Beat the Band (18 page)

“For what?” I remove my backpack and lay it on the floor. Helen’s already got her schoolbooks on the table, so I figure this is where we’ll be working.

“My mom’s . . . I don’t know. She just blurts stuff out like that sometimes.” Helen goes to the cupboard and takes out two glasses. “She hardly ever leaves the house anymore. I think she’s, like, lost her social skills or something.”

“Is she okay?”

Helen moves to the fridge and grabs a carton of Tropicana. “Oh, sure. She just . . . had to take some time off work. On stress leave. I don’t know. She’s a little weird.”

“I didn’t notice,” I say, even though I totally did. I pull out one of the wooden chairs and sit. “I thought she was nice. It’s sort of cool that she likes computer games.”

Helen smiles. “I don’t get you sometimes.”

“What?”

She holds up the carton. “Juice?”

“Sure.”

“I don’t know,” she continues. “It’s like . . . you’re this bizarre contradiction.”

“I’ve been called a lot of things before. But that’s a first.”

She laughs and starts pouring the juice. “No. I just mean that . . . sometimes you’re like this guy, you know. Like a lot of other guys. Kind of obnoxious. Sort of egotistical. Really crude.”

“All this flattery’s going to go to my head.”

She laughs again. “Let me finish,” she says handing me a glass. “Then there’s this other side of you that’s totally unexpected. Like . . . an empathetic side.”

“I don’t know what that means.” I take a drink of my juice. “But I’ll take it as a compliment.”

“You should.” Helen returns the carton to the fridge. She grabs her glass and leans against the kitchen counter. Her neck swoops so nicely into her shoulder. I get a flash of me kissing her right there. At that exact spot.

Jesus, Coop. What the hell are you thinking? Are you trying to make the rumors Helen’s been spreading true? I mean, maybe if
you
want to transfer to Our Lady of Mercy, sure, go ahead. Otherwise you’re talking social suicide.

I give myself an internal slap to the face.

“It’s like the other day. When I didn’t have enough money, and you bought me a soda.” Helen’s still talking. Thank God. It means she didn’t notice my neck lust. “Or just now. You knew I was embarrassed about my mother but instead of making me feel worse about it you said something sweet.”

“I hate to dump on your donut,” I say, feeling a slight stab of guilt. “But you’re giving me way more credit than I deserve.”

“Okay, well.” Helen shrugs. “You may not want to believe that you have a soft side but it’s there. No matter how much you’d like to bury it under dumb jokes and crudeness.” She drains her glass and puts it in the sink. “Anyway, I’m going to run upstairs and take a quick shower. I’ll just be a few minutes.”

In the porn version that instantly starts playing in my head, Helen asks me to join her and we stumble up the stairs, tearing off our clothes, and step into the shower as Mrs. Harriwick cluelessly plays on her computer in the family room.

“Coop?” Helen says. “Did you hear me?”

“What? Oh, yeah. Sure. Go ahead. I’ll, uh, start doing . . . something.”

“I’ll be fast.” She heads off, out of the kitchen.

I sit there for a moment, the image of water cascading down Helen’s naked body in the shower mesmerizing me.

Until a voice in my head shakes me from the fantasy.

“Would you rather see her in the shower or me?”
It’s Prudence, and she sounds a little ticked off.
“This is your chance, Coop. Maybe your only one. Go get Mrs. Harriwick’s e-mail and signature. Find out what church
they attend. Save yourself. Your reputation is on the line.”

MRS. HARRIWICK DOESN’T SEE ME
standing in the doorway to the den. Her eyes have a slight unfocused look as she stares at the screen of her laptop. The only sounds I can hear over the heartbeat in my ears are the
clickety-clack
of the computer keys and the shower water running through the pipes in the walls.

I don’t want to do this. My insides are a tortured cocktail of guilt, dread, self-loathing, and desperation. I envy the Vulcans, even though they don’t really exist. What I wouldn’t give right now for the ability to completely suppress my emotions and work on pure logic. Because, logically, Prudence is right. I may never get another opportunity like this.

“Oh, really?” Mrs. Harriwick says, startling me, until I realize she’s just talking to her computer screen. “I don’t think so, Snarkbone. That’s just another dead end you want us to go down.”

The rolled-up school form in my hand absorbs the sweat from my palm. If this goes wrong, I don’t even want to think about the repercussions. And if it goes right, well, I kind of don’t want to think about that either.

I take a deep breath and enter the room. “Hi, Mrs. Harriwick.” My voice cracks. I clear my throat.

She looks up at me and flashes the very same vague smile she gave me before. “What is it, hon? Where’s Helen?”

“I, um . . . She’s taking a shower.”

Mrs. Harriwick gestures at her computer. “Should I shut this down?”

“No, I uh . . . I just . . . I texted my friend, Sean. He said he’d love to do a quest with you. If you could give me your e-mail, I could pass it on to him so you guys could, you know, coordinate all that.”

“Great. You have a pen?”

I walk over to the couch and hand her a piece of notebook paper and a pen. I didn’t notice it before, but Mrs. Harriwick is wearing some seriously chunky perfume. It’s like someone shoved rotten roses up my nose. It’s odd that she would even be wearing perfume, considering Helen says she rarely leaves the house. Who is she trying to smell nice for, I wonder?

Mrs. Harriwick scribbles something down on the page, her hand shaking a little as she writes. Like she’s forty years older than she actually is. When she’s done, she passes the paper and pen back to me. “Make sure he mentions you or Helen in the subject line or I’ll think it’s spam.”

“Sure,” I say, trying to work up some kind of saliva in my mouth. “There’s, um, something else.”

The water upstairs shuts off with a clunk and a rattle of the pipes. How much time will it take Helen to dry off and get dressed? All of a sudden, the image of her stepping naked from the shower ambushes me. It occurs to me and my stirring divining rod that at this very moment Helen is upstairs, with no clothes on, probably toweling off her round breasts and her —

“Yes?” Helen’s mother says.

“Yes, what?”

“You said there was something else?”

I blink, bringing myself back. “Right. Yeah. Our Health teacher, Mrs. Turris . . . She requires some kind of documentation every time Helen and I meet.” I’m starting to feel light-headed. Have to get this over with fast. “So, usually Miss Jerooni, the librarian, signs our confirmation slip. But, since we’re meeting here . . . I’m sort of in charge of getting the signatures and . . . I was wondering . . . if you could sign it for us today?” Oh, Jesus, there it is. I’ve done it. Could I sink any lower?

“Of course.” Mrs. Harriwick laughs. “The way you were acting I thought you were going to tell me you got Helen pregnant or something.”

“No!” I say. “We’re not even . . . no!”

“Okay, sure, whatever. You’re not even. Until you are.” She gestures at me. “Give me that pen back.”

I hand her the pen and present the school form, which I keep a tight grip on. I’ve folded down the page so only the signature line is visible. “Right here,” I say, indicating where I scribbled a star.

I hold my breath and pray.

Mrs. Harriwick barely even glances at the paper as she scrawls her name. Her eyes half on her computer screen. “No, no, no,” she says, passing the pen back to me. “What are you doing? You idiot.” She looks up at me and smiles sheepishly. “Sorry. I just get so involved in this thing.”

“It’s okay. I understand.” I start to leave, then remember the baptism question and figure I might as well go for broke. “Oh, yeah, I almost forgot.” I turn back and see Mrs. Harriwick with one eye on me, and the other on her laptop screen. “I’m doing this survey for my World Religions class. Would you mind telling me what religion your family is? It’s completely anonymous, don’t worry.”

“Oh, I don’t care about that,” she says, typing something on her keyboard. “Technically, we’re Methodists. Though, to be honest, I can’t remember the last time I was at church.”

I scribble
Methodist
down on the notebook paper like I’m writing down the survey answers. Though I don’t think Mrs. Harriwick even notices. “And, um . . . was Helen baptized?”

“She was. That was Stephen’s idea. My ex-husband. Back in Baltimore. He was the devout one. When it was convenient.” More typing on the laptop.

I draw a few squiggles on my page to show I’m taking this all down. “And do you remember the name of the church?”

“Goring United. We used to call it
Boring
United.” She laughs. “Obviously, you can tell I’m a faithful follower.”

“No. That’s cool. Not too many people in the class are very religious either. That’s sort of why we’re doing this survey.” I quickly write the name of the church. “That’s, um, everything, I think. Thanks. I appreciate it.”

“Any time.” Mrs. Harriwick returns her full attention to the computer.

“Any time, what?” I hear Helen say as she comes down the stairs, all freshly cleaned and showered.

Oh, crap. A jolt of adrenaline surges through my veins and I freeze. How am I going to explain this one?

“YOUR MOM WAS KEEPING ME COMPANY,”
I say, stealthily tucking the school form and notebook page into my pocket. “She gave me her e-mail to pass along to Sean so they could play World of Warcraft together.” I force a laugh. “So, should we get to work?”

Helen glances at her mom, who’s completely focused on her computer again. “Okay, sure,” she says.

And that’s that, thank God. A little bit of truth to hide the iceberg of lies.

Everything inside me trembles with the aftershocks of almost being caught. I feel slightly dizzy.

Once we’re in the kitchen it takes me a few minutes to come down from the anxiety rush. I attempt to focus on our work, all the while trying not to let my shakiness show as I turn the pages in the Health text.

“So,” Helen says. “We should figure out who’s going to talk about what. I was thinking — now that we’re working so well together — we could probably convince Mrs. Turris to let us do your ‘He said, She said’ thing, but do it all in one lesson instead of two. What do you think?”

“Yeah. Good plan.” My internal gauges are starting to level out. Dodged a major duker there. “You think she’ll go for it?”

“If we hand in a rock-solid lesson plan, maybe. It’s worth a shot, right?”

“Hey, you know me. I’m all about having to do less work.”

Helen smiles. “I don’t know how much less work it’ll be. But at least we won’t have to spread it out over two days.”

As we lay out our Health paperwork, my thoughts shift back to the application form in my pocket. I am so ready to be done with this stupid school form it’s ridiculous. It weighs on me like a sumo wrestler. There’s still so much left to find out. I flip through the questions in my head and decide to start with one of the easier ones. “You’re really good at all this stuff,” I say. “You’re so focused. I mean, with cross-country, and your schoolwork. You probably have it all figured out, what you’re going to do after high school, huh?”

Helen shuffles through some of her papers, looking for something. “I don’t know. I kind of have this fantasy of being a pilot.” She laughs self-consciously. “It’s silly, I guess. There’s something about flying, though. I think I must have been a bird in a past life. But I’ll probably go to college first. Get some kind of business degree or something. If I can get the scholarships. How about you?”

Oh, man, I’ve tapped a gold mine here. This conversation could provide a whole slew of answers. I’m not about to throw us off track by talking about me. “I haven’t really decided yet.” I shrug. “Do they
have
cross-country scholarships?” I ask.

“Sure. They have scholarships for everything.”