I'm Not Your Other Half: A Cooney Classic Romance Page 2

  “We,” said Annie contentedly, “will be chapter nine of every paperback romance we ever read. Where the laughing foursome sits in the booth at the ice-cream parlor, their heads close together. There’s always a photograph like that in the yearbook.”

  Annie and I talked till nearly midnight, while I twirled the cord and jumped mentally. Fraser and Michael, sitting in a tree, k, i, s, s, i, n, g.

  As surely as spring follows winter, I thought, life will be better for having the boys in it. Annie and I will be like flowers in the sun, full of color and joy.

  I did not remember then that not all flowers bloom at once. Some of them fade and die.

  Chapter 2

  SATURDAY WAS COLD. THE thermometer was in the high teens when we assembled at the school to get on the bus. Presumably there was a sun in the sky, but it seemed very far away. In another galaxy, perhaps. The sky was the color of lint—white, gray and limp. The wind came in gusts and penetrated to the marrow of our bones.

  The front of Chapman High is beautiful—three stories of brick, with immense stone columns and finely proportioned stone steps. Unfortunately, buses load in the back, where there are no rows of softly swaying hemlocks, no gentle brick walls, no delicate tracery of birch and dogwood. Just a parking lot, a row of dumpsters and a generator in a wire enclosure. The pavement is pockmarked from last winter’s frost heaves, and pieces of newspaper blow in the wind.

  I had brought along a fat old quilt, and Annie had a holey old Army blanket. I wanted to wrap up in my quilt right out there in the parking lot, but pride prevented me. Pride also prevented me from putting on my tie hat. My ears get cold easily, and I still get the ear infections that other people outgrew when they were four years old. In windy cold weather I can either wear a hat that covers my ears, or I can make an appointment with my doctor.

  The hat that works for me is plain gray wool, with a soft flannel liner, that hangs in two long fat ribbons like the ears of a very tired bunny. The ties loop under my chin, and I feel stupid and matronly wearing it. But I’ve tried everything else. Ear muffs slip off; ear flaps aren’t tight enough; scarves are too thick to tie under the chin.

  There was no way I would have Michael’s first judgment of me include the gray bunny hat, so I was standing there with my ears turning red, wishing he would hurry up so I could make a good impression on him and then put on the hat.

  The bus arrived.

  Not the usual stylish one with corduroy upholstery and its own bathroom. A regular yellow school bus. Annie moaned. “For this we paid good money? Lumps and cold vinyl? We won’t drive to the University. We’ll lurch.”

  I was too cold for a wisecrack about the resemblance to her own driving. The fillings in my teeth hurt whenever I opened my mouth. I was resigned to the school bus. School inures you to certain forms of torture.

  Annie hopped up and down as the cold moved through her sneakers. She was wearing flannel-lined jeans with the extra turns to compensate for her lack of height, and she had thick fuzzy ankles of red plaid. Her shirt was red wool, over a red-heart-dotted turtleneck, and her ski jacket was electric blue. I was almost entirely in green, with a few scraps of white to offset it. We were a very colorful pair.

  I had washed my hair twice (the first time I blew it dry, it came out in peculiar stiff tendrils), and when I left the house, it was hanging in soft, lightly tucked waves, but now the wind had snarled and matted it. Hurry up, Michael, I thought.

  I shifted the picnic case. Thick, padded, soft vinyl, filled with yummy food and four soft drinks.

  “We should have brought a thermos of something hot instead,” said Annie, shivering violently. “How much do we really want to go to this football game anyhow?”

  “A lot,” I told her.

  Annie grinned. Her tiny even teeth gleamed. Both of us had worn braces for years. We always notice teeth, because we respect the pain involved acquiring good ones. “We might as well board. If we don’t get seats now we’ll end up having to sit over the wheels.” We shuffled toward the bus.

  “Can’t be that heavy,” said Michael’s teasing voice.

  Even before I lifted my eyes, my heart lifted. It was as though the heavy, somber cold of the day had vanished, and we were somewhere in Bermuda—white sand, blue sky, soft warm sun and all the hours on earth to spare.

  “We’re heavy eaters,” I told him.

  Michael looked unconvinced. “You?” he said, nodding his chin at my slim legs. All of me is slim, which is fine if it’s ankles, less so if it’s shoulders and chest. My face is narrow too, but I like to think it’s elegant, especially the new way I’m wearing my hair, swept back like combed honey.

  Michael took the picnic carrier from me and held it up with one finger.

  “Show off,” I said. “Fitness freak.”

  We grinned at each other.

  “Hi, there, Fraser,” said another voice. “Hi, Annie.”

  Standing next to Michael was Price Quincy. It was all I could do not to say, “Oh, shit. You.” I bit back the words. Annie was saying, “Why, Price, great to see you” and so I said, “Price, how’ve you been?” trying not to sound gloomy.

  I did not care how Price had been and I hoped he would not tell us. Price is a reasonably attractive person in the flesh and in some ways in the personality. But he’s wild in that borderline way that makes me nervous. No thought of consequences. No concern for people. Just doing whatever is exciting at the moment.

  Some girls are very attracted to that. They like the idea of a guy having a six-pack and then driving over the school field doing wheelies. I can only think, Yes, and what if you go home and take the curve at the bottom of Chapel Street at fifty miles an hour and some little kid like Kit Lipton happens to be crossing the street?

  “You were smart to bring food,” said Price. “Saves money.”

  “Mostly it saves time,” said Annie. “My time is too valuable to waste standing in line.”

  Price laughed, his eyes on Annie. Now, I certainly check boys out, and I certainly think Annie is a girl worth checking out, but it’s different when you actually watch the eyeballs trace the body and you know they’re wishing for no fabric between them and the full nude view. I felt slightly sick and turned to see how Michael was looking at me.

  He wasn’t. He was looking at the bus.

  Thanks a lot, I thought indignantly. I mean, you could at least show a little interest.

  “I knew I should have brought a thicker coat,” he said. “I always need padding on those buses.”

  “We brought two blankets,” I told him. “We reupholster any bus we ride in. You want to share?”

  There was the briefest of pauses, as if we were all calculating something on invisible calculators. Price said, “How about Annie and I take the Army blanket there and you and Michael take the—whatever that thing is.”

  “This is a Depression quilt,” I informed Price stiffly. “It is an honor to sit on it, so it’s just as well you realized you deserve only an old Army blanket in standard olive drab.”

  “A Depression quilt?” repeated Price. The quilt was ugly, in fat blocks of dark brown, striped gray and rusty black. “Is it supposed to start up your depression or clear it?” he asked.

  “This quilt,” I said, “was made by my great-grandmother during the Depression out of old worn-out men’s suits in the church charity box. It’s stuffed with pieces of old coats and it wasn’t meant to be pretty. It was meant to keep them warm when they couldn’t afford to heat the bedrooms.”

  Michael looked at it with genuine interest. Price shrugged and led Annie onto the bus to reserve seats. What a sacrifice for Annie, I thought, having to share Price’s company. “Your great-grandmother,” said Michael. “That would be Viola Maude Fraser’s daughter?”

  I was immeasurably delighted. Of course it was only two days, and Michael didn’t have a wind cavern behind his eyes. But it was quite a compliment, his keeping track of my ancestry.

  Price and Annie were five seats beh
ind the driver. It took me one step to pass them to slip into the sixth seat; one second was all I had to look at Price and Annie; and one moment was all I needed. They were framed in that curious way couples have. Heads coming together, slightly bowed, the same sort of intimacy of hands about to touch.

  Oh, no, I thought. Oh, Annie, don’t fall for Price Quincy, please.

  I would have worried, but Michael sat next to me, and I forgot Annie. They were inches from us; we could easily have addressed them over the seat back, but we never even thought of them. We talked of ordinary things, mostly school, yet the conversation was intense. It was intimacy with a pause. I was considering each syllable before I uttered it. Saying to myself, Yes, I’ll be that honest; it’s safe.

  With Annie, everything simply poured out.

  Someday, Michael and I will know each other well enough that we won’t stop to deliberate, I thought. There will be no walls between us.

  I was astonished when we arrived at State: I had not noticed a single spine-splitting pothole, a single red light.

  Oh, Fraser MacKendrick, I thought, as Michael and I got up and he folded the Depression quilt over his arm and stood back to let me out of the seat. Have you got it bad!

  The bleachers at State are stone, set into the hillside like an ancient Greek stadium. The wind came through the goal posts and tore cruelly up the stone stands and through our clothing. I had no choice. I took my crumpled sagging old gray wool hat out of my jacket pocket.

  “What’s that?” said Michael. “It looks like a litter of gray mice.”

  Annie giggled. “It’s her bunny hat, Michael. Fray has tender ears.”

  Michael looked at my ears with interest. It was the first time my ears had ever served a better purpose than providing holes for my earrings. “I don’t know about tender,” he said, “but they sure are red.” He took the hat from my stiff fingers and fluffed it out, sticking his fist inside for a model head. “Wild!” he said, laughing. “Where did you get this? It’s so old-fashioned.” He put it on me, accidently bending my ears forward. I reached up to unfold them, and our hands touched: frozen flesh against frozen flesh. The vapor from our warm laughter rose up between us.

  “That reminds me of a shower at my house,” said Michael.

  “What, you don’t have hot water?” I exclaimed. “How Spartan.”

  “We have hot water. We just don’t have water pressure. We don’t even call it a shower. We call it a mist. As in, ‘Michael, are you out of the mist yet?’”

  Not too far from us, two teams were playing football, and around us people shouted and cheered, but among the four of us, there was just talk and touching and laughter. Wouldn’t it be incredible, I thought, if both Annie and I found the right boys at the same time, in each other’s company? Could anything on earth be finer than both of us becoming couples at the same moment? I struggled to like Price, but clearly this was easier for Annie than for me.

  “Let’s have something hot to eat,” said Price. “My treat, Annie. French fries, cheeseburgers, fried onions and hot chocolate. Okay?”

  “Wonderful,” agreed Annie, although she hates fried onions even if it’s somebody else eating them. She doesn’t like hot chocolate either and has had coffee every morning since she was very little (which may have been a contributing factor to her height).

  “That means you and I get roast beef on hard rolls,” I told Michael. “Also bananas and pickles.”

  “Bananas and pickles,” said Michael. “My favorite combination.”

  I was warm only on my left side, from my knee to my shoulder, where Michael and I were leaning against each other. “This is like trying to get warm in front of a fireplace,” I said.

  “Try my lap.”

  I slid onto his lap. It was a perfect fit. I am tall, but Michael is taller. I could actually snuggle against him. I loved it.

  I was aware of every inch of him—his wide-wale cords, the frayed belt strung through the loops, the pale-gray striped oxford shirt under the heavy gray hand-knit sweater.

  I turned my head to rest against him, and Annie was nodding at me, a secret smile on her lips. In the air she traced a shape. Another person might think it was a smile, or a crescent moon. I knew it was a watermelon.

  Chapter 3

  “MOM?” I SAID AT breakfast. I was now three days, or seventy-two hours, into my crush on Michael. “Would it be all right if I took the car today?” I handed her a plate of buttered whole-wheat toast with bacon and a sliced banana.

  My mother is flustered at breakfast. She is not a morning person, and having to be well-dressed, well-groomed and well-fed, all before seven-thirty, looms large five mornings a week.

  She eyed the clock. “I guess so. But that means you’ll have to drive me first and come back to drive your father. And pick us up in reverse order. Honestly, I wish we had two cars. If we weren’t saving for your college … Oh, dear, Fraser, look at this button hanging by one thread. Now I’ll have to change my blouse.” She kicked off her high heels for more running speed and dashed up to her room to get another blouse.

  My father, who sits quietly in the corner of the breakfast room until poor Mom has fled the premises, sipped his coffee. “Why do you want the car, honey? It’s so much trouble.”

  Because I need more than eighteen seconds after my last class. Because I intend to drift down the hall and find Michael Hollander. Because I want to be able to go somewhere with him, instead of race like a rabbit for the bus.

  “Because I have to work on my botany lab project after school,” I said.

  My father is very proud of my lab project. Twice he’s gone to school to discuss it with my teacher. I am the only student taking both chemistry and botany, and my father daydreams more about my future than I do. I don’t have the slightest idea what my future is going to be, but every day Dad comes up with a new possibility. Actually I took two sciences mostly to get them over with, but he is convinced he has a future Nobel Prizewinner on his hands. “Oh, well,” he said happily. “In that case, drive your mother and I’ll walk down to Chapel Street and catch the commuter bus so you don’t have to drive me as well.”

  I felt a stab of guilt, but it wasn’t much of a stab. More of a paper cut. Michael seemed to have come right into the breakfast room with us filling the very air with his desirable presence, and he was all that mattered.

  Of course, when I arrived at the school lot after dropping Mom off, every single slot was filled. I had to drive all the way down Buckley to find a parallel parking space, and then run back five blocks over patches of ice where last night’s drizzle had frozen in the dawn cold, and I was late to homeroom.

  One of the advantages to being a star student is that you never get into trouble. Your teachers automatically assume that you were doing something of vital importance, like inoculating your corn with nitrogen-fixing blue-green algae. Sure enough, nobody said a word.

  I had thought last week of going for a few long country walks after school. If I followed the meadow path in back of the yards of Coventry Road, I could scout out wild grapevine and bittersweet that clung to the trees along the meadow rim. My master plan for Christmas included making bittersweet wreaths for all my Christmas presents. Gray-brown vines with the bright piercing orange and scarlet berries and perhaps a bright calico ribbon. I could store them in the garage on the rafter nails until December tenth or so, and then give them out.

  Was Michael the gathering-bittersweet type?

  If the opportunity came up for me to suggest a date, what would I say? A movie? A meal? A walk down Coventry meadow path?

  If he wasn’t the type, I would not bother. I would buy everybody something at the gift shop instead.

  After school I dawdled to my locker. There was no way for Michael to know which of the three thousand lockers in school was mine. I detested Chapman High for being so large. In any decent small school a few turns around a central hall and you would have located anybody. But I could wander the halls of Chapman for two hours and still
not encounter Michael Hollander.

  When fifteen minutes passed without a trace of Michael (Come now, Fraser, I thought, a trace? What did you expect? The lingering scent of his aftershave to guide you?), I went down to work on my corn after all.

  Ah, the Goddess of Love and Crushes.

  She had directed Michael to the botany lab, and he was just leaving, looking sorrowful—because I wasn’t there.

  “Hi, Michael.”

  His head turned, his eyes lit on me, his lips moved into a smile. “Hi, Fraser.”

  We were locked in appreciation of each other, and we laughed slightly, like children, linking hands and walking instinctively toward the parking lot. Michael, evidently sharing all my thoughts, had driven his father’s car.

  There is nothing, nothing, more awkward than two people in love driving separate cars.

  We got into Michael’s car in the student lot (he had arrived early) and drove five blocks down Buckley where I hopped out, got into my car, and followed him across town to Vinnie’s.

  McDonald’s, Burger King, Wendy’s, Roy Rogers and Arby’s all have their place in my life (I am a dedicated hamburger hound), but Vinnie’s booths have high walls blackened with years of initials—dark, quiet corners where you can sit in peace for hours.

  “So,” said Michael, “tell me about blue-green algae.”

  “It’s not exciting. We’ve got six varieties of blue-green algae in a water solution and we inoculate the soil around the corn, testing for the best fertilizer. The real problem is keeping the algae alive. I’m working on various nutrients to add to the water solution. Karen de Forio is changing the algae types and Lisa Schmidt is monitoring the other variables, like sun and heat. We’re going to exhibit at the state Science Fair this winter.”

  “You like laboratory research?”

  “Not really. I liked coming up with the theory, and I liked figuring out how to approach it, but I can’t say I actually like doing it.”

  “Same as Toybrary,” said Michael.

  I stared at him. “How do you know I don’t enjoy Toybrary?”