Mothership (15 page)

Me, though? I’m not cheering. Or grinning. Or relaxed. I’m more in what you might call shock. And not because of the whole plummeting-to-Earth-in-a-giant-coffin state of emergency in which we currently find ourselves.

No,
I’m
in shock because the face on the monitor is one that I know very, very well.

The afternoon of the Spring Fling, hours before Ducky arrives for our Ringwald marathon, I am holed up in my room watching
Rebel Without a Cause
. I realize I’m going to be watching flat pics all evening, but the urge has struck.

Sometimes—not always, but sometimes—I get just a little bit mom-sick. Like I miss the lady, even though I never met her. And for all Dad’s strengths as a kick-ass parent, he hasn’t really told me much about the chick who gave birth to me. I mean, I get that it’s hard for him to talk about her, I do. But every once in a while I wish I could have just a little bit more info to latch on to. More than just wisps of who she might have been. Really, all I know for certain is that my mom wanted to see the world one day (hence the book of maps), and that she absolutely loved 1950s actor James Dean. It’s not a lot to go on.

So, anyway, I guess that sort of explains why I’ve seen this
melodramatic cheesefest, like, a thousand times. It’s unfortunate that James Dean had to go and die so young, in a car crash when he was just twenty-four, because if he’d made more than three flat pics, maybe I’d feel more connected to my mom. But in a way it fits, because my mom was only twenty-six when she died. What is it they say about people who die before they grow old? Forever young, forever beautiful? That’s my mom, all right.

On the bed next to me my phone begins to buzz.

I snatch it up and check the screen.
UNKNOWN CALLER
. That’s the eighth time this week. I tap the screen, hoping I can catch my loser stalker before he has a chance to hang up. “If I were you, I’d stop the prank calls,” I say into the receiver. “After the tenth one the voodoo curse kicks in, and good luck removing that badger from your ass.” This time my stalker does not hang up. This time he says something.

“Hey, Elvs.”

I suck in my breath. Cole Archer. Cole Archer is calling
me
?

“The mechanic savant,” I say, my voice laced with annoyance. “What do you want?”

Cole doesn’t seem to be bothered at all by my icy tone. He replies just the way he always does—cool and calm and utterly sure of himself. “Well, obviously, I need help with my car.”

“Have you been hanging up on me for six days because you have
car trouble
?” I ask. “Just go to the auto shop.”

“I didn’t mean to—” For the first time ever I hear a note of hesitation in Cole’s voice. “I’m sorry about the hang-ups,” he says. “I kept getting, uh, distracted. But will you help me anyway? You promised you’d help me install new routers.”

I trace the seams on my bed quilt with my thumb and index finger. “Yeah, there’s no way I said that,” I tell him.

“Oh, come on, Elvs. No one knows as much about cars as you.”

Okay, I know sucking up when I hear it, but for some reason it works anyway. I sigh. I should be heading to the store soon to pick up the snacks for my marathon with Ducky, but . . . I look at the clock. I still have three hours, and it should take only about forty minutes to fix the Metric. If I can get Cole to drive me to the grocery store for snacks afterward, I’ll still have plenty of time before the marathon. “My name’s not Elvs,” I tell him. “It’s Elvie. If you want to get formal, it’s Elvan. But under no circumstances, ever, is it Elvs.”

Cole laughs. “I apologize profusely. Can I make it up to you by bringing you a beautiful car to work on?”

I huff in disgust. “Fine. But keep it up, and I’ll start charging you.”

“Fair enough. See you in five.”

As soon as I hang up the phone, I’m in whirlwind girl motion. I shovel my dirty clothes into my dresser, straighten out my pillows, and kick the towering pile of books and shoes and whattheheckisthat into the closet. Then I turn my attention to the mirror. Hair a mess, sweaty after-school T-shirt with the pit stains, and the cargo shorts I don’t ever wear in public.
Nice.
I’ve completely changed clothes, and am just beginning to run the comb through my hair, when I realize—

What on earth am I doing? Why am I trying to look cute for
Cole Archer
? Why am I trying to look cute to fix
Britta’s boyfriend’s car
?

I slap the comb onto the sink and race downstairs before I can preen any further.
Don’t be an idiot,
I tell myself.
He’s not interested in you that way. He likes girls like Britta.

And more important, I remember,
I’m
not interested in
him
.

When the doorbell rings, I catch sight of my reflection in the window and quickly whip my hair into a ponytail before I open the door.

After I open up the garage so Cole can pull his car inside, I get right to work on the problem. Naturally the Metric is one of the models where you still need to get underneath to connect the routers to the mag sphere network. Cole is not even pretending to be interested in learning a thing. He’s just standing at my dad’s workbench, sucking down a glass of GuzzPop while I crawl around under his car.

“You know, you wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place if you’d bothered to learn, like, the first thing about cars,” I tell him, snapping one of the router lines into the right front axle.

He just shrugs and takes another slug of soda. “I wouldn’t exactly call watching you work a mess.”

I roll my eyes, even though he obviously can’t see it. “That line ever work where you come from?” I ask.

“You know, Elvs,” he says, then pauses to suck down some more soda, “you’re pretty cute when you’re pissy.”

I squeeze myself out from under the car and stand up to work on the mag sphere. “So that’s a no, then.”

Cole doesn’t answer, and I think maybe I’ve finally won this round of Stump the Doofus, when I feel it. Cole’s breath on my
neck. It is warm and sweet and makes me goose pimple all over. His hands are on my shoulders, a light touch but purposeful. I suck in my breath. But I don’t turn around. I don’t dare.

He kisses me.

Right behind the ear, at the base of my hairline. I know I’ll be able to feel that spot, that kiss, forever.

“Shit,” I say before he can kiss me again.

Cole pulls his hands off my shoulders. “Elvs?” he says softly.

“There’s grease on my jeans,” I say. “My best pair. I . . . I shouldn’t have worn these ones out here. I . . . I gotta go change.” And I race out of the garage, through the door to the house, not even daring to look at Cole’s face as I go, because I
know
that his expression will just confirm what I am thinking.

I am the world’s biggest chromer.

As soon as I get upstairs to my room, I shut the door and throw myself backward onto my bed, burying my face in the crooks of my elbows. God, what the hell is
wrong
with me? The hottest guy in school tries to make a move and I talk about
grease on my pants
. I might as well move into a nunnery now. I might as well give up on being a member of the human race altogether.

Running through my head are a billion and one thoughts, and they’re all banging into one another like bumper cars.
Why did he kiss me? Does he LIKE me? Do I like him? Do I hate him? What about Britta? Did he break up with Britta? Am I hotter than Britta? Is this all because I’m wearing my shirt that shows a little bit of cleave? God, guys are so predictable. Cole is such a pig. Cole is such a dreamboat. I can still feel that kiss on
my skin. I’ve got to wash my neck off. I will never wash my neck. Do I want to kiss Cole back? God, I want to kiss Cole all over. I never want to SEE him again. I hope he takes the hint and drives home already. I should get back down there so he doesn’t drive home.

There is a knock on my bedroom door.

I sniffle up the tears I didn’t know I was crying, and wipe my face clean. “I’m changing!” I call, sitting up on the bed.

“Elvs . . .” Cole says quietly, then opens up the door and pokes his head inside.

I leap up off the bed. “I
told
you I was changing!” I screech, trying to slam the door in his face.

“But you weren’t,” he says. Calmly. Always calmly. “Can I come in?”

“No.”

He enters the room.

“Elvs,” he says again, making himself comfortable on my bed. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Don’t even worry about it,” I tell him. “It wasn’t a big deal.” But I still won’t make eye contact. I’m acting like a four-year-old, but I can’t help it. I open my closet door, planning on finding a new pair of jeans, but the pile of crap I shoved in earlier tumbles out and prevents me from hiding it from Cole.

“No,” Cole says. “It was.” He clears his throat. “I just wanted you to know that that wasn’t why I came over—” He stops. “Um, Elvs? Your floor is moving,” he tells me.

“Huh?” For a long second I think that Cole has lost it, that the only reason he kissed me is that he’s having a stroke or something, but an instant later I see it too. The pile of heaping
garbage at the bottom of my closet is indeed moving, rustling and shaking.

“Henry Chang!” I holler, kicking at the pile. “You get out of there!”

And now the pile is meowing too. With one swift ninja-kitty leap, the damn cat finally bursts out and skitters across the room, his freakishly long cat claws clattering against the hardwood floor until he finally knocks headfirst into the wall. He rights himself quickly, then gives a head shake and dives under the bed, right where Cole is sitting.

Cole bursts out laughing. “I didn’t know you had a cat,” he says.

“
I
don’t,” I reply, finally managing to shove the closet closed again. A second later I realize I didn’t get a new pair of jeans out, but I give up and lean against the closet door. “It’s my neighbor’s. He’s always getting in the basement window, and for some reason he loves my room.” I can see the thing under my bed, narrow green eyes staring out at me. “It must smell like kitty nirvana up in here.”

Cole smiles, then gestures to the frozen image on the television screen. “
Rebel Without a Cause
, eh?” he asks.

I raise my eyebrows. “You’re a James Dean fan?”

Cole shrugs. “I wouldn’t say ‘fan.’ I sort of know who he is. You like this stuff, huh? I could never get into it.”

“It’s pretty good. Crazy melodramatic, but, you know, it’s . . .” I’m having trouble describing the film. How can someone like Cole Archer understand what it is to be that angsty teen? Someone no one understands? “Here.” I pull my phone out and unpause the movie. “Just watch.” I plop down
onto the bed, achingly aware of Cole’s body millimeters away from mine. We both fall silent as the TV springs to life.

On the screen James Dean’s Jim Stark is on a school field trip visiting the planetarium—an old one with little lights projected onto the ceiling, before the invention of the migraine-inducing 3-D holo tech they use now, the kind that caused me to barf generously during my seventh-grade visit. Dean is broody and gorgeous, with narrow eyes and thick eyebrows and a smashingly luscious head of blond hair. I can see why my mom was so obsessed with the guy. On the ceiling above all the students, the stars are playing out their galactic theater, smashing into one another and swirling into black holes, when James Dean looks up at it all and declares, “Once you been up there, you know you’ve been someplace.”

Cole picks up my phone and pauses the flat pic. He looks at me for a while, right in the eyes, and I’m half worried, half hopeful that he’s going to try to kiss me again. But he doesn’t.

“Hey, Elvs?” he says, thoughtful. “You think we could be friends? I mean, just forget about earlier, in the garage and . . . ?” He trails off.