Chapter 10 #2
“Just look at Brittany Fields,” Sarah lamented. They turned to study an energetic blonde girl in a short tartan skirt and strappy silver tank top.
“I like your clothes,” Drake told her. Sarah took another swig of milk. “Boys are just dumb,” he said.
“You’re a boy,” Sarah reminded him.
“Well, what’s her name? The girl you need a gift for?” Drake’s mom rolled down the driver’s-side window and grabbed the cash canister from a long, clear bank tube. “Thank you,” she shouted through the speaker, slurping down the remnants of an Arnold Palmer inside a Styrofoam cup.
“It’s not for a girl,” Drake clarified in the passenger seat. “I need to buy a gift for all the girls.”
“All right,” Beth told him with a wink. “As long as you can stick to the budget, kiddo.”
One of the benefits of shopping late for the holiday was that the Valentine’s gifts were already marked down at the store.
Drake’s budget was enough for every girl in his class to receive a single rose and a small box of chocolates.
At home on his bedroom floor, he strapped a rose to each box with some leftover twine from his mom’s crafting supplies.
The next day in class, he handed the boxes out. Crushes formed around the room as Drake moved through the rows. When he landed at Sarah’s desk, she mouthed, “Thanks.” A hand shot up at the back of the room.
“Yes, Billy?” the teacher asked.
“I just wanted to thank our class lover boy.” Billy wielded a slow-clap, revealing sweat-stained pits. “Bravo, lover boy.”
Lover boy . The word was flung like a boomerang around the classroom, into the halls, and became a chant.
Lover boy! Hey, lover boy. Move it, lover boy!
Drake ate his white-bread sandwich alone on the outskirts of the cafeteria.
Sarah wouldn’t even sit with him that day, perhaps fearing the social implications of attaching herself to the newest class outcast.
Snow fell onto the railroad tracks as Drake walked home after school.
A train whistled in the distance. As he ventured onto Main Street, the yellow awning of his building, The Edison, stuck out in the frozen white world.
Drake flung the door open and pounded up the carpeted brown stairs to his second-floor condo.
His parents were playing dominoes at the old kitchen table where one of the legs was always breaking.
“What’s wrong?” Beth asked when she noticed his defeat.
Drake tossed his backpack on one of the kitchen chairs. “Not talking about it.”
“Sure,” Robert said, tapping a domino and debating his next move. “We don’t have to talk about it—”
“The Valentines were a huge mistake.” Drake sulked over to the table and picked up one of his dad’s dominoes, setting it back down on the wrong train. “The whole school is making fun of me.”
“Bet they wish they thought of it first,” his dad said, sliding the rogue domino back in its place.
Red and yellow LEGOs dotted the gray carpeting inside Drake’s bedroom, and posters from Spielberg movies lined the walls. He launched onto his bed, tucked himself under the race car sheets, and ignored the knock on the half-open door.
“Inside-out,” Beth whispered.
Drake rolled over in her direction. “What?”
She tiptoed in the room and sat on the edge of the bed. “That’s what they called me in school. I put my gym uniform on the wrong way one time, and … well, that was that.”
Drake scrunched his nose up. “That’s dumb.”
“It was.” Beth nodded. “But it was still embarrassing. And then, it was over. That’s the good thing about bad things.”
“What is?”
“They pass. All of them, they just—whoosh.” She pressed her thumb onto one of the cartoon race cars. “Zip on by.” Beth gave her wisdom a second to land before getting up and moving back to the door. “Why don’t you take a nap before dinner? Dad’s heating up a frozen pizza—”
“What if I’m Sarah?” Drake asked.
Beth turned back to him. “Sarah?”
Drake smashed a pillow over his face. The cushion muffled his woe. “What if nobody ever wants a Valentine from me again?”
Beth pulled the face pillow off. “We all feel that way, at some point or another.” She kissed Drake’s forehead. He pretended to hate it. “But, hey. You’re going to find someone who always wants to be your Valentine, and who you love more than anyone. And when you do, don’t let her go.”
“You have to say that,” he groaned. “You’re my mom.”
“I’m saying that because it’s true.” She pulled his blanket to his chin. “You’re a good egg, Drake.”
“I don’t like eggs.”
“It’s an expression, sweetie.”
As Drake drifted off to sleep, the bedroom door clicked shut.
A little snore landed in an instant, then the world around him got blurry.
The colors in the image turned into moving spots.
The elephant night-light distorted and became a faraway star, and then Drake’s young dreams switched over to a new character in the movie.
Ellie.
The prep school, with its bleak white walls, was a good place to be bored.
Ellie had lost track of the teacher’s words.
Her focus turned to a sprinkler ticking its way across the lawn out the open window.
She wanted to be down there, stomping through the grass and ruining the lace dress her mom picked out that made her look like a pastry.
The wardrobe fit the occasion, at least. She was stuck in a baking class.
“Ellie!” her teacher snapped. Parents liked this teacher. She was a matriarch of summer school who enjoyed her authority over her students a little too much.
“Sorry,” Ellie said. She set the pen down.
“All right, ladies.” The teacher tightened an apron around her cream, A-line skirt. “Let’s get baking!”
Sandra Marshall insisted that baking was one of the more useful life skills, despite rarely doing it herself.
In her mother’s mind, conflict could be resolved by a well-orchestrated floral display, an afternoon high tea, or a rhubarb pie.
The teacher had just explained that rhubarb was a vegetable.
Spending her birthday making a pie out of vegetables seemed like a tragedy to Ellie.
The knock at the door couldn’t have come at a better time. Whispers darted across the room as five neat rows of girls turned to see who was responsible. When Ellie joined them, she spotted the daring green eyes she knew so well.
“My mom wants me to pick up my sister,” Ben said with the charisma of a movie star trapped in a much younger body.
“I’m sorry, Mr.—”
“Marshall,” Ben offered. “Ellie’s brother.”
The teacher surrendered the measuring cups to her wood cutting board. Flour puffed out around her face in a cloud. “We need a parent’s note to dismiss summer students.”
Ben gave her a slight nod. “I hear that. The thing is, Ellie won an award.”
The teacher raised her neatly plucked eyebrows. “What is the award?”
“Little Miss … She’s won the Little Miss Manners Contest.” Ellie coughed to cover up her laugh.
Using a believable excuse would’ve been too easy.
Ben delighted in finding complicated ways out of family obligations—fake Cub Scout troops that needed a leader for the weekend or school projects turned into cutting-edge business ventures.
“It’s part beauty pageant, part manners contest,” he elaborated.
“Anyway, we have to hurry so Ellie can get into her dress.”
Amazingly, the plan worked.
“Part beauty pageant, part manners contest?” Ellie recapped outside of the school. “Mom is going to ground us into the next century.”
“Well, lucky for us, Mom is not going to find out. You’re looking at a seasoned escape artist.” Ben led her away from the school building.
As they walked, the rules bent and lost their shape.
Youth made lines more nebulous. Ellie followed him without asking where they were going.
“Besides, nobody should rot in summer school on their tenth birthday.”
“I guess so,” Ellie agreed. “I think I was about to bake my own cake.”
“Pie, Ellie. I saw the recipe on the blackboard. It was a pie.” Ellie straggled behind him.
The shoes she’d been forced to wear were to blame; they were a pair of white kitten heels all wrong for hijinks.
Ben stopped and waited for her to catch up, with his hands on his waist. “Despite your current getup, you’d make a terrible housewife. ”
A short walk past the parking lot and a long stretch of Tudor homes led them to a small downtown area.
Ben pushed open the doors of a shop that exploded with bold colors and patterns strung from circular racks.
Their hands grazed an ocean of textures, and Ben called out the type of person who would wear each garment.
“Motorcycle lady!” he shouted as he flung a leather jacket off the hanger and slid it over Ellie’s arms. A slight spin in front of a long mirror revealed a pair of white angel wings and script font on the back.
“Property of Bobby,” Ellie read. “How did you know about this place?”
“I found it last week.” It was only the second week of summer school for them, which meant Ben hadn’t made it through a single sitting of his beginner’s Latin class.
He set his hands on her shoulders. “You want the jacket?” Ellie shook her head no.
What she did want was a pair of shorts, she said.
Not expensive khaki shorts made for private boat charters like her mom picked out.
She wanted the denim ones in her hand, which were embellished with highlighter-pink stitching along the pockets.
After Ben paid for the shorts, he bought her an ice cream, too. “I loved that place,” Ellie told him, lowering herself onto the hot curb. She spooned a runny bite of Rocky Road into her mouth.
“Cool, huh?” Rainbow sprinkles dotted Ben’s nose. “It’s not like the new expensive stuff Mom buys,” he said. “It’s all old. Vintage.”
Ellie had never heard that word before . Vintage.
“Did you use your allowance for the shorts?” Ellie asked. “I can pay you back.”
Ben shrugged. “Don’t worry about it.” He broke into his Marlon Brando impression. “Happy birthday, Little Miss Manners.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Ben rubbed the top of Ellie’s head, which messed up her hair. She left it that way.
By the time Ellie and Ben made it back to the school, Sandra’s car was waiting by the parent pickup.
Their mom was hard to read. She barely looked up from the women’s magazine she had fanned over the front wheel, using the spare minutes to find her perfect summer lip shade.
They gave each other a look as they buckled into the backseat.
Had their mom seen them walking from the opposite direction from where their classes let out? Were they busted?
Maybe Sandra had missed the shopping bag in Ellie’s hand. Or maybe, based on her little smirk that Ellie hadn’t noticed back then, Sandra Marshall loosened the grip on her otherwise strict rules because it was Ellie’s birthday. Maybe, just maybe, she had actually let their big escape slide.