“Almost eighteen,” he says, eyes still on me.
“Did you just move in?” I ask. “Or are you staying with the couple that lives here? I don’t remember them moving out.”
“They didn’t.” He hitches his finger over at the house. “I just moved back in with my parents for a little bit until I can figure some stuff out.”
I dare to step closer to the fence and notice how beautiful his eyes are. And how much emotion they carry. Like he’s feeling too much, but trying to keep it all bottled up inside and hidden from the world. “Well, where’d you live before?”
He seems to get a little tense from this question, his shoulders stiffening. “Here and there.”
I think about asking him what his story is, or, better yet, dazzling him with my flirting skills. But I haven’t discovered them yet, so instead I end up saying, “That sounds cool.”
He gives me a look like he thinks I’m adorable. “Where are you heading to so early in the morning?”
“School,” I tell him.
“It’s summer. Isn’t school out?”
I shake my head. “Today’s the last day.”
“And you’re going?” he questions, wiping the grease on his hands onto his jeans, seeming to lose interest in me as he gazes off over my shoulder. “Man, I used to always ditch the last day.”
I suddenly feel like a ten year old with LOSER stamped on my forehead. “Well, I have dance right after and I take the bus from school so I sort of have to go.” I make a lame excuse.
“You’re a dancer?” he asks, and it brightens me up a little bit that he’s paying attention to me again.
I nod. “Yeah, I do mostly ballet and sometimes hip-hop.”
His gaze slowly scrolls over my lean legs and flat stomach, and I struggle not to look away from the heat in his eyes and the heat surfacing in my body. The heat only amplifies when his gaze meets mine, and for a moment I feel this strange confidence inside me flicker and I stand up a little bit taller.
“I’d love to see you dance sometime,” he says with a smile. I’m not sure how to respond, nervous over the idea. The smile starts to leave his face the longer I stay quiet. “Unless you don’t want to.”
“No, I want to,” I say quickly. “I-I will.”
His grin returns, bigger, bolder, more confident. “I’m going to hold you to that, Delilah,” he says. “In fact, I’m looking forward to it.” He pauses, his eyes skimming over my body again, and then he opens his mouth to say something. The look in his eyes makes me wonder if it’s important, but he snaps his jaw shut when a woman walks out the door.
She’s wearing a robe, but it’s not like my mom’s; this woman’s robe is made of pink furry material and flows all the way to her ankles. Her hair is in rollers and she has slippers on. “Dylan, get your ass in here and clean up the goddamn mess you left in the kitchen!” she shouts, loud enough that the neighbor across the street can hear.
Dylan’s jaw tightens, the bottled emotion in his eyes on the verge of bursting out. “I’ll be in there in a minute,” he replies in a surprisingly calm tone. He doesn’t look at her when he speaks; his gaze is still fixed on me, and all the emotion inside him is directed at me.
It’s overwhelming, and my breath hitches in my throat.
“Don’t give me that ‘I’ll be in there in a minute’ bullshit,” she shouts back, scooping up the newspaper from the porch. “With you that means your dumb ass is going to sit out here and work on the car until you feel like coming in.” She backs for the door. “I’m not putting up with your bullshit. Get your ass in here now and quit bothering the goddamn neighbors.” She turns away and steps back into the house, the screen door slamming behind her.
There’s this long pause where all I can hear is the sound of Dylan breathing. I want to ask him if he’s okay, because his mom seems like a real bitch.
Finally, I manage to gather up enough courage. “Are you okay?”
He blinks, like he’s stunned, but the stricken look on his face swiftly vanishes and suddenly he looks calm. “I’m perfectly fine. It’s nothing I haven’t heard before.”
“Are you sure?” I double-check. “I know how much of a pain parents can be.”
He nods, looking at me as if he’s trying to figure something out. “I’ll be okay, as long as you can do one thing for me.”
“Okay,” I say, a little confused.
“When you get home, make sure to say hi to me.”
“What if you’re not outside?”
“I will be,” he promises with a smile, and the dark cloud that rose over him evaporates.
“Okay,” I tell him, holding back a smile, despite how much happiness is bubbling up inside me. “I’ll make sure I do that.”
“Good.” His smile broadens. “I’ll let you get to school. Wouldn’t want you to be late for your last day.” He winks at me as he backs away toward an old car parked in the driveway with the hood up.
I wave at him and then head off to school, taking even strides, despite how much I want to dance up the sidewalk. I can feel him watching me all the way to the end of the yard where he can no longer see me as I disappear around the corner.
I let my smile break through. For once someone was looking at me. For once I feel like Poison Ivy instead of Invisible Woman.
Looking back at it now as I lie here on the shore, the water rising with the current and slowly rushing over my body, I realize that I was naïve. That I was nowhere close to being Poison Ivy. That I would never even come close. If anything, Dylan was Poison Ivy in disguise, and I was his next victim.
But it wasn’t all his fault. After all, I’m the one who chose to go back to him, even after I discovered his toxic kiss.
Chapter 2
Plastic Dolls
I make sure to say hi to Dylan on my way home. We talk for about ten minutes and then he has to go inside to help his mother with something. I don’t run into Dylan again for the next couple of days after that, and I’m surprised how sad this makes me. I’ve never been a girl who obsesses about boys, yet I find myself constantly checking to see, if by chance, he’s wandered out to his driveway again.
But three days after we meet, I still haven’t seen him again, and it looks like the start to a very long, boring summer. Bryant, my only real close friend, moved clear across the country a few days before school got out. That leaves me to hang out with Martha for the entire summer, who’s more Bryant’s friend than mine, and who I’m pretty sure thinks my mother is a prostitute.
“I can’t believe she walks around like that,” Martha says, flipping through a magazine while lying on her stomach on my bed. She’s got her brown hair pulled up in a messy bun, shorts and an overly large T-shirt on, and her sunglasses on her head. She could probably be pretty if she tried, but she doesn’t. Plus, I think she’s an extreme feminist and hates dresses and skimpy clothes. Maybe that’s why she’s so repulsed by my mom’s wardrobe.
“Yeah, you get used to it, though,” I tell her, leaning forward in the chair in front of my vanity to peek out the curtain again. I have the perfect view into Dylan’s driveway, but like the ten other times I looked out, it’s vacant. I sigh, sitting back down, knowing I should stop looking because I’m veering toward stalker behavior.
“I don’t think you should have to get used to it,” she says. “She’s a mom and she should act like one.”
I get a little defensive. “Just because she dresses skimpy doesn’t mean she’s a bad mom.”
She glances up at me with doubt. “She’s setting a bad example for you and teaches you everything a woman shouldn’t be.”
“And how do you know what a woman should be?” I ask, knowing I’m being rude, but at the same time she’s insulting my mother and she didn’t abandon me like my father did. “You’re completely clueless about what guys want, which is why you’ve never gone out on a date.”
She glares at me as she closes the magazine. “You know what? I don’t have to put up with this,” she says, climbing off the bed and slipping on her flip-flops. “I told Byrant I’d try to be nice to you and give you the benefit of the doubt that you’d return the favor, but as usual, you’re being a bitch.”
“I’m the one being a bitch?” I say, irritated. “You were insulting my mom.”
She snatches her purse off the bedpost and gives me a harsh look as she swings it over her shoulder. “I wasn’t insulting her. I was just saying what everyone else in the town says about her—that she’s a whore.” She looks at me condescendingly. “Only I was trying to use nicer words.” She heads toward the door and I let her leave, even though I know that there’s a good chance I’m going to be spending the entire summer alone now.
“Bitch,” I mutter under my breath as I get up and cross my room to the phone on my nightstand. My mom gave me the phone when I was eight, back when I was still into dolls, and so the receiver is pink and glittery and looks like it belongs in Barbie’s Dreamhouse. I’ve been trying to get her to get me a cell phone, but she says we can’t afford it.
I dial Bryant’s number and wait for him to answer.
“Hey, how’s the sexiest redhead in the world?” he asks, which is how he always answers. We’re still pretty close, but we actually used to be closer until he started dating someone a few months ago and the girl thought I was some sort of threat, especially when she asked Bryant if we’d ever hooked up and he stupidly told her the truth: that yes, one time when we were fifteen, and tried drinking for the first time, we made out and touched each other inappropriately. After that she didn’t want him hanging out with me. He still did hang out once in a while, but not nearly as much as he used to.
“Did you tell Martha to try and give me the benefit of the doubt?” I ask, plopping down onto my bed and staring up at the ceiling at a poster of Flashdance, which is totally eighties, but as a dancer I can respect the movie.
“Shit, she told you that?” He curses under his breath and I smile to myself, knowing that if nothing else, Bryant’s going to chew her out for doing so.
“Yeah, after she told me that she wasn’t going to do it anymore,” I tell him, twisting the phone cord around my finger. “And that I was a bitch.”
“And were you being a bitch?” he asks.
“Maybe,” I admit. “But she called my mom a whore.”
He pauses. “But she kind of is.”
“Yeah, I know, but it doesn’t give her the right to say it.”
He sighs. “I know. I’ll talk to her.”
“Don’t bother.” I roll onto my side and prop my elbow onto the mattress so I can rest my head against my hand. “I know you want us to get along, but without you, it just feels awkward.”
“But I worry about you,” he tells me. “You don’t have a lot of friends, and I’m worried that you’ll just sink.”
“You make me sound suicidal,” I reply. “And I’m not.”
“I know you’re not,” he replies. “But you can be self-destructive when you’re by yourself.”
“How do you figure?” I ask, not sure whether I’m curious or offended.
“Remember when I went on that family vacation during the summer,” he says. “When we were thirteen.”
I frown at the memory. “I was going through a phase.”
“Delilah, you almost got arrested.”
“I was bored,” I argue. “And Milly Amerson was the only one who would spend time with me. It wasn’t my fault she was a klepto.”
“But it was your fault you tried to be a klepto. And a very bad one at that,” he says. “You chose to do it because you were bored and have such a hard time making friends. In fact, you’re better at making enemies than anything.”
I sigh heavyheartedly. “All right, I get your point,” I say. “Sheesh, you’re such a mom.”
“Well, someone has to be,” he says. With anyone else I’d get offended, but I always let Bryant off the hook because he was there right after the divorce when my mom hit rock bottom and she drank herself into depression and would barely get out of bed for three months. She did eventually get up, though, and start taking care of me again, and people are allowed to break every once in a while.
“Thanks for taking care of me,” I say. “But I promise, even if Martha and I don’t hang out, I’m not going to go back to my klepto days with Milly.”
“Just be careful,” he says. “I worry about you.”
“I know you do,” I tell him. “But I promise, if things get too bad, I’ll let you know.”
“Good,” he says. “Now, I gotta go. My mom’s nagging at me to help her finish unpacking.”
“Okay, call me when you get a chance,” I say. “And I’ll tell you about my hot neighbor.”
He laughs. “Okay, that definitely sounds call-back worthy.”
We say good-bye, hang up, and then I lie in bed, staring up at the ceiling. It’s quiet, and I’m guessing my mom went to work already, which means I have the house to myself until three, an hour after the bar closes, because she always spends an hour with whatever guy she’s tempting to come home with her.
Boredom starts to set in. I hate being alone. It makes me feel even more invisible. If I had my way, I’d have someone around me all the time.