Lola and the Boy Next Door

Cricket turns to me with his entire body—head, shoulders, chest, arms, legs. There are no half gestures with Cricket Bell.

“Another slice?”

I motion toward the piece in front of me, which I haven’t even started.

“Lindsey?” he asks.

She shakes her head. “I’m not exactly pie-deprived, visiting here so often.”

Why is he here? Isn’t there some campus party he should be at?

The more I think about it, the more incensed I become. How dare he show up and expect me to be friendly? People can’t just do that.

“How’s your family?” Andy asks.

Cricket swallows. “They’re good. My parents are the same.

Dad’s a little too exhausted, Mom’s a little too enthusiastic. But they’re good. And Call is busy training, of course. It’s a big year with the Olympics coming up. And Aleck is married now.”

“Is he still composing?” Andy asks. Alexander, or Aleck as dictated by the family nickname, is the twins’ older brother. He was already in high school when Calliope started training, so he escaped most of the family drama. I never knew him well, but I do vividly recall the complicated piano concertos that used to glide through our walls. All three Bells could be considered prodigies in their fields.

“And teaching,” Cricket confirms. “And he had his first child last year.”

“Boy or girl?” Lindsey asks.

“A girl. Abigail.”

“Uncle . . . Cricket,” I say.

Lindsey and Andy both let out an uncontrolled snort, but Andy instantly looks horrified for doing it. He glares at me. “Lola.”

“No, it’s okay,” Cricket says. “It’s completely ridiculous.”

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“No, please. Don’t be.” But there’s a catch in his voice, and he says it so quickly that I look at him in surprise. For the briefest moment, our eyes lock. There’s a flash of pain, and he turns away. He hasn’t forgotten.

Cricket Bell remembers everything.

My face burns. Without thinking, I push away my plate. “I need to . . . get ready for work.”

“Come on.” Lindsey grabs my hand. “You’ll be late.” Andy glances at the Frida Kahlo wall calendar where I post my schedule. He frowns toward Frida’s unibrow. “You didn’t write it down.”

Lindsey is already pulling me upstairs. “I’m covering for someone!” I say.

“Am I supposed to pick you up?” he hollers.

I lean over the banister and look into the kitchen. Cricket is staring at me, parted mouth and furrowed brow. His difficult equation face. As if I’m the problem, not him. I rip away my gaze. “Yeah, the usual time. Thanks, Dad.”

Lindsey and I run the rest of the way into my bedroom. She locks my door. “What’ll you do?” Her voice is low and calm.

“About Cricket?”

She reaches underneath my bed and pulls out the polyester vest.

“No. Work.”

I search for the remaining pieces of my uniform, trying not to cry. “I’ll go to Max’s. He can drive me to work before Andy gets there.”

“Okay.” She nods. “That’s a good plan.”

It’s the night before school starts, and I’m working for real this time. Anna and I—and her boyfriend, of course—are inside the box office. The main lobby of our theater is enormous. Eight box-office registers underneath a twenty-five-foot ceiling of carved geometric crosses and stars. Giant white pillars and dark wooden trim add to the historic opulence and mark the building as not originally a chain movie theater. Its first incarnation was a swanky hotel, the second a ritzy automobile showroom.

It’s another slow evening. Anna is writing in a battered, left-handed notebook while St. Clair and I argue across the full length of the box office.

She just got another part-time job, unpaid, writing movie reviews for her university’s newspaper. Since she’s a freshman, they’re only giving her the crappy movies. But she doesn’t mind. “It’s fun to write a review if you hate the movie,” she told me earlier. “It’s easy to talk about things we hate, but sometimes it’s hard to explain exactly why we like something.”

“I know you like him,” St. Clair says to me, leaning back in his chair. “But he’s still far too old for you.”

Here we go again. “Max isn’t old,” I say. “He’s only a few years older than you.”

“Like I said. Too old.”

“Age doesn’t matter.”

He snorts. “Yeah, maybe when you’re middle-aged and—”

“Golfing,” Anna helpfully supplies, without looking up from her notebook.

“Paying the mortgage,” he says.

“Shopping for minivans.”

“With side air bags.”

“And extra cup holders!”

I ignore their laughter. “You’ve never even met him.”

“Because he never comes in here. He drops you off at the curb,” St. Clair says.

I throw up my hands, which I’ve been mehndi-ing with a Bic pen. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to park in this city?”

“I’m just saying that if it were Anna, I’d want to meet her coworkers. See where she’s spending her time.” I stare at him, hard. “Obviously.”

“Obviously.” He grins.

I scowl back. “Get a job.”

“Perhaps I will.”

Anna finally looks up. “I’ll believe that when I see it.” But she’s smiling at him. She twirls the glass banana on her necklace.

“Oh, hey.Your mom called. She wanted to know if we’re still on for dinner tomorrow—”

And they’re off in their own world again. As if they don’t see each other enough as it is. He stays in her dorm on weekdays, and she stays in his on weekends. Though I do admit that their trade-off is appealing. I hope Max and I share something like it someday. Actually, I hope Max and I share one place someday

—

“Oy !” St. Clair is talking to me again. “I met your friend today.”

“Lindsey?” I sit up straighter.

“No, your old neighbor. Cricket.”

The ornamental ceiling tilts and bends. “And how do you know that Cricket Bell was my neighbor?” My question is strangled.

St. Clair shrugs. “He told me.”

I stare at him. And?

“He lives on my floor in my dorm. We were talking in the hall, and I mentioned that I was on my way to meet Anna, and where she works—”

His girlfriend beams, and I’m struck by a peculiar twinge of jealousy. Does Max tell people about me?

“—and he said he knew someone who worked here, too. You.” One week, and already I can’t escape him. It’s just my luck that Cricket would live beside my only Berkeley acquaintance. And how does he know where I work? Did I mention the theater?

No. I’m positive that I didn’t. He must have asked Andy after I left.

“He asked about you,” St. Clair continues. “Nice bloke.”

“Huh,” I finally manage.

“There’s a story behind that huh,” Anna says.

“There’s no story,” I say. “There is definitely NOT a story.” Anna pauses in consideration before turning toward St. Clair.

“Would you mind making a coffee run?”

He raises an eyebrow. After a moment, he says, “Ah. Of course.” He swoops in for a kiss goodbye, and then she watches his backside leave before turning to me with a mischievous smile.

I huff. “You’ll just tell him later, when you guys are alone.” Her smile widens. “Yep.”

“Then no way.”

“Dude.” Anna slides into the seat beside me. “You’re dying to spill it.”

She’s right. I spill it.

Chapter six

When I was five years old, Cricket Bell built an elevator. It was a marvelous invention made from white string and Tonka truck wheels and a child- size shoe box, and because of it, my Barbies traveled from the first floor of their dollhouse to the second without ever having to walk on their abnormally slanted feet.

The house was built in my bookcase, and I’d desired an elevator for as long as I could remember. The official Barbie Dream House had one made of plastic, but as often as I begged my parents, they wouldn’t budge. No Dream House. Too expensive.

So Cricket took it upon himself to make one for me. And while Calliope and I decorated my bookcase with lamp shades made from toothpaste caps and Persian rugs made from carpet samples, Cricket created a working elevator. Pulleys and levers and gears come to him as naturally as breathing.

The elevator had completed its first run. Pet Doctor Barbie was enjoying the second floor and Calliope was pulling down the elevator to fetch Skipper, when I stood on my tiptoes, puckered my lips, and planted one on her very surprised brother.

Cricket Bell kissed me back.

He tasted like the warm cookies that Andy had brought us. His lips were dusted with blue sugar crystals. And when we parted, he staggered.

But our romance was as quick as our kiss. Calliope proclaimed us “grody” and flounced back to their house, dragging Cricket behind her. And I decided she was right. Because Calliope was the kind of girl you wanted to impress, which meant that she was always right. So I decided that boys were gross, and I would never date one.

Certainly not her brother.

Not long after the elevator incident, Calliope decided that I was grody, too, and my friendship with the twins ended. I imagine Cricket complied with the arrangement in the easy way of anyone under the sway of someone with a stronger personality.

For several years, we didn’t talk. Contact was limited to hearing their car doors slam and glimpsing them through windows.

Calliope had always been a talented gymnast, but the day she switched to figure skating, she burst into a different league altogether. Her parents bragged to mine about potential, and her life turned into one long practice session. And Cricket, too young to stay at home without a parent, went with her.

On the rare occasions that he was at home, he busied himself inside his bedroom, building peculiar contraptions that flew and chimed and buzzed. Sometimes he’d test one in the small space between our houses. I’d hear an explosion that would bring me racing to my window. And then, but only then, would we exchange friendly, secretive smiles.

When I was twelve, the Bell family moved away for two years.

Training for Calliope. And when they came back, the twins were different. Older.

Calliope had blossomed into the beauty our neighborhood had expected. Confidence radiated from every pore, every squaring of her shoulders.

I was awed. Too intimidated to talk to her, but I chatted occasionally with Cricket. He wasn’t beautiful like his sister.

Where the twins’ matching slenderness made Calliope look ballet-esque, Cricket looked gawky. And he had acne and the peculiar habits of someone unused to socializing.

He talked too fast, too much. But I enjoyed his company, and he appeared to enjoy mine. We were on the verge of actual friendship when the Bells moved again.