She didn't answer, which meant he hadn't. Instead she lifted an eyebrow at me in a superior way. "Sometimes you don't have to say it. When you're in love you know it."
We'd almost reached the restaurant doors and I slowed my pace. "You know it? That's all there is to it?"
Her expression softened, as though just talking about Rick improved her mood. "The first time he danced with me, I knew it was love."
How can you take someone seriously who says things like that? "Just because you danced together? Shouldn't other things matter when you make those kinds of decisions?"
She rolled her eyes like I was the one being foolish. "See, that's how I can tell you've never been in love. If you had, you'd understand."
Uh-huh. Some people refuse to be reasonable.
After we went inside, I looked for my friends. This proved to be harder than I thought because the place was packed. Most of the senior class had come, and as Aubrie pointed out when I finally found my friends, quite a few attractive strangers besides.
"Who would have thought that Rick knew hot guys?" Rachel said. "Do you think they're from Moscow or that they're college men?"
Moscow, Idaho, was only eight miles away from Pullman, Washington, so there was always a certain amount of crossover at any given activity. But since the other two Deadbeats in Rick's band went to WSU, it was more likely that the hot guys were their friends.
"Doesn't Rick have an older brother?" Samantha asked.
He did. I knew this because I'd heard Adrian talk about him. Pullman High was so small that normally you knew who everyone was, even in the classes a year or two ahead of you, but Rick moved here the end of our sophomore year. His older brother stayed in California to finish high school, and then came to Pullman to go to WSU after that.
Adrian said he was conceited and obnoxious. I figured that since she thought Rick was normal—whereas I thought Rick scored rather high on the conceited and obnoxious scale—that Rick's older brother must be so bad he had dedicated his life to harassing people in customer service departments.
"I've never seen Rick's older brother," I said, " I 'd tell you to watch for someone who looks like Rick, but to tell you the truth under all his hair color and eyeliner, I'm still not sure what Rick looks like."
"Well, at least Rick had the taste to rent out a nice place for his party," Samantha said. "How much do you think it cost him?"
"A lot," Rachel said. "This place isn't cheap."
"Where do you think he got the money?" Aubrie whispered.
"Probably doing something illegal," I said. "That's why he constantly changes his hair. It helps him evade the authorities."
Because Rick had always hung out with the fringe teenagers, and since he'd only lived here for a year and a half, my friends knew very little about him.
"Does his family have money?" Rachel asked, and then everyone looked at me, like I should know. And you would think I would, seeing as Rick was dating my sister. But I didn't. I generally blocked Rick, and all things Rick-like, out of my mind.
Most of the kids at Pullman High had parents who worked at WSU or Schweitzer Engineering Labs, which made us a fairly homogeneous tax-bracket group. I'd just assumed Rick was the same, but now I struggled to remember if there was something different about his background. What had Adrian said about his family?
Um . . . they didn't understand his musical genius . . . and well, I usually stopped listening after that. Could they be wealthy?
Rick drove a jeep. Those weren't that expensive. On the other hand, over the summer his family had vacationed in Kauai. I knew this because Adrian had moped around for the entire two weeks he'd been gone. That's when I'd started trying to set her up with normal guys.
I shrugged. "Maybe they have money."
I didn't say more because Rick walked up to the mike, welcomed people, and started his first song. I recognized it right away. It was the one we'd accidentally played at the pep assembly. Everyone burst into applause. I rolled my eyes, then let my gaze wander over the crowd.
I mentally rated each outfit I saw, every once in a while commenting to my friends if someone had made a great choice or an especially glaring mistake. Samantha is trying to break me of this habit because she says I sound like a fashion fascist, but really, is it that hard for people to follow simple rules? No one gets mad at teachers for pointing out where you should use punctuation in your writing. It's the same thing, but instead of commas, I point out that you shouldn't wear a sweater that makes you look like you're smuggling a life vest under your shirt.
I want to be a fashion designer someday so I have to pay attention to this kind of stuff. Besides, it's not like I say these things to people's faces. Although I admit I'm considering it in Naomi's case. She's so thin and wears such tight-fitting clothes, that every time I see her I have the urge to slip her a Snickers bar just to keep her from starving to death.
She and Mike were hanging out with the football crowd. The guys smiled and talked with her, accepting her as easily as they ever accepted me. Naomi had her hand draped across Mike's waist in a way that made me feel conspicuously boy-less and wanting to spend the rest of the evening dancing with a hot, mysterious stranger.
In fact I needed it. I wasn't about to go one more night letting Mike think that I was still moping over him.
I leaned over to Rachel. "Hey, are any of the cute guys here without girlfriends?" I knew she'd know. Rachel calculates these sorts of things almost subconsciously.
"Enough of them to keep me busy," she said.
Samantha's gaze skipped back and forth between the two of us. "I thought we came to keep an eye on Adrian. Is this going to turn into one of those everyone-goes-off-flirting-with-guys-and-I'm-left-standing-by-myself-in-a-corner nights?"
"Maybe," I said.
She rolled her eyes. "I knew I shouldn't have come without Logan."
"I'll stay with you," Aubrie said, "because I'm loyal, and besides, I have too much taste to go out with any of Rick's friends."
"Thanks." Samantha cast me a glance designed to make me feel guilty.
Rachel put her hand on my arm. I recognized the boy-hunting glint in her eye—and yes, she does actually use the term boy-hunting. She has a whole hunting-season vocabulary worked out. She smiled at me. "Let's go get a drink and scope out the room." Then she shrugged in Samantha and Aubrie's direction. "Well, we all agreed that Chelsea needs a new boyfriend; and I'm going to let her have first pick."
"All right," Samantha said with a martyr-like sigh. "If it's for a good cause . . ."
How had I suddenly become a pity project?
I followed after Rachel, enjoying the growing distance from Rick's music. Honestly, he only knew one volume: painfully loud.
When we got to the back of the room, we picked up some sodas and looked around. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a tall guy in tan Dockers and a white button-down shirt off to our right. A Hilltop employee. A few guys dressed in the same uniform milled around the room, picking up discarded cups and plates, and in general acting as crowd control.
I ignored him and looked out at the guys standing around the edges of the room.