There was a long moment of silence in which I wondered if Karen had hung up or fallen asleep. After a minute or so of the silent hum of ambient noise, Karen’s voice sounded on the other line. “It’s worth a shot,” she said finally, instantly bringing a smile to my face.
“Perfect,” I said, a bit more enthusiastically than was necessary. David gave me an odd look, but I ignored it and continued. “I’ll see if Nate can drop by your house tomorrow to talk to her. Don’t worry, Karen. This is going to work. I just know it.” We ended our conversation after a few more reassurances. I knew I shouldn’t make promises to her if I couldn’t definitely keep them, but I was just so sure that this whole plan would succeed that I couldn’t see any other outcome.
“So everything’s all right, I take it?” David asked beside me.
“I think it is. Nate’s going to talk to Karen’s mom tomorrow. He’s going to ask if she can go back to being homeschooled in exchange for the freedom to date him. Personally I don’t see how her mother can refuse. Trading in 3,000 kids for just one potential threat has to be a pretty appealing offer,” I said confidently.
“Unless she feels that Nate poses a greater threat than those 3,000 kids,” David replied with a sigh. “From what I’ve seen of her, Karen wouldn’t be the type to go around kissing 3,000 students, just passing them in the hallways, not even making physical contact.” As much as I hated how grim his outlook on my plan was, I couldn’t deny that it was a legitimate argument, and one I’d have to be prepared for. “And there’s always the possibility that she’ll agree to the terms and then go back on the offer once she has her daughter out of school,” he continued, quite unnecessarily.
“You certainly have a glum outlook on human nature,” I said in annoyance.
“I was trying to catch a con artist for a year, so I had to start thinking of every possibility,” he replied with a cheeky grin.
“I’m not a con artist,” I corrected with indignation. “I’m a breakup artist.”
Chapter Sixteen
After school that day David was waiting for me by my car. I walked, a bit faster than normal, to meet him and instantly dropped my backpack on the ground once I was close enough to throw my arms around him. He laughed at my enthusiasm but I buried my face in the small space where his shoulder and neck came together. His wonderful smell was strongest there, and I considered never moving again. I kissed his neck softly, which made him shiver beneath me.
“Well, if I really am just a job, then you’re pulling out all the stops,” he said with a laugh. I leaned back slightly with my arms still around his neck so that I could get a better look at him. I had been thinking about David all through biology and had come to the conclusion that I didn’t get to spend enough time with him today. Ever since we’d started officially dating, we hadn’t really had time to ourselves to just be alone and talk. I didn’t know nearly enough about him and everything he knew about me he had found out from a distance. That was no way to start a relationship.
“So I was thinking today,” I began tentatively. His face became expectant, as if he thought I was going to break things off right then and there. I let that thought stew with him for a moment, just because I seemed to get some sort of sick pleasure out of the fact that he cared enough about me to worry. “I was thinking that you should come over today… Right now, actually.” This obviously hadn’t been what he was expecting, and his face brightened.
“To your house?” he asked, as a confirmation of what I had just said.
“Well, yeah. My mom is never home so you don’t have to do the whole ‘meeting the parents’ thing just yet.” I realized the second that I said my mom wouldn’t be there that he could have easily taken a different motive from my asking him over to an empty house. “It’d just be nice to talk somewhere that isn’t school,” I added hastily.
“I’d like that,” he said, after I spent what felt like an eternity of watching his face shift between some unheard thoughts. “Should I just follow you there?” he asked.
“Yeah, it’s not too far from here,” I answered happily. He dropped his hands from my waist and said, “I’ll see you there.”
It felt odd to have someone following me to my house. In my whole life I’d never had anyone over to my house to see me. Every birthday party had simply consisted of my mom and I going out to eat somewhere, and even those events had stopped with my thirteenth birthday. Now my birthdays consisted of my mother leaving me a twenty- dollar bill on the counter with a quickly scribbled note that read “Happy Birthday! Hope you have a great day! Love, Mom.”
Even though it had only been a day since David and I had resolved our differences and decided to be an official couple, everything seemed so different. Life just held more possibilities now that I had allowed myself to experience it. Before David I hadn’t really thought that I needed any changes in my life. Everything was just fine the way it was, with the occasional plague of loneliness that lasted a few days. Now that I had changed my views so completely, it felt as if I could breathe for the first time. It was like David had enabled me to fill a hole inside of me that I hadn’t even known was there to begin with. It was a wonderful feeling, and I couldn’t get enough of it.
We arrived at my house ten minutes later, me pulling into the driveway and David parking along the sidewalk. There was a nice looking black car near the sidewalk across the street, and I wondered for a moment if the neighbors were having the president over for dinner or something. These thoughts were quickly erased, however, when David emerged from his old blue car in all of his glory. I smiled at him and held out my hand, implying that he should take it. Luckily he was quick on the uptake and immediately obliged.
“You know, as we were coming here, I realized I’ve already been to your house. I didn’t really need to follow you,” he said matter-of-factly. I simply shrugged at this statement and turned the key in the lock on our front door. As we walked through the house to get to the living room, I decided to kick off the conversation. I vaguely registered that the house smelled a bit like smoke, but I didn’t see a fire so I figured a window must have been opened to the smells outside.
“Since we’re getting to know each other better, there’s something I’ve been wondering,” I said with a glance in his direction. “Are your parents married or divorced?” As the words were coming out of my mouth we turned into the living room where my mother stood with a man in a business suit. David and I stopped dead in our tracks, and I automatically dropped his hand, though I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like holding hands was a crime. My mother looked equally as shocked and I noted with profound embarrassment that her hair was disheveled with a button undone on the middle of her white blouse. It looked as if she had been pretty hastily put together. The man was in better shape, though his graying hair was sticking up a bit in the back.
I could feel my face turning red at the sight before me and I tried not to think of what the whole scene would look like to an outsider. Like mother, like daughter-I’m assuming is what that outsider would think. I kept my emotions under control, reminding myself that David and I were just going to talk and get to know each other, so I had absolutely nothing to feel guilty about. My mother, on the other hand…
“Amelia, what are you doing home?” she said, in what I’m sure she was hoping was an offhand, disinterested way.
“School always gets out at this time,” I said simply, looking anywhere but at the man standing beside my mother.
“Of course it does, dear,” she said, trying to salvage the “unfit mother” image she had just pinned on herself with her question. “Amelia,” she said, pulling herself back together. “This is Lawrence Everett.” She motioned to the man next to her, who gave me a winning smile and held out his hand. I reluctantly shook it and got a nose full of the cigarette smell I’d noticed earlier.
Lawrence Everett wore an expensive suit. His graying hair was slicked back in a businesslike manner that made him look like a snake. I also noted that he had a gold band on his left hand ring finger.
The situation was bad, but it wasn’t one of those bad situations that has a sort of bad thing that can be overlooked. It was full of bad. There was the fact that, no matter how much David had figured out about me after watching for a year, he didn’t know that my mother’s relationship with me was nonexistent. And there was always the little concern of the ring on Mr. Snake’s finger. I looked at the ground now, though I knew it was my turn to introduce my company. I didn’t know if I should spring the title of “boyfriend” on my mom as a small, shocking payback, or just say “friend” so that we could avoid any further conversation. The room was silently expectant, waiting for me to fill the void.
