Chapter 11: Cherry Pie

The tent on the lawn glowed, with strings of white bulbs looped from pole to pole and a speaker playing Motown.

It was Thursday night, the joint bachelor and bachelorette party, and sixty people were there.

My father and Judy sat on hay bales in the middle of it, wearing paper crowns that said GROOM and BRIDE.

My father was crying a little into a plastic cup of root beer.

I was holding a seltzer.

So was Jack.

We had agreed on it in the boathouse, and on everything else.

"No," I said loudly, "you can't have the last piece of cherry pie."

"I took it first."

"You took it second. I put my fork in it."

"Your fork was near it."

"Near it is in it, Jack."

A cousin by the dessert table looked up with interest.

"Here we go," she said to her husband.

"They've been like this since Monday," her husband said.

"It's like watching tennis."

I stabbed the pie with my fork and held it up.

Jack took the plate out of my hand and put it on the table.

He stood very close.

He smelled like lemon soap and the lake.

"You're ridiculous," he said, loud enough for the whole tent.

"You're insufferable."

"Outside."

"Fine."

I put my chin up and stalked out through the tent flap with him one step behind me.

The cousin by the dessert table sighed happily.

"Ten dollars says someone throws something."

Behind the tent, the lawn went dark.

The party was a bright noise on the other side of the canvas, bass thumping through the grass.

The only light out here came from the stars and from a silver minivan parked under a maple with its windows up.

I knew that van.

It was Marlene's, and she was somewhere inside the party being gracious.

Jack caught my wrist and pulled me around the back fender into the black shadow between the van and the tent wall.

"Rule three," he said, a breath from my mouth.

"There's no one here."

"There's sixty people on the other side of this wall."