Lola and the Boy Next Door

chapter nine

It’s embarrassing to admit, but whenever Max and I are on a date, I want to stay out longer, walk farther, talk louder, so more people will see us together. I want to run into every classmate who’s ever teased me for wearing pointed elf shoes or beaded moccasins, because I know they’ll take one look at Max with his dark eyebrows, inked arms, and bad attitude and know that I’m doing something right.

Usually, I’m bursting with pride. But as we trudge back to his new van, I don’t notice the face of anyone we pass. Because Cricket Bell asked me out. Cricket Bell asked me out. What am I supposed to do with that information?

Max unlocks the passenger-side door and holds it open for me. Neither of us has spoken since we left Amoeba. I mumble a thanks and get in. He climbs in the driver’s side, turns the key in the ignition, and then says, “I don’t like him.”

The flatness of his tone makes my stomach turn. “Cricket? Why?”

“I just don’t.”

I can’t reply. I don’t know what I’d say. He doesn’t break the silence again until we pass the Castro Theatre’s landmark neon sign, only blocks from my house. “Why didn’t you tell me about him?”

I look at my hands. “He’s not important.”

Max waits, jaw tense.

“He just hurt me, that’s all. It was a long time ago. I don’t like talking about him.”

He turns to me, struggling to stay calm. “He hurt you?”

I sink into my seat, wanting anything but this conversation. “No. Not like that. We used to be friends, and we had a falling-out, and now he’s back, and I’m running into him everywhere—”

“You’ve run into him before.” He’s staring at the road again. His knuckles tighten on the steering wheel.

“Just . . . in the neighborhood. He’s not important, okay, Max?”

“Seems like a glaring omission to me.”

I shake my head. “Cricket means nothing to me, I swear.”

“He wants to take you out every night, and you expect me to believe there’s nothing going on?”

“There’s not!”

The van jerks to a halt in front of my house, and Max pounds on the steering wheel. “Tell me the truth, Lola! Why can’t you tell me the truth for once?”

My eyes sting with tears. “I am telling the truth.”

He stares at me.

“I love you.” I’m getting desperate. He has to believe me. “I don’t love him, I don’t even like him! I love you.”

Max closes his eyes for what feels like an eternity. The muscles in his neck are tense and rigid. At last, they relax. He opens his eyes again. “I’m sorry. I love you, too.”

“And you believe me?” My voice is tiny.

He tilts my chin toward his and answers me with a kiss. His lips press hard against mine. I push back even harder against his. When we break apart, he looks deep into my eyes. “I believe you.”

Max speeds away in his van, the Misfits blasting in a musical cloud of dust behind him. I slump. So much for my day off.

“Who was that?”

I startle at the sharp voice behind me. And then I turn to face her for the first time in two years. Her dark hair is pulled back into a tight ponytail, and she’s wearing warm-up clothes.Yet she still manages to look more beautiful than I ever will.

“Hey, Calliope.”

She stares at me as if to say, Why haven’t you answered my question?

“That was my boyfriend.”

Calliope looks surprised. “Interesting,” she says, after a moment. And I can tell she is, in fact, interested. “Did my brother find you? He went out looking for you.”

“He did.” I speak the words cautiously. She’s waiting for more, but I’m not giving it to her. I don’t even know what more would be. “Nice seeing you again.” I move toward the stairs.

I’m halfway to my front door when she says, “You look different.”

“And you look the same.”

I shut the door, and Nathan is waiting on the other side. “You didn’t call.”

Oh, no.

He’s furious. “You were supposed to check in over an hour ago. I called five times, and it went straight to your voice mail. Where have you been?”

“I forgot. I’m sorry, Dad, I forgot.”

“Was that Max’s van? Did he get a new car?”

“You were WATCHING?”

“I was worried, Lola.”

“SO YOU DECIDED TO SPY ON ME?”

“Do you know why guys buy vans? Do you?”

“TO HOLD THEIR GUITARS AND DRUMS? To go on TOUR?” I storm past him, upstairs and into my bedroom.

My dad pounds up the stairs behind me. “This conversation isn’t over. We have an agreement when you go out with Max. You check in with us.”

“What do you think will happen? Why don’t you trust me?” I rip off the pink wig and throw it across my room. “I’m not getting drunk or doing drugs or breaking windows. I’m not her. I’m not Norah.”

I’ve taken it too far. At the mention of his sister, Nathan’s face grows so hurt and twisted that I know I’ve hit bull’s-eye. I brace for him to tear into me. Instead, he turns without a word. Which, somehow, is worse. But it’s his fault for punishing me for things that I haven’t done, for things SHE’S done.

How did this day get so awful? When did this happen?

Cricket.

His name explodes inside of me like cannon fire. I move toward our windows. His curtains are open. The bags he brought home are still on his floor, but there’s no sign of him. What am I supposed to say the next time we see each other? Why won’t he stop ruining my life?

Why does he have to ask me out now?

And Max knows about him. It shouldn’t matter, but it does. Max isn’t the type to keep bringing it up, but he is the type to hold on to it. Save it for when he needs it. Did he believe me when I told him that I love him? That I don’t even like Cricket?

Yes, he did.

And I’m in love with Max. So why don’t I know if the other half was a lie?

I’m not the only one with guy problems. Lindsey has been remarkably distracted this week. She didn’t notice when our math teacher misused the quadratic formula on Monday. Or when Marta Velazquez, the most popular girl in school, forgot to peel the size sticker off her jeans on Tuesday. Her leg said: 12 12 12 12 12. How could Lindsey not notice that when she sat behind it for an entire hour in American history?

It’s not until Thursday at lunch when Charlie Harrison-Ming walks past us and says, “Hi, Lindsey,” and she stutters her “Hey, Charlie” back, that I realize the issue. And then I realize they’re wearing the exact same red Chucks. Lindsey’s great at solving other people’s problems, but her own? Hopeless.

“You could say something about the shoes,” I suggest.

“You’re the clothes girl,” she says miserably. “I sound dumb talking about that stuff.”

Today I’m wearing cat-eye glasses and a cheetah-print dress I made last spring. I’ve pinned oversize red brooches like bullet wounds to the front of the dress, and I have bloodred ribbons tied up and down my arms and throughout my natural hair. I’m protesting big-game hunting in Africa.

“You never sound dumb,” I say. “And I’m not the one wearing his sneakers.”

“I told you, I don’t want to date.” But she doesn’t sound so convinced anymore.

“I’ll support you no matter what you choose.You know that, right?”

Lindsey plants her nose inside a hard-boiled detective novel, and our conversation is over. But she’s not reading it. She’s staring through the pages. The look gives me a familiar jolt—the expression on Cricket’s face the last time I saw him. He never came back home last weekend. His curtains are still open, and his bags are still on his floor. I’ve been strangely fascinated by the shoulder bag. It’s an old, brown leather satchel, the kind that should be worn by a university professor or a jungle explorer. I wonder what’s in it. Probably just a toothbrush and a change of underwear.

Still. It looks lonely. Even the mesh laundry bag is sad, only half full.

My phone vibrates once against my leg, through the backpack at my feet, signaling a text. Whoops. We’re supposed to have them turned off at school. But who’d text me now, anyway? I bend over to reach for it, and my glasses—a vintage pair that doesn’t fit well—clatter to the cement. They’ve got to be right beneath me, but I can’t see them. I can’t see anything. I hear the loud prattle of a mob of girls heading our way.

“Oh crud, oh crud, oh crud—”

Lindsey swipes up my glasses just before the girls hit. They buzz past, a swarm of perfume and laughter. “Did your vision get worse again?”

I slide them on, and the world comes back into focus. I frown. “Please. It gets worse every year. At this rate, I’ll be blind by twenty.”

She nods at my glasses. “And how many pairs do you own now?”

“Only three.” I wish they weren’t so expensive. I order them online for a discount, but they still eat up entire paychecks. My parents pay for my contacts, but I like variety. I’d prefer more variety. I peek at my phone, and I’m thrilled to find the text is from Max:

saw two fallen branches in the shape of a heart. thought of you.

I grin like an idiot.

“Who was it?” Lindsey asks.

“Max!” But then I catch the look on her face. I shrug and turn off my phone. “It’s nothing. He saw . . . something.”

She flips her novel back open. “Oh.”

And then I have it: the perfect solution to her problem. Charlie is totally interested in her, Lindsey just needs someone there to guide her through those first difficult steps. She needs me there. A double date! I’M A GENIUS! I’m . . . dating Max. Who would never agree to such a thing. I glance at my best friend, who is staring through her mystery novel again. Trying to solve her own mystery. I cradle my phone in my hands and keep my mouth shut.

And I feel so disloyal to her.

I have an early shift on Saturday. I closed last night. It feels like I never leave, like I should just get it over with and put my old Disney Princess sleeping bag underneath the seventh-floor concessions counter. When I arrive at the theater, I’m surprised to find St. Clair behind the box office. Anna isn’t scheduled to work today. I’m further surprised when I notice what he’s wearing.

“What’s with the uniform?” I ask.

He shrugs. It’s a slow, full-bodied shrug that makes him seem . . . more European. “One of the managers said I spent so much time here, I ought to be working. So I am.”

“Wait. You got a job here?”

“Yeah, but don’t tell anyone. It’s a secret.” He widens his eyes, joking.

“You. Working?” St. Clair never discusses it, but everyone knows his family is rolling in it. He doesn’t need to work. Nor does he strike me as someone who’d want to.

“You don’t think I can handle ripping tickets?”

“My exhausted feet say it’s a little more than that.”

St. Clair grins, and my heart skips a beat. He really IS attractive. What’s my problem? I must be more tired than I thought. And I’m not interested in Anna’s boyfriend—he’s too short, too cocky—but the fact that I’m noticing him bothers me. I dive into work on another floor to distract myself from increasingly uncomfortable thoughts. But St. Clair approaches me a few hours later, once we’ve calmed down from a rush. “My feet feel dandy,” he says. “In fact, I’m considering forming a dance troupe. Would you be interested?”

“Oh, bite me.” I’m still irritated. The six people who complained to me about our parking garage didn’t help the situation. “Seriously, why did you get a job?”

“Because I thought it would build character.” He hops onto my concessions counter. “Because all of my teeth have fallen out, and I can’t afford dentures. Because—”

“Fine. Whatever. Be a dillhole.”

“I should be doing something productive, shouldn’t I?” St. Clair hops back down and grabs a broom from the supply closet. “All right, all right. I’m saving for our future.”

“Our future?” I give him a coy smile. “I’m flattered, really, but that’s unnecessary.”

He pokes my back with the tip of the broom.

“And is Anna aware that you’re saving for your future together ?”

“Of course.” St. Clair sweeps the fallen popcorn around my ankles while I take someone’s Diet Coke–and–soft-pretzel order. When I’m done, he continues. “Do you think I’d get a job and not discuss it with her first?”

“No. But still, I thought . . . you know . . .” He looks confused, and I’m forced to finish the thought out loud. “I thought you had money.”

St. Clair bursts out laughing as if I’ve said something foolish. “My father has money. And I’d like to keep him out of my future.”

“That sounds . . . ominous.”

The European shrug again. This time, to change the subject. “And it’d be nice to have a bit of spending cash so that I could take her out. We tend to dine mainly in our dormitory cafeterias.” He frowns. “Come to think of it, we’ve always dined mainly in school cafeterias.”

“In Paris?”

“In Paris,” he confirms.

I sigh. “You have no idea how lucky you are.”

“Actually, I’m confident that I do.” St. Clair props the broom against the wall. “So why do you work? To support your unhealthy costuming habit? And what IS your hair about today?”

“I wanted to see what it’d look like in tiny buns. And then I added the feathers, because they looked like nests.” He’s right. That is why I work. Plus, my parents said when I turned sixteen I had to get a part-time job to learn about responsibility. So I did.

St. Clair examines my hair closer. “Spectacular.”

I back away. “Exactly how far into the future are you planning?”

“Far.”

The word hangs between us, loaded with strength and meaning. Max and I talk about running away to Los Angeles and starting a new life together—me designing elaborate costumes by day, him destroying rock clubs by night—but I get the sense that St. Clair’s conversations with Anna are more serious than the ones I have with Max. The thought makes me uneasy. I stare at St. Clair. He’s not that much older than me.

How can he be so confident?

“When it’s right, it’s simple,” he says to my unasked question. “Unlike your hair.”