Mark Winthrop to love you forever and ever, amen.
Nan dumps the sheets and towels on the Sox beanbag chair and looks around, pulling off her windbreaker and wrinkling her nose. “Since when are you the big sports fan? What’s with the weights? Where’d you get all this stuff, anyway?”
“I robbed Dick’s. What do you care? What’s with all that?”
“Mom wanted me to bring it and to –” She stops dead.
“Spy on me, right? Make sure I wasn’t up to no good?”
“Are you?” Her voice is sharp. “Are you in trouble again or something?”
“Wha-at? No. Not more than usual. Why?”
“Some woman, or girl, or whatever – keeps calling, asking for you. Do you owe anyone money? I – know what Dad said to you. If you need money, I have –”
“Nan, kid, I’m fine. I don’t owe anyone anything but a shitload of apologies. Don’t stress. It’ll affect your grade point average.”
Her cheeks flame at that last and she says, “I . . . I’ve been doing my college applications. Starting them. So maybe I can be early-decision, I won’t have to freak out all year. And –”
“Nano –”
“It comes easy to you, Tim, but it’s really hard for me to concentrate –” Her voice breaks a little. She’s blinking rapidly, shoulders hunched, giving me the face.
But I shake my head. “Just no, okay. No.”
Her expression goes blank for a second, then she says, “That’s that, then. So . . . so . . . where do you sleep?”
I point to the bedroom door. “Be my guest. The drunk, naked babes are all in the shower right now, so no worries.”
“You’re such a jerk. I thought I’d make the bed, because I doubt you have any idea whatsoever how to do that. You can come watch and –”
“What, you’ll quiz me on it later? I’ll pass. I’m gonna get in the shower.”
“Fine,” she says. “Watch out for the naked girls. Word is they’re slippery when wet.”
I start laughing. She’s a pain in my ass, Nano. But I’m a dick to her ninety percent of the time and she loves me anyhow. She went all uptight right when I went all crazy and I wish to hell there was an AA for perfectionism, because I’d haul her ass there in a heartbeat.
She’s smiling back at me now, because I laughed, and she was the one who made it happen, because, as she said in that goddamn diary, “Dear God, make me funny like Tim, because people like funny people and maybe then Mark Winthrop would . . .”
Love her.
“Nano – the school shit,” I say, then swallow. “I can’t help you that way anymore. You get that, right?”
She nods, staring fixedly at the beanbag chair. “Look, about the college money, Tim – Dad said I’d probably get it for Columbia because you –” She stops, and I can hear the gears turning as she tries to figure out how to put it. Because you –
Are the boy most likely to.
Fail.
Everyone and everything.
There it is again, its silver top gleaming under the light of the Schmidts’ fake streetlamp, glossy from the rain. The car pauses at the end of our block, as it has three times since Brad dropped me off. Then, as I watch, it signals the turn, though our street is completely deserted. I edge down the steps, arms folded against the wet, silty breeze blown over from the river.
Looking up at the shaded windows of the garage apartment, I see Tim’s rangy figure pass by, then someone else, a girl, hair in a ponytail, gesturing with both hands.
As I’m watching this, the car pulls slowly into our driveway at a bad parking angle, sharply slanted behind my Bug and Tim’s Jetta.
The headlights snap off.
Enough. Who’s this weird about pulling into a driveway? Who cases the street beforehand? I can’t see through the tinted windows.
Dealers?
Maybe the garage apartment’s new tenant has brought his sketchy past with him.
Or hired a hooker to join the party.
I stalk down the steps to the car.
Rap sharply on the window.
Right as it occurs to me what a stupid thing this is to do.
No weapon. No Mace. Unless they’re vulnerable to the power of Harry’s authentic Nerfblaster Lightsaber with glow-in-the-dark detailing, lying in the grass nearby.
The car turns back on, window slowly rolling down, and I’m staring at a girl, my own age or younger, with long brown hair and huge, thickly lashed blue eyes, wide and unblinking in the throw-back glow of her headlights.
“Looking for someone?”
She edges back at the sound of my voice. Her fingers, with chipped dark pink polish, clenched at the ten-and-two position on the wheel, tighten even more.
“Yes. No. I mean . . . I . . .” she stammers. “I . . . I –”
“Are you lost?”
She gives a quick, unsteady laugh, and then says, “You got that right. Sorry – don’t worry about it. I’ll find my way.” Then she rolls the window up and backs out as slowly as she drove in.
“I’m coming in, we need to talk,” I say before the door’s even half-open.
Tim blinks at me, takes a step back, then peers over my head as though expecting a lynch mob.
“The scariest phrase in the universe.” He’s wearing baggy striped pajama bottoms, with a toothbrush in one hand, Crest poised in the other.
“Let me in,” I repeat, louder.
“Not by the hair on my chinny-chin-chin. You’re looking predatory.” He stares down at my shirt, slightly damp with rain. “And your – uh – chest is heaving. Is that you huffing and puffing?”
“Tim. Now.” I’m not here to be disarmed.
Raising his hands holding the toothbrush and Crest, he steps aside. I brush past him, into the center of the room. My room. Which he’s completely marked as his territory. Open Grape-Nuts cereal box and an empty carton of orange juice on the counter next to a worn leather wallet and a handful of crumpled bills. Socks and a sweatshirt balled up in a corner. More clothes piled on the couch. Dishes in the sink. An
