Sarah Dessen (14 page)

They’d only been in town for a couple of days when I’d first met Dexter at Don’s Motors: they were sleeping in the van then, in the city park, until they found the yellow house. Now it seemed they’d stick around until they were run out of town for owing money or small legal infractions (it had happened before) or just got bored. Everything was planned to be transitory: they boasted that they could pack up and be gone in an hour flat, already drawing a finger across the wrinkled map in the van’s glove box, seeking out a new destination.

So maybe that was what kept me from giving The Speech, this idea that his life was just as impermanent at this moment as mine. I didn’t want to be like other girls that were probably in other towns, listening to Truth Squad bootlegs and pining for Dexter Jones, born in Washington, D.C., a Pisces, lead singer, thrower of challenges, permanent address unknown. His history was as murky as mine was clear, with his dog seeming to be the only family in which he had interest. I was soon to be Remy Starr, formerly of Lakeview, now of Stanford, undecided major, leaning toward economics. We were only converging for a few weeks, fleeting. No need to follow protocol.

That night me, Chloe, Jess, and Lissa got to Bendo around nine. Truth Squad was already playing, and the crowd was thin but enthusiastic. I noted, then quickly made a point of not noting, that it was mostly made up of girls, a few of them crowded up close, next to the stage, holding their beers and swaying to the music.

The music, in fact, was a mix of covers and originals. The covers were, as Dexter put it, “a necessary evil”—required at weddings, and useful at clubs, at least at the beginning of sets, to prevent being beaned with beer caps and cigarette butts. (This, apparently, had happened as well.) But Dexter and Ted, who had started the band during their junior year of high school, preferred their original compositions, the biggest and most ambitious of which were the potato songs.

By the time we sat down, the band was finishing the last verse of “Gimme Three Steps” as the assembled girls clapped and whoo-whooed. Then there was a few seconds of practice chords, some conferring between Ted and Dexter, and then Dexter said, “We’re going to do an original song for you all now, an instant classic. Folks, this is ‘The Potato Song.’”

More cheering from the girls, one of whom—a buxom redhead with broad shoulders I recognized from the perpetual lines for the ladies’ room—moved closer to the stage, so that she was practically at Dexter’s feet. He smiled down at her, politely.

“I saw her in the produce section,”
he began,
“late last Saturday. It hadn’t been but seven days since she went away. . . .”

Another loud whoop, from someone who was, apparently, already fond of “The Potato Song.” Good thing, I thought. There were dozens where that came from.

“Once she’d loved my filet mignon, my carnivore inklings,”
Dexter continued,
“but now she was a vegan princess, living off of beans. She’d given up the cheese and bacon, sworn off Burger King, and when I wouldn’t do the same she gave me back my ring. I stood there by the romaine lettuce, feeling my heart pine”
—and here he put a hand over his chest, and looked mournful, to which the crowd cheered—
“wishing that this meatless beauty still would be all mine. She turned around to go to checkout, fifteen items or less. And I knew this was the last go-round, so this is what I said. . . .”

He stopped here, letting the music build, and John Miller drummed a bit faster, the beat picking up. I could see some people in the crowd already mouthing the words.

“Don’t you ever give me no rotten tomato, ’cause all I ever wanted was your sweet potato,”
Dexter sang.
“Mashed, whipped, creamed, smothered, chunked, and diced, anyway you fix it baby sure tastes nice.”

“This is a song?” Jess asked me, but Lissa was laughing now, clapping along.

“This is many songs,” I told her. “It’s an opus.”

“A what?” she said, but I didn’t even repeat it, because now the song was reaching its climax, which was basically a recitation of every possible kind of vegetable. The crowd was shouting things out, and Dexter was singing hard, winding up the song: when they finished, with a crashing of cymbals, the crowd burst into loud applause. Dexter leaned into the microphone, said they’d be back in a few minutes, and then got down off the stage, grabbing a plastic cup off a speaker as he did so. I watched as the redheaded girl walked up to him, zeroing in, effectively cutting off his path as he started across the floor.

“Ooh, Remy,” Chloe said, noticing this too, “your man has a groupie.”

“He’s not my man,” I said, taking a sip of my beer.

“Remy’s with the band,” Chloe told Jess, who snorted. “So much for that no-musicians rule. Next thing you know she’ll be on the bus and selling T-shirts in the parking lot, showing off her boobs to get in the stage door.”

“At least she has boobs to show,” Jess said.

“I have boobs,” Chloe said, pointing to her chest. “Just because they’re not weighing me down doesn’t mean they’re not substantial.”

“Okay, B cup,” Jess said, taking a sip of her drink.

“I have boobs!” Chloe said again, a bit too loudly—she’d already had a couple of minibottles at the Spot. “My boobs are great, goddammit. You know that? They’re fantastic! My boobs are
amazing.
”

“Chloe,” I said, but of course then it was too late. Not only were two guys standing nearby now completely absorbed in checking out her chest, but Dexter was sliding in beside me, a bemused look on his face. Chloe flushed red—rare for her—while Lissa patted her sympathetically on the shoulder.

“So it is true,” Dexter said finally. “Girls do talk about boobs when they’re in groups. I always thought so, but I never had proof.”

“Chloe was just making a point,” Lissa explained to him.

“Clearly,” Dexter said, and Chloe brushed a hand through her hair and turned her head, as if she was suddenly fascinated by the wall. “So anyway,” he said brightly, moving on, “‘The Potato Song’ really went over well, don’t you think?”

“I do,” I said, moving in closer as he slid his arm around my waist. That was the thing about Dexter: he wasn’t totally touchy-feely, like Jonathan had been, but he had these signature moves that I liked. The hand around my waist, for one, but then there was this thing that made me crazy, the way he cupped his fingers around the back of my neck, putting them just so, so that his thumb touched a pulse point. It was so hard to explain, but it gave me a chill, every time, almost like he was touching my heart.

I looked up and Chloe had her eye on me, vigilant as ever. I shook off these thoughts, quick, and finished my beer just as Ted came up.

“Nice work on that second verse,” was the first thing he said, and not nicely, but in a sarcastic, snarky way. “You know, if you butcher the words you do the song a disservice.”

“Butcher what words?” Dexter said.

Ted sighed, loudly. “It’s not that she was a vegan princess, living
off of
beans. It’s she’s a vegan princess, living
off
beans.”

Dexter just looked at him, completely nonplussed, as if he’d just given the weather report. Chloe said, “What’s the difference?”

“The entire world is the difference!” Ted snapped. “
Living off of beans
is proper English, which brings with it the connotation of higher society, accepted standards, and the status quo.
Living off beans,
however, is reminiscent of a more slang culture, realistic, and a lower class, which is indicative of both the speaker in the song and the music that accompanies it.”

“All this from one word?” Jess asked him.

“One word,” Ted replied, dead serious, “can change the whole world.”

There was a moment while we all considered this. Finally Lissa said to Chloe, loud enough for all of us to hear (she’d had a minibottle or two herself), “I bet he did really well on his SATs.”

“Shhh,” Chloe said, just as loudly.

“Ted,” Dexter said, “I hear what you’re saying. And I understand. Thanks for pointing out the distinction, and I won’t make the mistake again.”

Ted just stood there, blinking. “Okay,” he said, somewhat uneasily. “Good. Well. Uh, I’m gonna go smoke.”

“Sounds good,” Dexter said, and with that Ted walked away, cutting through the crowd toward the bar. A couple of girls standing by the door eyed him as he passed, nodding at each other. God, this band thing was sick. Some women had no shame.

“Very impressive,” I said to Dexter.

“I’ve had a lot of practice,” he explained. “You see, Ted is very passionate. And really, all he wants is to be heard. Hear him, nod, agree. Three steps. Easy cheesy.”

“Easy cheesy,” I repeated, and then he slid his hand up to my neck, pressing his fingers just so, and I got that weird feeling again. This time, it wasn’t so easy to shake, and as Dexter moved closer to me, kissing my forehead, I closed my eyes and wondered how deep I’d let this get before ducking out. Maybe it wouldn’t be the whole summer. Maybe I needed to derail it sooner, to prevent a real crash in the end.

“Paging Dexter,” a voice came from the front of the club. I looked up: it was John Miller, squinting in the house lights. “Paging Dexter. You are needed on aisle five for a price check.”

The redheaded girl was back at the stage, right up close. She turned her head and followed John Miller’s gaze, right to us. To me. And I looked right back at her, feeling possessive suddenly of something that I wasn’t even sure I should want to claim as mine.

“Gotta go,” Dexter said. Then he leaned into my ear and added, “Wait for me?”

“Maybe,” I said.

He laughed, as if this was a joke, and disappeared into the crowd. A few seconds later I watched him climb onstage, so lanky and clumsy: he tagged a speaker with one foot, sending it toppling, as he headed to the mike. One of his shoelaces, of course, was undone.

“Oh, man,” Chloe said. She was looking right at me, shaking her head, and I told myself she was wrong, so wrong, even as she spoke. “You’re a goner.”

“And?”

“And,” I said, “my mother doesn’t cook.”

He looked at me, waiting.

“At all. My mother doesn’t cook at all.”

“She must cook sometimes.”

“Nope.”

“Everyone can make scrambled eggs, Remy. It’s programmed into you at birth, the default setting. Like being able to swim and knowing not to mix pickles with oatmeal. You just
know.
”

“My mother,” I told him, pushing the cart farther up the aisle as he lagged along beside, taking long, loping steps, “doesn’t even like scrambled eggs. She only eats eggs Benedict.”

“Which is?” he said, stopping as he was momentarily distracted by a large plastic water gun that was displayed, right at kid’s eye level, in the middle of the cereal section.

“You don’t know what eggs Benedict is?”

“Should I?” he asked, picking up the water gun and pulling the trigger, which made a click-click-click sound. He pointed it around the corner, like a sniper, taking shelter behind a display of canned corn.

“It’s a way of making eggs that is really complicated and fancy and involves hollandaise sauce,” I told him. “And English muffins.”

“Ugh.” He made a face, then shuddered. “I
hate
English muffins.”

“What?”

“English muffins,” he said, putting the water gun back as we started walking again. “I can’t eat them. I can’t even think about them. In fact, we should stop talking about them right now.”

We paused in front of the spices: my mother wanted something called Asian Fish Sauce. I peered closely at all the bottles, already frustrated, while Dexter busied himself juggling some boxes of Sweet ’n Low. Shopping with him, as I’d discovered, was like having a toddler in tow. He was constantly distracted, grabbing at things, and we’d already taken on entirely too many impulse items, all of which I intended to rid the cart of at the checkout when he wasn’t looking.

“Do you mean to tell me,” I said, reaching up as I spotted the fish sauce, “that you can eat an entire jar of mayonnaise in one sitting but find English muffins, which are basically just bread, to be disgusting?”

“Ughhh.” He shuddered again, a full-body one this time, and put a hand on his stomach. “Icks-nay on the uffins-may. I’m serious.”

It was taking us forever. My mother’s list only had about fifteen things on it, but they were all specialty items: imported goat cheese, focaccia bread, an incredibly specific brand of olives in the red bottle, not the green. Plus there was the new grill she’d bought just for the occasion—the nicest one at the specialty hardware store, according to Chris, who didn’t keep her from overspending as I would have—plus the brand-new patio furniture (otherwise, where would we sit?), and my mother was spending a small fortune on what was supposed to be a simple Fourth of July barbecue.

This had been all her idea. She’d been working away at her book ever since she and Don had returned from the honeymoon, but a few days earlier she’d emerged midday with an inspiration: a real, all-American Fourth of July cookout with the family. Chris and Jennifer Anne should come, and Don’s secretary, Patty, who was single, poor thing, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if she hit it off with my mother’s decorator, Jorge, who we just had to have over to thank for all his hard work on the addition? And wouldn’t it be such a great way for everyone to meet my new beau (insert me cringing here) and christen the new patio and our wonderful, amazing, beautiful lives together as a blended family?

Oh, yes. It would. Of course.

“What?” Dexter said to me now, stepping in front of the cart, which I’d been pushing, apparently, faster and faster as these stress thoughts filled my head. It knocked him in the gut, forcing him backward, and he put his hands on it, pushing it back to me. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said, trying to get the cart going again. No luck. He wasn’t budging. “Why?”

“Because you just got this look on your face like your brain was caving in.”

“Nice,” I said. “Thanks ever so much.”

“And,” he continued, “you’re biting your lip. You only do that when you’re about to shift into superobsessive, what-if mode.”

I just looked at him. As if I was that easy to figure out, a puzzle that could be cracked in, how long had it been, two weeks? It was insulting.

“I’m fine,” I said coolly.

“Ah! The ice queen voice. Which means, of course, that I’m right.” He came around the cart, holding the edge, and stood behind me, putting his hands over mine. He started pushing and walking in his goofy way, forcing me to fall into his rhythm, which felt as awkward as it looked, like walking with a shoeful of marbles. “What if I embarrass you?” he said, as if posing a theory, like, say, quantum physics. “What if I break some heirloom family china? Or talk about your underwear?”

I glared at him, then pushed the cart harder, making him stumble. But he hung on, pulling me back against him, his fingers spreading across my stomach. Then he leaned down and whispered, right in my ear, “What if I throw down a challenge to Don, right there over dinner, daring him to eat that entire jar of sun-dried tomatoes and chase it with a stick of margarine? And what if ”—and here he gasped, dramatically—“oh my God, he
does
it?”

I covered my face with my hand, shaking my head. I hated it when he made me laugh when I didn’t want to: it seemed some huge loss of control, so unlike me, like the most glaring of character flaws.

“But you know,” he said, still in my ear, “that probably won’t happen.”

“I hate you,” I told him, and he kissed my neck, finally letting go of the cart.

“Not true,” he replied, and started down the aisle, already distracted by a huge display of Velveeta cheese in the dairy section. “Never true.”