Rhymes With Cupid (6 page)

Dina had finished with the paper guy and was holding the picture of Oreo, the panda, in the air to get Patrick’s attention. He gave her a little wave to let her know he’d be there in a sec.

“On the other hand, though,” I added quickly. “Some girls are really into the corny stuff.” I hoped he’d get my drift. “We just got this adorable one with puppies wearing floppy hats. Dina, for example, loves it.” That was an understatement. She’d practically melted into a puddle of goo the first time she’d seen it. “I can show it to you tomorrow. But right now you’d better go meet the bear,” I said.

“Right,” he answered, “and pay for this.” He slid the nonsploodgy pen out from behind his ear and turned to go.

“Hey!” I called, getting his attention. He stopped. “Do me a favor, okay? Don’t promise Dina you’ll go to her party unless you really mean it.”

“Why wouldn’t I mean it?” he asked.

“I don’t know.” I thought of the girl he wanted to buy a valentine for—his “not exactly girlfriend.” If it wasn’t Dina he was talking about, I didn’t want him leading her on. She was way too sensitive for that kind of thing. “It just means a lot to her, okay? So if you say you’re going, then show up.”

“Oh, I’ll be there,” he said. “Black-and-white snacks? Endangered species bingo? Are you kidding me? It’s gonna be awesome. Ever since you told me
all about it
yesterday, I’ve been counting down the days.”

I gave him my best apologetic look. “About that . . .” I started, but he seemed to have already let the subject drop.

“Don’t worry,” he continued. “I’m going. Wouldn’t miss it. It’s gonna be total panda-monium.” I rolled my eyes at his stupid joke, but there was something in his tone that put me at ease. There was no question in my mind: Patrick might be annoying, but he was mostly a decent guy. I could tell that he meant what he said.

Chapter 6

T
rue to his word, Patrick didn’t push me as hard in our driving lesson that afternoon. In fact, there was no parallel parking at all. He
did
make me drive one exit on the highway (something that made my pulse race even faster than parking), but even that wasn’t completely disastrous. I must have checked my blind spot ten times, but somehow I managed to merge before the dotted lines on the road ran out.

It also kind of helped that, as soon as we got in the car, Patrick took a CD out of the glove box and slid it into the player. “Surely Sarah,” he said as the music started. It was kind of mellow, with a lot of guitar and hardly any drums. “Do you know them?”

I shook my head. When I’d been dating Matt, he’d taken me to a few heavy metal concerts. The singers were always dressed in black. They wore silver chains hanging from their pockets, jumped up and down, and shouted a lot. For some reason, I’d felt like I had to pretend that I thought it was totally hardcore and awesome. But I was really more into classic rock. Stuff like Van Morrison and the Doors, which my uncle Tom (who played the bass in an amateur, old-guy rock band) had introduced me to. Besides that, the only thing I really listened to (and not by choice) was the soft rock, seventy-percent-Céline-Dion radio station my mom always had on.

“You should give them a try,” Patrick said, turning up the volume. “I think you’d really like them.” To my surprise, I
did
like them. The melody was pretty, and kind of catchy and, without even realizing what I was doing, I released my death grip on the steering wheel and started drumming my fingers along to the music. By the time we were done with the lesson, I was so relaxed that I actually made the left-hand turn onto our street (across two lanes of traffic) without any cars honking their horns at me from behind for taking too long.

It would have been a not-so-bad lesson all around, actually, if Patrick hadn’t wanted me to practice backing into his grandfather’s driveway. “It’s pretty easy. Line the rear bumper up with the edge of the driveway,” he instructed.

I’ll admit: I knew my wheels were crooked, but I was hungry. My mom always made a roast chicken after she grocery shopped on Saturdays, and I could practically taste it already, so I didn’t bother pulling forward to fix them. Twisting my body around to see over my shoulder, I hit the gas pedal and came into the driveway at a 45-degree angle, landing the front wheels in the garden between our houses and slamming on the brakes with the back bumper sitting about two feet from Patrick’s garage. It maybe wouldn’t have mattered, except for the crunching sound we heard as I backed up. An innocent shrub in Patrick’s side of the front garden had obviously paid the price for my impatience.

“Oh God,” I said, getting out of the car to examine the flattened collection of twigs. “I’m so sorry. I’ll buy your grandfather a new one as soon as the garden center opens, I promise.”

Patrick drew in a breath as he crouched down and gently lifted one of the crushed branches. He let it drop into the snow again. “Thanks, but I don’t think this one can be replaced. It’s a blossoming Japanese cherry bush. They’re kind of rare.”

I felt like I was going to cry. Leave it to me to run over the most rare and beautiful bush on the entire block. “Well, maybe I can order one off the internet, or something. Somebody must import them. I’ll find one. I swear.
I told you
I sucked at backing in.” I looked at the mangled mass of twigs again and sighed. This clearly wasn’t Patrick’s fault. “God, I’m an idiot. I knew I didn’t have the right angle. I should have pulled forward and straightened out the wheels, but I was in a rush. I’m really, really sorry.”

Patrick stood up, a smile breaking across his face as he laid a hand on my coat sleeve. “Elyse, relax. I was kidding,” he confessed. “But, by the way, you’re right. You just needed to pull forward a bit to straighten your wheels. Besides that, you were doing great. It’s not a blossoming Japanese cherry bush.” I froze, then pulled my arm away. “It’s some kind of super weed. We have them all over the backyard, too. They smell like feet and get these wicked spikes on them in the summer. You can run it over again if you want.”

I stared at him in shock. I couldn’t
believe
he’d done that to me. How was it possible for somebody to be so nice at times and so aggravating at others?

“Oh man,” he said, catching my look. “You’re mad at me again.” He pulled his hat down over his eyes, then pulled it up a little, peeking out at me, trying to be cute. “You hate me.
Again
. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just that, you looked so serious. I
had
to tease you. Okay.
I’m
the one who’s an idiot.”

I didn’t disagree.

“See you tomorrow,” I said instead, giving him a small, tight smile. We were at T-minus twelve days to my driving test. I needed him, and there was no use being mad all the time, even if he was mostly infuriating. “And, thanks for the lesson,” I added, rather generously I thought. “It wasn’t totally horrible.”

He nodded. “I’ll take that as a compliment, I guess. And, hey, next time, if you straighten the wheels, you’ll nail it. Then you’ll be, like, the Baryshnikov of backing in.”

I turned my back so he wouldn’t see me smiling for real and headed toward my house. “Hey, wait,” he said. I stopped, one foot deep in the snowbank between our driveways. “About this panda party. You going with anyone?”

It either said something about my total lack of interest in dating, or the fact that my nerves were still a little shot from the rare Japanese shrub incident . . . but I didn’t even understand the question. “Depends if I pass my road test. I’m still betting it’s a fifty-fifty chance I’ll fail—no offense to your teaching skills. I might get my mom to drive me.”

“No. I mean,
going with someone
. Like, your boyfriend?”

I actually laughed. “Uh-uh. I mean. No. I don’t have a boyfriend. I’m not going out with anyone. But I’m sure you can bring someone if you want.” I hesitated, knowing that if he showed up with some other girl it would ruin Dina’s entire Valentine’s Day. “But, then again, Dina will probably need a lot of help setting up and everything. If you didn’t bring a date, then maybe you could help out more.”

“Sure,” he said. “Yeah, no problem. I’m not going out with anyone either. And I’m good at pouring chips into bowls and putting up streamers and stuff.” He leaned down and picked up a mitten full of snow, formed it into a ball, and threw it softly against his grandfather’s garage door. “How come you don’t have a boyfriend?” he asked, reaching down to pick up some more snow. “Is your mom really strict or something?”

“No.” I wiggled my toes inside my boots to keep them warm. “No, trust me. My mom would love it if I was going out with someone. She thinks I study too much. I don’t date because . . .” I trailed off. I’d known Patrick all of three days. He didn’t need to hear the gory details of the Matt Love heartbreak. “It’s complicated,” I finished. “Or, no. Wait. It’s not complicated at all. Men are pigs.” I realized a second too late that I’d just insulted his entire half of our species. “High school guys, especially. I mean, not all of them. Obviously. But ninety-eight percent.”

“Is that a scientific fact?” he asked.

“Pretty much,” I answered.

“Well, what about the other two percent?”

“The other two percent are really hard to find.”

“They do exist though,” he countered.

“Right,” I said sarcastically, then I stepped out of the snowbank and lifted a branch of the totally smushed, totally not-rare spike-weed with the toe of my boot. “I’ll believe that when I actually meet one.”

I had Sunday off, so my mom and I spent the day unpacking the last of our boxes. It was nice—if a little weird—to see all of our books lined up on the built-in shelves, our photos on the new mantelpiece. Even though the house was smaller than our last house—with hardwood floors that creaked and groaned, cracking plaster, and old-fashioned windows that let in a draft—it was starting to seem more like home.

“Look at this,” my mom said, coming down the hallway. She was holding something curled in the palm of her hand. “I found it between the floorboards in the attic while I was putting the boxes away.” I set the towels I’d been folding on the linen closet shelf and went to see. It was a thin, tarnished chain with a tiny pendant on it. “I think it’s an opal,” my mom said, tipping the small, iridescent blue stone in the light. It was shaped like a heart. “Must have belonged to the old owners. But they didn’t leave a forwarding address. It’s yours now if you want it.” She opened my fingers and dropped the necklace into my hand. “There’s some silver polish under the sink.”

I didn’t usually wear jewelry—especially cheesy heart-shaped stuff—but there was something kind of sweet and simple about the necklace that made me not hate it. I dropped it into my pocket, planning to clean it up later.

My mom ducked into her bedroom and came out dragging the laundry hamper behind her. “I’m going to put in a load before I start painting the bathroom,” she said. “Do you have anything you want washed?”

“No,” I said. “Not really.” My mom started off down the hallway with the heavy hamper, and that’s when I noticed the dust in her hair from the attic; the tired slump of her shoulders. We’d mostly been in separate rooms so I wasn’t certain, but I couldn’t remember seeing her stop all day to eat anything, or to sit down. And I was positive she hadn’t gotten around to showering yet.

“Hey, Mom,” I said. “Why don’t you leave the bathroom? We can live with puke green for one more day.” It was hard to understand why anyone had picked that color for a bathroom in the first place. It made everyone who went in there look like they were just getting over the stomach flu. “We could rent a movie. Something brainless, like a romantic comedy. Make some popcorn. Take a break for tonight.”

“
You
want to rent a romantic comedy?” my mom asked, raising her eyebrows doubtfully. I didn’t want to, actually. I hated the whole “boy meets girl, they fall in love but—oh—they can’t possibly be together because of some terrible but really very easy-to-resolve misunderstanding” plots that always ended happily ever after with a passionate kiss and/or a wedding, but I knew they were my mom’s favorites so . . .

“Yeah. I do,” I said.

“Hang on.” She was grinning. “I’ll put this laundry in, run a brush through my hair, and grab the car keys. There’s a Video 411 at Carson Square.”

Big mistake. An hour later, I was in sappy story heartbreak hell. “Oh, I can’t look,” my mom said, covering her eyes. “He’s going to see the other girl from behind, wearing the same sweater, and think it’s his fiancée. And they made such a cute couple, too. Didn’t you think it was romantic when he had the airplane skywrite his marriage proposal?”

I thought it was kind of show-offy, actually, but my mom was obviously enjoying her movie, and I didn’t want to ruin it. I grabbed a handful of popcorn and shoved it into my mouth.

“Yeah, romantic,” I said not too convincingly while I continued to chew.

A buzzing sound came from the basement. “Oh, that’s the wash cycle finishing,” my mom said, hopping up. “Don’t pause it. I’ll be right back.” She came up the basement stairs five minutes later with the first load of clean laundry, which she folded while watching the female lead sob into a cappuccino with her best friend. Then, as soon as she finished that, my mother noticed that the mirror above the mantel was streaky. “I can clean it and watch at the same time,” she said, getting up for the Windex and paper towels. By the time the couple was getting to the bottom of the whole similar-sweaters/mistaken-identity thing via a shouting match in Central Park followed by (surprise) a romantic kiss that cut to (surprise) their wedding day, my mother had moved on to dusting. So much for getting her to take a break. I sighed and picked up a dust rag as the credits rolled. If I couldn’t beat her, my only option was to join her. We cleaned until ten that night and both fell into bed exhausted.

In a way, it was almost a relief to go back to school the next morning. At least in class I could sit down and have a quiet moment to myself.

But the quiet didn’t last long. Dina started shrieking the second I saw her in the hallway between math and chemistry. “Look!” she said, pulling a scrap of paper out of her pocket. “I got it. On Saturday. You’re making that cheesecake now. No excuses.
And
the pinwheel cookies. You can pay me out of your next check for the twenty-five-dollar donation to Panda Rescue, if you want. Or even the one after that. I was so nervous I thought I was going to pass out. I wanted to tell you, but you guys left together for your driving lesson. So I decided to wait until I saw you in person today, but it’s been killing me.” I took the piece of paper she was waving excitedly and examined the phone number written across it in crisp black ink. “I gave him my number, too. He said he’d call me tonight if he didn’t get a chance to see me at the store first.”

“Really?” I handed back the paper, a strange, heavy feeling filling my chest.

“Yeah. We’re going to talk more about the party.”

“Dina, that’s great!” I said, biting my lip. I gave my head a shake. Seriously? What was wrong with me? Like I’d told Patrick, I didn’t date; plus, even though he was a nice guy, Patrick got on my nerves every time he teased me (which was often); plus, I
wanted
him to like Dina. Everything was going completely according to plan for once. “That’s really, really awesome.”