Cat Bennet, Queen of Nothing

by Mary Strand

  I frowned. “My cell phone didn’t ring.”

  “I called your house. Your mom said you went to a movie with your sisters, which I totally didn’t believe at first—I mean, you never used to do anything with your sisters, except Lydia of course—but your mom insisted, so I didn’t call your cell. I didn’t want to bug you at the movie.”

  I swear she never even took a breath.

  “You didn’t text me, either.”

  Tess shook her head. “I figured you’d turn your cell off.” She gave me a bright, chirpy smile, the type Megan usually wore, but on Tess it didn’t look quite the same. “Anyway. The dance was totally lame, and no one was there, so we split.” As the warning bell rang, she started picking up speed. “I’ll see you later, okay? When does the band play again?”

  “No idea.”

  I wasn’t sure Mary would tell me, let alone ask me to tag along. I also didn’t know why I’d started tagging along with Mary, even if it involved a band and Kirk Easton.

  Tess grinned and waved as she headed down the hall in the opposite direction. “I’ll find out and let you know. Can’t wait to hear you sing!”

  Great. I’d sung one song, and I already had a groupie. Or an agent. Or something. I had no idea what Tess was.

  Which was part of the problem.

  I took the Jeep after school to the Mall of America, where I changed into my work clothes for Nickelodeon Universe and spent the next few hours watching paint dry.

  With a half hour left on my shift, I wandered around the store, straightening shelves that didn’t need straightening and listening to my co-worker Pete tell me in excruciating detail about inventory and receipts and a million other things that made my brain explode.

  At quarter to seven, I heard the babble of voices outside the store. Weird. I mean, Nickelodeon Universe is a loud place, but something about the voices made me tense. Just as I turned, someone called out. “Cat? Is that you?”

  If I didn’t already recognize Tess’s voice, I would’ve known that giggle. The giggle she didn’t have a month ago.

  I plastered a smile on my face as phony as the one I saw on hers. “Hey, Tess. What’s up?”

  Another giggle escaped her, but she tried to cover it with her hand. “You have a job? How . . . cool.”

  Since she choked on the word “cool,” I knew it wasn’t. I’d known it the moment Zoe assigned me to this store.

  I shouldn’t have counted on no one finding out, especially Tess or Amber or anyone else from my gang. None of them worked. None of them had to.

  I shrugged. “The money is good.”

  “Yeah, especially if your dad doesn’t make much.”

  I flinched. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  But I knew exactly what it meant. Tess knew everything about me from all the chat sessions we’d had since she moved to town at the start of seventh grade. She knew what I thought of my dad leaving his engineering firm to pursue his “lifelong dream” of opening a yoga center. But she’d never thrown it back in my face before. As her words swirled around in my brain, I felt something twist in my gut.

  Tess came closer. “You know. Your dad and his silly yoga.” She waved a hand in the air. “I mean, we all have embarrassing parents. It’s just that you used to laugh about your dad.”

  Yeah, when we’d laughed together at things.

  “I didn’t mean I need the money. It’s just nice to—”

  “Anyway. Great to see you.” Tess didn’t look a bit sorry for interrupting me, like whatever I said didn’t matter. “And now we know what you’re up to. I started to think you were spending all your time with those art freaks.”

  My mouth curled up at the same instant as Tess’s, but I’m sure we had totally different reasons. Art freaks? Was that how I looked at Megan and her pals? Well, not Megan. She was into art, but she wasn’t a freak. At all.

  Tess glanced out of the store, then back at me. “You’re not, are you? Hanging out with the freaks?”

  The all-school art show suddenly slid to the back burner and right off the stove. If Tess ever heard about it—no, when she did—I’d never live it down. “Nope. No freaks.”

  “Good.” Tess smiled, looking like she wanted to pat me on the head. “By the way, the band is playing at Michael’s house on Sunday afternoon. See you there?”

  My stomach churned wildly as a dozen reactions raced through me. The thrill of singing again, even in front of more kids. The terror. The dread that I’d have another Drew-and-Chelsea encounter. The flickering hope that Drew would show up without Chelsea and dance with me again.

  I shrugged. “Maybe. I’ll have to see what’s going on.”

  Like with my brain.

  I floated into Drawing class on Friday, thinking about my old gang. Today I’d felt more normal—more accepted—with all of them, even Amber, than I had in weeks. Sure, I still had a mildly queasy feeling that Amber would eat me for lunch if I wasn’t looking, but even Drew said hi, and Kirk smiled at me from the far end of our table like we were pals. Tess sat next to me, bubbling with excitement. Kirk was throwing a party next Friday, and I was invited. Specifically.

  Life was looking good. Finally. Until Megan grabbed me the moment I sat down at my art table.

  “Cat, I asked the other kids in art club about changing the day we meet. Does Wednesday work? Or Friday?”

  I blinked. Friday? They’d even consider holding after-school meetings on Fridays, when every other kid in school was home getting ready for Friday night?

  “Did you ask Bethany?” I jerked my head toward the back of the room. “You asked her a couple of days ago. She said no.”

  The bell rang, and I glanced at the front of the room. Mr. Reiman hadn’t shown up yet. Megan’s gaze followed mine to the door, then came back to my face. Sighing, I met her eyes. She was biting her lower lip, and I wanted to look away. I wanted to blow her off.

  I probably just had.

  “I was trying to work around your schedule. It’s super helpful to get everyone’s input when it comes to putting your portfolio together for the art show. You said you’re busy on Tuesdays.” She gave me a long look, as if she wondered if I’d made up an excuse to skip art club. It wasn’t a bad idea, come to think of it.

  I thought of Tess and Amber and the rest of my friends. The ones who’d finally come back to me. I couldn’t afford to lose them again, which meant I definitely couldn’t be an art geek—or art freak, as Tess put it.

  I shook my head. “I can’t do it. Not on Wednesdays or Fridays or whenever.”

  She frowned. “You’re that busy?”

  A lot busier than I’d been a month ago, but that wasn’t the point. “I can’t do the art show.”

  Megan started to say something, but the words caught in her throat, finally coming out strangled. “Wh-why not?”

  I thought about how great it would’ve been to have all the kids in school see my portraits, maybe even stop me in the halls to tell me how much they liked them. Even Mom and Dad and my sisters might finally think I was cool. Like, for the first time.

  “Sorry. I just can’t.”

  The thing was, it was true. I was sorry. Weird.

  Mary was waiting by my locker after school, Josh nowhere in sight. She watched me while I spun the dial on my locker, yanked the door open, then picked up all the junk that tumbled out onto the floor.

  I looked up at her from my squatting position as I stuffed half the junk in my backpack, the other half on the bottom of my locker. “What’s up? Did you just want to see how big a mess I’ve got going here?”

  She tilted her head. “I saw Liz’s locker once when I was a sophomore, and she had it worse than you.”

  “Is that a compliment?”

  “Just an observation.”

  “And you’re still not telling me why you’re here.”

  She stooped down to pick up a sheet of paper I’d missed. “I wanted to see if you needed a ride.”

  “You’re not catching a ride with
Josh?” I tried to tamp down my disappointment at not getting the Jeep to myself, even though I didn’t have anything going on. “Is everything still okay with you two?”

  “Like you care.” Shrugging, Mary leaned against the locker next to mine, her hands stuffed in the back pockets of her jeans. “For your information, he’s in a skateboard contest all weekend, so he had to leave as soon as the bell rang.”

  I thought about commenting on guys who blew off their girlfriends to do a skateboard contest when they were seniors in high school, but I caught the disappointed look on Mary’s face and clammed up. A month ago—even a week ago—I would’ve totally rubbed it in. Was I getting nicer? To Mary?

  She finally broke the silence between us. “I was also wondering if you wanted to go out tonight.”

  “With you?” I blinked, then realized how shocked I must look. “I mean, with Liz and Jane, too?”

  We did the girls’ night out when we saw the Channing Tatum movie a week ago, but I hadn’t seen Jane or Liz since last Saturday. Apparently their boyfriends didn’t dump them for lame excuses on the weekend.

  Mary shrugged. “I don’t know what Jane and Liz are doing. I was just asking.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that.” I still thought Mary could be annoying, but she’d saved my butt last Sunday when Chelsea showed up at band practice. I never would’ve expected it of Mary. “I just probably have plans. You know, with Tess and the rest of my gang.”

  And I did. Kinda. Tess invited me to Kirk’s party next weekend, and someone must be having a party tonight. I just hadn’t heard about it yet. Tess would call or text me with the info any minute, as soon as she found out, just like she always used to do. Before everything got weird.

  Mary gave me a look that reeked of pity, even though everything was going great for me again. Maybe, in some ways, for the first time since Lydia left last September.

  When she didn’t say anything, I finally glared at her. “What’s the big deal? I’m not grounded anymore.”

  At least, I didn’t think so.

  Mary shrugged. “Sorry. It’s just that I heard from the guys in the band that Tess was having a party tonight, and Kirk invited me, but I thought you might not know.”

  No kidding. Because Tess hadn’t told me. Eyes burning with tears I refused to cry, I slammed my locker, slung my backpack over one shoulder, and ran out of school. Without Mary.

  Totally alone.

  Chapter 13

  “[I]f I should ever go to Brighton, I would behave better than Lydia.”

  — Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Volume III, Chapter Six

  When I stomped inside our house twenty minutes later, Mary was waiting at the front door, trying to talk to me, trying to make it all better. As if. I didn’t say a word, and I didn’t bother to take off my boots or jacket before running upstairs. When I reached my room, I slammed the door.

  I threw my backpack on the floor, then grabbed my cell phone out of my purse for the fifth time since school ended, scanned the face of it, and tossed it on my bed. No, I hadn’t missed any calls or texts, and Tess definitely knew how to find me. She also knew how to push my buttons.

  For a girl who claimed we were still pals, she sure didn’t always act like it. But why?

  My cell phone rang. I practically fell all over myself to pounce on it, then waited for it to ring one more time before flipping it open.

  “Cat?” Tess sounded breathless. “Ohmygod. I told you about Kirk’s party next Friday but forgot to ask if you were coming to my party tonight. Isn’t that hilarious?”

  Not even remotely.

  I gulped in a quick breath and let it out softly, trying to be calm, trying not to sound like I’d been crying.

  “Hey, Tess. I heard about your party.” From Mary, of all people. “What time was it again?”

  I think I sounded normal, but I flipped on my iPod, hoping the music would drown out the shakiness in my voice. The whole thing made me realize how much work it took these days to deal with Tess without getting burned.

  “Eight o’clock, but I told Amber and the other girls to come over around seven. Can you make it?”

  At seven or eight? I couldn’t ask; I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. “I think so. Thanks for calling.”

  “Sorry for not calling sooner.” She’d sound a bit more sorry if I hadn’t heard the tiniest giggle, but whatever. Maybe she was nervous. “I totally spaced it.”

  I sighed. “No prob.”

  After all, I was getting used to being forgettable.

  At seven-fifteen, I headed downstairs, dressed to kill in skinny jeans and a low-cut red stretchy top and some funky boots Lydia had left behind. I wanted to show up at Tess’s house right at seven-thirty, putting me dead-center between seven o’clock for the cool girls and eight for everyone else. I needed to play it strategically. Kinda how Tess seemed to be playing me.

  From his usual position in the leather recliner in the living room—well, his usual position when he wasn’t on his yoga mat with his butt or toes in the air—Dad glanced at me over the tops of his reading glasses, then back at the newspaper.

  I took a step into the living room. Mom was nowhere in sight, not even in the kitchen as far as I could tell.

  “Um, Dad? Tess is having this party, and I was wondering if I could take the Jeep.”

  Dad kept reading the paper.

  “The party starts at eight, but Tess asked if I could get there by seven.” I cringed as Dad glanced at his watch, then at me, then back at his newspaper. I was already too late to be on time, of course, which was my plan, but it never helped to explain to Dad how teenage minds worked.

  He finally folded his paper, once, twice, nailing the creases to perfection. Since he usually did that only when he was about to launch into some huge argument with Mom, I didn’t take it as a good sign.

  After all that careful folding, Dad tossed the newspaper on the floor. “Last time I checked, you were grounded.”

  “B-but—” I started to sputter. Okay, I had been grounded, but that was before Dad let me stay after school and go to the Mall of America to work, and I’d already been grounded forever. “I haven’t gone out with my friends in ages, and everyone’s gonna be there, and—”

  “I didn’t have the impression that those friends of yours were the best influence on you. I also didn’t think you saw too much of them anymore.”

  I frowned. “They’re the coolest kids in school. You haven’t let me hang out with them.”

  Dad gave me a tiny little smile, as if he knew something I didn’t. About yoga, maybe, but not about being in high school, especially being a girl in high school. Dad went to a boys-only high school where they wore uniforms and got whacked by the teachers on a regular basis. No wonder he married Mom, the first girl he dated in college.

  Not that I don’t love Mom, or feel sorry for her having to deal with being bipolar and a lawyer to boot. It’s just that sometimes she’s hard to take. Like right this moment, when she suddenly appeared from out of nowhere.

  “Cat? Why are you dressed like that? Is that what you wear to work? Are you working tonight? And isn’t it a bit late to tell us you’re working tonight?”

  Dad’s lips twitched as he glanced from Mom to me, and the unfairness of the whole thing started to piss me off.

  “I don’t work on Fridays.” My jaw ached from being so tense, from having to bite off the urge to scream. “Tess is having a party, and I asked Dad if I could take the Jeep. Like, now. Or I’m gonna be late.”

  Dad glanced again at his watch. “You’re already late, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, but I’m gonna be even more late if—”

  “Howard, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  When Dad nodded, my odds of getting out the door tonight plummeted. “I reminded Cat that we grounded her.”

  “For drinking.” Mom’s nose wrinkled, as if she’d never tipped back a cold one in her life. Ha. At least I didn’t have to worry about alcohol af
fecting my meds. “A party is the last place for her if we let her go out at all. Which I don’t think we should.”

  I tried counting to ten or twenty or thirty in my head, the way they claim you’re supposed to if you’re about to blow your stack. By the time I made it to five, I was already thinking about all the crap Mom let Lydia get away with, and by twelve I lasered a glare at Mom.

  “In case you’ve forgotten, you let Lydia get away with murder every day of her life, until they finally had to lock her up in reform school.”

  Something in the back of my mind told me I wasn’t exactly helping my own case, but I was already screwed, wasn’t I?

  “I never treated Lydia any better than—”

  Dad held up a hand, cutting Mom off. “I don’t think we need to discuss Lydia right now. As Cat pointed out, she’s at reform school, with ample time to ponder her mistakes.”

  Mom started to sputter, but Dad ignored her.

  “If I understand you correctly, Cat, you’re asking your mother and me to make the same mistake twice.”

  I started shaking, part angry, part something I couldn’t get a handle on. “I’m asking you to treat me like everyone else. Like Liz and Jane. Like Mary, even. But at least as well as you treated Lydia. I’m not a criminal.”

  “She’s not a criminal, either.”

  Dad and I both looked at Mom.

  “Well, she’s not.” When Dad snorted, Mom stamped her foot. “Lydia’s a girl, not a criminal. She doesn’t deserve to be locked away in reform school where she’s not even sure of getting clean socks every day.”

  “I’m sure she has clean socks, Connie.”

  “But you don’t know that. And I don’t ever get to see her, and it’s not fair. She’s my little girl.”

  A groan escaped Dad. “Thank you, dear. I believe you’ve now confirmed Cat’s claims about how you treat Lydia, so much so that I’m tempted to let Cat take the Jeep.”

  A flutter of hope sprang into my chest. Knowing Dad, it was probably unwarranted.

  Dad aimed a steady gaze at me, the one he gave any of us when he was about to insert the word “no” in a sentence. “I’m sorry, Cat. I was joking. But I agree it’s not fair to ground you indefinitely with no hope of parole.” He glanced out the window, which held only the inky darkness of the February night. “I think you’ve earned your freedom—”