“Yeah, she can really hold a grudge.”
“I like this shirt,” Raye drags me over to the rack where she was browsing and picks up a hot-pink T-shirt with long sleeves, very punk chic.
I reach out and touch the sleeve. It’s a nice soft cotton.
“Marion can’t seem to understand that the thing with Paige and her brother has nothing to do with me, or with her, either.” It makes me so mad, the way she treats me like a leper or something.
“I heard they had to put Kyle into a center for depression a few months ago, that he was completely suicidal before they hospitalized him,” Raye says.
“No way. That didn’t happen.”
“How do you know?” Raye puts down the shirt. I pick it up.
“I would know. I would’ve heard.”
“From who, Marion? She won’t speak to you, and she’s not going to put anything bad about Saint Kyle on her blog, that’s for sure.” Marion has this blog that’s a big deal around our school, even though Marion herself is not.
“I just think I would’ve heard.” I hold up the shirt she put down. “You don’t like this?”
“I already have a shirt that same color. You want it?” I hold the hanger up and away from me and look at the shirt, thinking about how much Marion cares for Kyle. They’re like a different species than me and my sister. Paige wouldn’t care if I fell off a building and got a concussion, unless blood splattered on her and messed up her outfit.
“I don’t think I own anything hot pink” is what I say.
“You should get it, that color would look good on you.”
“Yeah?” I look at the price tag. “We really need to go.” I put the shirt back on the rack, remembering that I have no disposable income. None. “We should go down to the food court.” I suggest this but don’t leave the store until Raye glances at one last shirt and then turns and walks out. I’m two steps behind her. I take a deep breath.
“I visited the basement yesterday.” I’ve been putting off telling her this, but all of a sudden I need to talk.
“No!”
“Yeah.”
“I thought he told you not to come over again unless you were willing to . . .” I grab her arm and she laughs. “Just because you don’t want to do it doesn’t mean I can’t say it, Parker!”
“Whatever.” I put my hands into the pockets of my jeans and shuffle my feet around a little.
“So did you?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Are you back together?”
“No.”
“So you didn’t?”
“It was Christmas, Raye.”
“What does that even mean?”
I shake my head at her and we walk along in silence.
The mall is a sad shrine to materialism. The wreaths are crooked, the boughs of holly are falling down, and the happy holidays sign over the entrance is askew. The mallployees were perhaps too overwhelmed on Christmas Eve to do more than ring up the pathetic last-minute shoppers. Now there are lines and lines of people returning crappy gifts. I wonder if the Things Remembered store would like to have a key returned. Piece of crap probably came from Wal-Mart, anyway. Or the hardware store. It’s in my pocket now, jingling around on my vintage Hello Kitty key chain.
“You have that dreamy look on your face.”
“I don’t.”
“You do. You’re thinking about lover boy.”
“I wasn’t. But I am now.” I feel my mouth curving into this goofy grin that feels pretty good.
“God, Parker. You should just marry him and move into his basement lair.”
“Maybe I will.” I smile at her. She knows he makes me crazy. She knows why we broke up. There isn’t any reason to go back over it now. Not here in the middle of the mall between the hordes of preteens flocking to Limited Too and the chunky post-teens flocking to the Great American Cookie Company.
“So how about it, you want to go on a date? There’s this guy I’ve been checking out, and he has a friend.” Raye has access to a much wider pool of boys than the rest of us because her dad lives in this gated community all the way across town. So the boys in her dad’s neighborhood go to a totally different school, and she’s always meeting guys who ask her out. Once I spent the night with her at her dad’s and some guy from down the street turned and looked at me like twice, but he never asked me out, which is good because I would have said no. Probably. It’s obvious that even with a wider assortment of possible dates, I would never get asked out even half as often as Raye. She always looks guys right in the eye and smiles really slowly. She could have a different date every night of the week if she wanted.
“Don’t they all,” I say.
“What?”
“Don’t they all have some single friend?” Meaning guys, and Raye’s guys in particular.
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t we both single at the moment?”
I nod, unwilling to proclaim my newly bereaved status aloud, though I did break up with him, sort of, by default.
“And are we not short on funds?”
I can’t help picturing the hot-pink shirt. It might be nice to own something bright like that. I nod.
Raye and I have had this strategy since we were fifteen. That’s when my parents first started letting me out of the house for dates. Seriously, I couldn’t wear mascara until I was a freshman. Paige was drinking vodka and doing it in the back of some college guy’s BMW and I had to sneak eye shadow into the school bathroom and try to apply it really fast while Ms. Rolland yelled for me to hurry up so the other girls could get in and pee.
So now that I can officially wear makeup and go out with boys, the strategy is as follows: One weekend night is reserved for us, Parker and Raye, to hang out, watch a movie, eat mall pizza, whatever. While we were dating someone, the other weekend night is for boys. Movies, popcorn, and big soft mall pretzels on the guys’ dollars. What could be better? Especially since I don’t have an abundance of dollars anymore.
See, this date is kind of a friendship necessity thing. Raye went through a really bad breakup at the beginning of the school year. I mean, as much as I’ve second-guessed my decision to walk away from the basement, and despite the three and a half times I’ve slunk back down there, I did keep some dignity. Raye got totally dumped and cheated on. The girl her slimeball boyfriend Ian cheated on her with wasn’t even the girl he dumped her for. It was ugly, really ugly. So I’ll probably go along on the planned excursion to meet this guy she thinks she might want to go out with. I’ll probably go for Raye, with no other reason, but what happens next makes it definite.
Raye grabs my arm and says, “Let’s go into the sunglasses place.”
“What?” We never go into the Sunglass Hut. Raye is a pretty bad liar sometimes. I look into the sunglasses store, because I’m the kind of girl who has to look when someone says not to look, and there reflected back at me is my ex-boyfriend walking beside Kandace Freemont. I guess Raye was trying to get me to dive in there and avoid them or something.
“Hi, Rachel,” Kandace says. She doesn’t say anything to me, just stands back kind of behind him. He and Raye circle each other warily, two cowpokes with itchy trigger fingers. Raye is always suspicious around him. I guess I would be suspicious too if I saw my best friend reduced to quivering jelly by some guy. And now, since the breakup, I suspect it’s going to get worse. He’s bringing Kandace Freemont to the mall. He’s crossed some kind of invisible line now, and Raye is unlikely to forgive him, ever. She’s like that sometimes.
“Hey, Kandace, what’re you guys doing here?” Raye sounds bored but she looks concerned. Am I that big of a social retard that she thinks I’ll foam at the mouth or something?
“We’re shopping for hats,” he says. Raye gives him a dirty look. She doesn’t like it when she asks someone else a question and he answers. Though in the past it was his answering for me that she objected to.
“I think the Santa at Sears got drunk and left his hat in the Dumpst
er. If you hurry you can get there before they pick up the trash,” I say.
He flashes me a smile so sudden and sincere that it makes my heart stop. Kandace and Raye don’t know what the hell we’re talking about, and that makes my heart beat faster. Stop. Start. Stop. Start. God, he keeps me so off balance.
“You must really like that new sweater, huh?” Oh my God. I’m wearing the same sweater from last night. This morning it just seemed like the only thing in my closet with any appeal. Because it’s new and pretty is what I told myself. Because he said I looked good when I was wearing this sweater and because it was pressed next to him for nearly ten minutes is what I know to be the truth. Again they are looking at us like we are speaking a foreign language. And then he does something unprecedented.
“Parker wore that sweater last night,” he tells Kandace. She glares at me. She has been working so hard to ignore my existence, and now he has forced her to acknowledge me. He’s such a social sadist.
“Look, I really need a cappuccino and a cheesecake brownie.” Raye grabs my arm to pull me away.
“Prescott,” he calls after me, “I liked your e-mail. I know you aren’t a dude.” I can feel my face burning. Raye is pulling me away. I don’t look back because I don’t want him to see me blushing. Raye doesn’t ask about the e-mail, but I see her frown, her eyes turning down at the corners.
“Cappuccino,” Raye says soothingly. “Cheesecake brownie. You can even have one of those awful cookies with M&M’s on top that you love so much.” She doesn’t say anything about the basement or ask me about the e-mail. She went through a breakup. She knows how crazy it can all get. She won’t even ask me about it later. I hope.
“Do you think Cute Cookie Guy will be there?” My voice sounds fine. My voice sounds normal. Doesn’t it?
“Cute Cookie Guy will totally be there.”
“Did you notice?”
“That he was wearing that ratty corduroy jacket you despise?”
“No, Raye.”
“That Kandace Freemont wears bright red lipstick to the mall?”
“No, Raye.”
“That Sunglass Hut had Ray-Bans on sale so you can play cops and robbers in your trailer-park bedroom?”
“No.” Loud sigh. “Raye.”
“What, Park?”
“He was explaining things to her. He never explains himself.”
“That’s because he’s an absolute tool.”
“No, Raye. It’s because he can’t stand idiots. He doesn’t like to have to slow down for people.”
“Because he’s an absolute tool. And Parker, I don’t think he’s hanging out with Kandace Freemont for her intelligence.” I push my hair out of my face and feel myself sagging, deflated. He was with me last night. He kissed me. He got my e-mail and read those things that I said I wanted to do with him. And yet he’s here today with Kandace. There is no way to deal with this unless I admit that I am in serious pain, the kind of emotional breakdown that you can’t hide, not even if you’re an ice princess.
Raye is determined to medicate me with sugar. She pulls me along and I follow her because I can think of nothing else to do. There is no line at our cookie place, because it’s off in the corner and not as flashy as the other cookie place. They don’t have smoothies with protein infusions, but they do have frozen mocha-mugs, though these come in paper cups rather than mugs and have mucho-mocha fat grams, and chocolate shavings.
“I’ll take three cookies.” I try to ignore Raye’s words, though they are bouncing around in my head.
“Rough day?” Cute Cookie Guy is always sympathetic. If he wasn’t so obviously gay, I would run off with him, bear his children, and get fat eating cookies all day.
“Terrible day, terrible week, terrible life,” I say. He puts twelve cookies in a brown bag and rings me up for three. Cookie Guy rocks.
He hands me the bag. “At least you have a good metabolism.”
“Tell me about it.” Raye is practically shoving me out of the way, because she’s addicted to iced cappuccinos. Raye wears size six jeans and I wear size four. This means that I can borrow her jeans and she can’t wear mine. This is fair because she has a bank account and I don’t.
8
Three hours, two phone calls, one quick glance at Marion’s stupid blog, and six cookies later, we are on our way to the movies. Raye has a cute date named Josh, if you like the clean-cut type. My blind-date guy is tall, which is good, but kind of droopy, which is bad. He is down and depressed, which is okay (Parker likes the moody guys, all right?), but he’s moody because his girlfriend broke up with him, which is bad.
He keeps staring at the front of my new sweater, which I have realized might be a bit tight. If I liked him this might kind of be good, but I absolutely do not like him.
Clean-cut guy drives an SUV. Me and Droopy sit in the back. Raye keeps the conversation going until we get to the theater. The real theater, not the one at the mall. These guys are a class act.
So Droopy doesn’t say anything until we get out of the vehicle, then he comes around to help me down, and he asks,
“Do you like fish?”
“Um, like fried fish?”
“Do you like to fish?”
“What?”
“I really like to fish.”
“Like, catching fish with a fishing pole?”
“Yeah.”
“Uh-huh.” I am imagining that whore Kandace Freemont in the basement. If his parents are out, then they will be on his bed. It squeaks. Great, now I have visual and audio. If the family is home, they will be on his floor, on the striped quilt. So much for his not liking sleazy.
“You know what,” I say, and as I am opening my mouth I’m already kicking myself, but I just plow on and say, “there are a lot of challenges in this world, but I don’t have to try to outwit a fish, because I have all the confidence in the world that I am smarter than the average fish.” Raye is looking at me and kind of stomping her foot. Clean-cut guy is looking at me with a little half smile on his face. Droopy is staring at my chest again.
We get into the ticket line. Raye is quizzing Josh about the types of candy he likes. Reese’s Pieces get a yes, Sour Patch Kids a no, Junior Mints a sometimes. Raye doesn’t like Sour Patch Kids either. They should live happily ever after. I am trying to keep my mind out of the basement when I notice Droopy has dropped out of my peripheral vision. What’s he doing now, checking out my ass?
Raye and Josh, tickets in hand, sprint to the candy line, intent on those Reese’s Pieces, and I am left staring at the ticket guy, who has six piercings just in the side of his face that is turned toward me. (Eyebrow, nose, weird chin thing, and three earrings.) Freaky.
“How many?” he asks. I glance behind me. Droopy is intently studying the coming attraction posters.
“How many?” The ticket guy is getting impatient, and he’s a little intimidating, with all the barbells stuck through his face and the lank midnight black hair. Droopy, on the other hand, is not moving forward. I get the message, loud and clear. My blind date is rejecting me;
he’s forcing me to pay my own way.
“One,” I say. The ticket guy prints my single lonely ticket. I have to pay with my last wrinkled dollars and eight quarters.
Cheap ass suddenly becomes aware that he’s in the ticket line and asks for one ticket. I don’t know whether I should wait for him. Obviously we aren’t exactly on a date, are we? I could walk ahead to show him I don’t really need his lousy company. I feel all jangled-up and confused. Droopy does not go to the refreshment line, and I can’t afford even the cheapest, smallest item they sell. There is exactly thirty-five cents in my purse and a few sticky pennies that don’t count because they don’t fall out when I turn my purse upside down.
For some ridiculous reason, I feel my eyes start to tear up a little. I feel crappy that I can’t afford anything to snack on, and even more crappy that Droopy didn’t consider me date-worthy. What’s wrong with me? I take a really deep breath and force the
feeling away, because there is no way I’m going to sit here and cry in the middle of this action-adventure spy thriller, with Kandace probably in his bed and my feet stuck on the floor thanks to the adhesive nature of spilled cola drinks, when I can’t even afford a syrupy fattening soda of my own. I take three deep breaths and then wipe my eyes with the back of my hand.
Raye has horrible taste in movies. Not that she was really ever planning on watching this one. I look over at the end of the previews, prepared to bum just a couple of Reese’s Pieces, but she is already locked in an embrace with this Josh guy. My brain is in slow mode, and they catch my eye for like two seconds more than I’m comfortable with. It’s weird, seeing something like that from another perspective. His tongue, her tongue. Different when it’s my best friend and not some person on TV. Or me on the striped blanket on my ex-boyfriend’s floor, trying to be quiet. Anyway, I guess Raye likes Josh.
On-screen two people hit each other until one guy, the bad one, I think, falls down. I glance at my watch, but I can’t see it because the probably-good-guy is running through a cave now, and there’s no light. I’m guessing that the movie is about half over. I feel a stab of annoyance that morphs into anger. Anger that Raye’s being a total slut. But I know that’s not fair, because I want her to get over Ian and move on. Because if I am jealous that she went out with Ian for nearly a year, and jealous that she is finally able to kiss some new guy and forget about missing Ian, I wouldn’t be a very good friend, would I? So I’m not jealous, and I’m not pathetically sad, and I’m no longer stuck to the floor because I kept wiggling my feet until they pulled free.
As I sit through the movie I concentrate on being really still between the kissing session on one side and my anti-date on the other—oh, and trying to follow the movie, since I invested all my money in watching this film. I don’t use the armrests at all. By the time the lights come back on I’m almost used to having my elbows smashed up against my rib cage. Almost.
After the last explosion we file out of the theater, and Raye suggests we drive to the park. She wants a more scenic place to make out with Josh. To give them privacy I walk with Droopy down to the fishpond. It’s a koi pond, like with those really big fat goldfish.