The party was a bust. Skyler’s crew was a laughingstock. That went double for Cassidy, who got out of car-retrieval duty but spent the rest of the night with a carton of Ben & Jerry’s between her legs.
And now, more than ever, Skyler was pissed.
Next time you point a finger …
I’ll point you to the mirror.
—PARAMORE
“Playing God”
CHAPTER
13
Life doesn’t do much to prepare you for finding out someone isn’t who you think they are—more specifically, seeing what someone you like and respect has dwelling in the inner sanctum of his iPod.
Like, how do you deal with knowing the guy you have a massive crush on likes really shitty music?
One option: Pretend it never happened. Pretend you never even touched that iPod and you definitely weren’t scrolling through it when you happened to find the offending Miley Cyrus song (which is to say, any Miley Cyrus song).
Another option? Torment your boy-crush until you feel you have shamed him enough to satisfy your inner Simon Cowell. (However, that way might make him hate you, so if you have hopes of any kind of boyfriend/girlfriend action happening, you might want to skip this option.)
Last but not least, you could very calmly let this person know that you have this tidbit of information in your back pocket and that you can and might use it against him should he ever piss you off. This one runs close to Option B in that it’s mildly threatening, so you have to weigh your tone and keep it playful. It’s still a little bit risky.
I chose Option A when I found a Miley tune on Chris’s iPod. I decided that he had to have a very good reason for this terrible offense, that he was innocent until proven guilty of ever listening to or (about a million times worse) actually enjoying it. I would just pretend I never saw it. (Kind of like how girls always have to pretend we never see guys adjusting their balls, which they seem to do every 8.5 minutes. What’s going on in there, anyway? It’s not like one’s threatening to bounce out of their pants or anything. Is it?)
We were having a study session. It was just Chris and me in the quad, chilling at one of the cement tables, umbrella overhead. There was a test coming up on Friday and it was going to count for a third of our grade that semester. I was trying to focus on the books, but Chris was so cute, it was making things difficult. He was wearing the jeans I loved on him, my absolute favorites, the ones that had a tiny hole just starting on his right knee, and I wondered whether I could track the progress of this developing flirtation by how big the hole grew.
Would I be around long enough for his whole knee to be exposed? Maybe eventually his calf? (I hoped so: He had really nice calves. Although that suddenly made me think of little baby cows. They’re so cute. But then I thought of hamburgers and steak and chili, and that made me a little sad. Comfort me, Chris Roberts. Save me from the sadness of sloppy joes.)
He had the nicest eyes too, brilliantly blue, brought out by an orange T-shirt with a logo on it that I couldn’t quite make out, with a red, yellow and orange flannel shirt over it. Noel would definitely approve.
“What are the odds we’ll ever need to use this information as adults?” he asked me, noticing I was zoning out, thinking of our future life together.
“I’d say slim to it-will-never-come-up-again,” I replied. “Slightly better than the odds of glee club making regionals next year. Or ever.”
“Exactly,” he said, and shook his head. Oh, that smile. He has perfect teeth. I love those teeth. Our kids would never need braces.
“I think school is a conspiracy to just keep us out of our parents’ hair so they can work and do stuff until we’re old enough to go work and do stuff,” I said. “We’re all just worker bees being groomed to replace the current worker bees.”
“Well, that’s depressing,” he said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “But you can always choose a fun profession. Like Jay-Z grew up to replace Run-D.M.C., right?”
“I can see my mansion now…,” he said.
“How many cars will you have?” I asked.
“Probably thirteen,” he said. “It’s my lucky number.”
“And how many girlfriends?” I boldly asked. Please say just one. Please say me. I would make a good baby mama. Together we could bask in your rap star glory.
“Just one,” he said, as if he could read my thoughts. Yes!
I was imagining an MTV Cribs–style home for us and getting lost in his eyes, the same blue as our swimming pool, which would be shaped like a dollar sign, of course, when I heard her.
“Is that a hole in your nose?”
I looked up to see Skyler standing before me, looking none too pleased to see me sitting with Chris. But then, I’m sure these days I could save Skyler’s entire family from a horde of zombies and she’d still want my head on a stake. A bamboo stake from Gucci, of course. Do they sell stakes?
“Guilty as charged,” I said, loud and proud, though it was totally embarrassing. I hated the hole in my nose. I wished I’d never had it pierced. Among other things, when you no longer have a stud in there, it’s basically indistinguishable from a wee acne scar.
“So, what, did you like, used to be a goth or something?” she prodded.
“It was a phase,” I said.
“I never noticed,” Chris said, now inspecting my nose, and I’m thinking, Stop looking at my nose, Hannah Montana lover!
“Aww, it’s cute. Looks like a freckle.”
Whew.
That’s much better than a wee acne scar. Isn’t he sweet? (Answer: Yes, he is.)
“Cute?” Skyler said. “About as cute as the mustache she’s sporting. Ever hear of laser hair removal? Or at the very least waxing? Should we take up a collection for you?” Skyler reached into her pocket and pulled out a five-dollar bill. “Here’s five bucks,” she said, placing it on my notebook. “Get a Bic razor in the meantime.”
God, what an asshole! I didn’t have a mustache, but I didn’t expect little things like reality to divert Skyler from her mission to destroy me at all costs. On top of everything else, I was sitting with her ex-boyfriend. He thought my nose-hole was “cute,” so she decided to go for my throat—well, actually, my upper lip.
But Skyler had a way of making “Old Hailey” emerge from deep inside me. I knew she was just being a bitch because—well, just because she’s a gigantic freaking bitch.
It reminded me of that old fable about the scorpion stinging the frog that had agreed to carry it across a river. Just before they both drown, the frog asks why the scorpion did it. The scorpion replies: It’s my nature.
Skyler the Scorpion, I thought. Now, that might make a good target for Abby Invisible.
Still, my insecurities were welling up. I wanted to disappear. But first, I wanted to get my hands on a mirror. Did I suddenly start growing a mustache between this morning and now? Did I have a huge mustache? Did I look like Dr. Phil?
Of course, all of that occurred in my head in all of two seconds. It was washed away the moment Chris said,
“Shut up, Skyler.”
Thank God, I thought, both to have Chris defending my hopefully-still-mythical mustache and saving me from even having to think of a comeback. (I’d probably have one by eighth period, but that might be a little late to the game.)
“Wow,” Skyler said, her eyes boring into Chris. “How the mighty have fallen.”
Then something happened. It seemed like it was happening in slow motion, but I’ll just assume it happened in real time because I’m not in a movie or on a TV show—even though I do often feel like there is a soundtrack to my life, and in that soundtrack, the audio at this particular moment was my exaggerated heartbeat.
Chris reached up to my face—oh my God oh my God oh my God—and picked at something on my upper lip. He held it out for display.
“Oh, this,” he said. “You win, Sky. I can’t believe I didn’t notice it sooner.”
It was a tiny wisp of brush hair, nothing mo
re.
“Happens to my sisters all the time. It’s from a makeup brush—though I can’t say if it’s for eye shadow or blush.”
My hero. Again.
“Hailey,” Chris said to me.
I lifted my head and my eyes met his. I was swallowed up in that sea of blue.
He continued: “I don’t know why you thought it was okay to actually go out in public at only ninety-nine-point-nine percent gorgeous.”
At this point I’m probably beet red. And that’s okay.
“It’s all good, though,” he said. “Now you’re back to your usual hundred percent.”
Now Skyler was turning red. And as much as I loved everything Chris just said, I was letting this damsel-in-distress act become a bad habit.
I turned to face my tormentor.
“You know, Skyler,” I said. “If you spent a third of the time studying that you do being a total bitch, maybe you could end up being more than the dumb stereotype that you are.”
“I’m not dumb,” Skyler said. And I knew that was true—though she could definitely brush up on her studies—but that wasn’t the point. I needed to hit her where it hurt. I couldn’t call her ugly; that would obviously be a lie.
“No?” I asked. “You just handed me five dollars—and thanks, by the way, I’ll keep it—in an effort to humiliate me when you didn’t even have your facts straight. So now you not only look stupid … you’re out five dollars.”
“Like I care about five dollars?” she said desperately.
“You don’t? I just thought it might come in handy, considering all those cab rides you had to shell out for, retrieving your party guests’ cars the other night.”
The look on Chris’s face—hands over his mouth, trying hard not to laugh out loud—made me (the now-100-percent-gorgeous me, according to Chris, that is) feel all the more empowered. So I continued, “I guess when you don’t value people’s feelings, money doesn’t matter either.”
“Whatever, Hailey,” Skyler said in a moving-on-now tone.
“Oh, good. So we’re done here?”
“We were done a long time ago,” Skyler said, looking at me, and then Chris. Her meaning was clear.
I watched her walk away and wondered how long this was going to go on. We were only sophomores. Were we going to just attack each other for the next two and a half years? Would it ever get old? I was certainly over it, but would she ever stop?
“That was awkward,” I said.
“She’s gotten worse,” he said.
We watched as she disappeared into Chem Hall. I so badly wished I knew exactly what he was thinking. Was he missing her at all? What did they actually share? What were they like as a couple?
Not having gone to West Hollywood for my freshman year, I missed out on so much. This was information I needed!
Of course, I was still floating a bit from the 100-percent-gorgeous bit—not even Skyler could completely wreck that. But my curiosity was killing me, and Chris had opened the door with the “she’s gotten worse” comment, so I figured I’d see if he cared to expand on that thought.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Just … she didn’t used to be such a total bitch,” he said. “I mean, yeah, she wasn’t the nicest girl to people who weren’t her friends, but it got worse and worse and that was part of why we broke up. She started to become … like … a monster.”
“But she’s kind of…” I stopped to gather my thoughts, but the truth was, I couldn’t even conceive of her being any other way.
So I said as much.
“I mean … she’s Skyler. I can’t imagine she was ever that much different from who she is now.”
He shrugged and looked down at his book, but he sure didn’t look like he was reading anything. I decided to press my luck a little.
“What did happen with you guys?” I asked.
“Like, why’d we break up?”
“Well, yeah, I guess.” I said. “If it’s too personal, you don’t have to tell me.”
“No, it’s fine,” he said, and kind of scrunched up his face as he gathered his thoughts. “She was pretty, you know? Obviously. So, at first I was attracted to that…”
“She is pretty,” I agreed, while thinking only on the outside. I actually felt myself biting my tongue.
“And we had the same friends, so hanging out was always convenient. And I guess there was a part of me that felt cool because I was dating her.”
I let out a chuckle and immediately wished I hadn’t. Chris looked up and tilted his head. “What?”
“No, I get it,” I said. “She’s the most popular girl, so it would be cool to date her.”
“But it wasn’t,” he said. “I mean, at first it was because she wasn’t always so bad. Sure she was a little snobby, but it wasn’t until things got weird at home for her that she started to get really nasty. I’m still not even sure what the deal was—she never told me. But that’s when things got bad.”
About 75,000 questions filled my brain, but I resisted the urge to interrupt him.
“And it wasn’t that she was mean to me,” he continued. “She was fine with me. It was when I saw how she treated other people that I got uncomfortable.”
“Because you’re a good person,” I interjected.
“I guess.” He shrugged.
I was dying to know more, but I tried to play it cool. We were still getting to know each other. Better not put him on the spot, not after he rescued me from mustache-hole-in-the-face hell. I jumped straight to:
“So what was the final straw?”
“She was all excited about Spirit Week,” he said, and of course I immediately sat up extra straight. “She was planning a prank, and it was so brutal … I just was like—whoa … not cool.”
What was the prank? What was the prank? What was the prank?
“Did you tell her that?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he said. “I told her it was totally out of bounds. But she didn’t care. She thought it was funny.”
“What was it?”
Chris sighed. “She was planning to hold her very own Westminster Dog Show.”
“Huh?”
He looked me in the eye. “She was going to Photoshop pictures of the unpopular girls’ heads on different breeds of dogs, poking fun at them based on weight—and other potentially humiliating characteristics—and then post them all over school.”
Wow.
“That’s pretty awful,” I said. “Like … for Spirit Week this year?”
“Yeah,” Chris said. “That was the other thing. It was so long ago, and she was already planning how to hurt people that far in advance. Like, forget doing well in school or looking at colleges and starting to think about your future—she was all about embarrassing people.”
“That’s … I mean, that’s seriously messed up.”
“Totally. That’s when I finally saw Skyler for who she had become: someone with this deep-seated need to make other people feel bad. Who cares how pretty she is on the outside if that’s who she is on the inside?”
“No argument here,” I said.
Then he looked at me with a look I wasn’t used to. He almost looked a little embarrassed. “Especially when there are people like you, who are pretty on the outside and the inside,” he said.
Oh my God.
I didn’t think things could get better after 100 percent gorgeous, but I was thrilled to be proved wrong. I didn’t know how to respond to that. Was I supposed to respond? What’s the protocol when the Cutest Boy Ever has just paid you yet another major compliment?
He saved me the trouble of figuring it out.
Chris took my hands.
“Hailey … this has been fun, the texting, the calls and all—”
Oh my God, no! That sounds like he’s breaking up with me. Is he breaking up with me? He’s breaking up with me! We’re not even going out and he’s breaking up with me!!!
“Chris,” I sputtered. “Chris—wait, I, um—”
Oh no oh no oh no … why did he change his mind? Now we’ll never go out and I’ll never get to see that hole in his pants get bigger and I’ll only get to take secret peeks at his calves at PE and baby cows and—
“What?” I asked.
He looked puzzled. “Didn’t you just hear me?”
Not if you’re going to just dump me again.
“Um … sorry,” I said. “What was the last part?”
Chris smiled. “I said, it’s been fun texting and calling and all, so let’s go do something, like, this weekend? Is that cool?”
Oh, thank God. Thank you, God, thank you, baby cows, thank you, mythical mustache.
“Yes,” I said a little too quickly.
“Cool,” he said. “I know Andy was thinking about asking Emily to hang out, so maybe we can all hang out together?”
Really? I thought. Emily and Andy? That’s cool! But there were far more pressing matters at hand.
“Sounds good to me,” I said. And the butterflies in my stomach were going so crazy, I was scared one was going to literally fly out of my mouth. Which would be weird. And then Chris would probably take back his invite, because—butterflies or not—who wants to hang out with a weird girl who has insects flying out of her mouth?
Luckily, nothing warranting a terrible Syfy Channel movie came fluttering out of my mouth, and even more luckily, I was eventually able to get the picture out of my mind of caterpillars slowly metamorphosing in my stomach, and much, much more luckily …
I had a real date with Chris Roberts coming up!
* * *
I was so stoked about my date with Chris that it didn’t even seem super-weird that Mom had left me a note on the table when I got home:
Book club tonight. Your dad’s working late, so heat up the leftovers in the fridge. I’ll be back by 9. Love you!
Mom
Had Mom told me she joined a book club? That must have slid right past me. This whole lack of family dinner was a big change—I don’t think Dad had been home for dinner in a week, but Mom almost never missed dinner with me. Maybe that’s just how it is when you get older. It might have bummed me out a little if my thoughts lately weren’t pretty much all Chris Chris Chris Chris Instagram Chris Facebook Chris Twitter Chris Chris Me & Chris. Chris.
Confessions of a Hater Page 17
