bowl. I spread the chicken and its yellow sauce out evenly and methodically picked out every cashew, placing them into the stone mortar I’d found in one of the cluttered cabinets of our kitchen. When I was sure that I had found every cashew, I got the pestle and ground half of them up into a fine paste, then mixed the cashew paste back into the korma, and put everything back in its container. I took the remaining cashews, placed them in a folded piece of paper towel, and hid them behind the condiments in the fridge. I washed the mortar and pestle, plus the bowl, and put them back where I’d found them. I put the containers of Indian food in the flat’s quarter-size refrigerator. Chicken korma was one of Eric’s favorite, and the restaurant we’d gotten it from in New Chester never put nuts into it. The stage was set. All I needed to do now was wait.
I tried to read Gaudy Night but had trouble concentrating. I wasn’t nervous, exactly, but I wanted it to be over with. Eric had started his challenge at around one thirty, so he would be finished, one way or another, at six thirty. At about six fifteen the harsh din of the door buzzer sounded. I jerked upright. I wondered if he’d given up, but when I got to the front door and opened it, I found Addison. She was crying, her shoulders hitching up and down, and searching through her purse for the key.
CHAPTER 13
TED
My junior year at Dartford-Middleham High School I asked a sophomore girl named Rebecca Rast to the junior prom. She was a popular blond student I’d gotten to know while we both worked at the school newspaper. She seemed happy when I asked her, even though I knew she was more interested in the school’s jocks. It was fine with me; I was just looking for a date.
But a week before the prom, I ran into Rebecca at a beer party at an abandoned military base the next town over. I’d heard about these parties but had never gone to one. About a hundred students were there, cars parked on the broken asphalt of the base’s old parking lot, the kids milling around the sloping hill on the south side of the boarded-up buildings. Most of the kids had brought six-packs lifted from their parents’ homes, or bought by older brothers and sisters. I had come with my best friend, Aaron, who was, like me, neither popular nor an outcast. Before getting out of our cars we had nearly turned back, intimidated by the scene, and embarrassed that we had brought no alcohol. But then I spotted Rebecca clambering out of a nearby convertible with a bunch of her girlfriends, and I convinced myself that I should, at least, say hello to the girl who would be going with me to the prom the following week.
To my surprise, she seemed thrilled to see me, and we spent most of the party together, drinking warm beers on the hill, then exploring the abandoned base. We wound up on a low flat roof that we reached by a rusted fire escape. We stared at the stars, the beer we’d drunk making them slide in and out of focus, then we started to kiss. It was a warm spring night, and Rebecca wore a midriff-baring halter top and a short denim skirt, and she let me touch her everywhere, at one point whispering to me that we should slow down unless I had a condom. I didn’t, but, lying in bed later that night, I told myself that I needed to get one as soon as possible and definitely before prom night. It was an exhilarating thought, but more exhilarating was the fact that I had my first girlfriend.
On the evening of the prom I picked Rebecca up at her parents’ modest house near Middleham pond. While Rebecca’s mother took pictures, her father leaned against his Dodge Dart, smoking a cigar and giving me icy looks from under a Patriots cap. I was glad when we were safely in my car on the way to the Holiday Inn where the prom was being held. Rebecca wore a light blue dress with a low neckline. Her hair was French-braided, and she smelled like vanilla.
Despite some bad nerves on my part, the first few hours of the prom went well. Rebecca was chatty and flirty. We ate the dried-out chicken cordon