Crazy in Love

by Dandi Daley Mackall

  “The phone!” I whisper, because the wind was knocked out of me. “Get the phone!” I’m imagining Jackson on the other end of the phone, waiting again.

  Sandy wants to stay with me, but I shove her toward the still-ringing phone. She answers it. “Hello?”

  I get to my knees and concentrate on getting my breath back.

  “Yes,” Sandy says to the phone. Without taking the phone from her lips, she turns to me and shouts, “It’s a boy!”

  Still on all fours, I reach out for her to give me the phone.

  She doesn’t. “Marwyjan? She’s my sister.”

  “Bring me the phone, Sandy!” I cry. My wind has nearly returned, but I’m still shaken. I sit where I am, on the floor, on top of the popcorn kernels. “Give me the phone!”

  “She spilled her popcorn,” Sandy’s telling the phone.

  “Sandy!” I shout.

  “You can talk to her.” She starts over to the couch but still has the receiver to her ear. “We’re watching ‘Scooby-Dooby-Doo, where are you?’” She sings this part.

  When she’s close enough, I grab the phone out of her hand. “Hello?” I’ve forgotten to use my sexy voice, so I say it again, “Hello?”

  “Mary Jane?” It’s a boy. But it’s not Jackson.

  “Yeah?” I kind of snap at the guy on the other end because he’s not Jackson. And now I realize that my chin hurts. My left elbow and knee have rug burns.

  “It’s Brad.” He waits, as if anticipating applause, doesn’t get it, and goes on. “So, had any good pizza lately?”

  I can’t figure out why he’d call me. “Not really.” I want to ask him why he’s calling. Then I have a thought. Maybe he’s calling for Jackson. Why else would he call me, when he’s never even nodded at me in the halls?

  “So . . .” He coughs, and it sounds fake, a nervous cough. “When are you coming out for the team? We can hold try-outs just for you. Say the word.” He laughs, and it’s as fake as his cough.

  I want to cut to the chase, to make him admit that Jackson put him up to calling me, that Jackson wanted him to ask . . . ask what? What if I’m wrong? And even if I’m right, I have to play it cool. “I’m there, soon as you get those new outfits,” I say, going for light and witty, and sexy and confident. “I suggest sienna. Goes great with my eyes.”

  “You got it,” he jokes.

  I can’t stand this much longer. Sandy is glued to the TV. I’m sitting in popcorn. “What can I do for you, Brad?” I ask.

  That’s my girl! M.J. cries. Take control! Take charge!

  Two boys call you in one night? Plain Jane is highly suspicious. Now I know this is all one big prank. Besides, isn’t Brad going with Colleen?

  “I was thinking,” Brad begins, “maybe we could get together tomorrow night.”

  I’m blown away. “You . . . and me?”

  “Yeah.”

  He’s not calling for Jackson. Brad is calling for himself. “Don’t you have a game tomorrow night?” I ask, because it’s the first thing I can think of. And it’s lame. Guys go out after the game.

  “Yeah,” Brad says. “And then I kind of . . . well, I kind of made plans already for right after the game.”

  Told you so! Plain Jane’s screaming. He’s got a date with Colleen already! So why is he asking you for a date when he’s dating Colleen?

  Good question.

  “Let me get this straight, Brad,” I begin. “You already have a date after the game, right?”

  “But I could take her home fast after that,” he says quickly. “Then you and I could get together.”

  "Get together,” I repeat, hoping this isn’t what it sounds like.

  “Yeah!”

  “After your real date,” I add, as the picture comes into focus and that cold-pizza-sauce feeling returns with a vengeance to the pit of my stomach.

  “Yeah!” Brad sounds thrilled that I get it. His grand plan.

  “And let me guess. This would be our little secret, right?” I’m praying that he’ll say “Wrong!” That he’ll be outraged that I’ve so grossly misunderstood his intentions.

  “Right!” he says gleefully.

  “Wrong!” I hang up on Brad, so hard the phone rattles.

  This can’t be happening. Not to me.

  Did he really think I’d agree to . . . to . . . to what? He couldn’t be thinking what I think he’s thinking. But I’m not stupid. I watch MTV. I know what some girls do in cars when they disappear from parties. Could he really think . . . ? Is that possible? How could seventeen years of my reputation get tossed out for a mythical missing four minutes? How could that happen? To me? Mary Jane Ettermeyer! Member in good standing of Abstinence in Action!

  I can’t decide whether to cry, to throw things, or to throw up. Or maybe I should enter the Witness Protection Program and start life over.

  Before I can make up my mind, the phone rings again.

  “What?” I say when I pick up the receiver. I’m expecting it to be Brad again, asking why I hung up on him.

  “Mary Jane?” It’s a male voice. But it’s not Brad. And it’s not Jackson.

  “This is Mary Jane,” I admit cautiously.

  “Sweet! This is Tim.”

  Tim is even worse at small talk than Brad was. And I have even less patience for it. Once again, I’m picturing my name and number scrawled on bathroom walls.

  He finally gets around to popping his big question. “Wanna go out and do something?”

  Inside, I feel myself drowning in a pool of thick red pizza sauce. But I keep telling myself that none of this is my fault, and I haven’t done anything drowning-worthy and I will not let them hear me cry. I swallow hard and brace myself for a performance that would make Nicole jealous.

  “Tempting, Tim,” I say, gathering all my M.J. forces to muster an iota of sarcasm.

  “Cool.”

  I should have known sarcasm would disappear into the black hole of Tim’s mind. “I can’t. I’m watching Sandy while my folks are gone.”

  “Sweet! So can I come over?” Tim asks. “Your parents aren’t home, right?”

  I cannot keep this stiff-upper-lip routine going one more second. “I’m hanging up now, Tim.”

  He’s saying something, but I can’t make it out as the phone clicks off.

  How did this happen? It’s like the ozone layer finally caved, and the carbon monoxide’s driven everybody stark raving mad.

  I pick up the spilled popcorn, then plop onto the couch next to Sandy, just as the Scooby-Doo credits roll. We watch one of Sandy’s shows on Nickelodeon. Then I make her take a bath while I clean up the kitchen.

  While Sandy’s in the bath, I get two more calls. One from Michael, who’s in my psych class. And one from Tyler, who plays ball with Brad. I know for a fact that Tyler’s been going with Emma Phillips for almost a year. I think I’m getting an ulcer.

  And the voices inside my head are ganging up on me:

  Plain Jane: You’ve really done it this time. You have to get your parents to move. There’s no way you can continue going to Attila High. You should have seen this coming!

  M.J.: What’s the big deal? Guys want you! It doesn’t mean you have to give them what they want. They want you! This is what you’ve always dreamed of. You go, girl!

  Sandy huddles under the covers in her purple flannel jammies, and I pull the cowgirl blanket up to her chin. Her whole room is covered in horse—horse posters, horse lamp, horse calendar, horse bedspread. She even has a real saddle on a sawhorse in the corner of the room. The only thing missing is a real horse, which is what she wants more than anything in the world. When I’m on my own, I plan to live on a farm just so I can get Sandy a horse and keep it for her.

  “Tell me a story,” she says. It’s the command every night when I’m on duty. When we were little and shared a room, she’d make me tell her a story every night. She likes books read to her, but she’d rather have me make up stories that she can help with.

  “Okay. But then you have to p
romise to go right to sleep.” I begin with “Once upon a time . . .” because if I don’t, she stops me and makes me start over:

  “Once upon a time, there were four horses that lived out in the wilderness. And their names were . . .” I stop, like I always do, and look to Sandy.

  “Jerry. And . . . Jacob. And Jeff and Jimmy,” Sandy supplies. As often as we’ve told the story, I don’t think she’s ever given any horses the same name.

  “All boys, huh?” I ask.

  “Stallions,” she corrects.

  “Right. Well, Jerry and Jacob and Jeff and Jimmy lived in a valley between two mountain peaks. They got along fine. But one day, Jeff said, ‘I wish we could meet some more horses.’ And Jerry said, ‘Let’s all wish the same thing. Then maybe it will happen.’ ”

  Fortunately, Sandy isn’t picky about plotlines. All she really waits for is the chance to name the horses.

  “So they all wished together, in a giant horse wish, that they could meet more horses. And the next day, four pure white horses came trotting along. ‘Man . . . I mean, stallion, are we glad to see you!’ Jerry exclaimed. ‘What are your names?’ And one by one, the white horses answered.” I look to Sandy again.

  “‘I’m Max,’ ” Sandy says, in this cute, horsy voice she has. “‘And I’m Mick.’ ‘I’m Mark.’ ‘And I’m Michael.’ ”

  “All guys—I mean stallions—again, Sandy?” I ask. I don’t want her to grow up thinking it’s a man’s world, so I try again. “But in the valley below, a brown horse was kicking up her heels, her hooves, and whinnying. And when the stallions saw her horsing around, they all started galloping down to meet her.” I stop, picturing the brown horse raising her head, as the stallions careen down the hill after her.

  “Go on!” Sandy demands. “What happens to the brown mare?”

  The phone rings. I pick up Sandy’s purple phone. “Hello?”

  “Hey, Mary Jane?” says the caller. “This is Colby Paxton. I’m in your English class. I wondered if you want to go out sometime.”

  I close my eyes and picture those stallions racing faster and faster down the hill.

  And suddenly, I know exactly how that mare feels.

  12

  The Twisted Pretzel

  Saturday morning I drive to Springmill Mall and park Fred in the back lot. I wear a scarlet letter F for “Flirt” on my sweater. Not really. But I’m trying to stop obsessing over my stupid reputation and regain my innate, though buried, sense of humor.

  I know I will need said sense of humor this morning. Since August, I’ve worked most Saturdays and some Friday nights and Sundays at The Twisted Pretzel. This is not a job I want to spend the rest of my life doing, but it’s better than my last two jobs. Last summer I stuffed fliers in ad rags and delivered them—until I got fired because they actually wanted me to get there at seven. In the morning. In the summer.

  Before that, I had a job walking dogs. But I only did it for two days. Dogs are not really our best friends, it turns out.

  Luckily, The Twisted Pretzel is in the far corner of the mall, by Ritz Department Store and Fine China, where few high school kids venture. Our sign promises fifty varieties of pretzel, but I’ve never sold more than a dozen. I used to like pretzels before I worked here.

  There are several things about my job, besides the minimum wage, that would keep me from pursuing a career in pretzels:• I have to wear a white hat in the shape of a triangle that says THE TWISTED PRETZEL on it. No amount of begging can make my boss change this rule.

  • My boss. Peter Pretzel (real name, Peter Prater) is a little man who believes he is in a position of power, where he no doubt has never been before. Someday I intend to introduce him to Ms. Lake, the school librarian/serial ax murderer. It’s not that I necessarily want him to be her next victim. I’d just like to see her shush him.

  • Plastic gloves, which would be a better fit on my feet.

  • Robbie, my coworker. Actually, Robbie is a sweet kid, a pimply freshman, who asks me out every day after work.

  We coexist in a six-by-six, linoleum-floored cubicle, with a glass counter in front and a silver oven in back.

  “You’re late,” Pretzel Boss grumbles as I slip behind the counter and don my charming white hat.

  I don’t point out that in the scope of time eternal, five minutes is hardly late. The man has no depth.

  Robbie comes up and whispers, “I tried to cover for you.”

  I raise eyebrows at Robbie. “How’d you do that? Tell him I’m actually here, but he can’t see me?” I pull on the plastic gloves and raise my voice for my Pretzel Boss. “Sorry, boss. Won’t happen again.”

  “It better not,” he warns.

  I mouth the words as he says them because Pretzel Bosses are so predictable.

  “You look nice today,” Robbie says, staring at me like he always does. I don’t think Robbie has heard the current Mary Jane rumors. This is simply his way of relating. He’s a head shorter than I am, so he’s eye level with my boobs, which works out well for the boy, since that’s exactly where he’s constantly looking.

  “Thanks, Robbie. Go away now.”

  Mall traffic has picked up every week since October. Now that we’re done with Halloween, it’s worse than ever. Christmas decorations have taken over at the mall, as if nobody could wait for Thanksgiving to be over with. Alicia and I used to write letters to Congresspersons, demanding a law against celebrating Christmas before Thanksgiving was over. We only heard back from one lawmaker. He told us how cute we were for writing, and he ended his letter, dated November 15, with “Merry Christmas.” Alicia and I promised that when we could vote, in about eight years, we’d never vote for him.

  Pretzel Boss pulls out two Santa hats, floppy red numbers with the white ball tassel on the end. “I got these for you two. You can start wearing them next weekend.”

  I consider telling him about my moral stand on Christmas-before-Thanksgiving, but he’s already mad at me for being late.

  “Cool!” Robbie exclaims. “So we’ll be, like, Mr. and Mrs. Claus!”

  “Never going to happen, Robbie my boy,” I whisper, after Pretzel Boss moves out of hearing range.

  I’m not sure how much longer I can work here anyway. The rents will shower me with disappointment if I lose another job. But I refuse to work the Friday after Thanksgiving, commonly referred to in the mall biz as THE shopping day. I won’t miss Sandy’s big game. And that’s that. I haven’t asked for the day off yet because I’m pretty sure the only reason Pretzel Boss is keeping me on is that he needs me for THE shopping day of the year. If he can’t have me then, I think he’ll fire me on the spot.

  As I take my turn twisting pretzels and sticking trays into the oven, I’m thinking that getting fired on the spot is looking better and better. Maybe I should tell Pretzel Boss right now that I refuse to work on THE day. Might as well get it over with and be rid of this job. Plus, I could tell the rents I did it for my sister Sandy.

  On the other hand, maybe I shouldn’t get fired yet.

  Plain Jane: Of course you can’t quit! What were you thinking? You are so lucky to have a job in a nice, warm mall, when millions of people all over the world are jobless and homeless.

  On the other hand, you should see yourself in that hat!

  M.J. (who habitually kicks into whine mode the minute I step behind The Twisted Pretzel counter): Pretzels are embarrassing. It would be so much cooler if you’d get a job at Abercrombie. Or Hollister. Even the Gap or Banana Republic. Or Bebe! Then your friends would drop in to see you and use your discount!

  Life is too short to wear a white triangle hat and twist pretzels.

  The first hour we’re open is busier than I’ve ever seen it. All that shopping must make shoppers hungry. They order things like the Egg Pretzel, Bacon-and-Pretzel, and Cinnamon Swirl, with frosting.

  “My turn to bake,” Robbie says, which means I have to take a turn at the counter.

  People who do Christmas shopping apparently don’t be
lieve in the Christmas spirit. And whoever claimed that the customer is always right certainly never worked at The Twisted Pretzel.

  I pull on a fresh, clean pair of my fashionable transparent gloves and prepare to meet the public in my equally fashionable hat. For the next twenty minutes, it’s all I can do to keep our line down to six, which is our unofficial magic number for survival.

  Then all of a sudden, there’s nobody. This is the way it always works. It’s almost like the customers huddle around the corner until their numbers increase past six, then rush the counter, like we’re in the Great Depression, and this is the free breadline. Somebody then sounds a silent whistle, and they magically disappear . . . until the next onslaught.

  I take advantage of the down time to sprinkle candies on the Sweet-Treat Pretzels and peppermint on the Peppermint Pretzels. If I had to do this during rush hour, I would run the risk of being bodily assaulted by a whacked-out bargain hunter who believed my menial task was keeping her from getting the buy of the century.

  I’m shaking those tasteless, multicolored candies onto pretzels when I hear the chink, chink, chink of a customer’s keys on the glass pretzel case. It’s a familiar sound, used by customers everywhere to get the peasants’ attention. I have half a mind to pretend I don’t get it.

  Again comes the sound of keys rattling glass.

  “May I help you?” I ask, in a tone that won’t win me any Employee of the Month awards. I look up at the offending customer.

  But what I see are the big brown eyes of Jackson House.

  Instinctively, I pull off my white hat, forgetting that I’ve pinned it in place with bobby pins. Pins and hair now stick up, and I slap at them with my plastic gloves.

  “Hat, Mary Jane!” Pretzel Boss yells. “You want to get me shut down?”

  I do. But I don’t have time to get into it now.

  I replace my hat and move to the counter. A woman with at least fourteen shopping bags takes a spot behind Jackson.

  “So, what’s good here?” Jackson asks, all kindness and full of niceness, as if I weren’t standing before him in plastic gloves and a triangular hat.