I lowered the music and turned to face her. “I mean, what’s so douchey about Seth is that he volunteers and he’s all high-and-mighty about it. But like, he only does it for college. So wouldn’t it be way less douchey if he didn’t volunteer at all?” I rambled on. “He’s just so phony.”
“We’re all a little phony,” Mia replied. “I pretend I love snow cones when I’m talking to the customers, but obviously regular ice cream is way better.”
“That’s your job,” I reminded her. “It’s different.”
“Sit back, sit back!” Mia screeched, looking through the mirror on her side.
I glanced up through the rearview and saw Seth leaving his house. He had a backpack over both shoulders and his worn-out Yankees hat on.
I hated that hat.
Mia talked through her teeth. “Justine, come on. He’s going to see us!”
She was scared and happy at the same time, and at that moment I wondered if we should stop. Maybe I was prolonging the agony. But I had to believe that in the long run, it would be worth it. We couldn’t let him get away with what he’d done.
“Calm down,” I said. We were far enough that he wouldn’t see us.
“So now what?” Mia asked me. “He got in his car and left.”
“Right,” I said.
“And?”
“And we want to get a sense of his schedule, so we know when Katie should start talking to him,” I explained. “Please. Just let me be in charge.”
“Aren’t you always in charge?” Mia asked me.
She was right. I was always in charge. But that was our dynamic, the way it had been since kindergarten, and it was way too late to change it now.
“Come on,” I said. “We have snow cones to sell.”
MIA
Alexis came home for two days, totally unexpectedly. Her dad had to go to a conference in Toronto, so she was back in Bridgefield staying with her mom.
Alexis’s mom got remarried last summer to this guy Bernie. His shirts bulged in the middle, he sweat when he ate, and he drooled when he got really fired up about something. His wife died six years ago from brain cancer. It was pretty clear he wanted someone, anyone, to help run his life. Alexis’s mom was good at stuff like that.
“We’re friends because we all have problems with our moms,” Alexis told her stepsister, Roey. She was eleven and very impressionable. Alexis was pretty dead set on corrupting her. We were sitting in their kitchen, picking at the remnants of an old birthday cake. “Hers is dead.” She pointed to me. “Hers is crazy.” She pointed to Justine. “And mine is—well, you know what mine is. A lovable control freak.”
It was nice that she added the lovable part.
“Okay,” Roey said. “But all that matters is that you guys are best friends. I hope I have friends like you guys when I’m in high school.”
“You probably won’t.” Alexis rebutted Roey’s dream. “We’re pretty much one of a kind. But ya know, it’s good that you have lofty aspirations. See ya, Ro. We got places to be!”
Roey flopped herself forward onto the kitchen island, deflated that we were leaving so quickly.
“You’re so mean to her,” I whispered once we were outside on the hammock. I had a feeling Roey was hiding somewhere, and I didn’t want her to overhear me.
“So what? It’ll make her tougher. She doesn’t need to be such a wimpy little girl.” Alexis groaned. “Anyway, enough about her. I was scheduled for a massage today and then my dad had to bounce to some conference, and now I’m back here with you losers.”
Come to think of it, Alexis was mean to everyone. That was just her way: prickly and rough.
“What are you drinking?” Alexis made a face. “It smells like the organic floor cleaner my dad’s cleaning lady uses.”
“Huh?” I shook my head. “It’s a smoothie.”
“It looks really and truly disgusting.”
“You don’t know about Juiceteria either?” I squawked. “It’s, like, the biggest thing in town. We are so out of it.”
“The biggest thing in town,” Justine mocked.
“It’s called Rise-Up Raspberry, for when you really want to rise to the challenge of life,” I explained. “Raspberry, mint, coconut water, watermelon, spinach.”
Alexis looked like she was about to puke. She turned away from me and flicked Justine on the eyebrow. “Why aren’t you guys at work?” Alexis asked. “Put down your phone already, Justine. I’m here for like a day. Come on.”
“Stop,” Justine whined. “You’re so annoying.”
“What are you doing on your phone all day anyway?” Alexis pressed. “You’re being weird.”
My heart thumped. Was Justine going to tell Alexis about our mission? I didn’t want anyone else to know about it. It seemed like the more people who knew, the weirder and creepier it became.
Justine and I made eye contact. Please don’t tell her, I pleaded.
“Nothing, sorry.” Justine put her phone in the back pocket of her shorts.
Thank you, I mouthed to her. This was our thing. Our secret thing. Alexis didn’t need to know.
Justine kept talking. “We’re off today because Uncle Rick wasn’t happy with the original paint job for the Mobile Cones truck. So he took it somewhere else. He thinks a prettier truck will sell more snow cones.”
“I guess millionaires can afford to take risks,” Alexis said. “And you girlies get to hang with me! Lucky!”
“Yippee.” Justine forced excitement. “So what should we do? I’m not spending all day on your dilapidated hammock with Ro-Ro following us around.”
“Sorry I’m not the entertainment committee you expected,” Alexis mocked, and turned to me. “So you and Seth are still over?”
“Yup,” I said, clumps forming in my throat. Don’t cry. Don’t cry.
“I guess I should tell you….” She looked straight into my eyes. “He tried to make out with me once, grabbed my boobs and everything. I wasn’t into it.”
“What? When?” I sat up and nearly made the hammock tip over. “You didn’t tell me!”
“Calm down. It was like a month before you guys started going out.” She rolled her eyes. “We were putting our instruments away in the band room closet. And he was like, The way you play your flute is so hot, and I was like—”
Alexis burst out laughing so hard she stopped talking. I snatched the hammock pillow away from Justine and hit Alexis over the head with it again and again.
I was annoyed at Alexis for making up that lie and thinking I’d believe it, but it felt good to hit her with the pillow. It felt good to laugh.
“Sorry, Mia, your facial expression was just too good,” Alexis said. “You looked like you were about to pass out. Didn’t she, Justie?”
Justine deep-sighed. “You don’t know the half of it. She carries around a pen he once lent her in assembly. She, like, holds it and stares at it and stuff.”
“Wow.” Alexis shook her head. “Mia, Mia, Mia. He’s just not worth it.”
Justine put an arm around me. “We’ll help you through this, Mi. But let’s get out of here. Ro-Ro’s staring at us from the window, and I feel guilty.”
She had a soft spot for Roey. Justine had a much older half brother, from her dad’s first marriage. He lived in San Francisco and she never saw him. She always wished for a younger sister.
Come to think of it, maybe that’s why we were friends. It wasn’t the mother thing. It was the sibling thing. All three of us were only children.
A stepsister here some of the time, a half brother far away all the time. They didn’t really count.
—
We decided to go for frozen yogurt and then sit in the gazebo at Pebble Park.
I wanted chocolate fudge brownie in a sugar cone, but I was still pretty full from the smoothie and I wanted to be loyal to the Skinny Mission. I got cucumber water instead. I was midsip when Alexis said, “I know what you guys are doing.”
My whole body tightened.
“You left your
phone on the counter when you were digging through your bag to find your wallet so you could pay for the fro yo. You really need to clean that thing out. You can never find anything in that bag,” she lectured Justine. “So. Katie McCormick?”
“Huh? Who’s that?” Justine asked, all cool.
“Don’t who’s that me,” Alexis warned.
Alexis knew. She knew everything.
“So Seth unfriended you guys after the breakup, and this is the only way you can figure out what he’s doing?” she asked, like she’d figured it all out. “Lame. So lame. You’re that desperate to know the stupid stuff Seth posts that you need to make up a freakin’ fake person so you can anonymously online-stalk him?”
So she didn’t know. Well, she knew a tiny little part of it, I guess. But she didn’t know the whole thing. She didn’t know what was really going to happen with Katie McCormick.
I was relieved and completely freaked out all at once.
MIA
“I don’t understand the picture….Who is that?” I shrieked to Justine over the phone later that night.
“Okay, so there are these sites with, like, random photos of people….I think they’re used for magazines, maybe? Book covers? I don’t even know.” Justine crunched something; it sounded like a pretzel. “But she looks perfect, right? Like, pretty but not too pretty. She looks so much like Katie. She is Katie.”
“Justine, seriously? This is sick.”
“No, it isn’t. It’s just a photo. Calm down.”
I sighed. “Do you even know what you’re saying anymore?”
“Yes, I do.” She paused. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”
“Justine,” I pressed.
“What? Please just trust me. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t truly believe it was going to help you get over Seth.” She crunched again. “And also totally mess with him in a major way, something he’ll never expect. We need to get back at him, Mia. You can’t just go on feeling so sad. Revenge is the answer!”
The truth was, it was crazy and it was a bad idea. But we had already started it. And I did want to destroy him.
“So Uncle Rick has the truck back.” Justine changed the subject. “We’re all set for tomorrow.”
“And what about Katie McCormick?” I asked.
“What about her?”
“Well, when does she start doing something? So far she’s just the photos of a random girl with an interest in modern dance and volunteer work,” I explained. “When is she actually going to talk to Seth?”
“Oh, just you wait,” Justine said. “I’m still fine-tuning. We can’t have her contact him too soon. We need to find her friends, more interests, an Instagram page that links to Facebook. She needs to take really artsy photos of lakes and woods and stuff. I think she’s into hiking.”
“Okay, but shouldn’t I be part of the fine-tuning?” I asked her.
“You are,” Justine replied, but then stopped suddenly. I heard yelling in the background. Her door closed. And then she sighed. “I gotta go, Mia. I’ll text you when I’m on my way tomorrow.”
I said goodbye, but I doubt she heard it. When the yelling started, Justine turned into some kind of ceramic statue.
Justine’s parents were fighters, but when the arguments ended, everything went back to normal. It always seemed like everyone forgot about the fight. Like it would never happen again.
Justine had told me the password for Katie’s Facebook page, but I hadn’t gone on by myself yet. I guess it seemed safer when Justine was by my side. If I went on alone, I was really doing it. I was really a part of it, not just some innocent accomplice watching the whole thing.
But in the quiet of the night, I felt the need to log in by myself. I wanted to figure Katie out. I needed to add something to her story.
So I signed in. And there was her picture.
Whoever she was.
Katie could be anyone we wanted her to be. She could do anything we wanted her to do. She was putty in our hands, ready to be molded.
The more things I added, the more I wondered why it was so satisfying. Was it because I wanted to see what would happen? I was curious to find out if Seth would tell her things he’d never told me. Or maybe it was because I could create her; I could write her story.
Some of the things I decided on weren’t even revealed on her Facebook page. Why would they be? Stuff about her family life. Stuff I so desperately wanted.
I imagined her, living in Easterly. A regular girl with a regular family.
She had a mom and dad who loved each other. A happy mom and a happy dad. They went out to dinner on Saturday nights; they really enjoyed each other’s company.
And Katie had a little brother who played on the town soccer team. The whole family would go to watch his games on Sunday mornings. They’d pick up bagels on the way. They never restricted their carbs. They didn’t need to.
Katie liked modern dance. And painting. She wanted to go to Oberlin. Or maybe Vassar. She wasn’t quite sure yet. She dabbled in creative writing.
Katie volunteered at the local nursing home, playing cards with the residents every other Thursday. Her group of friends was popular, but not mean. They were all well liked. They stuck together. They did well in school. But they didn’t spend their whole lives studying.
They were skinny, but not because they starved themselves.
Katie was everything extraordinary and yet so simple at the same time.
JUSTINE
“I did it,” Mia said as she got in the car the next morning, before she even said hello.
“Did what?”
“I made some decisions for Katie…and then I wrote to Seth.”
“What?” Katie was my creation. And now Mia was just going to jump in and make changes and make decisions without consulting me first?
“Wait, you’re mad?” Mia asked me. “You gave me the password. I mean, isn’t this all about me, anyway? I’m not allowed to be involved?”
I tried to stay calm. “No, you are. But it’s just that…I figured you’d discuss it with me first. Like, we should be on the same page and stuff. Ya know?”
Mia glared at me. “Justine, seriously? You’re getting a little crazy over this. Come on.”
I was getting crazy over it. I was still all garbled up from my parents’ fight. It was just their way of communicating, it happened all the time, but it still made me feel like I had rocks on my shoulders.
“So did Seth write back?” I asked her.
“Not yet.” She scratched the top of her head.
When we got to the snow cone shop to pick up the truck, Mia showed me what she’d written.
Hey. I saw you’re on the list for the CT Volunteers Corps beach cleanup thingy on Saturday. We live kinda close to each other, so I figured I’d say hey. I’m Katie, by the way.
I looked at Mia. It was hard for me to admit this, since I had nothing at all to do with it, but it was good.
“Obviously she can’t go to the beach cleanup,” Mia said, like she had it all figured out. “But this is a way to get them talking.”
She was right. “Good job, Mi-Mi.” My insides felt fizzy.
Things were going to start happening. Now.
JUSTINE
“You’re studying? In the summer?” I asked Dennis when we went into the shop on Saturday to get the keys to the truck. We’d decided it was safer to store them there than keep them with us overnight.
“Just a little side project of mine.” He stared at his flash cards.
Side project?
“What is it?” Mia asked him.
I glared at her.
“Well…” He finally looked up at us. “Who was the losing vice-presidential candidate in 1952?”
“Ummmm…let me think about it,” I replied. “Literally no idea whatsoever.”
“John Sparkman,” he said.
“Great. Good to know.” I grabbed Mia’s hand. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“Wait,” Mia said, walking over to D
ennis to look at his flash cards. “I don’t get it. What is this?”
I put my hands on her shoulders to guide her over to the door, but she stayed put.
“I just think it would be cool if I knew all the losing vice-presidential candidates,” he said, looking up at her. “Like for fun. A little trivia.”
“How did you think of that?” Mia asked, genuinely interested.
Seriously, was she a journalist for the Most Boring Things Ever Newspaper? What was happening?
“I don’t even know.” He shrugged. “It just kind of came to me.” He paused. “Actually, you guys can help quiz me!”
“No, thanks.” I grabbed Mia’s hand again. “We gotta go.”
“All right, well, I’ll be tweeting ya!” He laughed.
“Huh?” I turned around.
“Get it? Like I’ll be seeing ya…but I’ll be tweeting because, like, that’s part of my job here.”
Mia cracked up. “I get it.”
“Well, thank goodness someone does.” He went back to his flash cards. “See ya.”
Uncle Rick had put Dennis in charge of all social media for the business. I was kind of shocked Uncle Rick even cared about social media, but he did. I was also kind of shocked that Dennis even knew what social media was.
“So we’re just gonna show up at the volunteer thing?” Mia asked me once we were in the truck. She’d been sipping a bright orange smoothie all morning. Something with papaya. It smelled like a vegan’s throw-up.
I nodded. “Yeah, we’ll be there, and maybe some people will buy snow cones, and you’ll be able to see that no one thinks Seth is cool whatsoever, and maybe he’ll be looking for Katie, but she won’t show up, and it’ll be really funny to watch….”
She slurped the rest of the smoothie. “Um, I love how you have all of this completely figured out.”
“I do,” I defended myself, cleaning the lenses of my sunglasses with my T-shirt.
“I lost a pound and a half, by the way,” Mia said, changing the subject. “And I honestly feel lighter. These shorts feel looser.” She pulled out the waistband to show me. “Is that possible?”
I eyed her suspiciously. “I guess?”
“Yeah, and it’s like the smoothies are great. I don’t even feel starving,” she explained.
Kale, My Ex, and Other Things to Toss in a Blender Page 5
