The Stillburrow Crush (14 page)

"What are we doing, Carrie?" he whispered—almost hissed.

I shrugged. It seemed useless to point out that of the two of us, I had the least experience in this department. But Luke seemed to realize it soon enough and turned his head away with a bitter laugh. He leaned forward, set his feet on the clutch and the brake and turned the ignition.

The car came to life, roaring under us. Luke stayed leaning forward. His head bowed a little as if he was straining to rest his cheek on the steering wheel. "Your parents are probably wondering where you are."

All I could do was shrug. "They won't be worried yet. I'll just tell them I was at the library."

He turned toward me with a probing stare. "You don't want them to know you were with me?"

I made a face by squinting my eyes, silently saying,
Heck
no, I'm not telling them
. "It'd just make them think we were dating or something."

"What if—" He stopped talking so abruptly I had to probe further.

"What if what?"

He shook his head and slid the car into first. "Nothing."

"What?"
I insisted.

He lifted a hand to stop me. "I said it was nothing."

I zipped my mouth shut. I wanted to ask what his problem was but I was sure I already knew. He was mad at himself for kissing me. I stared out the side window and acted like I was 129

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pushing the hair out of my face when I was actually rubbing the moisture out of the corner of my eye with my palm.

We took the country roads back to town. When we hit the city limits, I tried to duck down. But after a sharp, "Don't,"

from Luke I pulled myself back up. The windows were tinted anyway. No one would see me. Probably.

"You can drop me off here," I said, as we approached the corner where he could turn to head home. Luke only shot me a dirty look, at which I slumped down saying, "Or not."

If he'd been a cartoon character, steam would've been rolling from his ears. I'd never seen him so ticked. When he pulled to a stop in front of my house, he didn't look at me.

"So," he said. "See you at school."

My throat was jammed up so I could only nod. I grabbed the door handle, then remembered the whole purpose of our ride. "Oh! I almost forgot."

I reached into the pocket of my jeans and pulled out a lump of folded paper. Luke glanced over. When I tossed it into his lap, he frowned at me and cautiously picked up the bundle.

"That's all the feedback I received from putting your poem in the paper."

Luke had been in the process of unfolding the stack of papers but when he heard what it was, he stopped. "You were carrying it around in your pocket?"

I nodded and tried to smile, but failed miserably.

"Somehow, I had this feeling you'd jump me from out of nowhere and demand to know what everyone thought."

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His eyes moved to the sheets still folded in his fingers.

"Did a lot of people reply, then?" He slowly moved his fingers over the still-folded sheets.

I took the papers gently from his hands. "It's the biggest response since I wrote an editorial about getting a fire station built in town." I unfolded the notes and Luke's gaze suddenly strayed. He couldn't look at the results, so I said, "They loved you."

He came back. "Really?"

I grinned, a true grin this time, at his expression of complete disbelief. He snatched the papers out of my hand and read through each comment. His face moved from incredulous to ill to ecstatic in only moments. Then he crushed the comments in his fist and looked at me.

"They really did like it," he whispered.

I bit my lip. "I know."

"They liked me, Carrie." I think he had to repeat the words to believe them. And when it soaked in, he suddenly looked like he could grab me and pull me toward him to wrap his arms around me and bury his face in my hair. But then he looked down at the stack of replies without touching me.

"This can't be real." He slapped the critiques gently against his thigh and turned to me. "Thank you," he said quietly.

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It was after that first kiss I decided to start keeping a diary—this very book, in fact. I called it a journal, though, since I thought diaries were for sissy girls who only wrote about what boy they had a crush on that week. I didn't plan on writing just about my crush alone. Yeah, that was probably the biggest reason I wanted one but it seemed that so many things were changing around me. I knew I would look back on this year one day and try to remember the exact smells and the exact color of things I was currently experiencing. And I knew they were things I didn't want to forget.

I know, I know. I should've already started a journal by that point. Sixteen, almost seventeen, seemed old for someone like me to begin such a task. But I never thought I had an exciting life...not until Luke Carter deemed me interesting enough to kiss.

So I decided I needed a notebook. Yes, I spent most of my time writing and had plenty of notebooks. But I wanted a new one, something fresh and clean that had never been written in before. I knew there was no way I'd find one in my room. I wrote so much every notebook I owned was already half filled with scribbles.

So I decided to ransack Marty's old room. I don't think I ever saw him do over an hour's worth of homework so I knew he had to have dozens of brand new, spotless notebooks.

His room was half empty. His clothes, posters, and even the pillows off his bed were gone. But other things remained.

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He'd actually won first place at the science fair one year.

He'd invented a new kind of water bomb and his demonstration of it had been outstanding. His trophy for that was still sitting on his dresser along with some loose change from which I pocketed the quarters and dimes.

I started searching under his bed. Marty kept old school things there like yearbooks and past report cards. Mom had everything stored in a Rubbermaid container. I shimmied down on my hands and knees and reached for the box. The dust almost choked me when I pulled it out. And I knew then that Mom had kept his room sacred, not stepping foot into his personal domain since he'd left.

Waving away the dust cloud so I could see, I opened the box and sorted through it. It smelled musty and stale.

I found a picture he'd drawn when he was in kindergarten.

The paper was yellowed and ragged at the corners. The drawing showed Mom and Dad and Marty standing in a row and holding hands. Mom had a fat stomach so she must've been pregnant with me. At the top, in the worst handwriting I'd ever seen, Marty had written, "I love Mommy. I love Daddy. I love baby."

I sighed. Too bad Marty hadn't stayed that sweet over the years.

I shoved the drawing back into the pile and sifted some more. No notebook. Growing more and more restless, I pushed the box back under the bed and stood up, wiping my knees with my hands.

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The closet was the next place to look. I pulled the string for the light and once again a dust cloud enveloped me. It made the confining closet look dim and hazy.

I had to stand on tiptoes to peek at the top shelf. As I did, I bumped into some clothes still hanging there. It rustled up a smell I associated with my brother. And for the briefest of moments I missed him. That was something I would never tell a living soul. But the smell of Marty reminded me of when we were younger and he would sometimes let me ride in the front seat when we went with Dad to test drive a car. And it reminded me of when we went grasshopper hunting together.

Marty let me hold the jar while he caught the grasshoppers, which was fine with me because I had no desire to touch the creepy-crawly critters. But it had made me feel important to hold that jar for my big brother. Of course, then Marty would torture the poor thing by pulling its legs off one by one, and I'd go running to Mom, bawling. But standing there, in his closet, made me miss those old days.

It also reminded me of how so many things had changed.

Marty had moved out, and someday I would too. We weren't foolish little kids anymore, pulling off grasshopper legs. I sighed. It was almost depressing to think about growing up.

But then I spotted what looked like a notebook stuck under a shoebox. More determined than ever to preserve my memories of fair youth, I shoved the clothes aside and peered over them to get a look at what was on his closet shelf. Sure enough, there was a plain, three-holed notebook wedged under everything.

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I tugged on it, trying to shimmy it out from under the shoebox. But when I pulled it free the shoebox came as well.

My fingers clamped desperately around the notebook as the contents of the box that had been on top of it spilled out and onto me. I ducked, wrapping my hands over my head to cushion the blow. Objects fell around me, bumping and scraping against my arms and fingers before crashing in a heap at my feet. The notebook had acted as an umbrella throughout the ordeal, protecting my noggin from harm.

I stood there, half paralyzed for a second, until everything settled on the carpet. Then I checked myself for damages. I fared the collision OK. There were a few stinging scrapes on my arms, but the skin wasn't bleeding or broken.

I looked at the floor. The shoebox, empty now, lay propped against my shoe, and old fireworks littered the floor around my feet. I bent down and picked up a bundle of sparklers and a string of cracker jacks fell from my hair, landing on a stick of roman candles.

For a moment, I could only stare. There were fireworks everywhere.

I wondered how old they were and if they were still good.

Marty loved the Fourth of July. It was the only time of year he didn't get into trouble for blowing something up. And he always went crazy buying every kind of firework he could find. I swear he used to save his money all year just for the Fourth of July. I had to admit I loved the season too. I don't think I had one bad memory of Independence Day. Maybe it was the hot summer sun, the smell of freshly cut grass, the taste of homemade ice cream, or the fact that I didn't have to 135

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worry about school. It was just one of those holidays where nothing went wrong.

I started to pick everything up, thinking of one year when just Mom, Dad, Marty and I drove out into the country and celebrated the Fourth. Mom packed a picnic and Dad spread out an old blanket for us all to sit on. I'd never seen Marty have so much fun entertaining us with his fireworks display. I settled on Mom's lap and tried hard to stay awake and see every explosion. I wanted to keep the night alive because I never remembered my mom smiling so much. She never let me sit on her lap during church when I got tired. She used to say it made the family look like bunch of monkeys crawling on each other. So I would just inch past her and settle myself on Dad's lap. But that night, where no one else could see us, I was allowed to curl myself into her lap. She ran her hands through my hair, and her laughter vibrated through me like a soothing rocking chair. And it cradled me right to sleep. When I woke up the morning after, I thought it had all been a dream: a sweet, lovely dream.

I set the last bottle rocket in the shoebox and stood up. I was sliding the box back onto the shelf when the idea hit me.

That Fourth of July had been the exact kind of memory I wanted to put in my journal. I paused in my task, thinking about it, already planning. The memory was so fresh in my mind I swore I could still taste the watermelon we'd eaten that night.

It had to be written about. It had to be immortalized and kept precious forever in words—beautiful, flowing words.

And with that thought, I made up my mind.

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When I left Marty's room, I had the notebook plus a shoebox full of fireworks tucked under my arm. And I had a plan in my head. It seemed like such a good idea, I acted before I even thought it completely through.

I tossed the box on my bed as soon as I hit my room and I instantly looked up Luke's phone number. It wasn't until after I dialed that I panicked. I started to think about the flaws in my plan. What was I doing, involving Luke Carter in my idea?

I'd never even called him before. And we hadn't exactly been on the best of terms lately.

Since the kiss in his car, we'd ignored each other in school and he hadn't come over to tutor me. Not that I felt I needed tutoring anymore. I actually understood what Under-the-hill was teaching in class these days and I knew I was doing better. But the situation between Luke and me was ridiculous.

We acted as if we were complete strangers, as if we'd never talked to each other, as if he'd never come to my home and showed me how to make a true after-school snack, as if he'd never kissed me.

There was one time at lunch when I'd glanced up and caught him staring at me from across the cafeteria. I paused and stared back because his look puzzled me. He was scowling, yet he didn't look mad. He looked...I don't know, like he was disappointed or something. And then his friend, Nathan, caught him and turned to see whom Luke was watching. When Nathan saw me, he said something to Luke I couldn't hear. Luke looked away then and shook his head. His lips barely moved as he gave Nathan some kind of reply. I had no idea what Luke's response was, but it had Nathan 137

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turning back to gape at me. He pointed a finger in my direction and it looked like he said, "Her? Are you sure?" And Luke only nodded with his head bent low.

I was still thinking about that when the first ring echoed in my ear. My hand started to shake. What was I doing? I'd gotten some stupid idea after seeing those fireworks and now I was acting before thinking. I had no idea what I was going to say to him when he answered. And what if his mom or dad picked up? I knew I wasn't ready to talk to a Carter parent yet, so I decided to disconnect.