“Eh, you managed to impress me once. You’ll get there.”
I clenched my sweaty hands down at my sides, and felt the need to peek at my driver’s license or dig out my birth certificate or look in a mirror to make sure I was still me, because whatever Snake was doing to me had never happened before. It honestly was remarkable.
“I’m going to kiss you,” he announced, his eyes gauging my reaction.
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am.”
“I’ll tell Carla.”
“No, you won’t.”
“Yes, I will.”
“Ugh, fine. It was worth a shot.” He placed his hand on the doorknob and shot me a pleading look that was all kinds of attractive and obnoxious. “We wouldn’t be any worse off for it, you know.”
“Open the door, Fabio.”
He obeyed with a smile, and I walked outside onto the dog bone mat with Snake trailing behind me. I heard him make a sort of gasping sound that was one octave away from being the most embarrassing sound a teenage boy ever uttered. And that was when I saw the porch light reflecting off her long red hair.
Karma (see: Carla Banks).
There she sat, her back against the porch steps, wearing the ugliest purple sundress any hand had ever sewn. She was staring across Snake’s lawn where the moon and clouds drew gloomy pictures on the surface of the pond. When she heard the door open, she spun around. Her shaken reaction to seeing me signaled that I was not a welcome intruder. Her eyes were familiar because they were my Stage 2 eyes. Puffy. Drained. All cried out.
Snake brushed past me down the short steps, kneeling to her level. Even with his arm around her, she was still looking at me. “Babe,” he whispered in what I dubbed the Official Carla Voice, a composition of whiny, affectionate, and other stereotypical boyfriend sounds. “Is everything okay? Is the baby all right?”
“He’s fine,” she snapped. “Help me up.”
Angry Carla. I didn’t mind her. She was way more tolerable than Preppy Carla or Little Miss Flashburn Carla or Ohmigodtotally Carla. Snake gripped both of her arms and struggled to pull her to her feet. After a little effort and a lot of emasculation on Snake’s part, she was up with her hands on her belly and her teeth biting the blood out of her glossy lips.
“I didn’t know you would be here, Reggie,” she said through gritted teeth. I could tell she was trying to keep from crying again.
“I didn’t either.” I glanced at Snake, who was pleading with his eyes again. A different plea this time. “Snake, uh, left his wallet at work. I was returning it.”
“He had his wallet last night when we went to dinner.”
I glared at him in a way that wasn’t exactly a glare, but enough to make him squirm. He knew what he had done. He had been texting me last night. Where was Jeanine when you needed to prove to her that her son really was the douchelord of Doucheshire?
“Why aren’t you at the wake?” Snake asked, to change the subject.
“Everyone left an hour ago.”
“Did you drive here? I don’t see your car.”
“My dad dropped me off.” She glanced down the street. “He’s waiting at the dead end.”
“Why didn’t you ring the doorbell?”
“I was giving myself time to think.”
“About what?”
She didn’t answer.
I tried to stop myself from staring at her pretty face, but there I was . . . staring at her pretty face. Again. And, much to my misfortune, she did have a very pretty face. She was dainty and full-lipped and more superficially beautiful than the rest of us suburbia girls. When we were growing up, her looks were one of the main things I had always secretly resented about her. But that night, she didn’t look so pretty. Her caramel-brown eyes were droopy, and her pink cheeks were bloated, and she was tired and angry and lonely. She had Snake on her arm and a baby in her stomach and her dad waiting at the end of the street, and she was lonely.
“I better get home,” I said, reaching for my keys. “Don’t want Karen to send out an AMBER Alert.”
Snake didn’t look at me. He never looked at me when Carla was around. When he did, it was just his puppy dog eyes begging for me to lie so that he could have his cake and eat it too. Carla looked at me, but I couldn’t tell what she was looking for. Maybe a sign that I was hiding something. Maybe a flash of honesty in my eyes that could back up my story. Or maybe she was just afraid of being fooled, and opening her eyes to any possibility was better than being blind to it.
I walked past them down the sidewalk that was all stone and decorative bead liner. I was almost to my car when I heard Carla yell, “Reggie! Wait!”
She hadn’t moved from her spot beside Snake. His back was turned. The coward wouldn’t even tell me goodbye.
“I just wanted to say thank you,” she called.
“For what?”
She shrugged. “Just . . . thank you.”
I was in the minivan before I could press her for an explanation, backing out of the driveway onto the street. Her hair flamed under the porch light. Snake had a hand on her face, whispering something against her skin. I wondered if she liked the way he smelled of strawberry. I wondered if she appreciated his dull, honest eyes. I wondered if she had ever seen The Snake Project. I wondered if she knew the right way to hate him.
He led her inside as I drove away, and all I could think of was Margaret and that damn tightrope.
Just imagine how miserable a fate it is to be to be a woman unable to close her eyes.
Chapter Ten
“YOU VERY MUCH SUCK RIGHT NOW.”
“That’s a little harsh for a tutor.”
“I can say what I want. You don’t pay me.”
Polka and I had been working on a writing assignment for forty-five minutes, and he was clearly fed up with my shit. Admittedly, he was justified in ripping my first draft to shreds, but hitting me with his notebook felt a tad excessive. I’d finally given in to his begging after I got a C on last week’s character study. I’d stated the hero’s motivation as “Becoming the biggest mansplainer in history,” which, apparently, was a hindrance to the cause.
“You still not write your final paper yet,” he accused. He jumped up and slung his backpack over a studded jean jacket, straightening the checkered bow tie around his neck. His style—’80s pop star meets cocktail waiter—?was incongruent with his personality.
“I’m getting to it,” I said, zipping my bag.
“Getting to it mean waiting to night before.”
“I’m not going to wait until the night before.”
He focused his black eyes on me. “Because I come to your house and help you.”
“Polka—”
“It settled.” He said it the same way he cursed, matter-of-factly and nothing to it. “I come to your house and help with paper. When good time?”
“I don’t know . . . sometime,” I groaned.