“That’s good, though, right? I mean, now you can stop daydreaming about him.” Amanda patted my arm.
“Have you stopped daydreaming about Mario?”
“Um, no.” She looked uncomfortable. “It does take a little longer than that to break a habit. I think it’s twenty-one days or something like that.”
“But you have to find a new habit to replace the old one, or the old one will just come back to fill in the hole,” Dylan pointed out.
“We’ll both have to find new guys to obsess over.” I abandoned my peas and picked up the donut I’d thrown on my tray at the last minute. We were supposed to be cutting back on dessert items in our cafeteria, but the lunch ladies took compassion on us and brought in a few things from time to time. They said it was to wean us off sugar slowly, like we weren’t eating a ton of it when we weren’t on school property or something.
Amanda turned and looked around the lunchroom. “Yeah, but who? I don’t see anyone cuter than Mario.”
“Does he have to be cuter? Could he be equally as cute?” Dylan asked.
“Doesn’t work that way. When you’re trying to get over a broken heart, you’ve got to shoot for something better than what you had before.” Amanda faced us again, looking despondent. “I should have started with a more ordinary guy and worked my way up.”
Dylan shook his head. “Listen to you. And girls think guys are the only ones who objectify other people.”
“We all do it—it’s sort of natural. It’s just that some people talk about it more openly than others.” Amanda picked up her fork and twirled it in her mound of spaghetti. “And it’s good to know what you want.”
“And what about brains and potential and all that?” Dylan wanted to know.
“I tried that, and look where it got me.” I sighed. “I’m starting to think crushes are overrated. Maybe Colby had it right—maybe we should all give up dating for the rest of the year and just concentrate on getting ready for college.”
“We could do that, and it would be the most boring senior year in the history of forever.” Amanda shook her head. “We just need to keep trying. There must be guys out there for us—it’s a matter of knowing where to look.”
“We could try the swim team,” I suggested. “That would be new territory.”
Dylan scraped up the last of his sauce and licked his fork. “So, let’s change the subject because you two are weirding me out. What’s next on the list? I left my copy at home.”
“You made yourself a copy?” I wasn’t sure if that was supportive or creepy.
“Of course. I had to make sure it was correct. I cross-referenced it against itself to make sure there were no duplications.”
“You’re obsessive, you know that?” I pulled my list out of my pocket. “I have to get the combination on my locker changed.”
“Why?” Amanda asked.
“The girl who originally wrote in was getting harassed—people were putting dead leaves and stuff in her locker.”
“Oh, yeah, I remember that. Did they ever find out who did it?”
“Yep, and they got suspended for a few days.” I stood up, deciding that lunch was a waste of time. I was going to stop thinking about Colby—I really was—but until I figured out how, I’d have this knot in my stomach every time I remembered the blue of his eyes. “I’ll go take care of it now.”
The biggest problem with this challenge was that I couldn’t explain why I was suddenly doing all these random things. Amanda and Dylan knew, of course, but it’s not like I could walk into the office and say, “Excuse me. I need a new locker combination because I’m being blackmailed.” That would give Bruce exactly what he wanted—permission to go all berserk with that list.
“Excuse me. Can I get the combination on my locker changed, please?” I smiled, hoping that would make my question sound less strange.
The secretary looked at me with a blank expression on her face. “I’m sorry—what?”
“I need a new combination for my locker. I keep forgetting my old one.”
“You keep forgetting it?”
“That’s right.” I tilted my head to the side, hoping that she’d notice—without my having to point it out—that I’m a natural blonde. I’ve always hated the “blondes are stupid” stereotype, but I’d play it to my advantage if I had to.
“Most students just try a little harder to memorize their combinations,” she explained.
“Oh, but I can’t. The part of my brain that memorizes things didn’t form properly in the womb.” I didn’t like having to come up with an excuse, but I figured that using the word “womb” would make her uncomfortable enough to stop questioning me, and I was right. She immediately went into “let’s get this girl out of here” mode.
“I probably can’t get anyone out here to reset the combination for a bit, so how about if I just give you a different locker for now?” She thumbed through some papers. “Here. This looks like a nice, easy number. What do you think?”
I studied the combination, pretending to analyze it. “Yes, that should be much easier.”
“Great. It’s down the hall from the science lab, right before the fire extinguisher.”
What? That wasn’t anywhere near my old locker. This would mess up my entire walking-the-halls routine, the routine I’d worked so hard to develop. I knew, on any given day, which books I needed to carry with me and when so I’d have them for each class, and then I knew when to stop by my locker to switch out for the next set. Except, of course, for when I forgot, but that was beside the point. These things took precision planning, careful artistry, and not a small amount of juggling. I’d have to start from scratch.
But if I objected, she might not believe my story, and I needed to be believed if I was going to win this bet with Bruce.
“Thank you.” I smiled, trying to look sincere. “I really appreciate your help.”
“See if you can get your things moved over by the end of the day.”
“I sure will. And thank you.”
As I walked out of the office, I muttered a curse upon Bruce and all his descendants for twelve generations.
Dylan and Amanda stood with me in front of my new locker. We all stared at it. It looked just like my old locker, but it was so wrong on so many other levels.
“You’ll just learn how to walk faster,” Amanda said. “You’re always talking about how you want to burn more calories during the day.”
“Yeah, but I was hoping that would magically happen without my having to do something.” I reached out and turned the combination. It opened right up, and I slid my books inside. “Maybe after I finish doing everything on the list, I can request my old locker back,” I said. It was fishing, but I was desperate. Lockers are very personal, important things.
“That sort of seems like cheating, though—doing something just to win the bet and then going back on it,” Dylan pointed out.
He was right. Dang kid was always right. “Okay, okay, I’ll just stay out here in Outer Siberia. See if you can manage to come visit me once in a while.”
“Oh, come on. It won’t be that bad.” Amanda slung her arm around my shoulders as we walked out to the parking lot. “And it’s really not that far away.”
Sometimes having friends with rose-colored glasses isn’t very much fun.
“Your father called,” Mom said when I walked into the house. “He says not to eat dinner—he wants to take you out tonight.”
“Think a snack would be okay? I didn’t eat very much at lunch.”
“I’m sure that would be fine.”
Mom followed me into the kitchen and watched from a stool at the counter while I poured myself a bowl of cereal. “So, how was school?”
How to answer that . . . the school part had been just fine. It was the other stuff that had been awkward and miserable and pretty much rotten. “It was good.”
“You haven’t had a party for a while. Do you want to invite some friends over this weekend, get some pizza?”
That was kind of random. “Maybe. I’ll think about it.”
She reached out and touched my arm. “I just want you to be okay, Jill.”
The pleading look in her eyes was more than I could take, and I decided to be honest with her. “Mom, a party isn’t going to fix this. And neither are pancakes. I know you’re trying and I know you love me, but I’ve got to work through this on my own.” I smiled, trying to soften my words. “I’ll be okay. It’s just going to take some time.”
She nodded. “I understand.”
I really hoped she did.
Chapter Nine
When Dad came to pick me up, he rang the doorbell and waited for Mom to answer it before he came in. That was pretty awkward—like I was going to the prom or something, and like he didn’t belong here anymore. I guess he didn’t, not really, but that thought was too awful and horrible to contemplate. I bounded down the stairs as soon as I heard his footsteps echoing in the entryway. I didn’t want to wait until Mom hollered for me, like I was making a grand entrance or something.
I climbed into Dad’s car and clicked the seatbelt while he walked around and opened the driver’s side door. He didn’t say anything as he put the car in reverse and steered us onto the road, and I didn’t say anything until we were on Main Street.
“So,” I said.
“So,” he replied. “Where do you want to eat?”
He was letting me choose, huh? I could take total advantage of this, but instead I named a place I knew we both liked. Plus, it was cheap. Now that he and Mom were juggling two places to live, he wouldn’t have a lot of spare cash floating around. He turned at the next corner, and there we were.
We ordered at the counter and sat down, and then he asked me all the standard questions about school and stuff while we waited for our burgers to arrive. He’d only been out of the house for a few days, but the distance between us felt a lot greater than that. I looked at him and wondered how well I even really knew him. This was almost like meeting someone for the first time.
I told him how I was doing in each of my classes, but I didn’t go into a lot of detail. He wouldn’t know my teachers’ names or anything about my life, so I didn’t see the point in telling him much at all—he’d just feel lost.
He listened to me with a look of interest on his face until I wound down, which didn’t take long. Then he cleared his throat. “So, Jill,” he said, lacing his fingers on the table. “Um, I don’t know if your mother told you this, but we’ve decided to legally separate for a while first and see how that goes before filing for divorce. I don’t want to get your hopes up or anything, but we agree that we should take this a step at a time. We’re not any more eager to do this than you are, and we’re still willing to try to work things out.”
“If you’re not eager to do it, why are you doing it?” I asked. As soon as I said the words, I wondered if I really wanted the answers. My parents had already assured me that there hadn’t been any infidelity, but there had to be something or everything would be fine, wouldn’t it?
My dad didn’t answer for a moment, and the food came while he was thinking about what he wanted to say. We each took a few bites, and I don’t think I tasted anything.
“When two people get married, they have to find a balance,” he said after a moment. “On the one hand, they have to become a unit with their spouse. They should have the same life goals and want the same things. But they also have to set their own goals and remain individuals so they can feel as though they’re progressing as people. If that balance is off, the marriage suffers.”
“And you and Mom swung too far over to the ‘remaining individuals’ side?”
“That’s right. We never did really become a unit, and we were so focused on our own careers—” He stopped. “I was so focused on my career that I didn’t see what was happening. Our foundation had holes in it from the very start, and you can’t build something strong on a weak foundation.”
“Do you still love Mom?”
He cleared his throat again, and I was surprised to see tears forming in his eyes. “I will always love your mother. I just don’t know her anymore.”
So all three of us were strangers, then. And I’d thought we were a family.
After we ate, my dad took me to the movie I’d been dying to see, and I was surprised to find myself relaxing. I’d been stiff and uptight during dinner, trying to figure out this new dynamic, wondering how this was all going to work, wishing it would just end and yet not wanting him to drive away again. During the movie, though, I was able to push that to the side. Dad seemed to like the film too—he laughed in all the right places, and when I glanced over to catch his expression in the glow from the screen, he looked like he was having a good time.
“I want to do this once a week,” he said as we were driving home. “And I’ll always be here if you call me. Just for whatever you need.”
I blinked a couple of times. I’d never done stuff with my dad on a weekly basis. Ever. The closest we got had been Saturday morning pancakes, and that was more, he’d make ‘em and I’d eat ‘em. And now he wanted to hang out and do stuff? Was that weird or cool? I couldn’t decide for a minute.
“Sure,” I said after I thought it over. “I’d like that.”
I didn’t watch him drive away that time—once was enough for me.
I couldn’t sleep. The glowing numbers on my alarm clock told me it was after midnight and I really should be asleep, but it just wasn’t working. I might as well get up and put the finishing touches on that week’s article.
I had started it earlier in the day, but I found myself questioning everything I wrote. I kept seeing Bruce’s face, mocking me, daring me to say something silly so he could use it against me later. As I read over my rough draft, I shook my head. This article was terrible. It’s like I’d completely lost all my mojo.
I erased almost half of what I’d written and started over, trying to regain some parts of myself that I’d lost. It was really hard to strike a balance between my old self and my newer, more cautious self—I had no idea if Bruce was going to make me do all this stuff too.
After an hour, I was finally able to go back to sleep, but my dreams were filled with me chasing Dad down a long, dark tunnel. I knew I needed to catch him, but I couldn’t figure out why he was walking away so fast.
“So, how’d it go?” Amanda asked when I met up with her in the hall the next morning. “With your dad, I mean.”
I shrugged. “It was okay, I guess. Totally bizarre, but okay. It’s like he’s suddenly taking an interest in me.”
“Oh, come on. He’s always loved you.”
“I know he’s always loved me, but he hasn’t always paid attention to me. Now it’s different.” Or at least, it had been the night before. I didn’t know if this was going to last or if it would wear off, like things do when you get used to them and start taking them for granted. I didn’t want to fall back into our old patterns—I liked it when he listened to me with his eyes. And then I felt guilty for feeling that way. I wasn’t really glad he’d moved out, was I? What kind of awful thought was that?
“He probably misses you.”
“Yeah, that’s probably it.”
I had just enough time before class to pop in at the newspaper office and drop off the article. Colby actually looked up when I placed it on his desk, and I saw something in his eyes that looked like it might be an apology. I didn’t need his pity, but I was grateful that at least this time, he noticed I was there. And that afternoon during journalism class, he asked my opinion on a couple of things—also a nice change.
I was heading down the hall toward my locker—the very long hall to the locker that was very far away—when I heard my name being called out. I turned to see Scotty dashing to catch up with me.
“So, hey,” he said, leaning against a locker and trying to look cool, even though he was a little out of breath. “I wondered if, you know, you’d like to go out with me sometime.”
I
didn’t know what to say for a minute. He was a year younger than me, but I didn’t consider that a problem. He was also really cute, which definitely wasn’t a problem. We’d probably have a good time. But after getting my hopes up with Colby, only to have them get shot down again, I wasn’t ready to think about anyone else, even if it was just for a fun, no-strings-attached date. How could I turn him down without hurting his feelings?
I decided that maybe Colby’s line had some merit after all. “I’m sorry, Scotty, but I’m really not dating this year. I’m concentrating on getting ready for college.” That would take out any personal sting, right, because I was turning down everyone and not just him?
Scotty nodded and smiled, although I did see a pang of hurt in his eyes. Dang it. That’s not what I wanted at all. “Not a problem. But if you ever get tired of all that studying, give me a call.”
As he walked away, I almost caught his arm and told him I’d changed my mind, but then I didn’t. It really wasn’t fair to him when I was still hung up on Colby.
The next day was A day again, which meant second-period math. I studied my list—“Talk to the teacher about your unfair grade.” This one was pretty awkward—I didn’t have any unfair grades. I was getting a B- in math, but it was totally deserved. When I made this deal with Bruce, why hadn’t I realized I would have to say things that weren’t true?
Mr. Kramer started out our class with a long discussion about numbers. Okay, that wasn’t unusual—this was math, after all. But he lost me right after he mentioned equilateral something-or-anothers and polynumerals or something like that. I’d have to look it all up later. I got along better with my book and the Internet than I did sitting in class, but that wasn’t something I was going to mention out loud in front of people.
While my mind was wandering, my eyes decided to take a little walk too. Colby was sitting there paying rapt attention, as though every word that fell from Mr. Kramer’s lips was pure gospel truth. I missed Colby. I mean, I could still see him, obviously, but I missed the dream of Colby. Maybe it was better that I had gotten my feelings out in the open so I’d stop pining for someone who wasn’t interested. On the other hand, having a secret crush was a whole lot of fun, and gave me something to look forward to every day.
Take My Advice Page 6
