The Quarry Girls(30)
Ant’s hand dropped from my chest and he leaned away. He looked dazed and greedy. “You should stop laughing at me. I know a lot of people think you’re gross because of your ear, but I don’t even see it. I just see your pretty eyes.”
It was a terrible thing to say. Somehow, though, it made me feel bad for him rather than for me. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be laughing.”
“No, you shouldn’t.” He glanced down at his hands, then back at me with puppy-dog eyes. “Can I take your picture now?”
It sounded better than what we’d been doing. “Sure.”
He leaped off the bed and had that camera in hand before I could change my mind. It was flattering, I supposed, and I felt loose from the whiskey and pot and warm from kissing, and I’d known Ant my whole life and felt okay with him, even though he was being a weirdo.
I decided to pose like they did on the cover of Vogue, leaning forward provocatively and scraping all the smart off my face. I puffed my lips into a pout. I bet my mouth looked bruised and swollen from making out. It felt silly and good, which was a relief after that grody french-kissing. I intended to tell Claude all about it next time I saw him. He would think this night was hilarious, start to finish.
“That’s nice,” Ant said, encouraging me, his voice almost a snarl. “Sexy.”
His cutoffs had gone solid in the front. I pushed through the mental fog, staring at his shorts curiously, and then all at once, I understood. Hot shame washed over me.
“I have to go, Ant.”
He lowered the camera, his face cycling through all sorts of feelings, hovering the longest over anger before finally landing on something blank, which was the scariest look of all. I’d seen his dad’s face do the same routine at church when Ant was acting up, those spinning options and then a flourish of rage, and finally, all emotion wiped clean.
“You can’t go home until I get my picture,” Ant said, his voice as flat as his face. The front of his shorts stayed firm. “You owe me.”
“What?” I was having a hard time keeping up.
“You can’t come back here and give me nothing.” His resentment was a living thing in the room, so concentrated I could almost see it.
“Fine,” I said, squeezing my knees together, resting my elbows on them, chin on my hands. The back of my throat tightened with the unfairness of it all.
He clicked. The camera spit out a square of film.
“Now take off your shirt,” he said.
“What?” Apparently it was my new favorite word.
“You heard me. It’s no different than being in your swimsuit. Take it off.”
My stomach gurgled. “I think I’m gonna barf, Ant. I want to go home.”
“Show me your bra.” He didn’t even look like Ant anymore.
I started crying, I don’t know why. It was Ant. “Fine.”
I pulled my T-shirt over my head, glancing down at my chest. The front of each white cup was puckered. Mom had said I’d grow into the bra, that it would save money if we bought the bigger size.
Tears were streaming down my face. “Take your dang picture.”
He removed the first photo and snapped a second, the sound crisp in the small room. The moment that second photo ejected, he grabbed it and started waving it in the air to dry it.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it? Now Ed will take you home.”
CHAPTER 16
“What happened last night?”
I jumped away from the fridge. I hadn’t heard Mom step into the kitchen, didn’t even know she was awake. Oh my god, does she know? Does she know I let Ant take a picture of me in my bra? The biting odor of campfire in my hair suddenly made me woozy. “What do you mean?”
She wore her best housecoat. Her hair was in curlers, her makeup perfectly applied. “I mean your show at the county fair. That was last night, wasn’t it?”
Relief made me light-headed. “It was good, Mom. Real good.” I flushed remembering it. “The crowd was a nice size, maybe a couple hundred people. They were there to see the headliner band, but I think they liked us.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t brag, Heather. It’s unattractive.” She stepped to the coffeepot, yanked it from its slot. “This is cold.”
I walked over and felt it. “Dad must have left early.”
“Or he never came home last night.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. “He didn’t come to bed?”
Sometimes I’d run into him sneaking out of his office in the morning, the couch behind him holding a blanket and rumpled pillow. He’d twist his mouth sadly, mumble something about Mom having had a bad night. His office was off-limits these days—his personal kingdom, he said. It wasn’t my place to question it. Besides, I knew how much work Mom could be.
Her eyes grew hooded. “I didn’t say that.”
She reminded me of her mom—my grandma—when she looked like that. Grandma Miller, the one who gave Junie the Four-way Freddy, lived in Iowa, and we visited her on Easter and Christmas. She had thick, crinkly plastic covering all her furniture and only butterscotch disks for candy, but she was nice to Junie and me. I sometimes caught her looking at Mom like Mom was staring at me right now, though, like the other person had played a prank that she was trying to decide if she would allow or not.