The Boy I Love (2 page)

While we waited for the bus, Dad told me that the biologists and forest service people needed to decide whether they should move the alligator or let the species expand
its territory. No matter what they decided, I wasn't sure if I would ever walk down the road by myself again. And thanks to Mr. Alligator, I knew my days of swimming in the Cutty River were over for good, even if the mercury rose to two hundred degrees.

But guess what? When I got on the bus, it turned out I'd become a celebrity! It seemed everyone on the bus had heard about our alligator. Who knew so many kids watched the news? Even the people who hadn't seen me on TV knew about it. Practically everyone leaned out the open windows, trying to look down the river and spot the gator. When I sat down and the bus pulled away, about ten kids—most of them juniors and seniors—crowded around, asking me questions. I told them about how that loquat fell off the tree and then I saw the alligator floating in the water. I held my hands out wide to show them how big it was, wiggling my fingers to show it was even longer than my arms would go.

“God,” one girl said. “I would've run so fast!”

“That's what I did,” I told her. “My dad said I looked like the Bionic Woman coming up the driveway.” I didn't mention that I'd screamed for my mom the whole way.

During this conversation, I noticed one guy hanging over the seat a couple of rows closer to the driver, watching me. It kinda seemed like he was more interested in me than what I said about the alligator. Not knowing I would be getting so much attention today, I hadn't put much
effort into what I was wearing. I had on a sleeveless Fresh Produce sundress that essentially looked like an oversize T-shirt, and my hair was in a sloppy ponytail. It took a full minute for me to realize that it was Tim Greenlaw looking at me. Not only that, but Allie had been right: He was much taller and even cuter than he'd been at the Cutty River School. Tim Greenlaw looked like he'd spent the whole summer surfing at Wilbur Beach, with this super-blond hair that flopped across his forehead, and the perfect number of freckles. And he had a very smiley way about him, even when he wasn't smiling. That might not make any sense, but I think it had something to do with his eyes. For some reason he always just looked like a happy person, thinking secret happy thoughts.

Tim saw me staring back at him and waved. “Hey, Wren,” he said.

Because I am an idiot who never thinks before she speaks, I blurted out, “You remember me?”

He smiled, a slow and self-aware smile like he was used to turning girls into morons. “Well, sure,” he said. “I didn't get amnesia after Cutty River.” I think he felt bad for me when my face turned red, because he added, “Also, I saw you on the news last night.”

It was nice of him to try, but that didn't help. My cheeks burned all the way into Williamsport.

*   *   *

I got over my embarrassment pretty quick, though, because the rest of the morning went pretty much like the bus ride. Even the teachers stopped me in the hall to ask about the alligator. The story was also in the
Williamsport Sun-News
. By the time I met Allie for lunch at a picnic table outside, I was exhausted from all the attention.

“Well, hello to you, Miss Famous,” Allie said, scootching close. “Everybody's been talking about that alligator, and seeing you on TV. I told one girl you were my best friend, and I don't think she even believed me. She thought I was just trying to curry favor.” This last is the kind of expression Allie uses all the time, probably because her parents are professors.

Allie looked much more done up than usual. Yesterday had been just as much a letdown for her as it was for me. But unlike me, this hadn't kept her from making an effort. She wore this flouncy little skirt that made her legs look four miles long, a tank top, and a cool string of clear and purple beads, plus she'd straightened her hair. It wasn't like her to try so hard, and I could tell she was determined to get noticed. Allie was used to people paying lots of attention to her on account of her looks. For example, last July when she went to visit her grandmother in New York City, a modeling scout spotted her sifting through the Ralph Lauren sales rack at Bloomingdale's. The scout wanted her to make an appointment for test shots, but Allie's parents said no, which
was probably the biggest disappointment in Allie's entire life. Allie still carried that woman's business card with her everywhere she went, and I noticed her tapping her fingers on the side of her little purse, probably to remind herself it was there.

But for the first time since we'd been friends, it wasn't Allie's looks that finally got us attention. It was my alligator. I barely had a chance to tell her she looked great when two guys helped themselves to the bench on the other side of our table. One of them was from our American history class; his name was Devon Kelly. The other one was . . . Tim Greenlaw. Allie pinched my hand under the table.

“Hey,” Devon said. “It's Alligator Girl.”

You wouldn't think it, but between the two of us, Allie is the shy one. She waited for me to say something back to Devon. But seriously, how much more could I possibly say about an alligator? Mostly they just lie around in the water, not even bothering to swish their tails.

This kid Devon sounded like a Yankee, but I am half Yankee on my mother's side, so this did not bother me at all. Plus, he had this casual, friendly way about him, like everything was just a little bit of a joke. I could tell Allie was pretty thrilled that they'd come over, and I didn't want to blow this chance for her. Or myself, for that matter. Unfortunately, I couldn't think of anything cleverer to say than, “I'm Wren, and this is my friend Allie.”

Allie smiled at Tim. She is very exotic-looking, with glossy dark hair and gigantic gray eyes shaped like Cleopatra's. Devon stared straight at her when he said, “Well, hello there, Allie and Wren.”

I noted how he gave Allie top billing, which was pretty much par for the course. Devon asked me a couple of questions about the TV crew, then told us he was having a party on Saturday night. “It's on the beach by my house,” he said. The invitation was for both of us, but he was still staring at Allie. This didn't bother me as I loved Ry, my guitar teacher. Meanwhile, Allie ignored Devon's staring. She kept zeroing right in on Tim, who kind of smiled back at her in a polite way.

“So you'll come?” Devon said.

“Sure,” Allie finally piped up. “You bet. We'll come, for sure.”

Devon and Tim got up and sauntered toward the gym, while Allie and I cleared our food away. “Well, well,” she said, as we tossed out the garbage from our lunch—which in both cases included most of the lunch itself. “It looks like there are all kinds of benefits to having an alligator in your backyard.” She had the happiest little smile on her face, and even though it was nearly a hundred degrees out, I could tell in her head she was already wearing Tim's football jacket.

As we walked back toward school, Allie had a little
bounce in her step. We were definitely having a better second day than first. Even though I wasn't at all sure that my parents would let me go to Devon's, I wasn't going to spoil Allie's excitement by telling her.

Allie and I have been
best friends since kindergarten. She used to live out in the boondocks like us, but last year her parents finally got sick of the commute to the university, so they moved to Williamsport. Allie never had to tell them about wanting to be a cheerleader in order to switch schools, not like me with the acting. When we were kids, Allie won tons of gymnastics awards, but she got so tall she couldn't do it competitively anymore. Cheerleading seemed like a good new sport for her, but being intellectuals and feminists, her parents did not exactly approve. Not that they would put their foot down about it. They just weren't particularly encouraging.

As for my family, we are stuck in Leeville for good. Back when they were first married, my mom turned Dad's old family plantation into the North Carolina Thoroughbred Retirement Center. The original pillared grand house had
burned down during the Civil War, so we live in the regular old farmhouse that was built to replace it. All the other buildings except the stables were torn down years ago. My mom rescues horses that would otherwise be headed to the glue factory, rehabilitates them, and finds them new homes. That last part is theoretical, because Mom is so picky about where they go. Usually the horses stay with us for a long time, if not forever, and we generally have about fifteen of them. This whole setup might sound like a whole lot of fun to you, and I guess it was before the economy collapsed. But taking care of horses is pretty expensive, what with feed and vet bills, so even before that, my parents always sweated bullets over their bills. Mom could never bear to turn one single horse away, even though the farm was refinanced to the hilt.

However, living on a horse farm does have plenty of items in the plus column, especially my favorite horse, Pandora. Whenever anyone asks what I would take with me to a desert island (and people ask this more often than you might think), I always say Pandora. She is beautiful and gentle and fast, and has been here with us since longer back than I can remember. There is no amount of horse manure I wouldn't shovel, or tack I wouldn't polish, as long as I could ride Pandora every day of my life.

*   *   *

After my second day at Williamsport High, my mom was waiting for me in her station wagon when I got off the
bus. Aunt Holly hopped out of the passenger seat to give me a hug.

“I didn't know you were coming,” I told her.

“Well, who else was going to protect you from that gator?” Holly said, and I laughed. She laughed too, but there was a wistful note to it. Holly was my dad's younger sister, and for the last few months she always looked sad, like she might cry any minute, ever since she called off her wedding.

Holly got back into the car, and I climbed into the rear seat with Daisy, who had to sniff and lick at me to make sure no damage had been done while I'd been gone. Our family nickname for Daisy is Hellhound. She weighs almost a hundred pounds, is pitch black, and has the deepest, most ferocious bark in the world. Mom saved Daisy from doggy death row. She landed there because she bit a FedEx delivery man. You'd think a mother might have been cautious about adopting a dog that had a history of biting, but no. The truth is my mother is the kind of person who should have had ten kids, but instead she had me and three miscarriages. She says that after the last miscarriage, she realized Dad and I were all she really needed in this world, and I almost never point out that she also seems to need a lot of expensive animals whose owners want to toss them away.

Mom started the car and turned back up our driveway. Last night Dad kept saying that alligators were usually not aggressive toward humans. Mom and I had not taken a
whole lot of comfort in the word “usually.” After all, alligators
usually
didn't travel northwest of Williamsport. Clearly this reptile was what my dad would call an outlier, and I would not be walking up or down our driveway anytime soon. But at that moment the main thing on my mind was how to get my parents to let me go to that party on Saturday night.

“Mom,” I said, leaning forward from the backseat. “Do you remember a boy named Tim Greenlaw from the Cutty River School?”

“It doesn't ring a bell,” she said, and of course it wouldn't. We had never done anything social with him, and I generally did not discuss my crushes with my parents.

“He was a grade ahead of us,” I told her. “Allie and I had lunch with him today, he's at Williamsport now too.”

“That's nice,” Mom said.

“Anyway,” I hurried on, like if I spoke fast enough she would say yes without thinking, “he has a friend who lives at Wilbur Beach who's having a party Saturday night, and Allie and me are invited. Isn't that great?”

Holly nodded, like she agreed it was great. She looks like my dad and me in that she has brown hair and brown eyes. But lately my dad had started wearing glasses, and Holly can still see just fine. Plus, her face is completely covered with square, pale freckles, which personally I find very wonderful. I'm a big freckle fan, and I have always found
it disappointing not to have any myself. Holly is a hospital chaplain at a medical center in Raleigh, so her whole job is comforting sick people.

“Now wait a minute,” Mom said. “Who exactly is throwing this party? Do we know his parents? Will parents even be there?”

“And so it begins,” Holly said, laughing a little. “We always knew this day was coming, Elizabeth.”

Mom sighed and stopped the car. We got out and started walking to the house. “I don't know, Wren,” Mom said. “In Wilbur Beach? Your dad's not going to like it.”

My heart began to sink. Wilbur Beach is the richest town around here, and these days my parents have a grudge against anyone who doesn't spend every waking moment worrying about money. Whenever my mom sees a Mercedes or BMW on the road, her face gets very dark.

But Holly, oh thank you, Holly. She said, “Come on, Elizabeth, let her go. What's the harm? Let her go.”

Mom didn't argue. I knew she wouldn't. Everybody had been treating Holly with kid gloves since the end of her engagement. See, James Galveston was a doctor in the burn unit at her hospital in Raleigh, but he grew up here in Leeville. He was supersmart and super nice. As far as I'm concerned, he and Holly have been together forever; they've known each other since high school. Back then the Cutty River School didn't even exist, so come to think of
it, they'd probably started dating at Williamsport High when Holly was a freshman and James was a junior. Their whole lives, everybody always knew that they would end up together. They were just one of those perfect couples: both of them sweet, nice people who wanted to devote their lives to helping others. But last year James's father died, which inspired his sister to start researching their family, and she had found out that their ancestors had been slaves. Being that they were African American, this was not a big shock. But then . . . it turned out that their great-great-great-grandmother had . . . I can hardly stand to say it. But she belonged to our family.
Belonged to our family
. It sounds so weird and awful. It
is
so weird and awful. Just thinking it gives me this sharp and terrible pain in my stomach, and I have to push it out of my head very quickly.