Leap Day (24 page)

When she sees the guy intended for her she is psyched. He’s prep-pier than the guys she usually likes, but he’ll do fine for a one-night adventure.

Katy watches the square of chocolate sink to the bottom of her cup. Maybe getting drunk will make it easier to have The Conversation with Josie. Maybe it will fortify her. Take away her hesitancy and fears. Before she can change her mind, she lifts the cup to her mouth and takes a big gulp. In retrospect, she thinks that probably wasn’t such a good idea. Her throat may never be the same again. When Megan and Zoey say they’re going off with those two guys, she feels her chest tighten. The time has come and there’s no getting out of it. Water always calms her, so she leads Josie to the edge of the lake. Watching the ripples of the water and the leaves drift by is almost like meditating. Usually, that is. Right now, it’s barely having an effect.

Josie starts guessing and Katy almost hopes she lands on the right thing. That’ll take away the pressure of having to actually say she might be gay. Or a lesbian. Or whatever a girl is called when she has a crush on another girl, or on a woman, in her case. Finally Katy sees her opening and she takes it. She holds her breath while Josie absorbs the news. At least Josie didn’t storm off or say “That’s gross” or anything. When Josie asks if she wants to kiss Ms. Conners, Katy pictures herself walking into the world religions classroom after school. Everyone has left for the day. Ms. Connors is sitting at her desk, slowly fanning herself with her hand because the air conditioning has broken. She looks up and says, “Hello, Katy. I was hoping you’d come see me.” Then they walk toward each other, lean forward, and... and what? Katy can’t see past that. Does this mean she doesn’t want to kiss her? Or simply that her powers of imagination aren’t strong enough?

When she and Josie laugh and fall down onto the sand, Katy is laughing more out of relief than anything else. Even if she doesn’t figure this out right now, she is grateful that Josie will be by her side for the ride.

Megan can’t help thinking that Justin’s mouth tastes like barbecue sauce. At first she couldn’t put her finger on what it was. But now she settles on barbecue sauce with medium spiciness. Barbecue sauce happens to be one of Megan’s favorite condiments, but she prefers when it enters her mouth via fork. After a few minutes she gently turns her head to the side, not wanting to offend him. Now she’s going to need a mint to take the taste out of her mouth. Justin takes her move as a sign that she wants him to kiss her neck. All she thinks while he’s doing it is that it’s going to leave a bruise.

Zoey glances through the trees at Megan and Justin. Justin is kissing Megan’s neck, and Megan has her eyes closed. Marc is talking about some big golf tournament in town next weekend, so of course she stopped listening almost immediately. She feels bad that Katy and Josie don’t have anyone to be with. It would have been really cool to set up Josie on her birthday, and Katy could use a little action too. While Marc is yammering on about “below par” and “a Big Bertha” — which she thinks is a kind of golf club but isn’t really sure — an old memory is sliding around the outskirts of Zoey’s brain. Something about the way Marc kisses reminds her of someone else, but she can’t quite place it.

Megan and Justin step out from behind the trees and join them. “We should go,” Megan tells Zoey. “Katy and Josie must be wondering where we are.”

Zoey agrees and tells the boys they have to go sit with Dennis for the next ten minutes. She tells them Dennis is an old friend, because she’s too embarrassed to admit that her brother had to come along. When the boys try to argue she leans in and kisses Marc on the lips. “Just ten minutes,” she says. When they walk away, she says to Megan, “Boys are so easy.”

At first when they return to the bonfire, they think Katy and Josie must have left.

“Oh my god,” Megan says. “We’re the worst friends in the world.

We just ditched them for some stupid guys. And it’s Josie’s Leap Day birthday!”

“Calm down,” Zoey says. “There they are, by the water.” She watches as Katy and Josie fall back onto the sand. “They seem just fine.”

“Oh. Okay. Good.”

As they head toward them, Zoey suddenly stops and says, “Greg Adler.”

“Huh?”

“Greg Adler, summer after sixth grade, seven minutes in the closet.” “The kid who’s having his bar mitzvah at fifteen? What about him?” “I was trying to think of who Marc reminded me of.”

“Marc isn’t anything like Greg.” Megan says. “Greg is shorter and has dark hair.”

“Not their looks, the way they kiss.”

“You remember a kiss from sixth grade?”

“You never forget your first kiss. I think I may give Greg another shot. If Marc doesn’t call, of course.”

“Of course,” Megan says.

Katy is stunned when she hears Zoey ask Josie the Truth or Dare question. Her heart feels like it has stopped beating as she waits for Josie’s answer. Why couldn’t she just have waited to tell Josie her secret until after the initiation was over? Then Josie would have such an easy choice. There’s no way Josie is going into that cold, dark lake naked.

When Josie starts silently taking off her clothes, the wave of gratitude that Katy feels is like nothing she’s ever experienced. She decides then and there that she will do whatever it takes to make sure Josie knows how much her act of self-sacrifice means to her.

Dennis tosses a handful of sand onto his small fire and heads toward his sister and her friends, who are at the edge of the lake. His last exchange with Marc and Justin had gone like this:

Justin (to Marc): Dude, you were right. They were total hotties. I like a girl with a few extra curves.

Marc: I think mine is a sure thing. That red hair is such a turn-on. Dennis: Do you even know their names?

Blank looks from both.

Dennis: If you don’t leave right now I’ll tell them every word you just said.

Marc: So?

Dennis: And then I’ll kick your butts all over town. Justin: Dude, you’re not that scary.

Dennis had a trick up his sleeve. He stood up and gave them the look that he’d practiced for hours in front of the bathroom mirror. The look said,
You better start running, because I just may be psycho.

So now Dennis is coming alone to tell the girls it’s time to go. He sees Josie walk out of the water with something held in front of her that’s not doing a very good job covering anything. The trees are casting a shadow over most of the lakefront, so he doesn’t think she can see him. He turns away anyway, just in case. He’s already seen enough. In the moonlight she had seemed to him to be carved out of a smooth piece of ivory. Like an ancient chess piece. He likes how her body isn’t perfectly proportioned. It’s so much more real than those pictures under his bed. He waits until she’s fully dressed (well, almost) until he approaches them.

While the rest of them look for Josie’s ring, Dennis hurries back to the car, feeling a little guilty about seeing what he saw, even though it wasn’t on purpose. He repositions the car and turns on the brights so Josie won’t be so scared on the way back. It’s the least he can do. That summer he will write a poem about a girl and a lake that wins fifty dollars. When the prize money arrives, he will use a tiny bit of rubber cement to stick a twenty-dollar bill onto the windshield of Josie’s car, so when she finds it in the morning she’ll think it blew there. Unfortunately, it is Rob who finds it and celebrates by buying himself a new CD and one of those plastic gizmos that make it easier to open the CD wrapper.

Ten hours after her water broke, Sherri delivers a healthy baby girl with ten fingers and ten toes. It hurt less than she had expected, but she knows the drugs helped. The doctor makes sure she is doing all right and then rushes out for an emergency C-section down the hall. The nurse cleans the baby off and lays her on Sherri’s chest. Bobby kneels by the side of the bed and touches the baby’s cheek.

“What are you going to name her?” the nurse asks.

“Amanda,” Sherri says definitively. Bobby doesn’t answer at all. Another nurse then rushes in and whispers something to the first one. Together they pick up the baby.

“I’m so sorry, honey,” the first nurse says when Sherri reaches out for the pink bundle. “I didn’t know the situation.”

The baby starts to cry as she is taken from the room. The pain Sherri feels now is much worse than the delivery itself. But she and Bobby don’t change their minds. For that, Hayley and David Solomon of North Miami Beach are forever grateful. In eighteen years the baby will have the right to contact her birth parents. But she won’t.

“We could win this whole thing,” Stu says to Grant as they stroll through the aisles of the Circle K. “Five hundred bucks. That’d be so sweet.”

“Not if we keep running in here every hour for chocolate. You’re like a girl.” Grant turns the corner and runs straight into Stacey Lu, a girl in his study hall. She just moved here last year and is a total hottie. He’s never spoken to her before.

“Is being like a girl so bad?” she asks with a wicked smile.

“I’ll answer that,” Stu says, pushing Grant out of the way. “Being like a girl is an excellent thing. Especially when they look like you.”

“Are you just saying that so I won’t shoot you?” She reaches for her Nerf gun at the same moment Stu pulls his out of his jacket pocket. They face off, both grinning, neither moving.

Stacey’s equally hot teammate, Randi Gold, comes up behind them. “Uh, guys. I don’t think a convenience store is the best place to be waving guns at each other, fake or not.”

“They’re orange,” Stu says. “I don’t think anyone’s going to mistake them for real.”

“No, she’s right,” Stacey says. “I’ll lower mine if you do.”

“C’mon, man,” Grant says, nervously eyeing the security mirrors. “Okay,” Stu concedes. “But no funny business.”

Stacey nods and at the same time they slowly lower their guns to their sides.

“So, what do we do now?” Stu asks. “We’re trapped here together. As soon as one of us makes a move we’ll all get shot. We’ll both lose. Unless...”

“Unless what?” Randi asks.

“Unless you guys strip down. Then we won’t be able to shoot you.” Grant laughs. He’s gotta hand it to Stu. He’s always thinking.

“Or you could just let us shoot you,” Randi suggests, stroking her long blonde hair with one hand. Grant wants to reach out and stroke it, but of course he doesn’t.

“Now why would we want to do that?” Stu asks, leaning one arm against the Slushee machine.

“Because, as you said, otherwise we’ll all lose. But if you let us take you out of the game, we’ll go out with you Saturday night.”

“Even if you don’t wind up winning in the end?” Grant asks.

“Yup,” Stacey promises. “Right, Randi?”

Randi nods, still playing with her hair.

Grant pulls Stu aside. “So? Whaddaya think?”

“I don’t know, man. Five hundred bucks.”

“We have no idea if we’re really gonna win,” Grant points out. “Thirty teams are still alive out there. And some of them have grudges.”

Stu turns back to the girls, who are waiting patiently, clicking their nails on the counter. “We’ll want your phone numbers first.”

The girls agree, and Stacey scribbles them on the back of an old receipt. She hands it to Grant, who looks it over and sticks it in his pocket, satisfied.

“Okay,” Grant says. “We’re ready to be sacrificed.” As he waits for the dart to hit him, he pats his pocket. He has a backup plan in case the girls gave fake phone numbers or break the date. Stacey’s credit card number is on the receipt from Banana Republic she just gave him. That could go a long way toward softening the blow.

Rob finishes his homework and checks his watch for the tenth time in as many minutes. He can’t be expected to focus on his homework when Anne ignored his phone message and his sister is in a car with the kid known around school as Dennis the Menace. When he goes off to college next year, who is going to look out for her? He goes to the bathroom to splash water on his face. As he reaches for the hand towel he hears his parents talking animatedly in their room. He puts his ear up to the air vent so he can hear them better.

“Mumble mumble Disney World mumble mumble help people mumble.”

Rob figures his mother must have opened the folder on the dresser and discovered Dad’s new job. He checks his watch again. Where is Josie, already? Rob grabs his bag of piñata candy from the floor of his room, goes downstairs, and plops down on the last step. As he sits there watching the door, he polishes off four Tootsie Rolls, a box of watermelonflavored Nerds, and two grape Pixy Stix. With football season over and no girlfriend, he figures he’s allowed to comfort himself with junk food.

Finally a car door slams shut outside. Rob jumps to his feet and tosses his candy bag in the den to hide the evidence. Once he hears Josie’s key in the door he swings it open and she comes flying in. He can’t believe it when he sees her wet hair. He would have sworn on his life that she would never have gone in that water. Clearly she is braver than she used to be. He’ll need to remember that. The mention of leeches sends her over the edge, though.

As he goes into the den to retrieve his candy, he realizes that, mixed in with the musty lake smell that Josie emitted as she ran past him was the distinct aroma of peppermint. That could only mean one thing. He runs up the stairs and knocks hard on the bathroom door. The shower is already running.

He gets no answer, so he knocks again, harder. He hisses through the door, “Josie Taylor! Have you been drinking?” He doesn’t want to call out too loudly and bring their parents into the hall again.

But Josie doesn’t hear him, either. She is too busy scrubbing every inch of her body. She scrubs places she didn’t know she could reach. She pays special attention to the places that had never, before tonight, been exposed to the outdoors. She washes her hair twice. It’s a good thing there isn’t a drought right now, because Josie uses enough water to fill the dolphin pool at SeaWorld. Finally satisfied that she is leech-free, she dries off and pulls on her robe. She uses the hair dryer to dry her hair but doesn’t bother putting any effort into straightening it. She’s just going to sleep on it anyway. Then she opens the bathroom door and trips right over Rob, who for some unknown reason is sleeping outside the door.