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up and go stand next to him. He puts one arm around my shoulders and gathers me close. “You're a good kid,” he says, which makes me feel about two years old. I don't want to be a kid. I want to be one of his women.
    “I'm not a kid,” I mumble into his shirt. “How old are you, anyway?” My guess is around thirty.
    “Old enough,” he says, and then he grinds out his cigarette on the windowsill, which is really gross. God, smokers get on my nerves sometimes, they really do. I'm always picking up after Shirley, and right now I'm tempted to pocket Frank's butt, but that might make him mad, so I don't.
    Frank turns and heads downstairs and I follow himbecause I don't know what else to do. He holds the front door open for me, shuts it, and then checks to make sure it's all closed up tight, which is stupid since it's not like there's anything to steal in there. Then we walk back to the car without saying anything and get in. Frank sticks his screwdriver into the ignition and pumps the gas pedal. I wonder where we're going now, not that I really care. Frank doesn't say anything and neither do I, though I'm dying to know: does he like me or what?
    Just when I'm about to ask where we are, things start looking familiar. There's the sign for the Long Island Expressway that some stupid kid spray-painted so it says Eggs Zit instead of Exit, like that's really clever. And then we pass the turn to my school and then we're back on Farm Hill Road and Frank stops the car in the exact same spot where he picked me up. I put my hand on the car door, but I don't open it right away. Frank just sits there, staring at me. I wish he would say something. Like what—I
had a great timel
Yeah, right. I want to tell him something like
Thanks for the ride
, or
It was nice meeting you
, or even
See ya
, but before I can even get one word out, Frank says, with that smile that makes my stomach turn over, “Tomorrow.”
    Tomorrow.
The most wonderful word in the English language.
Tomorrow.
The way he says it, it's not a question and it's not a command. It's just a simple fact, a statement, you know, like the sky is blue; tomorrow will come; Frank will drive up, and off I'll go with him.
    “Tomorrow,” I repeat, nodding in agreement, like I think tomorrow's a wonderful idea, which I do. Then Ipick up my knapsack and get out of the car, closing the door gently as though I'm afraid it might break. Frank drives away and gives me the same old wave he's been giving me for the past month like today's just another ordinary day, and I wave back in my usual way, too, like nothing at all has changed. Yeah, right.

FOUR
    Home, bittersweet home. I unlock the door, and as soon as I push it open, the burglar alarm starts blaring so loudly I bet my grandmother can hear it all the way down in Florida. Without her hearing aid on.
    “Andrea, is that you?” Shirley screams from the living room.
    “Yeah, yeah, it's me, it's me.” I run to shut off the alarm, then dash into the kitchen to call the cops and give them our secret password so they know it's only us screwing up again and they don't have to rush over.
    “I'm sorry,” I yell after I hang up the phone.
    “Andrea, come in here, please.”
    Uh-oh. I drag myself into the living room, where Shirley is watching
The Edge of Night, One Life to Live
, or some other stupid soap opera.
    “I'm sorry,” I say again before she can start yelling at me. “I didn't do it on purpose. I just forgot to turn it off before I opened the door.”
    “That's beside the point,” Shirley says, barely taking her eyes off the TV. “Why can't you be more careful? The police have better things to do than respond to every false alarm in the neighborhood. You've got to focus on what you're doing, Andrea. Why are you so distracted?”
    You don't want to know
, I think. Out loud I say, “Well, at least I remembered the password,” unlike Mike, who set the alarm off last year when he arrived home to surprise Shirley for her