You can ask." he said, flirting back, "but that doesn't mean I'll grant it."
"I've got to get home as quickly as possible today. Could you possibly drive me home?"
He considered my request a moment and then glanced back at Phoebe, who was shooting poison arrows from her eyes in my direction,
"Okay," he said impulsively. "Just meet me in the parking lot. I have my mother's car today, the black Mercedes convertible. It's not hard to find. It's the only Mercedes
there," he said.
"Thank you," I said demurely. "I'll be so grateful."
"Right. Okay." He looked nervous. but I thought his eyes also betrayed an explosion of excitement.
He returned to Phoebe and ignored me the remainder of the afternoon. How he got away from her after school I didn't know, but he was waiting nervously in his car when I approached.
"Get in." he said urgently as if we were making a getaway.
The moment I did, he backed up and shot out of the parking lot, sharply turning us onto the street. I hadn't even gotten my seat belt fastened.
"Do you always drive this fast?" I asked him.
He looked as if he wasn't going to talk to me at all but just deliver me to my home and take off. Finally, a good mile or so from the school, he relaxed and slowed down.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to inconvenience you in any way," I said.
He looked at me. "I'm not inconvenienced. No. I don't drive that fast all the time. I'd better not. One more speeding ticket, and my father will take away my license and not let me use any of the cars." He smiled. "I'm sort of on probation. I guess where you come from you would call it demoted or something. huh?"
"No. You're on report, but you're still a lieutenant junior grade."
He laughed. "Look." he said. "Let me give you a little advice. Don't go head to head with Phoebe. She has a real mean streak in her when she feels
threatened."
"How could I possibly threaten her?"
"Anyone who continually confronts her is a threat to her. She hasn't forgotten how you beat her at that card game in my house. She has a lot of friends at school, friends a lot like her, if you get my meaning. I've seen them go after someone. It's not pleasant."
"Why do you go with her if you dislike her so much?" I asked him.
"I don't dislike her."
"You don't like her," I insisted, "You can't like someone who does things you don't like."
"Where did you get so much wisdom about people?" he asked. smiling.
"I listen, and I don't forget," I said.
"You've traveled about a lot, haven't you?" he asked, looking at me with a new interest,
"Yes. I wasn't happy about it, but we had to move when my father was transferred to a different base."
"I guess that is hard, making new friends all the time," he concluded. He looked sorry for me.
"I survived," I said, and he laughed,
"You more than survived. Despite all that chaos in your life, you're smart and," he added, glancing at me."pretty as well as pretty sophisticated."
I didn't say anything. Once when Mommy and I were having a serious conversation about boys and romance, she told me the hardest thing to do is distinguish between a sincere compliment and one lavished an you for a selfish purpose. The school I was in at the time had a Great Books program as an extracurricular activity, and I had been admitted. One of our books was Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and one of those tales was "The Nun's Priest's Tale." which told about the fox that trapped the rooster Chanticleer by flattering him and how Chanticleer turned the tables on the fox by flattering him back. I summarized the story for Mommy, and she nodded.