Prince Charming (21 page)

“I have a few announcements to make here, before we get started.” He cleared his throat, and picked up a piece of loose-leaf paper from the lectern. “We just got an email that funeral arrangements for Evan Carpenter will be on Wednesday afternoon, at one p.m. at the First Episcopalian Church here in Robert Hill. Visitation is Tuesday from four to eight p.m. at Truitt Funeral Home. Any students wishing to attend the funeral will need to bring a written excuse from their parents.” He cleared his throat again. “Now. Does anyone have any questions, or comments?”

“Did they say anything more about the police investigation?” someone asked from the back of the room.

“No.” Mr. Langston gripped the sides of the lectern, and his bony knuckles popped out from his chalky white skin.

“Just can’t believe he died,” I heard someone say across the room.

“Look, I never had the pleasure of teaching Mr. Carpenter, but I know a lot of you were friends of his, or looked up to him. He certainly appeared to have a bright future playing football for the Buckeyes.” He paused, and then dramatically shook his head. “It’s a shame that will never happen for him. A big shame. And on that note, I need to remind you that the AP test is Friday. Five days. I know for many of you this will be long week, so I suggest you use the rest of this hour to study for the test.”

I stifled my groan, as the rest of my classmates opened up their study guides. Mr. Langston’s right about this; we were all about to have a long-ass week. I had the AP Calculus test on Wednesday morning, the AP English Language test on Friday morning, AP Biology the following Monday, AP German on the fifteenth, and I would follow that up with European History on the same afternoon.

I needed to get to work, but before I did, I glanced over at Laine. She still didn’t look up from her notebook, but I saw her wipe away a few tears.

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W
EDNESDAY, MAY 8TH

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“D
AVID,” MOM CALLED from just inside the garage. “Are you and the boys ready?”

“We’re coming,” he yelled from somewhere upstairs.

She clicked the key fob on her Mercedes SUV and turned her sad, sympathetic eyes to me. “So. Are you ready to do this, honey?”

“Yeah, Mom, I am.” I leaned up against the garage wall, and put my foot at a ninety-degree angle against it. With my hands tucked into my gray pants, I studied her. She had the strangest expression, as if someone she’d loved and cared for had died, not someone she knew from Friday Night Football, the local news, and gossip shared around the dinner table.

“How long do you and the boys want to stay at the visitation, Geoff?”

I shrugged my answer because in truth, I didn’t want to go at all. I didn’t want to pay my respects, or honor a person I knew to be a fraud, and an asshole. Evan Carpenter had never been nice to me, not even in kindergarten, and on top of that he’d been even worse to Laine. He didn’t deserve anything, but at that moment I was stuck. The whole senior class and most of the rest of the school planned to attend the services. Much of the larger community would be at Truitt Funeral Home that night, too, and David liked to keep up the pretense of prominence.

We had to go, no matter how much it pained me.

“Well, I guess while we wait for them, and um . . . we’ll just get in the car,” Mom said, motioning for me to follow her.

Once the engine started and she turned her attention to the radio, I decided I might as well admit my misgivings. “Do you really want to go to this?” I asked her.

“Of course I want to go.” She looked at me through the rear view mirror. A frown split her smooth forehead into equal parts. “Why do you ask?”

“Evan wasn’t all that great of a person, Mom.”

“He wasn’t?” She didn’t look up from the console, but her hand stopped punching buttons.

“No. He wasn’t.” I paused. “Listen, can I tell you something?”

“Sure you can, honey.”

“Evan was a horrible person. Mean. A jerk.” I gulped. “He also got so drunk at prom that night that he slapped Laine Phillips, right after she and he became Prom Queen and King.”

Her head snapped as she looked over at me, her attention no longer on whatever bothered her on the console. “Slapped her?”

“Yep.”

“Are you—are you sure—”

“I’m not lying.” I interjected, my annoyance growing.

“In front of everyone?”

“Not in front of everyone, Mom.” I leaned my head back against the leather headrest as the memories of that night pushed against my head. “Just me. Well, I think I was the only one who actually saw it. You know, they were off in a corner having an argument, and she was angry—”

“Wait. Laine Phillips.” Mom twisted her lips to one side of her face, deep in thought. “Tell me which one that is, again? Is she that cute girl?”

“She’s the one that’s a model.” I closed my eyes, still leaning against the seat. The back of my head began throbbing, and the dull ache snaked down my neck. “Blonde. Tall. Skinny. Really smart.” I stopped there, knowing better than to list all of Laine’s better qualities, because Mom didn’t know anything about my infatuation with her.

“Oh, yes.” Mom sighed. “I remember her now. She went to one of the Catholic schools—St. Margaret’s.”

“Until seventh grade.” I turned my head to her, and opened one eye. “Do you have any Tylenol? My head is killing me.”

She opened up the console between the seats, and handed me the small bottle she kept in the car. “So he hit her?”

“Yep.” I swallowed a couple of the pills. The way this conversation was going, I would need the whole bottle.

She shook her head. “Maybe it was a misunderstanding.”

“No way,” I said, the headache spreading through the back of my head. “There was no mistaking it. He meant to hit her.”

“So sad.” She clicked her tongue. “We have to go to the funeral honey. He’s dead.” Then she checked her watch. “Do you think they’ll come down soon?”

“Why don’t you honk the horn?” I said, after I popped two more pills in my mouth. “Listen. It’s more than that with Laine. She’s not just a kid in my class. We’ve been—we’re—I don’t know?”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve been sort of dating on and off, I guess.” I left the part out about how I almost lost my virginity just days ago to Laine. Mom didn’t need to know that. Ever. “In between her dating Evan on and off.”

“Did she go to prom with Evan?”

“Yeah,” I said bitterly. “She did. And now I just don’t know what to do, like if I should try to talk to her about what happened, and then there is the whole slapping—”

Mom’s eyes moved from mine to the garage door by the kitchen. I followed her in time to see David, Blake and Bruce walk through the opening door. “Let’s talk about this later, honey. After the visitation.”

D
avid had to park the SUV in the First Presbyterian Church parking lot, three blocks from Truitt Funeral Home’s brick mansion. Everyone in Robert Hill, it seemed, had turned out for the visitation.

Black bunting rimmed the mansion’s wide pillars. A long black limo and a black Hearse waited outside the front doors, and visitors who came to pay their respects wound their way down the circular driveway to the sidewalk. Everyone wore black, and many people concealed their faces behind large black sunglasses. We might as well have been at the funeral for a Hollywood celebrity.

The five of us didn’t speak to each other as we waited in line. David nodded at people as they walked by, and my mom occasionally gave people a sad smile, but for the most part we stayed silent.

To pass the time, I counted the people in line around us, and got to five hundred by the time we walked to the front door to sign the condolence book. It gave me a nice distraction from beating myself up over the fact that I hadn’t felt sad about Evan’s death for even a minute.

“There are a lot of people here,” I muttered to my mom after I signed my name. “A lot.”

“Did you expect anything less, Geoff?” She gave me one of those sideways looks that meant she wanted me to shut up, as she took my hand and led me into the main viewing room.

Low lights and large stands of flowers in the Heritage High School colors of red, maroon, and yellow fanned out from Evan’s open casket coffin, which lay at the end of a long row. His family sat in a group of chairs off to the side of the casket. I sucked in my breath when I saw Laine sitting among them, and then I cursed myself because my dick got hard.

What kind of an asshole got hard at a funeral?

I stepped out of line for a moment, shoved my hands in my pants pockets, and forced myself to think about frogs. Frogs weren’t sexy; Frogs didn’t want to have sex with me, and I didn’t want to have sex with frogs. Frogs had beady eyes, and slimy backs. They didn’t wear sexy black peplum dresses with black netting across the chest and shoulders to funerals. They didn’t smell like bubblegum mixed with flowers and salt. And they didn’t toss me sad smiles, have long blonde hair or wear red lipstick.

As we neared the casket, a woman passed out tissues. I handed mine to Mom because she started crying right when we walked in the front door of the funeral home. She was sentimental like that.

“I hate these things,” Mom said, under her breath. “Reminds me of your dad.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean.” Of course, Dad’s visitation and funeral didn’t have a fifth of the number of people this one did. He’d been such a quiet person, with few friends, but a good reputation. He said he’d liked it better that way, and that being a good person with a giving heart while on earth went further than being a famous one.

“We should say something to his parents,” Mom whispered to me, as Blake and Bruce walked with David up to the front of the room. They stood in a row in front of the while casket, and for a moment they reminded me of three male Russian nesting dolls. I had to stop myself from laughing out loud, because it was not a good look for them.

“Okay,” I said, because once again it was the proper thing to do. I stepped forward to view Evan’s body with Mom. He lay on a while pillow, and had his eyes closed. He wore a blue suit, and someone had nestled his Heritage and Ohio State football jerseys next to his shoulder. He didn’t look like he had been in an accident at all.

After a few seconds, Mom pulled me over to the family. Evan’s mother, a stocky woman with a severe blonde bob, stood up from her chair. “Thank you for coming,” she said, in a voice tortured by years of cigarette smoking. She held onto the back of the metal chair in front of her with one hand, and shook my mom’s with the other.

“Of course,” Mom replied, in a warm but still quiet voice. “We really are so sorry for you loss.”

That was the kind of thing people said when someone died. I’d heard it hundreds of times after my dad passed away, and the words didn’t mean anything to me. I’m sure it didn’t mean anything to Evan’s mother, either, but she still hugged my mom.

“I hate that this happened,” I said, as Mrs. Carpenter turned to embrace me. Over her shoulder, though, I locked eyes with Laine. She gave me another sad smile, and all I felt was confused. She hadn’t responded to any of the text messages, Facebook messages, or direct messages on Twitter I had sent her since Sunday. And, I admit, I’d sent more than a few.

I’d sent about twenty-five.

Now, seeing her in the funeral home, things had turned even more awkward. My brain swam in a mix of memories about the night we almost had sex, anger at Evan, confusion about her reaction to his death, sadness over the whole thing, and the desire to stand up in front of everyone and tell them the only girl I cared about was Laine Phillips. She didn’t belong in the middle of all this, playing grieving girlfriend to a guy who’d disrespected and mistreated her. She belonged with someone like me; someone who would never hurt her like that.

Laine stood up after Mrs. Carpenter had released me, and hugged my mother. Their embrace lasted longer than it should have, and Laine hung onto my mother like a life raft. “Thank you for coming,” she said in a muffled voice against Mom’s shoulder.

When she turned to me, Laine had a blank look on her face, just like she used to before this all happened. Anyone at this visitation who looked over and saw us would have thought we didn’t know each other. The blank expression and dullness behind her eyes wore on me, until I couldn’t stand it any longer. Who cared where we were?

Time, once again, to man up.

“I’m worried about you,” I said to her in a low voice. I grabbed her arm and gently pulled her closer to me so that only she could hear my next few words. “Really worried.”

She glanced at the rest of the receiving line. “Not . . . not here, Geoff. I can’t . . . I’m just . . .”

“I know you loved Evan.” My hand tightened on her arm, but I held my voice steady. “But I have to talk to you. You can’t ignore me anymore.”

“I know.” She bit her lip. “Tomorrow. Come over tomorrow.” She sounded nervous and unsteady, and my heart quickened in my chest. At least, in the middle of all this confusion, I’d get to see her again.

“What time?”

“After seven,” she whispered. “That should work. After seven.”

“Perfect,” I replied.