Carrie Diaries

CHAPTER NINE The Artful Dodger

When Dorrit and I get home, my poor father takes one look at Dorrit’s hair and nearly passes out. Then he goes into her room to have a talk with her. That’s the worst, when my father comes into your room for a talk. He tries to make you feel better, but it never quite works that way. He usually goes into some long story about something that happened to him when he was a kid, or else makes references to nature, and sure enough, that’s what he does with Dorrit.

Dorrit’s door is closed, but our house is a hundred and fifty years old, so you can hear every word of any conversation if you stand outside the door. Which is exactly what Missy and I do.

“Now, Dorrit,” my dad says. “I suspect your actions concerning your, ah, hair are indirectly related to overpopulation, which is something that is increasingly becoming a problem on our planet. Which was not meant to sustain these vast clusters of people in limited spaces…and tends to result in these mutilations of the human body — piercings, dyeing the hair, tattoos…It’s human instinct to want to stand out, and it manifests itself in more and more extreme measures. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“No.”

“What I mean,” he continues, “is that you must do all you can to resist these unwarranted instincts. The successful human being is able to conquer his unwanted and unwise desires. Am I making myself clear?”

“Sure, Dad,” Dorrit says sarcastically.

“In any event, I still love you,” my father says, which is the way he ends all his talks. And then he usually cries. And then you feel so horrible, you vow never to upset him again.

This time, however, the crying bit is interrupted by the ringing of the phone. Please, let it be Sebastian, I pray, while Missy grabs it. She puts her hand slyly over the receiver. “Carrie? It’s for you. It’s a guy.”

“Thanks,” I say coolly. I take the phone into my room and close the door.

It has to be him. Who else could it be?

“Hello?” I ask casually.

“Carrie?”

“Yes?”

“It’s George.”

“George,” I say, trying to keep the disappointment out of my voice.

“You got home okay?”

“Sure.”

“Well, I had a great time on Saturday night. And I was wondering if you’d like to get together again.”

I don’t know. But he’s asked too politely to refuse. And I don’t want to hurt his feelings. “Okay.”

“There’s a nice country inn between here and Castlebury. I thought maybe we could go next Saturday.”

“Sounds great.”

“I’ll pick you up around seven. We’ll have dinner at eight and I can get you home by eleven.”

We hang up and I go into the bathroom to examine my face. I have a sudden desire to radically alter my appearance. Maybe I should dye my hair pink and blue like Dorrit’s. Or turn it into a pixie cut. Or bleach it white blond. I pick up a lip pencil and begin outlining my lips. I fill in the middle with red lipstick and turn the corners of my mouth down. I draw two black tears on my cheeks and step back to check the results.

Not bad.

I take my sad-clown face into Dorrit’s room. Now she’s on the phone. I can tell by her side of the conversation that she’s comparing notes with one of her friends. She bangs down the receiver when she spots me.

“Well?” I ask.

“Well what?”

“What do you think about my makeup? I was thinking of wearing it to school.”

“Is that supposed to be some kind of comment about my hair?”

“How would you feel if I showed up at school tomorrow looking like this?”

“I wouldn’t care.”

“Bet you would.”

“Why are you being so mean?” Dorrit shouts.

“How am I being mean?” But she’s right. I am being mean. I’m in a mean, foul mood.

And it’s all because of Sebastian. Sometimes I think all the trouble in the world is caused by men. If there were no men, women would always be happy.

“C’mon, Dorrit. I was only kidding.”

Dorrit puts her hands on top of her head. “Does it really look that bad?” she whispers.

My sad-clown face no longer feels like a joke.

When my mother first got sick, Dorrit would ask me what was going to happen. I’d put on a smiley face because I read somewhere that if you smile, even if you’re feeling bad, the action of the muscles will trick your brain into thinking you’re happy. “Whatever happens, we’re all going to be fine,” I’d tell Dorrit.

“Promise?”

“Of course, Dorrit. You’ll see.”

“Someone’s here,” Missy calls out now. Dorrit and I look at each other, our little tiff forgotten.

We clatter down the stairs. There, in the kitchen, is Sebastian. He looks from my sad-clown face to Dorrit’s pink and blue hair. And slowly, he shakes his head.

“If you’re going to be around Bradshaws, you have to be prepared. There could be craziness. Anything might happen.”

“No kidding,” Sebastian says. He’s wearing a black leather jacket, the same one he was wearing at Tommy Brewster’s party and on the night we painted the barn — the night we first kissed.

“Do you always wear that jacket?” I ask as Sebastian downshifts on the curve leading to the highway.

“Don’t you like it? I got it when I lived in Rome.”

I suddenly feel like I’ve been swept under a wave. I’ve been to Florida and Texas and all around New England, but never to Europe. I don’t even have a passport. I sure wish I had one now, though, so I’d know how to deal with Sebastian. They should make passports for relationships.

A guy who’s lived in Rome. It sounds so romantic.

“What are you thinking?” Sebastian asks.

I’m thinking that you probably won’t like me because I’ve never been to Europe and I’m not sophisticated enough. “Have you ever been to Paris?” I ask.

“Sure,” he says. “Haven’t you?”

“Not really.”

“That sounds like being a little bit pregnant. You either have been or you haven’t.”

“I haven’t been there in person. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been there in my mind.”

He laughs. “You are a very strange girl.”

“Thank you.” I look out the window to hide my tiny smile. I don’t care if he thinks I’m strange. I’m just so happy to see him.

I don’t ask him why he hasn’t called. I don’t ask him where he’s been. When I found him in my kitchen, leaning against the counter like he belonged there, I pretended it was perfectly natural, not even a surprise. “Am I interrupting something?” he asked, like it wasn’t odd that he suddenly decided to show up.

“Depends on what you call interrupting.” My insides were filled with diamonds, suddenly illuminated by the sun.

“Do you want to go out?”

“Sure.” I ran upstairs and scrubbed off my clown face, knowing all the while I should have said no, or at least allowed myself to be convinced, because what girl agrees to go on a date spur of the moment like that? It sets a bad precedent, makes the guy think he can see you whenever he wants, treat you however he wants. But I didn’t have it in me to refuse. As I pulled on my boots, I wondered if I’d come to regret being so easy.

I’m not regretting it now, though. Who makes up those rules about dating, anyway? And why can’t I be exempt?

He puts his hand on my leg. Casually. Like we’ve been dating for a long time. If we were, I wonder if his hand on my leg would always produce the reaction I’m having now, which is a confused sort of divine giddiness. I decide it would. I can’t imagine ever not feeling like this when I’m with him.

I’m losing it.

“It’s not that great, you know,” he says.

“Huh?” I turn back to him, my happiness pitching into inexplicable panic.

“Europe,” he says.

“Oh,” I breathe. “Europe.”

“Two summers ago when I lived in Rome, I went all around — France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain — and when I got back here, I realized this place is just as beautiful.”

“Castlebury?” I gasp.

“It’s as beautiful as Switzerland,” he says.

Sebastian Kydd actually likes Castlebury? “But I always imagined you” — I falter — “living in New York. Or London. Or someplace exciting.”

He frowns. “You don’t know me that well.” And just as I’m about to expire from fear that I’ve insulted him, he adds, “But you will.

“In fact,” he continues, “since I figured we ought to get to know each other better, I’m taking you to see an art exhibit.”

“Ah,” I say, nodding. I don’t know a damn thing about art either. Why didn’t I take art history when I had the chance?

I’m a goner.

Sebastian will figure it out and dump me before we’ve even had a proper first date.

“Max Ernst,” he says. “He’s my favorite artist. Who’s yours?”

“Peter Max?” It’s the only name I can think of at the moment.

“You are funny,” he says, and laughs.

He takes me to the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford. I’ve been there a million times on field trips, holding the sticky hand of another little classmate so no one got lost. I hated the way we were marched around, scolded by a teacher’s aide who was always somebody’s mother. Where was Sebastian back then? I wonder as he takes my hand.

I look down at our intertwined fingers and see something that shocks me.

Sebastian Kydd bites his nails?

“Come on,” he says, pulling me along beside him. We stop in front of a painting of a boy and a girl on a marble bench on a fantasy lake in the mountains. Sebastian stands behind me, resting his head on top of mine and wrapping his arms around my shoulders. “Sometimes I wish I could go into that painting. Close my eyes and wake up there. I’d stay there forever.”

But what about me? screams a voice in my head. I suddenly don’t like being left out of his fantasy. “Wouldn’t you get bored?”

“Not if you were there with me.”

I just about fall over. Guys aren’t supposed to say these things. Or rather, they’re supposed to but never do. I mean, who actually says things like that?

A guy who is crazily, madly in love with you. A guy who sees how incredible and amazing you are, even though you’re not the cheerleader or even close to the prettiest girl in the school. A guy who thinks you’re beautiful, just the way you are.

“My parents are in Boston,” he says. “Want to go to my house?”

“Sure.” I figure I’d go just about anywhere with him.

I have this theory that you can tell everything about a person by their room, but in Sebastian’s case, it isn’t true. His room is more like a guestroom in an antique boardinghouse than an actual boy’s lair. There’s a black and red handmade quilt, and an old wooden captain’s wheel hangs on the wall. No posters, photographs, albums, baseballs — not even a dirty sock. I stare out the window at the view of a fading brown field and past that, the stark yellow brick of a convalescent home. I close my eyes and try to pretend I’m with Sebastian in the Max Ernst painting under an azure blue sky.

Now that I’m actually in his room — with him, for real — I’m a little uneasy.

Sebastian takes my hand and leads me to the bed. He puts his hands on either side of my face and kisses me.

I can barely breathe. Me — and Sebastian Kydd. It’s really happening.

After a while, he raises his head and looks at me. He’s so close I can see the tiny flecks of dark green around his irises. He’s so close I could count them if I tried.

“Hey,” he says. “You never asked why I didn’t call.”

“Was I supposed to?”

“Most girls would have.”

“Maybe I’m not most girls.” This sounds kind of arrogant but I’m certainly not going to tell him how I spent the last two weeks in an emotional panic, jumping every time the phone rang, giving him sidelong glances in class, promising myself I would never, ever do any bad thing ever again if he would only talk to me the way he had that night at the barn…and then hating myself for being so stupid and girlish about the whole thing.

“Did you think about me?” he asks slyly.

Oh boy. A trick question. If I say no, he’ll be insulted. If I say yes, I’ll sound pathetic.

“Maybe a little.”

“I thought about you.”

“Then why didn’t you call?” I ask playfully.

“I was afraid.”

“Of me?” I laugh, but he seems oddly sincere.

“I was worried that I could fall in love with you. And I don’t want to be in love with anyone right now.”

“Oh.” My heart drops to my stomach.

“Well?” he asks, running his finger along my jaw.

Aha. I smile. It’s only another one of his trick questions.

“Maybe you just haven’t met the right girl,” I murmur.

He brings his lips close to my ear. “I was hoping you’d say that.”