My First Love (8 page)

“Spill it,” Blythe said as I climbed into her Jeep. But I wasn’t going to give up my secret so easily.

“What do you mean?” I asked innocently. “I’m not doing your homework for you just because you slept through the eclipse.”

“I’m not talking about the physics assignment, and you know it,” Blythe said, turning the key in the ignition. “I’m talking about your
extracurricular
activities.” She backed the Jeep out of our driveway and took off like a maniac. Her boldness was part of what made her a great writer—but it also made her a terror behind the wheel.

She accelerated around a corner. “Blythe, slow down!” I yelled. “I’m too busy fearing for my life to tell you anything.”

“Spoilsport,” Blythe pouted. But wanting the story, she slowed.

“The eclipse was amazing,” I told her.

“I know—I saw it.”

“You did?”

“Of course,” she said impatiently. “I watched it from Payson.”

It seemed impossible to me that we had witnessed the same moon. “What happened after?” Blythe teased me as she cut between two cars. “And don’t tell me that after you
looked at the moon together, you cuddled up for an exciting game of chess.”

“Very funny,” I said. “As a matter of fact, we went for a swim.”

“Skinny-dipping?” she asked.

“Blythe, don’t start rumors,” I said. “Of course we kept our clothes on! We went down the street and hopped Joey Favata’s pool.”

“What possessed you?” She laughed, delighted because it was the kind of thing she would do. “The water must have been freezing.”

“It was.”

“That’s real romantic,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Did he kiss you in the Favatas’ backyard?”

“Nope,” I said. Blythe looked disappointed. “We kissed on the rooftop, and then again in front of the Palms.”

Blythe smacked the car seat and whipped her head around. “So you
did
kiss him!” she said. “I knew it! I could just tell!” She sighed dramatically. “A rooftop kiss. That sounds
so
romantic.”

“Yeah,” I said, unable to wipe a big silly smile off my face.

“Wow,” Blythe said. “So … is he a good kisser?”

“Awesome,” I said.

“Awesome,” Blythe repeated. “Does this mean that you’ll go with him to the junior-senior dance?”

“I hadn’t thought about it,” I answered casually, although
the mental image of Chris and me dancing together made my pulse race. “It’s too far away.”

“Let’s look at dresses anyway,” Blythe said, swinging into the parking lot of the Ocotillo Mall. Even though it had just opened at eleven, the lot was filling up. “You never know how things will turn out.” She was going so fast around the turn I swear she left tire treads in the hot asphalt.

“I—I don’t know,” I began to protest. “I have so much homework to do. We have a physics test on Tuesday, and I haven’t done any calculus in three days, and I—”

“Amy,
come on
,” Blythe said impatiently, pulling the Jeep into a parking space and jerking to a stop. “You have spent your entire life doing your homework. It’s time to live a little.”

“But I—I just—”

Blythe cut the engine and dropped her keys in her purse. She looked in the rearview mirror, running her fingers through her long hair. “Let’s try Buttocks first,” she suggested, calling the store by the nickname that had stuck ever since some prankster with a can of spray paint had crossed the two L’s.

I tagged behind obediently, trying not to think about how many calculus problems would be waiting for me when I got home.
Live a little
, I ordered myself.

In Bullocks, we were bombarded with a blast of air-conditioning and the buy-me scent of brand-new clothes.
We breezed through shoes and then cosmetics, dodging the heavily made-up women who offered makeovers and sample spritzes of cologne. “We’re on a mission,” Blythe called out to a particularly insistent salesperson, as we boarded the escalator bound for the evening-dress department. “We don’t have time for avocado facials.”

The department was called Cotillion, after the debutante ball the daughters of Phoenix’s rich families were presented at every spring. Blythe was quite at home there—after all, she’d been invited (though she’d refused) to join the Desert Debs. I admired the way she strode through this very expensive, very formal department in her combat boots, her long floral skirt, and her tank top. She stopped and held up one dress, then another. She didn’t need to look at price tags, but I did. And every time I turned one over, I gasped.

“Three hundred dollars!” I exclaimed, holding up a demure black velvet dress.

“Kind of conservative,” Blythe said, squinting. “But it would look all right with a pair of army boots.” She took the dress from me and followed a pinch-nosed clerk into the dressing room.

It’s weird how all that taffeta and satin and velvet can confuse you.

Finally, I chose a slinky slip dress in bright red—something I wouldn’t wear in my wildest dreams. Blythe and I came sheepishly out of our cubicles and stood together in
front of a large full-length, three-panel mirror. To be honest, we looked like a pair of wannabe actresses auditioning for the wrong parts.

“Do I look like the Bride of Frankenstein?” Blythe asked me, turning carefully in the black velvet dress.

“Not exactly, girlfriend. You look more like the Bride of Rick Finnegan.”

Blythe laughed. “Yeah, right,” she said, then stared at me. “And you look like you should be riding on a fire truck with a cute fireman.”

I laughed. “It is the color of a fire engine.”

“It looks gorgeous with your hair,” Blythe added.

Blythe pulled her own hair back into a ponytail, then smoothed it and twisted it into an elegant chignon. She looked older and very sophisticated. “I think I like the Finnegan dress,” she said, “even though it isn’t quite my style.”

“I know what you mean,” I said, referring to myself.

Though I never would have picked the red dress before Friday, the longer I wore it, the more I liked the way it looked. The dress was bold and risky, the kind that would encourage a good girl to behave like a wild thing. I whirled before the mirror, remembering how it felt to have Chris’s lips on mine.

Then I snapped back to reality. “But it’s way too expensive,” I said regretfully, smoothing the silky fabric. “I don’t spend this much on clothing all year.”

“The dance isn’t for another month,” Blythe reminded me. “We could stake out that dress between now and then, watch to see when it goes on sale.”

“Maybe,” I said doubtfully, since Blythe and I had vastly different ideas of what was affordable. “In the meantime,” I told her, “I’ve got to get this off before I lose all my willpower and put it on layaway.”

Just then, the salesperson walked over to us. “How are you young ladies doing?” she asked in that fake-sweet tone salespeople always use to show you that they care.

“I’m going to have to pass on Fire Engine,” I told her. “How about you, Blythe? Are you going to go for Finnegan?”

The clerk stood there smiling stiffly, trying hard to be amused. She relaxed a bit when Blythe said, “Charge it,” and flashed her parents’ Visa card. Smiling her approval, the clerk hurried away with the credit card before Blythe could change her mind.

“So,” I said to Blythe, trying to sound casual, “I guess this means you’ll ask Rick. You look too good in that dress to waste it.”

Blythe gazed at me in the mirror, a rare flash of uncertainty in her eyes. “But Rick is … our buddy. It’s always been the three of us, friends forever. Now it’s like everything is changing. What if he doesn’t feel the same way I do, what if …” She shrugged helplessly. “I don’t want to blow our friendship, Amy. Once you’ve started something like that, you can never go back.”

I stared at myself in the sexy red dress, remembering Rick’s hurried kiss and all that had happened since: the awkwardness that had replaced my easy friendship with Rick, the thrilling and confusing feelings I had for Chris.

You couldn’t go back. That was true. You couldn’t stop the planet from spinning, day from turning into night. You couldn’t take back a kiss.

“Things are going to change. There’s no way of stopping it,” I said, more to myself than to Blythe.

“You’re, sure in a good mood,” Mom said suspiciously when I offered to wash the Honda before she left for work.

“It’s just that it’s so gorgeous outside,” I said, while his name—
Chris, Chris, Chris
—surged through my brain. After spending the last hour staring at my physics book and daydreaming about Chris, I’d thought of a great way to do something productive
and
daydream about Chris at the same time—wash the car. Besides, I wanted to be alone where I
could think about him without worrying that my smile or my mood would betray me. “I can’t stand staying inside.”

Mom squirted some detergent into a bucket and handed me a sponge. “Can you finish in half an hour? I’m going to take a shower now and get ready for El Rancho.”

“No problem,” I said, tossing the sponge aside and running to my room to change.

Outside, it was what people call Indian summer. In Phoenix it lasts almost the whole autumn, a stretch of amazing bright-skied, eighty-five-degree days. On such a day, anything seemed possible—breaking a state swimming record, getting a college scholarship, even living happily ever after with a guy like Chris.

I used the garden hose to fill the bucket with sun-warmed water and started sudsing down the car. As I slopped the sponge around on the hood, I wondered where Chris was at that moment and whether or not he was thinking of me.

Our yard was haunted with reminders of the previous night: the rooftop we’d used as a diving board, the lawn where we’d huddled under the blanket and kissed, the bent branches of the oleanders where we’d stashed his bike. Everywhere I looked, I saw Chris’s face. For a minute, I thought I must be going crazy, because as I was hosing the suds off the car, I heard his voice too—calling my name.

“Amy!”

I whirled around, expecting a phantom. But instead
there he was—riding his bike, dressed for some reason in a linen jacket and a tie. Chris Shepherd, in the flesh. I was so surprised, I nearly doused him with the garden hose.

“I was hoping you’d be here,” he said, dismounting from his bike as he coasted to a stop, his scuffed loafers slapping the puddle of water under his feet. “I don’t have your phone number. And I couldn’t find it in the book.”

“My mom goes by her maiden name,” I said. I looked down at my cutoffs and tank top and suddenly felt self-conscious. “It’s confusing. She’s a Turner. I’m a Wyse.”

He barely let me finish. “I had to see you,” he said, letting the bike fall, rattling, onto the soaking grass. He put his hand on my shoulder as though he would kiss me right there in broad daylight. I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand on end, both from pleasure and from a sense of danger.

That’s when Mom appeared in the back doorway, carrying a bag of trash and wearing her red-and-white checked El Rancho uniform. “Amy, I’m heading off—” she began, then stopped herself midword. “Oh! I didn’t know you had company,” she said, coughing and clearing her throat several times, the way she did when she disapproved.

“Hi, Mom,” I said, quickly pushing his hand from my shoulder. “Chris, this is my mother. Mom, this is Chris Shepherd.”

I was ashamed of myself for being embarrassed, but I couldn’t help seeing her grocery store uniform through
Chris’s eyes. But Chris didn’t seem to notice what she was wearing. “Ms. Turner,” he said politely, offering his hand. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

Mom shook his hand with her free one. “I’m pleased to meet you too. Excuse me while I go and dump this trash. I’ll be right back.”

I could tell that Chris was waiting for my mom to say she had heard so much about him. But she wouldn’t because I’d kept our stargazing session a secret—in fact, I still hadn’t mentioned him at all. “I’m on the Dolphins,” Chris said, trying to jog her memory when she returned. “And I’m in Amy’s physics class.”

Mom didn’t respond to this information—she was too busy sizing him up. I guessed the blazer and tie were meant to impress her. “Ms. Turner, may I study with Amy this evening?” he asked, as sweetly as a boy in a 1950s movie. “We have a big physics test on Tuesday.” That was all it took for me to be thoroughly charmed.

Charming Mom, though, was considerably harder—she crossed her arms and stood like a guard at the back door. “Would you excuse me a moment?” she asked Chris. “I need to talk to my daughter.”

“Of course,” he said as she pulled me aside.

“Who is this young man?” she asked in a whisper. “How come you’ve never mentioned him before?”

“It—it just happened,” I stammered. Wrong choice of words.

“
What
just happened?” Mom asked, her whisper rising.

“Nothing,” I said, glancing back at Chris. “I mean, I’ve known him for a while, but until now, we’ve never, you know, hung out.”

“Amy,” Mom reprimanded, “you’re not being very articulate.” She was quiet for a moment. “I guess there’s no harm in studying,” she said finally. “Your friend can stay until ten o’clock.”

I wasn’t sure whether to feel frightened or elated. Had Mom really agreed to leave me alone in the house with a boy she’d just met?

“Thanks, Mom,” I said, struggling to be casual. I was afraid I’d seem too eager if I turned around and gave the thumbs-up sign to Chris.

Then, right in front of Chris, Mom kissed my cheek. “Behave yourself, sweetie,” she whispered. “I’m counting on you.”

With those words, all the happy recklessness I’d been feeling since Saturday disappeared.

I’m counting on you
. I knew exactly what she was counting on. She was counting on my not doing what she had done. Not screwing up over a guy. Seventeen years ago Mom was in the Crossroads Baptist Church when she first saw my dad. It was the organ music making her heart swell and the high-pitched singing of the choir and the fervent nodding of the congregation that did her in, she told me. In an instant her well-laid plans were dashed. Mom and Dad were wed in
that same church three months later, when I was already on the way. “You were a love child,” Mom had always told me, “a beautiful baby.”