Bitter End

  “And gorgeous.”

  “I thought you wanted to map our route to Colorado.”

  “It’s a straight line. There’s no mapping to it,” she said. “I’m done.”

  “Well, let’s talk about the hotel some more, then.” I could feel a bead of sweat roll down my back.

  “There’s nothing more to talk about,” she said. “I practically have the amenities list memorized by now.” But I could feel Bethany’s feet lift off the chair and heard the scraping of metal against concrete as she pulled close to the computer again. “So we arrive on day one, check in, eat somewhere fast, and sit in the lobby looking amazing in our new road trip wardrobe….”

  “I can’t afford a new road trip wardrobe,” I intoned for the thousandth time.

  “You can borrow,” she said in the same tone, also for the thousandth time.

  The door to the patio swished open, and Georgia plowed outside, holding a plastic tray in one hand and a wet rag in the other.

  “Never mind me, sun goddesses,” she said, wiping down a table. “I’m just cleaning up because somebody didn’t think to do it before she clocked out.”

  I smiled. “Sorry, Gee. Guess you just can’t get good help these days.”

  “Don’t I know it,” she said. “Too busy working on their tans so boys like the one inside will notice them.”

  I stretched a leg up luxuriously and gazed at it, rotating my foot in the air. “It’s tough being beautiful.” I giggled. “But so worth it.”

  She flicked her towel softly at the top of my head. “Ha-ha-ha. I’m busting a gut over here.” But I could see the amused grin on her face as she worked. She brushed the crumbs onto the tray in her hand. Georgia acted tough, but she was a pushover on the inside. After closing, she would turn up the music and we’d sing while we wiped down the kitchen. She called me her older daughter, and I called her the mom I always wanted. She’d been there for me more times than I could count. But if people were around, we acted really put out by each other. It was our little game.

  “Go ahead, laugh it up,” Georgia said. “I’ll do your job for you, ya lazy good-for-nothin’.”

  Bethany turned and glanced over her shoulder, then turned sharply and looked again. “Alex,” she hissed. “She’s not kidding.”

  “What?” I let my leg plop back down onto the chair.

  “Half the basketball team is in there,” Bethany said. “And isn’t that Hot Guy with them?”

  My heart skipped a beat and I sat bolt upright, my head whipping toward the window. Inside The Bread Bowl, right on the other side of the window, sat a group of the most gorgeous guys in our school—with Cole Cozen right in the middle of them, eating a bagel.

  “Oh, that one,” Georgia said. “Yeah, he was asking about you, Alex.” She set the tray on our table and followed my gaze to the window.

  “He was? About me? What’d he say?”

  “I knew you were into him,” Bethany crowed, turning back to the computer and using the screen as a mirror. She pushed her glasses back up on her nose and pulled the elastic out of her hair, then re-slicked her ponytail.

  “Shut up!” I hissed at her. “I’m not!” Then I looked at Georgia, who’d picked up her tray and gone back to wiping tables. “What’d he say?”

  “Oh, just asking if you were working is all,” she said. Yesterday, after I’d mentioned my job, he’d asked me where I worked. The conversation had seemed so offhand, though. I was surprised that he even remembered, much less showed up at The Bread Bowl asking about me. Georgia moved to the next table. I followed her.

  “And…?” I prodded.

  “And I told him you were outside with your girlfriend, and he ordered a bagel and sat down by the window with all the others.”

  “And that’s it?”

  “And that’s it. Goodness, girl, you’re acting like it’s some big emergency.”

  “It’s not,” I said, feeling my face flush.

  Bethany snapped her computer shut and crammed it into her giganto-purse. “Well, I hate to break up this party, you guys, but I’ve got to go. I promised my mom I’d babysit tonight. Alex, coming with?”

  “Yeah,” I said, pushing in my chair and bending to unroll my pant legs. My skin felt electric at the thought of passing all those guys—especially Cole—as we walked through.

  “Hold it,” Georgia said. I could tell by the way her mouth was set that she was trying to hold in a laugh. She reached up and pulled my visor—left over from work—off my head. Then she reached behind me and tugged the elastic out of my hair, letting it drop in waves around my shoulders. Lightly, she used her fingers to fluff and tame my hair. She stood back and assessed me for a second, then sniffed. “Well, you still smell like potato soup, but you look beautiful.”

  I smiled. Sometimes Georgia really was the mom I wished I had. Sometimes, when she got soft and took care of me, I imagined that’s how a mom would’ve acted with me. Sometimes, like a mom, Georgia just instinctively knew all the right things to say and do. Sometimes I couldn’t tell if she made the sting of missing my mom feel better… or worse.

  If I were to write a poem about Georgia, I’d definitely use the word succor, which means “comfort.” Mrs. Moody would love that word.

  “Okay. Come on,” I said, grabbing Bethany’s arm with both of my hands and leading her to the door. “We’ll just casually say hi on our way out.”

  “Whatever, Miss Not-Into-Him,” she mumbled, tossing her Dr Pepper into the trash.

  The air inside The Bread Bowl was about fifteen degrees colder than it was outside, and almost immediately my skin crawled with a smattering of goose bumps. My teeth even chattered a couple of times.

  Bethany and I burst through the dining area as if we didn’t even notice anyone sitting there. I hated when guys from school came in when I was working. I always felt ridiculous in my high-waisted navy uniform pants and tucked-in polo shirt.

  I put my head down and kept walking forward, tugging Bethany along with me.

  Suddenly, Bethany stopped and turned around, forcing me to stop, too.

  “Hey, I know you,” she said, and even before I turned around, I knew who she was talking to. I was going to have to kill her. That was all there was to it. Sure enough, she said, “You’re the new guy in gov. Cole, right? Alex was just talking about you.”

  “Hi,” I said, giving an embarrassed little wave, imagining all the ways I would totally get Bethany back for this. Kill a tree, maybe? Refuse to recycle my water bottle? Tell Zack she’s hot for him?

  “Hey, Alex,” he said, swallowing a bite of bagel. “Just get off work?”

  I glanced down at my uniform. “No, I just wore this outfit because I love polyester mom pants.”

  I was going for funny, but nobody laughed. But Cole smiled, that dimple popping up right over the corner of his mouth. At least he got my joke, which made me feel a little bit better.

  “Dude, I gotta blow,” Steve Shunk said to nobody in particular, scrunching up his sandwich papers in one hand. All the guys started moving then, pushing back their chairs and loudly wadding up wrappers.

  “Yeah, we should go, too,” I said, pulling on Bethany’s arm. “See you in lab on Monday?”

  “Yeah. I’ll be there.”

  “Cool,” I said, then turned and practically sprinted to get out of there before the guys jammed up the doorway.

  Once outside, I wrapped my arm around Bethany’s shoulder. “So, Cowboy Ugly, what shall your punishment be?”

  She rolled her eyes and shrugged me off. “Please. Watching you two pretend you weren’t making goo-goo eyes at each other was punishment enough.”

  I grinned, despite myself. She may have been right about that. I thought he had been looking at me a little differently lately, too.

  Suddenly I couldn’t wait to get to lab on Monday.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Celia was with Bethany and Zack, waiting for me at my locker before final period. I took a deep breath. I knew this was going to be
a hard year, with my baby sister roaming the halls. Not that I didn’t love her or anything but, well, let’s just say if they gave awards for being loud, mean, and completely immature, Celia would need a trophy case.

  My grandma used to say it was because Celia grew up without a woman in the house. That she learned with my dad that if she just howled and stomped her feet she’d get whatever she wanted. A spoilt baby, that one, Grandma used to say, lifting her chin at Celia.

  Grandma was right—Celia was difficult to take. And she howled and stomped her feet a lot. But it wasn’t because Dad gave in to her; it was because it was sometimes the only way to get Dad to pay attention. Shannin and I had a way of just giving up on Dad and taking care of business ourselves. Or sometimes just giving up. But Celia figured she needed to squawk louder. And usually it worked.

  Celia was spoiled. You’d have thought we’d have been closer, since we were only three years apart. But Celia was just too much sometimes. She was rude and abrupt and jaded and cynical. She skipped through life as if everything was hers and everyone should bow down to give it to her. She never smiled unless she wanted something. Sometimes I felt sorry for Celia because she never seemed happy, but usually that sentiment was short-lived because she would undoubtedly say or do something nasty and ruin any sympathy anyone could ever have for her.

  Well, except Zack. Zack liked Celia in a big-brother sort of way. He thought she was “fragile” and would humor her, leaving Bethany and me shaking our heads and rolling our eyes.

  “I need a ride home,” Celia barked, before I even got to my locker. “I’m not going to Yearbook Club today.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Just meet me outside the tutor lab.”

  “Can’t you come down to the freshman hall and pick me up there? I don’t want to have to walk all the way up here.”

  “You just walked all the way up here right now.”

  “Exactly. And I have a lot of homework. I don’t want to have to drag my backpack up. It’ll be too heavy.”

  I stuck out my bottom lip. “Poor baby. Think you’ll live?”

  “God, Alex,” she said, tossing her ringlets over one shoulder. “Why can’t you ever just be nice?”

  I opened my locker, blocking out her face. I caught Bethany’s eye—she was making a give-me-a-break face. If Celia were Bethany’s sister, she’d probably be walking home today. Bethany didn’t put up with much from her younger siblings. “I’m giving you a ride, aren’t I?” I said wearily as I pulled a couple Starbursts out of the bag on my second shelf.

  “You’re such a bitch.”

  “Fine, Celia,” I said, sticking my head around the locker door to scowl at her. “If I’m such a bitch, you can get a ride with someone else.”

  “Dad said you could take me home, and if you don’t—”

  “Ladies,” Zack said, stepping in between us, “I think you’re missing the bigger picture here.” He reached into my locker and grabbed a handful of Starbursts. He held up a yellow one. “Alex has been hiding candy from us.” He turned and fake-glared at me. “You know,” he said, “one of the first signs that there’s a problem is you start hiding the evidence from your friends.”

  I shoved him with my hip. “Get out of my way, you thief,” I said, slamming my locker door. “I have them counted, just so you know.” But I knew by the end of the next day they would be gone. Zack and Bethany and I knew one another’s locker combinations. We each had free rein. He would eat them all. Knowing Zack, I figured he would probably replace them with condoms, just for a laugh.

  Bethany and I started walking toward the tutor lab. Zack put his arm around Celia’s shoulder and followed us. “Tell you what,” he said around a mouthful of Starburst. “I’ll meet you in the freshman hall and walk you up here myself. I’ll carry your heavy backpack for you. I’ll even give you a piggyback ride if your legs give out, m’lady,” he said to Celia.

  I glanced over my shoulder. She was beaming, leaning her head back against Zack’s arm. Sometimes I thought maybe her damsel-in-distress act wasn’t so much of an act around Zack. Sometimes I thought she really liked him. “Deal,” she said. “Good to know one of you can be nice.”

  “Take that back,” he said, brandishing a Starburst at her face.

  “Fine. You’re a jerk, and I hate you,” she said, snatching the candy away from him.

  “That’s more like it,” he said.

  The warning bell rang and Celia gave out a little eep, ducked out from under Zack’s arm, and then scurried away to get back to the freshman hall for her last class. Zack got caught up talking to some guy by the water fountain.

  “You going to the soccer game tonight?” I asked Bethany, who’d had the biggest crush on Randy Weston, the team’s star striker, pretty much since birth. He didn’t know she existed.

  She shrugged and pushed up her glasses. “Can’t,” she said. “Enviro Club.” Bethany was one of those superbrain types who spent most of her time studying for math tests, even when she didn’t have one coming up anytime soon, and in her “spare time” was busy “saving the world, one plastic bottle at a time.” She wore bamboo T-shirts and hemp jewelry and generally made her parents’ lives miserable with trash-can hypervigilance. And she was just smart enough to have every dreadful and depressing statistic about how humanity is ruining the Earth permanently etched in her memory bank. “But I saw Randy this morning in the caf, and he looked amazing. All dressed up.”

  “Did you say anything to him?”

  She blew out a puff of air, looking miserable. “God, no. Plus, I don’t know, I’m not sure I’m all that into him anymore.”

  I gasped. “You’ve been into him since kindergarten.”

  We reached the locker room and stopped; Bethany had Everyday Sports for seventh period, which was the PE class that all the kids who hate PE take in their senior year. She shrugged again. “And he has totally ignored me since kindergarten. It’s probably time to give up on him. Go after someone more attainable.”

  “Maybe you should just tell him how you feel. See for sure if he’s interested.” This was rich, coming from me. If either of us was going to be the type to lay all of her cards on the table, it was so much more likely to be Bethany than me.

  “Tell who how you feel?” Zack asked, coming up beside us. He leaned his elbow on my shoulder, a toothpick dangling from the corner of his mouth.

  “You,” I said. “Of course.”

  Bethany’s grin widened. “Yeah. We feel that you smell like armpits.”

  We cracked up, bumping shoulders, while Zack pretended to pull a knife out of his chest.

  “Is that so?” he said, then grabbed Bethany’s head with one hand and lifted his other hand high over his head. “You asked for it!” he said, smashing her face into his armpit. She was squealing and smacking his chest, but when he let her go, she looked flushed and happy.

  “Go away, you nasty!” she said, pushing his chest and ducking into her classroom.

  “Not without Alex,” Zack said, grabbing my hand and pulling me down the hall behind him. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll walk to the tutor lab with you. Celia wants some of my nice to rub off on you.” He half-dragged me down the halls toward the lab, giving me “Nice 101” in a goofy falsetto voice, until Mrs. Moody ushered him into Amanda’s room, saying something about him needing to put as much effort into his grammar as he does his humor.

  I walked through my lab room door just after the final bell rang. Cole stood up, just as he almost always did when I came into a room. It was hard not to feel a little gushy inside when he did it.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I said.

  His face was all smiles. “No problem. Guess what.”

  “What?” I said, plopping my backpack on my chair and unzipping it. He sat at his desk again.

  “I got an A on my essay test. Ninety-seven percent.”

  “Hey, that’s awesome!” I cried, and before I even knew what I was doing, leaned forward and gave him a big hug. “Congratulations!”
r />   “Thanks. I did everything you told me to do. Totally worked.”

  I pulled back, breathless and feeling a little awkward, but it was a good awkward.

  “So,” I said, slithering into my seat, pushing out of my mind how good he smelled up close. “I have a surprise for you, too.”

  He sat in the seat facing me, leaning forward on his elbows. The leather sleeves of his Pine Gate jacket creaked underneath him. “Yeah? What?”

  I dug around in my backpack for a few minutes and then pulled out an old sheet of notebook paper. I handed it to him without saying anything. Truth was, I was so nervous I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t exactly used to letting anyone other than teachers look at my writing. And Cole wasn’t just anyone, either. For some reason, I wanted to impress him.

  He gazed at the paper for a while, a crease between his eyebrows. “Oh,” he said, finally, his eyes lighting up. “This is your poem! The one that won you an award, right?”

  I nodded, my eyes feeling like they would burn right out of their sockets. “You don’t have to read it, though.”

  “I want to,” he said, and he read aloud:

  “I cannot swallow your hardened eyes

  Sightless of my shrinking heart

  My caving chest

  Shoulders to the polished floor

  “I cannot swallow your bound arms

  My throat the leg of a drowned man

  Rubber of a smoldering tire

  Your pointed elbows stabbing my temples

  “I cannot swallow your cool tongue

  Clicking behind your teeth as you

  List my failures

  I can only cry a dusty tumbleweed