Two Truths and a Lie(96)

“Can I take your car?”

“No. Of course not. No way. Anyway, mine has a flat. I’m driving my mom’s.”

“Can I take your mom’s car?”

“Definitely not.”

And here was where things got complicated. Tyler had known Alexa and her family for a long time. He’d been in this house, what, zillions of times. He knew where they kept the extra toilet paper and the backup pool towels and the Cap’n Crunch her mother bought for Tyler to have as a snack, dry, by the handful. He knew that you had to pull up on the handle of the door that led to the back patio to lock it and that the window screen in Alexa’s bedroom fell out when a stiff wind blew. He knew that car keys went inside the small blue bowl on the hall table that came from Fireside Pottery in Maine, and that was where he reached, before Alexa could stop him.

“Tyler. Give me the keys. You can’t just take my mom’s car.”

But it was too late. He was already out the front door, and she saw that past the porch lights it was fully dark, with no moon to speak of. Blacker than the inside of a cow, as Peter used to say, until the motion-sensor driveway lights went on. With her eyes she swept the driveway and then the slice of High Street she could see. No black SUVs.

Then she remembered. She’d sent that text to Sherri. Except she hadn’t told Sherri that she had moved the girls to her own house, so if Sherri was on her way anywhere it was to her own house.

“I’ll bring it back safe, don’t you worry,” Tyler was saying from the driveway. “I just want to talk to the guy. Cam. See what I can do about getting my girl back.”

“Ugh. Tyler, I’m not your girl. I was never your girl. I’m not anyone’s girl.”

“We’ll see about that,” said Tyler.

She heard him peel out of the driveway in the Acura. If anything happened to her mother’s car, her mother was going to freak out. She’d just gotten that dent fixed.

Once again, she closed and locked the door. She peeked in on the girls—they were off the couch, and doing their own dance to Freedom along with Anna Kendrick and the rest of the Bellas. Katie had decent rhythm.

Okay. Deep breath. In, out. Everyone was safe.

She sent another text to Sherri. So sorry. False alarm.





79.





Cam


Cam’s parents were at the lake; he had the house to himself. Before it got dark he and the dog, Sammy, had walked all the way around the Artichoke reservoir—five solid miles, with hills—and they were both tired and content. He was waiting to hear from Alexa. She said she’d call him when she was finished babysitting. Cam had thought at first that he might be invited to go over while she was babysitting, but in the end he was glad, in a self-preserving way, that he hadn’t been. He didn’t want to compromise her babysitting reputation.

Cam was so attracted to Alexa. He couldn’t even believe it. He understood in a way he never had before why people did crazy things for love: why they killed for it, died for it, ruined their lives or the lives of other people over it. Why they fought wars! He had never comprehended, when they were assigned The Illiad in high school, just how it was that Helen of Troy’s beauty could have caused such havoc between the Trojans and the Achaeans. Now, though? If some guy named Paris of Newburyport tried to make Alexa fall in love with him and take her away from Cam forever . . . yeah, he’d put up a fight. He’d start a war.

Cam showered and settled on the couch with the Golf Channel on, Sammy’s head resting on his bare feet. Some people liked to put on golf to sleep but to Cam there was nothing peaceful about it—golf, to Cam, represented edge-of-your-seat drama. In what other sport was utter concentration so necessary that even a small noise from the crowd, even a puff of wind moving in an unexpected direction, could change the entire course of the game?

The Golf Channel was showing a tape of Phil Mickelson’s 2004 Masters win, one of the all-time bests. Even though Cam knew exactly how this would play out, even though he’d watched it dozens of times, maybe more, he watched, tense, as Mickelson and DiMarco strode toward the eighteenth hole. He listened to the tweeting of the birds and the whispered commentary of the announcers. The quiet of the spectators was so very quiet that it was almost a sound unto itself.

DiMarco putted, missed. With Mickelson gearing up for his final, tournament-winning, history-making putt, Cam’s phone rang.



When he’d first started hanging out with Alexa, his friend Dex had said, “That girl? Bro! She is so far out of your league I don’t even think your two leagues are in the same universe.”

“I know,” said Cam. “I know.”

“Dude,” Dex went on. “One day that girl is going to wake up, and she’s going to look in the mirror, and then she’s gonna look at you, and she’s going to come to her senses. And that will be the last you see of her. You ugly bastard.” Dex laughed and punched Cam on the arm—this was a habit he’d taken up after pledging Alpha Sigma Phi at Boston University.

“Okay, Dex,” said Cam. “I get it.”

Deep down, Cam wondered if Dex was right. Cam’s parents raised him and his two older brothers to be respectful of girls and women, to be good Catholics, to undertake at least one service project a season, to work hard and play sports fairly, and to have some idea of the direction they wanted their lives to take so they were always marching along on a plane that was straight and sure. He could not believe that someone like Alexa Thornhill had ever given him the time of day, much less spent the better part of the summer with him.