Drive Me Crazy

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

SIMON PULSE

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

Copyright © 2009 by Erin Soderberg Downing

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Library of Congress Control Number 2008050195

ISBN-13: 978-1-4169-9497-8
ISBN-10: 1-4169-9497-1

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http://www.SimonandSchuster.com

For Henry and Ruby.
May you always be surrounded
by love, laughter, and tasty treats.

The first kiss tasted like toasted marshmallows, the sweet and sticky flavor of a summer bonfire. His mouth was soft and warm from days spent outside in the sun at the lake. As they kissed, his hand traced a line up her spine, twisting her insides into spirals. She melted into him and thought about their summer together, weeks of flirting and teasing that had finally progressed to a real kiss on their last night together.

He pulled back and looked at her, his piercing green eyes cutting through the dark night. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. It was the same look he’d given her all summer—but this time it was different, because now she knew where things stood. They had kissed. There was a new kind of bond between them, the kind of connection she’d seen played out in movies and the “Your Stories” section of her favorite magazine. She sighed, as she knew she should, and he leaned in for another taste. When he pulled away, she felt her lips hang on, sticky with marshmallow.

But in one tiny second the moment of bliss turned to a scene of horror. His hands gripped her arms and his eyes snapped open. His look was no longer teasing; it was terrified. “Kate, my lip is stuck in your retainer.”

Gasp!
Kate Rogers’s mouth snapped closed and her eyes popped open, suddenly awake. A tiny trail of drool had begun to escape from her mouth, and she swept the back of her hand across her chin to dry it.

It was the last day of school, so study hall was essentially empty. The few people who had bothered to show up for last period were stealthily sending text messages or paging through magazines while Mrs. Coyle pretended not to notice. Kate was there only because she’d feel guilty if she skipped…even on the last day of school, when she had nothing to study.

Kate glanced around the room to try to figure out who’d seen her napping. As usual Curtis Chin was watching her from his table across the room. Curtis was a very nonthreatening type of creepy. Kate shot him a look, and he eagerly waved at her. Kate was glad Curtis was graduating. She had lucked into study hall with him every semester since ninth grade, and his apparent attraction to her hadn’t faded.

Curtis’s crush wasn’t flattering, since he also harbored an unrequited crush on Kate’s best friend Alexis Goldstein, and had gone so far as to send snail mail
letters
with his drawings of fairies and dragons to her other best friend, Sierra West. Sierra had graciously thanked Curtis for his kindness and artistry, and had gently explained that he wasn’t her type; Alexis had just growled at him to “get lost, freak.”

A quick peek at her watch told Kate there were only six minutes left in her junior year of high school. She pulled a magazine out of her bag and flipped through it absentmindedly, thinking about the dream she’d just had. The marshmallow kiss, the feeling of Lucas’s hand tracing its way up her spine, the look in his eyes.

This wasn’t the first time Kate had fallen asleep in study hall, and it definitely wasn’t the first time she’d had that dream. The scene was always the same, an exact replaying of the moment she and Lucas had shared at the end of last summer. In real life, the kiss had been perfect, but the ending was a different version of awful each time she relived the moment in her dreams. Once, Lucas had pulled away in a dream because Kate’s dad had been standing next to them singing “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” Another dream had ended with Alexis and Sierra both watching their kiss from a judging table, holding up scorecards. (She’d gotten a 4.4 out of 10.)

This time she wasn’t sure what the deal was…. Kate hadn’t worn a retainer during the day since eighth grade. (She still wore it while she slept, which is something only Alexis and Sierra knew about.) She imagined these freak-out dream endings were just her nerves acting up, wondering what would happen between her and Lucas this summer. They had ended things with such a magical moment at the end of last summer, and had been exchanging flirtatious e-mails and IMs all year. She couldn’t wait to see him in person in less than a week!

The bell rang, signaling an end to study hall, eleventh grade, and Kate’s years with Curtis Chin. Kate smiled thinly at Curtis as she passed him on her way out the door, then breathed a sigh of relief that he was out of her life for good.

Now that the school year was through, she was just days away from reigniting the fire that had started to simmer last summer. As they had every year for the past ten years, Kate and her family and friends would be spending the next month and a half at the Cattail Cottages Resort in Love, Wisconsin (pronounced Loave, Wis-
can
-sin, which amused Kate tremendously). This year Kate would finally live out her dream of spending the summer kissing and whispering under the big pine tree, and she couldn’t wait.

Kate grabbed her bag out of her locker and slammed the empty metal cavern shut with a hollow thwack. She had left only a small piece of notepaper tucked into the far back corner, with a tiny “hello, you, from kate” scribbled on it. Kate did this every year—a message-in-a-bottle-style greeting to whoever moved into her locker the following fall.

Kate was a true romantic, and liked to think that the future inhabitant of her locker would find her note and track her down, and he would end up being the love of her life. This romantic scenario hadn’t yet played out (in fact, this past year Curtis Chin had moved into Kate’s old locker, and the secret note had only fueled the fire of his crush), but she left a little greeting again this year anyway, just in case.

Someday her prince would come.

“Kat!” Alexis hugged her from behind and pushed her toward the front doors. “We’re seniors, Kat! Yaaaaaaah!” Alexis pumped her fist in the air, her long almost-black hair swinging out behind her.

Alexis had called Kate “Kat” since fourth grade, after Kate had hastily climbed up—and even more quickly gotten stuck in—a tree, and the fire department had had to come and help her down with their big ladder. Just as the nickname had started to fade, in the middle of fifth grade Kate had scratched Justin Thornton when he’d called Sierra “chubster” on the playground. Justin had sported a cat-scratch-like mark for about a week, and Kate’s nickname had stuck with Alexis ever since.

“Woo-hoo!” Kate cried, hopping off the last two steps toward the front lawn of campus. She and Alexis skipped outside with the rest of the student body, everyone celebrating their summer freedom. It was a muggy New Jersey spring afternoon, and people had rolled up their jeans and sleeves to enjoy the sunshine.

Kate and Alexis sprawled out on the school’s lawn to wait for Sierra, who was probably bidding each and every teacher a personal farewell. Sierra did those sorts of things, which is certainly why she was so successful at everything she did. Sierra had just won student council president for the upcoming school year, and she was pretty obviously going to get valedictorian next year as well. She’d been given the honorary faculty prize in this year’s awards assembly, earning her a thousand-dollar college scholarship, compliments of the local business association.

In spite of her good-girl seemingly perfect exterior, Alexis and Kate loved her anyway. They knew the real Sierra, and she was a lot more fun and interesting than her campaign posters would suggest. “Hey, bitches.” Sierra had slid up behind her two friends on the lawn and whispered this in their ears. Ms. Mohan passed them at that moment and flashed a wave of hello. “Have a fantastic summer, Ms. Mohan!” Sierra said as she waved, dripping candy sweetness from her sugary smile. Then she turned to her friends and said, “Let’s get this party started!”

Kate grinned. “Eighteen hours until the girls’ road trip hits I-80!” she announced, pulling Sierra’s slides off her slender feet for her. Then she unsnapped her bag and pulled a list out of the interior pocket. “I think we’re just about ready. Are our road trip tunes set?” she asked.

“Check,” Alexis declared, tapping her iPod inside the back pocket of her jeans. “My road trip playlist is so hard core that you will puke before we get through every song. And I’m making us listen to it until we hit Ohio, just for fun.”

“Snacks?” Kate asked. Her stomach rumbled at the thought.

“Swedish Fish and Diet Cherry Coke!” Sierra clapped. Sierra was a total snack fiend, which you would never guess from her looks. Her “chubster” nickname was long forgotten…. She was now as long and willowy as a professional ballet dancer. Her dark skin glowed from within, as though she only ate spinach salad and water. Kate, on the other hand, was average height, “curvy” (Kate called herself “stocky,” which was far from the truth), and subject to skin disturbances every time she approached a french fry or processed sugar.

Kate studied her road trip prep list, growing more excited. For the first time ever, this summer the girls’ parents were letting them drive themselves to Love, and they had been planning their road trip for weeks. “And I have the entertainment covered,” she concluded. “Quizzes from the last six months of four different magazines, maps, travel and accommodation guides—”

“Ooh,” Alexis cut in sarcastically. “Fun!”

“Bite me,” Kate cheerfully shot back, then continued. “—And a detailed map of every possible amusement park along the way, including one that has one of those freaky fortune-telling machines.”

Sierra waved at a few girls from her AP history class, then turned back to Kate and Alexis. “I am so excited about this trip, y’all.” Sierra had lived in Birmingham, Alabama, until third grade, and tiny little bits of the South still popped up in her vocabulary every now and again.

“Me too,” Kate agreed. “My two best friends, the open road, a cute boy waiting for me at the end…” Not to mention that the road trip across country with her two best friends meant that she didn’t have to sit in the back row of her parents’ minivan with her little sister for the almost twenty-four-hour drive to the lake house. And Lucas’s warm, tan, scrumptious body was the pot of gold at the end of the road! “I had my dream in study hall again,” she said, lying back on the grass and looking up at the big oak tree hanging over them. “This time Lucas’s lip got caught in my retainer.” She cringed at the thought of Lucas’s perfectly smooth, scrumptious lip tangled in her mouth gear. Eek.

“By the time you finally get some, you’re going to be so freaked out that you won’t remember how to kiss,” Alexis said, and rolled her eyes. “You’ll see him in a week, Kate. We have almost a week of girl time ahead of us—please tell me that the whole trip won’t be consumed with romantic speculation about your upcoming summer o’ love.”

Kate smiled at her. “In fact,” she said smugly, “I had planned to talk about Lucas every single moment of each of those days, if you don’t mind.”

Alexis hopped up onto her knees and leaned over Kate, her scrawny 104-pound frame silhouetted by the sun above her. “I do mind. I think we’re all pretty clear about exactly what happened last summer—your ‘magical’ kiss”—Alexis wiggled her fingers in the air—“and it’s obvious exactly what needs to happen this summer. I have made it clear that you just need to jump him when we get to the lake, and everyone will live happily ever after.”

“Okay, okay,” Sierra cut in. “Alexis, you must be patient. Kate is preparing for her romantic rendezvous with her summer crush, and it’s our job to be supportive and talk her through it.” She smiled at Kate. “We know Kate wants the big moment to be perfect, and I’m willing to help with that. On the other hand…” She furrowed her eyebrows. “The Lucas talk better stop by the time we get to Pennsylvania, or there will be no Swedish Fish for you. Enough is enough!”

Kate frowned at both of them. But in all fairness she knew she’d been yammering on and on about Lucas for almost eleven months. She was ready to get some action, and wanted to stop talking about it just as much as her friends wanted her to. But Kate also wanted to make sure that everything was perfectly planned out, so her reunion with her hot soon-to-be-boyfriend would be as magical as their farewell night together the previous summer.

Lucas and Kate had been building a serious flirtation for almost three years—ever since Lucas’s family had started renting a summer cabin at Cattail Cottages—so their first kiss had been a major milestone. Their online flirtations all year suggested he was as ready as she was to take things to the next level as soon as they were together again. Lucas and his family were flying in his dad’s private plane from Winnipeg, Canada, in two days, and were scheduled to be in Love a few days before Kate, Alexis, and Sierra rolled in. Just enough time for him to build up the appropriate level of longing for the moment Kate would arrive.

“I don’t know how you’ve waited a full year to get some,” Alexis declared, settling into a cross-legged position on the grass. “I’m dying, and I saw Kevin when he was home for spring break.” She blew her long bangs away from her eyes. “I don’t think our one-day stop is going to be enough time to catch up, if you know what I mean.” She giggled mischievously.

Sierra looked at Kate, her eyebrows raised dramatically. Kate laughed, then said, “We get it, Lex.” One of the benefits of the girls driving separately from their parents was that they could stop to visit Alexis’s boyfriend, Kevin, at the University of Michigan en route. He had just finished his first year of college and was planning to stay in Ann Arbor for a summer internship. Alexis had decided to surprise him with a quick visit.

“I packed my boob shirt,” Alexis announced proudly, just as Mr. Prince, their English teacher, walked past. He covered his ears and cringed. “Sorry, Mr. Prince. Have a good summer!”

“Nice, Alexis,” Kate chided. She abruptly changed the subject away from Kevin. Sierra and Kate thought Alexis’s boyfriend was a creep. Sierra could hold her tongue, but Kate preferred to avoid the subject since she rarely had anything nice to say and often blurted out something she would later regret. “Sierra, is your mom staying the whole month?”

The Rogers, West, and Goldstein families spent the summer together at Cattail Cottages Resort. Greg Rogers, Cynthia West, and Sara Goldstein worked as professors together at the university in their town, and for the past eleven years each had taken at least a month off after classes ended to relax and read academic papers by the lakeshore in Wisconsin.

Alexis’s family had found the resort—she and her cousin Adam’s family had started going there together when they were babies—and had convinced the West and Rogers families to join them one summer when there was availability in the neighboring cabins. It had become a tradition, and now every year the whole crew caravanned from New Jersey to Wisconsin as soon as school let out.

This summer the university had finished finals a week earlier than the high school, so the Rogers and West families had decided to leave for the lake a little early, after agreeing that the girls could drive out on their own. Alexis’s parents weren’t leaving until next week…most likely so someone’s parents were still around to keep an eye on things until the girls’ road trip motored off to the west.

“My mom is playing it by ear,” Sierra responded quietly. “She’s not sure how long she’s staying. I think she has a lot going on in the lab this summer, but I’m sure she’s a little freaked about committing to a whole month with my dad.”

“Are they still in the test phase?” Kate asked. Sierra’s parents had been separated off and on for the past year, and had only just recently returned to “half-on.”