by Kieran Scott
“Who knows? She kept me on the phone for hours the other night, debating it,” Mindy said. “’Oh, Gabe is sooo hot. But Daniel and I have been together forever. We have something sooo deep,’” Mindy said, fluttering her eyelashes and tilting her head back dramatically. “I was like, ‘Spare me! Get a life!’”
“You said that?” I asked.
“No! Not really,” she replied.
“Well, why not? If that’s how you feel. . . .”
“I can’t even imagine saying that out loud to her,” Mindy said, staring down at the empty soda cup in her hand. She smiled. “You probably think I’m a total loser, right?”
“No!” I said. “Not at all. Sometimes I wish I was better at stopping myself before I said things. It can be a good thing, trust me.”
“Yeah, well, not all the time,” Mindy said. “Don’t get me wrong, Sage and I have been friends since kindergarten and she’s always been there for me,” she said. “There are just some things about her I can’t stand.”
“Yeah. Me too,” I said. Like everything, I added silently. “I can’t imagine her being there for anyone but herself.”
“Believe me, Sage is a good person to have on your side when you need her,” Mindy said. “All that energy she puts into being a bitch? Imagine what it’s like when she’s using it to defend you.”
“Why would you need defending?” I asked.
Mindy looked down into her soda and shrugged. “Everyone needs defending at some point, right? Sage was really nice to have around during my awkward phase.”
“Oh, yeah. I had one of those,” I said, nodding. “Up until about a year ago, my nose was way too big for my face and I had a mouth full of metal.”
“Really?” Mindy said, studying me. “For me it was scoliosis and a unibrow.”
“Wow,” I said. Mindy laughed. She was so beautiful, I couldn’t imagine her having an awkward phase, but I guess no one is ever perfectly happy with how they look.
“All right! Let’s go! Girl-on-girl Twister!” Tucker shouted. He stepped onto the chair-and-a-half, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Come one, come all!”
Ugh! Was he kidding?
“Kitchen?” I said to Mindy, blanching.
“Kitchen.”
We got up and scurried for the relative safety of the kitchen table. The keg and a huge bowl of Skull Punch (I don’t know why Gabe’s friends called it that) sat on the island in the center of the room. A few people hovered around while a guy with blond curls worked the tap and another, more meaty type sloppily served punch into cups. I stepped into the room, but when I went to lift my foot again, it hesitated a second before peeling off the floor.
“Ew!” I said, looking down. “What is that?”
“It’s floor film,” some guy in a plastic Viking hat—yes, a Viking hat—told me, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. “You know it’s a party when you’ve developed floor film.”
“That’s great. Can you let go of me now?” I asked, scrunching my nose at the smell of his breath.
Mindy had already slipped around the side of the room and settled in at the chip-and-dip-spattered table, where she was constructing a pyramid out of empty plastic cups. I sat down next to her and sighed.
“Having fun?” I asked.
“Totally,” she replied.
“Not much of a party animal, are ya?” I asked.
“I never really thought that drinking until I puked would be much fun,” she said as she carefully balanced a clear cup atop two blue ones.
“Have you ever done it?”
“No. You?”
“No.”
Mindy smiled. “Then we have that in common.” She picked up a half-full cup of punch from the edge of the table and sniffed it. “What is this stuff, anyway?”
“Skull Punch. Apparently it tastes like regular Kool-Aid, but it’s about four-billion-proof alcohol,” I said. “I’m surprised it’s not burning a hole through the cup.”
Mindy grimaced and placed the offending mixture as far away from her as possible, as if she were afraid it was going to leap out and slink down her throat of its own volition.
A couple of guys burst in through the side door to the driveway, carrying a huge speaker between them. They struggled under the weight, listed sideways and slammed into the table, knocking Mindy’s pyramid down in the process. Plastic cups bounced along the floor and under their feet, but they didn’t even notice.
“Whose party is this, anyway?” one of them asked on their way to the living room.
“I don’t know. Some brunette babe, I think,” the other replied.
Mindy and I looked at each other and cracked up laughing.
“So much for hosting my way to popularity,” I said. “This is going to go down in history as ‘that party thrown by some brunette chick.’”
“Well, you are they only brunette around here, so there’s a chance people will know it was you,” Mindy said.
“Yeah, what’s up with that?” I asked. “Is there something in the water?”
Mindy leaned into the table and tucked her chin. “Let’s just say the Drug Fair downtown makes most of its profits off Herbal Essences Amazon Gold.”
“I knew it! It couldn’t be natural,” I said. “Not all of it.”
“Well, mine is,” Mindy said, lifting one shoulder. “But I have personally been in on many bleach parties.”
“Wow. I think this might be the happiest moment of my life,” I said, grinning. There was a huge crash in the living room and I winced. “Do you want to get out of here and go to the movies or something?”
Mindy checked her watch. “Actually, I kind of have to get home. My parents are pretty insane about my curfew.”
“Okay. Leave me to my misery,” I joked. “Maybe I’ll just play some Twister.”
“Do not do that!” Mindy cried as she got up.
I laughed and walked her to the door, where she surprised me by hugging me good-bye. “See you tomorrow,” she said.
I stood in the doorway until she disappeared out of sight, thinking about our conversation. I was glad that she’d started to open up to me about Sage and stuff. It felt like we were on our way to being real friends.
A cheer went up in the living room and I went over to check it out. In the five minutes since I’d left the room, the furniture had been cleared to the walls and the old Twister board had been broken out. A girl from my English class bent backward over another girl to put her right hand on blue while Tucker and his buddies salivated and cheered.
My house had officially become the ninth circle of hell.
“Hey there, Jersey.”
Ah! A voice from above! All was not yet lost.
The second after I realized Daniel was standing beside me, my eyes darted toward the couch, which was now flush with the far wall. Sage and Gabe were no longer flirting. They were now trying to swallow each other whole. My heart slammed through my rib cage and I turned and tried to shove Daniel back into the kitchen.
“Hey! Hi! I was just thinking about going to the movies. Wanna come?”
Daniel laughed and stopped moving, his body like a brick wall. “What’s up with you?” he said, bending slightly to look me in the eye. “Been hitting the wicked ale?”
“No! I just want to get out of here,” I told him as another cheer went up from the living room. “This party is so lame.”
“Doesn’t sound like it,” Daniel said. “What’s going on in there?”
He sidestepped me and made it to the doorway before I could think of another stupid excuse to stop him. I watched as his face morphed from laughter, to surprise, to total nausea.
“Daniel, I—”
But he was already gone. He crossed the room, stepping on one of the Twister girls’ hands and taking their whole knot down in the process.
“Hey! Foul!” Tucker shouted, pointing at Daniel.
Daniel grabbed my brother’s shoulder, yanked him off an openmouthed Sage and shoved him right into a big green garbage bag full of c
ans and cups. The bag exploded and Sage screeched. In his stunned struggle for balance, Gabe took my mom’s potted tree down with him and was pinned underneath it.
For a split second no one moved. Then Sage rushed over to Daniel.
“Baby? Let me explain—”
“Save it!” Daniel said, seething.
Is it wrong that I thought he was beyond sexy at that moment?
Sage’s mouth snapped shut and Daniel stalked toward me. “I have to get out of here,” he said as he brushed by. I could practically feel the angry heat radiating off his skin.
Gabe’s friends were helping him up and he seemed fine. A little dirty and ego-bruised, but otherwise fine. And if I knew anything about the male psyche, I was pretty sure that, in 2.5 seconds, twenty surfer dudes were going to go after Daniel like bloodlusting pit bulls. I turned around to make sure Daniel had gotten out of the house okay, but he was standing at the side door, looking at me.
“You coming or what?” he said.
Hell, yeah.
We rushed out and Daniel led me to a black Honda Accord parked down the street.
“You drive?” I said.
“Get in,” he replied.
Then we peeled outta there like two outlaws on the run. As my heart pounded and I grabbed the top of the window for balance, I struggled to keep from smiling. Daniel Healy was just full of movie moments.
Ten minutes later, we were seated across a table from each other at a local hangout called Dolly’s. I’d heard it mentioned a few times since I’d started school, but hadn’t yet been there. It was basically an old-school beach-bum diner with walls that were open to the elements and a fifteen-item menu that was posted behind the counter with those plastic white letters that slide into little black slots. Dolly was the sun-withered but smiling old lady behind the counter, shouting at a rerun of Fear Factor on her mini TV.
“Don’t chicken out now, Implant Girl! You survived all that plastic surgery, you can survive a few cockroaches!”
“Nice place,” I said.
Daniel stared down at his untouched fries.
“You okay?” I asked.
“I feel like such a moron,” he said, suddenly squeezing his eyes closed. “Like two days ago I was telling you how I couldn’t imagine my life without her, and now—”
He stopped to bang his head back against the wooden bench. I winced.
“You must think I’m an idiot,” he said.
“Not at all. Sage is the idiot,” I replied.
“Just to clarify,” he said, “I never want to see that freak again.”
“Who? Gabe?”
“No. Sage.”
“Fine by me,” I said.
“I should’ve broken up with her ages ago,” he said, looking out the window.
I blinked. “But wait. I thought you said you couldn’t imagine—”
Shut up, Annisa!
“Yeah, but that’s . . . that’s because it’s been so long since I’ve been without her,” Daniel said, his blue eyes seeming to darken. He sat forward and dipped a french fry into a blob of ketchup. “It’s hard to explain. Have you ever been in a long relationship?”
“Um, no,” I replied.
“Well, I’ve been trying to break up with Sage for a year. Or thinking about it, but I just haven’t had the guts.”
“Are you serious?” I blurted. “What did you think was going to happen? Did you think her head was going to explode?”
“Possibly,” he said, looking down. Suddenly he was very focused on dragging another french fry through the ketchup blob. “I don’t know. I think I just . . . it sounds lame, but I guess it was just easier to not do it. I mean, I always figured it would be this big drama. . . .”
Which it was.
“I know you probably think I’m a total wuss, but I don’t know.” He wiped his hands on his jeans and sat back. “I guess I’m not good at change.”
“So you thought, Better to stay with Sage and avoid change—”
“Than grow some balls and break up with her.”
“Wow,” I said.
“Yeah. Wow.”
“A year’s a long time.”
“Tell me about it.”
“So that’s why you were so upset when she started acting weird,” I told him, putting the pieces together. “You thought she was going to break up with you and you were worried about—”
“Change. Drama. All of it,” Daniel finished. “Well, that and nobody likes getting dumped, right?”
I took a long sip of my milk shake. I couldn’t believe it. Daniel wasn’t helplessly in love with Sage. He had been trying to figure out a way to break up with her for a year. Would it be wrong to get up and do a spontaneous jig on the table?
“I’m sorry I attacked your brother,” Daniel said suddenly.
“Please. He had it coming,” I said. “Plus, now you’ve saved me the trouble of getting back at him.”
“For what?” Daniel asked.
“Public humiliation,” I said.
“Yeah. I think I took care of that.”
“So, if you hate change so much, you must really love the way I’ve bulldozed into town,” I said, picking at my nails.
“Are you kidding? What did I tell you the other day?” Daniel said, his face brightening. “Things have gotten a lot more interesting since you’ve been here. In a good way.”
“Really?” I asked, grinning.
“Hey, I participated in a prank war, I’ve got someone to walk to school with and now I have the perfect excuse for a breakup,” Daniel said. “Gimme a break, Jersey, you’re like a . . . a . . .”
Guardian angel? Princess? Beautiful, perfect love of my life?
“Well, I don’t know, but you’re something,” he said.
“Not much of a poet, are ya?” I said.
“Sorry.”
“Hey,” I replied with a smile. “I’ll take it.”
“You’re a real wank, you know that?” I told my brother the next morning as I sat at the center island in my cheerleading uniform, eating my Cap’n Crunch. Gabe was attempting to mop the floor, but however wet and soapy he got the mop, it kept sticking in the pockets of film anyway.
“Are you gonna help me or what?” Gabe asked.
“Why don’t you get your so-called friends to help you?” I asked, knowing full well that Joe was passed out in a pool chair and Tucker was booting it big-time in the upstairs bathroom for the third time that morning. “Or better yet, get your new girlfriend to help you.”
“For the ten gazillionth time, I didn’t know she had a boyfriend!” Gabe said, mopping vigorously now. “God, Annisa, it’s not like I asked the girl to marry me. We were just messing around.”
“Gabe, you could’ve charged for admission,” I told him.
He stopped mopping and leaned the handle into the counter. “Why do you care, anyway? I saw the way you followed her man out of here like he was Brad freakin’ Pitt. You should be thanking me.”
My face flushed faster than you can say snagged. I was about to protest when there was a knock on the side door and Mindy and Sage walked in, thereby saving me from lying to my brother.
Was it really that obvious I liked Daniel?
“Ready for the big rivalry match-up?” Mindy asked cheerily.
“Nice power breakfast,” Sage said, looking down at my bowl. “But then, I guess you’re not hungry, since you were up half the night at Dolly’s, chowing down carbs with my boyfriend.”
My mouth dropped open. What? How did she . . . ? Why would he . . . ? When did they . . . ? My brain couldn’t even finish a sentence.
“It’s none of your business what I did or didn’t do last night,” I said, getting up and storming over to the sink, where I noisily deposited my bowl and spoon. God! Did everyone at Sand Dune High think they could tell me where I could go and what I could do? And with whom? I took a deep breath, then whirled on her. “Besides, he’s not your boyfriend anymore.”
“Yeah? We’ll see, Jersey,” Sa
ge said.
Hearing her say Daniel’s nickname for me was like blasphemy.
“Were you or were you not trying to suck my brother’s face off last night?” I shot back.
“I think I should go,” Gabe said, beating a hasty retreat.
“That is none of your business,” Sage retorted.
“Oh, yes it is! You guys made it the business of everybody at the party!” I replied. “Were you always that much of a ho, or does my brother just bring it out of you?”
Sage looked about ready to rearrange my face and I definitely knew the feeling. Mindy sensed there was about to be a cheer brawl and stepped between us.
“You guys! Stop it!” she said in as loud a voice as I’ve ever heard her use outside of cheerleading. “We have to get to the game. You can tear each other’s hair out later.”
I narrowed my eyes as I glared at Sage over Mindy’s arm. Tearing her hair out didn’t seem like the worst idea. But Mindy was right. We were going to be late.
“Fine,” I said finally.
“Fine,” Sage replied. She flounced over to the refrigerator and yanked open the door.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I’m thirsty,” she replied, her back to me.
Who did she think she was? She hadn’t even asked if she could have something!
“That’s it. I’m going to the field,” I said, walking out of my own house and slamming the door behind me. Maybe Sage would slip and fall on the freshly mopped floor and never walk again. Or at least develop a severe limp. Temporarily.
I’ve never seen so many people at a high school football game in my life. Fans packed both stands, filling up every available inch of bench space and bursting over onto the grass around the track. One side was a wall of yellow and blue, the other a sea of green and white. At the concession stand, the separate colors avoided each other like they were afraid of catching some horrifying disease by brushing up against the arm of an enemy T-shirt. The tension was so thick, I felt like at any second someone would say something mildly insulting, a punch would be thrown and we’d be smack in the middle of an upper-middle-class riot.
But all in all, the people in the stands were fairly well behaved. It was the cheerleaders who were having problems.
