Way to Go (15 page)

“Well, don't go corrupting my little Danny here.”

Will jumped to his feet. “If you'll excuse me, I have some work to do.” My heart sank as I watched him walk over to the fire and start flirting with Shyla, a beautiful dark-skinned girl in an embroidered dress.

“Will's been totally hitting on Shyla since he got here,” said Lisa. “They're totally going to do it.”

“She's pretty hot,” I said.

“Yeah, she's okay. Kind of full of herself, but whatever. So are you having fun?” Lisa asked me.

“Yeah, for sure,” I said. “Everyone's really cool. I love your aunt's house. Thanks for inviting me.”

“It wouldn't be the same without you,” she said.

“Any idea when Kierce is going to be home?” I asked her.

“No. He's left me a couple of messages,” she said vaguely, “but I haven't called him back.” She stood up. “Come on, let's go up to the house and get something to eat. I'm starving.”

As we walked back up the hill, I glanced back at the group on the beach. I wasn't one of those people yet, but I knew that I wanted to be. I hoped I wouldn't have to wait too long.

TWENTY

In the car while driving me to work the morning after the party, my mom handed me an envelope.

“What's this?” I asked.

“It's your application fee. To cooking school.”

I opened it up. Sure enough, it was a check for fifty dollars, made out to the Atwater Culinary Institute.

“For the record,” Alma said from the backseat, “I contributed five bucks toward that.”

“And I swiped a symbolic twenty from your dad's wallet,” said Mom. “All three of us are helping you with this, whether we're all fully aware of it or not.”

“I don't understand,” I said.

“Come on, Danny,” she said, “do you think I'm going to miss out on the chance to have a classically trained chef in the family? The only requirement is that
you
have to cook the Christmas turkey every year for the rest of our lives.”

“That was my idea,” said Alma. “No more repeats of the '92 holiday disaster. Or as I like to call it, ‘The Towering Inferno.' ”

“What about Dad?” I asked.

“What about him?” said Mom. “He's not the only member of this family. More importantly, he only contributed fifty percent of your DNA, and a total of zero percent of the pregnancy and lengthy delivery required to pop you out into the world.”

“Okay, gross,” said Alma.

“The point,” my mom went on, “is that I'd like to think that I have some input into your future. As far as I'm concerned, you becoming a chef is a great idea. Even if your dad is absolutely right and cooking school turns out to be a terrible idea, you have your whole life to come up with a Plan B.”

“I'm sorry,” I said, “I just never thought that you were that interested in what I did for a living.”

“Are you kidding me? There are few things more interesting to me than what my two fabulous children make of themselves.”

“ ‘A boy's best friend is his mother,' Danny,” said Alma.

“Did it ever occur to you,” said Mom, “that I'm just not that worried about you?”

“Well, Dad sure is.”

“You have to understand, Danny. Your dad loves you. He wants nothing more than for you to have a wonderful, happy, fulfilling life. The problem is, he overthinks everything. Sometimes you two are so alike that it makes the back of my head quiver.”

“What?” I said. “Are you kidding me? Dad and I have nothing in common!”

Mom and Alma both snorted at the same time. “As if,” said Alma.

“Just because you don't have the same hobbies or interests,” said Mom, “doesn't mean you aren't practically the same person sometimes. First of all, you've both been sulking like children since your big blowup. Then there's the fact that the two of you worry about absolutely everything. You could both stand to have a little faith that things will work themselves out.”

“Don't forget the earlobe thing,” said Alma.

Mom laughed. “She's right. When you guys are concentrating on something, you both twist your earlobes the same way. It's pretty funny.”

Dad did that.
I
didn't do that. Did I?

She pulled into the Sandbar parking lot. “Listen, Danny, cut your dad some slack. He's been pretty down on himself lately. I keep telling him not to worry, things are going to be fine, but he hates the uncertainty right now. We'll pull through, we always do. And so,” she said, reaching over to twist my ear, “will you.”

I got out of the car with my head spinning. Did my dad and I
really
have that much in common?

I heard Ken laughing through the open window as I approached the restaurant.

“Maybe we'll go back to—what did you call it?—the Spot,” he was saying. “
That
was pretty impressive.”

At the mention of the Spot, I stopped and stood outside the window to listen.

“No way,” I heard Lisa say. “That was stupid.”

“I don't understand why we have to keep sneaking around,” said Ken. “It's so high school.”

“It's just easier than getting people all upset.”

I walked in, and they both turned at the sound of the door. Lisa's face turned red when she saw me, and she pushed past Ken through the swinging door into the kitchen.

“Hey, Danny,” said Ken. I ignored him and followed Lisa. She'd grabbed a cloth and was busy pretending to polish silverware.

“What was that all about?” I asked.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“Did you take Ken to the Spot?” I asked. Everything made sense all of a sudden: Lisa lying about spending all that time with her mother; the condom wrapper Jay had found.

She sighed and put her cloth down. “It just kind of happened. I really like him, and we're having some fun, that's all.”

“Doesn't Ken have a girlfriend? Don't
you
have a boyfriend?”

“You mean Kierce? Oh god, give me a break. I told you, I'll talk to him as soon as he gets back to town. And things with Ken and his girlfriend have been going downhill for months.”

That was news to me. Ken was always talking about how hot his girlfriend was, and how he couldn't wait to see her again when he went back to university in the fall.

“I can't believe you took him to the Spot,” I said.

“What difference does it make? It was just a place to go. You don't own it, you know.” She walked over and ruffled my hair. “Danny, come on, please don't be childish. I wanted to tell you, but I was waiting for a good opportunity. That's why I invited you to the party at Cheryl's house, but we were having so much fun, it didn't seem like the right time. I really care about you, but this is none of your business.”

She pulled me into a hug.

“Please don't ruin everything by being mad at me.”

“WOW,” SAID MAISIE
that night when I told her and Jay what was going on. “That's pretty low.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I don't know what to do. Should we try to get in touch with Kierce?”

“Just let Lisa handle it,” said Jay. “It's their business. Kierce isn't stupid; he knew something was up before he left for Ontario. I don't think he'll really care that much. He's been away for a week, and summer's almost over. What does he think is going to happen?”

Jay was right, but I didn't feel good about keeping it to myself, especially after Kierce had asked me to keep him in the loop. As it turned out, I didn't have much time to think about it.

The next night after work, Maisie helped me clean up the kitchen so we could get out of there quickly. Diana and Jay were picking us up after our shift ended.

“See you guys tomorrow,” said Lisa, stopping into the kitchen to grab her coat.

“Hey, Lisa,” said Maisie. “You should come out with us after work sometime. We miss you!”

“Soon, I promise,” said Lisa, walking over to where we were polishing wineglasses. “I'm terrible. I've been kind of preoccupied.” She looked at me and smiled.

Maisie and I finished up and walked out of the restaurant about ten minutes later.

“Oh shit,” said Maisie. I turned and saw Kierce's van parked next to Lisa's car. Diana's car pulled into the parking lot, and she and Jay got out just as Kierce jumped out of Lisa's car. He had a bunch of flowers in one hand, and he hurled them onto the ground. Lisa got out of her car and stood awkwardly next to it.

“Get away from me!” he yelled.

She started to walk toward him, but he held his hand up, palm out, to stop her.

“Go!”

She hesitated, then got into her car and pulled out of the parking lot.

Jay and I walked over to him. He was pacing in a circle, and as we approached, he stopped and looked at us. I was surprised to see that his eyes were glistening.

“Come on, man, calm down,” said Jay.

“Don't fucking tell me to calm down! What do you know about it anyway?”

Neither of us said anything. He stopped in his tracks, turned and looked right at us.

“Did you guys know about this?”

“We didn't find out until after you were gone, Kierce,” I told him.

He looked at me with disbelief.

“You mean you guys knew about this, and neither of you bothered to tell me?”

“Kierce, come on, we figured it was her job to tell you.”

“So my two best friends didn't think I deserved to know she was screwing around on me?”

“It wasn't like that at all,” Jay said. In the background, Maisie and Diana stood watching us.

“Do you know what?” he asked, walking up to me and poking his finger at my chest. “I thought you had my back. I really believed that. Joke's on me, right?”

“Kierce, come on,” I said. “You aren't making any sense.”

“Unbelievable. Rule Ten: Who needs enemies with friends like you guys?”

He walked over to his van and got in, spinning his tires as he took off out of the parking lot.

“What the hell just happened?” asked Jay.

I TRIED CALLING KIERCE
the next day, and the day after that, but his mom kept making excuses, and he didn't return my calls or Jay's.

Driving across town with the girls, we would sometimes see him cruising around with Ferris and some of their hockey buddies, laughing and drinking beer. Occasionally he'd glance at Maisie's car and then turn away without acknowledging us.

“He's being a total dickhead,” said Lisa when I told her what was going on. She obviously didn't care whether she ever saw Kierce again or not.

“Well, he's still my friend,” I said, “and I feel bad for him.”

“Bad because he decided to blame you for something that wasn't your fault? Danny, things don't always end up all neat and tidy. He probably wasn't much of a friend to begin with, if he's treating you like this.” She headed back out to the dining room with an order of desserts.

Jay saw it differently. “Who cares, man? Kierce will come around. He's just pissed off about Lisa. By the time school rolls around again and she's back in New York, it will be like it never happened.”

Something told me it wouldn't be that simple.

TWENTY-ONE

“Are you guys heading down to the beach party?” Lisa asked me as Maisie and I prepared to leave work.

It was the last Saturday of August, and there was going to be a big end-of-summer party at the beach, one last blowout before school started up again after Labor Day.

“You bet,” said Maisie. “It's going to be super fun!”

“Why don't you come with us?” I asked Lisa. “It'll be packed. Jay and Diana are already there. You could bring Ken.”

“You're sweet,” she said, “but it's his last shift, so we're going to go hang out together somewhere.” She flashed me a genuine smile, and I felt a pang of sadness that things had ended up this way.

“You never know,” she said, “maybe we'll show up later on.” I doubted it. Ken obviously thought he was way too cool to hang out with us.

“I don't understand what Lisa sees in Ken anyway,” Maisie told me as we crossed the road and headed through the sand dunes toward the far end of the beach. “He's such a jerk!”

“Yeah, no kidding.”

“She and Kierce were weird too, I never understood them being together. Maybe she just likes to test out different kinds of guys.”

“Who knows?” I said. I'd given up trying to understand what Lisa was looking for.

“So you're still not talking to him?” Maisie asked.

“Kierce? It's more like he's not talking to me.”

“All because of the Lisa thing? That's so stupid. There must be something more to it than that.”

“Like what?”

“Who knows, but it's obviously not your fault that Lisa was screwing around with Ken. I don't know why he's punishing you.”

I wondered if she was right. If something else
was
bothering Kierce, I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it would be.

“Hey,” said Maisie, “do you want to go up into the sand dunes and have a drink before we head down to the party?”

We scrambled up into the dunes and set ourselves up in a hollow surrounded by sea grass. From where we sat, we could see down the beach toward the already growing bonfire. Thick clusters of clouds drifted lazily across the moon, and the tide kept up a steady rushing pulse. Sitting there with the sea air wafting up into my nose, I wondered how I would ever leave this place. For a few moments, it was hard to imagine anywhere more perfect on Earth.

Maisie had arranged for her cousin to buy some booze for us, and I was pretty happy when she opened up her backpack and pulled out a big bottle of Raspberry Comet Cooler. She cracked it and took a swig, then passed it to me.