He nodded. “You didn’t wear it to the party for my sake. You were trying to hook up with Sean.” I banged my head against the driver’s side window—on purpose, to emphasize my frustration, but a little harder than I’d intended. “Again with the Sean,” I said.
“Again with the Sean,” he agreed self-righteously.
Without raising my head from its resting place against the window, I said, “You’re not supposed to be jealous of Sean right now, Adam. You’re supposed to be jealous of Parker.”
“Oh, go ahead and make an ADHD joke,” he said. “Go ahead.”
“Adam!” I shouted. “I do not make ADHD jokes about you. Sean does that. I am your friend.” He looked out the passenger side window. “Is that what you are now?” he said to the glass.
“I don’t know what to say to you, Adam,” I told his back and his golden brown curls, which were getting longer and looked like he was grooming them about as often as he was shaving, i.e., never. “You’re determined to be mad at me no matter what.”
His shoulders rose and fell slowly with a deep breath. Still looking out the window, he said, “Tell me about your panties.” I was going to tell him the sexy panties were a joke. en it occurred to me that sexy panties were my friend. e whole thing might backfire on me if he believed I wore this mysterious lingerie for Parker. But I was hoping I’d made him feel sheepish enough about the ridiculous hand-up-the-skirt scenario. All that was left was to get Adam back in my corner. I did this by waving imaginary sexy panties at him.
“ey are red lace,” I said. “See-through. ey are those boy shorts, do you know what I mean? ey cut across my butt. ey’re kind of uncomfortable to sit on, actually.” I made this up based on my last glance into the window of the lingerie shop as I walked toward the sporting goods store. In reality I was wearing Powerpuff Girls panties I’d had since I was twelve.
Adam totally bought my story, though. He turned toward me with his eyes wide, but little frown lines remained between his brows. He flicked his lighter and held his thumb on the button so the flame burned steadily. He dipped his head to examine my thighs sticking out of my miniskirt. He was imagining the phantom panties. His gaze traveled up to my Slinky Cleavage-Revealing Top. Finally his eyes met mine. ey did not look friendly, exactly. I would not have asked him to borrow twenty dollars just then. They looked… lustful?
Yes, this was a lustful look, I was pretty sure, judging from the way my body answered. is look lit fuses in my heart and left trails of gunpowder down my limbs for the fire to burn along.
I wiggled on the seat, emphasizing that my imaginary lace boy shorts were cutting into my butt cheeks.
Adam’s mouth dropped open.
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK. I jumped, sure that my heart knocking against my chest in response to Adam’s lustful thoughts was going to kill me.
But it was only McGillicuddy, still sitting on the truck, knocking on the hood. en he twirled his finger in the air: Wrap it up. He was sweet to signal us without looking at us, so he could still tell Dad truthfully (sort of ) that he hadn’t seen us together. I would have felt overwhelmed with sisterly love for him at that moment if he hadn’t been disobeying my direct order to help me change Dad’s mind. He was guarding my fake date like a prisoner of war.
“Are you still mad at me?” I asked Adam.
He worked his jaw, still staring a hole through me, but he didn’t say a word. He flicked his lighter again.
“Fine.” I opened the driver’s door and slid out of the cab very, very slowly, letting my skirt ride up waaaaaaay too high to escape the notice of the parking lot. I calculated the precise height at which it would reveal the super-sexiness of Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup and stopped there, so that my phantom sex panties remained forever my secret.
“Lori—,” Adam growled.
I jumped down from the cab and slammed the door. Ha! Try that teen soap-opera business on me, would he? I was way ahead of him. I had stepped up my MTV intake for precisely this reason.
As I passed McGillicuddy, I called, “You and I are going to have a talk when we get home, young man.” He glared at me. “Are you sure you want to ride home with Parker after what he did?”
“He didn’t do anything, as Adam will tell you. Both of you were taken in by a running back who can’t tell la casa from qué pasa.” I flounced around the back of the Beamer—Adam had parked so close to it that there was no room to slip a piece of paper between the bumpers, much less me—and slid into the driver’s side, trailing my long sexy legs behind me for Adam’s benefit (and accidentally kicking over an RC Cola bottle standing upright in the parking space, which somewhat ruined the effect, what with the fizz. Note to self: Sexy exits do not include fizz).
“Parker, I am so sorry,” I gushed as soon as I’d closed us safely inside the car and locked the doors. “I know you’ve met them both before at some point, but in case you’ve forgotten, that’s my boyfriend, Adam, whom we’re trying to get me back together with, and that’s my brother. ey know about the plan, but their friend told them that you—” I took a deep breath. I’d just been boasting about my panties to Adam, but I couldn’t even bring myself to tell Parker what the ruckus was about. It was so embarrassing, not to mention far-fetched.
Or was it? According to the rumors, the old hand-up-the-skirt ploy wouldn’t have been new to Parker. However, it definitely didn’t go with the vibe I’d gotten from him since I picked him up for this date. He’d put his arm around me when I’d asked him to in the theater, yes, but he hadn’t tried to go down my shirt, which was standard eighth grade fare in the back row of the movie theater (or so I gathered—not that I knew this from personal experience), and which I wouldn’t have put past him. I’d been willing to take the risk in the name of getting Adam back.
Parker said in a small voice, “Could you get me out of here?”
I looked over at him, his dark hair gelled just so, his shoulders broad in a preppy pink shirt that no male in town would have been caught dead in but that somehow worked on the Birmingham boy. A lot of girls said he had a mesmerizing stare that made them want to take their bras off, but to me it had always looked a lot like bug eyes, and right now he was staring bug-eyed at Adam and McGillicuddy way up in the cab of the truck. They glared right back down at him.
“Sure. Do you want to go back to my house?”
“Will they be there?” he asked, bug eyes never leaving the horrifying threat in front of him.
“Er, no. My brother has a date with his girlfriend. I don’t know what he’s doing here, come to think of it. And Adam wouldn’t dare set foot in my house.” I wasn’t sure this was true. The longer I knew Adam, the more I realized there wasn’t much he wouldn’t dare do, even in the face of my extremely angry father.
Hey, great idea! “Yeah, let’s go to my house.” With Parker quickly losing his enthusiasm for this fake date, I needed to squeeze all the juice out of him while I could.
at meant introducing him to my dad. Over the next few days my dad would ask around town about Parker and find out about the many horrors, ideally including the time Parker and his prep school friends filled the famous fountain in the center of Birmingham’s Southside with cheese grits.
Sticking my tongue out at Adam—he just turned away—I cranked the engine of the Beamer, looked carefully behind me for football players and monster trucks and RC
Colas, and backed out of the space. I half expected Adam to follow right behind me. Half hoped he would. Because that would have given me another chance to argue with him. Arguing with him seemed to be allowed by McGillicuddy and, bad as it was, it was miles better than no contact with Adam at all.