She looked out across the parking lot, then back at the school doors. “You still need lots of loosening up.”
I took a step toward the school. “Right. And besides, I need you in the car so I have an excuse to see Josh. He wouldn’t take me to school if you dropped out.”
She let out a grunt. “Yes, he would. He takes you home when I’m not around.”
A took another step toward the school, then another. “But it would be awkward.”
Elise reluctantly followed me back to the stairs. “So are you saying you want to get back together with my brother?”
“Maybe. A little bit. Okay, yes. But don’t say anything to him about it.”
“Hmm.” Elise was silent for the rest of the way up the stairs, but she wore a thoughtful expression.
That expression worried me. We’d come to the school door. I opened it and stepped inside, letting the warmth engulf me. “Really, Elise. Don’t say anything to Josh.”
“I won’t,” she said, “but that doesn’t mean I can’t help things along.”
“The last time you tried to help along my love life, I wound up at the police station.”
“Details, details.”
We walked back to the cafeteria. I don’t know why I looked at the other side of the room. Perhaps it was my built-in, Josh-is-near radar working. At any rate, I saw him. He, Troy and Jared, strode across the cafeteria. They stopped in front of Chad’s table. I grabbed Elise’s arm. “Look!”
We walked to our table, watching as Josh talked to Chad. We couldn’t hear what was said, but it was easy to see from their facial expressions that neither was happy. Chad turned deeper and deeper shades of red. Josh leaned in towards him. The general level of noise in the cafeteria dropped as people noticed what was going on.
Finally, Josh and his friends walked away. When they were a safe distance removed, Chad, in a loud voice, called them members of the horse family.
Josh turned and called back, “You’re lucky you didn’t touch my sister, Warren, or it wouldn’t just be your football that gets kicked downfield.”
The crowd hooted. Chad called a few more obscenities from his safe distance.
Josh shook his head and kept walking. He never saw Elise and me watching. He never looked at anyone in the crowd.
“Wow,” Caitlin said.
Faith followed Josh with her eyes. “I second that.”
Elise smiled broadly and picked up her sandwich. “I have the best brother ever.”
I kept my gaze on Josh’s retreating back and on his broad shoulders and his wavy black hair. “Yes, you do.”
Elise nibbled at her sandwich happily. “He almost makes up for the rest of the Benson crew.”
I had been over to her house enough times to know her brothers and sisters. “Actually, the rest of the Benson crew is pretty great too.”
“Naw,” Elise said. “They’re hopeless. But maybe the new baby will have some redeeming qualities. It could be another little Elise or Josh.”
I ate my lunch, every once in awhile glancing over to where Josh had been.
Elise sent me a sly smile. “I’ll think of a way to help you. Something really subtle.”
I shook my head at her. Elise could be many things, but subtle wasn’t one of them.
* * *
Elise didn’t come to my locker after school. She wasn’t at hers either. I walked slowly out to the parking lot, wondering if she planned on not showing up so Josh and I would be alone.
He was sitting in his car reading a physics assignment, but he looked up when I got close. “Where’s Elise?”
“I don’t know.” Plotting someplace probably. I turned and scanned the parking lot. Maybe she was waiting somewhere until she was sure I sat down in the car next to Josh.
Josh let out a sigh. “She didn’t ditch school, did she?”
“I doubt it.” I got into the front seat. No sense in letting Elise’s plotting go to waste. “She’s been in a good mood since lunch when you threatened to treat Chad like a football.”
Josh flipped his physics book shut. “I couldn’t help myself. The guy seriously ticks me off.”
“He deserved it,” I agreed. “And Elise thinks you’re the greatest brother alive now.”
“That’s a step up. I’ve been a mega pork ever since I broke your heart.”
We saw Elise then, hurrying across the parking lot to the car. When she reached us, she was out of breath but smiling. “Hey, thanks for defending my honor at lunch, you big brute.”
“You’re welcome,” Josh said. “But that’s not a habit I want to form, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah.” She opened the back door and tossed her backpack onto the seat.
“Where have you been?” Josh asked.
“I was talking to Bob.” She sat down with a bounce and scooted her backpack over. “He says I can rejoin chess club. He even said he’d show me some of his grandmaster moves.”
As Josh started the car, I turned in my seat to talk to Elise. “Bob offered to show you his moves?”
“It wasn’t like that,” Elise said. “And besides, you said he fair game.”
“Uh huh. Watch out for Bob’s putting-his-arm-around-you move. That one nearly broke my nose.”
Elise’s expression clouded. She clicked on her seatbelt with slow deliberateness. “Wait, you don’t think Bob is being nice to me because he thinks I’m easy, do you?”
I shook my head. “He’s not that type. We went out on two dates and he never even tried to kiss me.”
Elise relaxed. Josh raised an eyebrow at me.
“And Bob is a gentleman,” I added. “He always held open doors for me.”
“Ah,” she said, “That’s so sweet.”
“Ah,” Josh said tapping his thumb against the steering wheel. “I’m stuck in the car with Bob’s fan club.”
Elise smacked his shoulder. “I thought you liked Bob.”
“I do,” Josh said. “He’d be good for you. You should date him.” Then Josh glanced at me, probably to see if I was upset by the idea of Elise taking a second guy from me.
“You should,” I told Elise.
Josh smiled. I saw it even though he’d turned and was keeping his eyes on the road. I just wasn’t sure what it meant.
* * *
The next day on the way to and from school, Elise borrowed Josh’s phone so she could text Bob about bug facts. She was trying to find one he didn’t already know. “Get this,” she told us, tapping out her message. “So many termites live in the Sonoran Desert that when it’s quiet, you can hear them munching on stuff.”
“Now aren’t you glad you moved to Pullman,” I said, “instead of wherever the Sonoran Desert is?”
“Arizona,” Josh said.
Maybe I am a geek at heart. I found it incredibly attractive that Josh was smart enough to know where the Sonoran Desert was.
Bob texted Elise back, and she read his message and squealed. “Gross. There’s a kind of wasp that paralyzes spiders, then lays their eggs inside the spiders so that when the babies hatch they have something to eat.”
Josh shook his head. “You’re undoing all of my work with Bob, Elise. Now he’s going to think girls like hearing this sort of stuff.”
“Elise,” I said firmly, “for the sake of womankind you have to put a stop to this right now.” I held out my hand to her. “Give me the phone.”
She didn’t. And she did the same thing every day that week. She also came late to the car after school, which I never complained about because it gave me time to sit and talk to Josh. He didn’t complain either. I wasn’t sure whether that was because he liked talking to me, or whether he was just glad Elise was interested in a guy who wasn’t likely to be arrested in the near future.
Elise told me she liked Bob because he was the polar opposite of Chad, but I knew there was more to it than that. She was reverting back to her original persona. A smart girl. A fun girl, but a smart girl too.
The next Monday after school, Elise came to the parking lot on time and asked Josh to drive her to Bob’s house before we went home. “I’m asking him to the Tolo, so I need to put stuff in his room before he gets home.” She held up a bag full of plastic ants. “I’m going to spell it out on his carpet. Perfect, huh?”