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“Hey, c’mon,” Carmen said, sliding off her stool. “Let’s go to my room.”
“Don’t get on the Internet,” Elena warned.
Carmen snorted in exasperation as she led the way up the stairs to her bedroom. The Proffitts watched over their children’s online time like hawks. It drove Carmen half-crazy, but Reverend Proffitt was fiercely concerned with the behavior of teens and making certain they didn’t head down the wrong path.
Bailey appreciated her friend looking out for her. Joyce tried to stop her from leaving with a “I never get to see you anymore” plea that sounded like a whine, but Bailey covered her ears, physically putting her hands over them, to block her mother out.
“I can’t stand it,” she said, once the bedroom door was closed behind them.
“I don’t want to think about anything but the overnight,” Carmen said, stretching out on her twin bed. Bailey took the beanbag chair, the only other place to sit in the tiny room. Carmen’s bedspread was pink checks with ruffles, a remnant from girlhood that no one in her family seemed the least inclined to change, and when Carmen had complained about it, she’d been ignored completely. The reverend and Elena had no clue what went on inside Carmen’s head. Bailey could have told them she was obsessed with Tanner Stahd, and they would have fallen over themselves trying to deny it. It wasn’t a subject Bailey and Carmen talked about much, as Bailey thought Tanner was cute and all, but maybe overrated for all the fuss about him. But Carmen’s every other thought revolved around him. Though Carmen hadn’t said it, Bailey knew she was kind of counting on the overnight above the river as a way to be near him.
As if divining Bailey’s thoughts, she asked, “Do you think Tanner and Delta will break up?”
“Do you . . . want them to?”
“I don’t know. They’ve been together forever. I just wondered. . . you don’t think he and Amanda are really hooking up, do you?”
There was an edge of desperation in her voice, as if she could live with Tanner being with Delta, but the thought of him with Amanda was anathema.
“Nah. Amanda’s never serious about guys.” Bailey actually had no idea what Amanda’s thoughts were. The girl was a cipher, only showing what she wanted to be shown. But Bailey wanted the subject to change to steer Carmen away from her obsession, no easy feat.
“Amanda won’t go to Oregon,” Carmen predicted. “She’ll go to some other school. Maybe back east. Something prestigious and cool.”
Bailey didn’t respond to this. She wanted to give her friend some hope, sort of, but she also wanted her to face reality. Carmen didn’t have a chance with Tanner. He was too popular, and Carmen, even though she was one of the Five Firsts, was a little too nerdy, a little too needy, and her dad being the reverend only made it worse. None of the guys wanted to be with her. They all wanted Amanda, or Delta, or maybe Zora . . . and even Ellie. Bailey knew Carmen yearned to be in that grouping—the one the guys lusted over—and felt a little bad that she was glad she wasn’t. Bailey had no interest in giving her heart to any of the high school boys. It wasn’t that she didn’t find them hot, despite some of them saying she and Carmen had to be lesbians because they were always together and had never had boyfriends. She just knew that, as the daughter of one of the town’s policemen, if she was going to sow her wild oats, it was going to be outside of high school, somewhere far away from West Knoll.
Carmen broke into Bailey’s thoughts with, “Don’t you just want something to happen? Something good?”
The words sounded wrenched from her soul. “Well . . . yeah, I—”
“I just feel like we’re waiting, you know? It’s just . . . waiting and waiting. I want it all now. Don’t you?”
“Depends on what it is, I guess,” Bailey said cautiously.
“It’s Friday night. We’re not going to get drunk. We’re not going to be with our friends. We’re not going to see the guys.”
For guys, read “Tanner.”
“We’re just waiting for the rest of our lives to start. My dad’s freaking that Amanda’s party’s an overnight.”
“It isn’t really Amanda’s party. It’s the whole class, and—”
“I know, I know. Coach Sutton, Mr. Timmons, and Ms. Reade . . . They’ll all be watching us. And some others, too, I think. I’ve told my dad that, but I don’t know. At least your dad gives you some freedom, but not mine. Mom’d probably let me. But she can’t go against him.”
“Some of the kids are just going for the day—”
“I don’t want to be one of them!” She leapt off the bed and paced the room, stopping in front of the window and throwing back the curtains. It was just getting dark, and the sky was purplish, with a crescent moon rising on the horizon. “I want to spend the night with the guys. It doesn’t have to be a sex orgy, like my dad thinks it’s going to be. I just want to camp out. Roast hot dogs and marshmallows and swim in the river by moonlight. I know. Never mind,” she said quickly as Bailey started to protest. “The river’s too high in the spring. It wouldn’t be safe.”
“I was going to say, it would be hell getting down the cliff to the water. I know there are steps, kind of, and we’re going to do it, but in the dark . . .”
“I just want to get out of here,” she moaned. “I just want to be with . . . a guy.”
This was as close as Carmen ever got about admitting her deep, deep crush on Tanner Stahd.
“I can’t believe Amanda was with Tanner,” Carmen muttered.
“I can’t believe she had an audition tonight. She seemed really irked at her mom about it all.”
“And then Zora just went home. I guess we’re not cool enough to be with her.”
