He threw back his head and laughed. Then he put his hand on my shoulder. “See you next Friday night, Gemma.”
And then, before I could react, he reached past me and opened the passenger door of my mom’s car. I climbed in, dragging my baton bag after me. He closed the door with a thick thud.
As my mom drove away from the curb, I watched Max in the side mirror. He stood staring after us for a moment, looking straighter and thinner and taller now that I could see all of him, not just his expressive face. He shook his head as he slung his bag over his shoulder and walked up the sidewalk toward the parking deck.
“And who was that?” my mother asked expectantly. She stopped at the next intersection, by the mall and restaurants and high-rise hotels. Smiling couples held hands as they crossed the street in front of us.
Willing the tingle in my shoulder where he’d touched me to fade away, I sighed, “Max. Addison’s date.”
6
“Addison’s date!” my mom exclaimed.
“Yep.” I barreled through an explanation so she wouldn’t ask me twenty questions. “He’s a junior too, and he’s a kicker for the football team at East. We met him today at Tech. His dad is a professor there. Max was in football camp while we were in majorette camp. Addison’s going out with him next Friday, and I’m going out with his friend Carter, if that’s okay with you, to a concert. Max is picking me up because he lives around here. He was just waiting with me until you came.”
“That was nice of him,” my mom said. She peered into the rearview mirror as if to give him another once-over, even though he was long gone. She looked out the windshield again. “He has such good manners.”
“Yep,” I said.
“He’s very handsome,” she said.
“Yep,” I said.
I felt her watching me across the dark car. I’d never been on a date, but I’d assumed I would go on one now that I was a majorette and looked the part, except for my hair. Maybe my mom had been waiting for this too. She would have laughed if I’d explained to her how badly I wanted Max to be my date, and how far that was from happening.
She gave a little gasp. “What happened to your nose?”
I’d forgotten all about my injury after my nose had stopped throbbing. I touched it tenderly. It was sore. That’s probably what Max had been staring at the whole time I thought he was looking right through me to my soul.
“Addison hit me with her baton,” I said.
My mom raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment. I had suffered many injuries at Addison’s hands. Most of them had not been accidents, but I’d always claimed they were so I wouldn’t lose my only friend.
I was having second thoughts about that policy.
“So, you ate at the Varsity?” my mom asked. “What’d you eat? Not what you ordered, but what you ate.”
“A grilled chicken sandwich,” I said. “I ordered it and I ate it.”
“Is that all?” she exclaimed. “Are you still hungry? I made lasagna and kept it warm for you.”
“That sounds so good,” I said truthfully. “Maybe I’ll have some tomorrow.” But I knew tomorrow she would cook something else and press me to eat that. I couldn’t eat everything. Not anymore.
“How about some fresh peach cobbler with vanilla bean ice cream?”
Now she had me. Sweets had always been my weakness. I mean, food in general had been my weakness, but dessert was the worst. My mouth watered at the thought of cold ice cream melting over the flaky brown crust, sugar sparkling in the light from the kitchen chandelier, and all those sweet peaches. Georgia was the Peach State, and peaches were in season. My mom and I would sit at the table together and eat and say mmmmmm and feel like a family.
But I couldn’t do it. As I’d told Max, in the past nine months, I’d learned the difference between wanting food and being hungry. I was not hungry.
“Maybe tomorrow,” I repeated.
My mom was quiet, probably thinking about whatever charity ball she was planning at the moment. My thoughts drifted to our over–air-conditioned mansion ahead.
After the day I’d had with Addison, it was ridiculous of me to miss her. Yet I felt a horrible dread as my mom turned onto our street, passed the Campbells’ house and the Browns’ and the Khans’, and pulled into our brick driveway. If Addison were driving me home, she would be blasting the sickly sweet pop station specifically because she knew I hated it. But when she parked in my driveway, I never wanted to get out of her car. Addison was rude, selfish, and spiteful. She was also full of life, and she made noise.
My mom parked in the spotless garage with three of the four spaces empty, and sighed. “I have a lot of work to do tonight, honey. A lot. But when I get through, I want to hear all about majorette camp and these boys.”
“Okey-doke.” I unlocked the door into the kitchen and galloped upstairs. My mom promised all the time that we’d chat, then got absorbed in what she was doing. She’d be working until I fell asleep. She would not ask me about camp. Neither of us would say anything for the rest of the night.
I closed the door of my room and waited for her to get her cobbler and ice cream and shut herself in her office, so I wouldn’t be tempted. When the coast was clear, I unzipped my bag, took out my batons, and ran back downstairs, through the kitchen where the scent of peaches and sugar still hung in the air. I let myself out the French door, into the hot, humid night, a relief after the supercooled air inside the house. I crossed the marble patio to the big back lawn.
One of the instructors at camp had advised us first-time majorettes that the biggest hazard of our halftime show would be the bright stadium lights. If we weren’t careful, we would toss up a baton, lose it in the glare of the lights, and drop it. In the band formation I would be in front of the student section. I could not drop a baton. Facing the spotlight on the corner of the roof, I threw baton after baton into the glare and practiced catching them by feel instead of by sight, until my hands were sore. And then kept going.
I didn’t see Addison for the rest of the weekend. She was doing charity work for her debutante ball, which was coming up in October. Most people understood the debutante ball as a place where rich girls made a lot of affected movements and got “presented” to the rich boys who went to the same country club. All of that was true, but the girls needed community service hours too. It was kind of like training to become my mother, so when they turned forty-five, they too could be single mothers, live alone in a mansion, and plan charity balls for other people. That’s what I called living.