with like sixty people in tow, all of whom, she claimed, were just dying to meet the son of the President of the United States.
And David, exactly the way a politician’s son should, went to shake their hands, without another single glance at me.
“It’s not your fault,” Catherine, across the room on my couch, said. “I mean, you can’t help that you’re in love with Jack.”
I was curled up in my bed, Manet snoring softly at my side.
“You met Jack first,” Catherine said, through the darkness all around us. “What does David think, anyway? You were just supposed to wait around and not fall in love with anybody else until he rode up on his big white horse? I mean, it’s not like you’re Cinderella, or something.”
“I think,” I said, to the ceiling, “that David kind of thought if I was asking him to some party that there was a possibility I might like him, and not some other guy.”
“Well, that was very old-fashioned of him,” Catherine said firmly. Now that Catherine had been on her first date, and it had turned out to be a successful one—Paul had kissed her goodnight on my very front porch. On the lips, she’d informed me proudly afterwards—she seemed to think she was some kind of expert on love. In between worrying that her parents were going to find out. Not so much about Paul, I think, as about the black jeans and the party.
“I mean, you are an attractive and vital girl,” Catherine went on. “You can’t be expected to just stick with one man. You have to play the field. It’s absurd that at the age of fifteen you should settle down with just one guy.”
“Yeah,” I said, with a short laugh. “Especially one who is in love with my sister.”
“Jack only thinks he is in love with Lucy,” Catherine said firmly. “We both know that. What happened tonight was just evidence that he is finally becoming aware of his deep and abiding affection for you. I mean, why else would he have been so mean to David if it wasn’t for the fact that the sight of you with another man drove him into a jealous rage?”
I said, “I think he just had one too many beers.”
“Not true,” Catherine said. “I mean, that might have been part of it, but he was definitely threatened. Threatened by what he perceived as your happiness with another.”
I rolled over—disturbing Manet, who went on snoring, not at all—and stared at Catherine’s dim form in the darkness of my bedroom.
“Have you been reading Lucy’s Cosmo again?” I asked.
Catherine sounded guilty. “Well. Yes. She left one in the bathroom.”
I rolled back over to stare at the ceiling. It was kind of hard to tell what I should be thinking about everything that had happened that night when the only person with whom I could safely discuss it was spouting advice she’d garnered from the Bedside Astrologer.
“So did he kiss you goodnight?” Catherine asked shyly. “David, I mean?”
I snorted. Yeah, David had really felt like kissing me after that whole thing with Jack and the Adams Prep cheerleading squad. In fact, he had barely spoken to me for the rest of the night. Instead, he’d gone around making the acquaintance of half the student population of my school. Evidently not by nature a shy sort of person, David hadn’t seemed to mind a bit being the centre of attention. In fact, he’d looked like he was having a pretty good time as Kris Parks and her cronies hung on his every word, laughing like hyenas every time he made a joke.
It wasn’t until around eleven-thirty—Theresa, who was babysitting while my parents were at a dinner party they hadn’t left for until after David picked me up, had given us a twelve o’clock curfew—that he finally looked around for me. I was sitting by myself in a corner, looking through Kris’s mom’s copies of Good Housekeeping (who said I don’t know how to have a good time?) and trying to ignore the people who kept coming up to me and asking if they could have my autograph (or, conversely, if they could sign my cast).
“Ready?” David asked. I said I was. I went and told Catherine that we were leaving, then found Kris—I noticed I didn’t have to look very far; she was practically tracking David’s every move—and said thanks and goodbye. Then David and John and I headed back out to the car.
Cleveland Park isn’t really all that far from Chevy Chase, where Kris lives, but I swear that ride home was one of the longest in my life. Nobody said anything. Anything! Thank God for Gwen, singing her heart out over the stereo.
Still, I noticed that for the first time ever, the sound of Gwen Stefani’s voice didn’t exactly make me feel better. The worst part was, I didn’t even know what I had to feel so badly about. I mean, OK, so David knew I liked Jack. Big deal. I mean, is there some kind of federal law that prohibits girls from liking their sister’s boyfriend? I don’t think so.