Glow (Glimmer and Glow #2)(87)
“Yes,” she said softly, running the lighter through her fingertips and whisking off the cap several times. It did feel familiar, the memory of the antique lighter a purely tactile one. The grooves in the metal felt good beneath her fingertips. No wonder she’d liked it as a child. Impulsively, she pressed it against her lips and nose and inhaled. There was no discernible odor, but she smiled anyway. She had the distinct impression she’d done that before. She looked up at Dylan.
“Is it okay? That I gave it to you now? Is it too soon?” he asked.
She shook her head adamantly. “No,” she assured him, going up on tiptoe again to put her arms around his neck. “It’s perfect.”
When she lowered enough to see his face, she saw a shadow of tension on his face.
“What’s wrong?” she whispered.
He shook his head, stroking her shoulders. “It’s nothing,” he grimaced and inhaled. “No, that’s not true. It’s something.” He met her stare. “I wish this could have waited, but it can’t. We need to talk about something important when I come back Thursday, okay?”
SEVENTEEN
That morning, she was extra thankful for the distraction of running with Terrance on the beach when she returned to camp. Dylan had insisted that what they needed to discuss wasn’t earth-shattering, and that he was confident she could handle it. But he wouldn’t say any more. About that, anyway.
He did tell her that he wanted her to return to the camp and hit the ball out of the park in regard to her counselor duties.
“You’ve been a huge success here,” he’d said. “Now, just focus on going down there and sealing the deal.”
His support had meant a lot to her. Enough that she was pretty successful at focusing all her attention on Terrance that morning.
Terrance was doing a lot less huffing and puffing nowadays, even though he continued to waste an awful lot of breath by talking to her nonstop.
“I still think we were robbed with that tie with the Orange Team,” he was saying as he thundered along next to her. “We won the wall climb, Jill got top points for that painting she did, and Miguel even told her it was so good that he talked to a gallery owner he knows, and the guy said he wanted it for his gallery,” Terrance said, referring to Miguel Cabrera, the camp’s talented art therapist. Alice was highly gratified over the fact that Jill had finally felt secure enough to leave her safety zone in her art. The result had been three unique and moving paintings, one of which Miguel considered fine enough to sell in a top gallery in Chicago. Jill had gone speechless again for almost a whole day when Miguel told her. This time, her muteness had come from disbelief and happiness versus residual trauma. To see Jill so silently rapturous had humbled Alice, not to mention made her almost ridiculously proud.
“We dominated with that whole Bang thing,” Terrance continued. “Judith won the diving competition, and Red Team won all the football games for the week—thanks to me.”
Alice feigned shock. “And they had the nerve not to give us points for modesty.”
Terrance grinned slyly. “Why deny greatness?”
“Does that mean you’ve decided you’re going to go out for football this year?” she asked casually. It was something she’d been subtly pushing for with him. Not only did she think it’d help Terrance’s self-esteem enormously, she knew that the practices and a coach would continue him on a path of better health.
“Those guys are all white dicks.”
“All the guys on your school’s team are white?” Alice asked, surprised.
“No, I just mean they’ve got the littlest . . . Sorry,” Terrance said quickly when he noticed her repressive scowl as he started to show a measurement with his thumb and forefinger. “I just mean they’re losers.”
“Do you really know that?”
“The size of their dicks?”
“Terrance.”
He laughed. “I don’t know any of them personally. But those guys who do sports are all, ‘Look at me, I’ve got a shirt with numbers on it. Look at me, I can walk in the douche parade at a pep rally.’”
Alice suppressed a grin. “So you think people who are part of an organized team with a common goal are losers?”
“Yeah,” he said, as if she’d stated the obvious.
“That’s what you’ve been part of for the past few weeks,” Alice said, staring out at the glistening lake. “Seems to me, you’ve been pretty damn good at being a team player.”
“That’s different—”
“No, it’s not. Do you think I was the cheerleader, student counsel type in high school?”
“No, you were definitely a loner freak,” Terrance replied approvingly.
“Thanks,” Alice said, rolling her eyes. “My point is, you don’t have to become some kind of mindless robot to be part of a team. You can grow stronger as an individual by working with other people. Look at what you guys accomplished on the wall climb. That was all through teamwork, but it made you feel good. It made you smarter, too. Better.”
Terrance grimaced as he stared fixedly at the beach ahead.
“Those guys on the football team aren’t going to like me.”
“Screw them.” He glanced over at her sharply. Alice grimaced. She hadn’t meant to sound so sharp or bitter. She’d automatically gone into defensive mode at just the thought of cocky teenage athletes being jerks to Terrance. Alice knew how cruel kids could be toward another kid who was different. Grasping for her elusive reasonable calm, she continued more levelly. “Even if they do act like jerks at first, they’ll change their mind when they get to know you. You just have to work through that first difficult phase. It doesn’t mean anything when people say cruel things except that they’re immature and stupid. Let them think what they want in the beginning. Your skills will speak for themselves in the end. And if I haven’t told you enough, you have the skills, Terrance, not just the heft. A coach will be able to polish those skills up better than I can. With some hard work, you could be amazing,” she said sincerely. “Besides . . . those other guys on the team will be scared that you’ll squash them like a bug if they give you a hard time.”