100 Days (10 page)

“Cool.”

“What's cool, that our yard is a sacrilege?”

“Yeah,” Boone says. “Cool for me, I mean.” He grins, and I half wish I could see what his eyes look like when he does it. I can't, though. Between the too-long bangs and the shiner, he may as well be wearing a mask, like Jason Voorhees or Leatherface.

“There's stuff that needs to be repaired all over the house, too,” I add, glancing away so I don't seem overly interested in his eyes. “Little stuff, mainly, but my dad still needs help with it all. God, I swear, our house feels like it's falling down sometimes. And my parents are completely oblivious. It's embarrassing.”

Boone doesn't say anything, so I don't elaborate further. I don't tell him, for instance, about the decency talk I had with Mom and Dad just this morning when I asked if they would pay Boone to do some work in our yard. Basically, it amounted to:
Don't you guys
dare
be naked if he comes over here.

Sadly, this particular fear of mine is not unfounded. Once, during freshman year, I came home from school to find my father standing in front of an easel that had been set up in the middle of the living room. In the corner by the window, bathed in natural light, my mother sat posed with only a barely there, oversize silk scarf covering the parts of her body I didn't want to even think about, much less see. Clearly, she was trying to relive her college days when she earned money by posing as an artist's model for fine arts classes. And, apparently, my father thought he was Botticelli or something.

“Mom! Dad!” I yelled before turning back around and lunging for the door. “God!”

“What?” Dad asked, shrugging his innocence, paintbrush in hand. “We thought you weren't going to be home until later.”

“It's just a human body, Moira,” Mom said.

This was followed, predictably, by my dad saying, “A lovely human body, I might add.”

“God!”
I shouted again. I stomped as loudly as I could out onto the front porch and slammed the door behind me.

“You can come over this weekend, if it works for you,” I tell Boone now, cringing a little inside.

“How about tomorrow at ten?”

I nod and start to walk away, but then stop and turn back around to face him. “Is that idiot quarterback going to get in trouble for this?”

Boone looks at me and smiles. “Yeah, right. The school offered to send him out to my house to rake leaves.”

I can't help but laugh. “Well,” I say, “if you just happen to have a bunch of rocks lying around out there, I know someone who's in possession of a mean slingshot.”

 

24

BOONE

DAY 77: APRIL 9

A grizzled Labrador retriever ambles up and whacks its tail against my jeans the moment I set foot on the Watkinses' property that Saturday.

“That's Bingo,” Moira tells me. “The love of my life.” She blushes a little when she says it. At least her neck does. With all the makeup she's wearing, I can't tell if the color reaches her face or not.

“Hey, boy.” I reach down to rub the dog's ears before following Moira inside the house. Her mom is in the kitchen. She looks like a smaller, nongoth version of Moira. “I remember you,” she says, giving me a hug. “It's been a long time. How's your mom?”

“She's good,” I lie.

“Enough with the twenty questions,” Moira says. She leads me to the garage, where a man's legs are sticking out from under an old Volkswagen Vanagon. “Dad, this is Boone.” She nudges her dad's foot with her own, and he comes rolling out on his mechanic's board.

“Boone,” he says, smiling up at me. “It's been a long time. Last I saw you was—”

“You have grease all over your face,” Moira says, interrupting him.

“What's going on with the van?” I ask, trying to make things less awkward.

“I think it's the transmission. I never was much good with this kind of stuff.”

“I could have a look at it, if you want.”

“Would you?”

*   *   *

I spend a couple of hours working under the van and figuring out what parts Moira's dad needs to order. Afterward, I'm standing outside the back door blotting sweat from my forehead with a bandana. A month ago, I didn't think winter was ever going to release its grip. Now the weather's warming up fast.

Moira comes outside, too. She holds a glass of lemonade out toward me.

“Wow,” I say, taking it from her hands and chugging it down in about half a second.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing. It's just that this seems very … girly of you. Bringing a glass of lemonade to the menfolk.” I mean it as a joke, but as soon as the words are out of my mouth, I start wishing I wasn't such an imbecile. What am I thinking, flirting so casually with her?

“How dare you.” Moira makes a fist and holds it up between us. Thank God she's smiling. “Call me scary. Call me a fat hippo. But use the word
girly
and you're dead meat.”

I frown. “You're not fat.”

Moira holds my gaze seriously enough to make it a challenge. “Yes, I am,” she says, taking the empty glass from my hand.

“Not to me. Real women have curves.”

“Ha. According to you, maybe.”

“Well, who says otherwise?”

Moira's laughing now. “I don't know. Our entire society?”

“Maybe our entire society is totally screwed up. Have you ever considered that?”

Moira doesn't say anything. Her expression is unreadable.

“And nearly anyone would feel big next to Agnes, by the way. Think about how
I
feel next to her.”

She doesn't have a comeback for that, either. We stand there for a while, until it's time for me to leave. Surprisingly, the silence between us isn't as uncomfortable as I would have expected.

 

25

MOIRA

DAY 76: APRIL 10

I stand in front of the mirror in my bathroom and pull my shirt tight around my waist and hips, squinting my eyes to try to see what Boone was talking about. “Real women,” he said.

I'd have a nice waist if it wasn't for an extra roll or two, but my hips are enormous. Sometimes I wear loose shirts to conceal the matching humongosity of my boobs, but those shirts hang straight down in front, hiding my waist.

Sighing, I let my arms drop back to my sides and turn away from the mirror. No matter what I do, I'm always going to end up looking like the Michelin Man.

 

26

AGNES

DAY 75: APRIL 11

I hold up a big pair of wool trousers. They're men's pants, but rose colored. I can't imagine who would have worn them. Still, the fabric is so nice. It seems like nobody uses this kind of fine gabardine anymore. “I'm thinking of trying to incorporate these into my dress,” I say. “For the trim, maybe?”

“I wouldn't,” Moira says, biting off the end of a thread. “It's a cool idea. But it'll shrink in the wash like a son of a … gun and throw the whole outfit out of whack.”

“Yeah, you're probably right. I could boil it first, though.”

“I guess. But is it really worth your time?”

I don't have an answer for this. How am I supposed to know what is and isn't worth my time? “Ooh, look!” I say.

“What?”

I pull a scarf from the pile of clothes Mrs. Deene dumped on the table at the start of lunch. (“Old stuff from my closet,” she told us. “Do with it whatever you want.”) It's a pale, bluish gray chiffon wisp of a thing, hardly more substantial than air.

“Hey, I like that,” Moira says, reaching out her hand.

I jerk the scarf away and waggle a finger at her. “Ah, ah, ah. Finders keepers.”

“Okay, just let me check out the rolled edges, then.”

I hand it over.

“Ha!” Moira cackles. “It's mine now. Bwahahahahahaha!”

“Traitor!”

“Yes, but I'm a traitor with a pretty new scarf.” Moira wraps it around her neck. It's not very long, so it really only wraps once. It's so soft, though. Softer than the kinds of things she normally wears.

“Wow,” I tell her. “That looks really pretty on you.”

Moira unwinds it and frowns. “Not my color.”

“What are you talking about? It's perfect. Sets off your eyes.”

“Nah.” She hands it back.

“Mine!” I cry, victorious. “I used reverse psychology on you, and it worked!”

“Scoundrel,” Moira says.

“Indeed.”

“This isn't over, you know.”

I make a show of snuggling the scarf close to my heart, and Moira growls. Then she smiles to let me know she's not serious. She gets up, collects our lunch trash, and walks over to the waste basket on her way toward the door. “I'll be right back,” she says. “I have to pee.” She draws out the word
pee
in a singsongy falsetto voice to let me know it's an emergency. Her head is turned to the side when she says it, and she almost walks right smack into Boone, who's standing in the doorway of the home ec room with his hands in his pockets.

“Hey,” Moira says. Her neck turns pink. We all know Boone heard her, but his face doesn't give anything away.

“So, my truck's broke down,” he tells us.

“Bummer.”

“Yeah. The real bummer is that I need to finish serving my yard work sentence today.” He looks at me when he says it. “Weaver's going to fry my ass if I don't have my signed completion slip to him by tomorrow morning.”

“Fried ass,” Moira repeats. “What a lovely image.”

“We can give you a ride,” I tell him. “Can't we, Em?”

She nods. “My car's parked behind the gym. It's the gray El Camino with polka—”

“I know which one it is,” he says.

*   *   *

Mom isn't home yet when we pull up to the curb in front of my house. I show Boone to the garage, where we keep the rake and big plastic trash bags.

“I'm not going to shoot you again, if that's what you're thinking,” I say as he unspools a bag from its roll.

Boone and Moira exchange a quick glance. “It's not what I'm thinking,” he assures me.

“I was trying to be funny, but it was wrong, and I'm sorry.”

“Don't worry about it.”

Boone works for a few hours while Moira and I clean off a couple of lawn chairs and try to get some studying done in the late afternoon April sunshine. It's a glorious day. Boone's quiet the whole time, like he was in the car on the way over here. Every time I look up, he's getting rid of dead foliage from last fall, or mulching around new plants that are popping up in random places around the yard. There's no rhyme or reason to Mom's gardening style, but the flowers always look pretty come summer anyway. When Boone puts the rake away, I survey the yard. I can't remember it ever looking so tidy. “How were you planning to get home?” I ask him.

“Beats me. Hitch, I guess.”

Moira laughs. “Out to Beacon Valley? Yeah, right. Who's going to want to drive all the way out there?”

“I don't know,” Boone says. There's a tinge of irritation in his voice. “I've hitchhiked plenty. What does it matter?”

“It's, like, ten miles.”

“Seven, actually.”

As if that makes a difference,
I think. In the silence that follows, I nudge Moira.

“You should just let me drive you,” she says, taking the hint.

“Yeah,” I agree.

Boone seems to know better than to argue with the two of us, but he doesn't look exactly happy.

I know what to do to seal the deal and get him to just accept the stupid ride already. “I'd worry so much less knowing you were getting a ride with Moira rather than with some potential serial killer,” I tell him.

He looks at me.

“I'm serious. Worrying is really bad for my condition. Really bad.” I let out a sad little cough to show how the stress is already making me sicker.

It works. Boone rolls his eyes a little, but then he follows Moira out to El-C and gets in.

 

27

MOIRA

DAY 74: APRIL 12

I open my eyes, but I don't get up. Instead, I stay where I am under the covers and allow images from yesterday to scroll through my mind. There's no way my brain is going to let me think about this stuff once I'm fully awake. It will just confuse me all over again, and I don't have time for that. I have a day to get through.

I probably should have just let Boone hitchhike home like he wanted to, but I wasn't able to shake the feeling that I still owed him somehow for saving Agnes. It rankled me, that pressure of an unpaid debt. Then Agnes played the terminally ill kid card, and that was that. The sun was going down as we drove out to his house in the sticks. El-C fishtailed a little whenever we went around turns in the dirt road. Swirls of red dust rose up behind us.

Boone was quiet for most of the drive. At one point, he unlatched the lid of the big cassette case I keep on the floor of the passenger side and looked through the tapes, most of which I found at the used music store in town: Fields of the Nephilim, Sisters of Mercy, Suicidal Tendencies, and so on.

“Wow,” he said. “Dark stuff.”

I considered it a compliment. “What do you listen to?”

Boone shrugged. “I don't know. I like old stuff, too. Just different old stuff. Social D, Hank Junior, Johnny Cash.”

I thought about this for a minute. “Social Distortion is okay,” I said finally. “And maybe Johnny Cash. I like how he wore black all the time.”

“What do you have against Bocephus?”

When I glanced over at him he was grinning, but I still couldn't really see his eyes. “Who?”

“That's Hank Junior's nickname.”

“Ah,” I said. I tried not to smile back at him, and I succeeded. An awkward silence followed. To break it, I asked, “How do you even drive on this road when it snows?”