Not Exactly a Love Story by Audrey Couloumbis

laughter.”
    “If we were ever in a room together and I laughed,” I said. “I’m not worried.”
    “I checked with the operator last night. This is a local call.”
    “It took you long enough to think of that,” I said. My voice was steady, but my heart skipped a beat.
    “I’ve been giving you a lot of thought,” she said. “I know quite a bit about you.”
    I didn’t like the turn this call had taken. “For openers?”
    “Oh, don’t try to sound so tough,” she said with a delicate sneer in her voice. “You’re much nicer than you want me to think.”
    “Just your local neighborhood pervert.”
    She answered, “You apologized for that, remember? You never say anything really devastating, even when you’re being nasty.”
    “It’s nice to hear you think so,” I said on a sudden surge of emotion, but it didn’t come out sounding all that nice. “You’re not as self-centered as I thought, either.”
    She didn’t react. At least, she didn’t hang up.
    “That’s why you’re doing this, isn’t it? To get to know me.”
    I wanted to answer that with a resounding “maybe,” but nothing came out. Originally I’d wanted to ask her out, but now she talked as if nothing was going on in her life but these calls. And I knew different.
    She said, “It’s hard for me to accept that I can be so terrifying, you have to resort to this. I don’t have pointy teeth or long fingernails—”
    “You think I’m scared of you? Is this your latest theory? Let me tell you, you do not lack for amazing ideas—” Okay, so I was getting a little out of hand.
    “You trust me more than you know.”
    “How do you figure that?”
    “I told you I spoke to the operator and you didn’t hang up,” she said, all blithe spirit. “You trusted me not to have this call traced.”
    She hung up. Quietly.
    I had the feeling I’d lost this round.
    I wasn’t sure I trusted her, either.
    Melanie and I had been at the bus stop for about five minutes. We said hi, and then nothing. Brown Bunny and Patsy came from opposite ends of the street at the same time. Patsy didn’t appear to have lost any sleep over my phone call.
    “So how was dinner with the uncle?” Melanie asked when Patsy got to the bus stop. “What’s his mom like? And his dad?”
    “His parents weren’t there.”
    She and her friends talked about the most personal stuff in a normal voice. This made sense in New York City, where everyone was used to talking over the sound of traffic, but these neighborhoods were quiet. Everyone standing within twenty feet of these girls knew their business. Although Brown Bunny could not have looked less interested.
    “Sort of boring,” Patsy said. “He asked all the standard questions—what classes do I like, what are my plans for college, that kind of thing.”
    “Cool.”
    “No, just boring. He wanted to know if I mainly dated guys who were on a team. That bothered me, if you want to know the truth, and I got a little rude.”
    Brown Bunny came to life. “What did you say?”
    “I said I had just started dating, I hadn’t had time to become a groupie.” This got a laugh, but I could see Patsy hadn’t really been looking for that. “His wife kind of took over from there and talked about movies. It really wasn’t an occasion, just a meal. I helped with the dishes.”
    “Did you get the feeling you were being checked out?” This was Melanie. “Like, are you good enough for him?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe. Hey, I got a call on Sunday,” Patsy said, clearly finished with the dinner conversation.
    “What kind of call?”
    “An obscene phone call.”
    “You’re kidding.”
    Patsy’s expression squelched any doubts Melanie mighthave had concerning the seriousness of her statement. “I’ve gotten a few of them. They started after that party I went to in Bayside. It could be one of those boys.” She didn’t add any pertinent details, like
And we’re having conversations
.
    Brown Bunny said, “Obscene