Cat Bennet, Queen of Nothing

by Mary Strand

  “Thanks, Dad!” Without thinking, I stepped closer to give him a quick hug, even though hugs and teenage daughters didn’t mesh well with Dad.

  He held up a hand. “You didn’t let me finish. You can go out with your friends in the evening starting Monday. Not that I’m suggesting you go out on a weeknight, of course.”

  “Howard!” “Dad!”

  Mom and I blurted out his name at the same instant, for opposite reasons, I’m sure. Mom looked more than a little pissed. I’m pretty sure I looked like a teenage girl who’d just had her life ripped out of her throat. And I wasn’t even being melodramatic. I’d spent too much time since winter break in social exile, and Tess finally sprang me, and I wasn’t going to let some idiot screw it up.

  Even if that idiot was my dad.

  Mary clomped down the stairs just then, and I swung around to catch her all babed out and looking like she was going somewhere. Unlike, say, me.

  Gritting my teeth, I ran past her and—

  She grabbed my arm and yanked, keeping me in the hallway. Argh! I felt the blood rush to my head as I clenched my other fist and got ready to haul off and slug her one.

  “Dad? Mom? Okay if I borrow the Jeep? I was thinking of going to a movie. With Cat. That’s okay, isn’t it?”

  “I’m not going to a movie. I told Tess I’d—”

  She jabbed me hard in the ribs. When I twisted to jab her back, she winked at me. “Yeah, but if you can’t go to Tess’s party, you might as well go to a movie, right?”

  With Mary? Without Jane and Liz? She had to be kidding. Besides, Mom and Dad would never fall for it.

  “Is that true?” Dad gave Mary the evil eye, then me. Then Mary again. “You’re not going to this party, are you?”

  “I already asked Cat about a movie.” Mary gave Dad the responsible, you-can-trust-me look she probably gave to all her teachers, which was why she scored the high grades in school. It might get me out of the house, but I’d have to ditch Mary as soon as I made it outside.

  When Dad finally nodded, totally ignoring Mom’s protests, Mary grabbed her jacket from the front-hall closet. Half a beat behind her, I reached for mine and followed her out the door.

  The moment I shut the door behind me, I glared at her. “Tess invited me to her party. I have to go.”

  Mary headed for the Jeep, the keys jangling in her hand. “Yeah, and that was going real well, wasn’t it? Hey, I’m invited to the party, too. We can both go.”

  Together? I groaned. “The party starts at eight. Tess just told me to come at seven.”

  “You and half the school.” Mary shook her head as she opened the driver’s door to the Jeep and climbed inside. “She probably told everyone it was starting at eight, but to come at seven, so it wouldn’t be totally dead at eight.”

  Frowning, I opened the passenger door and climbed up onto the seat. “How do you know? You don’t go to parties.”

  Head down, Mary twisted the key in the ignition. The Jeep started with a rumble. “Not to your parties. Josh and I have a totally different set of friends. I just got to know some of the juniors when Kirk asked me to play in the band.”

  My jaw dropped. “Kirk asked you?”

  “Yeah, Kirk. The coolest guy in school. At least according to that group of kids you hang out with.”

  She acted like he wasn’t. Right. I wasn’t going to argue with her, but I also didn’t want to show up at Tess’s party with her. It might be better than not showing up at all, but I wasn’t too sure.

  Before I could figure out what to do, Mary parked on Tess’s street. Sure enough, the block was already filled with cars, noise was pouring out of the open front door to the house, and through the windows I could see tons of kids inside. So much for being strategic about showing up at seven-thirty. Besides, it was already almost seven-forty-five.

  I didn’t unbuckle my seatbelt, didn’t budge an inch.

  “What’s the matter?” Mary was already unbuckled, and she grabbed her purse from the floor behind her seat a moment before opening her car door. “Isn’t this what you wanted?”

  “Not exactly.” I crossed my arms and stayed put, thinking about the extra Jeep key in my purse, debating whether to hop into the driver’s seat and take off—anywhere at this point—the moment Mary went inside.

  Mary stayed in the Jeep with me, closing the door again just as the cold night air started knifing through me, even with my jacket on. “So what’s the problem?”

  Her. “These are my friends, not yours. Tess didn’t ask you to the party, did she?”

  There was probably a catch in my voice, but I couldn’t help it. I’d finally gotten back with my friends—I think—and I refused to let Mary ruin my little homecoming.

  Her voice was so quiet, I barely heard it. “Yeah. She did. Last Sunday, when she asked everyone in the band.”

  I went still. “I was there. She didn’t—”

  Of course she didn’t ask me. I’d stayed only ten or fifteen minutes before I went running out of Michael’s basement when Chelsea showed up to reclaim Drew.

  But I’d seen Tess all week at school, eaten lunch with her a few times, and she’d never asked. And no one else at our lunch table had breathed a word about the party. I thought it’d been weird when they talked about classes and ACTs and SATs and even colleges nonstop, but now I understood. It’d been code for “don’t tell Cat about the party.”

  Feeling dead inside, I looked at Mary. “Why did she bother inviting me? Why wait ’til the last minute, then call and pretend I was one of her best buds?”

  “I don’t have a clue. Like you always say, she’s your friend, not mine.” Her purse still slung over her shoulder, Mary opened the door again and started to climb out of the Jeep. “But there’s one way to find out.”

  I still didn’t budge.

  She leaned inside and waited until I met her eye. “And you won’t find out by cutting out of here in the Jeep, so you might as well leave that extra Jeep key in your purse.”

  I blinked. She wasn’t as clueless as I thought.

  Color me stunned.

  My legs shook as I walked into the party two steps ahead of Mary, trying to look like I owned the world but feeling like barfing. The first person I ran into was Amber, smirking and not bothering to hide her eye roll.

  “Hey Cat. You made it?”

  “Sure.” From the looks of it, I was the last one to arrive, even though I knew kids would keep streaming inside until two a.m. Tess’s parents traveled a lot, jetting off to Paris or London or wherever almost as if Tess didn’t exist. As much as my own parents annoyed me, especially lately, I’d always wondered what it felt like to have parents who didn’t even pretend they wanted to be around you.

  The house shook with thumping music, gyrating bodies, and screech-level chatter. My heart throbbed in time to the music, and my knees didn’t get any steadier.

  Amber studied me for a long moment, almost as if she knew exactly what my knees were doing under my jeans, then headed for the kitchen without another word.

  Mary came up beside me and touched me on the arm.

  “Wanna look around together? Or should I leave you to navigate the party by yourself?”

  Was she making fun of me? Did she know how sick I felt in this crowd of my so-called friends?

  “Cat.” Tess, smooth as silk, glided up and wrapped an ice-cold arm around me. “So glad you made it.”

  She giggled as she said it, but she had a beer in her hand. Knowing Tess, it wasn’t her first—or second—beer tonight.

  “Hey Tess. Good to see you.”

  “Kirk!” Just like that, Tess launched herself down the hall in the direction of Kirk Easton, who was wrapped around some leggy blond-haired girl I recognized. A senior, a basketball cheerleader, gorgeous. In case anyone didn’t know he played lead guitar in a band, Kirk was wearing sunglasses. He actually looked a bit stupid in sunglasses at eight o’clock at night in the middle of February, but Kirk was Kirk. A god.

  H
e managed to give Tess a hug without untangling himself from the blonde or spilling his beer, then glanced down the long hall at me and nodded. I started to nod back when I realized he was nodding at Mary.

  I hissed at her. “Do you have to stand right next to me?”

  When she didn’t respond, I finally looked at her. She was waving at Kirk, who headed in our direction, Tess and the blonde tagging along. Out of the corner of her mouth, Mary muttered under her breath. “Believe it or not, some of your so-called friends like me. Don’t be a baby.”

  I was about to zing her back when Kirk stopped in front of us. “Mary.” Kirk’s smile was on full wattage as he looked at her, and I wondered how much he’d been drinking. “You know Chrissie, don’t you? Chrissie, this is Mary. She plays guitar in our band.”

  I could’ve sworn I saw Mary flinch. An instant later, though, she gave Chrissie a tight smile. Chrissie had a weird look on her face, almost like she wanted to barf, so I figured they had a history. Chrissie, at least, didn’t seem to think Mary was all that.

  Then Kirk looked at me. “Oh, hey Cat. I didn’t see you.”

  I tried not to bite my lip, tried not to look totally mortified. He saw me standing here the whole time he walked down the hall, and he gave me his high-beam smile when I sang with the band on Wednesday. Like, two days ago.

  Before I could think of a decent response, he pulled Chrissie even tighter and headed to the wide marble stairway leading to the second floor. Tess disappeared again, off to exclaim over someone else who wasn’t me, leaving me with Mary.

  I turned on my heel and headed to the kitchen. A minute later, I had a bottle of beer in one hand and was trying to maneuver around a few groping couples for an opener.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Not when Dad’s about to spring you for good behavior.”

  I whirled on Mary. “Yeah? Thanks for the tip, but there’s a lot of stuff you wouldn’t do.”

  I practically screeched it, sounding more like Mom than I wanted to think about, and heat zoomed up my face when the couples around us stopped groping each other and just stared intently at Mary and me. If this wasn’t my worst nightmare, it definitely made the top ten.

  Mary grabbed the bottle out of my hand, put it back in the cooler, and pulled me out of the kitchen, but not before Tess and Amber walked into the kitchen from another direction, along with Drew and Chelsea.

  Okay, this was my worst nightmare ever.

  I yanked out of Mary’s grasp and ran. At the far end of the house, I whipped around a corner and headed downstairs to the entertainment center that Tess’s dad installed last year. The lights were out except for a dim glow that might be the TV, but it didn’t mean there weren’t a dozen couples down here making out. Not sure what I’d find, I cringed as I flipped on the overhead light.

  I found . . . Jeremy. Alone. Watching some shoot-’em-up movie in the dark.

  His head whipped around when the lights went on. “Cat?”

  I took a few steps into the room. “Jeremy? Why are you down here?”

  He shrugged. “I didn’t want to dance.”

  “So? No one’s making you dance.”

  “Yeah, well, a bunch of girls kept asking. Amber and Tess and even—”

  I held up a hand. “I get the picture.”

  No one had asked me to dance, but I’d only been at the party ten minutes. Fifteen, tops. And Mary had been hovering at my side nearly the whole time.

  Jeremy’s gaze flickered to the movie. As I started to walk out, he looked back at me. “What brings you down here? Too many guys asking you to dance?”

  Amazingly, he didn’t grin when he said it, or laugh, or act like it was a total joke if a guy asked me to dance. I have no idea why I came back into the room, but I did, glancing at the black leather couch where Jeremy sat before taking the chair next to it. I didn’t want to look like I was hitting on him. And this was Jeremy, the goofball. The guy who had a crush on me—or used to.

  He frowned at me, sitting all by myself in my chair, and I realized I probably looked like I was afraid of sitting next to a guy. Knowing Jeremy, he’d tell everyone I was frigid. Perfect.

  Silence stretched between us, which felt really weird because this was Jeremy. The guy who never shut up. Except, come to think of it, he’d hardly said a word in English the last couple of days. At least not to me.

  I scrambled for something to say. “I hear you guys are playing on Sunday? At Michael’s house?”

  When he just stared at me, I gnawed on the inside of my lip, cursing myself. We didn’t even have the band in common? Even though my sister played guitar and Jeremy played drums and I sang? What was so wrong?

  Finally, Jeremy sighed. “Yeah. We always practice at Michael’s. He has the room, and his parents don’t mind.”

  He didn’t ask if I was coming, let alone singing with them. Not that I needed an engraved invitation from Jeremy. But was he afraid he sucked at drums? He was good! I hadn’t told him so, but I didn’t want to make his crush any bigger than it was. Or make it seem like my crush, which it definitely wasn’t.

  “Are you, uh, gonna be there?”

  I blinked as Jeremy’s voice registered in the middle of my thoughts. “Where? At the band practice?”

  “Y’know, we don’t really need a new singer.”

  What?

  Jeremy looked down at his hands, loosely clasped between his knees. He had nice hands—nice fingers, as if that wasn’t the stupidest thought ever—and I could see why he was so great on drums. I just didn’t understand anything else about him.

  “A new singer?” My gaze shot from his hands to the movie on the huge flat screen just as the good guys went down in a hail of bullets. Finally, I looked back at Jeremy, who was watching me with a strange look I’d never seen on his face. “A new singer other than me? Or other than Michael?”

  Jeremy’s gaze left my face and went back to his hands. He was wearing a long-sleeved button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up just below the elbow, like he always did when he played drums. He had nice forearms, too.

  I had no idea why I was noticing him. Another portrait subject? Even though I wasn’t entering the art show?

  “It’s not that you sing so bad. I mean, you’re fine. We just don’t need another singer.”

  My jaw dropped. “I don’t sing so bad? Gee, thanks.” So much for thinking Jeremy had cute hands or forearms or anything else. He was still Jeremy: totally pathetic.

  I clenched the armrests of the chair and pushed myself to my feet. If I’d ever suffered through a more disgusting party in my life, I couldn’t remember when.

  “Wait.” Jeremy caught me at the door to the entertainment room an instant before I could bolt for freedom. “That’s not what I meant. It’s just that Kirk—”

  When he broke off, I stared at him, then shook my head and fled upstairs when I realized he wasn’t going to fill in the blank. Time to escape this stupid party.

  Even if it meant escaping with Mary.

  Chapter 14

  Kitty owned that she had rather stay at home.

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

  On Saturday, even SpongeBob and a million Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles felt like a welcome relief. At least Nickelodeon Universe paid me for humiliating myself.

  My back was turned to the door as I straightened three shelves of pink stuffed Patrick dolls that two little boys had slammed to the floor after their mom said she wouldn’t buy them one. I almost didn’t turn when the twentieth person in the last hour tapped my arm.

  “Cat?”

  When I finally turned, Megan started to walk away.

  “Hey. Megan.” As she turned back to me with the same timid look I’d seen on her face when I first met her, I offered a sheepish smile. “Sorry. You wouldn’t believe how many people have been grabbing me today.”

  Pete looked over at us, the closest thing to a frown on his face I’d ever seen. I gave him a little wave and mouthed
the word “friend” as I nodded at Megan.

  After he nodded back and gave Megan a friendly sweep with his eyes, I took a step closer to her and dropped my voice. “Pay no attention. Pete doesn’t get out much.”

  She rolled her eyes and motioned me farther away from Pete, to the SpongeBob display by the door. “You don’t have to look like that. Like I’m a freak. Like guys wouldn’t like me.”

  I frowned, wondering if she knew what Tess called the art geeks. I laughed, but it sounded fake even to my own ears. “Hey, I just think you can do better than Pete.”

  “Pete?” She glanced over my shoulder at him. “He seems nice. He keeps grinning at me.”

  “I think his mouth is frozen in a grin.”

  Megan started to laugh, then coughed instead into her hand, probably so Pete wouldn’t think she was laughing at him. Tess wouldn’t have bothered. And Amber would’ve made sure Pete knew she was laughing at him.

  No wonder I liked Megan. I just wasn’t quite sure where she fit in my life. Hectic as it was. Ha. “Actually, he’s a good guy. But what brings you in here?”

  Megan glanced around the store, offering Pete a sweet smile in mid-perusal, and finally looked back at me. “I’m a big SpongeBob fan.” When my eyes went wide, she laughed. “Kidding. I heard you worked here and wanted to stop by.”

  Not to make fun of me like everyone else? No, this was Megan. An art geek who could even turn into a good friend. In another lifetime.

  She stared at the floor. “Even if you don’t want to be in the art show, and you probably are too busy to come to art club, I was hoping we could still be friends.”

  “Sure.” The last time anyone I knew had made a major declaration about being friends, I think we’d been about eight years old. But, then, Megan was different from everyone else I knew. At the moment, it cut in her favor. Thinking of the art show, I smiled even as my stomach clenched. “Besides, without me for competition in the art show, you’ll totally clean up.”