Page 6 of Canadian Boyfriend

Someone knocked on the door. I fumbled my phone away. “Just a sec!” I called in a voice that sounded like it was coming from someone who was not me.

Maybe that person could go finish teaching Tap 3, too. But no. Whatever else was happening, Olivia Kowalski was back after a long absence, and it was time to tap my way into class and welcome her back.

2—DEPRESSION CAR

RORY

After class, I was standing at the bus stop reading thatChicago Tribunestory about Mike Martin’s wedding when the man himself pulled up in a convertible the same color as his eyes. Olivia was in the back seat eating an ice-cream cone.

“Aurora!” Mike Martin called over the car’s noisy engine. “Can we give you a lift?”

It was a simple yes/no question, and the answer was no, but instead of saying that, I blurted, “Your car matches your eyes.”

Click-click-click.Out came the dimple, and how could a grin that was a tooth shy of a full set be so powerful?

“It’s our depression car,” Olivia piped up from the back.

Huh? I forced myself to stop pondering the paradox that was Mike Martin’s broken yet inexplicably alluring dental situation.

The car behind him beeped. Yeah, there was no way I was letting Mike Martin drive me home. For many reasons, not the least of which was that accepting a ride from him would force me to postpone the urgent task that was currently using all my brain cells: reading everything Google served up on him so I could match him up—or not—with the boy from the mall.

“I’m fine, thanks.” That was true. “The bus will be here soon.” That was a lie. Buses were few and far between in this fancy suburb, with the exception of the express buses that took the Minnetonka Men™ to their jobs in downtown Minneapolis in the mornings and home at night. My car had died a few weeks ago, and since I hadn’t gotten my finances organized yet to get a new one, I was stuck on the bus.

Another honk sounded from the car behind Mike Martin, this one longer and decidedly less polite. “That guy sounds pissed. You’d better get in,” Mike Martin said.

I got in.

“Where to?” he yelled over the vroom of the engine as we pulled away.

“I live north of Cedar Lake Road, east of the Hopkins Crossroad.” Did he need directions beyond that? Apparently not—he hit the gas without another word.

“Miss Rory, your hair is so long!” Olivia called from the back seat.

The kids didn’t generally see me with my hair loose. I’d taken it down on my walk to the bus stop because I’d done a poor job with my bun today and the bobby pins had been digging into my scalp.

“And your hair is so amazing!” I called back. Sometime in the past seven months, Olivia had dyed hers lime green.

“I was inspired by Miss Miller!”

Gretchen was known for her seasonally rotating brightly colored hair; it was one of the things that made the kids adore her.

We tried to keep talking, but when Mike Martin got on the highway, it was hard to make ourselves heard over the rush of the wind and the noise of the engine.

“This is the part where you sit back and enjoy the drive!” Olivia shouted.

I glanced at Mike Martin. He was wearing the mirrored sunglasses and steering the car with his right hand while his left arm rested on top of the door. He was the picture of freedom, the poster boy for a carefree summer, cruising along on a still-sunny evening, which just went to show you how easily pictures could lie. I had seen his green-hole eyes.

I had a picture of me, an actual physical picture my mother had had printed and framed, dancing the part of Aurora, my namesake, in the Minnesota Ballet Center’s production ofThe Sleeping Beautytwelve years ago. It was a still photo they’d used for PR, a shot of me dancing the wedding pas de deux with my prince, en pointe, dressed in a white confection of a costume that made me look like a music-box ballerina. And—this is the lie part—I was smiling widely for the camera, as if I were happy. I kept the picture hidden in my dresser except for when my mother came over.

I had so many questions for Mike Martin. The same ones from before but also new ones. What was a depression car? Did it have anything to do with him waiting in it for Olivia’s lesson to finish, or had he merely been fleeing the Minnetonka Moms™because he was a rational human being?

Also:Howwas he here?

Was it evenhim?

I directed him into the parking lot at my place. I probably should have been embarrassed. Home sweet home was a big, nondescript apartment complex made of three-story beige stucco buildings.

I thought of the face my mother had made the first timeshe’d visited, the lemon-drop face, I used to call it—in my head—when I was little. I told myself what I’d never had the guts to tell my mother, that there was nothing wrong with this place. It was modest, but that was not a crime.

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