Free Burning Down the House by Allie Gail

though, and he and Trudy (another name from his little black book) went to see Rob play. We won that one, too.
    Mom called once in a while, but mostly we just emailed back and forth. Home from her honeymoon in Europe, she seemed to be adjusting to my absence admirably well. Of course, most of that was probably due to Stanley’s presence. No doubt they were enjoying their time alone together.
    As for the situation at home, it was a little surreal. Rob seemed to go out of his way to avoid me. I know it sounds like a cheesy cliché, but we really were like two ships passing in the night. Each was aware of the other, but there was no contact, no communication. We spoke only when necessary. I won’t say I didn’t make a few conversational attempts, but he was totally unreceptive and after a while I gave up. For whatever reason, he appeared to want nothing to do with me.
    It crossed my mind that the peeping tom incident might have had something to do with it, but I wasn’t convinced. He didn’t seem embarrassed by it. Still, I never told anyone about that, not even Dana. I held the secret close to me, a delicious memory that I pulled out and revisited every night after I crawled into bed. It was a pleasant vision to fall asleep with. To share it with anyone would have tarnished it somehow.
    And the days melted one into the other, average and uneventful, until quite suddenly things took an unexpected turn.

    It was after school on a Thursday, while Dana and I were working on the parade float, that Riley Murphy approached me about homecoming.
    My fingers and clothes were stained with blue and gold spray paint and I still had physics homework to look forward to, so I was trying to persuade Dana to call it a day. Unfortunately for me, she was a nominee on the ballot for homecoming queen and wanted to be as involved as possible in order to improve her odds. And of course, being the dutiful best friend, I wanted to help her out in any way I could. Even if it meant spending my afternoon spray painting a ginormous papier-mâché hornet.
    “Looking good!” Riley gave his approval as he appeared around the corner of the flatbed trailer. He looked up at me and laughed. “You have blue paint on the end of your nose.”
    I rubbed it, but I don’t think it came off. “You guys done with practice already?”
    “ Uh-huh. I was just about to head home.” He leaned against the edge of the trailer. “How come I didn’t see your name on the ballot?”
    “Me? What, are you kidding?” I walked to the edge and sat down with my legs dangling over the side.
    “Here, let me help you.” He reached up and I used his shoulders to balance on as I hopped down. “Were you planning on going to the homecoming dance?”
    “Hadn’t thought much about it,” I admitted. There was so much other stuff going on, a lame school dance wasn’t exactly top priority. His hands were still around my waist and I backed up a step to extricate myself from his hold.
    “Well…would you like to? You know, with me?”
    Caught off guard by his question, I stumbled for an answer. What was he asking me for? Surely he’d rather take one of the members of the court. He was the star quarterback, after all. “Oh. Um…homecoming. That’s next weekend, right?”
    He laughed good -naturedly at my hedging. Of course I knew when it was - I’d have to be living with my head buried in the sand not to. “Yes, it’s next weekend. So how about it? Sorry, I know it’s kinda last minute.”
    Well, why not? It could be fun. “Okay, sure. Yeah. I’d love to go.”
    “Awesome! Why don’t you give me your number and I’ll call you later so we can work out the details.”
    “All right.” I rattled it off to him and watched as he added it to his contacts list. From the corner of my eye I saw Dana on the float, grinning down at me.
    “So you need a ride home or anything?” Riley looked up from his phone.
    “Oh…no, thanks. I’ve got my car.”
    “Okay. Well…I will