The Ordinary Life of Emily P. Bates (7 page)

              “No. You can mess with Finn all you like, but you’re not getting your claws into me.”

              “But-”

              “But nothing! It isn’t really even a date! We’re going to watch a movie in his living room with his parents probably
in the same room
. You need to lighten up.”

              “Come on, Shannon,” Finn said, taking his sister by the arm when he saw that she wasn’t ready to give up. “Just let sleeping dogs lie, all right?”

              She let him drag her off in the direction of their house. “You call me after you get home!” she called.

              “Get a life!”

Ethan called over at my place around seven, just as Aaron and I were finishing up the
dishes
. “You ready?” he asked.

“Yeah, just give me a few minutes to finish up a couple of things.”

“Cool. You remember how to get to my house? Or do I need to come pick you up?”

“No, no. I remember. I’ll be over in a few.”

“Okay.”

I hung up the phone with a shaking hand.

“Who was that?” Mom asked, leaning against the counter.

“Nobody.”

“It’s hardly ‘nobody’ if you’re going to ‘be over in a few’.”

“Oooh! Emily’s got a date!” Aaron taunted. “Finally! I thought you were going to be thirty before someone finally took pity on you.”

“Shut up!”

“Yes, do shut up, son,” Mom said. “Just for that you can finish the kitchen alone.”

“Fine. Em’s already done all the work anyway.”

“Thanks Mom!” I called, darting towards the front door.

“Hold on!” she called after me. “I still want to know where you’re going and when you’ll be back. You know the rules.”

“I’m going to Ethan’s place, and I don’t know. Now can I go?”

“Ha!” Aaron barked. “It’s not even a date! You study with him every day after school. You’re going to have a study group, aren’t you?”

“You’re such a jerk, Aaron!” I wrenched open the front door, terrified that he was right. What was I thinking? How could I set myself up for what would turn out to be, as my moronic older brother had so succinctly put it, nothing more than a study group?

“Home by ten, you hear?” Mom called after me.

I waved a hasty response and dashed across the gravel drive to Oscar.

The entire ten minute drive to Ethan’s house was spent in agony. My gut was twisting itself into a giant soft pretzel, and no matter how many times I checked my hair in the mirror or yelled out loud at myself to calm down, it didn’t straighten itself back out. It only got worse when Ethan answered the door with his usual charming smile.

“Hey, you did remember.”

“I told you I did.” My hands were jammed into my back pockets in an attempt to keep them from fidgeting with anything. I had been to Ethan’s house a couple of times before to study. Both times, though, Shannon or Margo had been with me. Tonight felt very different than those other nights. Tonight I felt like the spotlight was directly on me. At least I wasn’t giggling like an idiot the way I usually did when I was anxious about something.

“Are your parents here?” I asked, noting how quiet the big house really was when I stepped inside. I had met Dr. Cavanaugh and his wife once before. He seemed friendly enough, but he really didn’t have much to say to me at all. He, like his son, was that weird shade of brown that was difficult to place as a race, so I still had no clue where Ethan’s family came from. And I still hadn’t had the nerve to ask.

“Naw,” he shrugged. “They went to see a movie. Nancy had to practically drag Dad out of the house.”

“Oh.” Suddenly my stomach rolled over even harder. I grasped around for something to say to distract myself from the fact that Ethan’s perfect brown eyes were drilling into my face. “So, ah. What’s the plan?”

It was like I’d stuck him with a pin. “Oh, right.” He disappeared into the kitchen. After just a couple of seconds he reappeared with a large bowl of popcorn and an armful of soda cans. “The plan is popcorn, soda, and a riotously hilarious movie.”

I stared at him, not sure of what sort of response he was looking for. His smile began to fade. He gestured towards the couch with the popcorn bowl when I didn’t move. “May I escort you to the sofa?” he asked.

I laughed at his quizzical expression, and his face melted into the usual grin.

“That’s not necessary, thanks.”

He dropped off the snacks on the coffee table and went over to the media system under the large flat panel TV that hung over the red brick fireplace. After a few minutes of fiddling w
ith it
, he joined me on the couch juggling three different remote controls. “There,” he muttered to himself, pressing a button on one remote. The TV clicked on. “And there,” he pressed three buttons on another remote. There was more clicking coming from the surround sound, but nothing spectacular happened. “And there.”

He settled into the couch next to me. I had elected to sit on the far right side of the couch, a fairly neutral position, but Ethan sprawled out in the very middle. He was far closer to me than I had expected, which gave me license to hope that maybe Aaron had been mistaken about the innocence of our night.

After all, his parents weren’t even home.

“That was the most complicated thing I’ve ever witnessed,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said as the main screen popped up, He pointed the third remote at the TV and hit play. “I’ve been trying to convince Dad to get one of those huge universal remotes, but they cost like seventy bucks and he doesn’t think it’s worth it.”

“It’s not.”

He shrugged and picked up the popcorn bowl. “Popcorn?”

I smiled and took a handful, though I wasn’t hungry at all. Mom had been experimenting in the kitchen to celebrate two whole nausea-free days and had come up with an amazing twist on Chicken Kiev. All three of us had eaten almost enough to feed five people.

I can’t say that I really paid much attention to the movie at all. I remember there was a professor demonstrating sex to a class of impassive college students and a very fat man exploded all over the other guests at a fancy restaurant. None of it really left much of an impression on me. Ethan would burst out laughing and look over at me fairly frequently, obviously checking to see if I was laughing, too. Of course I did, if only to let him think I was enjoying his movie.

Every so often Ethan or I shifted our weight or changed positions, and each time we managed to inch a little closer to each other. By the time the fat man exploded, our thighs were touching. He had his arm resting on the back of the couch behind me, and even though it wasn’t anywhere close to my shoulders, I still felt the electricity flowing from his arm to the back of my neck.

It was extremely difficult to keep from fidgeting with my cast, which was itching more and more with every second that I tried not to think about it. In the end I just jammed it under my right arm and tried to pay attention to the movie.

Far sooner than I would have liked, the movie was over and Ethan was removing his arm from the back of the couch. He took the empty bowl and soda cans to the kitchen. “So,” he called from the next room. “What did you think?”

I didn’t get it. “It was funny!”

“I told you.” He returned to the living room and plopped back down into the center of the sofa, a good foot and half between us now.

You sure did. “Yeah.”

“So which skit did you like the best?”

There were skits? “The exploding man was really gross.”

He laughed and got up to turn off the equipment. “I know. That’s my favorite one too. I told you you’d like it.”

“I know you did.” I watched his face carefully as he worked, and continued to do so without thinking about it when he returned to the couch.

“What?” he asked when he saw that I was staring.

“Nothing,” I replied, but still could not look away.

“Well it’s got to be something.”

“No, I’m just trying to figure out what you are.”

“What I am?” His voice rose a few decibels. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“No, what you are racially.” I blushed. “I guess I could have put that better.”

But he was suddenly laughing so hard that the entire couch was shaking.

“It’s not that funny!” I cried.

“No, no! It’s just that I was expecting you to say something completely different.”

“Like what?”

He shrugged, still smiling broadly. “I don’t know. But when someone questions
what you are
, then it carries some pretty negative connotations.

“So?”

“So what?”

“So what race are you? I’ve been trying to figure it out for two months.”

“And what have you come up with?”

“I dunno. Middle Eastern? Partly?”

He laughed. “Close, but no. My dad’s half Indian half Texan, and my Mom’s pure Hispanic.”

“Oh,” I said. “I wasn’t aware that Texan was a race.”

“Clearly you’ve never been to Texas.”

“Yeah.” I laughed. Suddenly a hollow chiming sound echoed down the dark hall into the living room. I jumped. It was the grandfather clock. “Oh crap, what time is it?”

“Ah, ten. Why?”

“I’ve gotta go.” I got up and started gathering up my shoes and my bag.

“Oh.”

Did I imagine the disappointment in his voice? I hesitated at the front door and turned back, a tentative smile on my face. I still wasn’t sure that this had been a date, but I wasn’t going to leave without giving him the opportunity to make it one.

“Come to school early in the morning,” he said.

My face fell a little. “What?”

“Come early. I’ll bring doughnuts and we’ll finish tonight’s calculus.”

“Oh. All right.” I grinned. More plans. They were completely innocent, but they were plans all the same. I stepped through the door, and he leaned out after me. “See you in the morning.”

“See ya.” He flashed that winning smile once more just for me, then closed the door.

Six

I wasn’t sure how early Ethan expected me to drag myself out of bed the next morning, but judging by the fact that we usually spent a little more than half an hour studying, I decided that 7:15 would be a good guesstimate.

It was the earliest I had ever gotten up just to go to school, but I was wide awake as I pulled into the almost completely empty student parking lot. The only other vehicle there was Ethan’s red truck parked in the very front.

“Hey!” he said when I walked up to the breakfast table, all smiles. “Doughnut?”

My mouth dropped open in shock when I saw the huge box of doughnuts on the table next to him. “How many did you bring?”

“Three dozen,” he said. “After the five of us get through with them, I’ll give the rest to the guys on the team.”

“Oh. That makes sense, I guess.”

“You guess?”

I frowned and sat down and carefully removed one sticky doughnut from the box with two fingers. “You shouldn’t analyze every word I say, you know.”

“And why not?” he was leaning forward, a sly look in his eye.

I leaned in to match his pose. “Because you might learn something that you don’t want to know.”

He laughed. “Yeah right, Em. Get over yourself.”

The assignment wasn’t a hard one, but I let him think that I was still having trouble with it so that he would lean in and make corrections on my paper. I felt a little stupid flirting with him, but it all just seemed to happen by itself. And it seemed to work pretty well, too. We both lost track of time and before we knew it, people began to file in through the double doors.

“What are you two doing here so early?”

We both looked up to find Shannon and Finn looking at us from across the table.

“We are doing calculus, as usual,” Ethan said. He nudged the doughnut box in their direction. “Breakfast?”

“Yeah!” Shannon sat aside her stale-looking biscuit and gravy bowl and dove into the sweet confections.

“Thanks, man,” Finn said, choosing one for himself as well. “And for the lady.” He produced a perfect sour green apple from his bag and placed it on the table in front of me, then pulled out a John Grisham novel to vanish behind.

“Thank you.” I took the apple and bit into it appreciatively. Its tart flavor was a high contrast to the doughnuts, but I really preferred it to the overly glazed alternative.

“Emily, you and Margo are coming over to my place tonight,” Shannon said as she flipped through a notebook. She found the page she was looking for and began scribbling something on it.

“We are?” I asked.

“Yes, you are. We have plans to discuss.”

“What plans?”

She took a deep breath and looked me squarely in the eye. “Dad is going out of town next weekend on some conference or another, so Finnegan and I are hosting a little get-together.”

My right eyebrow shot up. “A get-together?”

“We are?” Finn asked. He shifted his weight and put down his book. This was clearly the first he’d heard of any get-together.

“Yes we are,” Shannon said. “And you and Margo are going to help–ahem–arrange a few things.” She cleared her throat daintily in just the right place to make me severely concerned.

“What sort of get-together are you planning, Shannon?”

“Well, you might call it a party.” 

Finn groaned, his worst fears realized. “Aw, come on! Are you kidding?”

“All right!” Ethan said. “I was wondering if you Ar
kan
sans knew how to let loose once in a while.”

“What’s going on?” Margo had just slid into a seat beside Shannon. Ethan flashed his wide grin at her and I frowned. He didn’t notice.

“Shannon and Finn are having a party next weekend,” I said.

“Oh, fun!”

“Correction:
Shannon
is having a party,” Finn said, opening his book again.

“And you and Emily are coming over tonight to help orchestrate it,” Shannon said.

“All right. Cool.” She grinned, making her soft, round face just a little wider. She was such a cute girl, like a sweet old lady or something. I couldn’t picture Margo letting lose at a party.

“Please don’t drag me into this,” I begged Shannon.

“Why not?”

“Yeah,” Ethan asked. “Why not? I’ve got a great stereo system if you guys need one.”

“Sure!” Shannon said. “Now all we have to do is find someone who can get us a couple of kegs!”

Finn’s head snapped up. “Whoa, Shannon! How big is this party gonna be?” I don’t think anyone heard him but me.

“Don’t worry,” Margo said. “My big brother’s always having parties. He can get us whatever we want.”

“Great!”

“Not great!” Finn said, a little louder now. “Now I’m all for cutting loose once and a while, but I don’t want this mess in my house. I don’t want to be responsible for this whole thing when it spirals out of control. And it
will
spiral out of control.”

“Don’t worry so much,” Shannon said. “How bad could it be? I went to Justin White’s senior party last year and it was really tame.”

“That’s because Justin White is really tame,” I said.

“How many people, Shannon?” Finn asked.

“A lot. It won’t be a hit unless there are a lot of people. I think that between Ethan and me we can shore up the numbers.” Ethan nodded his agreement. He’d only been living in St. John for a few months, but he was already one of the most popular people I knew besides Shannon herself. His good looks and charming smile had won over plenty more than just little old me.

“All right, I officially wash my hands of this nonsense,” Finn said, picking up his book again.

“Me too,” I said. “I’ll come over tonight if you want, Shannon, but I’ll have no part in this party business.”

“Oh come on, Emily!” Ethan said with an appealing smile. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

I’ll admit it. I almost caved right then and there, and with almost no convincing. It was that stupid smile of his that kept undoing me. “It’s with the sober people,” I said after a few tenuous seconds of indecision. The warning bell rang just then, and our bickering had to be postponed.

Shannon and I split off from the group to head down to our lockers, each of us in our own little worlds. Shannon was probably going over party plans in her head. I could tell by the half-smile playing at the corners of her mouth. Something was on her mind at least.

Suddenly someone knocked into me from behind, jolting me from my musings.

“Shannon! Where’ve ya been?” It was Charlie Hamilton. I glared up at him as he shoved his way in between me and my friend without even glancing my way.

Shannon smiled up at him. “Around. Why do you ask?”

“Hey Charlie,” I said loudly.

“Hey,” he said without even turning all of the way towards me. “So Shannon, You coming to the game Friday? I’m starting this time.”

I rolled my eyes and stopped trying.

“The football game? That depends. Em? You want to come with me?”

“No.”

Shannon shrugged. “I guess that’s a no then, Charlie.”

“Oh come on!” he begged, taking Shannon’s hand. “Bring someone else with you. Please come. Please?”

Shannon blushed. Holy cow Shannon was blushing! And smiling like a school girl! That never happened, especially not with Charlie. “Sorry Charlie. I’ve got plans with Adam anyway.”

Charlie frowned. Even I had to admit that a scowl looked oddly manly on his fair features. If he’d been looking at me that way, I’d forget all about Ethan in a heartbeat, much less snarky old Adam Choate.

“See you later Charlie,” Shannon hinted with a grin. She stopped at her locker and waited for him to shove off before yanking it open.

“You do not have plans with Adam this weekend,” I said.

She shrugged. “I know. But
you’ve got to make him sweat about it
.”

“That’s mean.”

“It’s not mean.”

“You’re teasing him.”

“I’m doing no such thing.” She was looking way too pleased with herself. Clea
rly this wasn’t something I wanted to be involved in.

“Fine.” I shoved my books around in my locker, hoping to find a fresh pencil somewhere at the bottom.

“Fine.”

“Good.”

“Great. See you in Calculus.” She flashed me a winning smile and slipped off to class through the thinning crowd.

“Fine.”

“I can’t believe my sister is doing this,” Finn said during Lit later that day. Ms. Walsh was out sick that day, and our substitute was insanely liberal. We had already finished the busy work she’d left us. In fact, most of the class had nothing to do and the room was filled with the ethereal chatter of bored students that echoed off of the cinderblock walls.

Jeff and Tom were completely absorbed in a sheaf of papers that lay spread out between them and they were speaking in low voices. I caught a glimpse of one of the pages and it seemed to be covered in chemical equations. I had no idea why they were being so secretive over their Chemistry homework.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into her lately.” I flipped through the Shel Silverstein book that I had cracked my head open for. Its spine, miraculously, was still in tact.

“She’s gotten herself a hobby,” he said. “Here, gimme your hand.”

“Which one?”

“The broken one.”

I extended the clunky cast across the desk and he produced a dark green marker. He turned my arm so that the inside of my cast was up and started doodling on the inside of my wrist in green.

“So what do you mean about Shannon’s hobby?” I asked.

“She’s taken up meddling as if it were a sport. She’s even neglecting that football jock that she likes so much. Charlie somebody.”

“Actually she meddled around his head just this afternoon. She claims she just having fun but she’s just torturing the poor boy.”

“Well whatever. That just supports my point.”

“I see what you mean. Not only is she trying to get me all excited about dating and messing with Charlie’s emotions, but she’s doing her best to get you and Margo together. How’s that going so far, by the way?”

He shrugged. “Not much has changed since the first day of school.”

“Nothing?” I asked, looking up. “So is there even a chance, then?”

He shrugged again. “You never know, I guess.” He glanced up to gage my reaction, but I gave him nothing.

“I still think you guys would be cute together.”

“Oh yes, because that’s what every guy dreams of in a relationship.
Cute
.”

I grinned. “And what do you look for?”

“Brains and body,” he said with gusto. He released my arm and looked up. “My perfect girl is one who has the wherewithal to hold her own in an argument, and then hold her own in bed.” He paused thoughtfully then added, “Or vice versa.”

“And here I thought you didn’t care about sex.” I studied my arm. It was covered in various quotes and funny poems by now, with little room for anything else. Standing out in deep green on the inside of my wrist was a perfect little apple, complete with a stem and a leaf. I smiled and looked up.

Finn was stoic in his seat. “I’m a man, aren’t I?”

              Shannon’s agenda for that night’s planning turned out to be one of the most uneventful things I’d ever experienced. As it turned out, she and Ethan had spent most of calculus class passing notes back and forth, hashing out the details of the upcoming event. Between the two of them, we were expecting a huge turnout. The O’Malley house, in one and a half weeks, was going to be the hit spot in town for everyone under the age of twenty-five.

              “Here, Margo,” Shannon said, pulling a white peasant blouse out of her closet. “Try this on. It would go great with those jeans.”

              “Okay,” Margo agreed hesitantly. “Why am I trying this on?”

              “Because.” Shannon pushed her into the bathroom.

              “Why is she trying that on?” I asked. I was flipping through the channels on the little old TV in Shannon’s bedroom.

              “Because.”

              There was a knock at the door and Finn pushed it open without waiting for an answer. “Hey Em, have you finished your essay yet?”

              I didn’t look up. “Yeah. Why?”

              “Never mind.” He disappeared down the hallway to his own room.

              “Margo! It’s perfect on you!”

              I turned to see what Shannon was going on about and did a double take. Sweet little Margo, in Shannon’s old peasant blouse, suddenly looked like a teen pop star. She blushed scarlet. “Really? You think it looks good?”

              “It looks great on you,” I said. “Really.”

              She looked over at Shannon. “Do you think I could borrow it for your party?”