Rivals 1

He showed up at the Kravitz house ten minutes early, because his mom had always taught him you shouldn't keep people waiting. He didn't want to look too eager, though, so he walked around the block a couple of times before ringing the bell. Then it occurred to him that someone in the house might have seen him wandering around and wondered what he was doing.

He was nervous. Brent wasn't sure why, exactly, but something about this - this date - had him all worked up. He was even sweating a little. He pressed the doorbell again and heard it ring inside the house, but still nobody answered.

Which just made him more nervous. What was going on? Maybe something had come up, and Dana couldn't have dinner with him tonight, he thought, which would be okay, honestly. He took out his cell phone and started to dial her number but had barely got into his phone book when the door opened.

"Hi," Dana said.

Brent had no idea what to say in response.

She was beautiful. She was always beautiful, even in the casual clothes most kids wore at school. But now she was wearing a dress, a short black dress with a scoop neck, and she had just a little makeup on, and her hair was - wow. Her hair was almost glowing. It fell in dark waves across her cheeks and it swung from side to side as she turned to look up the street.

"There's a van following you," she said.

Brent spun around and saw a newsvan creeping up the street toward him. A camera man was leaning out of the passenger side window, focusing on him.

"You'd better come inside," Dana told him.

She lead him into a foyer full of dark wood furniture. All of it was polished and the glass and mirrors and brass was shining. He thought of Mandy Hunt's house, which was immaculately clean and tastefully decorated but in the end just felt sterile and unlived-in. This was something else. He felt like he'd stepped back a century into a more elegant age. Dana's family had money, he knew that. Brent's family didn't - at the moment, he and Grandma were just scraping by on money from Dad's life insurance policy. It was hard not to feel like he'd come to the wrong house.

"Come on through. We're going to eat in the kitchen, if that's alright. The dining room's just not cozy enough." She turned and smiled at him over her shoulder. "I hope you'll like what I made."

I'm sure I will, he thought. And then realized he hadn't said anything yet.

"You look gorgeous," he said, which sounded stupid when it came out of his mouth. She gave him another smile, though, and it was warm enough that he felt like he might get a suntan just from the light coming off her perfect teeth.

She lead him into the kitchen, which was bigger than he'd expected but at least the furniture didn't look like it cost more than his college fund. There was a simple table with straight-backed chairs. Two plates were already laid out with silverware and cloth napkins. Too much silverware, it looked like. There were three forks - what did you need three forks for?

"Aren't your parents going to eat with us?" Brent asked, when he'd processed the fact there were only two plates.

"Oh, no," she said, and her eyes were very wide. "You didn't think - " She recovered herself. "Brent," she said, "this is a date. They were kind enough to go out for the evening so we could be alone."

"Oh," he said.

He sat down and she served him a salad - that was what the first fork was for. The salad was delicately dressed and full of fresh vegetables. It was at that point he realized that he wasn't hungry at all.

"This is really nice," he said, and pushed a forkful of microgreens and chopped mushrooms in his mouth. He chewed with determination. "You really didn't need to go to all this trouble, though."

"It was no trouble, believe me," she told him, waving her fork in the air. "We have a cook who comes in. I gave her an extra twenty dollars this week and she whipped all this up. Anyway, I really did want to thank you for saving me. When I was in your arms - "

"I don't think," he said, interrupting her, "that you were in any danger. Really. I just didn't want to take the chance."

She took a drink of water and studied him across the table. "You would have done it for anyone, is that how it works? Anybody in trouble? Why is that? What makes you want to save people? It's not like they'd do the same for you." She shrugged an apology. "Sorry, that's a weird question, I guess."

"No," he said. "No." She got up and removed his salad plate - and his fork - and replaced it with his main course, a salmon filet in a creamy dill sauce. "It's just... complicated. I have these powers and I guess I feel I have a responsibility to use them for... well. For good. My dad, you see - "

- who I killed -

" - he would have wanted me to help people. He believed that if you have the ability to help people, if you're lucky enough to have something when other people don't, then you always should." I could have put that better, he thought.

"I can understand that," she told him. "My mom is really into charity. She's always throwing parties to raise money for cancer research, or to help homeless people, or whatever. Of course, what she spends on the parties is sometime more than she collects for the charities, but I think her heart's in the right place." She smirked. "Parents, huh? They try their best. But you can't spend your whole life doing what your parents want."

"You can't?" he asked. He took a bite of the salmon. It really was delicious, he thought, but in his mouth it felt like indigestible plastic. He'd barely touched the salad but it was filling up his stomach as if it had expanded in there, making him dread finding out what the third fork was for.

"No way! My dad wants me to become a systems analyst. Just like him. Whenever my computer goes down he says I have to fix it myself, because I need to learn how. But that's what techies are for, right? I don't want to spend the rest of my life looking at page after page of code. I want to travel and see the world. I thought maybe I should be an airline hostess. They can travel for free, did you know that?"

"No," he said. He put his fork down on his plate. Dana moved quickly to remove the plate and replace it with dessert - cheesecake with real strawberries on top. He picked up the third fork and studied it. It was shorter than the others, and one of its tines had a sort of claw on the end. He'd never seen anything like it before in his life.

"I think you should go to Hollywood," she told him, her eyes shining. "You could be in the movies. You're cute enough, in a scruffy kind of way. If we just fixed your hair you'd be a knockout."

He blushed. "I guess I could do my own stunts."

"Oh my God, yeah!" she laughed. "This is really fun, isn't it? Look, I don't want this dessert. It's just empty calories and who needs those, right? Let's go in the living room. Do you want to watch a DVD?"

He stood up and started picking up the dishes. "I'll wash if you dry," he told her.

Dana stared at him for a second. Then she shook her head. "Don't worry about it. We have somebody for that, too. Come on!"

She took him into a living room full of green leather couches and the biggest plasma TV he'd ever seen - it filled up half of one wall. She started gathering up remote controls and pointed, indicating he should sit on one of the couches. He sat down but before he could get comfortable she was on top of him, shoving in next to him so there shoulders and thighs touched and her head was lying on his shoulder.

"Do you drink?" she asked.

"Not really," he told her.

"That's so good to hear. My last boyfriend was a total alcoholic. He never saw a keg he didn't like. I think you and I are going to get along a lot better. Kiss me."

Alarm bells went off in Brent's head. He felt a drop of sweat roll down the inside of his shirt collar. "What?"

"It's going to happen eventually," she said, looking up into his eyes. "Why not now? Kiss me. Please?"

"I'm not sure I'm comfortable with - "

"Brent! It only feels awkward because you're not doing what you're supposed to. Kiss me, and if it still feels weird, then I promise I'll let you go home, okay? But first we have to find out. We need to know if we have chemistry."

She was - she was right there. She smelled great. She was a beautiful girl. Brent was a fifteen year-old boy. He spent all day, every day, thinking about how great it would be to kiss a beautiful girl. Well, kissing wasn't the only thing he thought about doing with girls, but it was a good place to start. He leaned his head down, just slightly, and let his lips meet hers. They were ridiculously soft. He pressed a little harder and felt her lips open a little bit beneath his.

"There," she told him. "That feels right, doesn't it? It feels exactly right."

He kissed her again.

It felt good. It made his head spin, in a good way. It made his whole body tense up, in an amazing way. Whether it felt right or not suddenly felt less important than it had before.