Wrong About the Guy(29)

If my mother ever tried to prompt me to say thank you . . . We were high school seniors, for God’s sake.

But Heather obediently repeated, “Thank you,” as she unrolled the top of the bag and peeked inside. “Oh, fun!” she exclaimed.

“What’s in it?” I asked.

Heather started pulling stuff out of the bag: a couple of brand-new number two pencils—

“With good erasers,” George said. “I tested them myself.”

“You need to get a life,” I said.

—and several different kinds of protein bars—

“For your snack break,” he told Heather.

—and a bunch of other snacks (candy and crackers) and a little stuffed rabbit—

“For good luck,” he said.

“Isn’t that supposed to be a rabbit’s foot?” Heather asked.

“With a whole rabbit, you get two feet,” George said. “That has to be even luckier, right?”

“Especially for the rabbit,” I said. “What else do you have in there?”

“An eye mask,” she said, pulling out a soft black cloth one.

“Won’t that make it hard to read the questions?” I asked George.

Heather giggled, and he said, “Very funny. It’s to help her sleep tonight.”

Mrs. Smith said, “I keep telling Heather that she absolutely has to get a good night’s sleep or she’ll regret it for the rest of her life. Speaking of which, I’m sure your mother wants you home early, Ellie. She does know you’re out with this young man, right?”

“He’s my tutor,” I reminded her. “This is basically an extended study session.”

But we took the hint and said our good-byes. A forlorn-looking Heather watched us from the doorway, her mother’s bony arm draped protectively across her shoulders.

“Heather’s mother is . . . interesting,” George said once we were safely back in his car.

“Yeah, you could say that. Here’s all you need to know about her: Once Heather and I went for a long bike ride. By the time we got back, Heather’s mom had already alerted the neighborhood security. She thought we must have been kidnapped because we were fifteen minutes late and Heather hadn’t answered her texts.”

“Oof,” he said.

“Right?”

“So what one story describes your mother?”

I thought for a second, staring out through the windshield at the headlights coming toward us. “From before or after?”

“Before or after what?”

“Marrying Luke.” I circled my hands through the air. “Things changed so much for us once she met him. I mean, here’s the story I would have told you about my mom back before: There was this kid who was being a jerk to me at school. She told the other kids I smelled bad and that I wore the same shirt over and over again without washing it. That kind of thing. Anyway, I told Mom, and she said to me that we should do some role-playing—she’d be me and I’d be the girl—and she’d help me figure out how to respond. So I would say the meanest thing I could think of to her and she would do something every time that would make me crack up—either say something funny, or speak in a crazy accent, or sniff her armpits—something weird and unexpected. Just fooling around like that with her totally changed the situation for me. It made the girl’s insults kind of silly and meaningless. When she’d say something mean, I’d think, ‘Oh, I’ll have to tell Mom this one and see what she says’ and somehow it didn’t matter anymore.”

“That’s pretty cool.”

“Best part? That same girl tracked me down after Luke got famous and tried to act like we’d always been friends. It was fun setting her straight.”

“I bet. So how would you say your mom’s changed since then?”

“Well, for one thing, she’s busy all the time—we’re never alone together. They have so many important events and trips, and then there’s Jacob, of course—that’s the biggest change of all. And I love Jacob. I love Luke. I love our lives. I love that we don’t have to worry about money anymore—worrying about money sucked. But . . .” I stopped.

He waited, not saying anything, just driving. And listening.

I said, “She was really present back then, you know? I mean, she worked long hours, but when we were together, it was the two of us and the world didn’t matter.”

“Yeah. It feels like whenever you gain something, you lose something at the same time.”

“That sounds like one of your SAT essay prompts.”

He laughed. “It does! I even have a literary quote for it. One I didn’t make up.”

“Let’s hear it.”

He recited it slowly, pausing a few times like he had to work to remember it all. “‘Progress has never been a bargain. You have to pay for it. Sometimes I think there’s a man behind a counter who says, “All right, you can have a telephone; but you’ll have to give up privacy, the charm of distance. Madam, you may vote; but at a price; you lose the right to retreat behind a powder-puff or a petticoat. Mister, you may conquer the air; but the birds will lose their wonder, and the clouds will smell of gasoline!”’”

“Wow,” I said. “What’s that from? And how do you remember all that?”