Temptation: A Novel (13 page)

36. Don’t You Forget about Me

Mr. Charleton thanks us all for doing the assignment. He doesn’t take our papers. Instead, he tells us to keep them and to continue updating them.

“I gotta tell you,” he says with a surprised look on his face. “This—was amazing. It gives me hope that youth is not necessarily wasted on the young.”

He lets us go half an hour early, and we all tell him good-bye as we leave. Before I take off, I ask him if I can give Lily her sheet back. He nods.

“Tell her I said thanks for being open and sharing. That took a lot of guts.”

“Sure,” I say taking the paper Lily wrote out. “Yeah, she seems to have a lot of those.”

When I walk out of the room, I remember that this is the final day of our summer class. At least for this particular group of people.

I suddenly have this awful thought.

Lily is gone, and I never even had a chance to tell her good-bye.

I won’t see her the rest of the summer and she’ll have her own life and she’ll go and forget about me.

I hear the song that Mr. Charleton was playing as we left the room, the main song from
The Breakfast Club
.

This is what’s going to happen. Lily is going to forget me, and then we’ll start school in the fall and she’ll be dating some football stud and will forget about me and my stupid, silly notions of living out a life in the eighties with my uncle’s records and my mother’s nightmares and—

“You lost?”

Lily is standing there by the doors of the school.

“Hey.”

“You look sad,” she says as she walks up to me.

“I thought you’d be gone.”

“Who’s gonna take me home?”

“I think you could get anybody you want to take you home,” I say.

“I want
you
to take me home.”

I nod and smile.

“But only for a short while, okay?” Lily adds, taking my hand. “’Cause it’s Friday, and I know what I want to do.”

“What?”

“I want to go back in time with you, Mr. Wrong-Decade-Boy.”

“You have a time travel machine?”

She stops and forces me to look at her up close. “I could take you to places that would blow your little mind, Mr. Buckley.”

I want to melt.

I mean, really, truly, that’s what I feel like doing, standing there like Play-Doh in front of her.

“Okay,” I say so weakly.

She just laughs, then puts a hand gently to my cheek. “You’re adorable, you know that?”

“Are you all right?” I ask.

“Yes. I am now. Come on.”

We walk down the steps of the high school and get on my bike, and I know that Lily isn’t going away anytime soon.

37. How Old I Am

Before the concert begins, the one that Lily was somehow able to get us into even though we’re both under eighteen and neither has a parent anywhere around, I look at her standing in the middle of the floor and come right out with it.

“Is this all some big act or something?”

We’re at the Orange Peel in Asheville, and the average age of the people surrounding us has got to be fifty. It makes me wonder when exactly these Psychedelic Furs were popular anyway.

Lily, with her normally curly hair straightened out, definitely looks older than her age tonight, in tight, dark jeans and a pink and somewhat sheer tank top and a big pink necklace coming down almost to her belt.

I feel like a total moron next to this girl.

She’s the adult I’m with. The babysitter. And that’s what’s led to this question. All of a sudden out of the blue.

“Is what an act?” Lily asks.

It’s not air-conditioned, and I’m already sweating even though a huge fan swirls around above us. Lily doesn’t seem to sweat. Of course she doesn’t. Girls that pretty never sweat.

“This—being here—you hanging out with me.”

“You have a problem with it?”

“No, it’s just … I don’t know.”

“
What
don’t you know?”

I’ve been around her long enough to know that she doesn’t like me taking a long time to get out something I’m thinking.

“Did someone put you up to this?”

“To
what
?” She still doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

“Going out with me. Hanging out.”

“Why would someone ‘put me up’ to it? Like a dare?”

I’m suddenly thinking of Jared.

I don’t know who put him up to that, but in the end I realized I’d been had.

“I don’t know.”

“I think you know what you’re saying,” Lily says.

“It’s just—”

Then the band begins to play.

For a moment, I see Lily staring at me with cold, distant eyes. But just for a moment.

Soon we’re lost in the crowd while this band from yesteryear plays songs I don’t know. Until, of course, “Pretty in Pink” comes on and everybody recognizes it, including Lily and me.

Suddenly I get why she’s wearing that shirt and oversized necklace.

She dances next to me during the song and takes my hand and forces me to do the same. It’s strange because I don’t feel as stupid making a fool of myself around all these old people. Some of them are dancing too.

Some of them
shouldn’t
be dancing.

Near the end of the song Lily comes up beside me and whispers something in my ear. Actually, she’s probably half screaming in order for me to hear.

“I think you’re endearing, Chris. And if you don’t already know that by now, there—I’ve said it. Believe it. I’m not lying.”

She moves away and I see that beautiful face and those lips and I know she’s going to kiss mine so I close my eyes …

But only for a second.

Because when I open them she’s already in front of me again dancing.

I glance around to see if anybody saw that utter display of stupidity.

An overweight slightly balding man holding half a cup of beer looks at me and nods. He’s not mocking me.

Nope. He’s giving me a glance that seems to say,
I used to be young and in love back when I had more hair and less of a gut.

I smile and suddenly forget how old I am.

Lily has that effect on me.

38. Dreams

Lily’s watching me drink the coffee drink that she ordered for both of us.

“You don’t like it?” she asks.

“No, it’s fine.”

“Do you even like coffee?”

It’s actually worse than coffee because it’s cold and sugary and gross.

“I can stand coffee.”

“But that?”

I move the drink back to her. “You can have the rest.”

She shakes her head. We’re on the second level of a double-decker bus that kinda reminds me of Harry Potter. It’s in the middle of the city. It’s a coffee shop, except the shop is a bus. Kinda cool, gotta admit. That’s why it’s crowded. We’re sitting next to each other in the cozy space, and I’m willing to down the whole cold coffee thing in order to stay here.

“Why don’t you ever speak your mind?” Lily asks me.

I shrug. “I’m not sure.”

“Is it because you’re nervous?”

I swallow and nod.

“Why?”

I scratch my cheek, look down.

“Chris—” She gently puts a finger on my chin to raise my head. “Look at me. Talk to me.”

“Okay.”

“Why are you nervous?” she asks.

“Because of you.”

“But I already told you—I want to be here.”

“I know.”

“Why are you nervous then?”

“I don’t know.”

Those green eyes don’t let me move. “Do you always get like this around girls?”

“No. Unless—”

“Unless they’re what?”

“Unless they’re gorgeous.”

She lets out a laugh, causing people around us to glance our way.

“Oh, Chris. You are something.”

“See—I say what I’m thinking, and I get mockery.”

She shakes her head. “I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at—I don’t know—just how earnest you are.”

“I’m serious about what I said,” I tell her.

“I’m sure you are.”

She takes a sip and looks down at the drink. Then she glances back at me.

“You know—I always dreamt of being some gorgeous movie star when I was younger. I wanted to move to Hollywood. Become glamorous. Go to the Academy Awards. Have magazine spreads written about me. All of that.”

“Who says you can’t?”

She looks at me but suddenly seems far away.

I decide to do what she’s asking and keep talking. “Just because you moved to this place—to Solitary—doesn’t mean you can’t get out.
I’m
getting out.”

“Good for you.”

“I’m serious. We’re both seniors—almost seniors—so what—what’s another year?”

“Yeah.”

But something about that “yeah” doesn’t seem so convincing.

“Maybe you can at least go back to Atlanta.”

I see something in Lily’s body seem to stiffen when I say that. Her expression turns dark and serious. “I’m never going back there. There’s nothing left for me there.”

I nod, then shake my head. “Can I tell you what I’m thinking now?” I ask.

“Sure.”

“I’m thinking that whoever broke your heart back in Georgia really did a good job of it.”

She curses and shakes her head. “He didn’t break my heart.”

“Then what is it?”

For a moment she seems about to respond. For a moment.

“Come on—let’s get out of here,” she says. “I’m feeling cramped and uncomfortable.”

Sad, ’cause I was just beginning to feel totally opposite.

Maybe it’s those lights that seem to hover and glow and spin around me.

Or maybe it’s the coffee thing that Lily ordered hovering and spinning around in my stomach.

Maybe it’s the fact that I’m following this girl around like a puppy and I don’t care.

She smiles at me and acts like she knows some big secret. But something tells me it’s just her, that a girl like her will always have secrets.

I don’t care.

She takes my hand. “It’s okay, you know.”

She can be answering a hundred questions and I know that yes, it is okay. It’s okay and it’s fine and it’s almost midnight and I’m out late even if it’s a summer Friday night.

“Come on,” she says, and she doesn’t have to ask anymore.

At the center of the city is a fountain that we walk around a few times. I don’t know how many for sure, because I’m following her and not paying attention to anything else.

“You don’t have a curfew, do you?”

“I’d break it if I had one,” I say.

Lily smiles.

And I wonder. What am I doing here? The middle of summer and there was a war going on and then suddenly she showed up and all the battles stopped.

I stopped.

“What are you thinking?” she asks me.

“I’m trying not to,” I say.

“Good boy.”

She talks to me like some little boy and all I can say is I like it. I like her and the way everything about her makes me feel.

She takes my hand and leads me down the sidewalk toward the somewhere I know I want to be.

I’m walking with her down a city street, dreaming of tomorrow and the next month and the next year.

But when Lily takes my hand, I’m suddenly dreaming of our future.

I know that this is all too fast and sudden and crazy, but don’t blame me. Blame the humid night and the still air and the passing strangers. Blame Lily and every round and wonderful thing about her. Blame her take-control attitude. Blame my let-go attitude.

The minutes evaporate, and soon I find myself back in Solitary, thinking foolish thoughts.

I don’t want this night—or early morning—to end.

Somehow she’s made this tiny town in the middle of nowhere suddenly come alive. I park the bike near the main strip, and we walk the rest of the way to her bed-and-breakfast. She holds my hand, and I’m not going to let go until she does.

We’re walking under an ancient oak tree and I’m laughing at something she says and then all of the sudden I hear her scream.

She’s screaming because I can’t scream. Because some dark, hideous figure has jumped out of the shadows on me. I’m sprawled out on the sidewalk while someone is kneeling into me.

I hear curse words.

Then I see him. A face I recognize.

Wade.

Jocelyn’s Wade. The guy living with Jocelyn’s aunt, the sleazy redneck guy I threatened and shot in a moment of outrageous courage.

A gaunt and grizzled face looks over me and spits. He laughs, breathing heavily like he just ran ten miles, then jams something stiff and blunt in my stomach.

“If you’re gonna shoot someone, you better kill him, because if you don’t, this is what happens.”

And before I can think of where he came from or what he’s doing here or what’s going to happen to Lily or my mom or anybody else in this town—