Even into mine and Suzie’s.
And I don’t think that either of us knew what to do about it.
When she had been sitting so close with her face so close, I knew that maybe she wanted me to kiss her.
Or maybe not.
And maybe I wanted to kiss her—or maybe not.
Maybe we really were attracted to each other in that way now.
But I wasn’t sure. And I couldn’t risk ruining what we had.
So I couldn’t just kiss her and stick my tongue in her mouth and feel her up sitting there on that wall. And I sure didn’t want to do it with everybody else—all the other kids and Tommy Werks especially—standing around and sort of getting their jollies seeing us make out. That’s just not something I’m particularly into, although I must admit that old Suzie didn’t seem like she would mind at all.
I blew my chances with her, as stubby Tommy Werks would say.
That’s true.
I still sort of blame Carol. If he hadn’t done what he’d done, things wouldn’t have been so accelerated. But it happened just like I’m saying.
Anyways, I’m still friends with Suzie.
But that moment never came again. Sometimes I wished it would.
She’s still around. Carol is too. It isn’t like I stopped being friends with him. And of course I still see him on TV sometimes.
You know, in one way, old Tommy Werks was right.
I really did blow it.
Because one thing you have to know is that if you are friends with a girl who becomes as incredibly beautiful as Suzie Perkins, you need to keep in mind that there are other boys around.
Lots of them.
Tons of them.
It wasn’t a week before I saw her on the street walking under the trees with another guy.
And then one night at a party she was tipsy again, and letting this super handsome jock scratch her all over in really inappropriate places—inappropriate for public perusal, I mean. It sort of made me sick, especially how the jerk grinned up at me while he was doing it, as if all he really wanted to do was just show off what he could get away with.
Anyways, by the time I finally met Laura, I had the experience with Suzie under my belt.
I won’t say it was a lot of experience, but I learned that if you are really great friends with a girl, you have to accept that sex can change everything and might ruin everything. That’s another thing my mom told me, and I know it sounds corny and obvious, but when it’s actually happening to you, it’s not corny at all. I must admit that I found that really hard to deal with. I knew Suzie so well. Had I fallen in love with her, it would have been great.
Or maybe not.
I’ll be honest: I couldn’t hide around Suzie. I doubt she’d have ever let me hide. If we’d fallen in love, I bet we’d have been all over the place, probably making out on every wall in the neighborhood.
Laura had let me hide. She had come looking for me only as far as I wanted her to. But Suzie knew everything about me. I’d told her everything until there were no more secrets, but there was no more mystery, either.
I guess I wasn’t in love with her.
I don’t want to sound stupid, but maybe you can’t know everything about the person you fall in love with, at least at first.
Maybe in a way you need to hide.
Maybe it’s hiding that makes you feel less awkward.
I’ve thought a lot about it, and I think it’s true.
It’s sad, but I think it’s true.
Chapter
Seven
When I woke up I had no idea what time it was.
Early.
I saw sort of bluish morning light coming in where I lay, behind the brown paper curtain.
I didn’t even get up. I just listened.
I really had no idea where I was, either.
At least not at first.
I just lay there looking up at the underside of the boards.
The whole thing reminded me of a story I once read in grade school, one of those Edgar Allan Poe stories I’d found in the library, about a guy who’s afraid he’ll get buried alive because he falls into these weird comas sometimes, so he goes about building this really elaborate tomb that has all these bell pulls and spring-loaded doors and stuff like that, so in case he does ever get accidentally buried, he can just pop right out like a jack-in-the-box. But then he goes on this camping trip with his friends, and of course it rains really hard so they can’t sleep in the open, and the only place the guy can sleep is in this sort of coffin-size box in a cabin, and when he wakes up he’s forgotten how he got there and he screams his head off, thinking he was buried alive.
Well, I didn’t have any bell pulls, so I stayed there, looking up at the wood. I guess I was still pretty drowsy, because I just couldn’t get it together.
But then I smelled dog and that did it. I tightened my hands on the plush under me.
It all came back.
At first I was sort of confused, because all that stuff about Suzie was still on my mind. I guess maybe I’d dreamed about it or just thought about it while I was still half-asleep. But when I realized I was in Laura’s house—that I had actually sneaked in and fallen asleep on her dog’s bed in the basement—I must admit I felt pretty freaked out.
What bothered me most, though, wasn’t that I had come in, even though I know it’s about the weirdest thing I could possibly have done.
What got me was something hidden in my mind; I was really busy sort of mentally factoring some problem I hadn’t figured out, a problem that had to do with both Suzie and Laura.
I didn’t know
