I watched as he took his phone out of his pocket, looked at the screen, pushed a button, and then put it back in his pocket. I heard his voice mail on my end. I immediately hung up.
Gasping in outrage, I said, “Did he just do that? Did he seriously just do that? He sent me to voice mail?”
“I saw this news report that said it’s bad to talk on cell phones around gas. Something about them making the pumps blow up.”
She was not going to make excuses for him. “Isn’t it like one of those Ten Commandments? Thou shalt answer the phone when thy girlfriend calls?”
Ella started sorting out her candy by color. “I’m pretty sure those are about not killing people and stuff like that.”
“Exactly. Because when you deliberately ignore your girlfriend’s phone calls she might kill you!” I took out my phone and started to text him. Send me to voice mail, would he?
Ella grabbed my cell out of my hand.
“Hey!” I protested. “I want to text that idiot and tell him that I saw what he just did.”
“You need to curb your textual impulses because if you tell him that you saw him do it, you’ll also have to tell him that you’re watching him like a psycho. And that won’t go over well, and you’ll blow your entire operation.”
Wasn’t she the one who didn’t even want to come? “I thought you didn’t want to be a part of this.”
“Well, now I’m invested, and I want to see how it all turns out.”
I crossed my arms and huffed once or twice. She was right, of course, but I still couldn’t believe he’d sent me to voice mail. Jake finished pumping his gas and walked into the convenience store. “He just paid for his gas. Why would he go inside?”
“To use the restroom? To buy some gum? To rob the place? There could be all kinds of reasons.”
“Or because the girl he’s seeing works there.”
Ella squinted at the store. “It’s a woman old enough to be his grandmother at the register. And I don’t think he’s into that. It looks like Jake’s buying snacks.”
A few minutes later, he came back out with several bags filled with junk food. He got out his cell phone and started doing something on it.
“Is he texting me?” I asked Ella. “To apologize for his earlier behavior?”
She checked my cell. “Nope. Tilly, he could be doing a thousand things. Watching a video where men injure themselves deliberately. Counting up all the calories in that massive amount of food he just bought. Maybe he’s looking for an address on Google Maps so he knows where to go next.”
“I’ll tell him where he can go,” I muttered. “Because that’s more snacks than just Jake can eat. I’ve seen him when he’s hungry, and it was a little like a starving hippo at the zoo during feeding time, but what he has now seems excessive even for him.”
Jake drove out to the street, and I continued stalking him. Er, vigorously verifying his whereabouts. I gripped the steering wheel tightly. Even though the bigger part of my brain kept reassuring me that he wouldn’t cheat, some smaller panicky part tried to prepare me in case it turned out to be true.
Ella announced, “I’m not really going to prom.”
“What do you mean?” I asked her. “Of course you’re going. You’re head of the prom committee.”
“No, I mean, I am going. Somebody has to make sure everything is perfect. I meant I’m not going to have that going with your boyfriend magical night that I’d always dreamed about.”
My heart squeezed hard inside my chest. I wanted that for her. “But you’ll be there with people who care about you, and that’s better than going with someone who kisses pretentious losers in steak houses.”
“I know. It’s just hard when life happens, and you have to alter your plans. When you realize that things aren’t going to be what you’d hoped they would be.” She seemed a little sad, but definitely more mellow. The candy must have done the trick.
“If we find out Jake is cheating on me, we’ll go together and be each other’s dates.”
“Sounds like an excellent plan B. For now, I just have to keep prom and carry on.”
That made me laugh, something I hadn’t been able to do for a few days what with all my worry and concern and anxiety.
Jake pulled into a parking lot, and I realized that it was for a hospital. I found a parking spot not too far off and watched as he got out of his car and headed to the main entrance, still carrying enough snacks to feed a small country.
“That’s a weird place to meet up with someone,” Ella commented.
Should I follow him inside? How would I explain it if we accidentally ran into him? “Maybe he’s dating a nurse. Or one of those candy strippers in those skank outfits.”
“Candy stripers,” she corrected me. “Not strippers.”
“Same difference.”
“Uh, no. I used to be a candy striper, remember?”
It was probably during that time period where I saw Ella as my stepsister and my enemy, since I was deeply envious of her life. Not so much the volunteering and cleaning parts, but the boy she dated part. “You’re not helping. Jake used to date you. Which means he has a type, and he’s gone back to their spawning ground to find another one, and I’m going to walk in on them kissing in a family restaurant, and then I’ll hyperventilate, and then my panic attack will turn into something worse, and I don’t want to die of a heart attack before I turn nineteen.”
She made a thoughtful face. “If Jake is dating a candy striper, at least she’ll be able to help you when that happens.”
I smacked her on the upper arm and she said “Ow!” and I could tell she was trying not to smile. “Maybe he’s here to see a patient.”
Who would Jake be seeing in the hospital? He would have told me if anyone he knew was sick. “Or date one.” A terrible thought occurred to me. “OMB. What if she’s one of those people dying and her Make-A-Wish dream was to date Jake?”
“Then she won’t be competition for very long.”
“Ella!”
“I’m just saying.”
She took out her phone, which finally had enough juice for her to log on. I sat and pondered my next move. Maybe her earlier suggestion of getting him chipped wasn’t so off base. It had some definite merit.
“What the—”
“What? Do you see Jake with someone?” I looked everywhere, even checking behind me, but he wasn’t anywhere visible.
Then I noticed that Ella was shaking. “Someone . . . someone sent Trent a text. They pretended to be me and broke up with him.”
I blinked several times, not really getting what she was saying. “Somebody got on your phone and broke up with Trent? Don’t you have a password?”
“Yes. And no, I don’t have a password. Why would I?”
This was part of the problem when you had all the trust and innocence of a newborn fawn. People took advantage of it. “When was it sent?”
“The day I lost my phone. No wonder he was kissing Bronte. He thought I’d broken up with him.”
The kiss I’d seen didn’t appear to have been a first date kind of kiss. More like they’d been going out for a while and felt comfortable kissing over appetizers. But I wasn’t about to rain on Ella’s parade.
“Did Trent reply to your text?”
“No.”
“Then he doesn’t get a pass. He should have talked to you first. I mean, breaking up with someone is pretty serious. You’d think he would have run it by you to make sure your phone didn’t do some weird auto-correct thing. And to find out why you would just break up with him out of the blue after you’d stood by him for so long.”
She stayed quiet for a minute. “Maybe. I don’t know. I think I should explain it to him.”
“You can if you want to. I don’t think it’ll change anything.”
“I know. I’m not trying to change anything. But I feel like we should have a final conversation. For closure or whatever.”
Maybe I should go with her. And start throwing some
left hooks if dumb boys got out of line. “Up to you.” I checked my phone for the time. “Jake’s been in there a while, and we have no idea if he’s coming out soon. We’ll pick this up another day.” I started the car, and as I was backing out of the parking lot, I turned to my sister to ask the one question neither one of us had voiced yet.
“Who would send Trent a breakup message from your phone?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I tried to think through all the possibilities of who would have broken up with Trent on Ella’s behalf. Her phone had been found out in the football field, so it was possible the jocks had discovered it and thought it would be funny. Especially since Trent had so often been the targeting of their special brand of bullying.
It could have been Deacon. The tall, blond football player friend of Jake’s. Jake had mentioned a while ago that Deacon had a crush on Ella. The same guy I’d seen Jake talking to yesterday. What if he’d done it to clear the field for himself?
Or the cheerleading squad, who were constantly telling Ella to dump Trent and date someone better. Somebody like Deacon. Maybe they decided to take matter into their own freshly manicured hands.
Maybe it was some freshman or sophomore who was deeply envious of Ella and had decided to try and mess up her life.
But I had the sinking feeling that the person who did this was Old Scratch herself, Mercedes Bentley.
Problem was I didn’t know anybody in the police department so I couldn’t beg for a favor and get them to dust Ella’s phone for fingerprints. (Not to mention that Mercedes’s fingerprints probably wouldn’t even show up. Like how vampires don’t have reflections.) There was no way to prove my suspicions. And I could have been wrong. It could have been someone I hadn’t even considered yet. But my gut told me that it was Mercedes.
Jake called at our regular time. “Hey there, Mike Tyson. I was just calling to tell you good night.” His rich, masculine tone made me melt. His voice was almost as hot as his perfect face and body.
Did that make me shallow?
If it did, did I care?
He asked about my day, and I so badly wanted to demand he tell me why he’d gone to the hospital, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want him to know that I’d been following him because I intended to keep doing it until I had my answers. Until I figured out what he’d been up to and why he was being so secretive and distant. I knew I could have just asked him, but I was afraid he’d lie, or he’d push me away, or worse, he’d admit to everything, and then we’d have to break up.
I didn’t really want that to happen just before prom. Even if that did make me superficial.
The next morning Ella and I saw a big commotion right outside the school’s front doors. When we got close enough to see a man talking, it took me a minute to place him. He was Harrison Phillips, host of that reality show about bachelors pretending to fall in love after going on two dates. There were four women lined up and in formal gowns. I wondered if they were from the show.
Right next to the host stood Alan Feldstein in a suit and tie. He cleaned up nicer than I would have expected. He held a metallic pin shaped like a heart in his hands.
His girlfriend Tori stood in front of them, hands over her mouth as she jumped up and down.
“It’s her favorite TV show,” somebody in the crowd said.
Another voice offered, “I think Alan’s dad is Harrison Phillips’s agent. Or manager. Something like that.”
“Now, Tori, it’s time for the final heart.” The host paused, as if he were actually on television and was creating dramatic tension for the upcoming commercial break. “Will you take this piece of Alan’s heart and go to prom with him?”
Then the four evening gown women turned, and each one wore a letter on her back that spelled out PROM.
“Yes, yes, I will!”
The crowd started applauding as Tori threw her arms around Alan. Then he turned her and dipped her, kissing her soundly. More cheering and catcalling.
Ugh. Some people should get a room.
In Iceland. Or Greenland. Whichever one of those was always cold and would force people to stay inside so I didn’t have to see them.
Ella told me she had an appointment with the guidance counselor, something about submitting her current transcripts to UCLA. She said she’d see me later.
I walked slowly to my first class. If Jake was here at school already, there was no way he could have missed Alan’s promposal. There was no way he could have missed any of them. He couldn’t claim ignorance. Not only were they happening all around us, but they were being shared on every social media platform. Daily. Promposals were literally everywhere. Like ants at a picnic.
And yet he still hadn’t asked.
I spotted Trent’s black, spiky fauxhawk in the hallway. A rush of anger followed by indignation that he’d dare to show his face rippled through me.
Surprisingly, I discovered that I was kind of tired of being angry at him. Like Jake had said, my anger was only hurting me. Me being mad did not affect Trent.
I mean, except for when I hit him.
Maybe Jake had also been right about the whole apologizing thing making me feel better. What if it also made me not feel so mad and churned up anymore?
There was only one way to find out.
I followed Trent until he stopped at that same alcove I’d found him in last week. He pulled out another book and ignored everyone around him. The bell rang, and I waited, just out of his eye line. I was getting pretty good at this whole stalking people without them knowing it thing.
I wasn’t sure if that was something to be proud of.
As I suspected, Trent didn’t go to class. After the hall had emptied, I approached him.
He glanced up at me and scowled. There was a faint purple bruise on his jaw, and I felt even guiltier. “Here to finish the job?”
“Tempting, but no.” I took in a big breath. Admitting I’d been wrong was not something I was known for. “I’m actually here to apologize.”
Trent’s eyebrows popped straight up his forehead in surprise. “Are you serious?”
“As a punch to the face.” He scowled, and I rushed on. “Er, sorry. Too soon? But what I did was wrong. I shouldn’t have hit you, and again, I’m sorry. That’s not how you treat a friend.”
At that, he let out a little guffaw. “You and I were never really friends, and we’re not friends now.” That felt like a crushing blow to my chest. Did he really think we were never friends? I had relied on him for so long. Was I that easy to dismiss and forget?
Despite me trying to move on and be the bigger person, him trying to hurt me stoked up the rage beast currently simmering in my chest. “You’re the one who cut everybody off, not the other way around. But maybe you’re right. No friend of mine could ever have done to Ella what you did.”
“Yeah, well, no friend of mine would ever ditch me just because some jock deigned to date her.”
I didn’t know what deigned met, but I caught that he was insulting me and accusing me of ignoring him. Some part of me wondered if he was right. I couldn’t remember the last conversation he and I’d had. I had been very wrapped up in Jake. Maybe I had neglected Trent before he found out about the end of his parents’ marriage.
But it wasn’t as if I could go back in time and undo what had already been done. It was sad to think that Trent used to be there in my life, so significant and important, and then he wasn’t.
Even if I hadn’t been a good friend to him, I could still be a good sister to Ella. “She didn’t break up with you. Somebody else sent you that text.”
“Yeah, she mentioned that last night when we talked. But whatever. It doesn’t matter now.”
I tried to hide my surprise. Um, that was fairly significant information she hadn’t shared with me yet. Why hadn’t Ella told me about her chat with Trent?
He got up from his seat, putting his book into his backpack. I probably should have let him go, but my curiosity was killing me. Had the fake text prompted all thi
s? Or was that just an easy lie for Ella to believe? “How long have you been dating Bronte?”
“That is none of your business.”
“My sister thinks it was since she lost her phone. I believe the opposite.” He shifted from one foot to another, looking like he just wanted to escape. It was also his tell. I didn’t know why I had to know; I just did. Maybe it was because I was tired of all the not-truths in my life. “You don’t need to lie to me. I won’t tell her either way because I would never hurt her like that, but just be honest.”
He paused, considering my request. “For a few weeks. Bronte gets me.”
The implication, of course, being that Ella and I didn’t get him. I didn’t even feel any satisfaction that I’d been right. If I was a better person, I’d want him to be happy. But part of me hoped that Bronte would dump him.
Then he walked off, without saying goodbye to me. It was probably our final conversation, and it hadn’t really ended. I hoped that Ella had gotten the closure she wanted at least. I watched him go, dealing with the warring emotions inside of me. Some piece of me was relieved that it was over. That I didn’t have to think or worry about him anymore.
Another part felt so sad. I supposed some friendships were meant to die and not last forever. Like I somehow always knew in the back of my mind that our friendship wouldn’t last past high school. Especially with him going to college on the East Coast and me staying out here in LA.
It was hard to believe we weren’t friends any longer. But we weren’t enemies, either. I could never really hate him.
Which essentially made us like strangers. But with shared memories.
“Just a footnote,” I murmured to myself.
But that didn’t make it any less painful.
In my next class with Ella, I had to wait for the end of class bell to ring before I could confront my sister. “You talked to Trent last night?”
“I did.”
And she didn’t even have the decency to look embarrassed. “And you didn’t tell me why exactly?”
“I don’t know. I’m still kind of processing it. And honestly, there’s not much to tell. I told him he hurt me, and he didn’t really say much in response. It was just a chance for me to express how he made me feel, and he . . . let me. How did you know we talked?”
The Promposal (The Ugly Stepsister Series Book 2) Page 9
