“You know,” Phil says, front wheels of his skateboard in the air. “I think you like Fiona. Really like her.”
“I think so, too,” Jimmy says.
“Shut up,” Thatcher says. He is sweating. It’s a true spring day, where even the air in the asphalt parking lot smells like cut grass and forsythia. “I’m just hungry.”
They reach the Kemps’ house at five o’clock, dangerously close to dinner time, and making the situation more precarious is Dr. Kemp’s brown Crown Victoria in the driveway.
“I don’t know about this,” Phil says.
“Come on,” Thatcher says.
When they walk into the side door of the Kemps’ kitchen, Sharky’s bark announces their arrival. Much to Thatcher’s relief, Fiona is alone in the kitchen, wearing her apron, drying dishes. Thatcher is looking at her, but Phil, with his skateboard tucked under his arm, and Jimmy, with his hair sticking up in sixteen permanent cowlicks, are looking at the kitchen table. In the center, where the fruit bowl usually is, the cheesecake rests on a pedestal. It’s beautiful-perfectly round and smoothed, creamy white with chocolate swirls on a chocolate cookie crust, sitting in a pool of something bright pink.
“You didn’t make that,” Phil challenges.
“Sure I did,” Fiona says.
“What is it?” Jimmy asks.
“Chocolate swirl cheesecake with raspberry coulis.” She holds up the June issue of Gourmet; the very same cake is pictured on the cover.
The three of them stare at the cake like it’s an alien spaceship landed on the table. Thatcher feels enormously proud of Fiona. He wants to hug her, but then he remembers Phil’s words in the parking lot and he tightens his expression.
Dr. Kemp saunters into the kitchen in his professor’s clothes-brown suit, bow tie, half-lensed reading glasses, South Bend Tribune tucked under one arm. He has an imposing academic look, but really, he’s very friendly.
“What do you think of that cake, boys?” he says. “Isn’t it something else?”
Phil and Jimmy nod nervously. Thatcher thinks how “something else” is exactly the right phrase. He can’t believe that someone he knows has made such a cake.
“Um, I have to go,” Phil says.
“Me, too,” Jimmy says.
They are frightened by the cake, maybe, or by Dr. Kemp, or by Fiona. They leave abruptly, the screen door banging behind them.
“Do you want a slice, Thatch?” Fiona asks.
Dr. Kemp rinses out a coffee mug in the sink. Thatcher does want a slice, and in the years since his mother left, there has been no one to stop him from eating dessert before dinner. And yet, he hesitates. He’s worried by how much he wants to taste the cheesecake, by how he craves it, craves Fiona’s eyes on him as he brings the first bite to his lips; he’s worried that what he really craves is Fiona. He feels himself reddening as Fiona gazes at him expectantly, awaiting an answer, and then Dr. Kemp looks at him from the sink. Suddenly the pressure of the question-Does he want a slice?-is more than he can bear.
Thatcher turns toward the door. “I have to go, too,” he lies.
Labor Day, 1984. They are fifteen now, about to be sophomores in high school. Fiona left home by herself for the first time over the summer, to a culinary camp in Indianapolis, but Thatcher knows she’s also interested in the things other fifteen-year-old girls are interested in. She spends whole days sunning herself on the roof of her house; she has rigged the telephone so that the cord reaches her perch. Sometimes, if the wind is right, Thatcher can hear her from his front porch four doors down: Fiona, deep in conversation with her friend Alison.
Thatcher has spent the summer working at his father’s carpet store-mostly moving the big-ass Persian rugs off the trucks into the showroom. As his father says, the Persians sell like winter coats on the day hell freezes over, and so there are always rugs to move. His father also has him steam-cleaning the two-by-three-foot samples of wall-to-wall, deep pile, and shag, because nothing ruins sales like a dirty sample. Thatcher moves Persians and steam-cleans samples and makes coffee and runs errands and stands around smiling so that his father can drape an arm over Thatcher’s shoulder and say to his customers, “This is my youngest son, Thatcher. Big help to his old man.” Thatcher hates carpet, hates wood flooring and linoleum and tile, and he really hates Persian rugs. His brothers hate it, too. His two oldest brothers, Monroe and Cal, work as lifeguards at the community swim club and his brother Hudson, just two years older, is a musical genius (drums) and has spent all summer at a music camp in Michigan. For Thatcher, Labor Day comes as a huge relief; school starts the next morning.
It’s Phil St. Clair’s idea to sneak out that night and meet at the playground of the elementary school, and it’s Thatcher’s idea to invite Fiona and convince his brother Monroe, now a junior at IUSB and still living at home, to buy them a six-pack of beer. Thatcher calls Fiona from the carpet store; he pictures her sitting on her roof in her powder-blue bikini. She’s all for the plan. Thatcher’s next call is to Jimmy Sosnowski, who suggests Thatcher ask for two six-packs. He does, Monroe extorts a price of thirty dollars, which Thatcher pays from his savings of the summer, and at ten o’clock that night, Thatcher walks out the front door of his house with twelve beers in his backpack. Thatcher wishes it could have been more like sneaking, but his father isn’t home yet and when he does get home, he won’t check on Thatcher; he never does.
Phil is already at the playground when Thatcher arrives. Phil sits on one of the swings. His whisper cuts through the darkness.
“Hey, did you get it?”
“Yeah.” Thatcher shifts the backpack; there’s a promising clink.
“Jimmy can’t get out,” Phil says. “His parents are having a barbecue and they’re staying up late.”
“That sucks.”
“Truly,” Phil says. “Give me a beer.”
Thatcher’s experience with beer is limited, and he panics because he hasn’t thought to bring an opener, but the beer Monroe bought, Budweiser, are twist-offs. Thatcher gives one to Phil, then opens one for himself and drinks. The beer is lukewarm (after Monroe brought it home, Thatcher hid it from his other brothers in the closet) but it tastes good anyway. It tastes adult.
“Sophomores tomorrow,” he says.
Fiona’s voice catches him so by surprise that he chokes on his second swallow, sending a spray of beer down the front of his shirt.
“Hey, you guys!” she says. She laughs at Thatch. “Amateurs.” She plucks a Budweiser from Thatcher’s backpack, flips the top off, and chugs half the bottle. Thatcher is impressed; Phil just shakes his head.
“Fiona, what are you doing here?”