The Six Rules of Maybe

heart were doing the tango surges of nerves. Kevin parked and got out in his big black tux, his hair smoothed back on his large head. Shiny shoes. He must have lost weight in the last few weeks—his usual large, bulky overhang seemed contained or at least well hidden. I bet he even smelled like cologne. He carried a small gold corsage box in one hand.
    “Kevin!” I shouted.
    I put both thumbs in the air, shook them in victory. Kevin did a very non-Kevin thing. He spun a full circle on the bottoms of those shoes, showing me the whole look. I wanted to applaud. I wantedto take pictures and show them to all the relatives.
    “Fantastic!” I said instead. “You look great!”
    He grinned. “I’m not dancing, so you know,” he said, and then he walked up to Fiona’s door. He rang the bell, and Mrs. Saint George answered. She wasn’t smiling. She shook his hand and let him in and the door closed.
    I cut six or seven stripes of lawn, stopping the flick-flick-flick of blades often. Our yard was small, and I needed to do slow-motion mowing or the task wouldn’t last. Finally, the Saint George door opened, and there was the sound of conversation. Kevin said something that made Mr. Saint George laugh a hearty obligation laugh. Fiona’s mother chirped a few words in response.
    And then there was Fiona herself. I actually gasped. She wasn’t wearing the fluffy pink number she’d drawn in chalk, but a sleek apricot dress that clung tightly to a body she’d never before shown underneath her usual sweatshirts and jeans. Her raven black hair was swooped up, and her bangs were sprayed across to show her deep eyes rimmed with her dark eyeliner. She was a little uncertain in her shoes, holding a bit of Kevin Frink’s tux sleeve to steady herself. But she looked beautiful. Goth Girl looked beautiful .
    I went back to my lawn mowing as they drove away. I finished in two seconds. When I was done, I sat down on the short, scratchy grass and looped my arms around my legs. I felt so satisfied. The night was sweet summer light. When Jeffrey and Jacob came out to play, when Jacob laid down on the sidewalk with his legs straight together and his arms flung out, and said, “Look, I’m Jesus on the sidewalk,” I actually smiled.
    For a good while after Kevin Frink and Fiona Saint George drove off together in that car, I was sucked right into the whole idea that said the Prom was the end of that story, same as the Weddingwas the end of the story. But there was something big and long and important called After the Prom and After the Wedding which was basically all the time that came beyond dancing in uncomfortable shoes. Of course, sometimes after isn’t long and important. Sometimes it’s brief and shattering. After is fate’s own personal cinematic moment, the one when you’re sure the movie is over and the bad guy is dead and gone forever but when he pops back up instead, reaching for the knife on the floor beside him.
    School got out, and summer eased all the way in, and I worked most days helping at Quill Stationers. On my days off, I continued to make progress on the Clive Weaver project, to read psychology books about how to fall out of love. I listened to Jeffrey and Jacob ride their bikes over wooden ramps, fight and make up, ride their bikes again. I watched Juliet grow round, watched her hand move to her stomach when she’d feel the fluttery butterfly movements of the baby that we could finally feel too, if we held still long enough.
    The construction workers over the back fence kept working on the house behind us. The songs from their radio— You can’t always get what you wa-aant … —were our summer sound track, along with the noise of lumber dropping and hammers against nails and the keshank of a shovel into gravel. There was the perpetual smell of newly sawed wood. Joe, the miserable ice-cream man, made increasingly insistent loops around our streets now that school was out. Juliet and Hayden went to see Dr. Crosby, and we got our first real picture of Jitter, a black-and-white sonogram image—a tiny curled-up body with small fists, an image that looked more like an incoming weather system than a baby.
    And then things were different.
    I heard Mr. and Mrs. Martinelli’s garage door lift on its squeaky hinges as I sat outside on the lawn waiting for Juliet. Soon, Mr. Martinelli was bringing out card tables, unfolding their thin metal legs.
    “Lemonade stand?” I joked, but he didn’t hear me. He was