That last part slips out unintentionally. I feel my face flash with heat. I don’t want to allude to my ID. Not with him.
Konrad’s quiet. His eyes travel down to my toes and back up to my face. His cheeks pink up and he says, “I think you look great.”
My blood boils instantly.
Oh. Hell. No. Of all people, how dare he say something like that to me? I curl my fingers into fists to get my body’s shaking under control. My chin snaps up. “Well, I think you don’t,” I spit. “You’re too perfect. Perfection is boring. No one’s ever told you that?”
Konrad’s smile instantly falls. He looks hurt. Like a helpless little boy. Like this is the cruelest thing anyone’s ever said to him. This just annoys me even more.
“No,” he says.
I blink. “Huh? No, what?”
“No one’s ever told me that. But I’ve been thinking the same thing.”
I flash him my teeth, not in a smile. More like a grimace of repulsion. “Good!” I say. “First time for everything.” And then I start walking away.
“Camilla! Come on. Just let me give you a ride.”
The desperation in his voice makes me stop. It makes me feel powerful.
I could turn around, tell him to fuck off. It would sting, but he’d get over it. Or, I could let him take me home. Make him think he’s getting his way and then tell him to fuck off. He’d still get over it, but it would carry more weight and I’d be getting a ride.
I practice a smile. It takes a few tries to get it to look just right. It needs to be subtle. It needs to say: Okay, you win. When I spin around to face him again, Konrad’s holding his breath.
“Fine.”
He exhales. His features gather into a huge smile that lights up his face from one ear to the other. “Cool. So yay or nay to the naleśniki idea?”
I’m about to say no, but my stomach grumbles so loudly Konrad can hear it. My eyes bulge. I’m frozen with humiliation. Konrad’s smile only grows bigger.
A minute later, I’m in a car with him. Again. And again with his body so close to mine I can smell his stupid boy deodorant. Ten minutes after that, we’re perched atop metal stools at a tiny window counter. I only agreed to make this little detour because he’s paying.
The Polish bakery is tiny all over. There’s a cake display with a pretty young woman in a white apron behind it; two round tables—both taken up by older men in hats; and our two stools, which couldn’t be any closer. Serious design flaw. If I didn’t have my crooked legs turned away from Konrad, I’d practically be sitting on his lap.
The smell in the air, a blend of powdered sugar and blueberry jam, is amazing. I’ve had three bites of my rolled-up Polish crepe-thing, and I have to admit, it’s heavenly.
“You’re Middle Eastern, right?” Konrad asks through a full mouth.
I sigh, trying to ignore yet another double take from a passerby outside. This time, it’s a college-aged guy with shoulder-length surfer hair. Yes, I think, glaring at him through the window. I’m ugly, Konrad’s hot, and we’re hanging out together.
“Yeah,” I answer. “Half-Turkish. My dad’s side.” After a moment, I add, “But I know next to nothing about the culture, unfortunately.” As I say the words, I feel a prick in my chest. My dad’s never going to have a chance to teach me. And I’ll never have another chance to ask. I should’ve asked. I had so many opportunities to ask.
“I’m sorry about your dad.”
I freeze in surprise. My dad’s death didn’t make waves in school. I made sure it didn’t. Konrad must remember me saying it when the ID specialists came to see us. I don’t like that he knows some of the most intimate things about me. First my doodles of Lance’s face in physics, now my dad. “Yeah,” I mumble.
He’s quiet for a minute. “When did it happen?”
What is his problem? I don’t talk about my dad. Even Jodie and Ashley know better than to bring him up. Why should I share this information with a guy who ruined my life? Especially since I don’t plan on ever speaking to him again after today.
“Last year,” I say, and before I can catch myself, I blurt, “It was a car accident. Totally his own fault. He drank too much.”
Pressure explodes in my ears. What the hell am I doing? Maybe it’s because I’ll never speak to him again that the words are able to flow so easily. But that doesn’t mean they should. I bring another forkful of crepe to my mouth and chew vigorously.
Konrad is silent. This is not the way this ride home was supposed to go. I’m about to tell him I’m ready to leave, when he says, “That sucks.” He pauses, but something in his expression tells me he has more to say. I don’t know why, but I let him. “The only funeral I’ve ever been to was for Alan’s sister. I’m sure you heard about it. She was sick for a while. Alan took it pretty hard. I tried to help make him feel better, but nothing worked.”
“Like how?” I ask, but I’m not sure why I’m even bothering. I can tell you from personal experience that nothing works. Nothing makes you feel better except time.
“Mostly, I just tried to distract him, you know? Like, he loves video games. We both do. Especially the old-school stuff. Downtown, there’s this bar with old arcade games—Pac-Man, Street Fighter, all the goodies. Lauren’s dad’s friend owns it, so he’d let us go there in the afternoons. For a while, after his sister died, we went every single day.”
“Huh,” I say. Another moment of silence stretches between us. My eyes travel from the stubby fingers around my fork to Konrad’s toned forearm. “Sucks that you guys aren’t friends anymore. You and Alan, I mean.”
Konrad’s brow knots and his gaze drops to his plate. Guilty pleasure shoots through my body like a dose of morphine. I watch his Adam’s apple rise and fall.
“Anyway,” he says. “You should come with me sometime. Play some games. It’s fun.” He looks me in the eyes. “Are you free this weekend?”
I see the plea for me to say yes etched all over his face. It looks so real it almost gives me shivers. Why is this kid acting so desperate for me to hang out with him?
And that’s when it hits me. Finally, I get it. Finally, I understand what’s going on inside Konrad Wolnik’s head.
He’s not acting at all. The desperation is real.
I was wrong. Or rather, I wasn’t entirely right. Konrad doesn’t just want my pardon. He doesn’t just want to show everybody what a good Samaritan he is with a one-time good deed. That’s not enough for him. No, he wants the world around him to be as perfect as his face. Ladies and gentlemen, Konrad Wolnik needs everyone to like him, and he can’t handle the fact that I don’t. After all, to this kid, nothing matters more than appearances. How did I not see this before?
But guess what? I can play the appearance game, too.
I can give him that perfect world. A world where he thinks he gets to have it all. And then I can take it away, and humiliate him in the process. Forget posting yearbook photos online and waiting for the kids at school to turn against him. I have a better plan.
I’m going to pretend to be Konrad Wolnik’s friend. And just when he thinks everything’s going his way—to borrow Alan’s words—I’m going to “friend-dump” him. Only I’m going to do it with a bang. If what Alan and Lauren say is true and Konrad hates rejection more than anything, I’ll make sure it’s the most public, most splashy rejection ever.
Oh, it’s going to be glorious.
I can already hear Ashley’s voice, loud and clear in my head, like there’s a tiny version of her sitting on my shoulder, nagging, scolding. But Ashley doesn’t know what I’m going through. Nobody does. People just assume they know what’s best for me. They think I’m this poor little thing who needs their help. They think they can speak on my behalf.
Well, guess what. I don’t need anyone’s help and I don’t need anyone to speak for me. This time, I’ll make sure everyone hears what I have to say.
Plus, if Konrad’s dumb enough to believe that I’d actually want to be his friend, he deserves every last thing comin
g his way.
Slowly, I turn toward him. And I smile. Because I actually feel like smiling.
“Sure,” I say. “Let’s do it.”
CHAPTER 21
KONRAD
“WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM?” BECCA SCREECHES. “You’ve been avoiding me all week. Now you don’t even want to have sex? Are you gay?”
At this point, I’m totally regretting my decision to come up to her room. I figured it’d be easier for everyone involved to break up with her in a safe space. But this is our sex den. We only come up here to have sex. I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess I must’ve felt a little sentimental since—if all goes well—I’ll never be coming up here again.
I exhale. “You know I’m not gay.”
“Then you have someone on the side,” she says. She glares at me, arms crossed over her cheerleading top. She’s trying to appear calm, but her nostrils are flaring. “It’s the only logical explanation. Guys your age don’t turn down sex from girls like me unless they are gay or getting it from someone else. Who is it? It’s Handy Ashley, isn’t it?”
I rub my face down with my hands. “Stop it with Ashley already.”
“Wait,” she says. “Carrie? Oh my God, I knew that skank was making eyes at you!”
“It’s not Carrie.”
Becca jumps from the bed and starts pacing around her room. “You know what, Konrad? If homecoming wasn’t around the corner, I would so consider breaking up with you right now.”
She stops moving to gauge my reaction. This is good. This is my chance.
I’m about to speak when her stern look morphs into a sad puppy face. She falls to the bed and glues herself to my side, her head tilting onto my shoulder.
I freeze. I did not see this coming. Her breath tickles my ear, and her fingers run up and down my arm. “It’s okay if you did it with Ashley,” she near-whispers. “Just don’t do it again, okay? And don’t tell anybody.”
I jerk away. “You wouldn’t mind if I was sleeping around?”
“I’m not saying I wouldn’t mind.” She shrugs. “But there are a lot of studies out there that prove humans aren’t meant to be monogamous.”
“What about your reputation? What you told me? You’re kind of contradicting yourself right now, you know.”
“You and me going to homecoming is a lot more important to my reputation right now.” Sighing, she grabs for her laptop, and flips it open. “This is the jacket I want you to get.” She leans in closer, her big eyes rolling over the screen. “We can go downtown tomorrow. I want to see it on you first. Everything has to be perfect.”
I shoot up to my feet. When I put enough distance between us, I turn to face her.
“Also,” she adds without lifting her gaze from the screen, “we need to talk about what we’re wearing for Spirit Week.”
“Becca,” I start, and then I pause, taking her in. Her long brown hair, which I’ve thought about putting in my mouth more than once because it smells that good. The always too-short cheerleader skirt. Those breasts—God, I’m going to miss those breasts.
But what has to be done has to be done.
Last Saturday, just as she’d promised, Camilla came with me to the barcade. We played Frogger for almost two hours and feasted on the best vanilla ice cream floats I have ever had. This morning, I picked her up for school because I knew she didn’t have a ride. So far, I have seen her smile a total of twenty-four times. (Yes, I counted.) I don’t want to jinx anything, but I think Camilla is starting to like me back. And just thinking about all this has me convinced that I’d rather spend a minute in her presence than a whole hour making out with Becca.
“Becca,” I try again, and this time, succeed. “I can’t.”
She looks up. Her blue eyes darken. “You can’t what?” she asks, even though I know she knows exactly what I mean.
“I want to break up.”
Becca’s hand reaches to shut the laptop, but her eyes never leave mine, not even for a millisecond. Her beautiful chest rises and falls as she takes one deep breath after another. “Can’t this wait until after homecoming?”
“No,” I say firmly. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re making a mistake.”
I slip my hands into my pockets. “I don’t think so.”
“You are.”
“Okay,” I say with a shrug. “I guess I am.” I wish I could feel bad, but honestly, I don’t, so why force it? Weeks of dating this girl and there’s nothing that even remotely resembles a flicker of sadness within me. “Look, you can say you broke up with me if you want to.”
Her lips form into a smile so cold, it literally gives me a shudder. “Oh, I plan to.”
“Okay.”
Becca’s hand flies up and does that condescending Muppet wave where your fingers tap the base of your palm. I lift my eyebrows and walk through her door.
Only when I’m striding out of her house do I feel a pinch of doubt. Am I making a mistake? Just because I feel this way about Camilla doesn’t mean Camilla feels the same way about me. Or that she ever will. What if I’m wrong? What if she still hates me? What I’ve just done is irreversible. Becca and me are over, and Becca is so damn hot.
But this doubt is only a pinch. A tiny black splotch on an otherwise colorful canvas of relief and excitement and hope. Becca talks. Camilla listens. And when Camilla talks, I actually care about what’s coming out of her mouth. Camilla’s the one for me.
I’m going to do it. I’m going to ask Camilla to homecoming.
And I’m going to do it right now.
I reach for my phone and start typing, but immediately delete what I’ve written and put it away. My dad’s words echo in my head: Surprises. Girls love surprises.
On the way to her house, I consider buying flowers. Do you buy flowers when you ask someone to homecoming? God, I have no idea. How funny is it that I’m racking my brain over something as stupid as a school dance—an event I couldn’t have cared less about a week ago.
No flowers. Too cheesy.
Across the street from Camilla’s house, an empty spot calls my name. I fill it with my Toyota and cut the engine. The car goes silent and still. My palms are covered in sweat. Reaching up, I pull down the visor and study my reflection in the little mirror.
When I look at Camilla, I don’t see her ID anymore. I see Camilla. But I know it’s not the same for her. This, right here in the mirror, the result of my ID, is the very thing Camilla dislikes most about me. The thing that reminds her of her pain.
But, then again, it’s also the thing that brought us together.
Tilting my head back, I check for boogers and get out of the car. Downstairs, her house is enveloped in darkness, but there’s an orange glow coming from Camilla’s window upstairs. I ring the doorbell and wait.
The lock on the other side of the door clicks. She appears in front of me wearing sweatpants and a black T-shirt. The second I see her, my heart flutters.
“Oh, hey,” she says, pushing her hair behind her ear. Her forehead wrinkles a bit. “It’s you. Again.”
I laugh. I love her sense of humor. “What are you up to?” I ask.
She looks over her shoulder and shrugs. “Just hanging out.”
“Cool.”
Both of us wait for the other to say something. One of her eyebrows lifts. “Do you want to come in or something?”
“Sure.”
She backs into her living room, holding the door open for me. I step inside, immediately comforted by the coziness of the place. It’s nothing like Becca’s huge, piano-decorated living room. Nobody plays piano at the Lipowska house. I asked. I kick off my sneakers and line them up against the wall. “Your mom here?”
Camilla’s eyes linger on my shoes. “No,” she says and looks up. “But she should be back soon.” Her hand gestures to the couch. “Um, sit down? Want some water?”
“That would be great.”
But she doesn’t get it right away. “Did something happen?”
No, I thi
nk, but it’s about to!
I make a face like what are you talking about? She hesitates, as if not entirely convinced, but disappears into the kitchen to fetch my drink.
When she returns to the room with a glass, I’m sitting on the couch, smack in the middle so she’ll have no choice but to sit close to me. “I thought you’d be hanging out with Becca tonight,” she says, passing me the water.
“I did. For the last time ever.”
Her eyes brighten with curiosity. “What do you mean?”
“We broke up.”
“Huh,” she says. “Sorry to hear that.” But Camilla doesn’t look sorry. My stomach twists in delight. This is a good sign. She crosses the room to the dining room table and pulls out a chair. Damn. One step forward, one step back.
Lowering herself, she adopts a perfect sitting posture. One of her hands squeezes the other. I observe her, entranced.
After having just seen Becca, it’s hard not to compare the two. Take their reactions to my gaze for example. When she knows I’m looking, Becca basks in it, lounging around like it’s an extension of her natural habitat. Like she’s entitled to it as much as she’s entitled to air. But when Camilla catches me looking, there’s a guaranteed retraction. Whether it’s a tiny blush or a shift in her body weight, it’s as if my gaze is a luxury she feels unworthy of.
And I can’t stop looking at her.
“So something did happen,” she says. “You lied.” Her lips turn inward and disappear in a brief smile. “Why’d you guys break up? You were, like, the perfect couple.” She says the last part like the words have left a bitter taste in her mouth. Another good sign.
“Nah,” I answer. “Appearances can be deceiving.”
Camilla’s cheek twitches under her left eye. She shifts in her chair and clears her throat. “Yeah,” she says. “They sure can be.” If she wants to hear more about Becca, she doesn’t ask. Instead, she sighs. “So, Pajama Day on Monday, eh?”
“Yup.”
“You dressing up?”
“I think so.”
She nods and looks around the room. This is my chance to dive right in, to ask her before her mom gets home and potentially ruins my game.
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