“And no Jake?” she called after me, and it was like those words had rooted me to the ground. I had to turn and look at her to see what she’d say next when I should have just kept walking. “You think everything’s going your way and then . . . poof. It all falls apart.”
Either she was intensely psychotic and trying to upset me, or more intuitive than I’d given her credit for and somehow figured out that things were not going well in my life. “Enjoy the party,” I told her. “I don’t want to keep you. I’m sure you have plans to convince one of these girls to trade her voice for a pair of legs.”
I stormed off, not looking where I was going and nearly clotheslined myself with a row of white twinkling Christmas lights. I noticed a big white tent off to my right that had the word “Massages” on a sign out front. I ducked inside. I was in desperate need of a massage to relieve some of this anger. I didn’t want to get kicked out for acting on some violent tendencies.
Fortunately, they had a table free and led me to a curtained off area where I did my best to relax and enjoy myself and not think about Ella, Kenyetta, Mercedes, Trent, or Jake.
Especially Jake.
About twenty minutes later, I felt tons better and remembered that I was supposed to rescue Ella from the tweenagers.
I looked all over the backyard but couldn’t find her. And since her phone was still missing, it wasn’t like I could call her.
Again not looking where I was going, I almost ran straight into Bahati.
“Mattie! Are you enjoying yourself?”
I nodded enthusiastically. I wasn’t going to let one bad Mercedes run-in ruin my day. “I am. The massage tent is amazing.”
She leaned in and whispered, “I thought it might be nice for the adults to have a place to escape to.”
That she had been involved with the planning kind of surprised me. Maybe she and Dr. Drummond were more serious than Kenyetta had let on.
“Good thinking,” I said. “You haven’t by chance seen my sister, have you?”
“Yes. I saw her in the house, in the library.”
“Thanks.” I started to walk away because I’d done enough interfering recently, but I couldn’t help myself. “Hey, Dr. Okafor?”
“Bahati, please.”
“Bahati. I know this is none of my business, and you didn’t ask what I thought, but I’ve been where Kenyetta is. My dad got married a bunch of times, and I’ve had more stepmoms than anyone should have. I know what it’s like to be the only person in your father’s life and then to have to suddenly share him with someone else. Maybe you could show her that you becoming part of her family doesn’t mean less time and attention, but more.” Bahati looked at me, and I didn’t know her well enough to read her expression. Had I offended her? I’d probably overstepped. She was a grown woman and a doctor, for crying out loud. She didn’t need my help. I began to walk away. “But what do I know? Still just a teenager.”
I found Ella in the library, reading a magazine.
“Mercedes is here,” I warned her. “We had some words. None of them were nice.”
“I saw her take off a little while ago.”
“Did she leave by her own choice or was an exorcism required?” I asked.
Ella just smiled and shook her head at me.
“So why are you holed up in here instead of being out with the party and getting all glamorous?” Like I knew she normally loved doing.
She shrugged one shoulder. “I kind of wanted to be alone with my thoughts for a bit.”
Uh-oh. “And what did you and your alone thoughts talk about?”
“Mostly Trent.”
I sat down in the armchair across from her. “And?”
“This morning I found out that Liam Fiorelli is going to be okay. He’ll have some scarring on his face from the fire, which is a shame because he’s ridiculously gorgeous, but he’s going to make it. And I think it’s kind of sad that I was more upset about my favorite rock star getting into an accident than I was about my so-called boyfriend kissing another girl. I’ve been trying to figure out why, and I think it’s probably because I knew this was coming. Not the him kissing somebody else part, but I’ve been preparing for our breakup for a while. I hurt the whole time he ignored me, and we drifted apart, bit by bit.”
“Oh, Ella.” It was so sad.
“I think that’s why it doesn’t hurt quite as much today. I’m not devastated, when I probably should be.”
“Well, are you at least going to confront him?” Because Trent deserved to be confronted. And possibly slapped around.
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
I hit the arm on my chair with my fist, which made it ache a little bit. Looked like I wasn’t fully recovered yet. “Don’t let your fear of confrontation let him get away with it!”
“It’s not that I’m afraid to talk to him. I know I sometimes run away instead of standing up for myself. But there’s nothing to be said. If he doesn’t know that what he did was wrong, me telling him it was messed up is not going to help. He’s a footnote, and I deserve to be treated better. I’m accepting what’s happened, and I want to let go. I’ll feel sad for a little while, and then I’m going to move on with my life.”
She was way too forgiving. “I can’t believe you’re letting him off that easy. He should suffer at least a little.”
“I think you took care of that for me.”
I snorted. “In case you were wondering, punching a cheating jerk is highly satisfying.”
“If only I’d had this article a few weeks ago, all of this might have been avoided.” She held up an issue of Seventeen. “Remember this? I used to love this magazine.”
We were about the right age for it now, but Ella had subscribed to it when she was eleven and then graduated to Cosmopolitan when she was fifteen. I had secretly read some of her stash, and the one thing I remembered about Seventeen was an article that said I should practice kissing on my hand. Which turned out to be faulty advice since kissing Jake for the first time was nothing like kissing my hand.
“Why?” I read through a few of the article titles on the cover. “How would knowing how to straighten your hair like a pro have helped you out?”
“No, the ‘How to Tell If Your Guy’s Cheating on You.’ Listen to this list.” Ella began to read, and as she did so, my heart started pounding loudly in my chest.
“He’s suddenly uncommunicative. Tells stories to explain his absence. Has secretive phone calls and texts. Has cheated in the past. Shows a decrease in affection. Misses important dates and events. Changes his routine and spends less time with you.”
As Ella read through the list, all I could think was Jake. That’s Jake. Jake does that. Jake, Jake, Jake, Jake . . .
When she finished, I groaned and put my face in my hands. “Oh my Buddha. My boyfriend is cheating on me, too.”
That made Ella stop reading. “What? Why would you say that?”
I started using my fingers to tick off my reasons. “He’s always taking these private, mysterious calls and texts. He leaves the room to talk on his phone. Something is going on with him, and he won’t tell me. He’s missing chances to make out. He is skipping important prom meetings and didn’t come to the birthday party today. The only thing he hasn’t done on your list is cheat in the past.”
“Well . . .”
My eyes went wide, and my heart slammed hard into my rib cage. What was she implying? “Well what? What does that mean?”
“I mean technically, and this is only technically, Jake had feelings for you while he was dating me. He kind of emotionally cheated, even if you guys didn’t kiss until after we broke up.”
“That doesn’t count!” Or did it? Had Jake been a cheater this whole time and I just hadn’t known it?
Was this why Mercedes had been so smug? Had she finally accomplished her goal and landed Jake behind my back? My stomach flipped over, and I felt dangerously close to barfing all over Dr. Drummond’s very expensive-looking area rug.
&nbs
p; “I don’t know why I said that.” Ella put one of her hands on top of mine and squeezed. “I’m a little insane right now. You need to ignore everything I’m saying. Jake is not a cheater. You know that, right? He’d never do that to you. He cares about you too much.”
“Before last night, wouldn’t you have said the same thing about Trent?”
At that, Ella fell silent. There was nothing she could say. Even if he’d become distant, neither one of us could have predicted what Trent would do or who he would be kissing that was not Ella.
Was this why Jake was pulling away from me? Was it why he hadn’t asked me to prom yet? Because he didn’t plan on going with me?
I stood up. “If he’s cheating on me, I want to know.”
She looked confused. “How are you going to know? If he is cheating on you, my guess is he probably won’t tell you the truth if you ask him.”
“You and I, dear sister, are going to follow him. I’m going to find out, one way or another, whether he’s stepping out on me.”
Ella sighed. “You do know that’s crazy, right?”
I nodded. Maybe I was crazier than a bag of rabid weasels, but I was not going to keep living in this limbo. If Jake was cheating on me, I was going to catch him in the act. I wanted actual proof and not just these gut-wrenching, heart-twisting suspicions.
Time to get my Nancy Drew on.
CHAPTER TEN
Ella and I spent the rest of the weekend eating more ice cream, and instead of dwelling on Trent like I’d thought we would, we strategized on the best way to find out whether or not Jake was cheating. (Although Ella kept insisting that he would never betray me and I was acting like an insane person. And I so wanted to believe that, but when you’re a realist and a pessimist, things don’t exactly work that way.)
In our first class together Monday morning, I told her, “We need to launch our plan soon. To see where he’s going and who he’s meeting up with.” Mostly because I suspected the anxiety was currently eating away at my stomach lining, and I wanted an answer before things got much worse.
“Text him and ask him what he’s doing today,” she instructed. I did as she said, and to my surprise, Jake wrote back almost immediately. How sad that a quick response now seemed uncharacteristic.
“He says, ‘Got some baseball stuff. Sorry.’”
“So now we follow him after school. See if he goes to practice, and if he does, we’ll follow him after. We should hang out in the parking lot, too, in case he skips it. If he does, we’ll start following him right away. Those are our best options, I think.” We agreed to meet up after school as quickly as possible and stake out his beloved red sports car.
In between third period and fourth period, Ella came running up to me at my locker. She looked so happy that for a brief moment I wondered whether Trent had come crawling back, begging for forgiveness or if that Liam Whatever guy announced that the doctors had been mistaken and his face would be fine. Instead she announced, “Mattie! Someone found my phone!”
She held her bedazzled cell phone up with both hands, like she was presenting it to all the animals on the savannah.
“Where was it?”
“Out on the football field. I must have dropped it while I was helping out the squad for tryouts.”
She looked at it with so much love I considered asking if they needed some time alone with it. “I’m glad. Although it’s dead, right? I guess you can charge it when we get home.”
Ella raised one eyebrow. She reached into her purse and pulled out a charger.
“You have a charger with you even though you didn’t know where your phone was?” I asked, incredulous.
“Duh.” She rolled her eyes at me like I did when somebody said they’d forgotten to eat that day. I forgot things all the time. Where I put my keys. The capital of Delaware. How much money my dad had said I was allowed to spend at the art supply store. But not once have I ever done something so dumb as forget to eat.
The mounted flat-screen in our hallway turned on. It was used for announcements and the student broadcast news, which aired once a week during first period. I turned, wondering what was going on.
A very famous Irish action star who’d made a movie about his teen daughter being kidnapped appeared on-screen. Gasps and whispered conversation exploded up and down the hallway as everybody watched and waited to hear what he would say.
“Rita, Aaron wants you to know that he doesn’t have a lot of money. But what he does have is a very special set of skills, skills that include dancing, making conversation, and opening the door for you. Skills that will make your prom night a dream come true. If you say yes to prom now, this will be the end of it. Aaron won’t look for you. He won’t pursue you. But if you say no, I will look for you. I will find you, and I will convince you to say yes to prom.”
While the famous actor part was cool, the rest of it had me shaking my head. “I don’t know if threatening a girl is the best way to get her to go.”
“I thought it was sweet and romantic,” Ella said. “It probably got her heart racing.”
“Yeah. Out of fear.”
Because my attention was still turned toward the TV screen near the windows, I spotted Jake heading toward the parking lot. So much for practice. “Ella! Jake’s leaving. We have to go now!”
I slammed my locker door shut and pulled her along behind me. I kept checking on Jake’s progress, and I saw that he got stopped by one of his friends, a tall football player guy named Deacon. Perfect. This would give us the time we needed to get into our car first so we could follow him.
“What are you doing?” my sister protested, but I didn’t let go of her arm. “We can’t just leave school.”
“It’s called ditching, Ella. You should try it sometime. Like right now. Come on, hurry!”
“What if we get caught?”
I kicked open the swinging outer doors using my foot. “I’m the student body president. I’ll issue us pardons. Move your tiny little legs!”
We ran all the way to the car, and my breathing like an asthmatic elephant made me remember how out of shape I was. I decided to drive, given that if Ella had her way she’d just take us right back to school.
And probably turn us both in.
“He could be going home,” Ella said as I pulled out of the school’s driveway and parked on the street.
“Then we’ll sit out in front of his house and see who else shows up.”
“Are you sure you want to find out?” she asked, using our car’s charger to breathe life back into her cell. “Ignorance can be bliss. Sort of. It at least lets you delay the inevitable.”
I shook my head. “I want to know. I have to. Like when you got tested a few months ago for the BRCA2 gene. You wanted to know one way or the other.” Ella’s mom had carried the gene, and Ella wanted to know if she had the same risk. We’d all been so relieved when it came back negative.
“Are you seriously comparing your delusions about Jake with me trying to find out whether I was going to live or die from cancer?”
“No! Of course not.” Yes, of course I was. This Jake thing felt very life and death to me. But I knew how shallow and pathetic that would make me sound so I stayed quiet up until I heard the roar of Jake’s sports car. I hissed, “Get down!”
She reluctantly complied and might have even muttered some things under her breath, which was very unlike her. “He’s going to notice you eventually, Miss Purple Hair.”
“No way. I got this. I’ve seen plenty of cop shows, and I know all about how to tail someone.”
Jake turned left while I had anticipated he’d turn right. Which meant that my car was pointed in the wrong direction. Taking the name of various deities in vain, I executed a quick U-turn so that I could follow him, making the tires squeal.
“Tell me again how this is not being a stalker?” Ella demanded, clinging to her side of the car as she was thrown against the door.
“It’s not stalking if you really love the person.”
Ella frowned at me. “I’m pretty sure every stalker thinks they really love the person.”
It was only two days ago that I was at Kenyetta’s birthday party, sarcastically telling Mercedes that I belonged to Stalkers Anonymous, and now I probably needed to apply. “I’m just verifying his whereabouts. Without him knowing it. That’s on the low end of the crazy scale.”
She started going through her purse. “You’re so far past crazy you couldn’t get back there with a map. You should just get him chipped like people do with their pets, and then you’ll always know where he is.”
“Whoa, what is up with you being all Miss Snarktastic?” I was both annoyed and proud at how much my sister sounded like me.
“I was looking for books online on how to get over a breakup, and I found that Eat, Pray, Love one, and I thought that sounded good, but I’m stuck on the first part. And I’m snarky because I’ve recently discovered that I have OCD.”
“OCD?” I repeated. Wouldn’t someone have told me if Ella had been diagnosed with something that serious?
“Obsessive Chocolate Disorder.” She pulled out a bag of M&M’s and held it up triumphantly. “Right now all I want to do is eat candy until my kidneys explode.”
“That doesn’t sound like the best plan,” I warned her, but she shrugged me off.
Jake pulled into a gas station, and I parked my car on the street, where I could see him and he hopefully wouldn’t notice us. He got out of his car and entered his credit card, then put the nozzle into his gas tank. He leaned against his car, staring at the pump.
“Why is he on this side of town at a gas station?”
“To get gas?” Ella offered sarcastically in between tossing M&M’s into her mouth. “You were right. He’s obviously up to no good with his nefarious schemes to put gas in his car.”
“I think you may have a sugar addiction that turns you into a not nice person. Admitting you have a problem is the first step.”
She swallowed her mouthful. “Says the girl currently stalking her boyfriend.”
Well, she had me there.
“I’m going to call him and ask him where he is. Let’s see if he lies to me.” I dialed his number and waited.
The Promposal (The Ugly Stepsister Series Book 2) Page 8
