he said. “That’ll be the day.”
I held the door open for Dill, and we walked down the hall toward her locker.
When I first met Dill, she always smelled like cookies. I’d tease her about it, and she’d tell me the name of her perfume was Vanilla No. 5. I found out months later that she wasn’t kidding. She actually put a few dabs of vanilla extract on every morning.
My mother always said Dill looked so wholesome. That description wasn’t exactly a turn-on, but I knew what Mom meant. Dill never needed makeup, never wore much. She had that great clean look the cosmetic ads were always telling females they’d have if they slathered their faces with creams and cover-ups.
“Mom said no to the New York weekend,” Dill said. “I didn’t even tell her we were going to use Pete’s apartment. I said we’d stay at your dad’s. She said is Arthur Rudd out of his mind?”
“Maybe I should talk to her.” I always got along well with Mrs. Dilberto. Mr. Dilberto was another matter, second only to my father in his curiosity about my S.A.T. scores, college plans, and the general direction of my next seventeen years.
“It won’t do any good to talk to her, honey,” Dill said. “I want to go so badly, too, even if it is Nicki Marr’s idea.”
“Just for Jack’s sake, give her a break.”
“Why doesn’t she give me a break? She looks at me like I’m not there.”
“She doesn’t know how to socialize.”
“With females,” Dill said. “I don’t even care. I heard Bruce Springsteen sing ‘I’m on Fire’ last night, and I got goose bumps!”
We were in front of her locker, and she turned around suddenly so that she was pressed against me. “Do you ever get goose bumps?”
“Right now. The size of half dollars.”
Dill liked to tease, and I liked her to. Dill said that there was instant coffee, instant tea, and then there was me: instant hots.
“Think of something!” I whispered at her. “We need to get away!”
“I thought all night—there is my Aunt Lana in Washington Heights. She’s Daddy’s kid sister. I think she’d lie for me and say I was staying there. She’s très romantic.”
“Are you très romantic?” I asked.
“Are you ?” Dill said.
“I'm on fire.”
Dill turned back to her locker, working the combination while I stepped back to let my blood cool.
“Honey?” Dill said. “If I do get Aunt Lana to lie for me, it doesn’t mean I’m going to …” She didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t have to. I knew the end of that sentence by heart.
“Sweetheart,” I said, “if you can get her to lie for you, don’t worry about that.”
“Promise?”
“Promise. Just don’t sweat it. Let’s just cool out that weekend. We’ll give Jack and Nicki the bedroom.” I sneaked a look at her expression, to see how that sat with her. I was remembering what Pete had told me. I thought I saw some vague glimmer of regret.
“I’ll sleep in Pete’s reclining chair. You can have the couch.”
Dill flashed me one of her dazzling smiles.
“Super!” she said. “You’d just get horny in the bedroom!”
Chapter Five
J ACK AND I HAD a late-Saturday-night tradition. We’d meet at my house and talk until one or two in the morning.
If we double-dated, we’d drop the girls off first. (Dill always had to be in by midnight.) If we didn’t double-date, Jack would show up around the same time anyway, tell me about his date, if he’d had one, where they went, what they did. If he hadn’t gone on a date, we’d just rap until he left and drove to his house down the street.
Usually Rock-N-America or Music Magazine was on TV in the background. It was the closest thing to MTV we could get out in Seaville. Jack wasn’t at all interested in rock—he barely watched the videos. I was interested, but not hot for them. I only watched them with one eye.
The Saturday night before our New York weekend, Dill and I didn’t have a date. She went to Smithtown with her folks, to have