“Who’s she trying to be? Your second mother?” Kane asked after he got his green slip, too.
“I guess I need at least one,” I said, and he immediately looked sorry he had spoken.
I made it just as the bell to end homeroom was ringing, so at least I wouldn’t be late for my first class. Nevertheless, all my girlfriends, who didn’t know about the traffic jam, were surprised and curious. Lana had caught sight of Kane and me entering the school together.
“Kane picked you up for school?” she asked. “It’s out of his way.”
“Yes, and yes,” I said.
“And you were both late,” Suzette said. All the girls smiled. I knew they were thinking Kane and I had been dilly-dallying and that was why we were late.
“It wasn’t our fault,” I said, even though I knew that it easily could have been mine. I rattled off a description of the car accident before anyone could ask anything else. Actually, I thought, it wasn’t my fault. It was Christopher Dollanganger’s.
I laughed to myself envisioning my meeting him someday and telling him.
I was sure he would say, “How I wish that was all I suffered in my teenage years, a late demerit in school.”
My girlfriends looked at me as we walked, all whispering.
“She’s just in love,” Suzette declared loudly enough for me to hear, and they all nodded.
I wished it was as simple as that. I was in quite a daze all morning. Besides feeling like I had run the four-minute mile, I was reeling with images and thoughts that Christopher had described in his diary. In two different morning classes, I was caught looking like I was daydreaming and not paying attention. I missed a question or something my teachers had said. I couldn’t help it. It was as if I was carrying Christopher along with me now wherever I went. Whatever I saw happening, whatever I heard said, I automatically wondered what Christopher would think of it.
“There’s something different about you,” Kane told me when we walked together to a table in the cafeteria at lunchtime. “I don’t only mean your almost being late twice in a row, although for you, that’s close to a capital crime and probably had you in a state of terror.”
“It is not,” I said, and tried to look sullen about his remark. He just smiled and slid in beside me.
“Okay. It’s not a capital crime. So what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” he asked as he started on his sandwich.
“I’m not going to tell you something that personal,” I replied, and he laughed.
“Sure. I bet it was something horrific, like drinking a beer at a girlfriend’s house when you were twelve.”
; I punched him a little more than just playfully in the shoulder.
“Hey.”
“Don’t make me out to be some Sandra Dee.”
“Who?”
“Didn’t you ever see Grease?”
He thought a moment and then smiled. “Oh, yeah, I remember. ‘Look at me, I’m Sandra Dee, lousy with virginity.’ Right?”
I gave him a good smirk, and he smiled.
“So what exactly does that mean?” he asked. “Lousy with virginity? Are you or aren’t you?”
“None of your business,” I said.
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” he kidded.
I turned away and thought about myself for a moment. Was I as virginal as Christopher and Cathy were? Did I reek of teen virtue because I was so devoted to my father and such a responsible and good student? Was I as responsible as Christopher had to be, both of us thrust into becoming older almost overnight?
I gazed around the cafeteria and wondered how my classmates really saw me. From what I had read so far, Christopher didn’t appear to have had many school friends. He mentioned no one in the early part of the diary, during the time before they were going to Foxworth to live. He certainly couldn’t have made new friends while he was there. I had friends. I wasn’t really like him, and for some reason, even though I was fascinated with him, that gave me relief.