The Debs

by Susan McBride

  “More like a golfer’s tan. It ends at my sleeves,” Laura told her, hearing Ginger Fore drawl, “Hey, girl!” as Mac opened the front passenger door.

  “Did Mac mention the sleepover at my place tonight?” Ginger bent over the console to ask her.

  “Yeah, and you’re on!” Laura said, leaning in past Mac and smiling at Ginger’s freckled face, almost not recognizing her with a pixie cut—what had happened to the red ponytail she’d had at the start of June? She was ready to comment on it, but Ginger shouted “Hop in and let’s bounce!” before she could get the words out.

  So Laura popped open the back door, about to toss her bag inside, when a speeding sports car with a growling engine did a nosedive into the space behind them, tires screeching and horn blasting, so that Laura jumped, hitting the top of her head on the frame of the Prius.

  “Ow.” She stood upright, wincing and dropping the tote bag at her feet. She muttered, “Freakin’ idiot,” but nearly stopped breathing when she realized the offending vehicle was a customized burnt orange Corvette Z06 with vanity plates that read:

  GR8HANZ.

  Oh, God.

  It was Avery Dorman.

  What was he doing at Hobby Airport on a sweltering Saturday afternoon?

  No way was he there to play welcoming committee, unless there were strings attached (and they were usually the kind that pulled her like a puppet).

  She swallowed hard, thinking that she knew those GR8HANZ intimately, just as she knew that the burnt orange color of his ’Vette was for the University of Texas. Avery had committed to the UT Longhorns and he’d be playing for them next year after he broke the school record for receptions at the all-boys Caldwell Academy this season, which everyone knew he was bound to do. He was the resident Golden Boy, drawing crowds so big to Friday night football games that Caldwell Academy had been forced to shift locations from their school’s athletic field to Tully Stadium, which could seat fifteen thousand instead of a mere couple thou. Avery was royalty in a place where football was king. And on top of it all, the guy was a certified Grade-A hottie.

  Laura had known Avery since their mothers had enrolled them in the same ballroom dancing class when they were fourteen. He was about the only boy she hadn’t towered over, considering that, even as a freshman, she’d stood nearly six feet tall in heels. They’d learned the fox-trot and flirted like crazy until Avery had finally asked her out a year later. Once he had, Laura had fallen hard, so in love she’d snubbed Mac and Ging entirely so that she could spend time with Avery and his crowd.

  Until one awful night when the world had blown up in her face. Laura had been too embarrassed to talk about it, not even to her two best friends, which had left Mac and Ginger believing that Avery was at fault and Laura was better off without him. But it wasn’t Avery who’d humiliated her. Only Laura knew exactly who was responsible: Jo Lynn Bidwell, the Queen of Mean.

  The past is history, Laura reminded herself, thinking that she had too much ahead of her to dwell on it now. She’d made some big decisions at Camp Hellhole and had written down a list of priorities for her senior year. At the top was becoming a Rosebud, of course. Second was getting Avery back for good. Everything else, including revenge, could wait.

  Laura wondered if Avery’s showing up at the airport was a sign from above, one she shouldn’t ignore.

  “Girl, let’s go,” Mac prodded from inside the car, her head stuck out the window. But Laura found she couldn’t move.

  The sleek Corvette parked cockeyed behind the Prius demanded her attention, especially when Avery got out, scooted around the hood, and approached her. His sandy brown hair looked sun-streaked against his skin, and his tanned arms, fully exposed by his muscle tee, were rock hard. He was one of the few guys she’d ever been attracted to who made her feel small and dainty and feminine.

  “Why, it’s Laura Bell,” he said as he planted a palm on the trunk of the hybrid and leaned against it. His gaze swept up and down Laura’s body, making it feel a whole lot hotter than ninety-three degrees in the shade. “Man, you’re looking good these days.” His dimpled smile made her heartbeat skip. “How about letting me give you a ride home?”

  “Hmm, last time I saw you, I ended up staring at your taillights, and now you’re offering me a lift?” She cocked her head, hooking a thumb in her pocket, hoping he couldn’t see how badly she was sweating. “How’d you even know I was getting in this afternoon? And don’t tell me it’s some amazin’ coincidence.”

  Like perhaps his latest plaything, Camie Lindell, was tied up getting detoxed with a high colonic, so he needed a temporary distraction.

  “A little bird told me you’d be arriving,” he teased, looking and sounding a lot like Matthew McConaughey in his A Time to Kill prime.

  “What little bird?” Laura knew good and well it wasn’t Mac or Ginger. They’d nicknamed Avery “Ratfink” long ago.

  “I called your house to see what was up, and your mom’s girl, Babette, said you were just getting in at Hobby,” he explained in his smooth, smooth drawl.

  Laura grinned. Calling Babette her mother’s “girl” made it sound like they were lesbians or something, when Avery knew exactly what Babette was to Tincy. The woman kept Tincy’s schedule, something that was no small feat, considering how much Laura’s mother loved throwing herself onto every chichi fund-raising committee that would allow her on board (and there were plenty—a generous donation from Harrington Bell went a long, long way).

  “I shot out here like Jeff Gordon, wanting to catch you before anyone else did.”

  He jerked his chin toward the Prius, and Laura followed his eyes to see Mac hanging out the front window, frowning like Debbie Downer. “Tell me I’m not too late.”

  “Well, um, I…” She wanted to say that she was leaving with her two BFFs, that she hadn’t seen them forever and she’d missed them terribly. But the words seemed to stick in her throat.

  “Laura.” Mac tried again, scowling. “Don’t,” she said simply. Laura knew what she meant: Don’t go with him, he’s bad news, he dumped your ass and broke your heart, and he’ll do it again and again and again if you let him.

  “Pretty please,” Avery said softly.

  Laura gazed into his playful eyes, which seemed to see right into her soul…and right through her clothes at the moment. Okay, so maybe he had an ulterior motive, she told herself, but then again, who didn’t? She knew she’d be a fool to refuse. He was too damned good-looking to blow off—at least, that was her reasoning.

  Laura turned to Mac. “Sorry, chica,” she blurted out, and began talking fast so she wouldn’t have a chance to think it over twice. “I’ll meet up with y’all later at Ginger’s house, okay? I can’t wait to catch up on every little detail of how your summer’s been!”

  “Laura!” Mac shot her a desperate look, but Laura averted her eyes, grabbed her bag, and closed the door to the Prius.

  Avery stood beside the ’Vette, smirking knowingly and holding the passenger door open.

  Laura hurried over to him and got into the car as gracefully as she could. The thing was so low to the ground, it took almost gymnastic maneuvering. Avery jumped behind the wheel and had the sports car in gear before Laura had even buckled her seat belt. Was he afraid that she’d change her mind if he didn’t leave quickly?

  “Babette said your parents flew to Telluride, so you’ll be going home to an empty house. I figured I’d hang around while you get settled in.” His right hand left the wheel to settle on her thigh, and his fingers gently rubbed the stretched denim. “Then maybe you could slip out of those hot clothes and put on those white debutante gloves your mama gave you, and…well, you know how imaginative I can be.”

  Good. God.

  If she’d been an old-school belle from gentrified River Oaks, like Ginger’s grandma Rose Dupree, she would’ve swooned or at least had the decency to blush a vivid pink. Not that the comment left Laura unaffected. Her mouth felt like cotton. How she found her voice after that she’d never
know; when she did, it sounded like a croak.

  “Your imagination is exactly what concerns me,” she said, pausing just long enough to make him sweat—or at least wonder a bit—before she told him, “Sure, we can hang out for a while.”

  As they drove off, shooting past the gray Prius, Laura hoped like hell he couldn’t hear the frantic flutter of her heart above the roar of the engine.

  * * *

  She thinks Bosnia-Herzegovina’s the Wonderbra model.

  —Isabel Wolff

  Why doesn’t America’s Most Wanted search for the thief who stole my stepmom’s brain?

  Please, get it back.

  She needs it desperately.

  —Mac Mackenzie

  * * *

  Two

  “Unbelievable,” Mac said to Ginger, watching as the vanity plate on the back end of Avery Dorman’s burnt orange Corvette disappeared into traffic well in front of them on Airport Boulevard, heading toward I-45. “The Ratfink shows up, snaps his fingers, and Laura turns into a dishrag. Aren’t modern women supposed to be beyond falling for guys who’re wrong for them? It just makes our whole sex look stupid.”

  “That’s what it’s about exactly, Mac”—Ginger nodded—“sex. You can’t rationalize biology.”

  “It’s like nobody can keep their pants on anymore. Whatever happened to romance and candlelight dinners and guys courting girls with love songs and poems? My mom used to talk about how my dad wooed her with flowers and mix tapes before she even let him kiss her.”

  “Courting and wooing? Poems and mix tapes?” Ginger laughed. “Talk about old-fashioned. You should really stop reading all that Elizabeth Barrett Boring—”

  “Browning,” Mac corrected her, leaning closer to the vents so she could feel the cool air on her skin. She closed her eyes as unruly hair blew across her face.

  “Whatev,” her friend replied. “No matter how badly you want it, the Victorian age isn’t coming back.”

  “Hooking up is so prehistoric,” Mac insisted, ignoring Ginger’s dig. She leaned back in her seat, crossed her arms, and stared out the window. She didn’t care if she was labeled old-fashioned. It was better than being called a ho behind your back and letting your emotions get all messed up by players who didn’t want anything more than a fast you-know-what, to say nothing of running the risk of catching some funky disease. “You think Laura’ll be okay?” she ventured to ask.

  “Sure. Until Avery disappears again and she finds out he’s dating some other girl, just like all the times before this.”

  “If that’s what being in love is all about, then I hope I never fall for anyone, not that way,” Mac said, adding under her breath, “unless he’s the complete opposite of Avery Dorman.”

  She valued brains over brawn anyhow; exploits in academia over prowess on a football field. What did women see in guys like the Ratfink, except the obvious? Mac much preferred someone like, say, Alex Bishop, who was the exception to the rule that said every guy at Pine Forest Prep’s “brother” school, Caldwell Academy, was a stuck-up jerk like Avery. Alex was cute in an “I’m not hooked on steroids” way and he wasn’t afraid of being pegged a geek. Mac might have even liked him beyond the “we’re just friends” stage if they hadn’t grown up side by side. When your baby album contained pictures of you at three taking a bath with the boy next door, it sort of killed all sense of mystery.

  “Well, Lord knows I can hardly sit in judgment of Laura’s bad taste in guys, can I?” Ginger said, her eyes wide. “Not after some of the choices I’ve made.”

  Mac wondered if she meant Enrique the Married Spanish Tutor or Mark the Emo Guitarist, who was, like, twenty-seven and who’d thought that scamming on groupies was a rock band’s God-given right.

  Just as Mac was about to remind Ginger of the idiocy of both crushes, Pink’s “Stupid Girls” blared from the car stereo, and she decided to keep her mouth shut.

  Stupid girls, stupid girls, stupid girls

  Maybe if I act like that, that guy will call me back

  Before Mac could do it, Ginger tapped the audio controls on the steering wheel and switched the radio station to 94.5 The Buzz, catching Velvet Revolver in the middle of “Let It Roll,” just as they were singing “burn her out of my head, drink her off of my mind,” which Mac found rather ironic as well. But she felt less mad at Laura somehow, after taking Ginger’s words to heart.

  “In a way, Laura and Avery are kind of perversely romantic. She’s like Pam Anderson with Tommy Lee,” Ginger opined with a toss of her spiky red hair. “She thinks she’s done with him, and he just keeps coming back like—”

  “Hepatitis?” Mac finished for her.

  “I was thinking more like poison ivy.” One of Ginger’s freckled hands left the wheel to scratch a spot on her neck, causing a dozen recycled-metal bangles at her wrist to jangle.

  “In fact, I’m wondering if I might’ve wandered through a batch down in New Orleans. Building houses for Habitat isn’t all fun and games, you know.”

  “Oh, really?” Mac cracked a smile. “What’d you do, roll around in the bushes with that senior from Tulane you kept e-mailing me about, the guy who always took his shirt off when he used the nail gun?”

  Talk about boy crazy. Ginger was nearly as bad as Laura, only, so far as Mac knew, she didn’t have her eye on any particular guy at the moment. Ging was more into causes these days, like building houses for the homeless or saving the planet.

  “Ah, Hayden the Hunky Hammerer. He’s so the flavor of last month.” Ginger snorted loudly, the noise completely incongruent with her tiny Tinker Bell exterior. “I struck out with him anyway.” She sighed. “The dude decided I was far too young and immature and blew me off for a premed student at Emory.” She shrugged. “Can I help it if I have a thing for older men?”

  “He said you were too young? No way.”

  “I know! D’you believe?”

  Nope, Mac had a hard time buying that one. Wasn’t it every man’s dream to bag a younger woman?

  She frowned and resumed gazing out the window at the industrialized edifices, strip malls, and sad-looking houses that lined the interstate. Billboards sprang up one after the next, half of them in Spanish and many of them beer ads that featured blondes with ginormous breasts. Living in the Villages, she sometimes forgot how big Houston was, how beyond her pretty green neighborhood was a port city with a shipping channel and Galveston beach a mere hour away, not to mention all the millions of people from different cultures spread out in every direction and the endless gray miles of highway.

  “Isn’t your dad a lot older than your stepmom?” Ginger asked, drawing Mac’s attention away from scenery that was anything but charming.

  “Yeah, like eleven years, I think,” she remarked, hating the edge she heard in her own voice. “She’s barely older than we are.”

  “More like your babysitter than your mom, huh?”

  “Tell me about it.” Mac shifted position, drawing her knees up so she could rest her feet on the dash. Her unpolished toenails looked like they could use a good buffing.

  “Is Honey still making you nuts?” Ginger asked, clicking on the blinker as she changed lanes, merging onto I-10 West. “Have y’all called a truce, at least? I mean, you haven’t put arsenic in her sweet tea yet, have you? Or blown up her tackle box full of Mary Kay?”

  “Don’t I wish,” Mac said dryly, and leaned back against the headrest. “It was hard at the lake house without you or Laura. It was just me, Dad, and Honey.” She started scratching at a scab on her shin until Ginger slapped her arm and made her stop. “I kinda hoped Dad and I would get the chance to talk privately, but Honey barely left us alone. And when she did”—Mac picked at a callus on her palm—“he hardly said two words to me.”

  “That sucks.” Ginger’s voice oozed sympathy.

  “It’s okay,” Mac lied, and slid her feet down to the floor again. “I’m getting used to it.”

  It had been that way since her mom died of lymphoma two years ago
. Jeanie Mackenzie hadn’t felt well for a while and had finally gone in for a checkup at Mac’s urging. Six months later, Mac was bawling over her mother’s mahogany casket.

  All too quickly, Mac’s life had been knocked upside down. She’d lost her closest confidante and biggest supporter. In the days and weeks after the funeral, it had buoyed Mac’s spirits to hear people remark how much she looked like Jeanie or how they walked alike and talked alike, though she figured that was part of the reason her dad kept his distance. And since he’d married Honey Potts this past spring, he had even less time for his daughter, or maybe more of an excuse not to be around her.

  Mac felt sure that he was as broken up inside as she was, and she wished he’d let it out once in a while. But Daniel Mackenzie was as buttoned-up with his emotions as he was with his Brooks Brothers shirts. Jeanie had been the one who’d worn her heart on her sleeve, and Mac missed that. She missed having her mother there; missed the hugs and the kisses on her forehead, missed getting her hair ruffled and hearing someone call her “Mackie.”

  “Anyway”—she shoved the glum thoughts aside so she wouldn’t start bawling—“Honey either clung to my dad like Lycra or skipped around in her short shorts with her big-ass pageant hair, acting all perky and calling me ‘sweet pea,’ while I imagined her falling off the slalom ski into the algae and being dragged under.”

  “Snap!”

  “Or her blow-dryer exploding and her hair catching fire.”

  Ginger laughed. “C’mon, Mac. She’s not that bad.”

  “No, she’s worse.”

  “At least your stepmom wants to get to know you. My dad’s trophy wife doesn’t even want me around.” Ginger wasn’t laughing anymore. Her mouth tightened and her pale skin turned pink, her blush nearly covering up her freckles entirely. “You know how many times I’ve been invited to their house in River Oaks? They live, like, two streets over from my grandmother, but do I ever see them? No.”