Elm Creek Quilts [06] The Master Quilter (32 page)

Todd eyed the stack in Brent’s hands. “She said we could get two.”

“Yeah, but she also said she’d bring them home for us. She’s feeling guilty, so take advantage.”

Todd shook his head, but grinned as he turned back to the shelves.

Brent nudged him. “Come on. Don’t be such a craven poltroon.”

Todd guffawed; one of their favorite inside jokes was to work vocabulary words from their SAT prep class into everyday conversation just to prove how awkward they were. But he selected two more DVDs, and when they took them to Mrs. Sonnenberg, she didn’t complain.

Todd’s parents finally went to bed after the first movie. “It’s about time,” muttered Brent, shoving the sofa aside to make room for the air mattresses.

Todd came over to help him. “Why? You tired already?”

“Not tired.” Brent grinned and headed for the kitchen. “Just thirsty.”

During their search for food, he had found where the Sonnenbergs had unimaginatively stashed their liquor, in a cupboard above the refrigerator. Todd realized where he was heading when he picked up a kitchen chair. “Brent, no. That’s not a good idea.”

“Why not?” Brent set the chair in front of the refrigerator and climbed up. “You don’t complain at my house.”

“My mom’s a human Breathalyzer. She’ll know.”

“Not if we don’t see them until morning.” He selected a bottle of vodka three-quarters full, then took out a bottle of rum. “Hey. Rum and Cokes.”

“Keep it down,” said Todd, peering over his shoulder. “She’s a light sleeper.”

“So she can check on her widdle baby if he cries?” Brent tucked the bottles under his arm and returned the chair to its place at the table. All the while Todd trailed after him, glancing anxiously toward the ceiling. “Will you relax? Have a drink. That will help.”

Todd scowled, but took the bottle of vodka. He retrieved the orange juice from the refrigerator while Brent searched the cupboards for the supersize plastic tumblers their class had sold two years before to raise money for their sophomore trip. They mixed their drinks in silence, listening for footsteps upstairs, then watered down the bottles, wiped them clean, and put them away.

When the harpy didn’t come swooping in to bust them, Todd finally relaxed and laughed his way through the Lethal Weapon series like always. They returned to the kitchen off and on, Todd for snacks, Brent to replenish his drink. “We should go get some beer,” Brent remarked as they slouched on the sofa watching a half-dozen cars collide and explode. “No one cards during spring break when the students are gone. We can take your mom’s car.”

“You’re not driving, not after that industrial strength rum and Coke you just put away.”

It never failed to irk Brent that Todd could drink all he wanted and yet sound as if he were stone-cold sober. “Screw you. I can drive just fine.”

“Take your own car, then.”

“And wake up my parents getting it out of the garage? Great idea.” But Brent stayed put, not really wanting to drive for beer or break his fifty when there were other untouched bottles just a room away.

They were half asleep in front of
Collateral Damage
when the sound of a door opening roused them. “Quick,” Todd hissed, bolting to his feet to hide the evidence although their cups had been empty for at least an hour.

They heard footsteps in the kitchen a moment before the light went on. They blinked and looked past the breakfast nook to find Michael setting his backpack on the counter and frowning at them.

“Oh, it’s you,” breathed Todd, and dropped onto the sofa.

“You better wash out those cups before Mom wakes up,” Michael advised, reaching into the cupboard for a glass. “I smelled rum the minute I walked through the door.”

“We will,” said Todd, and Brent remembered that spill near the sink he had been meaning to clean up.

Michael shook his head and poured himself some milk. “If you make a habit of this, you’ll get caught. They’ll know if you water down the booze too much.”

“Thanks for your moral authority,” said Brent.

“In case you haven’t noticed, we can’t go to the bars and we don’t have our own apartment like you,” said Todd. “And we aren’t doing anything you didn’t do.”

Michael finished his milk and put the glass in the dishwasher. “I’m just trying to help.”

Todd, bleary-eyed from the alcohol and lack of sleep, remained stubbornly belligerent. “If you really wanted to help, you’d invite us to one of your parties instead of making us sneak around.”

“One, no one’s making you do anything. Two, Mom would kill me if I gave you alcohol. Three, we don’t party at our house as much as you think.”

“Four, you’re an idiot,” said Brent.

“I didn’t come here to argue with a bunch of drunk high schoolers.” Michael took some papers or something from his backpack and stuck them on the kitchen counter by Mrs. Sonnenberg’s purse. “If you’re stupid enough to get wasted with Mom and Dad right upstairs, that’s your problem.”

He zipped his backpack closed, hefted it onto his back, and stalked away. A moment later, they heard the front door softly open and close.

Todd slumped against the sofa and groaned. “Man, I can’t wait until I go to Princeton.”

Brent felt a stab of jealousy. He had tried early admission for Princeton and had been rejected, though he was still hopeful for Yale. “Does he move back in at the end of the semester? Because if you have to spend the entire summer under the same roof with that loser—”

“He’s staying in his apartment.” Todd let out an enormous yawn. “And he’s not a loser. He’s just trying to look out for us.”

Brent scowled. “Yeah, I can tell how glad you were to see him.”

In response, Todd yawned again. “I’m gonna get ready for bed.”

Brent was too irritated to argue. He stalked off to the bathroom, and by the time he returned, Todd had cleaned up the kitchen, turned off the lights, and unrolled both sleeping bags on the air mattresses. He had left the best pillow for Brent. Mollified, Brent climbed into his sleeping bag and said, “Greg and Will are coming over tomorrow. We thought we’d go see a movie and get some beer. Want to come?”

“Where are you going to drink? The arboretum?”

“Where else is there?”

Todd barked out a scornful laugh. “You know, in a year those two are going to be indistinguishable from all the other losers staggering around Fraternity Row every weekend.”

“Yeah? How are you going to be any different?”

“I’m going to leave what passes for fun in high school back in high school. I’m not going to be lurking around in the woods chugging beer.” Todd thumped his pillow with a fist and rolled over.

“And neither are you, once you get out of Waterford. I can’t figure out why you like those guys.”

One
, Brent thought, glowering in the dark,
they don’t always have to prove how much better they are than everybody else. Two, they know how to have fun. Three, they understand the importance of friends who stick together no matter what. Four, their mothers didn’t treat my mother like something they scraped off the bottom of their shoes
.

Thoughts churning, he lay on his back with his eyes open, but Todd fell asleep before Brent could think of a retort. With a grunt, Brent crawled out of his sleeping bag and groped his way down the darkened hallway to the bathroom. On his way back, he passed through the breakfast nook and spotted Michael’s papers or whatever propped up against Mrs. Sonnenberg’s purse. He picked them up and opened the refrigerator door to read them, but it was just the course catalogue from Waterford College with a few passages marked. Brent snorted and stuck the booklet back where he had found it, and as he did, he noticed that Mrs. Sonnenberg had left her purse wide open.

He glanced over at Todd, sound asleep on the family room floor. He reached in for her wallet and leafed through the old photos, choking back laughter at one of the two brothers at about eight and ten years old, their arms over each other’s shoulders, beaming with gap-toothed grins. He considered taking money but decided against it, since she was such an airhead she probably wouldn’t even notice. But she’d notice missing keys, he thought, lifting the ring carefully to avoid waking Todd. She’d be late for that stupid quilt camp, maybe even get fired. She’d have to walk to that quilt store, too, and maybe get fired there, as well.

Biting his lips together so he wouldn’t laugh out loud, Brent stashed the keys in his jacket pocket and climbed into his sleeping bag. A few hours of frustration wouldn’t make up for what Mrs. Sonnenberg had done, but it was better than nothing. Too bad he could never tell his mom how he had scored some revenge.

When Brent woke, parched and groggy, the clock on the DVD player read 11:18. He groaned and flopped back against the pillow. He would have tried to fall asleep again if Todd had not sat up and asked if he wanted breakfast. Brent nodded, though he felt too queasy to eat. He padded off to the bathroom and, after splashing some water on his face, he felt a little better.

Mrs. Sonnenberg had left a plate of muffins and a few boxes of cereal on the counter, as if she thought they were too stupid to find the cereal themselves. They fixed themselves some breakfast and carried it back to the family room so they could watch the last of their DVDs while they ate. By that time, Brent had realized to his disappointment that Mrs. Sonnenberg had left in her car, so she must have had a spare set of keys. He hoped he had given her at least a few minutes of frustration, if not the frantic screamfest he had anticipated.

After the movie, they put away their dishes and cleaned up the family room. “Are you sure you don’t want to hang with me and Greg and Will today?” asked Brent, giving his friend one last chance.

Todd shook his head. “But call me if you want to do something tomorrow.”

Brent didn’t bother to try to talk him into it. He packed up the rest of his stuff and left.

He told himself it was Todd’s loss, and as it turned out, he was right. The movie was great, and three of the hottest girls in ASB were there—without dates, for a change, so they agreed when Will invited them to The Bistro. They managed to make a plate of nachos and another of mozzarella sticks last two hours, annoying the waitress with frequent requests for the free soft drink refills. When they finally decided to go, it was with enormous pleasure that Brent whipped out his wallet, placed the fifty on the plastic tray with the bill, and announced that he was treating the girls. They squealed with delight and thanked him admiringly in a manner that was more than a little attractive, and Ashley, the prettiest of them with her waist-length blond hair and brown eyes, even hugged him.

They left the restaurant with the girls exclaiming that they’d had a great time and that they should do this again before they all went their separate ways to college. The only disappointment was that the girls turned down their invitation to go drinking in the Waterford College Arboretum, but Brent didn’t care because he had managed to get Ashley alone for a minute and she had agreed to be his date for the prom.

He felt invincible as they sneaked back to Will’s house and raided his father’s well-stocked refrigerator in the garage. Stuffing six-packs beneath their jackets, they hiked along one of the lesser known trails through the arboretum until they came to their favorite drinking establishment, as Will called it, a small clearing where a few fallen trees had created tolerable seats. Night fell before they finished off the last beer, but Brent wasn’t worried because his parents knew he and Will were sleeping over at Greg’s house, but didn’t know that Greg’s parents, both sociology professors, were off at some conference in Santa Fe. Brent thought they should have just gone straight to Greg’s house with the beer—spring break or not, it was still cold at night—but the arboretum was tradition and Greg worried about his parents finding stray empties.

Hungry and wired, they hiked out of the forest, cracking up as they tripped over roots and fallen branches in the darkness. Main Street was deserted, a rarity for the hour even on a weeknight, with most of the college students long gone and the bars virtually empty.

Will stopped at a legendary dive, the one known for carding even gray-haired alumni and for providing free shot glasses to anyone who could drink twenty-one shots on his twenty-first birthday. He cupped his hands around his eyes and peered inside. “Two, three, four,” he counted. “Four customers! They’re not making enough to pay for the electricity. Why don’t they let us in when the students are gone?”

“Because they don’t want to lose their liquor license,” drawled Greg, pulling Will away from the window.

They continued down the sidewalk with Will pausing to test every locked door. “All we need is one,” he said, yanking on the doorknob of a shoe store. “Locked. And I need some new Nikes.”

Brent and Greg guffawed and shoved him along. “Locked,” said Greg at a bakery, laughing. “And I need some cookies.”

“Locked,” said Will. “And I need some—some thread.”

Greg laughed so hard he doubled over and nearly fell.

Brent stopped short. “Wait.” He dug around in his jacket pocket for Mrs. Sonnenberg’s key ring, which he had meant to hide someplace bizarre before he left, like the aquarium or a jar of peanut butter, but he had forgotten. “I think we can get in.”