Perfectly Dateless (16 page)

We all stare at each other. Chase runs with the hose to the end of the grass, but he gets nowhere near the fire when the hose runs out of mileage. “Call 9-1-1!” he shouts.

Naturally, no one has their phone on them, so Greg runs toward the fire and yells for us to run into the house. My legs are sweating as I hightail it to the massive front doors decorated with black wrought iron over the windows. I burst through the double French doors and find a couple staring at me, a king-sized bed behind them. Apparently I’ve stepped into the master bedroom rather than the front door. I’m too panicked to bother explaining a thing.

“Call 9-1-1, the field’s on fire!” Meanwhile I’m thinking,
Who has double doors and a master bedroom at the front
of their house?

Mrs. Connolly, an elegant redhead in capris and a collared shirt, drops a bottle of perfume and grabs the phone. “I told you to watch him!” she shouts at her husband. “I am going to kill that kid! If you weren’t so self-absorbed in your baseball games, you might have noticed your son is a pyromaniac!”

“So now he’s my son, is he? I didn’t raise him alone, you know! Maybe if you’d treated Greg as one of your charity events, he might have gotten enough attention!” Mr. Connolly rushes outside through the open doors to assess the situation, comes back in, disappears deeper into the house, and returns with a red fire extinguisher, all within seconds. It’s as if I’m standing still while time is in fast-forward.

Mrs. Connolly is on the phone with the operator when she looks out the window and tells her, “I think my son and husband may have stopped it from spreading, but hurry. Hurry!” She slams down the phone and starts speaking with her hands. “Harvard wants this kid. He has set this house on fire twice, taken apart absolutely everything electronic we own, and Harvard wants him. At this point, I’m glad someone does!” She finally notices my presence. “Who are you?”

“I’m Daisy.”

“Daisy Crispin?”

I nod.

“Well, little Daisy Crispin, I haven’t seen you since Greg’s fifth grade swim party. Didn’t you grow up to be a beauty? Forgive my outburst. I don’t know what came over me.”

“Well, your lawn’s on fire. It’s understandable.”

“How did this happen?” she asks rhetorically.

I don’t know. Why do you let your son play with explosives
in the front yard? Do you have an explanation for that?

“I . . . Claire—” This is where Claire usually comes in with one of her excuses. On my own, I’m stupefied. Two white fire engines appear at the curb, and I use the chaos to make my escape out of the house.

Greg’s father has turned the automatic sprinklers on, so there’s no chance of the fire jumping the line to the house, but the flames have petered out down the hill anyway and much of the excitement is over. Only the strong smell of smoke and a few sparks remain. Greg stands near his father and films the billows of smoke on his video camera.

“I guess you’re not going to work today,” I say to Claire. Her car is blocked by the fire trucks.

“When I get scared, Greg comes and stays, but it’s not what you’re thinking. His room is at the other end of the house. His parents never know he leaves.” She looks over at the horizon, watching the firemen.

I follow her. “That was not a sufficient answer.”

“No, Mrs. Crispin, it wasn’t meant to be.” She stalks off toward Greg.

“Sorry about the show,” Chase says as he walks over. “Maybe you were right about
America’s Funniest Videos
. We should have taped it. I threw the recorder down when the field caught.” If Chase were a dog, his tail would be between his legs. “I knew I shouldn’t have let Greg shoot it. He’s such a hot dog.”

“Hey,” Greg yells. “I was smart enough to pick up the camera, wasn’t I? Without it, we wouldn’t have a project. We’ll be heroes now!”

“Heroes? For setting your chemistry project on fire?”

“Shut up, I’ll have to edit you out!” Greg says and stalks closer to the fire and out of earshot.

“Chase?”

“Yeah, Daisy?”

“Greg wouldn’t do anything stupid, would he?” Which feels like the most inane question, considering the idiocy I’m watching unfold. “I mean, he wouldn’t take advantage of someone in trouble? Like a girl?”

“Greg? Nah, he wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

I stare at Greg while his father reads him the riot act at the edge of the grass, but what I notice is that Greg’s hand is currently intimately acquainted with Claire’s backside
. I
should have told my parents! What if Claire’s in trouble and
my own silence caused it?

I shake my head.

“What?” Chase asks.

“I have to call Claire’s mom.”

“What? Why? Everyone is counting on your party. It’s been the talk of the school. If Claire’s mom comes home . . .” He lets his voice trail off.

My mind goes in a million directions. If Claire’s mom comes home and we cancel this party, we are dirt at St. James and I am dirt with Claire, but she’s always been the strong one. The girl able to resist peer pressure and dress the way she wanted, act the way she wanted. She treated guys like lost puppies lucky to be in her shadow. Seeing Greg’s hand on her backside, ever so briefly . . . It’s like something changed.

“She’s not the same person.” I shake my head. “There’s not going to be a party. Claire needs her parents right now, even if she doesn’t think so.”

Chase steps toward me and wrinkles his nose. It’s my favorite expression of his. He looks so manly and yet so adorable at the same time. “Daisy, the whole school is counting on this. You can wait until Christmas break to call her parents. Claire’s already been alone for so long. What’s going to change now?”

“What if one day does make a difference? You want me to wait over a month?”

“Just until the party’s over. A couple weeks, that’s all.”

I nod toward Greg. “Has he grown up to be a decent guy?”

“Who, Greg? Heck yeah. Daisy, what are you so worried about? We’re not children anymore. What do you think is going to happen? It’s a party. They happen every week.”

“Not for us,” I say, humiliated by my own admission.“I don’t know. Maybe living in the present wasn’t such a good idea after all. Maybe we were better off invisible.”

Chase stares at me with that look I’ve always garnered from kids like him. The one that makes me feel like I need a straitjacket.

A policeman approaches with what’s left of the three-stage rocket in his bulging hands. The rocket had a parachute attached, which is now nothing more than a web of ashes dangling on some severed strings. “This belong to you?”

Chase reaches out, but the officer drops the rocket to his side on the grass.

“Not so fast. We have some questions for you and your friends.”

“There are no explosives, Officer. It’s a project for Physics. Everything is slow burn, stable, just a sugar mixture, and we got carried away with the stages. We didn’t think it would fly that far, but it’s perfectly street legal.”

“Not when it’s aimed at dry grass in a residential neighborhood.”

“It wasn’t aimed!” I shout. “I just lost control of it. It got away from me.” I try to remember my physics, but I’m so nervous. My hands are shaking. All I know is if Chase Doogle gets taken in, his days at the Air Force Academy are over, and by comparison, I have nothing to lose.

“Let me see your hands.” I hold them out. Chase does too. The officer walks away to question Claire and Greg.

Chase takes my outstretched hands, which are shaking. He’s not shy today. Maybe my lack of makeup, a hairbrush, and real pants helped that scenario.

“Just go home, Daisy. I’ll be fine. What we did is perfectly legal.” He steps toward me, and his eyes stare right through me. I could melt under them. I hear my heart beating as he gets closer, and I close my eyes to remember this moment and all its perfection. It’s like making that curlicue of chocolate perfection right on top of a truffle.

“There’s nothing sexier than a girl willing to fight for me. Little Daisy Crispin, my first love. My Daisy Crispin.” His smile develops slowly, and then his finger’s at my nose. “But let’s get one thing straight. I fight for my girl. She doesn’t fight for me.”

He pecks my cheek with a chaste kiss. My first grown-up kiss, even if it was like something my grandfather would grace me with. Somehow I always knew I’d hear sirens and see fireworks. I just didn’t know they’d be real.

“So when you say ‘my Daisy Crispin’—”

“Daisy Crispin!” I hear my father’s voice and stiffen.

“Did you say something?” I ask Chase, but his eyes are wide, and he shakes his head to tell me to shut up. Slowly I turn around.

My father, dressed like a pirate sporting his sagging, stuffed parrot, marches toward me. The Pontiac is blocking the cop car. A journalist snaps his picture as he approaches, and I try to think fast. Why am I standing on a boy’s front lawn in my scruffies, being questioned by the police and eerily close to Chase Doogle? Of course, my father has to show up dressed like he works at Long John Silver’s, and I half expect him to break into song. This is my life! Girls like me do not get to go to prom. Girls like me end up as statistics in the back of the yearbook:
Additional photography by Daisy Crispin.

“You want to introduce us, Daisy?”

Not really. Could you take the parrot off first?
“Dad,” I say through clenched teeth. “What are you doing here?” He knows good and well who Chase is, and this sudden amnesia is meant to humiliate me into quiet submission.

“I wanted to know what you and Claire were up to. Your mother has been trying to call Claire’s mother and hasn’t been able to reach her. It appears she’s changed her cell number. I thought I’d make a trip to Claire’s house to ask her parents about their beliefs on courtship, make sure they were honoring our wishes for our daughter.”

My heart is pounding. Had he gone to Claire’s house, he would have found out her parents are not in town. Nor have they been. Nor will they be. And as bad as it is that I’m standing on a guy’s front lawn practically in his arms, I think the alternative might be worse.

“Dad, you remember Chase Doogle from kindergarten? Chase, this is my dad.” I smile maniacally. “Dad, Chase is going to the Air Force Academy. He wants to fly, and this was part of his Physics project. Claire and I were passing by on our way to her house—”

My dad rips the parrot off his shoulder. “Be quiet for a minute, Daisy.”

“Dad, Chase was testing a theory on jet propulsion and—”

“Get in the car.”

“Dad.” I try to get his attention off Chase, but he won’t even look at me. It’s like I’m a rodeo clown and my dad is the bull who has eyes only for the guy he bucked.

“I’m sure you’re a very nice kid, but stay away from my daughter. She’s got a future in front of her, and she’s not going to screw it up over a guy, got it? We are a family that believes in courtships, and since Daisy has no intention of marrying in the near future, we see no reason for her to be in fellowship with boys her age.”

“Yes, sir.”

I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die. Right here and now, on Greg
Connolly’s front lawn. Just dig me a hole, throw me in, and
place a cross over me. I’m done.

“Daisy, get in the car.”

I do so because if he sees the ice chests or finds out what Claire and I were up to this time, Chase Doogle’s presence is going to be the least of my problems. I feel four inches tall, and I can’t even look at Chase until I’m safely behind the car’s window. I don’t want to know what he thinks. It’s as if my heart is being ripped from my chest. My dream was so close. I held it in my hand, and just like that rocket, it soared to new heights only to come crashing back to earth in a blaze of glory.

The police are still taking Greg’s statement, and I watch as Chase walks toward the officer, then turns back toward me.

“Chase,” I say to the window. He doesn’t take his eyes off me as my dad starts the car and pulls away from the curb. Chase gets smaller and smaller until we turn a curve and he disappears altogether.

I hear myself let out a sob. “How could you, Daddy?” When I get home, I’m going to look up the cheapest, furthest college from Silicon Valley, and if I have my way, I am never, ever coming back. “I can enlist!” I shout. “I’m used to rules and fighting for everything. I can enlist.”

“What did you say?” my father asks. “No, forget it. Don’t say anything to me. Right now I am so mad at you. Your mother needed help this morning, and where are you? Off on some guy’s lawn. You and Claire just take off like you answer to no one, and that is not how I run my household.”

“I can enlist in the armed forces. Oh my gosh, I bet it will even feel like freedom after my childhood!”

“You are not enrolling in the armed forces. Daisy, you can’t even make it through a war movie.”

“I can too.”

He looks at me. “Which one?” He starts to whistle. He whistles when the tension rises, to block any opposition or actual conversation. A nasty habit he has in the car, as if we aren’t obvious enough in our old clunker. Please, open your window and whistle so the world doesn’t miss us on parade.

“
The Sound of Music
,” I say, crossing my arms. “There were Nazis in it and everything!”

“I’ll tell you what, you make it through
Band of Brothers
or
Apocalypse Now
, and I’ll drive you to the recruiting station. What happened to UCLA? Venezuela?”

“Argentina,” I correct him. “It’s not my fault. You won’t let me see an R-rated movie, or I would have watched more.”

“So it’s my fault you’re not cut out for the military.”

“I guess it is. I’m glad you’re big enough to admit it.”

“I’ll make a deal with you.”

My dad’s deals are slightly fairer than the Taliban’s. “I’m listening.”

“You quit your job, go to Bible college where I know you’ll be safe, and you can be trusted to have more of a social life. Then, when you’re old enough, you can finish at whatever school you’d like.”

“Quit my job! I can’t quit my job.” It’s my only sanity. “I know I’ve had a lot of long hours, but that’s over after one more week. I want a car when I’m at college, and no offense, but I’m not taking this one. If I don’t have a car, I won’t be able to get around.”