Vickie leaned over to my desk and whispered, "Let's go to Starbucks after school. I want to try that new Frappuccino thing."
"I can't."
"Dairy Queen?"
"I asked you Monday if you could take me home today." I fisted my pencil at both ends, fighting the urge to snap it. "You said you could."
"Well, sure. I thought you meant hang out. I'm not, like, your chauffeur."
"I know, but I really need to go straight home."
She shifted her eyes to check the front of the classroom. Mr. Caws droned on with his back to us, so she continued, "How come?"
"We're having a family dinner tonight."
"So? You already do that weekly. Why is today important?"
Why was today important? She honestly had no clue about anything. I mean, I hadn't actually mentioned today to her or anyone else for that matter. It felt too personal, too raw. Not something I could just bring up randomly in everyday conversation. Even the thought of it made my heart pound. I kept my eyes on the teacher. "We're having company."
Vickie gasped. "Is today-"
Mr. Caws stopped talking to look at us. "Girls," he warned.
"Sorry, Mr. Caws," we both replied.
He turned his back to write on the whiteboard.
"Tiffany's boyfriend gets out of jail this week, right?" Vickie whispered.
Tick tock. Tick tock. I swear, time hadn't progressed. The clock had to be broken.
By now, Tiffany would be on her way to pick up Manning. I wanted it to be me. I wished I wasn't too afraid to cut school. I wished I had my license. I wished Tiffany hadn't caught me getting into Manning's truck and found both a reason to be suspicious and leverage over me. "He's not her boyfriend," I said.
"Sure seems like it the way she talks about him."
"Well, he's not. Tiffany's delusional." She exaggerated about everything. She only had him because he was trapped. I knew Manning wouldn't forget me, even though he hadn't bothered to write me back. The way he'd touched me-even just for a few seconds-I could feel it in his hands. He wanted me. He cherished me. That didn't go away just because of some time apart.
If anything, that desire got stronger.
Tick tock. Tick tock. There were still five fucking minutes until school ended. Four hours until Manning would be at our doorstep. Dinner was Mom's idea, one Dad had called "fucking dumb" right in front of me, which meant he'd been really angry. He'd eventually caved. Not to Tiffany but to Mom. In the time Manning had been away, Tiffany had managed to convince Mom he was innocent without revealing the truth about Manning and me. Dad didn't buy it. Manning had walked into our home uninvited, why wouldn't he walk into someone else's? But Mom wouldn't hear it. The man had been incarcerated for a crime he didn't commit, and he had no family to come home to but us. He deserved a home-cooked meal.
Tiffany thought so, too, even though she had her own place and could cook him a meal in her own kitchen, not that she knew how. Dad was outnumbered, even without my vote.
For the hundredth time today, I ran through all the things I planned to do as soon as the bell rang.
Go for a long run to calm my nerves.
Help Mom make the best food Manning would ever put in his mouth.
Make myself beautiful. Truly beautiful.
All of that would keep me busy until Manning got to the house. I needed to be doing, not sitting here thinking. I hadn't done anything good for Manning in too long. I'd only gotten him into trouble, damaged his life, his future. I wanted to serve him something wonderful, like the time I'd made him the Lake Special, my monster sandwich.
I had to show Manning I wasn't a kid anymore. That I wouldn't make any more mistakes. I was older, wiser, and my boobs were bigger. He couldn't miss that.
Mr. Caws checked the clock. "We still have five minutes."
God. What, was time going backward?
"Let's do some quiet reading," he said.
Time in 1995 was weird. It'd been killing me in all kinds of different ways ever since Tiffany had finally spilled the beans-Manning was coming home today, January twenty-third. Just like that, a year and five months into his sentence, Manning would be out. Time had come to a screeching halt right then and there and had been creeping along ever since.
December had passed like normal, but January was almost over, and we still hadn't heard from USC. My dad's panic made me panic. It wasn't standard for packets to come before March, but Dad didn't see any reason I shouldn't get accepted early. Lots of my friends had heard from schools all over the country. Mona's mom had shown up in the middle of English and dropped a fat envelope on her daughter's desk. Vinny Horton was a scrawny, bespectacled nerd, but he'd put his fist right through a wall when he'd found out the quarterback had been accepted to Stanford on a football scholarship while Vinny had been rejected. College was everyone's world. It was my world. Every day that passed without a packet in the mailbox, I was letting my dad down.