Six-four, black hair, olive skin, Docker Lewis had been the poster boy for Italian heartthrob since he was seven years old. Hunched over the end of the buffet table, he speared a meatball and added it to the stack of food on his plate. He’d been the star forward for Greens Farms Academy’s varsity soccer team, and by the look of his never-ending appetite, he was beefing up to be the star of Columbia’s team next fall.
I shifted in my stilettos, debating a U-turn. My relationship with Docker had consisted of nothing but mindless practical jokes since he’d returned the Katie Smith incident with the spring formal fiasco. I had returned that by finding out he had a crush on Elizabeth Reuben and telling her Docker was in love with her brother Kyle (who really was gay). Kyle spent the next two months sending anonymous love notes to Docker – by way of Elizabeth. Needless to say, once Docker discovered the whole messy affair when he invited “Elizabeth” to a festival, he plotted revenge on me again. So I plotted revenge on him. And so and so forth, until today, when I knew it was my turn to be revenged-upon.
Before I could turn all the way and retreat into the Yale territory of the kitchen, Docker looked up. He grinned, still half-chewing a meatball, and strolled over. His extra dose of cockiness said he knew I would be squirming.
“Crystal Thorne,” he declared. “You finally decided to come down from your perch?”
I frowned. “Perch?” He motioned to the back window that gave a clear view of the living room – and the balcony where I had been hiding. My eyebrows shot up. “I wasn’t hiding from you!”
Docker shrugged and nodded. “Sure you weren’t. But I’d hide from me too.”
I glanced to the side, at a group of my mother’s students who were slowly inching their way out of Yale territory and onto the terrace. Three girls, all looking-but-not-looking at Docker. I lifted an eyebrow at them before swinging back to him. “I should’ve kept hiding. It’s far too dangerous out here.”
Docker noticed the girls and broke into one of his Greek-god-like smiles. Fortunately, he hadn’t yet finished chewing another meatball, and his smile was coated in a fine layer of pasta sauce. The girls flinched as one and pretended their intent was to take a stroll through our backyard.
I laughed more than was necessary, especially when Docker licked his teeth and realized what had happened. “Oh man,” I snorted, “you’ve given me so many ideas for my turn.”
Docker freed a napkin from underneath his plate and scrubbed at his teeth. “If you live to see your turn. Muahahaha.”
He was kidding, but I still wasn’t about to stay and be humiliated at my mother’s party. I turned back for the kitchen and didn’t get very far when Docker’s hand tightened on my arm.
“Crystal.” His voice dropped to all-business, and he looked past me, into the kitchen. “Is your dad here? I was hoping he would–”
“No,” I cut him off. “No. He’s sulking.”
Docker nodded. Aside from being the sole reason I would avoid going to Columbia (dodging practical jokes while trying to establish some sort of adulthood independence wasn’t high on my list of to-dos), Docker was my dad’s favorite freshman physics major. The look on his face said he felt bad for my father, and before he could say anything to that effect, I jerked his hand off my arm.
“My dad is sulking at a party that his wife has been planning for five months. If you can find any reason why he should be sulking and not amongst the many well-wishers, then you absolutely deserve the physics department.”
I tried to stomp away again, but Docker swung around me and held my shoulder back as he tried to keep his food plate balanced. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Just – stop for a second.”
I crossed my arms and gave him my best I-will-physically-remove-you-if-you-don’t-get-out-of-my-way look. Docker set his food plate on a table and smiled at me, sans-pasta-sauce. I groaned. “What do you want?”
“I was going to ask your father. But – Crystal?” He tipped his head down and looked up at me, which was very difficult for him to do, considering I was five-two with the stilettos on. “Is it at all possible for me to see The Eloi?”
In first grade, I got detention for correcting Miss Surbotski on the historical inaccuracies of the movie Aladdin.
In third grade, I got detention for telling Mrs. Walter that the bouquet of evening primroses and snapdragons her husband had delivered to school represented inconstancy and deception.
In fourth grade, I got detention for starting a fight between Katie Smith and Docker Lewis. Katie was pretending to be a medieval princess and Docker was the knight who was supposed to save her. When I pointed out that princesses were generally handed over to the richest men, Docker took that as his cue to leave Katie locked in the tower of the tunnel slide. Katie didn’t take too kindly to being abandoned and knocked the air out of Docker when she landed on him.
In sixth grade, I got detention for refusing to read any of the Magic Treehouse books, claiming that if I wanted to learn what didn’t happen in history, I would’ve watched Aladdin. This was a bad choice of words, because Miss Surbotski had been promoted to the sixth grade and took my refusal as a direct attack of her teaching methods. Which it was. But I didn’t expect her to get that.
Eighth grade was an event that later became known as “the spring formal fiasco.” The theme was a medieval masquerade, and Docker Lewis came as Zorro. I think he knew I would rebuke his inaccuracies and land myself in detention. I’ve summed it up to a vendetta for the Katie Smith incident.
