The Dolls(16)

“Yeah, reading’s cool,” I mumble. I immediately want to smack myself. Reading’s cool?

I can see a smile tugging at the corner of his perfect mouth. “Sure,” he says.

“Cool,” I manage to say very uncoolly.

“Right. So see you later then?”

“Later,” I squeak.

He gives me a long, searching look and then vanishes through the library door.

I stand there frozen in place for a moment before shaking myself out of it.

“Reading’s cool?” I say aloud. “Who says that?”

I can feel my cheeks flaming in embarrassment the whole way home.





UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................





6


Idon’t even know if it’s a date,” I tell Meredith on Sunday evening as I put makeup on in the bathroom mirror. I’m wearing a long-sleeved black T-shirt, my old leather jacket, and a pair of skinny jeans, which I’m hoping are appropriate for the crawfish boil Drew’s taking me to tonight. At Meredith’s insistence, I’ve swapped my Converse for a pair of cowboy boots.

“But you said this Drew guy’s cute?” she prompts. I have her on speakerphone, and the way her voice fills my room, as if she’s right here with me, makes me miss my old life in New York so much it hurts.

“Very,” I tell her. I put the tube of mascara down and concentrate on dusting some blush on my cheeks.

“So do you like him?” she asks.

“I don’t know,” I tell her. “The thing is, there’s this other guy. . . .”

Meredith is silent as I tell her about Caleb and the way our eyes met across the cemetery on Thursday. I refrain from telling her about our spectacularly dorky encounter Friday outside the library.

“Girl, for all you know he’s gay. He could have been staring at Drew,” Meredith points out. “Go for the guy who’s already into you. How cool will you be if you start at a new school already having a boyfriend?”

I shrug before realizing she can’t see me. “I don’t even know if he’s interested. Besides, the girls I was telling you about don’t seem to like him.”

“Well, they sound like snobby little rhymes-with-witches,” Meredith sniffs. “So who cares?”

“I guess you’re right. But they’re from my past too. Everything feels totally complicated here.”

“Or maybe you’ve just been reading too many angsty novels,” Meredith says. “You don’t need to have every step planned out. Just do this crawfish boil, have a good time, go with it, and make out with the Drew guy if you want to.”

I swallow hard. I wish it were that easy. I wish I weren’t thinking about Caleb. I wish I hadn’t spent the last twenty-four hours daydreaming about being pressed up against the solid chest I’d collided with outside the library.

The doorbell rings, snapping me out of it. “That’s him. I’ve got to go.”

“Have fun!” she replies. She makes some kissy-kissy sounds, then I hear the phone click and she’s gone.

“Eveny!” Aunt Bea’s voice wafts up from the front hallway. “Drew’s at the door!”

“I’ll be right down!” I take one last look in the mirror, spiral my fingers through a few errant curls, and head for the stairs.


On the drive over to the crawfish boil in Drew’s pickup truck, I once again note that the Périphérie is practically the polar opposite of central Carrefour. In my part of town, every building sports a fresh coat of paint, every neighborhood looks like it could have been lifted from Better Homes and Gardens, and every person strolling by looks like they’ve been styled for a photo shoot.

But as soon as we make it through the thick tangle of trees that surrounds the center of town, it’s like we’ve driven into a new universe.

“It’s so different out here,” I say, hoping that I don’t sound like a snob.

Drew looks amused. “Poor, you mean.”

“No, that’s not what I meant,” I say quickly. “It actually seems like it has character.”

“I think you mean decay.”

“Not at all. It’s just odd that there’d be such a big divide between the two sides of town.”

Drew raises an eyebrow. “You have a lot to learn about this place.”

“Even the weather is different,” I add. Indeed, outside Drew’s pickup, clouds swirl against a dark, ominous sky, and it feels like the temperature has dropped twenty degrees since we emerged from the trees. I shiver and roll my window up.

“I heard once that the temperature variation between the two areas has something to do with water vapor from the bayou,” Drew replies. “I’m no meteorologist, but it never made much sense to me.”