He Loves Me Not (15 page)

“No!” I said emphatically.

“I kind of miss my camera,” said Ted. “There are a lot of good shots here. Somehow photography is always at the edge of my mind. I sort of see things in frames.”

“I know what you mean. I feel the chords coming for the modulation they’re about to do onstage. The drummer was rushing a little back there and I felt that.”

We talked music and photography and what we wanted to do with our lives. Ted wanted to go on to some really prominent paper, not the little punky (as he said)
Register.
Maybe the
Washington Post
or
The New York Times.
I told him about wanting Nashville and cutting records.

I met Ted’s friends—he had a lot of them; I envied him—and we ate and talked and danced with so many people. I really did feel like Cinderella at the ball, whirling every second.

At midnight we walked outside. Western High has a courtyard planted with slender saplings, dotted with cement benches and urns full of flowers. We stood in a corner and it was too dark to see each other; but then, we didn’t really need to see. Outside, away from it, the music was nothing but a throb echoing how we felt about each other.

I knew I would enjoy it when Ted put his arms around me, but I was not prepared for how
much
I would enjoy it.

They’re just arms, I told myself…but they weren’t. They were more: They made me feel hot and wild. When we kissed again Ted had stopped being his old comfortable self, and we were pressing fiercely against each other. Ted pushed my hair away from my neck and kissed my throat and for the first time in my life I really wanted the kisses to go on forever.

We stood back from each other, sort of gasping for breath, and I said shakily, “Oh, Ted.”

When we walked back in we were like strangers, not touching. It was as if we had gotten so close for a moment that we’d burned each other. It was scary.

T
ED TELEPHONED THE NEXT
day around noon. “You up yet?” he said.

“Mmmmm. Sort of.” Sunday, I thought. I had no plans for Sunday—no music, no homework, no nothing.

“Can I come over?”

“Sure. I’d love to see you.” I got up and brushed my teeth and slapped some cold water on my face. Last night had taken a lot out of me!

I could scarcely remember what we had done after we came back into the school at midnight. There had been noise and talk and wild dancing and lots of laughter. I had been so dizzy from thinking about Ted that a lot of it just hadn’t registered. We’d gone on to an after-prom supper by somebody’s pool and dragged ourselves home around three in the morning.

I stared at the hollow-eyed face in the mirror. How could anybody like her!

We had actually been too tired to kiss good night. In fact, I think both of us were too tired to w
ave
good night! I had staggered up the stairs and fallen asleep half-undressed, lying on top of the covers. Daddy’s breakfast-making noises had waked me up around seven and I’d finished undressing and slid between the sheets to sleep another few hours.

Lunch, I thought. It’s lunchtime. Have to make something for Ted to eat.

The June sunlight poured in our kitchen windows. It was so warm and pleasant there. My father had gone to get the morning papers at the drugstore. I sat listening to the refrigerator hum. How will I feel when Ted comes? I thought. Hot and on fire? Or relaxed and comfortable?

I began shaping hamburger patties.

When Ted rang the bell, my hands were all greasy from handling the meat. It actually upset me to keep him waiting the half-minute while I washed and dried my hands. Wow, I thought, laughing at myself, have I got it bad!

We hugged hello. Ted was his solid, ordinary self. He was wearing an old workshirt and corduroy pants with a tear below the knee. I was in jeans and an embroidered sweatshirt instead of an evening gown and satin slippers. There was no music and no atmosphere—and my heart flipped over just the way it had at the dance.

Oh, Ted, I thought. Is this just a crush or do I love you?

My father came in with the Sunday morning papers and we sat reading the comics together, laughing, and then we tried to work the crossword, and then I declaimed every line from the one article in there that Ted had written. (It was about a school board meeting where nothing happened, and we had the best time making every sentence dramatic and intense with hidden meaning!)

Is it Ted who is special? I thought. Or am I just so delighted not to be a musician at a keyboard that that’s what I’m in love with?

It was the last day of school.

The seniors had come back to get their report cards and certificates. They stood on the huge marble front steps of the school, looking so much older than the rest of us who would be coming back for another year. A group of boys and girls clustered around each other, hugging good-bye. They were going off to jobs and college. They kept crying out things like, “Oh, Jimmy, I may never see you again!” and, “Why did you have to decide to go to a college on the west coast, anyway?”

I may never see them again either, I thought. For a moment I hurt all over, thinking of lost chances to be friends with these people, thinking of the tricks of time and geography that separated people who had once shared everything from lockers to jokes.

One of the group was Mike MacBride.

He detached himself from the others and came over to me, smiling his quiet, elegant smile. I knew I had never met anybody as good-looking as Michael MacBride. He really was a perfect man.

Man,
I thought, half-shivering at the word. Yes, he had graduated and was no longer a high school boy, but a man.

A man, I thought with a pang, that I hardly know.

“How are you, Alison?”

“Fine. How are you?” Such dumb things to be saying to somebody you had admired your whole life. “Your picture in the yearbook was so good,” I managed.

“Thanks. Yours was very dramatic, sitting there at the keyboard as if you’re about to give a spectacular concert.”

I had laced two narrow braids of hair at my temples and pulled them gently to the back and tied them with a ribbon. Mike lifted one of the braids with his finger’ and stroked it. “You wrote in my yearbook that high school was ruined by not seeing any ball games,” said Mike. “Want to un-ruin your record and go with me to one next Saturday?”

Mike, whom I’d adored for years, asking me out. Giving me another chance to get to know him.

I’m not actually officially going with Ted, I thought. We haven’t made each other any promises. I could perfectly well go to a ball game with Mike. And Ted hadn’t asked me out for Saturday.

In the back of my mind I could hear Ted’s voice, see Ted’s face, feel Ted’s arms.

I swallowed. “Oh, Mike, you’re super to offer. I…I’d love to. But…but I’m dating a boy from Western and I can’t. Thank you anyway. I…it’s really nice of you.” My stutterings dwindled away.

Mike merely smiled at me again and the smile tore at me. Am I doing the right thing? I thought desperately.

Mike said gently, “Have a nice summer then, Alison,” and he walked off and I knew I would probably never see or hear from him again, what with his summer and college plans.

My chest hurt and the backs of my eyes prickled with tears. I walked home, because I had missed the last bus. The sun was streaming yellow, but I felt gray, bleak, and lonely.

A horn beeped twice behind me.

I recognized it. Ted! I thought, before I even turned, and my gray mood lifted. When the car pulled up next to me, I was grinning widely, and Ted was grinning back that crinkly, comforting smile—and I knew I had done the right thing.

“Where’ll we go, Alison?” said Ted, kissing me quick and moving back into traffic.

“I don’t care,” I told him.

And I didn’t. Anywhere he wanted to drive was fine with me, as long as we were together.

Caroline B. Cooney is the author of ninety books for teen readers, including the bestselling thriller
The Face on the Milk Carton
. Her books have won awards and nominations for more than one hundred state reading prizes. They are also on recommended-reading lists from the American Library Association, the New York Public Library, and more. Cooney is best known for her distinctive suspense novels and romances.

Born in 1947, in Geneva, New York, Cooney grew up in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where she was a library page at the Perrot Memorial Library and became a church organist before she could drive. Music and books have remained staples in her life.

Cooney has attended lots of colleges, picking up classes wherever she lives. Several years ago, she went to college to relearn her high school Latin and begin ancient Greek, and went to a total of four universities for those subjects alone!

Her sixth-grade teacher was a huge influence. Mr. Albert taught short story writing, and after his class, Cooney never stopped writing short stories. By the time she was twenty-five, she had written eight novels and countless short stories, none of which were ever published. Her ninth book,
Safe as the Grave
, a mystery for middle readers, became her first published book in 1979. Her real success began when her agent, Marilyn Marlow, introduced her to editors Ann Reit and Beverly Horowitz.

Cooney’s books often depict realistic family issues, even in the midst of dramatic adventures and plot twists. Her fondness for her characters comes through in her prose: “I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession. I love all of it, thinking up the plots, getting to know the kids in the story, their parents, backyards, pizza toppings.” Her fast-paced, plot-driven works explore themes of good and evil, love and hatred, right and wrong, and moral ambiguity.

Among her earliest published work is the Fog, Snow, and Fire trilogy (1989–1992), a series of young adult psychological thrillers set in a boarding school run by an evil, manipulative headmaster. In 1990, Cooney published the award-winning
The Face on the Milk Carton,
about a girl named Janie who recognizes herself as the missing child on the back of a milk carton. The series continued in
Whatever Happened to Janie?
(1993),
The Voice on the Radio
(1996), and
What Janie Found
(2000). The first two books in the Janie series were adapted for television in 1995. A fifth book,
Janie Face to Face
, will be released in 2013.

Cooney has three children and four grandchildren. She lives in South Carolina, and is currently researching a book about the children on the
Mayflower
.

The house in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where Cooney grew up. She recalls: “In the 1950s, we walked home from school, changed into our play clothes, and went outside to get our required fresh air. We played yard games, like Spud, Ghost, Cops and Robbers, and Hide and Seek. We ranged far afield and no parent supervised us or even asked where we were going. We led our own lives, whether we were exploring the woods behind our houses, wading in the creek at low tide, or roller skating in somebody’s cellar, going around and around the furnace!”

Cooney at age three.