Petra makes a slashing motion across her neck and hisses, “Abort, abort.”
“Oh, um, I mean . . .” I widen my eyes at her. “Did you? . . . What were we talking about?”
“Do you have any special interests?” Petra saves me, and continues filling the air with questions to deflect Anna’s attention. “What clubs did you belong to? Any photography experience? Surely you play a musical instrument.”
Anna finally snaps her head up from her book. “She is not joining the band.”
The two of them stare each other down hard. To break the tension, I blurt out, “Sorry, I don’t play any instruments.”
“Doesn’t hurt to ask,” Petra says, and turns to me. “We really need someone to play the bass.”
“Your marching band needs a bass drum player?” Anna rolls her eyes again and I mumble, “Sorry. I’m not really a drumline sort of girl—missing the rhythm gene.”
With a sigh, Anna goes back to reading, and the girl with the tight headband chimes in. “How about photography? We could use someone on the yearbook staff.”
“I’m not too bad with a camera,” I say, and it’s true. All the years spent studying movies have given me a decent eye for setting up a shot. At least, I know enough to pay attention to background composition and make sure it doesn’t look like a tree is growing from the top of someone’s head.
“That’s great!” Petra tucks her bobbed hair behind both ears. “Listen, we’re meeting in the library after school. The yearbook committee needs to get started now with selling ads and collecting baby photos of the seniors.”
Anna gives Petra a look that clearly says, Stop talking now, but Petra ignores her.
The girl with the tight hairband says, “Yearbook is the best. Anna already got a very unflattering photograph of Princess Kaia over there scarfing down a bag of chips like a gavone.”
Anna smiles for the first time. “It’s going on one of our ‘candid collage’ pages.”
I think of Kaia making herself throw up in private and feel a wave of empathy for what must feel like an endless cycle of eating and purging. It sounds even worse than Sisyphus’s curse.
I turn around in my seat to look at her, and most of my warm, empathetic thoughts go cold. I didn’t even manage to slow down her luring of Colton. They’re on the same trajectory as yesterday.
When I turn back to my table, everyone is watching me with obvious pity. I shrug and try sounding casual. “Hey, I heard the pizza here is pretty good.”
Picking up my slice, I take a tiny bite. Nope. Still horrible.
As the lunch period winds down, I excuse myself from the table and head to the one spot where I know Colton and Kaia will be after lunch: the entrance to the girls’ bathroom. It’s my final chance to make this do-over worthwhile and win Colton back.
Parking myself beside the swinging door, I stand guard as if I’m a bouncer collecting a cover charge from underclassmen.
Finally, I spot Kaia and Colton walking arm in arm down the hallway, and it’s as if Kaia has some sort of radar that can detect my plan to steal Colton away from her. She eyes me up and down as I lean against the wall, pretending to consult my phone.
I look helplessly at Colton and ask him which direction room 305 is in. Since I’ve now spent a day and a half wandering around these hallways, I’m actually pretty confident the room is to my left, but acting helpless seems like the most efficient way to get him away from Kaia. Colton can’t seem to resist playing superhero.
Before he can respond, Kaia displays an amazing capacity for quick thinking. Placing a hand delicately on his chest, she says, “Colton, honey, I forgot my planner in my locker—would you be a dear and grab it for me?” She looks me directly in the eye and adds, “It’s pink.”
Colton grins at her. “Sure, no problem. I’ll grab it on my way back from dropping Andie off at her class. What’s your locker number and combo?”
She turns her back to me and quietly gives him the information, making it clear she doesn’t trust me. I try to give her a confident smirk of victory, but as soon as I catch her eye, she smacks her head with her palm as if she’s just remembered something else.
I figure she’s going to tell him to skip the whole locker scheme since it didn’t get him away from me anyway, but instead she doubles down on her lie. “I forgot that I really need it before class so I can get back to Casey about our plans later on.” She smiles at him. “Any chance you could meet me back here with it? I’m sure Andie can find her way once she’s pointed in the right direction.” She aims her smile at me. “Isn’t that right, Andie?”
Man, she’s good, I think as I involuntarily nod my head yes.
Colton points me down the path I already know I need to take, which is, of course, the opposite way he’s heading. As I walk away, I kick myself for allowing Kaia to dissect me from Colton’s life so easily.
The rest of the day plays out basically the same way it did the first time: Kaia convinces Colton to usher me onto the bus, where I ride home like the friendless mutant I am. The pizza I ate disagrees with my stomach, and I’m reduced to eating Puffs ’o Oat cereal for the second night in a row. Too late, I remember the yearbook committee meeting I was invited to and think, Well, there’s another bridge I’ve burned. Just more evidence in my horrible-person casefile, since Petra seemed really nice too.
I can’t even think about facing the pink couch.
Mom’s clearly disappointed when I turn down her invitation to watch a movie.
“I’m heading in early,” I tell her when she enticingly waves a DVD case. On the cover is Mathew Broderick as Ferris Bueller, leaning back with his hands behind his head as he takes his day off. I didn’t share as many details of my day with Mom this time, so I guess she arrived at a different movie suggestion.
“You sure?” Mom grins and recites the movie’s tagline about how fast life can fly by. She quips, “You need to make sure you don’t miss it.”
No danger of that. “I’m okay with fast-forwarding through tonight,” I say, but then I get an idea. “Let me just see what else is left in the glass case.”
She slides out of my way, and I start poking around the shelves of her collection. When I’m positive she’s not looking, I open the pink plastic case to Pretty in Pink and snap the DVD neatly in half, fake-coughing to cover the sound. I close the pieces back in the case before she notices.
“Sorry, I thought something might catch my eye, but I’m just really tired.” I turn and give Mom an exaggerated yawn. “We’ll watch something cool together tomorrow night, I promise. Maybe The Breakfast Club.”
She looks so happy at this suggestion, I want to cry. As I make my way slowly up the stairs, I feel bad for deceiving my mother and for breaking one of her precious movies, but that Pretty in Pink DVD had to go.
chapter 7
I hear the music playing and I don’t even need to open my eyes to know where I am. On the enormous pink couch, with the DVD menu from Pretty in Pink playing on the television. And it’s the first day of school.
I sit up and look around at the rosy morning light. I really thought today would be different. When Dad comes whistling in to ask if I would like pancakes, I say, “I really, really don’t feel well,” and I’m not lying.
He walks over and takes my temperature, using the very scientific method of holding the back of his hand against my forehead.
“Cool as a cucumber,” he cheerfully announces. “Nothing a nice, hot stack of pancakes won’t fix. Do you mind turning that music off?”
“Sure, no problem.” I walk over, hit eject, and snap the DVD in half again. I shove the broken pieces underneath one of the cushions of the pink leather couch, wondering if I should try burying them in the yard. Or perhaps I should be digging a couch-sized grave.
When Mom walks in with her unbounded excitement over this endless first day of school, I repeat the news that I’m not feeling well. To take my temperature, she uses the much more accurate method of touching her lips to my fo
rehead, but her assessment is the same as Dad’s.
“You feel fine, sweetie. Probably just nervous about your big first day.” She grins. “Are you planning on wearing that dress?”
I flip the stiff pink skirt into the air and it happily floats back down and settles around my thighs. “It doesn’t matter.” I sit down hard.
When Dad waves a plate of pancakes in front of me, I just stare at them. “What is causing this?”
I don’t realize I’ve asked the question out loud until Mom pats my head. “Don’t question it. Just enjoy it. Your dad’s guilt over moving you your senior year of high school won’t last forever.”
“What?” I look at her dumbly.
Mom furrows her brow. “The pancakes? You asked what was causing them.”
Could it be something as simple as the pancakes causing my . . . whatever this is? Hallucination? Time loop? Mental breakdown? I shove the plate away from me. “I’m going upstairs to lie down for a little while before I have to get ready for school.”
“So exciting,” Mom says. “First day!”
“Yup.” I walk away. “First day.”
As soon as I close my bedroom door, I rip off the crazy pink dress and pull on my flannel flowered jammies. This is insane. There is zero chance I am mentally okay right now.
I jam my fingers against my neck to take my pulse and confirm my heart is beating quickly. This is the extent of my health examination know-how. Heart beating? Yup, I’m alive.
I start pacing around my room, and think about asking my dad for a diagnosis. The image of myself sitting in a straitjacket fills my mind, and I shove the thought away. My mother would be more likely to believe me. But even her creative mind won’t be able to wrap itself around all this and come up with a reasonable explanation. She’ll just tell Dad, which leads us right back to the straitjacket scenario.
I look to my phone for help, but there’s no one I can think to text. I can’t even consult Rhonda, since I’ve been awful at staying in touch with her over the summer. First, I was busy with the move, and then I discovered the joys of stalking Colton at the movie theater. She even accused me of sounding like I’m obsessed with him. I hate it when best friends are right. If I write to her now, she’ll just say Colton’s the problem.
Which reminds me. I look at the small white clock on my end table. He’ll be arriving in a little while to drive me to school. Flinging myself onto my bed, I roll over and face the wall. I can’t go through this again. I’m staying in these jammies.
Mom calls up, asking how I’m feeling, and I call back down, “Tell Colton to go ahead without me when he gets here. I’m not going to school today.”
I can hear Mom quickly stomping up the stairs to my bedroom, and feel the breeze as she flings open the door. “What are you talking about, Andie? You can’t miss your first day at the new school.” Looking at my jammies, she adds, “And where’s that pretty dress you were just wearing?”
I gesture to it lying in a heap in the corner. “I’ve already done this. I’m not doing it again.”
Mom comes over to sit on the edge of my bed. “Honey, I know this is hard, getting to know all new people. But you were so excited last night. What happened? I thought you were hoping Colton might be your first kiss.”
First kiss . . . I sit up like I’ve been struck by a lightning bolt. “We did wish for that together, didn’t we?”
She laughs. “I just wished for your first kiss to be with your true love.”
My mind is busy whirring as I nod to Mom in response.
She stands up and moves toward the door. “You still have some time.” Her voice goes firm. “But even if you’re wearing those jammies, you are going to school today.”
I lie back down in aggravation, and she laughs as she closes the door.
But the first kiss idea won’t leave me alone. I try to remember everything that happened back before this time-loopy thing started. We were definitely talking about my first kiss being with my true love, and I wonder, Could that really be the answer? Like some sort of fairy tale story where the kiss from the prince awakens the sleeping/poisoned/brainwashed/time-repeating girl?
Maybe Colton doesn’t even need to fall in love first. Maybe true love’s kiss will be how he falls in love with me.
I sit up and grab my laptop. Since I skipped the pancakes, I have an extra while today. A search for “power of true love’s kiss” leads to a bunch of scientific stuff comparing kissing to taking drugs where the chemical dopamine gets released through the system. Which gets boring pretty fast, but it makes me think I’m on the right trail.
Next, I learn all about a group of prairie dogs who do this thing called “greet kissing” to say hello. Apparently, the way they recognize each other is by first making out. After watching an adorable video of two prairie dogs kissing at the zoo, I check to see if prairie dogs are the same things as groundhogs (since Punxsutawney Phil is still high on my list of suspects). They’re not—groundhogs are bigger and less social, with fluffier tails—but I do discover that groundhogs are sometimes called “whistle pigs,” which is kind of perfect.
But also not at all helpful to my situation.
I head down the path of Internet movie trivia about the movie Groundhog Day before deciding that even if the movie is secretly based on true events, it is still true love that breaks Bill Murray’s character free. True love must be the key.
Finally, I discover a page devoted to true love’s kiss as a trope in stories, which I find fascinating. I’m surprised to learn that in Grimms’ original version of “The Frog Prince,” instead of kissing the frog to turn him into a prince, the princess threw him up against the wall. I laugh, imagining the flattened frog turning into a prince with a concussion, who in the story goes ahead and marries the princess anyway.
Reading through the list, I realize that magical true love’s kisses really are everywhere. Besides Disney franchises and fairy tales, they’re in a ton of live-action movies as well. Even The Matrix uses one. Spoiler: after hours of fighting and violence, the most kick-butt female ever, Trinity, saves Neo with a simple kiss. Actually, not simple. It is clearly true love’s first kiss, and it is all-powerful.
Eventually, my research devolves into watching the twenty-five top kissing scenes from movies including The Princess Bride, Clueless, Lady and the Tramp, Spider-Man’s epic upside-down kiss in the 2002 movie version, and finally the very last scene in Sixteen Candles.
Mom already had me watch that Molly Ringwald classic, and I remember Molly’s character, Sam, barely said two words to her crush, Jake, through the whole movie. Yet that final scene of the two of them sitting across from each other on top of a table feels so right and true. And then Molly and her guy leaning over her birthday cake to share their first kiss is one of the very best movie happy endings of all time. (It’s nearly epic enough to make people overlook the inappropriate way the prom queen gets treated, as well as all the offensive Asian jokes. Nearly.) Still, that romantic kiss softly lit by burning birthday candles convinces me I must be onto something big here.
Molly Ringwald is apparently a sage who holds all life’s wisdoms, both real and scripted. And I’m convinced that winning true love’s first kiss will be what sets time moving forward for me again.
I’m getting that kiss from Colton today if it’s the last thing I do.
But if I’m going to make a real impression, I’ll need to shake things up a bit. When Mom pokes her head back in to check on me, I’m already busy, slicking my hair back and securing it into a bun. It’s the style Molly wears at the end of Sixteen Candles.
“That’s the spirit, Andie.” Mom smiles, then can’t resist asking, “What are you planning to wear?” She eyes my flannel PJs.
“No worries, Mom. I’ve got this.”
“Well, I’m not sure what you’ve been doing up here all this time, but you’ll need to hurry if you want to be ready on time.”
“I just had to watch a few quick movie clips,” I say.
> Mom shakes her head. “Andie, you really don’t have time now—”
“Molly Ringwald has helped me figure out everything.” I innocently smile at her. I have all the time in the world.
“Okay, well, then . . . Good, I guess.” Mom gives me a puzzled look before closing the door. After a beat, she calls, “I’ll be downstairs if you need me.” Which is code for she’s going down to talk to Dad about my worrisome behavior.
I go back to the mirror and turn my head from side to side, noting how shiny my hair looks when it’s plastered this tight against my head. Not to mention the fact that my face is suddenly all cheekbones. I don’t know why I haven’t tried this hairstyle before. I suppose I’ve never felt the need to make a drastic change in my appearance in the hopes of breaking free from a painful, never-ending day. But there’s a first time for everything.
Giving my head an extra healthy dose of hairspray, I move to my mother’s room to borrow her cosmetics. If I’m going to win Colton’s heart, copying Kaia’s makeup just might help. Leaning toward the mirror above Mom’s dresser, I go to work with the shadow and liner.
It does not go well.
Applying a smoky eye is difficult—but making my two smoky eyes even is the real challenge. In my quest for symmetry, I keep adding liner and shadow to one side and then the other again and again. By the time Dad comes upstairs, I look like I’ve been double-punched in the eyes.
“Is there something you’d like to discuss, pumpkin?” he asks.
I project my anxiety back onto him by wailing, “I’ve told you that calling me pumpkin makes me feel like I’m a freak with red hair.”
“You have literally never told me that.” Dad looks more annoyed than upset.
“Well, think about it.” I scoop up Mom’s makeup caddy and make my way to the bathroom.
“Andie—”
Pretty in Punxsutawney Page 8
