“Okay! Go!” Mia tapped the snow cone against my lips and I took a bite.
“Ack, Mi, what’s in this?” I stuck my tongue out. “I need water.”
She handed me my Poland Spring, and when I was finally able to talk again I said, “Um, cinnamon, sour grape, and jalapeño?”
She cracked up. “How did you get that totally right? Did you get a flavor list in advance or something?”
“Just a good guess.” I chugged the rest of my water. “That was disgusting. Really and truly. And hot.”
“Exactly.” She smiled. “I call it the Seth.”
I wanted to throw something at her. “Mia!”
She slumped down. “I just want to know what he’s doing right now,” she admitted. “I know it’s pathetic. But I want to know. I can’t stand not talking to him. I keep checking to see if he’s posted anything new, but nothing. He’s probably with Adia, making out on a lounge by her pool.” She stuck her tongue out like she was about to throw up.
“Let’s go see if he’s there,” I said. “We’ll come right back in case there are customers. Then you’ll know what he’s doing and you can stop wondering. I guess sometimes you just have to face things head-on.”
“You don’t have your car today, remember?” Mia reminded me.
“Right. Duh. Okay, tomorrow then.” A lightbulb went on in my brain. “In our SNOW CONE TRUCK!” I screamed.
A magical, innocent, perfect way to stalk Seth.
No one would recognize us!
Mia gave me a halfhearted thumbs-up while staring at her phone.
“You’re still studying Seth’s Facebook profile, searching for clues?” I asked her, hopping down from the counter to make some more concoctions.
Mia rolled her eyes. That was exactly what she was doing, and I knew it.
“What do you think you’re going to find out?” I asked her. “Staring at it, waiting for him to post something…I mean, what’s the point?”
“He just posted some article about the coach of the Villanova basketball team.” She shrugged, acting like she didn’t care, but I knew she was reading the article like it was the most interesting thing in the world. She was probably ordering a Villanova hoodie right now. “I just want to know what he’s thinking, why he did what he did. It’s so unfair that I don’t get to know, that I can’t find out.”
I walked over to her. “Why aren’t you madder? Like, aren’t you so pissed that this stupid boy could break your heart like this?” I asked. “Be mad. Come on.”
“He’s on Facebook Messenger, though,” she said, completely ignoring me. “I didn’t even know he used that.”
“Mia!” I shouted. “Seriously?”
That’s when it hit me: I couldn’t simply be a bystander at the crime scene of Mia’s obsession. If I had to be a part of it, I had to be an active part of it.
I was her best friend. It was basically my job to help her. I couldn’t let Mia do this to herself.
Some people say that the best revenge is success, and maybe that’s true. But success can take a while.
So the backup plan: regular revenge.
We could hurt Seth like he had hurt her. Just in our own way.
“Come here, let me see,” I said.
“See what? Seth’s Facebook page? Aren’t you his friend?” Mia’s eyes lit up. Like she was already happier just because I was talking about Seth, and not just uh-huhing and nodding.
“I am his friend.” I smiled. “But we’re going to be making him a new friend.”
“Huh?” Mia took a sip of the strawberry-mango-pineapple slushie concoction I’d made when I blended the ice for too long.
Uncle Rick was committed to an only-snow-cone shop. He’d reminded us of that over and over again, but slushies were kind of like snow cones, just mushed up.
It got me thinking—we’re different versions of ourselves, depending on who we’re talking to and what we’re doing.
Sometimes we’re a snow cone, sometimes we’re a slushie. Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.
—
“Who’s Katie McCormick?” Mia scoffed, reading over my shoulder.
“She sounds like a real person, right?” My heart pounded.
“Um, I guess so,” Mia replied, confused.
“She’s from Easterly.” The more I said about Katie, the more real she felt. She was a Polaroid picture in my hands, coming into focus.
I’d spent my sixteen years of life wishing my parents were different. Why did they have to argue so much? Why couldn’t they just talk like normal people?
It was a waste of time. Complete and total waste.
Wishing and hoping wouldn’t change them.
But now, this was my chance!
Forget about change—I could create a whole person. To be exactly the way I wanted her to be. She’d be able to find out everything Mia ever wanted to know about Seth! Why he broke up with her, what happened that night, why he hooked up with Adia.
And then: we’d embarrass him way worse than he’d embarrassed her.
“What are you doing?” Mia asked, leaning over my shoulder. “You look like some kind of mad scientist, mixing potions in test tubes, waiting for an explosion.”
“I feel like that, actually! And I love it.”
“You’re freaking me out,” Mia continued.
I looked up from the computer. “Do you think Katie’s a softball player? Or soccer? Or maybe she does some kind of modern dance? Plays the cello? Mathletes?”
Mia closed the computer. “Seriously. Stop.”
“What? Why?”
“We’re not doing this,” Mia insisted. “This is not how we’re spending our summer. Sitting in a snow cone shop, making up a fake person so we can stalk my ex-boyfriend. Please. We’re better than this.”
Mia went on and on, like she was reading a script. There was no emotion in her voice; I knew she was just saying what she thought she was supposed to say.
“Fine. If you don’t mention Seth for the rest of the day, I’ll pretend Katie doesn’t exist,” I told her. I was setting my best friend up for failure. But truthfully, I knew my plan would benefit her in the long run.
“She doesn’t exist!” Mia laughed. “Justine, seriously. I know you’re bored, but you’re taking things too far.”
I pshawed her and waved a hand in her face. “I haven’t done anything yet. Calm down.”
—
Later that afternoon, a few kids came by on their way home after a soccer game. They were sweaty and smelled bad, and they wanted to sample every flavor before they decided on one. But they were still paying customers.
“If you were just a little closer to the field, you’d have tons of business,” the mom told us.
I told her about the truck. I took a screen shot of the map of the field she was talking about.
“We’ll be there tomorrow,” I said. “Look for the truck that says Mobile Cones.”
—
Mia failed at her mission. She couldn’t make it to the end of the day without mentioning Seth. She couldn’t even make it a whole hour without mentioning Seth.
I wasn’t surprised. And I’ll admit: I was happy about this. I wanted to create Katie. I wanted to do something.
So much of life was sitting and waiting for something to happen. You couldn’t control other people and you couldn’t make them change. You could only change yourself, your attitudes, how you responded to others.
But that seemed like a load of crap to me. It didn’t seem like enough.
Mia was sleeping over. We had a whole evening in front of us to figure out who Katie McCormick really was, and how she’d found her way to Seth Manzell.
It was time to get to work.
MIA
I failed on purpose. Well, not exactly on purpose. But I knew I wouldn’t be able to succeed. Talking about Seth was my only way to make sense of what had happened. And honestly, I loved talking about him. He still felt mine, in some small way.
He was actuall
y a boy who liked me, not one I just daydreamed about liking me. Not one I obsessed over from afar.
I loved the voice mails he’d leave me: Hey, Mia. It’s me, Seth. Not It’s Seth. He added me. I liked that. It felt special. Maybe he said that on everyone’s voice mail, but it felt like he only said it on mine.
And when I got the flu in February, he came over anyway. He brought me chicken soup from the deli in town. He sat with me watching shows on Bravo all day long. He didn’t mind the piles of wadded-up tissues on the coffee table.
Out of all the girls in school, Seth Manzell picked me.
But that was over now. Five months of bliss: over. I couldn’t handle it. I missed Seth. I missed having a boyfriend; I missed being part of a couple. What if I never had it again?
Justine and I sat side by side at her desk. “Okay. So far we have that Katie McCormick lives in Easterly and she likes modern dance.” She folded her hands in her lap and looked at me wide-eyed. “And?”
I leaned back in my chair. “I still don’t really understand what this Katie McCormick person is supposed to do. I mean, we can see Seth’s Facebook page ourselves. Same with Twitter, Instagram, whatevs. What can Katie McCormick do that we can’t do?”
“Just trust me,” Justine said. “You’ll see what she can do when she starts doing it.”
I swallowed hard.
“Also, it’s not only about what Katie can do. It’s about what Seth will do,” Justine added.
“Uh-huh.” Clearly Justine had a plan, but I didn’t understand why she was being so vague about it. I wanted to ask questions, but I was too scared of the answers.
“We’re going to make Seth fall in love with Katie,” Justine said, like it was the simplest thing in the world. “And then crush him completely. I’m talking gut-wrenching pain, here.”
There was passion in her scheming.
“Also, how many times have we wondered what guys thought?” she asked me. “Like about anything. Girls, hooking up, life…they’re so mysterious. Now we can find out everything we’ve ever wanted to know.” She bulged out her eyes. “Mia! This is huge!”
“Okay, okay, I get it.” I laughed.
“But the thing is, he’s pathetic, but he’s not literally the most pathetic person in the world, to fall in love with some complete stranger who found him online. So we’re going to need to do some digging,” Justine explained.
I wanted to stop her. I wanted to tell her to stop calling Seth pathetic. I was angry that he’d broken up with me, but I still loved him. I still desperately wished he’d change his mind. I wished he’d tell me this was all a mistake, that he wanted to be back together.
But this little experiment of Justine’s was all I had left of him. So I didn’t stop her. As long as we were doing this, it was okay for me to think about him all the time.
“So it says here he’s a part of this Connecticut Teens Volunteer Corps.” Justine pointed to the computer. “Katie needs to join that.”
Justine clicked the Join Group tab and voilà, just like that Katie McCormick was a volunteer.
“Um, she doesn’t have any photos,” I reminded Justine. “She’s this blank person without any friends who just joined Facebook. This doesn’t seem believable.”
“Relax. Please.” Justine sat back in her chair and stayed quiet for a little while, thinking.
“What are you going to do?” I asked. “Make up a million fake friends for her? Find some random photos? Justine, seriously. Let’s be done. This is really crazy. We’re the pathetic ones.”
She didn’t answer me. Within five minutes she was on the phone with her cousin Lara in California. She explained the whole thing. They were going to unfriend each other. And then Katie was going to friend all of Lara’s friends. On and on and on. They had a plan.
I had a million explanations for why Justine was so committed to doing this. One was that she really did want to help me get over Seth. Fine. Simple enough. She hated what he’d done to me as much as I hated it. So revenge was a big part of it.
But the other reasons were deeper: I always believed Justine wanted to be a different person, have different parents, lead a different life. Maybe this was her chance? I wasn’t a psychologist, obviously, but there was something else to her passionate, very crazy mission.
I just hadn’t figured it out yet.
MIA
I woke up starving at six in the morning. The only thing I wanted in the entire world was for Seth Manzell to love me again…and an egg-and-cheese sandwich.
I left Justine a note that I would be back in plenty of time for work, and I tiptoed down the creaky front stairs, and out of her house, and started the short trek into town. I mean, I was walking there and back, so that would pretty much cancel out most of the calories from the egg-and-cheese. I didn’t need to diet all the time.
It felt like the whole world was still asleep, except for the commuters going to the train station. In a way, it was nice to be up this early. Like I got a head start on the day. I was awake before anyone could bother me.
I was almost at Carlton’s for the best egg-and-cheese on the planet, when someone bumped into me. “The line starts around the corner, at the end of Hemlock.”
“Huh?” I asked. My sleepy town was suddenly crowded and moody.
“The line for Juiceteria,” the woman said. “I figured that’s why you were up this early. You know the new flavor comes out today.”
“Um, okay.” I peered around the corner. “Thanks.”
“I heard this month’s smoothie is their best yet. Something with pineapple…I mean, pineapple has all sorts of magical qualities. You know what they say about pregnant women—” She was interrupted by a gaggle of middle-aged women who arrived to join her. Apparently she was saving a space for them in line.
I still wanted the egg-and-cheese, but something told me to wait on the line.
A crowd at six-thirty in the morning? In Bridgefield?
Magical qualities of pineapple.
I couldn’t ignore all that.
JUSTINE
“We need to make one stop,” Mia told me as soon as we were in my car, on the way to pick up the truck.
“Where?” I asked, turning up the AC.
“Juiceteria,” she said. “It opened up last year, I think. There was a line around the corner this morning, and I totally get it. It’s amazing. It’s like dieting without torture. That should be their slogan.”
I nodded. “It does sound pretty good.” I flipped through the radio stations, trying to find something that would wake me up. “But you were already there and you want to go back? Is it a cult?”
Mia cracked up. “A healthy cult! Oh, and I want to get you one! Wanna know the best part?”
“What?” I laughed. It was nice to see her excited about something.
“The smoothies have names, and, like, you totally pick based on your mood!”
“Like the way we are with nail polish. This Love Every Minute polish I picked is totally coming true.”
“Hmm.” Mia smiled. “Can we make an Ex-Boyfriend Still Loves Me color?”
“I’m not even responding to that.” I turned the music up even louder, and I stopped outside Juiceteria.
Twenty minutes later, Mia came out with one goopy, brown, sludgelike drink and one peachy one, a color very similar to my toe polish, as a matter of fact.
“This is for you,” she said, handing me the orange cup. “Peach Perfect!” She giggled.
“Thanks, and what’s that one?” I asked her, trying not to gag. It looked and smelled like the slop at the bottom of a Dumpster.
“The Cheer-Up Cherry.”
“That is a good name, even if it smells disgusting. I guess you have to weigh the pros and cons.” I tried my smoothie. “Ooh, this one’s delish! Thank you!”
I rested it in the cup holder and started driving.
“The name just spoke to me. I mean, I definitely need cheering up. But the ingredients are good too: wheatgrass, blueberries, ch
erries, kale, soy milk…”
I reached my arm out for her to hand me the cup. “Not bad,” I said after a sip. “It tastes better than it smells. I prefer the peach, though.”
A few minutes later, we’d parked in the lot by the shop, and we were ready to start our first day in the Mobile Cones truck.
“I’m scared to really and truly stalk,” Mia said. “What if Seth sees us?”
“He doesn’t know there’s a food truck,” I reminded her. “Honestly, he probably forgot what we’re even doing this summer. He doesn’t pay attention.”
“He does, sometimes,” she defended him.
We drove for a few minutes and stopped halfway down the block from Seth’s house. In all fairness, there was a park with a playground at the end of his street, and there were kids playing there, so it was a good location for a mobile snow cone shop to hunker down.
We sat back in our seats and put our feet up on the dashboard. The breeze was blowing in through the open windows. It was one of those perfect summer days where the air feels delicious, no humidity whatsoever.
I pulled up Katie’s Facebook page on my phone and looked it over. Mia leaned in closer to get a better view.
“So we’re in a food truck, looking at a fake person’s Facebook page, stalking my ex-boyfriend,” Mia announced.
“We are,” I replied. “When you say it like that, it sounds sad. So please don’t say it like that.”
“Um, okay, let me rephrase.” Mia laughed and sipped her smoothie. “We’re snow cone saleswomen, creators of contemporary fictional characters, engaging in a social experiment about what it takes to get over a first love.”
“Yes!” When she put it that way, it did sound pretty good.
“Before we broke up, I had all these fantasies about Seth picking me up from work at the end of the day, and us, like, making out in the giant freezer,” Mia said, taking her feet down from the dashboard. “Doesn’t that sound hot?”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, it sounds freezing, actually, but yeah, also hot.”
“And he’d be our taste tester, and I’d feed him snow cones….”
“He wouldn’t have time for all that; he’s too busy volunteering,” I mocked.
“People make time for hooking up in a freezer.”
Kale, My Ex, and Other Things to Toss in a Blender Page 4
