PART 4
Uncle Frank is my mom’s older brother. He lives two streets over. He has a 1998 Buick LeSabre the color of old mustard, which he’s owned since it was new and treats like a member of the family.
He handed me the keys in his driveway like he was handing over a newborn baby.
“Don’t touch the radio,” he said.
“Why not?”
“It changes stations by itself.”
“Why?”
“Because it has personality,” Frank said seriously.
“Okay.”
“Also, it squeaks when you turn left.”
“Squeaks?”
“Squeaks,” Frank said. “Like a shopping cart. Don’t worry about it. It’s been doing it since 2011. It’s fine.”
“Is it safe?”
“It’s perfectly safe. It just has opinions.” He patted the hood. “Also, if it won’t start, jiggle the battery cable. The left one. It gets loose.”
“Uncle Frank…”
“It probably won’t happen,” he said.
“Have fun, kid,” he said. “Your mother says this is weird. Is this weird?”
“It’s a little weird.”
“Weird’s good,” Frank said. “Weird makes stories.”
I drove to Sheldon’s house that evening at six-fifty-five.
The car squeaked whenever I turned left. There were eleven left turns between Frank’s house and Sheldon’s. I counted. It sounded like a shopping cart with a broken wheel, a high, sad eeeeek that got louder the sharper I turned.
The radio turned on by itself halfway there. I hadn’t touched it. It came on amid a Spanish-language talk show. I turned it off. Two minutes later, it came back on, this time to a country station playing a song about a man whose truck was the one thing that understood him.
Sheldon lived in a nice neighborhood on the north side of town, with big trees and wide sidewalks and houses with columns. His was a two-story brick house with black shutters and a basketball hoop over the garage.
I pulled into the driveway. The car squeaked. I turned off the engine. The radio stayed on for three more seconds, playing the end of the country song, and then shut itself off.
“Brent!” he said. “You’re early!”
“Only by five minutes, sir.”
“Excellent! Excellent!”
He wore a sweater vest. I’d never seen him in a sweater vest. He had a digital camera hanging around his neck on a strap.
“There,” he said. “Better.”
“Just make sure Georgia has a good night,” he said.
“I will, sir.”
“And if anything unexpected happens,” he added, “just stay calm.”
“Uh,” I said, “what kind of unexpected thing?”
“Oh,” Sheldon said. He waved his hand. “Nothing. Nothing at all.”
Right then, Georgia came down the stairs.
I saw her through the open front door. She wore a long dark green dress, with her dark curly hair pinned up. She looked a lot like the woman in the photograph on Sheldon’s desk.
Sheldon immediately started taking pictures.
“Okay! Okay! Out front! By the hydrangeas! Stand closer!”
“Closer! You’re not strangers!”
“Brent, give her the corsage!”
I’d bought a corsage at the grocery store that afternoon on my way home from work. It was a white rose with a little green ribbon. It cost twelve dollars. I’d agonized over it for twenty minutes in the floral section.
I held it out. Georgia took it and slid it onto her wrist without looking at me.
“Smile!” Sheldon said.
Georgia smiled too, technically. It resembled the strained smile people offer at the DMV.
Sheldon took about forty pictures. He took pictures by the hydrangeas, by the front door, by the car, and then by the car again from a different angle. Georgia barely said a word throughout. She stood there in her green dress with her arms at her sides and looked like she’d been sentenced to three hours of accounting.
“Okay, Dad,” she said finally. “I think you have enough.”
“One more! One more!”
“Dad.”
“Okay, okay.” Sheldon lowered the camera. He studied me. “Midnight, Brent.”
“Midnight, sir.”
“Have fun, sweetheart,” he said to Georgia. He kissed her on the forehead.
She let him. She walked to the passenger side of Uncle Frank’s mustard-colored Buick silently and got in.
I turned left out of the driveway. The car squeaked. Georgia glanced at me sideways. I pretended not to notice.
“So,” I said, “are you excited about prom?”
“Sure.”
“Are your friends going to be there?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind of music do you like?”
“Lots of kinds.”
“It does that,” I said. “My uncle says it has personality.”
“Okay,” Georgia said.
The radio came on by itself. A man was shouting about mattress sales. I turned it off.
When we pulled into the Ridgeview High parking lot, it was packed. There were limousines lined up by the front doors. Kids in tuxedos and sparkly dresses were taking selfies on the steps. Somebody had rented a white Hummer.
I parked Uncle Frank’s Buick between a BMW and a pickup truck with a flag in the back.
I turned off the engine. I remained briefly with my hands on the wheel.
“Well,” I said, forcing a smile. “I hope tonight won’t be too terrible. I guess your dad really wanted you to go to prom.”
She opened her door, but she didn’t get out.
“Wait,” she said.
“Don’t make things too easy for him?” I read out loud.
Georgia nodded. “My dad wants me to make tonight difficult.”
“Why?”
“To see how you react.”
“What?”
“He suggested I complain about everything,” she said. “Make unreasonable requests. Be rude. Be a total nightmare. And then he wants me to tell him whether you lose your patience.”
I looked out the windshield toward the gym. I examined my grandfather’s funeral suit and the shoes I’d borrowed from my neighbor, which were half a size too small. I considered the mustard-colored Buick with its squeaking left turns and its haunted radio.
“So,” I said slowly, “I’m wearing borrowed shoes and driving a car that sounds like a shopping cart because your father wants to test my patience?”
It was a real laugh, loud and surprised, like it had escaped from her.
“Pretty much,” she said.
“Does he know there are easier ways to annoy me?”
“Brent!”
“I’m serious. He could just ask me to reorganize the warehouse again. I did it in February. Took three weeks. He changed his mind about where the paper towels go four times.”
“He told me about that,” she said. “He said you didn’t complain once.”
“I complained,” I said. “Just not out loud.”
“I told him I wouldn’t do it,” she said. “The whole difficult thing. It wasn’t fair to you.”
“Then why did you look so miserable back at your house?”
“Because my dad was standing right there taking forty pictures, and I didn’t want him to think I’d agreed to his ridiculous plan.” She shrugged. “And because I was annoyed with him. Not with you. Sorry. I should’ve said something sooner.”
“Then why are we here?” I asked.
“Because I still wanted to go to prom,” Georgia said. “It’s my senior prom. I bought this dress in February. And I thought you deserved to know what he was planning before you spent the whole night wondering why I was being horrible.”
“Planning for what?” I said.
“That’s the part I can’t explain yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because I want you to hear it from him,” she said. “It’s not my news to tell.”
“Georgia,” I said, “you’re making this sound like I’m about to inherit a castle.”
“No castle,” she said. “But you might be surprised.”
The theme was “A Night Under the Stars.” Somebody had hung hundreds of little silver paper stars from the ceiling on fishing line. They turned slowly in the air from the heat of the crowd. The basketball hoops were wrapped in white fabric. A DJ booth under among them with colored lights that pulsed with the music.
It smelled like floor polish, hair spray, and too much cologne, which is exactly what every high school dance smells like.
Georgia grabbed my arm and pulled me through the crowd toward a table near the back.
“Come on. I want you to meet Madison.”
Madison was Georgia’s best friend. She was short and blond and wearing a bright red dress with sequins that caught the light whenever she moved. She was sitting at the table eating a cupcake.
When she saw us, she put the cupcake down and looked me up and down.
“So,” she said. “You’re Brent.”
“Why does everybody say my name like that?” I asked.
“Madison knows about Dad’s little experiment,” she said.
“Wonderful,” I said. “Does the DJ know too?”
“Not yet!” she said. “But the night is young.”
Her date was a tall, quiet boy named Theo who played on the basketball team. He shook my hand and said, “Hey, man,” and then returned to looking at his phone. I liked him immediately.
We found our seats. A waiter, actually a junior from the culinary club, put plates of chicken and green beans before us.
“So,” Madison said, leaning forward on her elbows. “How’s the test going so far?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Nobody’s told me what the test is.”
“That’s part of the test,” Madison said wisely.
“Madison,” Georgia said.
“What? It probably is.”
About thirty minutes later, we were standing by the edge of the dance floor. Georgia handed me her purse.
“Hold this,” she said.
I took it. It was small and sparkly and weighed roughly as much as a sandwich.
She handed me her phone.
“And this.”
“Okay.”
I stood holding a purse, a phone, and a cup of punch. I looked at her suspiciously.
“Is this the test?” I asked.
“No,” Georgia said. “I’m tying my shoe.”
She bent down, fiddled with the strap on her high heel, and stood back up. She looked at my face and laughed.
“You’re going to question everything I do tonight, aren’t you?” she said.
“Your father,” I said, “has destroyed my ability to recognize normal behavior.”
For the next hour, Georgia teased me by pretending to make ridiculous demands.
“Brent,” she said, with a completely straight face, “could you ask the DJ to play ‘Midnight Sparrow’ by The Clementines?”
“Sure. Who are The Clementines?”
“They don’t exist.”
“Then how am I supposed to…”
“That’s your problem.”
I headed to the DJ booth. I walked over there. The DJ was a bored-looking guy in his thirties with headphones around his neck.
“Hi,” I said. “Do you have ‘Midnight Sparrow’ by The Clementines?”
“Never heard of it.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“He’s out of stock,” I told Georgia. “He offered me a substitute. Something by Taylor Swift.”
Georgia complained that the punch wasn’t cold enough.
I went to the drink table, filled a cup with ice, and poured the punch over it. I brought it back to her with a napkin folded into a triangle on top.
“Chilled to perfection,” I said. “And I’ve added a complimentary napkin.”
“Hmm,” she said. “Acceptable.”
“Northwest?” I said.
“Exactly northwest. Not north. Not west. Northwest.”
I checked my phone. I opened the compass app. I turned around in a slow circle amid the gym while Madison and Theo watched.
“Georgia,” I said, “I can offer you north or west. The budget doesn’t cover both.”
Madison laughed so hard she nearly dropped her cupcake. Theo actually looked up from his phone and grinned.
Georgia was laughing too. Really laughing, with her head tipped back and her eyes squeezed shut.
She was in her forties, with short gray hair and reading glasses on a beaded chain around her neck. She wore a black dress and a name tag that said CHAPERONE.
“Brent?” she said.
I rose. “Yes?”
“I’m Evelyn. Georgia’s aunt. I teach chemistry here.” She held out her hand. “I’m one of the chaperones tonight.”
“Nice to meet you, ma’am.”
“So,” Evelyn said, smiling, “you’re the young man Sheldon keeps talking about.”
“Hopefully nothing terrible,” I said.
“Oh, no. Not at all.” Evelyn’s smile got bigger. “He says you’re excellent under pressure.”
“Does everyone in your family discuss my job performance?” I asked.
“Aunt Evelyn!” Georgia said, covering her face with both hands.
“Have a nice night, Brent,” she said. “Don’t let my niece make you fetch the moon or anything.”
Later, Georgia and I stepped outside for some air.
The night was warm and smelled like cut grass. A few other couples out there, sitting on the steps or standing by the flagpole. The music from the gym was muffled through the brick wall, a thumping bass line I felt in my feet.
“Okay,” I said. “Enough games.”
“What?”
CONTINUE THE NEXT PART BELOW :
