The Taming of the Drew (27 page)

I almost choked in my outrage. “What about the pictures,” I said. “Did you conveniently forget the pictures?”

He gave me a smile, one so large and sincere, and gorgeous that I felt this shift inside me, my outrage and anger dwindling away. He dug in his front pocket and pulled out a thin, blue plastic square.

His smile got wider as the entire group gasped in delighted shock.

It was the memory card for a camera.

I felt my eyes well with tears. “You, you?” my voice cracked and I stopped, before I embarrassed myself further.

“Nah,” he said, giving Bianca, who stood beside him, a hip-check with his shoulder. “It’s the brat here. She took the chip out, first thing. Had it in her wallet. She gave it to me just a minute ago in the kitchen.”

Realization dawned and my tears began to ebb as I got more ticked off, “You mean you
knew
? You
knew
Celia didn’t have the photos and you acted all innocent like you couldn’t understand
why
I would be upset??!” I punched him on the shoulder and he gave an exaggerated OW face and rubbed it.

He waggled Groucho Marx eyebrows at me and said, “Listen, you
ever
punch me — and I find out about it — you’ll be in deep trouble.”

There were whoops and high-fives and cheers all around. Bianca looked shy and pleased, like she’d gotten us in trouble, but managed to fix it and hoped we’d forgive her.
 

I smiled back at Bianca, then it faltered. I moved her off to one side and said, “You wanted to see the photos, didn’t you? That’s one of the reasons you took it?”

“Well, if it was your brother, wouldn’t you want know exactly what they were, and who had their hands on them?”

“Yeah,” I said, certain that my face was now a neon, parrot red.

She said to me, her voice low, as everyone else moved to the living room to start watching Serenity. “They’re not
obscene
photos. Not exactly. If I was Drew, I’d be flattered.”

She sauntered off ahead of me.
 

Bianca had called him Drew. Somehow, that touched me, and made me feel better — almost as much as everything else she’d done.

Then she said, over her shoulder, “Of course, I’m just guessing, ‘cause he hasn’t seen them,” a wicked sparkle twinkled in her eyes, “
yet
.”

I plunged into a vortex of nervous horror all over again.

Which only got worse when I carried a pitcher of water from the kitchen to the living room movie-watchers and heard Helena say to Bianca, “See! Now
that
guy’s definitely a pitt.”

Within moments, the room erupted with
pitt! depp!
no way!
arguments shouted at the screen as every new male character appeared.
 

When Drew turned and raised an eyebrow at me, I knew Helena had explained exactly whose theory this was —
mine
.
 

Two hours later, people were at the doorstep, everyone leaving, shouting good-byes in the spring night. The only person who looked wilted was Gonzo.

“Poor thing,” my mother said. “But you know what they say, the course of true love never did run smooth. Or was that Shakespeare?”

Bianca, Drew and I, the only ones left, stared at her as she left the kitchen to get ready for bed.

Bianca said, “Tio would know,” then fell silent when Drew and I looked at her sharply.

She slipped quickly out the door.

I had been planning this for the last two hours but all the words I’d said over and over in my head, refining them, the tone, the inflection, it all fled. I couldn’t even look at him. I turned sideways, like it was normal to face a round-top, 1950’s refrigerator while you talked to someone on your left. “Those photos,” I said, and swallowed. “I, uh, I don’t want you looking at them.”

I had my head down, but I could see from the corner of my eye that he put his hands in his front jeans pockets, and rocked back on his heels.
 

“That bad, huh?”

“Depends on what you mean by bad.”

“Ah,” he said, his voice flat like he was trying not to laugh, “so even
your
photo skills couldn’t make me look good, is that what you’re saying?”

A prickly heat of embarrassment rashed its way up my face. I shook my head while I picked at refrigerator chrome detailing. “Right. Like
you
need to go begging for compliments.”

His hand touched my shoulder to turn me to face him, and it was like every finger burned on my bare arm.

I looked up at him and realized this was the first time we’d ever been alone together. I was so tall, my mouth reached his chin, and his eyes seemed glued to my hairline. “This means a lot to you?” he said.

Normally a gust of disbelief would have whooshed out of me, but now, for some reason, my insides felt tight and I only said, in a low, vibrating voice, “More than you can know.”

Even as I said it, that cold clear voice in my head was saying,
but why — why should it mean so much
? Why couldn’t I joke about these pictures and laugh it off, like I would have done if it was any of the other football guys trapped in a photo on that chip?

We stood there, the refrigerator humming and chortling beside us, as he thought about it. I stared at him while I waited. I could feel a warmth coming off him, and a smell of guy, like the tang of redwood needles and earth and it made me aware how close we were standing. I thought I could feel him breathing, a tickle on my face like a shiver that came and went.

I was afraid to move, waiting, hoping.

Then I realized that the reason it was talking so long was because he wasn’t being glib, and wasn’t promising without first deciding whether or not he could keep his promise. If he said he wouldn’t look at the pictures, then he probably wouldn’t.

My heart felt like a bubble in my chest, swelling with hope, and something else. Drew pressed his lips together, the way you do when you’ve decided something, and you’re about to say it — and then the kitchen phone rang, a loud, jarring clatter of sound that made us both jump.
 

We both knew no one would call at this hour, unless it was an emergency.

Before the second ring, my mother churned in from the back room, her eyes soft and vulnerable-looking without her make-up on. She picked up the phone, listened for a second and handed it, wordless, to me.
 

“I’m no fool,” Celia said. “So I’m assuming you must be, to think I’d just disappear after you handed me an empty camera.” [
handed?!
My mind shrieked in disbelief] “But this camera’s
not
worthless, now is it? Not in the right hands, anyway. See, you’ve made a very serious mistake. You forgot that I’m made up of 100% lawyer genes, generations of it, in fact. In a way, I was bred for exactly this kind of situation. So here’s the way I see it. If I were to take this camera in to the police, I’ve got the Dog’s and Bianca’s fingerprints all over it. Either you give me those photos, or I’m going to be forced to explain that I discovered the Dog bragging about having the camera at a sleazy Academy party,” [
sleazy?!?
] “and I had no choice but to grab it so I could return it to its rightful owner.”

I stood there, my breath loud against the receiver of the phone. Drew must have seen something on my face, or heard her voice, because he mouthed, “Celia?” at me.

I gave a short nod and he said a very bad word.

I walked until I reached the end of the extension cord, so I could lean my forehead against the wall. “Meet me Monday at lunchtime at the redwood trees at the edge of the Uni and Academy fields,” I said to her, then hung up. Whether Celia knew it or not, Drew was turning eighteen soon, which meant he could get adult charges filed against him, and adult prison terms. She could ruin not just Drew’s college, but his
life
without even realizing it.
 

A part of me wanted to go sob at all I had nearly destroyed with those stupid pictures, that stupid camera, but there wasn’t time. I turned and put my head back on the wall as I dialed one number after the other, calling the Greenbacks with my shoulders hunched in shame, disturbing their sleep, asking them to meet me at the usual pre-dawn time Monday at the trees.

When I hung up, the Dog was gone.

***

Sunday was a form of torture that’s probably banned in civilized countries. I pretended to do a ton of homework, performed my re-animated corpse act whenever I was forced to move around the house, and pantomimed sleeping for at least three times as many hours as I actually did sleep.

Monday, I went to my trees in the pitch black this time, needing my flashlight to get there safely. I flopped face-down on the stump with my arms out in the hug position, but before very long I curled on my side, as though the stump was cradling me. I couldn’t close my eyes, like I didn’t want to miss a second of the few Celia-free hours that were left to me and the fairy circle.
 

Way up above, the treetops stroked the sky, a slow, soothing movement back and forth. One tree lost more needles than the others — a steady drizzle of twigs like teardrops. I flicked on the flashlight and saw a cuff of thicker needles at its base.

It was a drought year, so maybe we Greenbacks could set up a rotation to deep-water that one tree every so often.

As I sat there, twisted to look at the tree, I heard a sound behind me, a louder snap than the usual morning scufflings. I jerked around, and at the edge of the circle was Drew.

He stood in deep shadow, no flashlight, wearing ripped jeans and a black tee-shirt, tight across the upper part of his chest.
 

My heart started thudding so hard I could feel it like a taste in my mouth. He walked forward, more careful than he needed to, like I was a gazelle who might startle.
 

I couldn’t see his eyes until he sat beside me on the stump, his face exaggerated in shadow.
 

He said, “You fit here.”

I tilted my head up to look at the top and said, “Redwoods.” In the silence, I realized the word had sounded kind of obscene and breathy. I cleared my throat and looked sideways at him. But he had looked up too, his gaze now fixed away from me.
 

Like a movie montage, I saw in my mind all the times he’d done that. He could, with a gesture, a move, only a few genius words, put people at ease. I was the kind of person who yammered and cajoled, and talked around and around, and he could, with a swipe of his hand at Gonzo, with a movement towards Tio, with a shrug in class, with a chin-nod of respect to Alex and Robin,
change
the people around him, make them feel confident, and warmed, usually without them even knowing why. He’d weathered the scorn of pottery, the humiliation of band, the starvation of his first week in Academy without complaint and he’d persevered until everyone around him respected him.

He said, to the tops of the trees, not seeming to hear the storm of thoughts that thundered inside me. “Me? I’m more of a sugar-pine guy.”

A breeze shifted the trees. He gave a loose, free laugh.

He knew.
 

That’s when it happened. It struck me the way lightning takes out a trunk. Everything changed. One blow of realization and only smoldering shards remained.

I knew, in that very moment, there all I would ever have was a destroyed stump where something should have grown, a worm-riddled shell that would inevitably disintegrate into dust around me. Even though I now, finally recognized what it felt like, this yearning, this ache, I could never tell or show him how I felt about him.

Because he was the Dog, Andrew Petruchio-Bullard, the star of University. And I was a geeky weird tall girl from Academy, with used clothes and a scary tree obsession. It was laughable to everyone who saw us.

And because I made a deal with his mother to be his supervisor, to badger and hound and torture him.
 

And I could never even hope he might ever, even a little, like me, not even as a friend. Not once he learned the truth.

Because he thought I made a deal, yoking myself to him, to keep from being expelled, when really I made it for money.

Because he would, sooner or later, see those pictures I took. The ones I also did for money.

Because he might, some day, find out how we’d plotted behind his back to manipulate him.

Because I couldn’t ever let him find out what the money was for. He couldn’t know that I would do everything I could to destroy the school’s chances of getting this tiny piece of land. He could never know, especially now, now that I knew he might love trees too. Because he would lose his entire future if he was involved in even one single, tiny, school violation before June. And the trees would be cut by June if we didn’t do something.
 

I sat in the semi-dark, feeling the heat of dawn creeping into the air, looking at the curve of his neck as he stared up. But all I felt was a chill, a permanent coldness, and dew-tears on my face, clinging to my hair.

I’d never
really
liked a guy. Ever. And when I finally found one, precious and worthy, everything was doomed before it began.

He sensed something because he turned to look at me. I sprang up from the stump and backed away.

“Geez, you act like I’ve got cooties or something. Here, I’ll move,” Drew said.

“No.” It exploded out of me. “You don’t have to. There’s no reason,” My voice cracked and I cleared my throat. “No reason to move away.”

I sat at the edge of the opposite side of the stump, my back straight, my fists on my knees. The minutes blossomed into day, my trees shifting and sighing.

***

The Greenbacks straggled in while it was still dim. Maybe they always arrived that early, but I didn’t know because I didn’t see them until I finished my time with the trees. This morning, maybe it was the tension radiating off me, or the fact that Drew was here, silent and awkward, for the first time, or maybe it was the threat of Celia hanging over us all, but for the first time, no one sat. Everyone stood, not putting down a bag, not smiling or talking, instead shifting in place like the trees. Alex and Robin wore knee-length cargo khakis, draggy tee shirts and tennis shoes. They both wore their hair with a teensy-tight miniature-broom-looking ponytail in the back. It was what I expected, but my heart still sunk to see them back to dressing like bookends. But then I noticed Alex had dangly earrings, and Robin wore a wide leather wrist-cuff. Maybe not so perfectly matching, after all.