“I hit the windmill!”
“I drank lemonade and threw up!”
“Cool,” I said, desperately trying to get a glimpse of Oliver without being desperate about it. (Way easier said than done.)
He leaned forward when he heard my voice, just so I could see half his face in the window, the other half still stuck in the backseat. “Hey,” he said.
“Hi,” I said, and before I could figure out what else to say, Maureen interrupted us.
“We’re heading home now! C’mon, we’ll give you a ride! Open the doors, Rick, let her in.”
“Careful in the backseat,” Rick said as I started to climb in. “There’s some random golf balls rolling around back there.”
“Thanks,” I said, trying to climb over the twins without actually touching them, since I wasn’t sure which one had been sick, and also without tripping over myself in front of Oliver.
“There’s room next to Oliver,” Maureen said, directing me from the front seat.
“I think she’s got it, hon,” Rick said.
“Well, I’m just making sure.” Maureen threw me a grin in the rearview mirror. “Enough room back there?”
I fell into the seat next to Oliver, squeezed in by bags of supplies: extra clothes, snacks, books, and tiny pink shoes. He looked like a giant next to all of it, but when I sat down, he smiled at me and grabbed my hand, squeezing so tight that all I could do was squeeze back just as hard.
“Hi,” was all he said.
“Hey,” I replied. Our voices were cool, like we said hello to each other all the time, like we weren’t holding hands in the backseat of his mom’s car, hanging on for our dear lives. “Did you get a hole in one?”
“I got a hole in one!” Nora screamed, trying to turn around in her car seat despite the harness, and I casually threw my bag over Oliver’s and my hands before she could see. Oliver laughed, then hid it with a cough.
“You okay, sweetie?” Maureen asked from the front. “There’s water in the cooler if—”
“I’m fine, Mom,” Oliver said.
“I got a hole in one, Emmy!” Nora finally settled for just craning her neck around at a terrible-looking angle. “It went in!”
“Awesome!” I told her. “Did you get a sticker?”
“Yeah, but it’s on my shoe.”
“Of course it is.”
Oliver’s grip on my hand hadn’t let go and I knocked my knee against his, raising my eyebrow in that subtle, universal gesture that means, “You okay?” He just nodded, so I let it go.
“Did you get my text?” I asked him. “Because I, um, I texted you. Today.”
“Hey, Mom?” he called.
“Yes, sweetie?”
“Did I get Emmy’s text today?” There was an edge to his voice, like this wasn’t a question he should be asking.
Maureen sighed heavily from the front seat. “Honey, you’ll get your phone back on Monday before school. We talked about this. He missed his curfew last night, Emmy.”
“Let him explain it, Mo,” Rick murmured from the front seat.
“No phone until Monday,” Oliver told me, his voice cheerful but his eyes anything but happy. “So no, I did not get your text. And I couldn’t text you, either.”
That last sentence went over everyone’s heads but mine, and I smiled despite myself. “Oh,” I said. “Oh.”
“Right?” Oliver asked. We were speaking our own language at this point, grinning like idiots at each other. “What did your text say?”
“Oh, I just wanted to know if you had a good time last night, that’s all.”
“I had a great time,” he replied. We sounded like we were performing a skit about the two most blandly cheerful high school students in America. “Really great.”
“Emmy, can you please tell Drew that next time Oliver needs to be home by eleven?” Maureen looked at us again through the rearview mirror, her “mom face” firmly in place. “I don’t know what his parents think is appropriate for a Friday night, but Oliver’s curfew is eleven o’clock.”
Oliver knocked his knee into mine this time. I didn’t need a body-language expert to explain what he meant. “Yeah, of course,” I said. “Drew’s not great with time.”
“You just don’t know what could happen,” Maureen said, and the double meaning in her words made everyone, even Molly and Nora, go quiet for the rest of the ride.
Oliver never let go of my hand.
Once we pulled up into their driveway, I had a plan. “Hey,” I said as the twins started to frantically unbuckle themselves like their car seats were on fire. “Do you have that book that I loaned you for English?”
Oliver didn’t miss a beat. “Oh, yeah, totally,” he said. “Come on up, I’ll get it for you.”
“You’re so sweet to loan him your things from last year,” Maureen said. “Molly, no, do not eat that Cheerio from the floor. I said no.”
“Of course,” I said. “It’s not a problem.”
As soon as we were out of the car, and while Rick and Maureen fumbled with the girls and empty juice boxes and bags, Oliver and I disappeared inside and ran up the stairs, taking them two at a time. “I am so sorry!” he whispered, even though we were the only ones in the house. “She went ballistic when I came home last night.”