How to Take the Ex Out of Ex-Boyfriend

  “Okay,” I said. I had no idea how to find out where Jesse would be, and only knew it wouldn’t be at my house since Gabby had banished him, and I was still grounded. Right now Jesse was at Wilson’s house, which I couldn’t go to, even though my mind had made frequent stops there all evening.

  I pictured Jesse sitting in the hot tub with Bridget. Bridget no doubt wore an A-list bikini on her double-D body, while both of them ate caviar on crackers shaped in the words “Vote for Wilson.”

  A knock sounded on my door, then Charity’s voice filtered in. “Giovanna, are you in there?”

  “Yeah, come in. Daphne and I were just talking about . . .” I glanced over at Daphne, reluctant to say more. “Some stuff.”

  Charity cracked open the door. “Daphne, Derek is acting bored, and I think he wants to leave. Giovanna, you need to get downstairs, because Rich and his friends are acting like idiots, and Dante isn’t doing anything to stop them.”

  Okay, great. What was I supposed to do about the three drunk guys my brother invited to the party? It should be his problem, not mine. Still, I trudged out of my room and down the stairs. If Gabby found drunk guys at our party, she’d probably veto any other parties for the duration of our teenage years.

  Several more people had come. Mostly they were fringe kids, the ones who didn’t fit in with any of the cliques at school. There were also more freshmen and a few foreign exchange students who probably didn’t have enough of a grasp of the English language to understand anything either Dante or Wilson said about the election.

  Rich, Brett, and Shane stood in the middle of the group re-enacting a scene from The Matrix. Or at least they tried. Mostly Rich fell down instead of dodging the imaginary bullets that Brett and Shane shot at him.

  The foreign kids kept looking at those three, then talking among themselves. They probably wondered about the American party game that required guests to swoop around and then fall on the floor. They looked a little worried as they spoke to each other, like maybe next we’d ask them to perform in this strange ritual. I bet they all wrote some interesting letters back home this week.

  I took hold of Dante’s arm. “Can I talk to you?”

  “Sure,” he said. He didn’t get to say much more before I dragged him into the kitchen.

  Once there I let my gaze bore into him. “You’ve got to get rid of Rich, Brett, and Shane before Gabby comes downstairs to check on the party.”

  Dante shrugged off my hand. “They’re harmless.”

  “She’ll think they got drunk here. Remember how she gave us that big lecture about how serving alcohol to minors is illegal and how I can’t afford to get in trouble with the law again?”

  Dante rolled his eyes. Easy for him not to worry. He hadn’t already imagined up a life in prison with a tiny cell, a rickety bunk bed, and a two-hundred-pound roommate who thrashed in her sleep.

  “I can’t just send them home,” he said. “They’re wasted. They’ll hit every telephone pole from here to the other side of Bickham.”

  I waited for him to say more. He didn’t. “So what were you planning? Letting them sleep it off on the living room floor? Gabby will love that.”

  He held up both hands—the exact same gesture Grandma used before breaking into Italian. “Well, we can’t take them home now. We can’t leave our own party.”

  “We?” I asked. “We?”

  “Sure. After the party you can drive them home in their car. I’ll follow you on my bike, so when you drop off their car I can take you back home.”

  I stared at him. “You want me to get in a car with three drunk guys? Hello, I wouldn’t trust those guys when they were sober.”

  His tone turned impatient. “Fine. I’ll ask Brandon or Stephen to do it.”

  Well, that probably meant Dante would notice I’d sent them away. I hesitated, looking at the refreshments instead of my brother. “Oh, um, they already left.”

  Dante tilted his head. “They left? Why?”

  I couldn’t lie about it. I knew he’d ask his friends about it later. “I sort of told them they should talk to Emily and Isabella, and I think they all went to see a movie.”

  “They went to a—” He took two steps toward the living room, as though about to go after them, then turned back to me. “Why did you tell them to do that?”

  “Because you’re the host of the party, and I didn’t think you wanted those girls hanging off you like little freshman barnacles.”

  Dante’s hands went back up in the air. “Why would you think that?”

  “I thought you liked someone else.”

  “I’ve never told you that I . . .” He took a step back toward me, and I could almost see him processing through the implications. “What you mean is you want me to like someone else.”

  I let out a snort as though the idea was ridiculous, but he nodded and took another step closer to me. His eyes narrowed. “And it must be someone at this party, or you wouldn’t have sent those girls packing.”

  It figured. Just when I didn’t want Dante to know what I was up to, the whole twin-psychic-bond thing kicked in. It was like Dante was peering into my head and seeing everything. I tried to block out Charity’s name from my mind. I thought of unicorns and ice cream cones and beach balls.

  He nodded, and his expression grew tighter. “It can’t be Daphne, because she’s here with a guy.”

  Starfish, and clam shells, and those seaweedy things that wash up on the beach.

  Another thought occurred to me. Maybe Dante had been able to read my mind all along, and he’d just never found anything in it interesting enough to comment on before. That would be so like him.

  He took another step toward me and folded his arms. “It can’t be Charity, because she doesn’t date yet. You’re trying to set me up with Raine, aren’t you?”

  “No,” I said.

  He tossed his head back and groaned. “Yes, you are. Have you talked to her about me? Does she like me?”

  “No,” I said.

  More groaning. “Oh, crap. Now it’s going to be all weird being around her. Is she expecting me to ask her to prom?”

  “I’m not trying to set you up, Dante. Don’t be so full of yourself.”

  He put his hand over his forehead and shut his eyes. “How could you do this to me? I’m going to have to avoid her until she finds someone else to like.”

  “Well, that shouldn’t be too hard for her, Prince Charming.”

  Dante turned back around to leave. I took a step to follow him. We both noticed Charity standing in the doorway at the same time. I wasn’t sure how much of our conversation she’d heard, but judging from the fact that the color had completely left her face, I figured she’d heard enough.

  “I came to tell you that Rich is getting out of control,” she said.

  Dante’s expression grew even darker. “Oh. Thanks. We’ll take care of it.” He strode past her out into the family room. I walked past her too. She gave me a vicious glare as I did, but there wasn’t time to explain anything to her.

  As we walked into the living room, I noticed several things wrong. The first was that Rich stood on our coffee table waving, and very nearly spilling, a glass full of Coke.

  He tossed his head back and belted out a song that had something to do with eating worms from tequila bottles and bathing in Jack Daniel’s. Brett and Shane sat on the floor in front of him like judges from American Idol and yelled up comments about his performance. Mostly they used the phrase, “You suck, man!”

  The second thing wrong, and this was nearly as important, was that Skipper stood not two feet away from them, dancing and laughing at Rich’s song. She sang the words to her own song, which went, “Worms, worms, worms, Jack Daniel’s.” This was especially bad, even though she had better rhythm and was more in key than Rich.

  But worst of all, I heard my parents’ bedroom door shut, and then footsteps coming across the upstairs hallway. I wasn’t sure what Gabby’s reaction to the scene in front of me would be, but I
knew it probably would involve a lot of yelling.

  Chapter 11

  Dante took hold of my arm to get my attention. “I’ll get Rich off the table. You take Skipper back upstairs.”

  I didn’t answer him. I just hurried over to Skipper and picked her up. “C’mon Skip, it’s past your bedtime.”

  Her lips scrunched into a pout. “But I wanna dance on the table too.”

  I hurried to the stairs. “Mommy wouldn’t like that, so we’re not going to tell her we saw anyone doing it at Dante’s party, okay?”

  I made it up three stairs before Gabby came down. She saw us, quickened her step, and held out her arms to Skipper. “What are you doing out of bed?”

  The pout dropped from Skipper’s lips. She reached out her hands to Gabby and batted her lids tiredly. “I tried to sleep, but they were too loud.”

  Gabby’s gaze switched to me. “Yes, I came downstairs to tell them the same thing.”

  “Sorry,” I said. “Dante’s taking care of it.”

  I waited for her to turn around and take Skipper back upstairs. She didn’t. Instead her gaze traveled past me to the crowd in the family room.

  Luckily, no one was dancing on the coffee table, or had spilled large quantities of soda on the carpet. Rich stood with his friends in the middle of the room raising his plastic cup with a wobbly hand. In a voice much too loud to let a five-year-old sleep, he said, “I want to offer a toast to our next pres-i-Dante.”

  Brett waved him off. “No more singing, man. You suck.”

  Rich tried to push him away, but missed. “I’ll break your teeth out, and then we’ll see who sucks.”

  Gabby let out disapproving huff and took a step downstairs. I didn’t move out of the way. “By the way, Gabby, I’ve been meaning to tell you I love your outfit.”

  She pushed past me as though she hadn’t heard me, and I followed her to the foot of the stairs.

  Rich raised his glass. “To Dante, you’re going to-quila Wilson on election day.” He let out a laugh and added, “’Cause Wilson don’t know Jack . . . Daniel’s.”

  There was miscellaneous clapping and hoots of agreement, mostly from Brett and Shane.

  “Is that boy drunk?” Gabby asked.

  “Oh, him? No, that’s just Rich. Since his pole vaulting accident last year, he doesn’t make much sense anymore, but we all humor him anyway.”

  Shane raised his glass. “No worms are good worms!”

  More clapping. Gabby’s lips twisted into a disapproving frown.

  “That’s Shane,” I told her. “He’s the one who fell off the pole vault onto Rich.”

  Gabby put her hand on Skipper’s head and turned to me. “I’m going to put your sister to bed. When I come back down, I want those boys gone from my house. Do you understand?”

  I nodded.

  “Good.” She turned around and walked up the stairs. Over her shoulder Skipper gave me a wave good-bye and sang, “Worms, worms, worms.”

  I trudged downstairs, trying to figure out how to get Rich, Shane, and Brett home. Dante couldn’t leave his own party, but if Daphne’s date drove them in Shane’s car, then I could follow behind him in mine.

  I took a deep breath. It would work. Derek had enough muscle that he could handle three drunks. I walked around the room searching for Derek and Daphne but didn’t see either one of them. Charity and Raine, however, stood together at one end of the room. Raine picked her purse up from the couch and riffled through its contents. “Hey Giovanna, it’s getting late, and Charity needs me to take her home—”

  “Where’s Derek and Daphne?” I asked.

  Raine took her keys from her purse. “They left already.”

  “They left?” I repeated. “But I need them.”

  Raine raised an eyebrow. Charity faced the crowd and wouldn’t look at me.

  Dante strode up to us. “What did Gabby say?”

  “She wants the drunks gone by the time she comes back downstairs.”

  Dante looked around the room, doing the same sort of calculations I’d just done. “Let’s see, who can drive? Not your freshman admirers . . .”

  “I’ll drive Shane’s car to his house.” I didn’t want to, but I didn’t see another option. “Raine, can you please follow me in your car to give me a ride back home?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  Dante nodded. “Great. I’ll tell the guys the party is about to end and you’re driving them home.”

  Charity finally spoke, but not to me, to Dante. “You can’t put your sister in a car with three drunk guys. That has ‘Bad Idea’ written all over it.”

  “She’s a good driver,” Dante said.

  “Yeah, be sure to mention that in her eulogy.”

  Dante let out one of the tormented sighs he saves for conversations with Charity. “She’s not going to crash.”

  Charity’s eyes flashed with frustration. “I’m not worried about her crashing. I’m worried about her body turning up in a shallow grave after those three Neanderthals flee the country.”

  “Um, you guys . . .” I said, not really because I had anything to say, but because it felt weird standing there—invisible—while they argued about me. Neither of them looked at or listened to me, though.

  Dante took a rigid step toward Charity. “Do you want me to send along some of her freshman friends to protect her?”

  “No, I want you to drive the guys home. You invited them. They’re your responsibility.”

  “Fine,” he said. “I’ll leave my own party, and Giovanna and the rest of you can stay here to entertain my guests.”

  Raine jingled her keys. “Except for me. I’ve got to go with you so you have a ride back home.”

  Dante looked at her. He didn’t say anything for a moment, but I could tell he was thinking about the ride home with her. The two of them alone the whole way. The conversation he would have to try and come up with.

  Dante narrowed his eyes at Charity. “You want me to go with Raine, is that it?”

  She shrugged. “Yep, pretty much.”

  “Well, isn’t that convenient,” he said. Meaning, I suppose, that he thought Charity was in on the conspiracy to set him up with Raine.

  “I can drive the guys home,” I said. “It’s really no problem.”

  Dante kept his eyes on Charity. His words came out with forced politeness. “There you have it; Giovanna wants to do it herself. What’s a concerned brother to do?”

  I took Raine’s arm. “Come on. The sooner we leave, the sooner it will be over.”

  Raine walked beside me toward the door, but looked back over her shoulder. “What was that all about? Dante’s acting weird all of a sudden.”

  “Guys do that sometimes.”

  As we walked outside, Charity caught up to us. “I’ll come with you, Giovanna. I’ll have two free hands to use my cell phone, so at least I’ll be able to call for help if they attack us.”

  “Great,” I said. “The more the merrier.” I’d seen Shane’s PT Cruiser in the school parking lot. I walked up and peered inside the car. A couple of crumpled cans lay in the back along with a suspiciously empty bottle. How much of this stuff could they drink and still stay conscious?

  Raine walked over to her Taurus and slipped in behind the wheel.

  A minute later Dante came out with the guys. Shane and Brett both swayed as they walked. Dante had a hold of Rich’s arm to keep him steady. “The night is still young,” Rich slurred out. “We have hours left to party.”

  Dante steered Rich to the back seat of Shane’s car. “And you can party at your house, because my parents want to send you home now. But thanks for coming.”

  “Parents suck,” Brett said. Dante helped him into the car and then turned to Shane for the keys.

  Shane fished around in his jacket pocket and then his other pocket, and then his jeans pocket. Finally, he produced them. He gave them to me and stumbled into the back seat with his friends.

  Charity got into the front seat without telling Dante
good-bye. He watched her for a moment, his face unreadable, and then stalked back to the house.

  I pulled onto the street, and Raine followed me. “Okay guys, whose house am I taking you to?”

  This caused an eruption of laughter from the back seat. “Mine,” Rich said.

  “No, it’s my house,” Brett said. And they all laughed again.

  Drunk people are so strange.

  “Where do you live, Shane?” I asked, because it would be easiest to take the car there and let Shane’s parents worry about the guys.

  “I’ll give you directions,” he said. “Go down this street.”

  “Remember to stop at the stop sign,” Brett said.

  “And then go again,” Rich added.

  A shuffling noise came from the back seat. “Is there anything to drink back here?” Brett asked.

  “Man, if you stopped stepping on my hands I could tell you,” Rich said.

  I tried to block them out as much as I could except for the pertinent directions, like which roads to turn on. They always told me these between fits of laughter. Then they started up the worm song again.

  Charity sat silently beside me, her cell phone open and the number 9-1-1 already pushed. Her finger hovered over the send button.

  “So,” I said to her, “besides all of this, did you think it was a fun party?”

  She gave me a humorless stare. In a near whisper she hissed out, “I can’t believe you told Dante I liked him.”

  “I didn’t tell him.”

  Charity tried to blink away the emotion in her eyes. “You said something to him, because he said he’d feel all weird around me, and he’d have to avoid me until I liked someone else.”

  “That wasn’t you. He was talking about Raine.”

  Her mouth dropped open, and she leaned toward me. “Raine likes him too?”

  “No.”

  More laughter from the back seat. “Turn left at the light,” Shane yelled. I turned from downtown Bickham, up the hill to a residential area. I hoped Charity would let the subject drop, but she didn’t.

  “If Raine doesn’t like Dante, why did he say all those things about her?”

  I hesitated, reluctant to admit my scheming, but there was no way around it. “Because I sent the freshman girls off with Stephen and Brandon, so he figured out that one of my friends liked him.”