Vegan Virgin Valentine

  “Why’d you do that?” V asked.

  “Are you deaf or something?”

  “Come on,” V said as she bit off a chunk of some beef-jerky–looking brown thing. “It’s funnier that way.”

  I didn’t even respond. Still holding the remote control, I returned to my room. I knew I was being a bitch, but V had asked for it.

  V followed me in and stood in my doorway. “Why are you being such a bitch?”

  I sat at my desk and stared down at Elementary Statistics.

  “It’s Travis, isn’t it? You’re still pissed off about that.”

  I clenched my jaw.

  “You said it wasn’t anything,” V said as she chewed at her nails.

  “What wasn’t anything?”

  “You and Travis. You said you guys were nothing, so I figured… We were just having fun. Don’t you ever have fun?”

  “You’re unbelievable,” I said. “You’re turning this around and making it about me?”

  “I’m just saying you should lighten up.”

  “At other people’s expense?”

  “God,” V said. “You sure are wound tight.”

  I’d had it. I’d really had it.

  “Will you get out of my room?”

  “Don’t get so offended. I’m just saying—”

  I chucked the remote control at V. She dodged it, so it smacked against the wall and split open.

  “I didn’t know you had a violent side!” V shouted, scurrying down the hallway.

  As I watched the batteries roll across the hardwood floor, I couldn’t believe my peaceful existence had come to this.

  To make matters worse, my parents were doting on V. On Tuesday, they both took off the afternoon so they could bring her to the mall and buy her a new wardrobe. They rationalized it by saying that she didn’t have any clothes suitable for an East Coast winter, which explained the sweaters, jacket, boots, and olive-colored scarf. All fine and great, I thought, but please explain the funky black pants and four cute shirts and expensive skin cream.

  When I commented about this to my dad, he said he was surprised at my attitude. He told me how I’ve never been denied anything and V has had it hard and they’re just trying to make up for lost time with her. By the way he talked, you’d have thought V was Cinderella and I was a wicked stepsister. If only he knew that V had hooked up with my Prince Not-So-Charming and was getting high on something other than life on the second floor of the palace.

  V definitely played up the lovable act with my parents. Whenever they were around, she was all smiles and sweetness, snuggling into the crook of my dad’s arm and combing his wild white hair with her fingers. When my mom complained of a backache, she helped with the laundry and the dishes. She even carried two loads of firewood up from the basement. But as soon as my parents were out of sight, V instantly reverted back to V. She was loud and obnoxious. She chugged directly from the carton. Once she picked a booger out of her nose, rolled it between her thumb and pointer finger, and flicked it across the room. Plus, she was constantly watching me, quick to point out any and all character flaws. It was driving me insane.

  On Wednesday afternoon, when I got home from my weekly volunteer gig of tutoring sixth graders, I found a thick envelope in the mailbox. It was from Johns Hopkins, telling me I was accepted to their precollege summer program. I speed-dialed my mom’s cell phone as I walked through the side door. V was conked out on the couch, watching TV. The volume wasn’t deafening, so I sat on the comfy chair and told my mom the news. Ten seconds after we hung up, my dad called my cell. My mom had told him and he wanted to say congrats. Just after we said goodbye, I called him back to ask if he could bring home takeout from Mythos tonight. While we were discussing what to get, my mom beeped in on the other line and shouted, “HOLY MOLY! With two more college courses this summer, my baby could enter Yale as a SECOND-YEAR STUDENT in the fall!”

  I was like, “Yeah! Yay! I know!”

  I pushed the “hang up” button and set my phone on the armrest. That’s when I noticed that V was staring at me through her long bangs.

  “Freaky,” she said.

  I sighed. “What now?”

  “How you and your parents are with your cell phones. It’s like you’ve got a satellite umbilical cord to them.”

  “We do not! I was just calling them with good news. Don’t go looking for things that aren’t there.”

  “It’s time to cut the cord,” V said.

  “Don’t say that.”

  With one hand, V pantomimed an umbilical cord extending out from her bellybutton. With her other hand posing as a butcher knife, she hacked through it. The whole time, she was chanting, “Cut the cord, cut the cord, cut the cord.”

  The following night, I was in the kitchen making vegetarian chili when V sauntered in.

  “Putting beef in there?” she asked.

  I continued dicing up the pepper. “I bet you can guess the answer to that.”

  “What’s up with your whole vegan thing anyway?”

  “It’s not my whole vegan thing. I’m just a vegan. It’s no big deal.”

  “But why? Aren’t you denying yourself all the pleasures in life?”

  “There are lots of good things to eat without having to consume dead animals,” I said. I obviously wasn’t about to tell her my Secret Travis Reason, so instead I said, “Did you know that by leading a meat-free life, you can save nearly eight hundred chickens, five cows, and twenty pigs?”

  V laughed. “I’ll probably eat more like ten cows in my lifetime.”

  I concentrated on cutting the pepper, careful to make all the pieces a uniform size.

  “That doesn’t explain why you don’t eat eggs and dairy,” V said.

  I turned up the flame on the frying pan and gathered together the peppers and onions and minced garlic. “I just don’t like to eat anything that comes out of a cow’s udder or a chicken’s butt,” I said.

  “Eggs don’t come out of the chicken’s butt,” V said. “They come out of a chicken’s—”

  “I know!” I tossed the vegetables into the frying pan. I’d turned it up too high, so the olive oil spat all over the place. I lifted the pan off the flame and dodged the crackling tears of oil.

  “Why can’t you say that word?” V asked.

  “What word?”

  “Vagina. That’s where the eggs come from. A chicken’s vagina.”

  A chicken’s vagina. My God. V is too much.

  “Will you leave me alone?” I said, sighing heavily. “I’m going to screw up the chili.”

  “Just say the word and I’ll vanish.” V snapped her fingers. “Just like that.”

  “I don’t want to,” I said, growing increasingly frustrated. It wasn’t just that I didn’t want to say it. It was that I couldn’t say it. Same goes for the P-word. The thought of saying them out loud makes me feel totally icky.

  V opened the fridge and got out the bottle of ketchup. Raising it to her mouth like a microphone, she began singing, “On top of va–giiiiii–na, all covered with snow. I lost my va–giiiiii–na, from courting too —”

  Just then my dad rapped on the back door. V halted midnote and ran over to let him in, a huge smile on her face.

  “Hey, girls!” he said, stomping his boots on the mat. “What do you look so happy about?”

  I glanced at V. She winked at me and then said, “Mara and I were just making dinner and talking about va—”

  “Vegans,” I said, cutting her off. “We’re talking about why I’m a vegan.”

  My dad inhaled through his nose. “Smells great,” he said. “I’m so glad to see you’re cooking together.”

  “V isn’t exactly helping me.”

  “I’m keeping you company,” V said, sticking out her bottom lip. “Doesn’t that count for anything?”

  “It counts for a lot,” my dad said as he wrapped his arms around V and kissed the top of her head.

  “Thanks for saying that, G-pa,” V said.

 
“Anytime, sweetie.”

  I pushed my wilting vegetables around with a wooden spoon, feeling pissed off at V and my dad and the world in general.

  On the school front, things were shaky, too. I bombed last Friday’s government test. Not bombed, but I got an 84 percent, which would definitely set me back a decimal point or so in the race for valedictorian. When the teacher handed us our tests, I stared down at my desk, willing myself not to look up in case Travis turned around and mouthed his score to me.

  Travis and I still hadn’t spoken since we’d IM-ed last week. I’d consulted with Ash Robinson, and she’d said that V and Travis—to the best of her knowledge—were a one-period stand. Ash mentioned that V had been eating lunch with Brandon Parker, our friendly high-school marijuana dealer. He’s nineteen, has a peach-fuzz mustache, and should have graduated two years ago but keeps getting suspended for smoking pot on school premises. Ash also told me she’d heard from a reliable source that Travis had been spotted with a girl from the neighboring village of Holley over the long weekend.

  “Big boobs, big hair, and a big reputation for being easy” was how Ash put it.

  “I hope she has a biiig case of herpes, too,” I said.

  “Mara?” Ash giggled nervously. “You sound bitter. Are you bitter?”

  I shook my head. “Just ignore me, okay?”

  But the Travis thing was definitely getting to me. Whenever I saw his face, I pictured him grinding with V in a shower stall. It felt like a throwback to the weeks after he dumped me, when the sight of him or the sound of his voice was enough to start me crying.

  It didn’t help that I saw him after school on Tuesday at the National Honor Society meeting, where he solicited a hug from every girl except me. And after school on Wednesday, as he was also tutoring sixth graders. And before school on Thursday, at the monthly hot-chocolate-and-bagels student government gathering. He stood up and made an announcement about how the senior class is doing a candygram fundraiser on Valentine’s Day and he needed volunteers to staff the table. As class treasurer, I should have been scurrying around, trying to get people to sign up, but instead I sank into my chair. I didn’t want to be reminded of last Valentine’s Day, when Travis and I, both junior class officers, pinned red-paper hearts on our clothing and paraded around the school selling carnations.

  Thinking about it now, it makes me shudder. But last year was the exception to my rule. I generally boycott anything to do with Valentine’s Day. From late January until February 15, I’m prone to lousy moods and random fits of depression. I just hate how in the weeks leading up to V-Day, everyone gets all obsessed about my last name and people shout things at me in the hallway like, “Hey, Valentine!” and “Will you be my Valentine?” Call me the Ebenezer Scrooge of Valentine’s Day. Bah-freaking-humbug.

  Back to Travis. I was dreading Friday morning. That’s when he and I were scheduled to meet with Mr. B about the Chemical-Free Grad Night party. We were the two co-chairs, an honor bestowed upon us by the vice principal himself. So there would be no buffers, no bagels, no squirmy sixth graders to hog my attention. I knew I wouldn’t be able to deal with it.

  On my way out of school on Thursday, I dropped by the main office and asked Rosemary if I could speak to Mr. B.

  “Anything for you, Mara!” she exclaimed, buzzing Mr. B on the intercom even though his office is nine feet from her desk.

  Mr. B shook my hand and led me into his office. He was wearing his pea green polyester suit with the ink stain on the collar. On top of his bad taste in fashion, Mr. B makes that dire mistake of combing slicked strands over his bald spot, the ultimate optical disillusion.

  As I sat down in the chair opposite his desk, Mr. B held the glass bowl of Hershey’s Kisses in my direction. I shook my head and cut right to the chase, explaining how I had to resign as co-chair of Chemical-Free Grad Night.

  “But why?” he asked, frowning. “You seemed ecstatic when I invited you aboard last fall.”

  I wouldn’t exactly say ecstatic, but I was still waiting to hear from Yale, so I may have played up my enthusiasm a little. Okay, I’ll admit, I clapped my hands together, but I didn’t jump up and down or anything.

  “I’m just…” I paused. “I’m a little overwhelmed with my college classes.”

  Mr. B grinned. “If you’re overwhelmed by SUNY Brockport, just wait until you get to Yale. Then you’ll see what hard work is all about.”

  I looked down at my lap, totally sucking it up. That’s how badly I didn’t want to co-chair with Travis.

  “Well,” Mr. B finally said, “while I’m sorry you can’t help organize Chemical-Free Grad Night, I can hardly say no to you. Not with everything you’ve contributed to Brockport High School over the past four years.”

  “Thank you, Mr. B.”

  “Is there someone you can recommend as your replacement? Someone who has the same strong morals as you and Travis Hart?”

  I nearly snorted at the mention of “strong morals” and “Travis Hart” in the same breath, but Mr. B was waiting for a response. Maybe Bethany Madison? I hadn’t returned her e-mail yet, so I don’t know what’s up with her, but I bet that’s the kind of thing she’d like to do. Hold on … no! If I paired Travis with anyone of the opposite sex who wasn’t hideously marred, he’d totally try something with them.

  As I quickly mentioned a few guys in the senior class, Mr. B jotted their names down on a piece of paper.

  To make matters even worse, things were getting weird at Common Grounds. Over the past week, whenever James stepped away from the counter, Claudia hunkered down with me and discussed Ways to Tell James She Loved Him.

  “I’m just not smart the way you are,” she whispered as we were discussing the possibility of writing him a letter or an e-mail. “I couldn’t make it poetic and deep and meaningful.”

  “That’s not true,” I said. “But I can help you write it if you want.”

  “That’s just like … isn’t there an old Steve Martin movie where he does that?”

  “All I know is the play, Cyrano de Bergerac.”

  “Cyrano de what?” Claudia sighed. “See what I mean? I’m not a genius like you. You’re going to Yale next year. That’s the kind of thing that would impress James.”

  “It’s not about me, Claud. We’re talking about you.”

  “I guess you’re right,” she said.

  But the weird thing is that it was starting to feel like it was about me. While Claudia was finding every opportunity to chat with James, he was paying more and more attention to me. Last Saturday he told me he liked how I did my hair. I informed him that this is how I’ve always done it, blow-dried and tucked behind my ears. But he said, “No, no, it looks different.”

  On Thursday, when the baked goods were delivered, I discovered that James had added something to the inventory. Apple-nut cookies. Vegan apple-nut cookies.

  “So there’s finally food for Mara to eat,” he said.

  Several times throughout that shift, James and I made eye contact. We’d smile at each other and then I’d get that thump in my stomach so I’d look away quickly. But even so, I found myself highly aware of his physical presence when he was reaching over me for stirring sticks or lids or sugar packets.

  Stop it! I’d tell myself. Stop it and work harder at helping Claudia with her game plan.

  On Saturday, the solution finally presented itself. Claudia had turned twenty-one earlier in the month and, while we’d stuck a candle in a cranberry muffin and sung “Happy Birthday,” she still hadn’t ordered a drink from a bar. She’d complained about it so frequently that on a Saturday night in late January, James said, “Maybe we should grab a beer after work? You can order.”

  Claudia played it cool and was like, “Yeah, that’d be great.”

  But as soon as James went out to his car to get something, she squealed, “I’m going to do it! Tonight’s the night! I’m going to do it!”

  As she scavenged through her bag for lipstick, I asked if she knew how she
was going to tell him.

  “I’m just going to say it. Point-blank. What’s the worst that can happen?”

  “Good idea,” I said.

  Claudia was a wreck for the rest of the evening. She spilled coffee all over the counter. She dropped three slices of crumb cake. She gave a customer a ten-dollar bill instead of a one.

  I tried to distract her by pointing out our favorite Internet mismatch. The beanpole mama’s boy and the butternut-squash-shaped mama. It was their third date here, at least when we’ve been working. They were sitting with their faces close, licking blueberry cheesecake off each other’s forks. Any other night, Claudia would have come up with all these funny comments about them. But she was busy obsessing about the fact that she wasn’t dressed for a night out with James and maybe she should borrow my car and dash over to her dorm room to change into something sexier.

  “It doesn’t matter what you wear,” I said. “James knows what you look like.”

  Claudia clutched my arm. “Oh my God. It’s really going to happen! What do you think he’ll say? Do you think he likes me back?”

  “You’ll find out very soon,” I said.

  But Claudia didn’t find out. Toward the end of the shift, James walked over to her and said, “Do you mind if we do the beer another time? I’m exhausted. I think I’ll just go home and crash.”

  Claudia shook her head and said, “No, that’s fine.”

  But a few minutes later, when James was in the bathroom, Claudia sank onto a stool. “It’s over,” she moaned. “It’s all over.”

  “What are you talking about? You can always do it another time.”

  “I’ve lost my nerve. I told myself that tonight was now or never.”

  I felt like such a hypocrite, but as I stood there patting her freshly brushed hair, I was relieved that the beer and confessional didn’t happen tonight.

  Don’t ask me why.

  I was refusing to even go there in my head.

  Chapter Six

  On the last Tuesday in January, the graffiti started showing up. As I was walking up the stairs between second and third period, I ran into Ash on the landing.