To his great surprise, Charlotte is glad that Dave called. "New Year's Day is always so boring" she says. "Becca and I are going to the movies. You should come along. My dad said that I could drive his car."
Dave is relieved and jealous at the same time. He's glad they won't have to rely on someone to pick them up and drop them off, but envious that Charlotte has her learner's permit already. He'd asked Mom and Watson if he could take Driver's Ed this semester, but they had said no. "It's too difficult and dangerous to learn to drive in the snow" Mom had fretted. Dr. Johanssen had taken the opposite opinion. "We live in Connecticut" she had told Char. "You may as well start out learning to handle snow and ice."
Charlotte notices the silence on the line. "Don't worry," she says. "I'm a good driver, and it's not very icy out. How about I pick you up in half an hour? I have to go get Becca first. You're on McLelland Road, right?"
Dave hangs up, and goes into the kitchen to look for some way to kill twenty minutes. He peels a sticky note off of the pad on the counter to leave a note on the fridge telling Mom and Watson where he went. He's thankful that Becca is going to be coming along so that it's not a date. Dave doesn't know what he'd do if Charlotte had wanted to go on a real date. He likes her, and thinks that she's interesting and fun to talk to, but he doesn't want her to get the wrong idea. He shakes his keys impatiently against his leg. Finally, he hears a horn honk from the road, and throws on his coat.
Becca waves at him from the backseat, and Vanessa opens the passenger door. She slides next to Charlotte to make room for Dave. He buckles himself in and turns around to see who is sitting with Becca. Of course, her hand is in Nick's. Jerry Haney is squeezed into the third seat. Charlotte sees the look of confusion on his face. "They were all at Becca's when I went to pick her up, so I asked them all to come along."
Oh good, it's not a date, Dave sighs. Well, except for Nick and Becca. It's still strange for him to see them together.
"We went ice skating, and Mama made us hot chocolate afterwards" says Becca.
"I don't ice skate," says Charlotte, by way of explaining why she hadn't been invited.
Becca taps Dave on the shoulder, and he turns to speak with her. She gestures that she has a secret to tell him, and he leans back so that Becca can whisper in his ear. "We went skating, because Nick and I are trying to set up Vanessa and Jerry."
Dave starts to worry. So this is a date! He looks at poetic Vanessa, looking cozy in a velvet coat and some sort of fluffy scarf and then back to Jerry, who is wearing a puffy jacket and a few silver chains. Both boys played for the SHS baseball team last spring until Jerry made Varsity. Dave knows that Jerry has a bit of a reputation as a player, and not in the athletic sense. He didn't see how either Nick or Becca could see a possible match in Vanessa and Jerry. Maybe Vanessa knows this too, and that's why Dave is sitting up front with her and Char instead of Jerry. Besides, if Char thought this was some sort of a triple date, she would have maneuvered it so that he was sitting beside her, right? He relaxes.
"I was thinking of seeing that new romantic comedy," says Vanessa, as they get out of the car at the movie theatre. "The one written all in iambic pentameter. I simply adore iambic pentameter."
"Awww, not a chick flick" moans Nick. "I want to see the remake of Macbeth. If we have to see something in rhyme, I want blood and gore."
Becca pipes in. "I wanted to see the new zombie movie. It looks cheesy, but I love cheesy movies."
"Here's how it's gonna break down, aight?" Jerry says. Dave flinches a little; he hates middle class white kids who use street slang. It sounds so discordant with the slightly backwards style of Stoneybrook. "We's gonna see whateva my baby girl Nessa wants to see, y'all know what I'm sayin'?"
Dave and Nick look at each other. Nick is biting his lip, trying not to laugh. Vanessa and Charlotte start walking ahead so they can gossip about the party, with Jerry slightly behind them, trying to butt into the conversation.
"What were you thinking?" Dave hisses, hoping that Jerry won't hear them. "They go together about as well as…as well as…" Me and you, he thinks a little ruefully. "I don't know, Byron and a girl."
"They both like poetry" Nick says a little feebly. His hands flail, trying to make a gesture that implies that there's something, anything, that might bring Vanessa and Jerry together. Dave likes the way Nick's gloved fingers fly about hopelessly in the cold air. He needs to look away, so he turns to Becca.
"Rap isn't poetry," Dave says.
"Don't tell anyone this, but Vanessa secretly has a thing for guys with chest hair" Becca offers. "She once had a crush on Burt Reynolds. Jerry's covered in hair."
"Those are pretty weak reasons," Dave says. He disagrees with the idea that everyone should be put into pairs, like Stoneybrook High is some sort of an adolescent Noah's Ark.
"Jerry's on the dance committee with me, and he's an okay guy" says Becca. "I think Vanessa should give him a chance."
Dave doesn't feel like arguing with them. He hates set-ups and thinks that if Vanessa had wanted to date Jerry, she would have asked him herself, or at least she'd walk with him into the theatre instead skipping ahead to whisper secrets to Charlotte.
Things don't get much better in the theatre. Jerry and Nick buy popcorn and drinks for their dates, so Dave decides that maybe he should pay for Charlotte's treats. He doesn't have any intention of making her believe that they're on a date, but he knows how weird teenage girls can get when they're on an outing with boys. He remembers Kristy, who prided herself on being independent, complaining about how Bart always made her pay her own way when he took her out to the batting cages. Karen recently went on a group date, and whined for days after Ricky Torres asked her to go dutch on their meal.
He hands Charlotte a bag of popcorn and a small cola. She starts to reach into her purse. "Let me pay you back for that" she says.
Dave is happy to hear her say that, not because he wants her money, but because it means that she's not getting the wrong idea. "My treat."
"At least let me buy some licorice for us to share" Charlotte offers.
Share? Maybe she is getting the wrong idea, Dave frets. His breath catches in his throat.
"I can never eat a whole package of it myself," she explains. "You'd better eat some, or I'll have to throw it out." Dave is able to breathe again. She's just a nice girl, there's no need to be scared.
Meanwhile, Jerry is giving a drink to Vanessa. "I got you a diet cola, girl."
Vanessa turns bright red. Nick gives Jerry a Look. While not overweight, Vanessa is a bit sensitive about her size. From having Kristy's friends around the house while he was growing up, Dave learned that offering a diet cola to a girl who isn't diabetic is one of the biggest insults a guy can make.
"I thought all girls drank diet cola, yo" Jerry apologizes. "I like how you look, Nessa. Don't go losin' that ghetto booty, you hear? I like a bit of junk in the trunk." After a slap to Vanessa's rear end, he starts to head into the cinema. Dave catches a horrified look on both Vanessa and Becca's faces.
The previews have just started, and they all sit down, but end up switching seats. Dave would be embarrassed if they weren't the only people, apart from an elderly couple, in the cinema. Vanessa doesn't want to sit by herself at the end of the aisle, so she switches with Char. Becca doesn't want to sit beside Jerry, so she trades with Vanessa. Nick put his drink in the wrong cup holder, so everyone moves over a seat. Char wants to share her licorice, so she sits beside Dave, who has an empty seat on his left side. They finally settle in, just as the movie is starting.
They're watching the movie Vanessa suggested, and while the film is beautiful to look at, the story itself is insipid and the poetry is dull. Nick is exhausted from the party last night, and starts to fall asleep. There's a scene where a character is being chased down a dark road, and Charlotte gasps. She grabs Dave's hand and squeezes it. Dave gasps, too, but not because the movie is scary. At that point, Nick's head rolls from the back of the chair, and snuggles onto Dave's shoulder. His curly hair tickles Dave's neck. Dave's breathing shallows, and he becomes painfully aroused. He's not sure whether it's the sex scene onscreen, Charlotte's soft hand and apple shampoo, or Nick's hair brushing against one of his more powerful erogenous zones. All he's aware of is the erection straining against his jeans, and the uncomfortable twisting pain in his scrotum. Dave panics, and purposely spills cola on his pants, so that he has a less embarrassing excuse than an erection to throw his jacket onto his lap.
Charlotte looks at him. "Let me help you clean that up" she says, and starts dabbing at his shirt with napkins.
The gentle tapping on his stomach is too much. "Please don't, I'm fine" Dave moans. He can feel himself starting to leak a little into his boxers. Nick's head nuzzles his shoulder, and Dave has to bite the inside of his lip to keep from screaming. He jumps up. Nick slumps over.
"I need to go to the bathroom," he whispers to Charlotte, before dashing out of the cinema. However, Dave doesn't go to the men's room. He rushes past the ticket taker, and leaves the theatre. The cold air makes him shiver, and the wet spot on his pants cools the heat in his groin. He shakes a little, and leans against the wall so that he can have a cigarette. Dave understands all the reasons why he shouldn't smoke, but he doesn't care. Whenever he's sad, or lonely, or confused, the greatest comfort he has is the feeling of that little cylinder in between his fingers or in his mouth. He tries to forget how velvety Nick's warm hair felt against his cool neck in the air-conditioned cinema. Instead, he thinks about the first time he tried smoking.
When he was twelve, Dave was a snoop. If someone left something like a purse or a book lying around, Dave would wait until their back was turned so that he could take a peek. One day during Spring break, Kristy had her friend Mary Anne over. Mary Anne had left her purse in the foyer with her coat, and Dave couldn't resist going through the contents of both. There was nothing interesting in her bag aside from a few tampons, which Dave took and later used the applicators to shoot the cotton pellets at Karen. However, in one of the coat pockets, he found a silver lighter, and a pink plastic case. Curious, he opened it. Inside were two neat rows of vanilla scented cigarettes. He took one out, and lit it, and then hid behind the hydrangea in the front yard so that he could try to smoke it. Dave coughed a few times, but he liked how grown up he felt, even though he was smoking a girly cigarette. Unfortunately, Mary Anne caught him. She had the same idea, to hide behind the hydrangea for a smoke so that Kristy wouldn't catch her. Ever the vigilant babysitter, Mary Anne plucked the cigarette from Dave's hand, stomped it out in the grass, and told him not to smoke again. Inquisitively, Dave asked why she smoked.
Mary Anne sighed. "I don't smoke a lot, just when I'm stressed, or upset, or confused. Like when Dad is being strict, or Logan and I had a bad date, or when Kristy…" Mary Anne tapered off. "But that doesn't mean you should smoke."
That was the day Kristy came out. After she told the family, Dave went outside and found the stomped out cigarette from earlier.
The movie ends, and the others trickle outside. Becca leads a drowsy Nick through the door. Jerry says to Dave, "You shoulda stuck around, man. The ending was wack!" Vanessa smiles weakly. Obviously she wouldn't have chosen that word to describe the denouement of an epic poem.
Dave forces a smile as well. Charlotte puts her hand on his shoulder. He resists the urge to shrug it away. "Are you okay?" she asks, and he's touched by her concern.
"It's all good" he lies. "I needed some fresh air. I think I ate too much popcorn." He pushes his floppy hair out of his face, and follows the others to the car, attempting to shake the feeling that maybe Nick wanted to fall asleep on his shoulder.