“Thanks for asking,” I say, still looking at Christian. He has his arms around Kay. Her face is buried in his chest. I don’t know what to do. I just stand there watching him.
He pulls back from Kay and says something to her gently, then leads her over to a table and pulls a chair out for her to sit down. He even goes to get her some punch, but she waves it away. Lines of mascara are drying on her face. She looks exhausted. At first I thought this might be a ploy, an act like her slutty rogue routine, but seeing her slumped in that chair it’s impossible not to believe that she is genuinely devastated.
Christian walks over to me, clearly flustered.
“I am so sorry,” he says. “I didn’t know this would happen.”
“I know,” I say quietly. “It’s all right. Where’s Kay’s date?”
Let
“He left,” says Christian.
“He left,” I repeat incredulously.
“So I was thinking,” says Christian, red in the face now, “that I should take Kay home.”
I stare at him, stunned.
“I’ll come right back and get you,” he says quickly. “I thought I’d get her home safe and then I’d take you home.”
“I’ll take Clara home,” says Tucker, who’s been standing next to me the whole time.
“No, it’ll only take a minute,” protests Christian, standing up straighter.
“The dance will be over in ten minutes,” says Tucker. “You expect her to wait for you in the parking lot?”
I feel like Cinderella sitting in the middle of the road with a pumpkin and a couple of mice, while Prince Charming charges off to rescue some other chick.
Christian looks sick with guilt.
“Go ahead and take Kay home,” I say, practically choking on the words. “I’ll ride home with Tucker.”
“That’s all right with you?”
“Sure. I have to be home by midnight, remember?”
“I’ll make it up to you,” he says.
I swear I see Tucker roll his eyes.
“Okay.” I look at Tucker. “Can we go now?”
“You bet.”
After I find Wendy and Angela and say good-bye, I wait at the door as Tucker rounds up his other dates. They look at me with something like pity, and for a moment I actually hate Christian Prescott. We ride crammed together in Tucker’s rusty pickup, four girls in formal wear, squeezed into the cab. He drops off the blonde first, because she lives in Jackson. Then the redhead. Then the brunette.
“Bye, Fry,” she says as she gets out of the truck.
Now it’s just him and me in the cab. It’s quiet as he drives out to Spring Creek Road.
“So. Fry, huh?” I tease after a while, unable to stand the silence. “What’s that about?”
“Yeah,” he says, shaking his head as if he still can’t understand it. “In junior high they called me Friar Tuck. Now it’s just Fry. But my good friends call me Tuck.”
When we pull into my driveway, I’m already fifteen minutes past my curfew. I open the door, then stop and look at him. “Can you. not mention this whole fiasco to anybody else at school?”
“They already know,” he says. “One thing about Jackson Hole High, everybody is in everybody’s business.”
I sigh.
“Don’t worry about it,” he says.
“Yeah, they’ll forget by Monday, right?”
“Right,” he says. I can’t tell if he’s mocking me or not.
“Thanks for the ride,” I say. “Fry.”
He groans, then grins. “My pleasure.”
He’s such a strange guy. Stranger by the minute.
“See you.” I jump down from the truck, slam the door shut, and make for the house.
“Hey, Carrots,” he calls suddenly.
I turn back to him. “You and I will probably get along better if you stop calling me that.”
“You like it.”
“I don’t.”
“What do you see in a guy like Christian Prescott?” he asks.
