Something Right Behind Her (12 page)

That was when I
lost it. I found myself getting really emotional, and not using any of Randy’s
strategies for stopping myself, since loathing Gayle with every bone in my body
felt exactly like what I should be doing. I was actually
thankful
for the hot feeling
of hatred that ran through me.

“Why don’t you
just get the fuck out?” I spoke in the same fake nice voice Gayle had used when
she asked Eve who had done her hair.

“What the hell?”
Gayle started to speak but I cut her off. I just repeated my question.

“I said why
don’t you just get the fuck out? Why did you even come here? Last year, you
didn’t even invite Eve to your fucking birthday when practically every other
girl in the grade was going and now you’re acting all...like you’re close to
her!”

Eve was getting
agitated. She let out a slight moan. Why wouldn’t she? I was on the warpath. I
wasn’t even really making any sense. Then I raised my voice and said again “Why
don’t you get the fuck out of here!”

“You’re a
fucking freak,” Gayle said. Then she kind of coolly said goodbye to Eve and
Carol had no choice but to follow along all flustered with her little
cheerleading skirt bouncing along behind her.

I was crying,
not noisily, but I had tears running down my face. I’d blown it. Now Eve knew
without a doubt I was losing it; I couldn’t handle what was happening. I was
just starting to apologize to Eve when the door opened. I thought for sure it
would be Eve’s mother, ready to escort me out of there, quietly furious that I
had caused any anxiety for Eve. But it was Doug. He had just gotten home and
found Gayle and Carol walking out all upset. “What’s going on?” he asked. He
seemed genuinely alarmed, his eyes round, his usually smug mouth pulled tight
in a grimace.

Eve knit her
brows in a surprisingly familiar expression. “Andy was defending me from my
arch enemy, Gayle Sayers. She thinks since I can’t move that she can fondle my
hair.” She gave a little chuckle. “Really she just wants to tell people she’s
seen me and I’m hooked up to all these machines and it’s so sad, and I feel
really upset now. Blah, blah. Those are the girls who like to have a good
little cry for me so their boyfriends will pay attention to them instead of
just talking about the game all night.” I was shocked by Eve’s composure, by the
sarcasm about her own situation.

“I’m sorry,
though. I shouldn’t have said anything.” I was relieved Eve understood where I
was coming from, why I’d lost it on Gayle, but I could still feel my face
getting hot. I hadn’t seen Doug since our fateful night, and now he had to see
me like this. I was already sorry I’d spoiled the evening by losing it, and,
worse even, now Doug knew I was a basket case.

“Jesus, you
two.” Doug leaned against the door frame, shaking his head. His tan was faded,
but he looked good, like he’d gotten back into shape. I was aware how
ridiculous we probably seemed to him, how hopelessly high school I must have
looked in his eyes. There we were with our hair and makeup on as if we were on
our way to a party, surrounded by all of Eve’s medical machinery. Eve looked
tired out by the whole ordeal, and I knew I should leave. I could feel the
backs of my knees tingling, and a weird feeling, like a belt tightening around
my gut.

I thought I saw
Doug give me a slight nod as he turned to go back downstairs, a sign, perhaps
to follow him. I flattered myself that maybe there was something he wanted to
tell me, some crucial information about Eve, perhaps, or maybe something more
personal?

I didn’t want it
to look to Eve like I was chasing after Doug, so I hung in there after he went
downstairs and read to her for about fifteen more minutes, and by then she
seemed to have had enough anyway. She started making little moans of
discomfort, and asked me to get the nurse. It was no big deal, she said, and I knew
that she probably just needed to use the bathroom. I got Ms. Kenney for her,
and then gave her a quick kiss goodbye. I tried to make my footsteps especially
loud on the stairs, so Doug could beat a retreat if he didn’t want to see me
alone.

CHAPTER NINE

“Are you headed
home?” Doug startled me as I walked through the kitchen on my way to the back
porch. “Let me get a ride with you downtown. I have to pick my car up at the
shop.” He had come home from Princeton that afternoon and was getting his car looked
at before he went back on Sunday. “Can’t trust any of those mechanics down
there,” he explained. “And Stevey always gives me a good deal.” I wondered for
a second if this was George’s famous half-brother. At any rate, I knew the
place he was talking about, since it had a dingy looking sign that said
Stevey’s in red paint that looked like it had been done by hand.

Standing so
close to Doug, my heart skipped a beat. I said “Sure,” not trusting my voice,
which felt sticky and thick in my throat. I wondered if Doug really needed the
ride, or if he was trying to get me alone with him. The drive down to Stevey’s
was no big deal, so I didn’t mind either way. I didn’t want to get myself
confused thinking that something was happening between us, if he was just asking
for a ride for the sake of convenience. There was also the matter of my promise
to Eve.

We went outside
and got in my car, and I started pulling away from the curb. I could smell
Doug’s shampoo, a sort of minty fragrance. He was wearing a navy blue down
jacket, which made him look younger, more approachable. “You and Eve seemed
pretty upset in there,” he said. I didn’t think Eve had it in her.”

“What do you
mean?” I asked.

“You know, to be
so pissed at that girl as if shit like that still mattered. It was kind of nice
to see her riled up like that - with some of her old spunk.”

“Well, I guess I
sort of started it,” I said. “That fucking Gayle bugs the hell out of me. She
was always such a bitch to Eve and then she just waltzes in there, eating her
candy, goddamn little hypocrite.”

‘Well, you,
Andy, are a girl with some serious spunk.” Doug patted me on the head and
looked at me sideways. “I’ve always liked that about you.”

I didn’t know
how to take that. It seemed like Doug was flirting with me again, but in some
sort of impersonal I-always-liked-you-kid way. Then I felt his hand linger on
my head. He went from patting me to stroking me. I straightened involuntarily
under his touch. I was trying to keep my eyes on the road. I was still headed
toward Stevey’s garage, which was just slightly out of town.

I didn’t turn to
look at him when I stopped at the traffic light before town. We would be at the
garage in a few minutes, once the light changed. I was torn between the need to
focus on the road and wanting to turn around and look at him - to ask him what
it was he wanted from me. I felt his hand slip down the back of my head as the
light changed.

I took the right
into Stevey’s garage and put the car in park. Doug’s car was parked just in
front of the garage door under the sign that said Stevey’s Bodyshop. The place
was dark. “He said he’d leave the keys on the dash.” Doug said. I turned around
sure he had his hand on the doorlatch ready to get out, but he was looking over
at me in the semidark. His blue eyes looked puffy around the edges.

“Andy,” he said,
and he kissed me. His mouth wasn’t soft, like I expected. The look in his eyes
had been sad, but now he kissed me hard. He held my hair in his left hand and
began to slide his right hand over my body. “I need to feel you,” he said, and
he slid his hands over my thighs.

I wasn’t sure
what I was going to do. I had wanted him to kiss me so badly when I was
driving, but now he was moving much too quickly.

He must have
felt my hesitation, because he suddenly moved both hands across my back and
pulled me close to him and hugged me. We were still kissing and I had to lean
around the steering wheel to let him press his lips to my neck. Then he
whispered, “You’re such a great girl, Andy.” I kissed him harder to show him
that I heard him, that I returned the sentiment, though I wasn’t sure I did.
Did I really think he was a great guy?

More like a
human magnet. Then he muttered “I can’t do this to you. I can’t do this.”

We sat up in a
kind of shocked silence. Douglas was splotchy-looking and his hair was rumpled.
I had to resist the impulse to smooth his hair down, and brush it away from his
eyes. He had declared, though, that he lacked the heart to execute a
devious-seeming plan; there was something he could not go through with. Did he
mean the sex? Because we had done that before, and if that incident had caused
my now general state of confusion, I was pretty sure Douglas didn’t know it.
Maybe he meant that he’d been using me, that this was all about convenient,
here-for-the-taking sex, like he’d had with Sharon. Maybe he even liked Sharon
more and I was the girl on the side. Maybe there were even more girls. Now that
I thought about it, with him down there at Princeton, there almost had to be
more girls.

“Sorry, Andy. I can’t
do this fucking teenage parking lot thing with you. I’ll feel like such a dog
going back into that house.”

He was the one
who was backing off when I had the promise to keep. He was her brother, after
all, he should have been the one to avoid this mess before it started, I told
myself. But what did that say about me, that I’d been willing to repeat the
offense, to break my promise?

“I guess we
should have avoided each other after our first train wreck,” I said. Clearly,
this was true on my side. I didn’t seem to have the inner strength to resist
him once in close proximity. In my dreams, my mind went to him; in reality it
was my body that moved toward Doug before my mind could do a thing. My only
true hope for getting over him was distance. Lots of it.

He shrugged, and
then stroked me on the cheek. “We’re only human,” he said, as if this explained
everything. I nodded. I wanted to tell him then about the dream of us on the
beach, although he’d think I was nuts. I thought I understood it now, because of
what he’d said. We were all only human, Eve included, and humans, every last
one of us, are mortal. In the dream, we’d been running from that very fact.

We kissed one
last time, but quickly, and he got out of the car. He walked with both hands in
his pockets and he looked a little thickset from behind. His hair was still
sort of rumpled. I didn’t look to see if he waved goodbye as he got into his
car. I just put my car in gear and hit the gas. At first I forgot to put my
lights on, and then an oncoming car flashed me, and I got a clue.

I hadn’t exactly
kept my promise to Eve, but I hadn’t really needed to. Turned out, Douglas
saved the day, which made me an even lower life-form than the preppy asshole.

CHAPTER TEN

We had
Thanksgiving at our house and it was a good break, with Grandpa and Grandma
there, and my Aunt Sarah and Uncle Jim, and everyone being really nice and
concerned about me because of Eve. Grandma made about four kinds of pie, and
Aunt Sarah made some surprisingly good sugar-free cheesecake. I ate like a pig,
but then I ran five miles each day of break, so that was all ok. I felt I even
got some distance on the whole Doug-Me-Eve thing. I felt bad going a while,
again, without getting to see Eve, but at the same time it helped me get my groove
back to just be doing my thing with my family. I knew I had to find a way to
keep this sense of balance at school, though. I had to return Monday and face
the music. Then I had a moment of inspiration.

Spanish was my
first period class Monday after break. Eve and I had been in the same Spanish
class, sitting right near each other for over three years. It had really
freaked me out, at first, being in that classroom without Eve sitting directly
in front of me. Of course she’d pass me notes whenever she was handing a bunch
of papers back to me to pass along the row. Of course, I could tell what kind
of mood she was in just by looking at the back of her head. If she kept her
eyes down, looking at her paper all class something was definitely weighing on
her, some crap with Jacob, or, later, something some doctor had said.

But since
September that chair, the one Eve had sat in all the year before, sat empty. It
was one of those little things that made me feel crappy every day. I decided to
take charge of that situation. When I got back from break, I moved one seat
closer to the front of the room. I sat in Eve’s old chair.

Tommy, who was
sitting next to me didn’t seem to notice anything. Neither did anyone else,
including Dr. Galas. When Sharon got there, she sat right behind me, in the
usual configuration, and she raised her slanted, mean-girl eyebrows at me and
opened her notebook. It was as if she were down with the plan from the
beginning. Class was absolutely normal, except for the slightly odd fact that
Dr. Galas didn’t call on me once all period and when I gathered up my things, I
could swear she’d winked at me. The only thing strange about the new
arrangement was now, with Sharon moved up one seat behind me, there was still
an empty desk at the back of our row, which sort of unnerved me. It was as if
Eve’s absence, which had been familiarly located right in front of me, had
shifted to this space behind me. It spooked me, as if I should be keeping an
eye on that empty desk in the back row.