I couldn’t help but notice a small line crease between Minnie’s eyebrows as her face shifted into a slight show of concern. And I looked her over, standing there in her bouncy skirt and sandals, and suddenly something occurred to me. Minnie, fresh and feminine, genuinely kind and a little ditzy, might just be a little bit boring. I looked back at Max, still smiling at some recollection of mischief we’d gotten into together. He didn’t have to know that I had become a little boring too. He still believed my Photoshopped life. Now I had a chance to make that life a reality. I reached up and felt the turtle charm. Time to emerge. Take a chance.
Minnie was watching Max smile at me.
Then suddenly Minnie grabbed at her eye and called loudly, “Oooh, my eye! I’ve got something in my contact!”
“Here.” The girl beside her reached into her pocket and pulled out some eyedrops. “I’ve got some solution.”
“Oh,” Minnie said, sounding both surprised and disappointed. “Well, I . . . I need a mirror.” She grabbed Max’s hand. “Max, walk me to the bathroom? I can’t see!”
He took her hand obediently and gently led her across the grass, weaving between partiers.
What just happened? I watched as Max opened the front door and led her inside. Something had happened, that was for sure. And that’s when I knew I had found my opportunity. I could show Max everything he’d been missing. Fun. Excitement. Adventure. And I could start by doing a hypnosis show tonight.
“I’m going to do it,” I said to no one in particular. I was abandoned, standing alone at a party where I hardly knew a soul.
Conner, the sweaty guy, patted me on the back. “Awesome!”
And I did think briefly about my mother and her sad, beseeching eyes. But Mom was a romantic. She would understand that I was just taking the necessary steps to open the door to true love.
8
“You’re going to do it?” Quinton asked.
“Sure,” I said nonchalantly, as if I wasn’t defying my mother in every way. My heart played bumper cars in my chest, slamming back and forth into various organs as I tried to calm my nerves, tell myself I could do it. No big deal. I’d channel my mother and everything would be fine. Better than fine, because I’d be reminding Max of my adventurous spirit—something maybe, just maybe, he was missing.
“What will you need?” Mia asked, very businesslike. I half expected her to whip out her four-color pen and create a list.
“Um, a stage?” The sound of the words made me shiver. A stage. My stage.
She nodded and began to walk up the driveway and around the house.
The mahogany-haired girl, Sadie, walked over to Mia. I recognized her from the previous day in English class. “Hey girl,” she said to Mia.
“Hi.” Mia adopted a much lighter tone than the one she had used with me.
“Love your skirt,” Sadie said.
“Thanks.” Mia smoothed the sides of her painted-on, metal-embellished black skirt. “Did you tell Riley about the new song?”
Sadie nodded. “Total approval.”
“Whew.” Mia smiled. “Thanks.” She started to walk again, and I followed, feeling a little bit like a dog. I couldn’t quite get a handle on Mia. She wasn’t mean to me, and I didn’t exactly feel invisible, but she seemed very wary of me for some reason.
“So,” she said, turning toward me. “How exactly is it that you became friends with Quinton?”
“We sort of . . . bumped into each other at the park.”
She looked me over with an intrigued expression, like she wondered if bumped into each other was code for bumping and grinding. I almost jumped in to correct her, but then I decided to let Mia wonder if I was the kind of girl Quinton would go for. It was thrilling to even pretend of the possibility. This was my reinvention, after all. I followed her behind the house to the backyard, where there was a large brick patio—perfect for a stage. Several people stood around a stone fire pit where an actual fire was sizzling—a fire! In this heat! Insanity! But the flickering yellow and orange flames sent waves of amber light into the darkening sky, and it did set a nice mood.
Mia scanned the area in planning mode when a burly guy, tall and gorgeous—looking a little like Taylor Lautner—walked over. His eyes were semi-closed under thick black eyebrows and he wore an expression like maybe the English language was too hard to muster right now.
“Hey sweetie!” Mia cooed, reaching up to stroke his mammoth bicep. “Are you having fun? Do you need another drink?”
I realized this must be Jake—Mia’s boyfriend.
He shook his head.
“Your party is great.” Mia tilted her chin up at him—maybe waiting for a kiss, or maybe just trying to close the gap in their height difference. “I mean, like, everyone is here. Everyone!”
He looked over at me and Mia followed his gaze. “Are you that chick who’s doing a hypnosis show?” Jake asked, shocking me that he could, indeed, speak. “Quinton said you had weird eyes.”
I didn’t know whether to be happy that Quinton was talking about me or upset because he’d called my eyes weird. At the park he’d said wicked. Wicked was much better than weird.
“Yes,” Mia answered for me with a pinched look on her face. “Her name is Willow.”
Jake lumbered in the direction of the patio door. “I’ll go tell Quinton. He’ll be psyched.”
Quinton will be psyched. I replayed the words in my head and for a moment, contemplated, could Quinton—beautiful, tousled, almost-top-of-the-pyramid Quinton—like me? I quickly squashed that thought and reasoned that he was just excited about seeing his classmates do something funny.
Jake opened the glass French doors and started to walk inside. He paused momentarily, halfway into the threshold, and I wanted to tell him to shut the door or all these softball-size bugs would enter the house, but I kept my mouth shut. He looked back over at me. “You need anything?” he asked.
“Could you get me a drink?” Mia asked sweetly.
“I meant for the show,” he said.
“Oh,” Mia said softly.
I felt uneasy, like I was caught in some kind of a quiet, passive lovers’ quarrel. I looked at Jake. “Um, some chairs?” I suggested.
He gestured with his chin toward a collection of wicker patio furniture. “I’ll get some folding chairs too.”
“And my drink?” Mia asked, slightly desperate.
He disappeared into the house without answering.
I began to lug the heavy, cushioned love seat out onto the patio area when suddenly two large floodlights, anchored at the corners of the roof, turned on and illuminated the area with crisp white light. Word spread quickly, because in a matter of minutes, the backyard filled up with hordes of people, all sort of staring in my direction, and without much preparation, everything felt very real. I was going to do it. This was my chance to have eyes on me, the spotlight, everything I never had but always wanted.
Jake and Quinton came through the French doors, stacks of folding chairs shoved under their thick arms, and quickly assembled them into a straight line across the patio as I instructed them to. More people spilled from inside the house and began seating themselves on the plush green lawn, looking in my direction. As others followed suit, the mass of partiers quickly became an organized, seated lot—an audience, huge and interested. Quinton stepped off the patio and squeezed himself onto the grass close to the stage.
Mia held her thin, sculpted arms into the air, taking charge, and the crowd immediately hushed, listening eagerly. “I’m not sure,” Mia said, raising her soft voice as loud as it would go, “if you’ve met Willow. She’s new at our school—just moved from Vegas, where she had a real hypnosis show! And she said she would do a little performance for us tonight!” She sounded so excited, so different than just moments earlier. I recalled how Mom could put on a stage voice and create a presence. I realized that was exactly what Mia was doing.
The crowd burst into a rowdy applause and I felt a tingle work its way up my spin
e. Fear. Insecurity. Doubt. I was going to humiliate myself. I wouldn’t be able to do it the way Mom did. I wouldn’t even sound as good as Mia. Just then, the patio door behind me creaked open and I saw Max, holding Minnie’s hand, slither around the perimeter of the patio and squeeze into the seated crowd. Max smiled broadly at me. Minnie’s eyes looked weak, a little red, and I wondered if it was from a true contact lens emergency or if she had been crying. I felt a twinge of guilt. I didn’t want to cause them to fight.
But then Max touched his index finger to his temple—a sign from our youth when we would signal to each other, If you think you can do it, you can do it, and something inside me snapped. I could do this. I would do this. And it would open the doors of Max’s heart to me. He would see my spunk, my energy, my adventure—all those things that I had lost over the years. And of course I would channel my mother and be sexy and confident and alluring, and if Max liked that too, well, fabulous. And if Max happened to realize that he was with the wrong girl, then that wasn’t really my fault—Max would be making that decision.
And really, it would be doing Minnie a favor, because if they weren’t meant to be—if they weren’t true soul mates like Max and I were—wouldn’t I just be saving her future heartache?
So I smiled and adopted Mom’s low, sultry stage voice. “I’m Willow Grey and we’re going to have some fun tonight.”
I saw Max giggle at my put-on voice and I remembered how he laughed so many years ago when we were in the tree and I used the same voice. But the crowd went nuts. Maybe it was the heat or maybe it was all the red plastic cups of beer consumed that made them so enthusiastic, but maybe, I thought with hope, maybe it was just me.
“I need some volunteers,” I said, and arms shot up everywhere. Mom always took fifteen but she had me to help her so I decided to just pick five people from the audience. I randomly pointed to five people, and they ran across the grass to the patio. I motioned for them to sit on the chairs. They high-fived one another and made victory fist pumps into the air.
I asked the audience to be very still, very quiet; then I had the volunteers close their eyes. I took a deep breath. I knew the words. I knew the sequence. I didn’t have the audio of the soft ocean waves to play, but I prayed it would work anyway. “I want you to take a deep breath, focus on my voice, and I’ll guide you through,” I said calmly.
For the next three minutes, with complete silence behind me, I found myself just falling into the routine, saying the words I heard my mom say so many times before. I didn’t have time to be nervous anymore. I was invested in the process. “From this point on you will hear what I say, feel what I ask you to feel, visualize what I ask you to visualize.” The five volunteers slumped in the chairs, heads limp to the side, some resting on the shoulder of the person next to them.
I turned back around to the audience and smiled. “Ready?” I asked. “You can make noise now.”
And they did.
“Okay!” I said, imagining how in our show the pulsing music would start to play. I had the volunteers open their eyes. I walked over to the guy wearing a Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets T-shirt. “Uh-oh,” I said to him. “You just got stung by a yellow jacket.” For some reason this sent the crowd into a huge uproar. Burly jocks stood up and screamed things about football and rivals. I knew the response wasn’t exactly because of me, but still, it gave me a little dose of confidence to know everyone was so enthusiastic. I turned back to the Yellow Jacket guy. “Your tongue is swelling up to twice its normal size. You have no trouble breathing, but it’s difficult to talk.”
“Oh no.” Yellow Jacket Guy grabbed at his mouth. “My thongue!”
There was more hooting and hollering from the crowd. I stared at the Yellow Jacket guy for a moment, watching as he poked his lips with his fingers. I had done it. Hypnotized. Excitement swirled in my stomach.
I turned to a petite girl in a pink sundress. “On the count of three,” I told her, “you will become Grammy-winning entertainer of the year, pop sensation Taylor Swift!”
“Woo-hoo!” The crowd applauded.
“One, two, three!”
Pink Sundress Girl popped up off her chair and sashayed toward the edge of the patio, a fake microphone in her hand, and began to sing loudly. The crowd went wild.
I stared into the audience of my new classmates and felt flushed with exhilaration. This was working. I was entertaining them. Then, at the very left side of the crowd, I saw Max and Minnie sitting so close to each other their arms looked zipped together. Minnie leaned over and kissed Max’s cheek. And he looked lovingly at her. I was onstage but he was looking at her.
Pink Sundress was singing “Mine,” but I had an inspiration. I tapped her on the shoulder. “Hey Taylor,” I whispered. “Why don’t you sing that song about the girl who secretly loves her best friend.”
Pink Sundress nodded eagerly and started to sing “You Belong with Me.”
I turned back toward the other volunteers sitting on their chairs. Yellow Jacket guy continued to poke at his mouth. I pointed to a girl with honey-streaked hair. “Can you put your hands in a fist? Good. Perfect. For the remainder of the show, your hands are stuck that way, okay? You can’t seem to pull them apart, but just keep trying.”
She began to struggle to separate her hands. At the edge of the patio, Pink Sundress sang, “Dreaming of the day when you wake up and find that what you’re looking for has been here the whole time.”
I looked over my shoulder. Max was looking at me now. My heart rocketed into my ribs. Keep his attention. Show him how much fun you are. Make him realize he wants to be with you.
I turned back to the girl with the pretend fused fists. “Oh, and for no apparent reason you’ve completely forgotten what your name is and any time I ask you your name, you’ll get up and sing this line from the song ‘That’s Not My Name’: ‘They call me quiet, but I’m a riot . . . Mary, Jo, Lisa, Always the same. But that’s not my name.’ Okay? So, tell me, what’s your name?”
The pretty girl, trying to pull her hands apart, got a confused look on her face. “I’m not really sure.” She giggled. “They call me quiet, but I’m a riot . . .”
A huge burst of laughter erupted from the crowds. This feeling was totally new to me—the feeling of deserving that kind of reaction, of owning the stage. Of being the star. Max was smiling, nodding in appreciation. I needed to really amp up the antics—show him how much fun I was. I tried to think of some outrageous things Mom did to really keep a crowd going. There was the bit where Mom had a volunteer think he or she was having sex—something Grandma called particularly crude and cruel. But it sure did get laughs. What if I just had one of my volunteers think he was making out with a Victoria’s Secret model? I looked over at the remaining volunteers. They were both guys. What if they got, like, a boner or something? Sure, it would bring the house down, but I kind of agreed with Grandma—it was cruel and something I couldn’t do no matter how much I wanted to prove to Max that I was adventurous. I got a different idea.
“You,” I said, pointing to a dark-haired guy wearing a baseball cap. “What’s your name?”
“Davis.”
“Davis, for the remainder of the show whenever I say your name, you’ll get a sudden bout of gas and fart explosively. Okay, Davis?”
Phrrrrrrt.
The audience went crazy. Doubled over laughing. I looked at Davis. No boner, so I didn’t feel too cruel. The remaining volunteer was a broad-shouldered, good-looking guy, clearly a teammate of Quinton and Jake’s. “And what’s your name?” I asked. “It’s not Davis, right?”
Phrrrrrrrrrt!
Laughter and snorts filled my ears.
“It’s Hayden.”
I looked over at Max. He was watching me, but I also caught him glancing over at Pink Sundress as she continued to sing: “Been here all along so why can’t you see? You belong with me . . .”
Was I imagining it, or did Max have a contemplative look on his face? Like maybe, just maybe, the words of the so
ng were seeping into his brain?
I needed to do something to show Max he could act on his feelings. I turned back to my final volunteer. “People have secret crushes all the time, but sometimes they’re just afraid to act on it, you know?” I said.
Hayden nodded, and suddenly the audience got very quiet.
“When I say your name, Hayden,” I continued. “I want you to get up and walk toward the girl you’ve always secretly liked but never told anyone about. When I say your name, I want you to lose that fear and just take a chance, okay?”
He nodded. The audience was very, very still.
“Go for it, Hayden,” I said.
Huge applause ripped through the air as all the football players stood up and egged him on. All eyes were on Hayden as he walked toward the edge of the patio. Mia, at the very edge of the brick stage, sat erect and poised. Everyone seemed to cast their eyes toward her, but Hayden walked right past her. Mia’s face froze in a plastered smile like the camera shots of losers at the Oscars. Everyone mumbled in surprise and looked on in confusion as Hayden navigated his way through the crowd toward the very back. He walked up to a nondescript mousy girl dressed in jean shorts and a green halter top.
“Hey,” Hayden said and smiled at her.
“Oh my God,” she whispered in shock.
The crowd, clearly surprised at his choice, looked back and forth from hot Hayden to this mousy, nondescript girl. The mousy girl, overwhelmed, started to cry.
Hayden reached over and wiped her eyes. “I think you’re so great.”
Then the crowd started to cheer. “Go for it, man!” someone yelled.
“Excuse me,” I said to the girl onstage who was still trying to pull her stuck hands apart. “What was your name, again?”
“They call me quiet, but I’m a riot . . .”
“Why don’t you dance, Davis?” I said.
Phrrrrrrrt! He got up and started to dance.
“Everyone, get up and dance!” I commanded.
Crush Control Page 8
