Doug smiled. Maybe I should have smiled too, and laughed like I thought we'd come to an understanding. But I knew my laugh would come out nervous. So I continued to gaze earnestly up at him.
He held my gaze. I had every subject except math with him because we were both in AP, but in most classes he sat across the room. In English he sat right in front of me, so I was familiar with the deeply tanned back of his neck and the way his black hair quirked into curls. I'd never been this close to the front of him, though, without his hair tucked into a swim cap and his eyes blurry behind goggles. Funny how he could avoid me since the ninth grade, but the instant I got him in trouble, he was in my face. I could see every black hair in the day-old stubble on his chin.
His voice was so honeyed, I would have thought he was complimenting me, except for his words, and the subtlest sarcasm in his tone that I'd come to know well in the past year on the varsity team with him. "No, Zoey. The difference is that I actually need a scholarship, and you're a spoiled brat." He twisted his arm out of my hand and rubbed it like I'd hurt him, though I was sure I'd hardly touched him. "And I'm worried about your academic scholarship if you're dense enough to think Brandon Moore gives a shit about you."
Then I was staring at Doug's back. He bounced down the stands, stepping over the seats to join some other guys at the edge of the swim team. He said something to them and they laughed. People complained to me privately about Doug, but when he was around, he was the life of the party. Now the huddle looked so conspiratorial that Ian walked along the bench below me to join it. Even Mike, who hated Doug, edged closer. I hoped they weren't talking about me. Or if they were, I hoped they were only talking about my argument with Doug, and not about my mom.
And then in my mind I was back in my mother's bedroom at our apartment, trying to fix everything. I held my phone to my ear with one hand, whispering to the 911 dispatcher. With the other hand, I straightened her bottles of expensive perfume on the cheap rental dresser. I rubbed imaginary dust from the glass stoppers decorated with glass jewels and glass ribbons.
I jumped and forgot the bottles as the marching band blared "Who Let the Dogs Out?" for the fourth time. In the end zone, the refs held their hands up, and Brandon's teammates slapped his helmet. My whole purpose in coming to the game was to watch Brandon play. Now Brandon had scored, and I had no idea how it had happened.
And now Keke and Lila trudged back up the stairs. Their hands were full of Cokes and popcorn and cotton candy, junk they shouldn't be eating with a swim meet tomorrow. If they'd stayed with me instead of going to the concession stand, Doug wouldn't have attacked me like a lion on the savanna targeting the vulnerable gazelle at the edge of the herd. Or . . . the species that bounced hysterically instead of running. I confused the deerlike animals with each other. Impala. "What?"
"I said, are you seeing Brandon after the game?" Keke asked through a mouthful of popcorn.
"Zoey loves Brandon. It's perfect and dreamy," Lila said in a voice from TV commercials about princess dolls. She was a princess herself, with her gauzy top flowing around her in the breeze, and her red curls pinned up and cascading into ringlets around her shoulders. "Brandon's going to a party tonight with the football team at the city beach park," I told them. "Male bonding."
"The swim team should crash the party," Keke declared.
"Y eah!" Lila skipped a few steps down the bleachers to discuss this idea with the junior girls on the swim team.
"No!" I caught Lila by the arm and dragged her back. She and Keke both waited for an explanation. I wished everyone would stop looking at me. Had I yelled no too loudly and yanked Lila back too hard? They must think I was crazy. "I was planning to go to his house tomorrow night after the swim meet and take him parking," I said as calmly and sanely as I could.
"Oooh," Lila said appreciatively.
"That's ridiculous," Keke said. "He can't ban you from coming to his beach party. It's not his damn beach."
"Good point." Lila escaped toward the junior girls again before I could grab her. She whispered to them and they squealed.
It was too easy, too good to be true. I hadn't planned it. I hadn't asked for it. I wouldn't look pitiful chasing Brandon around, because crashing the party was the swim team's idea, not mine. I'd fought resentment all day that Brandon was going out with the guys tonight instead of me, when I hadn't seen him since Monday night. I'd thought it was okay, I'd told him it was okay, but the longer I considered it, the less it was okay. Now suddenly the problem was solved without me doing a thing? It felt dangerous. I didn't trust it.
As if in agreement, the forest of pines and magnolias behind the guest bleachers bent in a gust of wind. A few puffs of popcorn escaped from the top of Keke's bag. My hair whipped into my eyes. "What about the hurricane?" I murmured, smoothing my hair back and knotting it into a heavy bun.
"It veered toward Mississippi," Keke said. "We'll only get thunderstorms late tonight. Goooooooo . . ." She cheered and circled her fist in the air like everyone else in the stadium but me as the Bulldogs kicked off. The ball lobbed through the air. The line of players ran forward and collided with the enemy team. Then Brandon jogged to the sidelines with the rest of the offense. I located his red helmet with the white 24 almost immediately because he was so tall.
And my stomach twisted with anticipation because he was mine, and I was about to have him again. Part of me didn't want to have sex with him anymore--the part of me that had felt nauseated and hadn't wanted to do it with him last weekend. I liked to keep everything in its place. Brandon Moore inside me seemed hopelessly out of place. But that was just nerves. I could overrule that part of me tonight, like I had before. Since we were going to see each other less often than I'd assumed, we needed to make the most of our time together whenever we had the chance.
And if the swim team crashed the football players' party, Doug would see me there with Brandon. Strange that I cared so much about this with everything else going on in my life, but after Doug's insult, I cared very deeply about looking desired and perfectly normal. He would see that Brandon did, in fact, give a shit about me. And as my mother had always told me, if I gave the appearance of keeping everything together, people like Doug would be less likely to attack me.
"Dee-fense! Good Lord!" Keke shouted through cupped hands, her popcorn bag in the crook of her arm. I looked past her at what Lila was up to. She'd finished with the junior girls and had moved on to the swim team boys. Then she stood on her tiptoes to see over their shoulders. She winked at me. The party was a go.