Peace, Love, and Baby Ducks

  Roger chuckles, and my eyes go to him. The way he’s looking at me makes me both nervous and pleased. Nervous, because what I see in his eyes is pretty darn appreciative. Pleased for the very same reason.

  I go over to him and say, “Let’s see what you got, bucko. Get over here, V.”

  Vonzelle picks herself up from the floor and joins us. We watch our video, and I couldn’t be more delighted. The toilet, the rattletrap truck, Vonzelle falling off the rattletrap truck . . .

  We are artistes. It is a masterpiece.

  “Just promise you won’t show it to your dad,” Vonzelle says. “Ever.”

  “Duh,” I say.

  “And you can’t post it on YouTube.”

  I grin, first at her and then at Roger. I feel the thrill of triumph as I say, “And just in case you missed it? That is called taking something old and making it new.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Y’ALL COME BACK NOW, Y’HEAR?

  After Vonzelle and Roger leave, I make some improvements to our video. I just want to spice it up a bit, make it even funnier. I’m buzzing with the thrill of creating something, and also with the thrill of entertaining my buds. It’s addictive, getting attention. Addictive and exhilarating.

  I grab my camera—not the video camera, just my plain old digital one—and go around the house taking pictures of all the pretentious crap Dad has accumulated over the years. His Rémy Martin brandy. The Steinway baby grand piano, which no one in the family knows how to play. The Waterford chandelier, which I, on occasion, have been made to clean—crystal by crystal.

  I also snap shots of Dad’s Italian suits and ties and an awesome close-up of his handcrafted French wingtips, shoes which took seven months to make and involved some French shoemaker making a cast of Dad’s feet so the shoes would fit exactly right. That same shoemaker sewed the seams of the shoes with a pig’s bristle instead of a needle. Dad bragged about it when the shoes arrived, and he passed them around so that Mom, Anna, and I could appreciate them. I clapped, as I recall.

  After I’ve collected an impressive collection of yes-my-father-really-is-this-pretentious photos, I upload them onto my MacBook Air. Then comes the chortle-making part: making a video montage. First I download a picture of Jed Clampett, the grizzled mountain man who finds the bubbling crude. The image I choose shows Jed wearing a tattered jacket and his ever-present, beat-up brown felt hat. He’s gripping a double-barreled shotgun.

  I photoshop out Jed’s face, but leave the mountain-man hat. Then I select a picture of Dad from one of my iPhoto albums, trim the image, and stick Dad’s head on top of Jed’s scruffy body.

  Oh, man, I think, because my Ted Clampett is PERFECT. The pasted-in head is from a photo Mom took at the Peachtree Club one day last summer, when she and Dad were watching Anna and me play tennis. One of us must have gotten smacked by the tennis ball—probably me—because Dad’s face is split by a grin. He’s pre-wheeze, but just barely.

  Dad’s grin, coupled with Jed’s hat, coat, and double-barreled shotgun? I hate to boast, but it’s pure genius.

  Next I find a pirated Beverly Hillbillies episode on YouTube and download a sample of Jed Clampett’s thick country accent. Then I go to VoiceDub.com, plug the snippet in, and voilà! I can type in any phrase I want, and Ted Clampett will say it in Jed Clampett’s backwoods drawl.

  After due consideration, I go with the following gems:

  Git yer mitts off my handcrafted wingtips!

  Just ’cause I cain’t play the piano don’t mean I ain’t got no ed-ja-maca-tion.

  And the clincher:

  Y’all come back now, y’hear?

  Now it’s time to roll up my sleeves and put it all together. Thank you, Mr. Abernathy, for teaching me about computers, even though you did accuse my sister of being a pervert. And thank you, Mom and Dad, for my state-of-the-art laptop, which will enable me to share my exposé of wealth and pretension with the masses.

  The final product is a seamless blend of Roger’s original footage, shots of Dad’s fancy shoes and fancier piano, and animated clips of my gun-toting Ted Clampett sharing down-home wisdom. And, fine, it’s not really seamless—I have a hard time getting Dad’s jaw to open and shut so it looks like he’s really talking—but it’s pretty frickin’ great.

  I name my masterpiece “The Ballad of Ted Clampett,” and I post it to YouTube, even though I know Vonzelle will freak. It would be criminal not to share such brilliance with the world.

  And anyway: Dad’s never going to see it unless (a) he has a closet fascination with old sitcom theme remixes; (b) knows how to troll for such remixes on YouTube; and (c) knows what YouTube is. I would bet my last silver dollar that he meets none of those criteria.

  And even if he DOES see it . . . it’s a farce! A satire! It’s art as social commentary, and you can’t argue with art.

  I hit the upload button and forward Vonzelle and Roger the link. I want to call them and tell them to check their darn e-mail, but I don’t. Far more fun for them to find it themselves.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  LOVE THE SINNER, HATE THE SIN

  Monday at school, I’m a grouchy black rain cloud. Why? Because despite all logic and probability, Dad did see the Ted Clampett video. He wouldn’t have, and he shouldn’t have, except for the tiny little detail of Anna “accidentally” showing him.

  “Anna claims she didn’t mean to get me in trouble, but she knew exactly what she was doing,” I tell Vonzelle before first period. We’re leaning against a row of lockers. “She was like, ‘Oh, Dad, you’ve got to see this, you’re going to think it’s hysterical.’”

  “But she had to know he wouldn’t,” Vonzelle says.

  I hold my hands palms up, like duh.

  “Then why did she do it?”

  “Because I was supposed to watch TV with her, and I forgot. Isn’t that such a crime? Wasn’t she totally right to screw with me just because I didn’t watch The Hills with her?”

  “So did your dad totally flip?”

  I twist around so that my shoulder blades press against the locker. “I don’t know. Sort of. He said it was offensive.”

  What Dad actually said was, “How could you be so stupid? Is it your goal to offend every single person in Buckhead?!” And so on. Red splotches mottled his cheeks, and his jaw kept twitching as if he couldn’t control his face muscles. It pretty much scared the daylights out of me.

  “I can kind of see his point,” Vonzelle says tentatively.

  “No you can’t,” I say. “And you know why? Because you have a sense of humor. If I put your face on Jed Clampett’s body, would you be all, ‘What if my clients see? Did you think of that, you idiot?’”

  “Is that what he’s worried about? His clients?”

  “Isn’t that the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard? Like his clients are really going to comb the Internet for Beverly Hillbillies remixes.” I pause, because I made the same wrong assumption about Dad. “I take that back. Maybe Anna’ll send a bulletin to his entire law firm, and everyone will make fun of Dad for being so materialistic, boo hoo hoo. And I’ll be the one who gets the blame, because of course innocent little Anna had nothing to do with it.”

  Vonzelle bites her lip, and her expression makes me itch. It’s not a full-out wow-you’re-kind-of-being-a-witch expression, but it does make me worry that she’s feeling bad for Dad—or, just as unacceptable, for Anna. I only want her feeling bad for me.

  “Anna tried to apologize this morning,” I say, to show I can be fair. “But I was like, ‘Whatever.’ And then Dad came downstairs and laid into me again. He only quit when Tracy showed up, and only then because he didn’t want to air out our dirty laundry, I guess.”

  “Who’s Tracy?”

  Oops. I didn’t mean to mention Tracy. “She’s the cleaning lady, kind of. She’s white.”

  Vonzelle looks at me funny. But Tracy is white.

  Down the hall, a girl bursts into tears. Vonzelle and I turn toward the sound.
r />   “Oh my God, it’s Trista,” I say. Trista’s crying, and Lydia is patting her shoulders and saying stuff. I can’t make out all the words, but the ones I do catch send thoughts of Dad and Anna right out of my mind.

  Cole, I hear Trista say. And last night, and broken.

  I look at Vonzelle, a new emotion taking up space in my chest. “Broken? As in broken up?”

  “Nuh-uh, no,” Vonzelle says, because she doesn’t like Cole the way I do. She doesn’t think I should like Cole the way I do. “Don’t go there, Carly. Finish telling me about your dad.”

  “There’s nothing more to tell. He’s a jerk. Story over.”

  “But did you take it down? The video?”

  “No way, he’s not the boss of me.” My gaze travels back to Trista. I have to find out what happened.

  “So what’s he going to do?” Vonzelle says. “Is he going to ground you?”

  “Dad doesn’t ground us,” I say distractedly. “He fines us.”

  “He fines you?” When I don’t respond, she pokes me. “Hey. Hey!” Lydia hugs Trista and says something comforting like, “I’m here for you, I’m on your side.” At this particular moment, however, she’s leaving Trista’s side.

  “We’ll talk at lunch,” I say to Vonzelle. “Hopefully, I’ll have Trista-and-Cole details to share.”

  “Carly!” she complains.

  “Gotta-go-bye,” I say, running it together like one big word. And then I’m off, dashing down the hall to catch up with Lydia.

  The rumors: Cole cheated on Trista, Cole broke up with Trista, Trista broke up with Cole. If Cole did cheat on Trista, no one knows with whom, although there’s speculation that it was with a girl from another school. No one thinks Trista cheated on Cole.

  “If he did step out on her, she should dump him,” Lydia says, standing by Vonzelle’s and my table at lunch.

  “I agree,” I say.

  “And if he stepped out on her and lied about it, that’s two sins,” she goes on.

  “She should dump him twice.”

  “I’m going to the chapel to pray for her. You two want to come?”

  “That’s all right,” I say.

  “I’ll say a prayer for Cole, too,” Lydia says. “Love the sinner, hate the sin.”

  I nod, and she strides off.

  “I do love the sinner,” I confess to Vonzelle.

  “I know you do, and you know you shouldn’t,” Vonzelle says. Today is spaghetti day, and she twirls a noodle around her fork. “I bet Cole did cheat on Trista. Is that the kind of boy you want?”

  “Well . . . I agree that cheating is bad.”

  She snorts.

  “But if he’s, like, tempted to cheat on her—which is bad! bad, bad, bad!—then doesn’t that mean she isn’t right for him?”

  “No. It means he’s no good.”

  “But he is good. He’s smart and gorgeous and . . . and . . .”

  “A complete player who can bend any girl to his will with a single smoldering look?”

  “Not what I was going to say, though he does smolder. You’re right. What I was going to say is that he gets it, you know?”

  She rips off a bite of garlic bread. “What does he ‘get,’ Carly?”

  “I don’t know. Stuff.”

  I think of the way he looks at me sometimes, with his smoldering eyes that see right through me. He gets it that I’m special.

  “He thinks for himself,” I say defensively.

  “So?” Vonzelle says. “Other guys think for themselves. He’s just the only one who happens to be so amazingly hot—”

  “See! You admitted it!”

  “—that even girls who should know better get sucked in.” She leans back from the table. “Every girl gets sucked in.”

  “Except you,” I say, to call her out on her superiority complex.

  She’s unfazed. “Even Lydia goes noodle-y around him. Yes, she’s on Trista’s side, but I’ve seen her buy Cole those Monster drinks at the student center.”

  “That’s embarrassing.”

  “Even Jackie Owens acts like he’s God’s gift to Holy Redeemer,” Vonzelle says.

  I believe her for a nanosecond, and I’m alarmed, because Jackie has announced frequently and without provocation that there will be no boys for her until spring semester of senior year, when she will assumedly have her admission letter to Harvard tucked safely in her bra. If it’s true that Jackie is susceptible to Cole’s charms . . .

  Then I realize that Vonzelle is yanking my chain.

  “Ha ha. Jackie doesn’t care about Cole. All she cares about is her big math brain.”

  “She does his algebra homework for him, did you know that?”

  Oh God. No, I did not.

  “She needs to stop that,” I say, primarily to myself.

  Vonzelle cocks her head. The message in her brown eyes is not a pleasant one.

  “Well, those girls don’t count, because unlike Jackie and Lydia, I don’t have to bribe Cole to like me,” I say. I regard her imploringly. “Don’t you get it? Cole’s my ironic love boodle.”

  “No, he’s not.”

  “He could be.”

  “Carly . . .” She sighs. “I can see his appeal. I’m not blind. But I can also see that he’s just . . . He’s not there yet. He’s not real.”

  That’s silly. Cole’s the most real person I know.

  “Who is real, if he’s not?” I demand. Then, because I know whose name she’s going to throw out, I quickly say, “Never mind.”

  She shakes her head like she’s sick and tired of this conversation. Well, I am, too. Vonzelle doesn’t know Cole the way I do. She doesn’t get that I could be the one to make him real.

  “Wake up, Carly,” she says. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if for once the right girl ended up with the right guy?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  We stare at each other. Neither of us gives in.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  REAL GIRLS WEAR SNEAKERS

  Cole and Trista don’t break up.

  “Told you,” Vonzelle says after several days of me saying, “Wait, just give it time.” While she wouldn’t be Vonzelle if she didn’t say that, it’s not what I want to hear.

  I almost want to talk to Peyton about it, because Peyton would be mean to Trista with me. She’d definitely understand my Cole lust. Except for me, it’s more than lust, which is why I don’t track Peyton down. I don’t want to cheapen my feelings. I know in my gut that I’m perfect for Cole. I’d appreciate him far more than Trista or Cheater Girl X . . . if Cheater Girl X even exists.

  Bad Attitude Cindy thinks Cheater Girl X exists. I overhear her talking to Lydia about it at Lydia’s locker. She calls Cheater Girl X a ho, and I briefly think, But . . . Cole’s the one with the girlfriend. He’s the one who’s cheating.

  I also think, horribly, I’d cheat with him. I seriously can’t imagine how anyone wouldn’t, and while it’s not Cole’s fault that he’s brilliant and talented and gorgeous and intense, I do realize that he milks it sometimes.

  Despite Vonzelle’s opinion, I am capable of seeing Cole’s flaws. I just see past them, that’s all.

  After lunch on Thursday, I spot Cole and Roger out on the lawn. Just the two of them, no Trista. Cole’s playing his guitar.

  Vonzelle notices and huffs. She says, “Go on. Go get it out of your system—and then take a look at the boy sitting next to him and say, ‘Oh. Roger. There you are.’”

  “If you like Roger so much, you go say, ‘Oh, there you are,’” I tell her.

  “Can’t, he’s into someone else.” She narrows her eyes meaningfully. “Now go.”

  I start toward them, then hesitate at the edge of the quad. Roger sees me and says, “Hey, Carly!”

  He beckons, and I feel important being called over by Roger and, by proxy, Cole. I’m aware of people noticing.

  “Hey,” I say, dropping down next to them. Well, next to Roger, because I don’t want to overstep. I don’t know where Cole’s at
with the whole Trista thing—like, if he’s brooding or whatever—and I’m not about to ask. I don’t want to be that girl, the one who cares about relationship drama like every other girl on the planet.

  Cole acknowledges me with a nod. He keeps playing his guitar, and when he gets to the end of one song, he starts another. It’s “Trouble,” by Cat Stevens. Cole gazes off into the distance as he strums the opening chords. He is brooding. I can see it in the tension of his jaw. I want to reach across the universe and let him know it’s okay, he’s not alone.

  He starts to sing, and my heart wells with something so raw and aching that I can’t put a name to it. It’s such a sad song. Sad and beautiful, both. A lump rises in my throat.

  He turns and looks at me, still playing. He gazes straight into my eyes. “You’re eating my heart away,” he sings, “and there’s nothing much left of me.”

  The connection between the two of us pulses in the air. Part of me feels self-conscious in front of Roger, but I do not look away and I will not look away. I will hold Cole’s gaze as long as he wants me to. I will hold his gaze forever.

  “Heads up, bro,” Roger says, and Cole stops playing. His eyes move from me to the girl taking mincing steps through the grass to get to us. It’s Trista. She’s wearing a black knit dress, black tights, and chunky black heels. On her, even black looks adorable.

  She’s not happy, though. She has circles under her eyes, and her fine features seem unusually fragile. Her highlighted hair gleams in the sun, but she’s wrecked. I can’t lie to myself and say she isn’t.

  I feel Roger’s gaze on me, and I know how foolish and stupid I must seem, watching Cole and Trista so intently. But I can’t help it. I have to know.

  “Hey, baby,” Cole says. Maybe he’s trying to act self-assured, but I can hear his uncertainty.

  “Can we talk?” Trista says.

  “Yeah, let’s talk.” He slides his guitar in its case, clips the locks, and stands.

  They go off together. Trista stumbles in her chunky heels, and Cole catches her arm.