None of the Regular Rules (13 page)

CHAPTER
FIFTEEN

We spent most of the rest of the evening in Grace’s room, watching movies, pretending that everything was normal. It might even have
been
normal, if this was two months ago—before things started to change and the old normal just wasn’t good enough anymore.

Ella told us a little bit about rehearsals for
Into the Woods
and her Christmas-tradition
dread, and Grace talked about student council and her excitement about her
early-d
ecision acceptance to Brown, but it was all really generic conversation. There were no surprises, only the things we talked about every other day between classes or after school or in the car. The conversation reminded me of one I might have with my grandmother
in Montana
, one of the twice-a-year calls where I’d catch her up on the same highlights I’d shared in our previous superficial conversation.

I wanted to talk to them about Johnny, to tell them how much I liked him, and to hear them tease me about it, as they would have done in the past. But I was too nervous to bring up the conversation, for fear that it would get us on the subject of guys in general, and I didn’t want to go there.

Around midnight, we began to get ready to sneak out. Grace’s parents had installed a hard-core security system a few years back, but I already knew that wouldn’t be as difficult to get around as Grace’s conscience was proving to be.

“What if Ian is right?” she said as she slipped into an all-black outfit. “Do you think I could get kicked off student council if we get caught?”

“We’re not going to get caught,” I said again. “I promise.”

She looked at me for a long moment, then nodded. Her curls bounced around her cheeks, and a sliver of the old Grace was suddenly noticeable. “Okay,” she said eagerly. “You’re right.” She grinned. “I’m sorry.”

As soon as we were dressed (I was the only one wearing a ski mask, rolled up—for the time being—like a normal hat), we
sneaked
downstairs to Grace’s basement. The front door was loud and centrally located, so Grace was sure her dad would hear if we opened it. Instead, I had scouted around a little and realized it would be possible to prop open the tiny window in the utility room off the back of the attached garage and scoot out of the basement on our bellies. We had to disable the alarm leading out to the garage, then rearm it before we closed and locked the door behind ourselves. But the window off the utility room led straight into the backyard, and it wasn’t armed with a security device, so it was actually possible. The snow had been slow to come this fall, so there were only wisps of it in the backyard—not enough that we would leave tracks on our way out.

I was feeling immensely proud when it all went off according to plan. Until I realized I’d left the keys to my car inside the house. “What are we going to do?” Grace whispered, her eyes wide and panicked. We all stood in a line pressed up against the back of the house. “We can’t go back in—not unless we’re going in to stay. There’s no way we’re going to get past my parents’ room again without them waking up and wondering what’s going on and coming to check on us. We’ll be lucky if they didn’t notice the first time.” She groaned. “We should have just
sneaked
out of Sophie’s house.”

“This is part of the fun,” I said, thinking that the fun of breaking out wasn’t going to be nearly as fun if we didn’t have anywhere to go once we were out. I mean, it wasn’t impossible to walk to the planetarium—it was only a few miles away—but it didn’t feel right. There was something less sneaky and even sort of sad-looking about the image of us walking along the side of the road to our intended break-in. “Breaking out of your house feels more legit, Grace. My parents never hear anything.
It’s not even a challenge.
”

“Screw legit,” Ella mused. “We’ve succeeded with our legit breakout, but now we’re stuck hanging out in Grace’s backyard. Not a total success. Unless…”

“Unless what?” I asked, hopeful.

“Well, my dad taught me how to hot
-
wire a car. We could try it.”

“You know how to hot
-
wire a car?” I gasped. “Why hasn’t this come up before?” I thought about how “borrowing a motorcycle” was on Suzy’s list—
my
list—and realized how convenient Ella’s trick would be when we moved on to that.

“Hot
-
wiring is not really a skill I use,” Ella said. “And I’m not proud that my dad taught me how to steal a car. That’s not the kind of daddy-daughter moment you brag about.” She led us around to the front of the house. We all slipped quietly toward my car, avoiding the motion detector light in the front of the garage.

“I’ll put it in neutral,” I stage-whispered as quietly as I could. “Then you guys give me a shove down the driveway.” I felt it was important to get as far away from Grace’s house as we could before attempting anything. “Sound good?” They both nodded, and I slipped the car into neutral. The car didn’t move at first, but slowly it began to roll and clunk, inch by inch, down the driveway. I guided it out to the street and parked in the shadows of a huge pine tree that stood in front of Grace’s neighbor’s house.

“You guys stand watch and I’ll give this a try,” Ella whispered. It felt like we were shouting, the way our voices seemed to carry down the street. I was giddy with the rush of it all, and felt myself getting swept up in the thrill of this new hurdle.

For almost ten minutes, Ella tried to get the car started. She swore and grunted and ripped her jeans on a rock, but it was soon obvious that my car wasn’t going anywhere. “I have another idea,” I offered, as Ella sat on the sidewalk in front of Grace’s house preparing to give up. “I could text Johnny. He could probably come pick us up. Then we’d have an accomplice
…
someone who could help us.”

“Johnny Rush?” Grace asked. “I don’t know, Soph.”

“I thought tonight was all about us?” Ella added. “But now you’re inviting your boyfriend?”

I gave her a nasty look. “One, he’s not my boyfriend. Two, he’s our only hope. He can come and get us, or we can weasel our way back inside Grace’s house and get our beauty rest. It’s your call.” The tone of my voice was colder than I’d intended, but I was feeling defensive.

Grace and Ella both agreed, and a few minutes later Johnny promised to be there to pick us up within twenty minutes. Fifteen minutes later, I heard a familiar sound roaring toward us from down the block. I looked up and there he was, sitting astride his riding lawn mower. It plowed down the street and the Radio Flyer wagon attached to the back clanked loudly as Johnny drove over the speed bump in the middle of the block. Finally, our escape vehicle purred to a stop in front of Grace’s house. “Hop on!” Johnny said with a grin. “Two in the wagon, one in the seat with me. I brought a blankie so you won’t get cold back there.”

We all stared, wide-eyed. Then I shrugged and climbed onto the back of the mower, my legs wrapped around Johnny’s hips. Grace and Ella both looked at me, then at each other, and reluctantly climbed into the wagon and wrapped up inside the blanket. We rode through the deserted streets of our neighborhood, going a thrilling fifteen miles an hour. After a few blocks, I realized I’d almost forgotten that my best friends were behind us, since all I could think about was Johnny.

My hands were wrapped around his waist, holding on, even though I probably didn’t need to worry about falling off a mower that was moving only slightly faster than I would be if I were running down the street. But when we began to move, Johnny had told me to hold on tight, and so I did. I slipped my hands around his stomach and linked them together, pulling Johnny into a kind of casual embrace that I wanted to be more. I could feel the heat of his skin through his sweatshirt, and I could smell his hair when I leaned forward far enough. If I’d been a different kind of person, I could have laid my head in the space between his shoulder blades, letting my cheek rest against his back.
If I’d had the courage, I would have put my hands in his hair and kissed the back of his neck, tasting his skin and breathing in his incredible smell. My mouth warmed at the thought, and I felt my fingers cinch tighter around his waist, as though my body was daring me to go there.

I’d almost forgotten we weren’t alone, and startled a little when we arrived at the planetarium and heard Ella say, “My butt aches. Bad.”

“You can take my seat on the way back,” I offered, jumping off the lawn mower as quickly as I could. I didn’t
want
to give up my seat. But I knew I needed to, since sitting that close to Johnny made it even harder for me to think about him as just a friend. I didn’t want to lose the thing that had developed between us, and I knew that if I didn’t stop thinking about the way his
lips would feel on mine
, I was going to ruin everything. “I’ll cuddle with Grace in the wagon on the way home.”

Ella looked at me curiously. Then she said, “We’ll see. I don’t really mind the wagon.” She smiled, more kindly than she had all night, and I knew she knew exactly what I was thinking about.

“So what’s the plan, ladies?” Johnny asked, still sitting astride the mower.
The full moon made it light enough that I could see the muscles of his thighs under his jeans when he was sitting the way he was.

“Well,” Grace said, looking only slightly perky. “We just need to sneak in, right, Soph? Then we can tick this one off the list?”

“List?” Johnny asked, running his fingers through his hair. He’d draped his hat over one of the mower’s handles, and his hair stuck out at odd angles. “What list?”

“I thought you told him about Suzy’s list?” Grace said innocently. “It’s not a secret, is it?” She looked from me to Ella. “I mean, I told Ian. Weren’t we telling people?”

I shook my head. “I haven’t told anyone about it, no.” I hadn’t wanted to tell Johnny about the list. I was embarrassed to admit to him that I hadn’t even been daring enough to come up with a list of dares for myself. I guess I’d subconsciously wanted him to think that I’d come up with all of the new things I’d been talking about doing on my own, and that it was just the thrill of doing something new that was driving me forward. The list was embarrassing, somehow, in the context of Johnny. Not that I was ashamed to be following in my aunt’s footsteps, but that I needed footsteps to follow in. I wanted to be the kind of person
who
made her own tracks. That was the point of finishing Suzy’s list, after all.

“Well
,
now I
need
to know,” Johnny said, looking at me. “What kind of list?”

“No kind of list,” I said. “Grace is drunk.”

“I’m not drunk!” Grace said, her voice slipping up an octave.

“Let’s just do this,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Let’s just break in and enjoy ourselves, okay?” I blurted this out and stared them all down. Grace and Ella were both looking at me strangely, but I didn’t even care. The adrenaline was pumping through me, and I just wanted to
go
.

Johnny shrugged, letting me off the hook. “Okay,” he said, stepping off the lawn mower. He dropped his hat back onto the top of his head. “Let’s do it.”

I smiled at him gratefully, then rolled my face mask down and followed along as he led us toward the back of the big, brick building. I felt like a ninja, though I’m sure I looked more like a bank robber—or a snocross champion—in my black knit stealthwear.

The planetarium was somehow affiliated with the local community college, and had been built using grant money in the late nineties. We usually went there once a year for school field trips, but that was my only experience with the place. According to Johnny, who had apparently done this many times before, there was a fire ladder that came down just a bit too far at the back of the building. If you jumped, you could grab it and pull it down onto the lawn, then scale the wall and make it up to the top—which was five stories high.

We wandered casually through the grass that wrapped around the side of the building, trying as much as possible to stay out of the floodlights that shone down every fifteen feet or so. “There are security cameras,” Johnny said after a few minutes. “But no one monitors them unless there’s an incident. Sometimes not then either.”

“Incident?” Grace asked. I turned back and watched her hook her arm through Ella’s. “Like, a breaking-in incident?” She chewed on her thumb.

“Stop being such a worrywart,” I said, probably more harshly than I should have. “We’re not going to get caught.”

When we reached the back of the building, Johnny pointed to the fire escape. “Ladies first.” He swept his arm through the air in a grand gesture.

Luckily, I was tall enough that I didn’t have to jump too terribly high before I could wrap my fingers around the rusting steel and pull the ladder down to the ground. It clanked and rattled as it fell, but there was obviously no one around to hear us. I was suddenly a little disappointed—it seemed like sneaking into something should be harder than this. I wondered, not for the first time, if Suzy would be disappointed in me. Was it enough? Or was I taking the easy way out of everything, still? “Do you guys think this is cheating?” I asked aloud. “Is it really sneaking in if they practically leave a door open for you?”