With those words, a cold blade of truth cuts through my confusion about what went on at Dooney’s party. Whatever happened, Ben doesn’t think Dooney and Deacon will be playing next weekend.
He kisses me lightly when we go our separate ways. I am easily carried toward my study hall in the stream of students leaving the assembly, unable to shake the feeling that our being called together is the start of everything we know beginning to fall apart.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
twelve
ANOTHER THING ABOUT living in a small town is that there isn’t a big law enforcement presence—especially not at school. I’ve seen TV shows where high school students in New York and Los Angeles walk through metal detectors flanked by security guards on the way into the building, but it’s like watching science fiction.
Also, nobody on those shows seems to have a mother. Or if they do, she’s away in rehab, or too busy running a fashion magazine inside a skyscraper in Manhattan, or acting in a soap opera on a soundstage in Burbank to notice that the police showed up at one’s high school.
Mine is not one of these mothers.
She and Dad always arrive home within a half hour of each other. I hear the water running in the bathroom off my parents’ room while he takes a shower. Then the crack of a beer and the sound of the five-thirty local news. As Seen on Thirteen! Central Iowa’s news leader is doing a pet adoption and a profile on one of the teams with a good seed in the high school state tournament next weekend. I’m almost done with my homework when I hear the garage door open again and Mom calls Will and me downstairs to help her set the table. I start unloading the dishwasher, handing Will silverware while Mom rolls chicken into tortillas.
“No-guilt enchiladas tonight,” she announces, drenching the first layer in a dirt-red sauce from a jar.
“Why would anyone feel guilty about eating enchiladas?” Will steals a handful of the cheese she’s sprinkling over the casserole dish as she smacks his hand away.
“All that fat,” she says, holding up the giant bag of fat-free cheddar she gets on her once-a-month pilgrimage to the Sam’s Club near Iowa City. “Ran into Adele at Hy-Vee this afternoon. She handed me a coupon—then told me the police showed up at your school today?” Mom leans over the island. “Anything on the news about it, Carl?”
“Anything on the news about what?” Dad wanders in from the living room. A commercial for Crazy Al’s Discount Furniture screams at us from the television.
Will pulls plates out of the cabinet. “It was wild,” he says. “We’re all just eating lunch, and then boom: Mr. Jennings was cuffing Dooney over the table.”
“Cuffing him?” Dad frowns as he tosses his can in the trash.
“Recycling, Carl,” Mom scolds, moving the can into a paper grocery bag under the sink. “They dragged that poor boy out in handcuffs?”
Will is bouncing around the table folding paper napkins in half and sliding them underneath the forks. “Yeah. Deacon, Greg, and Randy all walked out on their own, but not Dooney. He was pissed.”
Dad gets another beer out of the fridge. He leans over the island and grabs a tortilla chip as Mom pours them into a bowl. “These chips are gluten free.” Mom announces this with great pride as she hands me the bowl to put on the table.
“Aren’t all corn chips gluten free?” I ask. “I mean, they’re made from corn.”
Mom ignores my question and frowns as she pops the casserole dish into the oven. “Why on earth would they put John Doone in handcuffs?”
“Ask Kate,” says Will enthusiastically. “She and her boyfriend were standing right there when it happened.”
Mom turns around as I put coffee mugs into the cabinet. “Boyfriend?” she asks. “Kate, are you blushing?”
I take a deep breath. “What? No, I just—”
“What’s gluten, anyway?” Dad asks, grinning as he crunches on another chip. I smile back at him. He knows I don’t want to talk about this. It’s one of things I love about Dad: his belief that silence is golden.
“Carl, please! Don’t change the subject. Your daughter has a boyfriend.”
“And if she wanted to tell you about him she would.”
“It’s fine,” I say. “He’s not . . . we’re just . . .” I close the dishwasher. “Ben asked me to Spring Fling.”
“Oh, honey!” Mom almost knocks me down with a hug. “Isn’t that wonderful, Carl?”
“What the hell is a Spring Fling?” he asks.
“It’s this really cool dance,” says Will. “Everybody wears clothes they buy at the thrift store or garage sales. Tyler told me his brother found this hilarious suit from the seventies made out of denim.”
Mom’s face lights up. “Sounds like we’ll have to go shopping.”