chews on his lip ring. “No.”
“Bullshit,” I say.
He sighs. “It’s not that I’m nervous, per se. It’s more that I’m apprehensive. What if no one calls in? What if I spend the whole night just talking to myself? What if I suck?”
I offer him a drink from my Mountain Dew. His fingers brush against mine as he takes it from me, and a shiver goes up my spine, as cliché as that may sound. It really, actually does. I pull my hand back, hoping he didn’t notice.
“You know me too well,” he says, handing the bottle back to me.
“It’s true.”
Dinner is my favorite—homemade pizza with green peppers on top.
I watch my father and Mattie bow their heads to pray. My sister’s cross necklace, the one that used to be my mother’s, reflects light from the old chandelier hanging above the table. My mother picked out the chandelier, along with most of our other furnishings, at a flea market.
I search for the comforting feeling of the picture of my mother that I stashed in my pocket this morning, but it’s not there. I reach deeper. Nothing. After checking the other pocket with no luck, I start to worry. Did I drop it somewhere?
“So how was the operation?” Mattie asks when they’re finished praying.
To my relief, my father doesn’t go into detail, as he sometimes does when discussing a particularly interesting case. He takes his oath seriously and never tells us the names of his patients, but he usually can’t resist raving about how well a surgery went or ranting about how a nurse nearly botched the whole thing.
“As well as could be expected,” he says. “I just hope the parents made the right decision.” I think about the baby recovering from the surgery. My heart clenches for her.
“How was school?” he asks.
Mattie cuts in before I can even say a word.
“I got terrible cramps during first period,” Mattie moans dramatically. “I had to go to the nurse, and she gave me an Advil and let me lie down for a little bit.”
My father looks a bit like he regrets asking. He turns to me. “How about you, Vee? Did you have a good day?”
I nod, taking a big bite of pizza. Hell if I’m going to tell them about the weird experience I had during English class today. Or about sliding into Scotch. I’m attributing both of those occurrences to caffeine withdrawal. Neither my father nor Mattie knows that, up until a few weeks ago, I was swallowing twenty to thirty caffeine pills a day, trying desperately to stay awake so I wouldn’t slide.
“I learned what motif is,” I offer.
My father bobs his head, looking almost like he’d rather hear about Mattie’s period than about the literary terms I’m studying. “Good, good.” He lifts his slice of pizza and takes a big bite.
“Hey, have either of you guys seen that old picture of Mom, the one where she’s wearing a sombrero?”
Both of them shake their heads.
After that, we eat in silence.
Long after the dishes have been rinsed and loaded into the dishwasher, I’m sprawled on my bed. My alarm clock says it’s three minutes past ten. Earlier this afternoon I found a dusty old radio in my father’s study, and now I’m twisting the dial, looking for KRNK. All I hear is static. Spinning it the other way, I finally locate the right channel—and hear a familiar voice.
Rollins.
He’s talking about the ridiculousness of prom—how dumb it is for guys to spend weeks of paychecks to fork out sixty bucks a ticket, not to mention a hundred on a tux and another twenty on a corsage. Some idiots even rent a limo for the occasion. It’s a rant I’ve heard a million times. The corners of my mouth turn up into a smile. I close my eyes and sink into the familiarity of his voice, his words.
“My colleague Anna disagrees with me on this point,” he says.
My eyes fly open. Who is Anna?
Rollins continues. “I mean, I get where she’s coming from. There’s the whole romance aspect of it. You’re supposed to make the girl feel like a princess and sh—crap. But the thing is, if you’re really into someone, you shouldn’t have to spend a ton of money to prove it. Why not just rent a couple of scary movies and make some popcorn?”
I grin. That’s what we do every Friday night—watch horror movies and eat junk food. We call it Friday Night Fright. I can’t help but wonder if there’s some deeper meaning to his words. Is he trying to tell me something, hint that he still has feelings for me? Or is this all hypothetical? Just banter for his radio show?
I grab my pillow and hold it to my chest.
“Anyway, I’m sure you’re all tired of listening to me go on and on. Instead, I’ll play a song that, to me, screams true romance.” I hear him clacking through CD cases, looking for the right one. “Here it is. ‘Everlong’ by Foo Fighters. Okay, all you naughty kids, staying up late on a school night. This is what a rock song should sound like.”
As the opening chords rattle the old radio, I close my eyes. Is this song meant for me? This song about waiting and wishing and wanting someone for so long? Could Rollins still feel the same way about me that he did that night in October? Or has he met someone else, someone who is ready to love him back?
The music rolls over me, and a silly image pops into my head. Rollins, in a vintage tux, and me in a glittery black dress. We sway together to the music, moving too slowly for the fast song.
This dream is not like the others.
Instead of the passenger, I’m the driver. The steering wheel is hard and unwieldy beneath my grasp, and there’s the distinct scent of vanilla in the air—the smell of the air freshener my sister put in my father’s car when he started taking her for practice drives.
I’m not on the interstate like I usually am in my dreams. I’m on some strange country road I don’t recognize. The gravel crunches beneath the tires. Cornfields race by, a blur of shadows in the night. For some reason, the car is going faster and faster. It takes me a minute to realize my foot is pressing hard on the accelerator.
The moonlight shining down, the detail on the wooden fence that pops up on the left, the sweet smell in the air—everything is too real. I try an experiment and yank the wheel to the right.
The car veers, and I feel my stomach lurch as inertia claims me. The car rolls into the ditch, but it doesn’t stop there. I see a telephone pole in my peripheral vision, and when it slams into the side of the car, pain shoots through my arm and chest where the seat belt tightens. My head slams against the window, and everything goes black.
When I wake up, I search for the comfort of my room, my telescope, the old rocking chair that used to belong to my mother. Instead, all I see is the vanilla air freshener, dangling inches away from my face, spattered with blood.
I sit up,
