All I could do was shrug. "They won't be worried yet. I'll just tell them I was at the library." He turned toward me with a probing stare. "You don't want them to know you were with me?"
I made a face by squinting my eyes, silently saying, Heck no, I'm not telling them. "It'd just make them think we were dating or something."
"What if—" He stopped talking so abruptly I had to probe further.
"What if what?"
He shook his head and slid the car into first. "Nothing."
"What?" I insisted.
He lifted a hand to stop me. "I said it was nothing." I zipped my mouth shut. I wanted to ask what his problem was but I was sure I already knew. He was mad at himself for kissing me. I stared out the side window and acted like I was 129
The Stillburrow Crush
by Linda Kage
pushing the hair out of my face when I was actually rubbing the moisture out of the corner of my eye with my palm. We took the country roads back to town. When we hit the city limits, I tried to duck down. But after a sharp, "Don't," from Luke I pulled myself back up. The windows were tinted anyway. No one would see me. Probably.
"You can drop me off here," I said, as we approached the corner where he could turn to head home. Luke only shot me a dirty look, at which I slumped down saying, "Or not." If he'd been a cartoon character, steam would've been rolling from his ears. I'd never seen him so ticked. When he pulled to a stop in front of my house, he didn't look at me.
"So," he said. "See you at school." My throat was jammed up so I could only nod. I grabbed the door handle, then remembered the whole purpose of our ride. "Oh! I almost forgot."
I reached into the pocket of my jeans and pulled out a lump of folded paper. Luke glanced over. When I tossed it into his lap, he frowned at me and cautiously picked up the bundle.
"That's all the feedback I received from putting your poem in the paper."
Luke had been in the process of unfolding the stack of papers but when he heard what it was, he stopped. "You were carrying it around in your pocket?"
I nodded and tried to smile, but failed miserably.
"Somehow, I had this feeling you'd jump me from out of nowhere and demand to know what everyone thought." 130
The Stillburrow Crush
by Linda Kage
His eyes moved to the sheets still folded in his fingers.
"Did a lot of people reply, then?" He slowly moved his fingers over the still-folded sheets.
I took the papers gently from his hands. "It's the biggest response since I wrote an editorial about getting a fire station built in town." I unfolded the notes and Luke's gaze suddenly strayed. He couldn't look at the results, so I said, "They loved you."
He came back. "Really?"
I grinned, a true grin this time, at his expression of complete disbelief. He snatched the papers out of my hand and read through each comment. His face moved from incredulous to ill to ecstatic in only moments. Then he crushed the comments in his fist and looked at me.
"They really did like it," he whispered. I bit my lip. "I know."
"They liked me, Carrie." I think he had to repeat the words to believe them. And when it soaked in, he suddenly looked like he could grab me and pull me toward him to wrap his arms around me and bury his face in my hair. But then he looked down at the stack of replies without touching me.
"This can't be real." He slapped the critiques gently against his thigh and turned to me. "Thank you," he said quietly.
[Back to Table of Contents]
131
The Stillburrow Crush
by Linda Kage
Chapter Ten
It was after that first kiss I decided to start keeping a diary—this very book, in fact. I called it a journal, though, since I thought diaries were for sissy girls who only wrote about what boy they had a crush on that week. I didn't plan on writing just about my crush alone. Yeah, that was probably the biggest reason I wanted one but it seemed that so many things were changing around me. I knew I would look back on this year one day and try to remember the exact smells and the exact color of things I was currently experiencing. And I knew they were things I didn't want to forget. I know, I know. I should've already started a journal by that point. Sixteen, almost seventeen, seemed old for someone like me to begin such a task. But I never thought I had an exciting life...not until Luke Carter deemed me interesting enough to kiss.
So I decided I needed a notebook. Yes, I spent most of my time writing and had plenty of notebooks. But I wanted a new one, something fresh and clean that had never been written in before. I knew there was no way I'd find one in my room. I wrote so much every notebook I owned was already half filled with scribbles.
So I decided to ransack Marty's old room. I don't think I ever saw him do over an hour's worth of homework so I knew he had to have dozens of brand new, spotless notebooks. His room was half empty. His clothes, posters, and even the pillows off his bed were gone. But other things remained. 132
The Stillburrow Crush
by Linda Kage
He'd actually won first place at the science fair one year. He'd invented a new kind of water bomb and his demonstration of it had been outstanding. His trophy for that was still sitting on his dresser along with some loose change from which I pocketed the quarters and dimes. I started searching under his bed. Marty kept old school things there like yearbooks and past report cards. Mom had everything stored in a Rubbermaid container. I shimmied down on my hands and knees and reached for the box. The dust almost choked me when I pulled it out. And I knew then that Mom had kept his room sacred, not stepping foot into his personal domain since he'd left.
Waving away the dust cloud so I could see, I opened the box and sorted through it. It smelled musty and stale. I found a picture he'd drawn when he was in kindergarten. The paper was yellowed and ragged at the corners. The drawing showed Mom and Dad and Marty standing in a row and holding hands. Mom had a fat stomach so she must've been pregnant with me. At the top, in the worst handwriting I'd ever seen, Marty had written, "I love Mommy. I love Daddy. I love baby."
I sighed. Too bad Marty hadn't stayed that sweet over the years.
I shoved the drawing back into the pile and sifted some more. No notebook. Growing more and more restless, I pushed the box back under the bed and stood up, wiping my knees with my hands.
133
The Stillburrow Crush
by Linda Kage
The closet was the next place to look. I pulled the string for the light and once again a dust cloud enveloped me. It made the confining closet look dim and hazy. I had to stand on tiptoes to peek at the top shelf. As I did, I bumped into some clothes still hanging there. It rustled up a smell I associated with my brother. And for the briefest of moments I missed him. That was something I would never tell a living soul. But the smell of Marty reminded me of when we were younger and he would sometimes let me ride in the front seat when we went with Dad to test drive a car. And it reminded me of when we went grasshopper hunting together. Marty let me hold the jar while he caught the grasshoppers, which was fine with me because I had no desire to touch the creepy-crawly critters. But it had made me feel important to hold that jar for my big brother. Of course, then Marty would torture the poor thing by pulling its legs off one by one, and I'd go running to Mom, bawling. But standing there, in his closet, made me miss those old days.