“Come on, Doug. Stop the car.”
“We’ll go to the Gun Tree. Then I’ll take you home.” But he didn’t sound so sure.
“I’m getting out.” I grabbed the door handle.
Doug tried to pull my hand away as the car veered off the track and slid into a pile of dried cornstalks.
“Christ, Carrie. Why the hell d’you do that?”
We got out of the car to inspect the damage. It wasn’t too bad. Mostly straw caught in the bumper. “If you hadn’t…” I said, relief and anger burning the back of
my throat. “Because you wanted to prove to your stupid friends that you aren’t a loser—”
He stared at me, his breath steaming the air around him like a mysterious dry ice.
Then he smacked his hand on the hood of the car. “I wouldn’t fuck you if you paid me,” he shouted, pausing for breath. “You’re lucky…lucky I even considered having sex with you. Lucky I even took you out in the first place. I only did it because I felt sorry for you.”
What else could he say?
“Good. Then you should be happy.”
“Oh, I’m happy all right.” He gave the front tire a good kick. “I’m happy as hell.”
I turned and started walking up the road. My back was a firestorm of nerves. When I got about fifty feet away, I started whistling. When I was a hundred feet away, I heard the puttering sound of the car engine, but I kept going. Eventually, he passed me, looking straight ahead as if I didn’t exist. I picked up a strand of dried grass and tore it with my fingers, watching the pieces blow away.
I did tell this story to The Mouse and Maggie. I even told it to Walt. I told it again and again, but I made it funny. I made it so funny, The Mouse couldn’t stop laughing. Funny always makes the bad things go away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Paint the Town Red
“Carrie, you’re not going to be able to joke your way out of this,” Mrs. Givens says, pointing to the can of paint.
“I wasn’t planning to make a joke,” I insist, as if I’m completely innocent. I have a problem with authority. I really do. It turns me into mush. I’m a real jellyfish when it comes to facing adults.
“What were you planning to do with the paint, then?” Mrs. Givens is one of those middle-aged ladies who you look at and think, If I ever end up like her, shoot me. Her hair is teased into a dried bush that looks like it could self-ignite at any moment. I suddenly picture Mrs. Givens with a conflagration on her head, running through the halls of Castlebury High, and I nearly crack up.
“Carrie?” she demands.
“The paint is for my father—for one of his projects.”
“This is not like you, Carrie. You’ve never been in trouble before.”
“I swear, Mrs. Givens. It’s nothing.”
“Very well. You can leave the paint with me and pick it up after school.”
“Givens confiscated my paint can,” I whisper to The Mouse as we enter calculus.
“How did she find it?”
“She saw me trying to shove it into my locker.”
“Damn,” The Mouse says.
“I know. We’re going to have to go to plan B.”
“What is plan B?”