Where the Kissing Never Stops by Ron Koertge Page B

over Thumper.
    “What’s —”
    She just waved me away and closed the door in my face.
    At school the next day, every teacher I had yelled at me for no reason, and, worse than that, Rachel didn’t show up at all.
    Just about the only thing that hadn’t gone wrong was working with Mr. Kramer, so of course Friday afternoon the tractor broke down. All I could do was stand around and sweat while he swore and tried to fix it. When I told him that I had a date that night, he said it was just like today’s generation to quit when the going got the least bit tough, so like an idiot I decided to prove him wrong, and we didn’t finish until nearly eight o’clock.
    There was no message from Rachel, and, naturally, no Mom. There wasn’t even dinner, just the empty oven ready for any passing suicide. I knew when I dialed that Rachel wouldn’t be home, and sure enough, she wasn’t. Even the machine was off, probably out with everything else in the world having a good time, everything but me, fanning out a losing hand of frozen dinners, choosing the least obnoxious, taking a shower while it cooked, and looking at my sloping body in the mirror. I was pale except for my arms and the back of my neck. My God, a real redneck. Probably I’d buy a hound dog and start listening to banjo records if I wasn’t careful.
    The only good thing was that I was so tired I couldn’t stay up and worry about Rachel. I went to bed at nine-thirty, and the next thing I knew, my mom was saying that Sully was on the phone.
    “I hate to be the one to tell you this,” he began, “but Rachel was out with Thompson last night.”
    “Oh, God. Are you sure?”
    “Somebody who’s a busboy at the Embers saw them having dinner, and then they went for ice cream.”
    “Who said?”
    “They stopped for gas at the Chevron station; Mark saw them eating sundaes. Hot fudge, I think.”
    Bradleyville’s like Cartoonland: news travels like those wavy lines that drift from house to house while the cartoon characters sleep, and in the morning everybody knows.
    “Why don’t I come by later,” Sully said, “and we’ll drown our sorrows.”
    “I think I ought to talk to Rachel.”
    “Are you going to be home?”
    “Kramer’s going to have that piece of mine watered down good and then probably I’ll have to turn it over again.”
    “Well, I’ll find you.”
    “Hello?” Rachel sounded exhausted. Had he kept her out all night? Or worse?
    “It’s me,” I said coldly.
    “Walker? How are you?”
    “The question is, how are you?”
    “Terrible. I’ve been in bed for two days.”
    Oh, my God. With Tommy?
    “Walker, are you there? When I get my period, I get these terrible cramps.”
    “Oh,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief that would have propelled your average sailboat for hours. “You should have called me.”
    “I tried, but there was nobody home; anyway, I’m not very good company when I’m like this.”
    “Didn’t you get to go out at all?” Mr. District Attorney strikes again.
    “Just once. Dinner with my dad the other night.”
    “Damn it, Rachel. You went out with Tommy Thompson.”
    “That’s right. My dad and I had dinner with his dad and him.”
    “Is that all, just dinner?”
    “Yes. What’s —”
    I struck like I’d just caught her in the lie that would alter the course of history. I believe I even said
Aha!
“You had an ice cream with him afterward, just the two of you.”
    “Were you spying on me?”
    “Why, do you have something to hide? Anyway, Bradleyville’s a small town. Everybody knows everything about everybody else.” I thought of my mom. “Or almost everything.”
    “Then why don’t they know that I almost always go to dinner with my dad when he’s doing business?”
    “Some business, using his daughter as a —”
    “He wants to buy some land from Mr. Thompson, that’s all.”
    “Don’t you know what kind of person he is?”
    “Mr. Thompson?” she asked.
    “No, Tommy. God, he —”
    “Of