In one way, nothing worse could have happened. Love slows down reaction time; it mutes the sense of danger. My conversation with George LeBay was twelve long days in the past, and thinking about the things he had said - and worse, the things he had suggested - no longer raised the hair on the back of my neck.
The same was true - or not true - of the few times I talked with Arnie or glimpsed him in the halls. In a strange way, we seemed to be back in September and October again, when we had grown apart simply because Arnie was so busy. When we did talk he seemed pleasant enough, although the grey eyes behind his specs were cool. I waited for a wailing Regina or a distraught Michael to call me on the phone with the news that Arnie had finally stopped toying with them and had given up the idea of college in the fall for certain.
That didn't happen, and it was from Motormouth himself - our guidance counsellor - that I heard Arnie had taken home a lot of literature on the University of Pennsylvania, Drew University, and Penn State. Those were the schools Leigh was most interested in. I knew it, and Arnie knew it - too.
Two nights earlier, I had happened to overhear my mother and my sister Ellie in the kitchen.
'Why doesn't Arnie ever come over anymore, Mom?' Ellie asked. 'Did he and Dennis have a fight?'
'No, honey,' my mother answered. 'I don't think so. But when friends get older . . . sometimes they grow apart.'
'That's never going to happen to me,' Ellie said, with all the awesome conviction of the just-turned-fifteen.
I sat in the other room, wondering if maybe that was really all it was - hallucination brought on by my long stay in the hospital, as LeBay had suggested, and a simple growing-apart, a developing space between two childhood friends. I could see a certain logic to it, even down to my
fixation on Christine, the wedge that had come between us,
It ignored the hard facts, but it was comfortable. To believe such a thing would allow Leigh and me to pursue our ordinary lives - to get involved in school activities, to do a little extra cramming for the Scholastic Achievement Tests in March, and, of course, to jump into each other's arms as soon as her parents or mine left the room. To neck like what we were, which was a couple of horny teenagers totally infatuated with each other.
Those things lulled me . . . lulled us both. We had been careful - as careful, in fact, as adulterers instead of a couple of kids - but today the cast had come off, today I had been able to use the keys to my Duster again instead of just looking at them, and on an impulse I had called Leigh up and asked her if she'd like to go out to the world-famous Colonel's with me for a little of his world-famous Crunchy Style. She had been delighted.
So maybe you see how our attention waned, how we became the smallest bit indiscreet. We sat in the parking lot, the Duster's engine running so we could have some heat, and we talked about putting an end to that old and infinitely clever she-monster like a couple of children playing cowboys.
Neither of us saw Christine when she pulled up behind us.
'He's buckling down for a long siege, if that's what it takes,' I said.
'What?'
'The colleges he applied to. Hasn't it hit you yet?'
'I guess not,' she said, mystified.
'They're the schools you're most interested in,' I said patiently.
She looked at me. I looked back, trying to smile, not making it.
'All right,' I said. 'Let's go over it one more time. Molotov cocktails are out. Dynamite looks risky, but in a pinch - '
Leigh's harsh gasp stopped me right there - that, and the expression of startled horror on her face. She was staring out through the windscreen, eyes wide, mouth open. I turned in that direction, and what I saw was so stunning that for a moment I was immobilized too.
Arnie was standing in front of my Duster.
He had parked directly behind us and gone in to get his chicken without realizing who it was, and why should he? It was nearly dark, and one splashed and muddy four-year-old Duster looks pretty much like another. He had gone in, had gotten his chow,