They weren't just the Theater Geeks to me anymore; they really felt like my friends.
No matter what we did as a group on Saturdays, Archer and I would always end up at his house playing Ping-Pong. Sunday was homework day: I'd bring my books over and we'd study at his kitchen table.
More than a month went by this way. Archer and I spent an insane amount of time together, and no matter where we were or what we were doing, I'd feel his eyes on me. He always looked away when I caught him, but I knew what he was doing, because I did the same thing. I stared. I watched him as he chewed on his pencil when he pored over a history text. I watched him as we ran his lines for Cyrano. I watched him practice piano after he got into jazz band. I watched him, and I knew what I was thinking when I watched him, and if he was thinking the same thing when he watched me...
Except he never did anything about it. Not even when we were alone in my room, with the whole house to ourselves.
I hadn't arranged it that way. Mom and Karl had a wedding to go to one Saturday, the same day a guy was supposed to come fix our washing machine, so Mom asked if I'd stay home and wait.
"You can even have Archer over to keep you company," she added. It was the parental equivalent of a nudge and a wink. After Mom and Bina's first phone chat they'd exchanged numbers, and now Mom was Archer's biggest fan. Had it been at all possible, I'd have stopped liking him on principle alone.
I did have him over, and since we couldn't play Ping-Pong, we made Saturday our study day. We started out very productive, but then I brought out snacks, which led to a debate over whether or not Frosted Mini-Wheats without milk qualified as a snack. I said it did, but Archer maintained that breakfast cereal by definition was meant to be enjoyed at breakfast time only. This led me to wonder aloud about his intense need to categorize foods by meal and if it might be a deep psychological issue from his childhood. Somehow that reminded Archer of his mom's and Lila's obsession with DailyPuppy.com and how Bina would call him to the computer every morning to share an adorable puppy picture or video. He said it with a scoff, but I'd never heard of DailyPuppy.com, and it sounded like the cutest thing in the universe. I had to see it immediately and raced upstairs to my computer. He followed me.
As I plopped down at my desk and typed in the URL, Archer noticed the Tastykakes on my night table.
"You gave me Mini-Wheats when you have Tastykakes?" He picked up the package from its spot next to the mini Liberty Bell replica.
"Don't open that!" I shouted.
"Wow. Okay." He replaced the Tastykakes and backed away from it, his hands up.
"Sorry, it's just ... you don't want to eat that."
"Because it's far too normal a food to have in your house?"
"Because it's about five years old."
Archer scrunched his face. "Tell me you're lying."
"I'm lying."
"Tell me you're lying without lying."
"Lying about lying? Or lying about the Tastykakes?"
He opened his mouth to speak, then paused. "I'm not sure. I'm confused now. Why would you have a five-year-old Tastykakes on your night table?"
"It's kind of a shrine," I admitted.
"A shrine to prepackaged snack cakes?"
"It's from a trip we took downtown when I was in sixth grade," I said. "I got to bring Claudia, and we did the whole Independence Hall/Liberty Bell thing, then Mom and Karl wanted to go on a walking tour. We begged until they said we could hang at the Bourse, as long as we held on to one of their cell phones. It was a huge deal because my parents had never been okay with me out in the world without a grownup."
"Sixth grade?" Archer asked.
"They were a little overprotective. They got better."
"So what did you do with your taste of freedom?" Archer asked. "Wait, I know. You and Claudia got matching tattoos. Liberty Bell tattoos. Rebellious and patriotic at the same time."
I was wearing shorts and a tank top, so I stretched out my arms and legs. "Do you see a Liberty Bell tattoo?"
Archer wiggled his eyebrows and looked me up and down. I gasped as if scandalized.
"No! No tattoos. We got soft pretzels and ice cream.