Jessica Darling's It List 3

  She said it just like that. Without punctuation. Without feeling.

  “Um… yes.”

  “My pleasure Miss D’Abruzzi is a valued Chic Boutique client I’ll just need the items and do you have the credit card used to make the purchases.”

  It took me a second to hand it over because I hadn’t realized she had asked me a question. Kirsten’s teeth were sort of smiling, but her eyes were not. Otherwise, she looked like she’d stepped right out of a Chic Boutique catalog. Everyone who worked at the store did, even the poor girl chasing Sara. They all looked a lot like my sister, who, not coincidentally, works at a different Chic Boutique closer to her school.

  Sara rushed up to me clutching the homecoming queen’s dress to her heart.

  “Omigod! Omigod! Omigod! They have it!” she gushed. “In my size!”

  Kirsten smiled at Sara so hard her teeth looked like they were about to crumble down to the nubs.

  “You know,” she said. “We can always special order anything in”—her eyes narrowed—“your size.”

  It was the first time Kirsten’s voice revealed any trace of human emotion. And that emotion was MEAN. Sara shops here often, so this salesgirl must know she’s supersensitive about her size. It’s why she eats carrots and celery at lunch every day. She’s not fat, but she’s not shaped like the Chic Boutique girls, either. She’s sort of squarish, I guess, but she wears her clothes well. I mean, Sara is by far the best-dressed girl in school. I worried about how she’d react to the rude salesgirl, but there was no need. I should’ve assumed Sara has what it takes to handle herself in any tough retail situation.

  “I’ll remember to do that,” Sara said in her sweetest voice, “when you’re not here to get the ten percent commission.”

  ZING! KA-CHING! And OFF SHE WENT.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t follow. I had one more return to get through. The first three dresses had gone just fine. The fourth and final dress, however, was a problem.

  “We can’t take this back not even for store credit I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.”

  She was back to her automated voice. She didn’t sound sorry or not sorry. She didn’t sound like anything.

  “Um, why not?” I asked, wishing Sara would come back to deal with this.

  “It’s damaged goods the zipper is broken and all the tags have been removed.”

  Sure enough, she was right. The side zipper had been torn away from the fabric.

  “Hey, Sara,” I called out tentatively. “I’m having a little bit of a situation over here.”

  Sara shouted to me from the dressing room at the opposite end of the store.

  “AND I’M HAVING A HUGE OMIGOD SITUATION OVER HERE. COME! QUICK!”

  I bashfully placed the unreturnable dress in the shopping bag, retreated from the register, and took off for the dressing room. Guess who was there wearing Sara’s perfect dress? Hint: It wasn’t Sara.

  “Take it off!” Sara shouted at Manda.

  “No way!” Manda shouted at Sara.

  “You’re not even going to the Down-Home Harvest Dance!” Sara protested. “You don’t need it!”

  “Puh-leeze. Like your stupid hoedown is the only reason to buy a new dress.”

  Sara spun around to redirect her anger at Hope, who was standing off to the side but had little chance of hiding because of her height and hair and all the mirrors.

  “And you,” Sara seethed, “are a traitor to the square for even coming in here with her! You were supposed to shop with me!”

  “She just dragged me into the dressing room when she saw me!” Hope said in defense. “I was practically kidnapped.”

  I gave Hope a sympathetic look that said “Me too.” Hope responded with that familiar look of hers, the one that said “We are smarter than this.” And I gave her the look that replied “Well, obviously we are not.” And she looked back like “Why do we keep letting this happen to us?” and I looked at her like “I honestly don’t know,” and I swear Hope and I can have entire conversations without ever saying a word out loud. This is a convenient skill to have when many of our conversations are about girls who are standing right in front of us screaming at each other.

  “Girls! This is not Chic Boutique behavior!”

  This come-to-your-senses moment was brought to us by Bridget, who had entered the dressing room at some point during my telepathic conversation with Hope.

  “Bridget? What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “I work here,” she said proudly.

  “You work here?” I asked. “You’re twelve.”

  “Well, not work exactly.” She giggled nervously. “It’s an educational junior training program.”

  “Educational junior training program?” Hope asked.

  “Yes! Kirsten saw me shopping and stopped me and said I have Chic Boutique potential and that qualifies me for this highly selective educational junior training program that allows me to observe from the inside how Chic Boutique is managed.”

  Manda, Sara, Hope, and I had the same response.

  “What?!?”

  Bridget smoothed out invisible wrinkles in her one-shouldered pink-sequined top.

  “They give me Chic Boutique clothes, and I wear them.”

  “That’s it?” I asked.

  “Pretty much,” she replied.

  Emphasis on pretty. Bridget was recruited by Chic Boutique because she looks like someone who would work at Chic Boutique when she’s actually old enough to work at Chic Boutique. Like Kirsten. Like the blonde following Sara around the store. Like my sister.

  “Omigod! I spend thousands of dollars in this store, and they give you clothes for free! It’s not fair!”

  And before Sara could get Daddy’s lawyer on it, Manda restored order to the room. Or rather, disorder.

  “Attention!” [clap clap] “Attention!”

  All eyes returned to Manda in Sara’s perfect dress.

  “I’d like to discuss with Bridget how she might use her educational-junior-training-program discount to get this dress for me.”

  “I don’t think I can do that,” Bridget said. “I mean, like, all the clothes I get are in a certain size, and—”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Manda snapped. “Are you saying my dress is the wrong size?”

  Well, yeah. That’s exactly what Bridget was saying. Manda’s dress was the wrong size for Bridget. She didn’t mean anything bad by it; she was just speaking the truth that we all could see with our own eyes. Bridget is at least three inches taller. And Manda more than makes up for those inches… elsewhere.

  “My dress,” Sara said. “And I don’t need a discount to buy it.”

  “Your dress? I don’t see your name on it,” Manda said mockingly. “And the zipper is still intact and the seams haven’t split, so it can’t be yours.”

  Manda of all people should know how sensitive Sara is about her body. Sure, Sara had handled Kirsten’s comment without resorting to violence, but I was ready for her to go all-out nuclear now. But she stunned me—and everyone in that tiny dressing room—by keeping her cool.

  “Bridget, sweetie?”

  “Y-y-yes?” Bridget, too, was petrified.

  “Please tell Kirsten that I will purchase this dress…”

  “Don’t you want to try it on?” she asked.

  “Please let me finish,” Sara said. “I will purchase this dress in every size you have in stock, including”—she gestured toward Manda without actually looking at her—“that one.”

  “Puh-leeze. You can’t do that!”

  “Omigod. I totally can.”

  “Bridget! Can she do that?”

  “Yes? No! Maybe? I don’t know! This wasn’t covered in the educational-junior-training-program pamphlet!”

  Bridget ran out of the dressing room to get help from Kirsten, leaving Hope and me alone to keep these BFFs from killing each other.

  “This is just one store in one mall in a huge universe of fashion,” Hope s
aid, bravely stepping between them. “So let’s compromise.”

  The fact that Manda and Sara had stopped fighting long enough to listen to her says so much about what a powerful, peacemaking presence Hope has been in their lives. Without Hope around, these two surely would have murdered each other by now. In her calmest, most reasonable voice, Hope offered a solution.

  “No one gets the dress.”

  And Manda and Sara responded as I pretty much knew they would.

  “I GET THE DRESS!”

  They said it at the same time. And I swear they both flinched as they fought the instinct to high-five and shout “Bee-Eff-Effs!”

  Hope gave me a look that said “Worst Best Friends Forever Ever,” and I had to stifle a laugh. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any more dramatic, it did: Sara raised her hand and “zeroed” her WBFFE.

  “Oh yeah? Right back at you!” Manda hissed, copying the gesture. “It’s the closest you’ll ever get to fitting into a size zero!”

  “Omigod! Your boobs are totally hanging out! That dress is mine!”

  “Puh-leeze. You couldn’t even get it over those linebacker shoulders of yours! This dress is mine!”

  “Let’s hide in the food court,” Hope whispered in my ear, “until my parents rescue us.”

  Together, we quietly tiptoed backward out of the dressing room. As we exited Chic Boutique, Hope led the way, and I trusted her to get me out of there in one piece.

  Chapter Nineteen

  We took refuge at Cinnabon.

  “I think we’re safe here,” I said.

  I was about to add something about how Manda and Sara would come to Cinnabon only if celery sticks were on the menu. But I stopped myself because it sounded like something that snotty salesgirl Kirsten would say, and I didn’t want to contribute to all the bad mojo. Manda and Sara fight all the time—it’s what they do—but body bashing was a new low. And to be totally honest, I hadn’t liked it one bit when Sara complained about how hard it was to shop for our “practically impossible” figures.

  Not even gooey baked goods could remove the sour taste all that Chic Boutique drama had left in my mouth. I might as well have been gnawing on one of my mother’s nasty Tofurky balls. I set my Cinnabon down on a napkin and pushed it away from me. This got Hope’s attention, as I’m not known for passing up sweets.

  “Have they always been so terrible to each other?” I asked.

  Hope chewed for a few seconds before answering.

  “They’ve always been competitive, but it used to be in a more positive way. Who got the higher score on a math test, that sort of thing.”

  “Really?”

  The same girls who shout “Nerd alert!” whenever I ace a Pre-Algebra test? I couldn’t imagine them once competing for high math scores.

  “Oh yeah! Or, like, in second grade, Manda got it in her head that she wanted to win the geography bee, which pushed Sara to memorize every state capital.”

  “Who won?” I asked.

  Hope smiled shyly. “I did.”

  My heart did a little victory dance at the idea of Hope beating Manda and Sara in a second-grade geography bee.

  “Anyway, they used to push each other to do better. Even the comPETITION wasn’t all bad, because they had a common goal, right? But now they’re trying to outdo each other in totally useless ways, like who looks better in a dumb dress or whatever. And it’s getting way worse.” Hope licked frosting off her thumb. “I’m starting to wonder whether Manda’s doctor is right. Maybe her hormones are to blame.”

  “But you have hormones, and I supposedly have hormones, and we’re not acting like them,” I said. “Everyone has hormones, and no one acts like they do.”

  “No one that we know of. But I’m sure there are Mandas and Saras outside of the G and T classes, or in eighth grade. Definitely at other schools.” She paused to slurp a mouthful of soda. “I bet there have been Mandas and Saras all throughout history.”

  I thought of Bethany’s nonadvice about stressing, obsessing, and second-guessing. IT List 3 didn’t come right out and say Hey, here’s help with the perils of pubertizing, because my sister was savvy about public relations even back then and ew, who would want to read an IT List all about that? But that’s what all her don’t compare and early, late, and middle bloomer business was about, wasn’t it? My sister must have suffered through the hormonal freak-outs of girls like Manda and Sara. Or, even more likely, she might have been one of those girls herself. IT List #5: No one knows anything.

  “I wish there was a way to get them to make peace by working together again,” Hope said, balling up a napkin and tossing it on our table. “If only Manda wanted to win the Hoedown Showdown as much as Sara.”

  “She couldn’t care less about it,” I pointed out.

  “Now,” Hope said, looking off into the distance like she was concentrating on something. “But maybe we could get her to care somehow…”

  She didn’t finish her thought, because a commotion was headed straight for us at top speed on his skateboard.

  A commotion named Heath.

  “What’s wrong? Is everything okay?” He was all out of breath. “I left as soon as I got your message!”

  “What are you doing here?” Hope asked. “And why aren’t you wearing your helmet?”

  “I’m here to rescue you!” Heath said, still panting. “To bring you home.”

  “On your skateboard?” I asked.

  There was definitely not enough room for three of us on his skateboard.

  “No,” he said, lowering his voice. “In the car.”

  “You drove the car?!”

  “Shhhhhhh…”

  He clamped his hands over Hope’s mouth.

  “Look, Mom and Dad are always stressing, like, if you’re ever in a sketchy situation and need help, don’t hesitate to call day or night and we’ll come get you.…”

  Hope escaped her brother’s clutches.

  “They’ll come get me! Not you! You don’t even have a license.”

  “I’ve got my permit,” Heath said. “Which is practically the same thing.”

  “It’s logic like that,” Hope said through gritted teeth, “that keeps you grounded for life.”

  I tried to break the tension with a joke.

  “So who do we call to rescue us from our rescuer?”

  Hope wasn’t in a joking mood. She slapped her brother on the forehead.

  “OW!”

  “If you were wearing a helmet, that wouldn’t have hurt.”

  This was superawkward. I decided to let the siblings work it out on their own.

  “I’m just gonna…”

  I thumbed in the direction of the restrooms. I doubt Hope or Heath even noticed as I slunk away.

  “Do you realize the position you’ve put me in? I have to tell Mom and Dad you took the car.…”

  “To rescue you!”

  They were still going at it when I rounded the bend and—WHOOPS!—came thisclose to running right into the middle of a conversation between Scotty and Burke. Ack. Was everyone at Ocean County Mall this morning?

  “We’re better on defense,” Burke was saying.

  “Yeah, but we can’t win if we don’t score,” Scotty was saying.

  I’d put in way too much time with Scotty in gym class this week. Today was my day off. Fortunately they were too distracted by game talk to spot me as I ducked and took cover behind a nearby soda machine.

  “I can’t believe Coach threatened to bench us if we don’t go to this stupid dance,” Burke said.

  “It’s the only way to get any guys to go,” Scotty said.

  That wasn’t true. I’m pretty sure no one is forcing Aleck to attend.

  “Your girl is happy,” Scotty continued, referring to Bridget.

  “Winning the Hoedown Showdown is all she talks about,” Burke said. “Is Dori still giving you crap about not dancing with her?”

  “It’s not like I had a choice,” Scotty said. “If Dori were in my gym clas
s, I would’ve picked her. But she’s not. So I didn’t.”

  I should have left at that moment. But nooooo. I just had to stick around and listen. Sara deserves some credit. Eavesdropping isn’t as easy as it looks.

  “Who’s your partner again?” Burke asked.

  “This girl Jessica,” Scotty replied offhandedly. “She’s in my classes.”

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

  “Nerd classes,” Burke replied.

  “Shut up,” Scotty said. This was followed by sounds of grunts and shoving.

  “Which one’s Jessica?” Burke asked. “Is she the one with the big… heart?”

  Both boys grunt-laughed like huhuhuhuhuhuh.

  “Nah,” Scotty said. “That’s Manda.”

  Riiiight. Manda needs extra underwire support for her big heart.

  “The loud one?”

  Two sets of sneakers came closer, followed by the sounds of coins sliding into the machine.

  “OMIGOD!!!” Scotty shouted. “That’s Sara.”

  The imitation made Burke laugh out loud. I might have laughed, too, if I’d allowed myself to breathe.

  “The tall one with the red hair?”

  I pressed myself against the wall as if I could change into gray cinder-block camouflage like a chameleon. I hoped the boys were too focused on choosing caffeinated beverages to notice the subject of their conversation was HOLDING HER BREATH SIX INCHES AWAY.

  “Nope,” Scotty said. “Hope.”

  There was a pause followed by the ka-chunk sound of a soda being dispensed.

  “I don’t know who this Jessica girl is,” Burke said.

  Really, Burke? Really?!?

  YOU KNOW WHO I AM. I RIDE THE BUS WITH YOU EVERY SINGLE DAY. I LIVE ACROSS THE STREET FROM YOUR GIRLFRIEND AND WAS HER BEST FRIEND UNTIL YOU STOLE HER AWAY FROM ME.

  “You know who she is,” Scotty said. “She rides the bus with you. She lives across from Bridget. They were best friends until…”

  GO ON. TELL HIM, SCOTTY. WE WERE BEST FRIENDS UNTIL YOU STOLE HER AWAY FROM ME.

  “Oh yeah,” Burke butted in. “The smart one?”

  The smart one?

  “Yes! The smart one,” Scotty replied.

  Huh, I thought. I’m the smart one.