seemed to take forever. "With Maggie at my side, I am unstoppable," he said finally. "Have you ever seen a more beautiful gallery owner in your life?"
Apparently this was a rhetorical question because Sam's mom just said, "Darling," and beamed at
us before giving a little wave. "Well, we're off. Enjoy."
"Thanks," I said. I watched them walk a few steps before Sam's mom was embraced by a tall
man with a goatee. I heard her say, "Darling!"
"You know what?" Sam asked, looking not at me but at a spot just over my shoulder.
I shook my head. "What?"
"I need to get some air."
I wasn't sure if he meant for me to follow, but I did.
"Thanks for inviting me," I said, wincing inwardly at the memory of how rude I'd been to him
earlier. We were sitting outside on a bench a few feet from the reflecting pool. Sam hadn't said
anything since we'd gotten outside, and my sentence came out awkward and rehearsed, which
made sense, considering I'd experimented with several variations of it in my head before uttering
it.
"Yeah, sure," he said, but he sounded distracted, like he hadn't really heard what I'd said.
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I figured I might as well get the whole thing over with all at once. "I, um, didn't realize you'd put the card on my locker," I said. "I thought Ms. Daniels invited me."
Sam stood up and walked over to the reflecting pool. "Oh." He said. He leaped up onto the stone
wall that ran around the pool and started walking along it. "Disappointed?"
"What?"
"I said, are you disappointed?"
Now I was confused. "About what?"
"That I'm the one who invited you?"
"No. Why would I be disappointed?"
He was walking totally naturally, even though the stone lip he was balanced on was only a
couple of inches wide. "I don't know. Why would you assume Ms. Daniels was the one who had
invited you? Why wouldn't you think it could be me?"
"Ah, maybe because every time I try to talk to you, you look at me like you wish I'd get hit by a
car," I answered.
"Come on," he said, from the other side of the pool. "Or a bus."
"Please. I'm not that bad. It's just... embarrassing when someone comments on your painting."
I thought about explaining the difference between a comment and a compliment, but from the
way he was suddenly looking down, I could tell just talking about
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my talking about his artwork was making him uncomfortable.
"How did you know which one was my locker?" I asked.
"Your notebook."
"What?"
"It's on your notebook."
"Oh," It was true. The first day of school I'd written my locker number on my notebook so I
wouldn't forget it.
Sam was two thirds of the way around the pool now, and he looked over at me. Then he jumped
off without even spilling a drop of his wine and came back to the bench. He stood in front of
where I was sitting and ran his hand through his hair, making it stand up straight. Then he shook
his head like he was trying to clear it of something unpleasant. "Sorry about my mother back
there," he said.
"Don't worry about it," I said. "You should meet my stepmother."
"Yeah?" he asked.
"God yes, she's ten million times worse than your mom." I thought for a second. "Like, she
collects really expensive glass figurines," I said.
"No way!" Sam said, and for the first time since his mom had come over to us, he smiled.
"Really," I said. "And once one of a pair of matching unicorns broke, and she started to cry."
Sam
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was still smiling. "At least your mom collects art," I said.
"And artists," he said. He stopped smiling and looked back at the gallery. "What about your mother?" he asked. "What does she do?"
"Actually, she doesn't do anything anymore," I said. "She's dead."
"Oh, wow," he said, turning back to face me. "That sucks."
"Yeah, I guess," I said. I never know how to tell people my mother's dead, since it's pretty much guaranteed to bring even the most scintillating conversation to a complete halt. It was a huge
relief that Sam hadn't made the Poor little Lucy frown most people made.
"Is that why you moved to New York?" he asked. "Did she die recently?"
"Oh, no, she died a long time ago," I said. "We moved because my dad remarried, and my
revolting stepsisters can't function outside a ten-mile radius of the Miracle Mile."
Sam squinted and looked up at the sky, like he was trying to figure something out. "Soooo,
you've got a stepmother who's a bitch and some evil stepsisters," he said finally.
"I know," I said. "It's so Brothers Grimm."
"Seriously."
As I looked at Sam, who was standing right in front of me and still looking up at the sky, I could
kind of see why someone like Jane, someone who could go out with
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any guy she wanted to, might go out with him. In his sports jacket, holding a glass of wine, he
looked good. Not good like Connor looked good. Not in the pure gorgeous way. This was
different. I considered how Sam had laughed when he was talking to Milton Newman. Even
though there must have been at least a dozen adults around him, even though he was talking to a
guy who was clearly a successful, well-known artist, he'd seemed totally relaxed.
That was it--Sam was cool.
He sat down on the bench next to me. "So," he said. "You're uprooted from San Francisco and dragged across the country to Long Island. You're a sophomore. You know no one. Yet in just a
few short months you manage to snag the captain of the football--sorry, the basketball team. Not
too shabby."
I took a sip of my wine, then turned to face him. "I really don't think the guy who went out with
last year's prom queen ought to be quite so condescending, do you?"
Sam laughed. "Touché," he said. After a minute he added, "She wasn't actually the prom queen."
"Still," I said, patting him lightly on the knee. "I feel the point is justified."
"Yeah," he acknowledged. "I suppose it is." He stretched his arms up, then dropped his hands onto his head and ran his fingers through his hair. "Hey, maybe you'll get to be prom queen this year," he said. Then he pointed at me. "Dreams come true, right?"
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I put my glass down on the pebbled ground. "Okay, can I just say that I didn't like you before,
and then for a few minutes I liked you, and now I'm not liking you again?"
"Sorry," he said. When I didn't say anything, he said it again. "Really, I'm sorry." He shook his head and chuckled. "I just cannot understand how someone who seems to care about art as much as you do cares about basketball."
I crossed my arms. "Why not? Why can't you accept that a person could like sports and art?"
"I don't know." He shrugged. "Failure of imagination, I guess."
"Failure of something," I said. "You should care about basketball. You should open your mind to the beauty of the game."
Sam shook his head from side to side, smiling. "Well, maybe I'll do that," he said.
"Speaking of the beauty of the game, what time is it?" I asked. I was pretty sure it was getting close to seven, which meant I needed to think about leaving. There was a seven-twenty train I