Meet Me in Manhattan (True Vows) (4 page)

And then, while you're leaving Country Coffee Shop with the
taste of cheese and onions lingering on your tongue, and climbing
into your teammate Will's car, your old friend Laura Maher drives
across the parking lot, rolls down her window, and calls out to you,
"Hey, Ted-I know the perfect girl for you," and then drives away
before you can demand that she tell you who the perfect girl is.

And suddenly your day isn't just like any other day.

"Who?" Ted shouted after Laura, but she was long gone, leaving only the sour scent of her car's exhaust behind. "Who's this
perfect girl?"

Will gave him a playful shove. Matt, who'd been about to get
into the backseat, muttered the name of a really creepy girl who'd
been in several of Ted's classes in elementary school and had the
habit of eating her own boogers, which, Ted supposed, was better
than eating someone else's boogers but not by much.

"It better not be her," Ted said. Not that he thought ill of any
of his classmates, and she'd probably outgrown the whole booger
thing long ago, but still. Whoever this perfect girl was, he wanted
her to be ... okay, call him shallow, but he wanted her to be beautiful. He wanted her to be sweet and smart and funny, too, but
beautiful was pretty high up on his list. If he got to vote on particulars, he wanted her to have long, straight, light brown hair
with golden highlights shimmering through it, and big brown
eyes, and the kind of dimples that didn't look like someone had
dented her face with an awl but were subtle and graceful and
drew his eyes to her elegant cheeks.

Elegant. Yes. He wanted her to be elegant.

He wanted her to be a few inches shorter than him, and physically fit, and he wanted her to have perfect posture. He wanted
her to walk with purpose, as if she knew where she was heading,
and where she was heading was exactly where she wanted to be.

Not that he had a specific girl in mind or anything.

Will muttered, "I think we've lost him, doctor," while Matt
cupped his hands over his mouth and did the whole "Earth to
Skala" thing. Ted shook his head to clear it. Sometimes he
thought of his brain as an Etch-a-Sketch; one sharp shake and
whatever image he wanted to erase dissolved, leaving him with a
flat gray emptiness.

But the image of Erika Fredell never really disappeared from
his mind.

How long had he had a crush on her?

When was the first time he'd ever seen her? That long.

Not that she cared about him, one way or another. He could
plant himself in front of her, douse himself in gasoline, and light
a match, and she'd probably say, "I really should try to put this
fire out, but I've got to go horseback riding."

That was what she did. He knew this because Mendham High
was small enough for everyone to know everything, at least about
the people in their own class, and because he and Erika traveled
in overlapping social circles. He knew that Erika didn't just go
horseback riding. She was into competitive riding, show jumping. Equestrianism. He'd first heard about that from a classmate
who lived near her and told Ted she was an "Aquarian," as if her
zodiac sign carried special significance. It took him a few days to
find out she was an equestrian, not an Aquarian. But by now,
everyone in the school knew how seriously she took her riding.
Hell, she rode in national competitions. She won ribbons and
trophies. When it came to horses, she was hot stuff.

As a jock in a family of jocks, Ted had a great deal of respect
for winners.

He had even more respect for Erika Fredell's discipline. He was
in awe of the fact that she went to a stable every day after school
to train. Every single day. Weekends, she trained some more, or
traveled to competitions. Unlike him and his friends, she didn't
hang around the school after the final bell rang. She didn't loiter
in the school's parking lot or down by the bleachers. She never
showed up at Country Coffee Shop on early release days, when
half the school wound up there to buy burgers or ice cream.

He didn't have a prayer with her, he knew that. She took honors classes. She dwelled a few rungs up the economic ladder from
him and lived in a big house with, he was willing to bet, more
than one bathroom.

Besides, one of the frustrating mysteries of love was that the
girl you had a crush on was never the same person as the girl who
had a crush on you. If Erika Fredell had a crush on anyone, it was
probably one of the rich boys, someone sophisticated, someone
as at home in the world of horse shows as she was. Ted had heard rumors back in sophomore year that she was seeing an older guy,
although he had no idea how much older the guy was. Older than
Ted, in any case. Then she'd dated someone on the lacrosse team
for a while, and Ted had thought, lacrosse? Why date someone
who needed a stick to play his game when you could date a
wrestler who relied on nothing but his own body to excel in his
sport? Maybe the stick had turned her on. Expensive equipment
might have appealed to her.

Or might not. She wasn't with the lacrosse player anymore. She
wasn't with anybody. Ted was friendly with her, but not friendly
enough to ask why. He figured that either she thought mere high
school boys were beneath her or she was too busy with her horses
to be bothered with the whole social scene. Given her scheduleschoolwork, training, competing-she couldn't possibly have
time to think about boys, let alone go out with one.

And anyway, he was dating Kate, and he shouldn't even be
thinking about Erika. A two-year-old crush was a silly thing, kind
of lame, kind of pointless. Kate was nice enough, she was cute, she
was hot, and he should count his blessings.

For some reason, thinking about Kate gave him heartburn. Or
maybe it was the cheese steak he'd just eaten. He tried not to consume junk food during wrestling season, because he had to make
weight before each meet. Cheese steaks were a treat he indulged
in no more than once a week. For the most part, he tried to stick
to a diet of high-quality protein and veggies during the season.
He might not have the kind of discipline a girl like Erika had,
spending every freaking afternoon practicing her jumps and
turns and figure eights, or whatever it was she did on her horse,
but when it came to wrestling he knew how to focus. Better to eat
smart than to have to sweat off pounds in a sauna hours before
a meet.

He wondered if Erika Fredell ever attended a wrestling meet. It
wasn't like wrestling attracted the kind of audience the football
team did, or the basketball team. The wrestling team probably
had more fans in attendance at its meets than the lacrosse team
did, but that wasn't saying much.

If she did attend wrestling meets, he wouldn't know. He never
looked at the audience when he was wrestling. Too distracting. If
he knew she was there, he might start showing off for her, hotdogging, trying high-risk maneuvers. He might lose his concentration. Just as he'd be going for a pin, he'd glimpse her in the
stands and forget where he was, and next thing, he'd be shoulders
against the mat, listening to the ref count him out.

Once he, Will, and Matt were in the car and tearing out of the
parking lot, the other guys decided to devote themselves to figuring out who his perfect girl was. "Emily," Will guessed. "She's
been with every guy in the school at least once. It's probably your
turn, Skala."

"Yeah," Matt chimed in. "She's run out of other guys. You're
the only one left."

"And she doesn't like Kate, so it makes sense that she'd try to
steal you from her."

"Maybe she's not into you at all. Maybe she just wants to piss
Kate off."

"Kate's pretty easy to piss off," Will noted. "You piss her off all
the time, Skala, don't you?"

Ted laughed good-naturedly with his friends, and secretly suppressed the desire to throw a few punches. He didn't mind being
teased; growing up with four older brothers, he'd developed a
skin as thick as a rhino's. But being teased about girls rankled
him, for some reason.

Probably because he knew the one girl he dreamed about, the
one girl he believed was perfect, would never be interested in
someone like him.

"Come on," Laura's voice spun through the wire. "It's just a
small party. You should go."

Erika lounged on the bed, her head cushioned by her pillow
and the phone receiver tucked against her ear. "I'll be riding all
day Saturday," she said. "Then I'm supposed to go out to a party
that night?"

"That's the general idea. I'm riding, too," Laura reminded her.
"A day in the saddle has never kept me from a night of partying."

Erika sighed, although Laura's cheerful wheedling made her
smile. "I'll be exhausted."

"Take a nap."

"And smelling like a horse."

"Take a shower."

"What's so special about this party?" she demanded to know.

"It's senior year, Erika. You need to go to at least one party
before you graduate."

"Oh, good. I thought you were going to say I needed to go to
at least one party before I die."

"That, too."

"I go to parties," Erika defended herself. In general, she went to
parties only because Laura dragged her to them. Laura was one of
her closest riding friends. They'd known each other for years,
from back when Erika's family was still living in South Orange.
The Fredells had moved to Mendham when Erika was about to
start tenth grade-a horrible time to move to a new town and a
new high school. Everyone else in the high school already knew
one another. They'd grown up together. They had memories of one another dating back to preschool. They'd eaten cookies and
milk at one another's houses, swum in one another's pools, played
hoops and sung in the school choir together. Erika had been the
odd one out, the new girl who had no history with these people.

But she'd survived. Most of her social circle had consisted of
other riders when she'd lived in South Orange, and the same was
true in Mendham. She was glad her family had moved, because
Mendham was horse country. Her family's new house was much
closer to the stable where she trained, much closer to Five Star,
her favorite horse.

And much closer to Laura Maher, whom she'd known for years
through riding and who attended a private school in Morristown,
one town away. Even if they didn't see each other in school, they
could get together afterward. And Laura could drag Erika to parties, which she did with frequency despite implying that the party
she wanted Erika to accompany her to this Saturday would be the
one and only party Erika went to before she died. Or graduated.

"You'll know a lot of the people there," Laura promised.

"Who?"

"The usual people. Kids from Mendham and Morristown.
Allyson will be there."

The party suddenly became much more appealing to Erika.
Allyson Rhatican was her closest friend at the high school.
Allyson didn't ride, but like Erika, she'd lived in South Orange
before moving to Mendham in middle school. By the time Erika's
family had moved to Mendham a few years later, Allyson was one
of the most popular girls in town. And she'd chosen to take a fellow South Orange refugee under her wing.

If Erika was stuck knowing only one person in the entire
school, Allyson had been the right person to know. If not for her,
Erika would probably still be a loner two years after her arrival in Mendham, acquainted with no one, a weirdo pariah at Mendham
High.

Which, as far as she was concerned, wouldn't have been the
end of the world. But between Allyson's willingness to welcome
Erika into her circle and Laura's insistence on dragging Erika to
parties, Erika didn't have much chance to be a hermit.

"And there's tons of bedrooms," Laura cajoled. "If you play
your cards right, you won't have to sleep on the living room floor."

Erika laughed. Most people thought of New Jersey as an industrial sprawl, the New Jersey Turnpike slashing through miles of
factories and refineries that belched pollution into the air. But
New Jersey was the Garden State, and the northwest corner, where
Mendham was located, justified that nickname. The region was
bucolic, its rolling hills dotted with small farms and stables and
homes surrounded by vast, undeveloped acreage. When someone
was hosting a party, the guests often wound up spending the
night rather than facing a long drive home. The host's parents
would collect kids' car keys as the kids arrived so no one would
be tempted to cruise home, twenty or more miles over the winding, unlit country roads, after partying half the night.

Erika had slept on a few floors after parties. Couches were better than the floor. Beds were better than couches.

"All right," she conceded. "If I'm not too tired, I'll go to the
party with you."

"Don't be too tired," Laura warned her. "I'll pick you up
around eight."

On days when Erika was competing in a horse show, she often
arose as early as three-thirty in the morning to allow herself the
time she needed to dress, eat, drive to the stable with one of her
parents, load Five Star into the trailer, and then travel to the venue. When she'd told Laura she might be too tired afterward to
attend a party that evening, she hadn't meant that the riding itself
would exhaust her. In fact, she found riding invigorating. She
loved the way she felt perched in her saddle, the way she and Five
Star read each other, felt each other, merged until they were like a
single living creature gliding down the course and then leaping,
levitating, soaring over the fences. After a good ride, she was
invariably invigorated, drunk on her own adrenaline.

But the early mornings, the long drives, the brisk air, the noise
and bustle and stress-all of that tired her out.

Still, she had promised to go to the party with Laura on
Saturday night. She was hardly the most social girl in Mendham,
yet she appreciated Laura's attempts to liberate her from her tidy,
limited world of high school and riding. And Laura was right: she
was a senior. She'd already received an early-decision acceptance
into Colorado College's Summer Start program, which meant
she'd be starting college over the summer rather than in the fall.
Her plans were in place. She ought to cut loose a little.