Along for the Ride(9)

‘Your father is here?’ she asked, shifting Thisbe in her arms and peering over my shoulder, down the hallway. ‘I thought he went down to campus.’

‘He’s working in his office,’ I said. She leaned closer, clearly not having heard this. ‘He’s writing,’ I repeated, more loudly. ‘So I’m going. What would you like?’

Heidi just stood there, the baby screaming between us, looking down the hallway at the light spilling out from my dad’s barely open office door. She started to speak, then stopped herself, taking a deep breath. ‘Whatever you’re having is fine,’ she said after a moment. ‘Thank you.’

I nodded, then stepped back as she pushed the door back shut between us. The last thing I saw was the baby’s red face, still howling.

Thankfully, outside the house it was much quieter. I could hear only the ocean and various neighborhood sounds – kids yelling, an occasional car radio, someone’s TV blaring out a back door – as I walked down the street to where the neighborhood ended and the business district began.

There was a narrow boardwalk, lined with various shops: a smoothie place, one of those beach-tat joints that sell cheap towels and shell clocks, a pizzeria. About halfway down, I passed a small boutique called Clementine’s, which had a bright orange awning. Taped to the front door was a piece of paper that read, in big block print, IT’S A GIRL! THISBE CAROLINE WEST, BORN JUNE 1, 6 LBS, 15 OZ. So this was Heidi’s store, I thought. There were racks of T-shirts and jeans, a makeup and body lotion section, and a dark-haired girl in a pink dress examining her fingernails behind the register, a cell phone clamped to her ear.

Up ahead, I could see what had to be the burger joint my dad mentioned – LAST CHANCE CAFé, BEST O RINGS ON THE BEACH! said the sign. Just before it, there was one last store, a bike shop. A bunch of guys around my age were gathered on a battered wooden bench outside, talking and watching people pass by.

‘The thing is,’ one of them, who was stocky and sporting shorts and a chain wallet, said, ‘the name has to have punch. Energy, you know?’

‘It’s more important that it be clever,’ another, who was taller and thinner with curly hair, a little dorky-looking, said. ‘Which is why you should go with my choice, the Crankshaft. It’s perfect.’

‘It sounds like a car shop, not a bike place,’ the short guy told him.

‘Bikes have cranks,’ his friend pointed out.

‘And cars have shafts.’

‘So do mines,’ the skinny guy said.

‘You want to call it the Mine Shaft now?’

‘No,’ his friend said as the other two laughed. ‘I’m just making the point that the context doesn’t have to be exclusive.’

‘Who cares about context?’ The short guy sighed. ‘What we need is a name that jumps out and sells product. Like, say, Zoom Bikes. Or Overdrive Bikes.’

‘How do you go into overdrive on a bike?’ another guy, who had his back to me, asked. ‘That’s stupid.’

‘It is not,’ the guy with the wallet muttered. ‘Besides, I don’t see you offering up any suggestions.’

I stepped away from Clementine’s and starting walking again. Just as I did, the third guy suddenly turned, and our eyes met. He had dark hair, cut short, incredibly tanned skin, and a broad, confident smile, which he now flashed at me. ‘How about,’ he said slowly, his gaze still locked with mine, ‘I just saw the hottest girl in Colby walking by?’

‘Oh, Jesus,’ the dorky one said, shaking his head, as the other one laughed out loud. ‘You’re pathetic.’

I felt my face flush hot, even as I ignored him and kept walking. I could feel him looking at me, still smiling, as I put more and more distance between us. ‘Just stating the obvious,’ he called out, as I was about out of earshot. ‘You could say thank you, you know.’

But I didn’t. I didn’t say anything, if only because I had no idea how to respond to such an overture. If my experience with friends was sparse, what I knew about boys – other than as competitors for grades or class rank – was nonexistent.

Not that I hadn’t had crushes. Back at Jackson, there was a guy in my science class, hopeless at equations, who always made my palms sweat whenever we got paired for experiments. And at Perkins Day, I’d awkwardly flirted with Nate Cross, who sat next to me in calculus, but everyone was in love with Nate, so that hardly made me special. It wasn’t until Kiffney-Brown, when I met Jason Talbot, that I really thought I might actually have one of those boyfriend kind of stories to tell the next time I got together with my old friends. Jason was smart, good-looking, and seriously on the rebound after his girlfriend at Jackson dumped him for, in his words, ‘a juvenile delinquent welder with a tattoo’. Because of Kiffney-Brown’s small seminar size, we spent a fair amount of time together, battling it out for valedictorian, and when he’d asked me to prom I’d been more excited than I ever would have admitted. Until he backed out, citing the ‘great opportunity’ of the ecology conference. ‘I knew you’d be okay with this,’ he’d said to me as I nodded, dumbly, hearing this news. ‘You understand what’s really important.’

Okay, so it wasn’t like he called me beautiful. But it was a compliment, in its own way.