Ripped

  “Long time ago. In high school, before I switched schools and met you.”

  “But you don’t think he was worth mentioning before yesterday? He broke your damn heart and he sings about it on the radio!”

  I stare out the window, pulling up my walls tight around me.

  “What happened?”

  “Stupid girl attracted to bad boy, V card handed over, heart broken, end of story. I’m not even worried about him. Currently, I’m worried about what I’ll say to my mother. I’ll probably just say I have work, and I’ll talk to Susan to see if she’ll let me work from afar the next few weeks. I’ll tell Mother the truth once it’s all over.”

  I’ll be lying, but who gives a shit. I’ve lied before. Like when I used to steal out in the middle of the night, my heart racing, to meet Mackenna.

  “Let’s talk about the guy, shall we?”

  “No, we shall not.”

  “Then let’s talk about this—I can’t believe you’re going to be in a fucking movie!”

  I snort. “It’s not a real movie. It’s like the Katy Perry and Justin Bieber ones, which is sort of lame.”

  “It’s a movie, Pandora. Played in movie theaters. And I loved both Katy and Justin in them! You kept asking how could Brooke just leave town for a guy she loves? Now you’re leaving town for one you hate! That’s a karmic lesson for you. Stop judging people in love for what they do. You’re doing worse shit for someone you don’t even love,” she says with a smirk.

  “Judge all you want. I got this big fat check, and what did you get? Not even a picture with them.”

  “I have Greyson, duh! He’s all I want. And I finally discovered the name of your asshole ex. Kenna is the hottest of the three and you know it, dude. Tell me what happened. We’re supposed to be friends. Who do you even talk to about this shit? You get sick when you hold it in. You need to let it out.”

  “I just let it all out, in the form of tomatoes.” I grin when I remember, and for a moment, I feel happy when Melanie laughs.

  “Will that part be in the movie? Please say yes!” she begs, taking my shirt in her hands and shaking me.

  I laugh. “I hope so,” I admit, jerking my shirt free. “Hell, I hope I can do it again at Madison Square, just before I kiss him. That’ll show him.”

  “Just so he can take off his shirt. God!”

  I hit her. “Mel! He wears wigs and grabs his cock when he’s dancing. He’s disgusting.”

  “Dude, watching him work it up there got half the people around us pregnant, I swear!” She laughs, but I stare out the window and glare, my anger resurfacing as I remember what it felt like to stare into those odd, eerie silver eyes again.

  It did not feel good at all.

  It felt uncomfortable, messy, complicated, and definitely not nice.

  I remember him squishing tomato into my scalp, and my stomach feels like a hot little pot, bubbling with toxicity.

  “Pandora, you both looked a little too murderous with each other. Maybe you should talk to your therapist first? So she can give you some pointers on how to stay cool?”

  My pride prickles. “I don’t need tips. I’ve got this. She’s been giving me tips for six years.”

  “Fine. Just get back here in one piece and in time to get measured for your bridesmaid dress. Pan, it’s my wedding, so suck it, bitch.”

  I groan, and she laughs and slaps my butt as I get out of the car. Mel is always excited. Always upbeat. She’s not like me. And I’m happy for her. I am. But I also hate that I feel mad because she’s so happy. Sometimes I feel like I can’t stand happy people.

  I just don’t fucking understand them.

  I head into the apartment, trying not to make noise. In case you haven’t guessed it by my name alone, my mother didn’t want me, and she never lets me forget it. The words “So you don’t make the same mistake I did” have been ingrained in my head since I got my first period, and I’ve never quite forgotten that the mistake was me.

  I should probably live alone. But my cousin Magnolia saved my mother and me. She lost her mom, my mother’s sister, to leukemia, and came to us as a baby a few years after my dad’s death. She pulled both my mom and me from a deep sadness. If it weren’t for seeing her perceptive little gaze every morning, I’d be on drugs. Or booze. Or both. I don’t know why I’m drawn to drugs or booze or both, but when my dad died and Mackenna left, and my mom slapped me every time I cried and told me to get a grip, be strong . . . I just didn’t feel like life had a lot to offer at the time. Until little Magnolia came to us. My mom focused her efforts on her, and so did I.

  I ease into the bathroom we share, turn on the shower, and pull free of my clothes. The water rushes over my head and I see his eyes, glittering silver and angry, and my stomach knots because I thought I’d feel better after hurting him. I felt that little rush at first, when we attacked him during his concert, but then I saw him, and all I know right now is that I don’t feel good.

  After my shower, I can’t sleep, so I sit on the living room couch, listening to the patter of soft rain and the whoosh of wind outside. I tiptoe into Magnolia’s room and look at the way she’s twisted on the bed, all innocent, her dark hair fanned out on the pillow. She, like Melanie, really likes the pink streak in my hair.

  “PanPan, read this for me,” she said only two nights ago.

  She pulled out a princess story, and I cleared my throat and began reading. Magnolia remained quiet and in rapt attention, until I lowered the book. “Mag, look, I don’t think these books give you the right expectations of what a man is really like,” I said. She has no father figure, no brother, no male influence in her life, and it worries me. “You’ll fall in love with this prince and never find him.”

  “Eww!” She jumped on the bed, yelling, “I don’t read these for the princes! I read them for the magic!”

  “But soon you’ll be lured by a prince—”

  “No prince! I want the dragon to eat the prince. Helena says that the boys with crowns in these stories don’t even like girls anymore. They like boys!”

  Shit, I laughed my ass off at that.

  And then I worried a little.

  She has a friend with two dads, and fortunately, Magnolia’s completely not jealous of her friend’s bounty of fathers. “Why would anyone want two dads? I have none and am super all right—right, PanPan?”

  She sounded confident when she asked, but I have such fond memories of my dad, I just don’t know. Still, I said she was right, because I didn’t have a dad anymore either. But is she truly all right?

  As the sun rises, I write her a short note in case I leave before she wakes, then I go and get my electronic cigarettes from the nightstand. The key to quitting smoking is to always keep ’em fully charged. I’m on a two-month streak, and I’m not going to start smoking again because of a fucking asshole like Mackenna. I shove the e-cigarettes into my bag and, on impulse, go to the shoebox in my closet where I’ve hidden some old stuff. Prized among those things is a stupid rock he gave me. Why did I save it? I don’t know. It’s a real rock, not a bling rock. I tripped on it once, when he walked me home.

  “Kick that,” I said angrily, cupping my bleeding elbow.

  “If we kick it, it’ll only trip you again next time you come around. The key to never tripping with the same rock is hang on to it,” he said with a smirk. “You can make sure you’ll never trip with the same rock if you grab on to it and know where it is.”

  Thank you, Mackenna, for that nugget of wisdom. I’m going to make sure I never trip over you!

  There are people who have an effect on your life. And then there are people who become your life.

  Like he did.

  I was always a solitary, withdrawn girl, my mother a workaholic, my father a workaholic, both of them strict and pretty much expecting me to focus on grades and grades only. They were always wary of me having bad influences, or even friends, really. This, for some reason, and my choice of clothes, made me the cool girls’ favorite attraction
—or distraction. I was the only goth in our grade, and they loved to snicker about my all-black clothes and call me a cutter. But there was this one boy, the coolest bad boy, who stopped the teasing one day. He approached me with a purple scarf I had seen one of the girls wearing earlier, and he draped it around my neck, pulling me to him almost intimately close. “I’ll see you after school,” he said and kissed my forehead. The other girls shut up.

  Because everyone would have given a limb to get that attention from “Jones”—and he gave it just like that to me.

  And that’s how I fell, like a ton of bricks, for Mackenna Jones.

  It turns out he did wait for me after school that day. He drove me home and asked his neighbor to sit in the backseat so “Pandora” could sit up front with him. I didn’t even know he knew my name. “Why’d you do that?” I asked when he walked me up the stairs to my building.

  “Why’d you let them?” he returned, those eyes of his making me feel vulnerable and naked and strangely pretty. For a goth, this is big.

  Really big.

  But I also noticed by his frown that he was displeased.

  “I don’t stop them because I don’t give a shit,” I said as I hurried up the steps. He followed, grabbed my wrist, and spun me to face him.

  “Hey! Go out with me Friday night.”

  “Excuse me?” I sputtered.

  “You heard me.”

  “Why would you want to go out with someone like me? Your line of fans not long enough?”

  “Because the girl I want is right here.”

  We started going out in secret, finding hiding places where no one would see us. He told me about music, how he wanted to see the world. He worked as a DJ on the weekends. He had hopes and dreams and wishes. I told him I didn’t know what I wanted to be, and I didn’t have hopes and dreams and wishes. I guess you never feel so hopeless as when you’re with someone who’s bursting with ideas and knows he’s going to take on the world. Even so, he was drawn to me. He teased me, made me laugh, later made me forget about my father’s death and the fact that my mother considered it a betrayal if I ever cried at his loss.

  He became my life. I began to wait for his eyes, silver like a wolf’s, to turn to see me. I began to quake and shiver in anticipation of him walking past my locker even if he wasn’t supposed to come over. Sometimes I dropped a pencil, a book, my bag, just so that he could hand it over with that smile of his and brush his thumb over mine. I suppose people wondered about us, but we never gave them proof. Maybe I wondered if he only wanted sex from me, but I also wanted it. I fantasized about it. When it would happen, where it would be, how it would feel, if he’d say nice things to me.

  It ended up being amazing. Every time with him. Amazing. Addictive.

  I only wanted him.

  We fooled around for months before finally going all the way, and things got even more serious after that. I spoke about telling my overprotective mother about us, about taking care of my school grades so she had no excuse to tell me I couldn’t have a boyfriend . . . and just when I was about to say something to her . . .

  His father got arrested for drug trafficking. That night, when I got home, my mother was being called by the DA’s office. Mackenna’s hopes were shattered, and I had none of my own to pull us through. I tried to tell my mother that Mackenna and I had “something,” to which she responded by immediately forbidding me to contact “the son.” And after Dad died, even as Mackenna and I planned to leave the city, she watched me like a hawk. . . .

  In the end, Mackenna did leave. He left me behind.

  I went back to being the goth people laughed at, except now I was not sad anymore. I was mad. I punched some of the girls, and my mother sent me to therapy and, later, to a private school, where I ended up meeting the two girls who’ve been my only friends.

  Melanie and Brooke.

  I never, ever mentioned his name to them.

  I’d thought he’d saved me, but it turns out he’d only just started to ruin my life.

  At seventeen, I had needed him.

  At eighteen, I still missed him.

  At nineteen, I still wanted him.

  At twenty, I still thought about him.

  But by the time I heard him sing about me on the radio, making light music from nights that had held me together when I’d felt lonely—that’s when I wished I’d never laid eyes on him.

  ♥ ♥ ♥

  AT DAWN, I hear my mom moving around.

  “Hey,” I say when I join her in the kitchen. She smiles and nudges a cup of coffee in my direction with the back of one finger. I shake my head. “Thanks.”

  “You came in late last night,” she says.

  “I was with Melanie.”

  “Ahh, of course. That explains it all.”

  I start buttering some toast for myself so I don’t have to look her in the eye when I lie. Otherwise, she’ll know in an instant. By profession, she’s naturally inclined to immediately detect liars. You have to be really good to fool her—which, I guess, I am. “Mother, I have a business opportunity, and I need to travel out of town for a while.”

  “Travel?” she repeats.

  She’s a lawyer. She’s used to asking a question and staring you down until you either whimper or cave. I stare back at her and don’t respond, forcing myself not to twitch under her stare.

  “Travel implies flying, Pandora.”

  The mere word makes my stomach spin as if someone is twirling it with a spoon. “I just flew with Melanie and did all right with the meds I took. By the time I woke up, we’d landed. I’ll take those and try to do some stretches by land,” I lie. I have no clue how the rock band works, or if they travel by land, air, or heck, even sea. Still, I open my hand and show her the pillbox I just retrieved, three pills resting inside.

  She stares directly at me, ignoring the pills. “So what kind of opportunity is this?”

  “It’s a good one—great one,” I amend as I frantically set my mind free to imagine a sufficient lie. “I sent in the proposal for several apartments—dark fabrics, you know. What I like. They’re for a big, um, family, and I was hired on the spot. They said nobody can do this but me—it has to be me. And I’ve been decorating long enough to know it’s the kind of opportunity I might never see again. Ever.”

  “All right, so when are you home?”

  “I think three weeks.”

  “Very well.”

  We continue our breakfast in silence. I try to exhale slowly so my breath doesn’t shake on its exit.

  “PanPan!” A cannonball lands on my lap, and I laugh as all the warmth that is Magnolia envelops me.

  “Hey, Magnificent!” I say, tweaking her nose. I call Magnolia anything with a Mag. She gets a toothy grin when I ask her what she’s up to.

  “Nuttin’,” she says, pulling free and jamming a hand in the cereal box on the counter.

  “Magazine, I’m going to be away for a bit, are you going to stay out of trouble?”

  “Nope. Trouble’s my middle name.”

  “We agreed it was mine.” I go to the cabinet and pull out a bowl and a spoon. “What’ll you do if you miss me?”

  She blinks.

  “You’ll make a list of the things you wanted to do with me when I was away and we’ll do them all when I get back,” I tell her.

  She nods and carries her cereal to the table. I’m a big believer in lists. You write your wants down on paper, and it’s like putting them out there to the Universe: Bitch, you gotta make this happen for me. I got it from my mother, who’s married to her lists, and I think I will probably marry mine . . . when I finally get around to writing one.

  “Okay, I will,” Magnolia says, starting to eat her cereal. I feel my phone buzz and notice Kyle’s car out in the street.

  “Kyle’s here, I better go.” Putting away my phone, I squeeze Magnolia to me. When I stand, my mother nods. I grab my duffel bag, and for a moment, I’m uncertain whether to hug her or not. Since she stands there with her coffee in her
hand and makes no move toward me, I nod back and leave. She’s just not very tactile, but neither am I. We’re more comfortable remaining in our little bubbles—little bubbles only Magnolia seems to penetrate. Well, Melanie sometimes gets into mine too.

  I spot Kyle behind the wheel and slide into his nerdy automobile.

  “What’s all this about?” he asks, confused by the duffel I toss into the backseat. “I’m driving you to some hotel parking lot? Did you become a cartel worker overnight?”

  “I’m . . . uh, stage setting with Crack Bikini. So . . .”

  “For real? You shitting me?”

  He looks amazed, which only makes me want to groan.

  He doesn’t know I know Mackenna. None of my friends know who “the asshole who made me hate men” was—their words, not mine. I only told Melanie last night because the bitch wanted to pass on the concert and stay home—to probably let her very healthy male bang her brains out—so I had to fess up to why it was so important that we go.

  Because I just spent a fucking fortune on two tickets, and because he’s the fucking asshole who broke my heart and made me heartless and bitter.

  Who? The one who sold you the tickets?

  No! Mackenna suck-a-dick Jones!

  “For real, you’re working with Crack Bikini?” Kyle asks.

  “No, Kyle. I just like bullshitting you for rides to random hotels.”

  “When are you coming back?” he presses.

  “Less than a month.”

  We head to where I was told to meet everyone, and as we spot about a thousand custom coach buses at the hotel parking lot, I’m so nervous I’m crackling.

  Kyle parks in awed silence, then grabs my duffel and helps me carry it as we head toward a group of band members. Before we reach them, he stops and gives me a brotherly peck on the cheek, and—isn’t this just perfect?—there’s Mackenna, watching it from the door of a nearby coach. I push on my tiptoes and shove my tongue down Kyle’s throat, and before he can figure out why the fuck I’m swapping saliva with him, I pull back with a little moan.

  “Be good,” I say in a lame seductive voice.