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.She really had tried to look pretty.One thing about Brian was, he understood the Pants.Just like Bailey, two summers before, had understood them implicitly.The Pants, in a way, were like the ultimate litmus test, separating the worthy from the unworthy.And no matter how he looked, Brian was the most worthy guy she’d ever known.Few people in the course of history had ever transformed, even just physically, as much as Brian had since the afternoon two years before when Tibby and Bailey first filmed him at the 7-Eleven.It was great and all.A supreme dork with a golden heart whom you befriend because you love him grows to six feet two, gets his dental hygiene together, accidentally breaks his hideous glasses, and morphs into a virtual heartthrob before your eyes.It was like dumbly buying a share of stock at one dollar and watching it soar to one hundred.Tibby still observed in stupefaction how girls whispered and flirted around Brian these days.But on the other hand, it seemed to Tibby like another example of destiny’s strange sense of humor.The single safest guy in Tibby’s life had turned imposing.He didn’t impose on purpose, she knew.He didn’t desire her to be mean to her.He didn’t plant these feelings in her heart to make her sad.But desire was there, his and hers, and as a consequence, it wasn’t a safe relationship anymore.“Brian, Brian, Brian!” Katherine and Nicky were literally dancing around him.Brian had earned their love the hard way, not by being their peevish older sister, but by playing every endless, tedious game they could devise and listening carefully to every harebrained thing they could think of to say.They were a lot more demonstrative than his real live date, come to think of it.Brian’s innocence gave him a funny kind of confidence.It was hard to explain.He didn’t care that he had walked all the way to her house because he had no car.He wasn’t self-conscious that their date car was her car.Once outside, he gallantly opened the door for her.On the driver’s side.He didn’t care, so it didn’t matter.Inside the car, it was private.So dark and private.He touched his hand to the inside of her elbow.She got scared, and fumbled the key into the ignition.They were growing up.That was a fact she had to face.He had grown from a kid to nearly a man.He was eighteen years old.He wanted Tibby in a different way than he used to.He looked at her differently.He wasn’t pushy or gross, but his eyes did linger on her breasts.When he put his hand on her, she could tell he was feeling the curve of her waist.And when he looked at her like that, she felt different too.It was natural, right?In the school parking lot he reached for her hand.Hers was clammy.What about friendship, though? What about the ease between them? Where was that going to go? And if they let it go, could they ever get it back?That was the thing about this summer.With everything that was happening, she wondered, was there any going back?The auditorium was dark and the DJ was loud and grating like at every school social function, but this was their last one, and for that reason, Tibby couldn’t bring herself to hate it quite as much.Brian held her hand fast.He was declaring their couplehood.Ironically, he did her more credit than himself.This spring his social star had certainly risen past hers.Not that he noticed or cared.In spite of her beautiful friends, Tibby was identified more with the disaffected artist types.Bee was a glamour jock.Carmen had turned into quite the babe, the target of a lot of underclassman fantasies, though she’d never curried favor with the ruling set.Lena flew under the social radar.And Brian, oddly, had become a darling of the social whirl—even they needed new blood occasionally—getting invitations none of the rest of them got.Tibby was one of those who sat on the sidelines in dark clothes, making cynical observations with other self-designated misfits who were too cautious to jump into the fray.Of all the boys in school, only Brian seemed to notice how Tibby’s hair had grown out, how her delicate shoulders looked in a tube top, how the Pants made her small behind look especially nice.She loved being noticed like this.And also, she didn’t.Bee and Carmen found them right away.Lena and Effie hadn’t arrived yet.Effie was an infamously slow and primping date.Bee was wearing a white halter dress and her hair was brighter than the tea lights.She looked like an extremely fit Marilyn Monroe.Carmen wore a siren red slip dress, to which the boys were already flocking.As stunning as they looked in their finery, Tibby was still grateful it was she who had drawn for the Pants.Bridget and Carmen hustled Tibby off to the bathroom in their time-honored way.The cavernous girls’ bathroom was always the most happening spot at a school party.“You both look unbelievable,” Tibby said along the way.“You, Tibby, are luscious,” Carmen responded.“Brian looked like his heart was going to break when we took you away.”An army of gussied girls were perfecting makeup, smoking, and gossiping in front of the mirrors.Bee took out her lip gloss.She put some on and shared it around.“Hey, Bee?” Carmen said.“Yeah?”“If you ever meet a guy and you fall in love with him, but because of some weird genetic mutation he doesn’t seem to return the feeling?”Bee always went patiently along with Carmen’s counterfactuals.“Yeah?”“Wear that dress.”Bee laughed.“Okay.”Lena arrived a few minutes later, dressed down as usual, in an olive green cargo skirt and a black shirt.“Lenny, did you have to wear the ponytail?” Carmen asked fake-irritably.“What do you mean?” she asked.“Come on, it’s our last high school party,” Bee said.Together, they put some mascara and lip gloss on her and coaxed the elastic out of her hair.Looking at their faces in the mirror, Tibby felt as though she might cry.This was the place where they’d spent the majority of school events these last four years.They had had more fun here, together, than anyplace else.This, on some level, was their real high school experience.Carmen caught her look.“It’s sad, I know.”“Let’s get back out there,” Tibby said.She didn’t want to feel these things right now.Back in the auditorium, they dispersed.Brian was waiting eagerly.“Do you want to dance?” he asked Tibby.Was she allowed to say no? Was a real live date allowed to say no? As he took her hand and led her to the floor, the fast song changed into a slow one.Was that better or worse? She couldn’t decide.It would have taken her an hour to figure out how to get her arms around Brian, but he went right for it.He closed in and held her tight.So here it was
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