“Mwah!” Layne blew the python a kiss. “I IGUANA him for my very own.”
“Um, Layne.” Claire pointed to a sign affixed to the habitat. A neon sticky said: I’M CANDY! I LIKE TO BE FED CRICKETS AND MICE.
“Deal breaker.” Layne spun in a circle, her coattails floating out around her like a tutu. She grinned. “Maybe I should take that one home instead?”
Claire followed the direction in which her friend’s gnawed fingernail was pointing, but instead of finding a reptile, she saw a lanky boy wearing a faded Phoenix T-shirt and a pair of dark-wash denim skinnys.
“Layne,” Claire whispered, the moldy scent of brackish water clogging her nostrils. “He’s in violation of rule number 21. I think that grasshopper weighs more than he does.”
“It’s unlawful to discriminate based on age or weight,” said Layne, beelining toward the boy like a hawt-seeking missile.
“Hi, there,” he said when they reached the counter. His name tag read ART, and up close it was impossible to miss just how much his dark, round eyes resembled Candy’s. Claire shuddered.
Layne curled her oversize foot around her left leg, then tilted her head in her patented cute-boy shuffle. The beekeeper hat shifted back, and she lost her balance. Claire grabbed her friend’s shoulder to steady her.
“I love your hat,” Art said. “It’s for bees, right?”
Layne adjusted the netting like a traditional bride trying to conceal herself. “None of your beeswax.” She giggled.
Art grinned. “So what can I help you with?”
Layne leaned her elbows on the distressed wooden counter. Clustered around the register were pink bottles of Natural Chemistry Healthy Habitat spray, Tetrafauna Baby ReptoMin food sticks, and bags of shredded wood bedding. “We’re having trouble deciding. But we don’t want to bug you.”
“No problem.” He blinked quickly, still looking remarkably like the shifty python they’d just encountered. “My mother always toad me to be kind to strangers.”
Claire rolled back on her heels, the way she always did when she was annoyed and anxious. “We just want some smaller bugs,” she said, hoping her brisk tone would help move things along. “Like, some bedbugs.” To go in a certain alpha’s bed, she added silently.
“I know just the thing!” Art said. He slunk around the counter, then loped down an aisle of bright yellow saltwater fish. Layne’s eyes followed him, and she licked her half-eaten wax lips. She’d been feasting on them since they had left the candy store—their second visit that week—and they looked half digested.
Claire elbowed Layne through her puffy coat. “Don’t forget the mission,” she hissed.
Layne ignored her, following close behind Art’s doodled-on yellow Converse as he led them past a wall of turtles, then through a dark room with tanks lining the walls. One tank let out a long hiss. It sounded like I know what you’re doing! A second later, a bunch of frogs in a grimy aquarium chimed in with a chorus of Mean! Mean! Mean!
“She deserves it!” Claire hissed back. “What would you do if someone scared off all your friends?” The frogs blinked back at her and tilted their heads.
Normally, Claire wasn’t the type to hold a grudge. Everyone made mistakes sometimes—she knew that. But when she looked back over her year and three months of “friendship” with Massie, it was all the bad times that stuck out. Counting the list of Massie-caused grievances was easier than making slice and bake cookies. She started ticking them off on her fingers.
She insulted the friendship bracelets my friends in Orlando made me, by pretending to think they were from kindergarten.
She left me in the trunk of the Range Rover on the first day of seventh grade.
She told me OCD stood for Orlando Claire = Dork.
She asked me if I was invited to her barbecue, and then when I said no, she asked me why I was up in her grill. This was the first of many, many, many, many, MANY similar insults. Too many to list. Just know: IT STARTED HERE.
She put red paint on my pants so it looked like I got my period. (Okay, Alicia actually did that, but she wouldn’t have done it if Massie hadn’t decided she hated me.)
She kicked me out of their first sleepover (practically, by being mean).
She said my brown sweatshirt looked like a hooded poo.
She said my pink belt made me looked like a pink boa constrictor had wrapped itself around my face and then died from shock at how bad my outfit was.
She threw salmon at me!
She told everyone that our joint Halloween party was just her party.
She said my geeky-loser costume was very convincing and asked if I was celebrating Halloween early that year.
She said my green apple gummies looked like alien sneeze.
She told me that just because matchy-matchy wasn’t in, it did nawt mean clashy-clashy was.
She called me stupid for not knowing that some dressing rooms use super-flattering skinny mirrors.
She threw out my favorite pants on Earth Day as part of the Beautify Our Planet campaign.
She told me my favorite sweater was making Bean sick because Bean was allergic to ugly.
She said she would’ve tossed my red sweatshirt in the fire, but she didn’t want to release toxic fumes when the synthetic fabric and puffy-paint melted.
She asked if I was getting extra credit in Abnormal Psychology for being friends with Layne.
She said my legs looked like they had Candy Cane Disease when I tried on a pair of striped tights.
She planted Oxy, Jolene face bleach, Depends undergarments, Rogaine, dandruff shampoo, athlete’s foot medicine, jock itch cream, and super-plus-sized tampons in the garbage in my trailer on the set of Dial L for Loser—and then videotaped a segment about it for The Daily Grind to try and convince everyone I had zits, a mustache, bladder control issues, female baldness, dandruff, athlete’s foot, jock itch, and a giant period!
She sent Cam a picture of me kissing Connor Foley on the set of Dial L for Loser to make him think I was cheating on him. (Which I wasn’t!)
She kicked me out of the Pretty Committee. At least eight times.
She wouldn’t speak to me for an entire week when I accidentally thought Bean was a French bulldog instead of a pug.
She wouldn’t speak to me for two hours when I mentioned that her nut “allergy” only comes out when she doesn’t want to eat something.
She wouldn’t speak to me for three days when I decided to hang out with Cam instead of watch Gossip Girl with her.
She replaced my bag of licorice whips with red rubber bands.
She called my eyebrows the “Bush twins” when I had to wear fake brows for Dial L.
She said my bangs looked like the top of my head was throwing up hair.
She called me Clarence when I wore work boots outside to help my mom garden. (There is no such thing as cute, girly gardening shoes!)
She recommended that I see a plastic surgeon because my right ear lobe is a little bigger than my left one.
She recommended that I walk around with weights on my legs to prevent cankles, because she thinks my mom has them.
She cut up my very favorite BDG hoodie because she ran out of plastic baggies and needed something to pick up Bean’s poo with.
She threw out an entire stash of gummy lobsters when she decided she was allergic to shellfish.
She insulted my overalls, even though she complimented the ones that Dylan wore.
She made fun of my mom’s mom-jeans. But what else is she supposed to wear? She’s a mom!
She locked me out of my own room when I didn’t vote for her in the Miss Kiss pageant.
She hit me with a remote control when she thought I was flirting with Dempsey (her then-crush) while on the boy fast.
She tried to force me to upgrade Cam with a new ninth-grade crush. She thought having a crush on a guy with an asymmetric haircut and a crush on a guy with one blue eye and one green eye would be the same thing. As if!
She got mad at me
for having ninth-grade friends, even though she’d been telling me that I needed to grow up!
She shaved my little brother’s head to get back at me.
She tried to make my new friends think I had a lice infestation.
Claire shook her head at the length of the list. And those were just the highlights. Massie had smacked down Claire more times than her AmEx. Claire pulled a gummy worm from her pocket and popped it in her mouth. The sugar calmed her stomach and reignited her hunger for revenge. Massie had bug-bombed Claire’s friends out of her life; it seemed only fitting that Claire would bug-bomb Massie’s bed in return.
Art finally stopped in a room with a sign that said ARTHROPODOGIE.
“These are your best bet,” he said, gesturing to an aquarium with a sandy bottom. A log ran through the center, surrounded by a smattering of rocks and pinecones. Multilegged creatures with antennae and exoskeletons scurried around the tank. A cricket stood on a twig like a general at arms, while four ants carted a fallen comrade back to their anthill.
“Ew. Those are worse than ugly,” cracked Layne. “They’re BUG-ly.”
“We’ll take two of each,” Claire said. “Two crickets, two beetles, two centipedes, and two of those pincer-looking things.”
Art pushed up a sleeve, showing off a tattoo of a tree frog on the inside of his forearm, and produced a small plastic box from behind the shelf. Inside, he placed a few sticks, a tiny patch of grass, and some dirt he scooped from an empty aquarium nearby.
With a green mesh net, he scooped the requested creepy crawlies into the box. When he was finished, he clamped the habitat shut and handed it to Claire. The bugs crawled all over one another, scratching at the walls like they were trying to get out.
“These latches are secure, right?” she said warily, staring at the box. She handed it to Layne.
They followed the lanky insect lover back to the front of the store, where a pin-thin man in a Sherlock Holmes hat had just entered. Art looked at him over his shoulder. “Be right there, Mr. Harbinger.”
Layne cleared her throat. “You know, I should probably get your card. In case I need advice on insect care or, like, a new job.”
“Oh, sure.” Art quickly scribbled down his name. “Facebook me. Karma Chameleon could always use more help.”
Layne beamed. “Well, I guess we’ll geck-o-ing.”
“Enjoy your new pets!” he called out as the girls walked away.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Layne giggled, high-fiving Claire. “We will!”
WESTCHESTER, NEW YORK
CLEARVIEW MULTIPLEX
Monday, December 8th
7:30 P.M.
“I still don’t understand why no one told me about the extra credit,” Kristen said, shaking her head as she and Massie entered Auditorium 7 at the Clearview Multiplex. Liaisons Diaboliques, a black-and-white French film about a teenage girl who falls desperately in love with a much older vampire, was about to start. The other theatergoers were also finding their seats, overstuffed containers of popcorn and boxes of Sno-Caps and Twizzlers in hand.
Massie, in a Burberry trench and D&G sunglasses, led Kristen and Bean (who was dressed in her own tiny puppy trench from Bark Jacobs) to a row near the back. She slid into the seat on the end and scanned the theater to confirm that she didn’t know a single soul sitting in the orange reclining chairs. The Pretty Committee was otherwise accounted for—Dylan was having dinner with her mom, and Alicia was at dance practice—but you couldn’t be too sure.
“I don’t know,” Massie said. “Maybe because your average is already ninety-eight?”
Kristen shrug-blushed and sank into the plush seat.
In order to convince Kristen to join her, Massie had told her the movie was for extra credit. And she wasn’t completely lying. She had brought Kristen here for educational purposes. Though this education had nothing to do with school.
It was now T-minus one day until lip touchdown, and Massie was nearing panic mode. She had watched movie kiss after movie kiss on YouTube. But the theater’s enormous high-def screen would make it a much more effective teaching tool. And who better to learn kissing en français from than the people who invented it?
Besides, the rest of the audience was almost all couples, which meant Massie would be able to observe other daters in their natural habitats. By spying on a couple in the “wild,” Massie could notate and memorize how to act when she and Landon were out on their own date.
The crystal-sconced lights dimmed, and a hush fell over the theater. The screen switched from an ad about a wine-tasting movie to a warning for theatergoers to be quiet and silence their cell phones. Massie folded her D&G glasses and replaced them with a pair of sleek silver binoculars.
“What are those for?” Kristen whispered.
“To see the subtitles better,” Massie whisper-hissed back. “Now, shhh! It’s starting.”
The film began with a shot of a dark forest in the south of France. On the screen flashed the words LIAISONS DIABOLIQUES. A silky-voiced narrator set the scene in French, and white, block-lettered subtitles appeared at the bottom of the screen.
“Wait!” whispered Kristen, horrified. “Will Madame Vallon still give us extra credit even though we don’t have to translate?”
“Of course,” Massie said. “But be quiet. I need to focus.”
She trained her binoculars on a couple near the front. The guy had a frizzy blond ’fro and wore horn-rimmed glasses. The girl barely had enough hair to fill out her ponytail. They were feeding each other Jujubes, and the guy kept pretending to bite the girl’s finger off. Massie wrinkled her nose.
Quel désastre.
She turned toward another couple in matching crocheted winter hats. They were sharing a bag of granola and a hummus sandwich, which they’d obviously made at home and smuggled in.
Horreur!
For a moment, Massie gave up her search and watched the movie as the heroine, Genevieve, appeared on-screen. With her pert, upturned nose and long dark curls, she looked like Christina Ricci’s French younger sister. She wore a white dress and clutched a textbook to her chest as she made her way home from school. Dusk fell over the rolling landscape, and day quickly morphed into night just as Genevieve reached the edge of the forbidding woods. She crossed herself anxiously as she passed gnarled, ancient limbs that seemed as though they wanted to reach out and grab her. As soon as she made it safely inside the white clapboard house on the other side of the forest, two glowing eyes appeared in the darkness and the shadow of Olav, a 313-year-old Norwegian vampire, stepped out from behind a fat oak tree. In his arms was the body of a young girl, two prominent, bloody teeth marks imprinted in her lifeless neck.
Kristen gasped. Bean hid her head in the crook of Massie’s arm. Massie just rolled her eyes. Vampires were so passé.
The scene changed to show Genevieve in a discotheque with her friends. A boy in dark wash jeans and a white button-down shirt—the picture of innocent teenage hawtness—emerged from the crowd just as Genevieve ordered a Coke from the bartender. The boy swooped in to pay for it and introduced himself as Jean-Luc, a budding poet. Genevieve shook his outstretched hand. “My, what cold hands you have,” she commented. The camera panned in for a close-up of Jean-Luc’s eyes. They smoldered with intensity.
Massie clutched her arm rest. Was it smooch time already?
Mais non. Genevieve merely took her Coke and rejoined her friends. Jean-Luc gazed longingly after her, then scribbled a short love poem in a small leather notebook he pulled from his jeans pocket.
Massie scanned the theater crowd again with her binoculars. Frizzy curls. No. Gelled spikes. No. Bedhead. No. Heidi braids. Definitely not. And… ah! Just two rows in front of them and one seat to the right, a girl with long, blond Gisele hair sat next to a boy whose mane was almost as perfectly shaggy as Landon’s. The girl wore a headband and a plaid jumper, and the boy wore a Brooks Brothers blazer and scarf. They were a few years older—high school juniors or seniors, maybe—and were lea
ning in toward each other.
Voila!
Massie activated the voice recorder on her iPhone and raised it to her lips. “Notes from the field, part one,” she whispered. Little bars rose and fell, calibrating her volume. “Test subjects sit close but not too close to one another.”
“Did you say something?” Kristen asked out of the side of her mouth, her eyes glued to the screen.
“I’m taking notes for extra credit.”
Kristen gave a wish-I’d-thought-of-that frown.
On the screen, Jean-Luc asked Genevieve to dance. She flashed him a luminous smile, but instead of leading him to the dance floor, she took him to a utility closet at the back of the club. Once they were alone, he leaned close, as if mesmerized by her clear blue eyes. She leaned in too, like she was getting ready to lip-kiss.
Massie clutched her iPhone in anticipation. But then, suddenly, Genevieve held up a cross that she’d been hiding in her dress pocket. Jean-Luc hissed at her, his front teeth elongating into fangs.
“Ehmavampire!” Kristen gasped. “I so did not see that coming.”
Unfazed, Genevieve pulled a vial of holy water from her pocket and tossed it on Jean-Luc, and he collapsed to the floor with a thunk. His leather-bound cahier followed with a thud.
Gisele Hair buried her face in her date’s shoulder.
Massie bent over her iPhone. “Female test subject uses fear at a scary event as an excuse to get closer to male test subject.”
In the row in front of them, a woman with salt-and-pepper hair turned around and shhhed Massie.
“YOU shhhh!” Massie glared back and pointed to the screen. “We’re trying to watch the movie.”
On-screen, the heroine gave a quick glance around before staking Jean-Luc through the heart with a pencil she pulled from one of the shelves in the closet. Then, with a devil-may-care smile, she disappeared down the hallway and out into the night.
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