Doug gave up, slammed the passenger door, and righted himself on his crutches, hopping a little. "What'cha doing?" he asked me in his sweet, sarcastic voice, pretending he hadn't seen the tape measure.
"Getting some fresh air," I said. The wind at my back flipped my ponytail over my head. I brushed it away. "I've been hanging out at Keke and Lila's house. They have, like, fifteen or sixteen siblings."
"We have three," Keke called from the payload as the pickup drove past to retrieve Lila.
"Seems like more," I called back. I stared after the retreating pickup, and Keke knocking on the window to bother Officer Fox, so I wouldn't have to meet Doug's gaze. I should thank him for insisting Keke take me home with her last night. I didn't thank him because all I did lately was thank him and apologize to him and hope he wasn't ruining my mother's life behind my back. I wished we could go back to the way we were at the beginning of the school year, when we avoided each other. Before he called me a spoiled brat at the game. Before he knew I liked to snuggle in the grass. Before I knew what he smelled like.
Because now the wind swirled around us both and wound me up in his scent of chlorine and ocean.
He reached for my mouth. I didn't know what he intended, so I willed myself to stay still and not make a big deal out of his hand moving in slow motion toward me, beside my cheek, almost out of my line of sight. With his pinky he brushed a strand of my hair from the corner of my mouth where the wind had blown it into my lip gloss. His fingertip trailed fire across that tender corner.
And then he put his hand down and smirked at what he'd done to me. At least, that's how it seemed. He stood in the hot air and the cool wind, taller than ever on his crutches, and looked me up and down with his distant green eyes. "So, a little hair of the dog?"
"Where?" I glanced around. Now that Keke and Lila weren't guarding the road, a car could fly by and cream whatever wandered into its path.
Doug whistled and passed his hand in front of my eyes to get my attention. "Hair of the dog. Bloody Mary after you've spent the night drinking. As in, revisiting something helps you get over it."
My eyes followed the path of his hands down as he grabbed the handle of his crutch before it fell over. Did he mean we'd spent the night drinking? I didn't drink. Doug didn't drink while he was in training. Mike did drink. However, he hadn't been drinking before the wreck, or Doug would have been driving Mike's Miata.
Doug's fingers caressed the worn wooden handle of the secondhand crutch. My gaze trailed up his big hand, his wide wrist, his strong forearm meant for pulling his body weight through the water rather than maneuvering himself on land. Slowly I realized he was speaking metaphorically.
And I lashed out. "I do not need to get over you," I said more forcefully than I'd intended, because I was lying. Oh God, I was lying again, and now I was confused, but this had to stop. "I am happy dating Brandon. I didn't know you would drive by while I was here. How could I know that?"
He stared at me without blinking, and tilted his head ever so slightly to one side. "I meant you're getting over the wreck."
"Right!" I turned toward the skid marks in the road to hide my red face. He would use this to embarrass me in public. Embarrassing me in private was bad enough. Zoey likes me after she swore she didn't. Zoey has been fantasizing about my knee on her thigh.
Miraculously, instead of pressing the subject, he gave me a way out. "That's where my brother and I have been, looking at the Bug and the Miata in the junkyard." He waved past me, inland. Then he glanced pointedly at my pocket. "I didn't take a tape measure, though."
I watched past his shoulder, way down the road. In the distance, Lila set down her bucket and poster board, put her hands on her hips, and argued with Officer Fox inside the truck. I willed her to stop arguing and come back to save me from this conversation and this beautiful, snarky, way-too-perceptive boy. The cool breeze caught the poster board and blew it down the shoulder. Lila abandoned her act with Officer Fox and galloped after the poster. No help there.
"I . . ." I said, thinking hard.
Doug raised one black eyebrow at me.
"I'mmmmm still a little confused about what happened. What time did we wreck?"
The suspicious look he gave me let me know I shouldn't have asked this. "About two thirty," he said.
I'd made him suspicious with this question and the answer didn't even give me any information. When I'd lived with my mom, every curfew had been negotiated in detail, taking into account the activity, location, and company associated with said revelry (and sometimes I typed out a contract in legalese like this just to poke fun at her).
But my dad didn't care what time I came in. When we'd wrecked at two thirty in the morning, I could have been headed south for home. Or I could have been headed north to Brandon's house, or elsewhere.
Where? Officer Fox had gathered Lila and cruised back in our direction. I could slip one more question in and then escape quickly if Doug's eyebrow rose again. I brushed past him and walked along one of the skid marks. I asked over my shoulder, "So, I was driving along like this? And then, all of a sudden--" I threw out my arms. "Deer drama! Right?" I turned around to grin at him.
Uh-oh. His eyebrow was up. "Y don't remember which direction you were driving?"
So I'd aroused his suspicion again. At least I knew now that I'd been driving in the other direction, north toward Brandon's.
Or did I? Maybe Doug wasn't telling me I was wrong. He was only saying it was a weird question for me to ask. I was getting dangerously close to admitting I didn't remember the whole night.
The pickup reached us and pulled to a stop, bringing the cool breeze with it. I shut my eyes against the sand in my face.
Lila sobbed from the payload, "Now we'll never collect enough money to fund the swim team trip to District!"
"There's no one here for you to bullshit," Doug told her.
"Oh, right." She and Keke climbed out and ran for the Datsun, hampered by the breeze against their poster boards and their buckets.
I beat them to it. Before Keke could slip into the driver's seat, I pushed the seat forward and dove into the back, which smelled strongly of used bubble gum. I owed Doug some kind of good-bye, but maybe the surprise escape would take his mind off my blond questions.
No such luck. He crutched forward and knocked on Keke's window until she cranked it down. (This was a very old Datsun.) "Zoey," he said, angling his head to look past Keke and the headrest, straight at me. "Y don't remember which direction you were driving?"
I leaned between Keke's seat and Lila's, out of his line of sight, and hissed, "Go, Keke, before Officer Fox arrests us."
"I thought you said this was legal!" Lila whined. "Y mom is a lawyer!"
our
"It might be just a little illegal," I admitted. Keke was already spinning the tires in the soft sand of the shoulder to make our getaway.
Doug had wisely maneuvered out of our path. As Keke sped away and she and Lila both bitched at me for getting them in trouble and wondered aloud whether the wreck had given me brain damage, I stared out the back window, between the old-fashioned defrost stripes, at Doug watching us go.
If he asked me again at school tomorrow, I would deny everything while maintaining a friendly distance so he didn't get pissed at me and give away anything about what we'd done together after the wreck. Or about my mom.
In the meantime, I would go to my father's house and take a long swim in the ocean. Stroking against the tide would restore my strength and help me think. As I planned my next step in finding out what had happened to me, I would swim away from shore, and my dad's house on the beach would grow smaller and more distant. Just like Doug leaning on his crutches in the middle of the country highway, smaller and smaller until his green eyes disappeared. 8 "Zoey!" the three chicks on my relay team screeched at the same time Coach bellowed, "Commander!" Then I hit the water.
I knew I'd jumped the block almost before I jumped it. Starts were one of the key parts of relay practice. Swimming fast and growing stronger were important, but I also had to make sure I didn't dive into the water before the person ahead of me touched the block I was standing on. If I did, I let down all three teammates in the relay with me.
I surfaced quickly so the team would have less time to talk trash about me. I caught Stephanie in the middle of, "Not again !" Then I swam to the edge of the pool and held on to the side, waiting for Coach's rant.
He didn't rant or even kneel down to give me a talking-to. He barked, "Dry off, Commander," like that was the end of our discussion.
"Coach!" I shrieked. "I'm fine. I won't do it again."
"Y ou've done it three times in a row," Stephanie pointed out. Swim caps and goggles didn't enhance anyone's natural beauty, but I thought Stephanie looked particularly googly-eyed and sea-monsterish as I hoisted myself out of the pool and slapped to the bleachers to drip-dry in the afternoon sun.
Swim practice started the last period of school and extended an hour and a half after school was over. I'd done fine at first. And my head wasn't bothering me. As a precautionary measure I'd taken painkillers all day--only two every four hours, exactly the recommended dosage. Maybe Coach would let me back in the water after a few minutes.
Because I could focus now. I'd finally accepted that Doug wasn't coming to swim practice. He'd skipped English this morning. I'd spent a long hour in fear that he wouldn't come to school at all, I would stay in the dark about our accident for another day, and something had gone wrong with his leg. Gangrene.
Then he showed up in biology after going to the doctor to get the splint off and a cast put on. Y couldn't miss him when he entered the classroom. He
ou was enveloped by boys hooting, the weak ones capitalizing on a strong boy's downfall. The thought crossed my mind that he would punch them for this, and I wondered if it crossed theirs. I wasn't sure why he had attacked that guy outside history class and had gotten suspended for it two years ago.
I didn't cross the room and talk to him myself. After sleeping with him on the bus Saturday, I didn't want to give anyone reason to tell Brandon something was going on between Doug and me. Besides, now that Doug was back at school, I knew I could talk to him during swim practice without so many people around.
And now he'd gone missing. When I'd taken roll at the beginning of swim practice, Gabriel had told me Doug was in Ms. Northam's class making up the English test he'd missed this morning. That accounted for his absence last period. It didn't explain why he still wasn't here after school.
I shivered in the cool autumn breeze that had settled in despite today's hot sun. We would need to put up the massive dome over the pool this week if the wind kept up. Then I sat on the bleachers, pulled my phone out of my backpack--as always, checked first for a message from my mother--and pressed Doug's number. Cringed in anticipation of his voice mail announcement, which is what I usually got when I called him about a change of swim team plans. Sighed with relief when his phone rang. Tensed again after the third unanswered ring, hoping he was okay, revisiting thoughts of gangrene. The rest of the swim team splashed back and forth across the pool in front of me. Doug should be in the pool with them.
The wreck hadn't been my fault. He'd said that himself. So why did I feel guilty?
"Zoey!" he yelled through the phone, and I jumped. "Are you okay?"
"Well, yeah," I said. "Did you think I wasn't?" He sounded like he was as worried about me as I was about him. But that was impossible. Doug didn't care that much about anybody .
Static sounded on the phone as he let out a long breath. "I didn't expect you to call me."
"I wanted to make sure you're okay," I said. "Y ou're not at swim practice."
"Oh, swim practice ." The bittersweet sarcasm was back. "Y know me. Normally nothing could keep me from supporting my teammates. But my dad
ou got a charter for the afternoon, and I need the money. I guess I haven't totally given up on the idea of going to college someday. Hold on." There was more static, and his muffled shout at someone with his hand over the phone. Then he was back. "I need to go. We're trying to land a marlin."
"Do you plan to avoid swim practice for the rest of the season because you don't want us to see how upset you are?"
In the background, a man shouted, "Doug! A little help!"
When Doug didn't answer me, I rushed on before he hung up on me. "Y ou're overreacting. Yeah, six weeks in a cast is a setback, but you were so far ahead already. College scouts know that you had an injury and that you'll recover. Y need to come to practice and show Coach how committed you are
ou instead of catching marlins and feeling sorry for yourself. Break your leg, take one day off, fine. Now get back to work." I got more excited and louder than I'd intended. Coach looked over at me from the edge of the pool and gave me a thumbs-up.
"Doug!" shouted the man on the boat.
Without putting his hand over the phone this time, Doug hollered back at the man, "What the fuck? I'm on crutches." Then he lowered his voice for me. "I guess I was waiting for somebody to tell me that. Coach hasn't told me that."
"How could he tell you? Y didn't come to practice!"
Silence fell, except for the calls of seagulls through the phone, circling Doug's boat. Or maybe they were the seagulls swooping above the school. I couldn't tell.