by Ann, Becca
I try humor instead.
“I think Sandy has a cold or something.”
She tenses. “What?”
“Major boogers hanging out of her nose. Didn’t you notice?”
A big whoosh of air pops from her mouth as she laughs against me. “Now that you mention it, I think she’s always had a nasal problem.”
“Kind of sick, isn’t it? On top of that, I think she has B.O. issues. Smelt like socks and hot dogs from where I was sitting.”
She laughs again, releasing her hold on me and wiping her eyes. “I think that was your food, Ry.”
“Vegetarian, remember?” I pat my stomach and wink at her. She punches me in the shoulder, but it’s one of those halfhearted ‘I’m just doing this so you’ll think I’m okay, but I’m really not’ punches. Rubbing the back of my neck, I say, “Lex, I want you to do something for me.”
She cocks an eyebrow. “What?”
“Forget about him. He’s not worth it.”
She doesn’t answer. Just looks down at her black nails and sighs. I wrap her in my arms again because it’s all I can think to do.
“But he… he’s perfect.”
Heat starts going up my neck. Perfect, my ass. That guy hits on anything with boobs. My voice comes out in a growl. “I know, you told me.”
“I-I’ve never felt like this with anyone before.”
More heat. I’m surprised she can’t feel the flames coming off my face. “Lex…”
“Do you think, maybe it’s possible for me to prove I am good enough for him?”
What is she talking about? I pull her back to study her eyes. She’s serious. She wants to try to go after the jackass, even after he completely spit-swapped with her mortal enemy?
“You don’t have to prove anything.” I know I’m sort of yelling and that’s not what she needs right now, but how could she even be thinking of chasing after a guy who’s going to do this to her over and over? Play her then go for some other girl. “He’s not good enough for you.”
“Really, Ry?” She folds her arms and gives me the constipated mad look. “I’m the daughter of the town drunk and the reason my dad walked out—”
“Knock it off.” She knows I don’t like to hear about the mess with her parents. We’ve had an unspoken pact not to talk about how much crap we get at home. “Let’s just…talk about something else.”
She looks like she wants to yell for a second, but she shakes her head and lets it go. “You want to talk more about Booger Sandy? Because that was helping.”
I chuckle. “Booger Sandy. You think we should give her a big box of tissues before she heads off for the senior ski trip? Or should we just watch it freeze to the top of her lip while she’s out there?”
She doesn’t laugh. Damn, I thought that one was pretty good. But Lex’s eyes get real big, and her smile stretches across her face. “That’s it! You’re a genius, Ryan.”
Huh? “Well, yeah…but what about this time?”
“I’m going on the senior trip with you guys.”
That perks me up. In more ways than one to be honest. “Yeah? Sweet! It’ll help you take your mind off all this sh—”
“Sean’ll be there. It’s the perfect opportunity.” She’s talking to the window, throwing the hoodie over her head and cuddling into it.
“Wait, what are you talking about?”
“All I have to do is make him see me when I’m having a good time.” She flips her long brown hair out of the sweater. “Like, when I’m not dealing with my mom or living in my crummy basement apartment, or bumming around school. He needs to see me without all that crap. Just as me. I’ll totally get him to see I’m right for him.” I’m frozen as she leans across the seats to kiss my cheek. “Thanks. You know you’re awesome, right?” Another hug around my middle. “I couldn’t have asked for a better friend, as cheesy as that sounds.”
Bullet to the gut on top of everything else.
Always the friend.
And now the reason why she’s going on the trip to do Operation Date Dickhead.
This trip will be one hell of a week.
Chapter 3
Lexie
For a girl who has nothing, I sure as hell have a lot of shit. I toss another pair of jeans out of my closet and move on to the next. Once I found a twenty dollar bill in my pants pocket. You would have thought I hit the jackpot the way I jumped up and down and screamed. Ryan, who was waiting in the living room, flew in ready to perform his spider killing duties, but there was no spider. Only me and a twenty.
Now I could really use another one. Several dozen actually. I need to go on that senior trip. Problem is, the only money I have is my ticket out of this dungeon. It’s my life savings. Every penny I have ever made has gone into the purple ceramic piggy bank hidden on the top shelf of my closet behind my old school notebooks, so Mom doesn’t find it.
Eleven hundred dollars is a heck of a lot of money. But I’m willing to part with it if it gets me to the same ski resort as Sean.
“Alexis!” Mom’s voice shoots through the room like shards of glass.
I step out of the pile of clothes surrounding me and stick my head out the doorway. Our place isn’t big. All I have to do is look to the left to see the entire apartment. She’s standing outside her room with her French tipped nails on her tight, black, barely-there mini skirt. Other than the skirt the only thing she is wearing is a highlighter yellow bra.
“Yeah, Mom?” The fact she’s standing in her bra, I already know what she wants.
“Can I borrow your red shirt with the scoop neck?”
“That shirt’s tight on me.”
“Are you trying to say I’m fat?” Her black-lined eyes narrow in on me and a chunk of blond falls away from the rest of her jet black bob.
No…I’m trying to say it’s tight around my small B’s, so if you put it on, your D’s will surely have the seams hanging on for their lives.
Not that’d I’d say that out loud. Mom always thinks I’m passing judgment on her when all I’m really doing is trying to keep her from being the poster child for white trash.
“Not at all. You’re perfect. I’ll go get it.” In order to survive another year with her, I have no choice but to stroke her ego. And now with the trip in my future it’ll be even longer.
My entire closet is on my floor, but luckily the red shirt is on top of the pile. I hold it out and admire it for one last time. It’ll never be the same. Every shirt she borrows comes back either stained, stretched out or with a cigarette burn. She doesn’t even smoke.
“Here.” I step into the hallway and hold it out to her. She pulls it over head, and I swear I hear one of the seams break loose.
She looks down at her boobs, does this turny thing where they shift, and with a satisfied grin she glances back at me. “You’re right. Perfection.”
If you were going for the “I rent a room by the hour look” then yes…perfection. I sigh on the inside, but on the outside I smile.
“So what are you doing home?” Air rushes out of her nose into a snort. “Still no boyfriend?” Her head tilts down, eye cocked waiting for me to admit I’m as pathetic as she thinks.
I’d never tell Mom about what happened with Sandy and how she stole Sean out from my red fingernail grip. Even if technically, I never had a grasp on him. It’ll just be more bottles for Mom to stack in her bar of Lexie screw ups.
I walk to the living room and pick up my Cha Ching Cherry nail polish. Maybe if I ignore her, she’ll just go away. I sit down and repaint my thumbnail.
“Let me guess.” She taps her finger on her chin. “The boy you like doesn’t like you?”
Where’s Nate and his disappearing act when you need him?
I don’t answer. I apply another coat to my thumb.
And another.
And another.
“That’s what I thought,” she says as she slides into her black stilettos. “Face it, Alexis. Guys are just a waste of your time.”
Waste of
my time because no one will ever love me. I’m incapable of being loved. She’s said it all before, and I don’t want to hear it again. I twist the cap back onto my nail polish and slam it down on the coffee table. An empty can of beer falls on its side and rolls to the edge. She started early today. Surprised I didn’t smell it.
“Hey! You trying to dent the table?”
“Like you’d even care if I did. Half the time you’re too drunk to notice and the other half…” I stop myself. My body freezes in shock. I never let my thoughts seep out of my mouth, and I just blew them out like a cannonball.
The glassy coat on Mom’s hazel eyes tell me it was a direct hit. Damn it.
I’m about to apologize when she holds her hand up. “You need to remember something. You’re the reason your father left. You’re the one who’s the fuck up here. Not me!”
How can I forget when I have her constantly reminding me? It’s not even worth it. I pick the beer can up off the table. If I don’t, it will never find its way to the garbage.
Without another word to my mother I grab her keys off the counter. “Hey, where are you going with those?” she screams and trips as she runs after me.
It’s too late. I slam the door in her face and lock it.
I put my earbuds in and let the Black Keys drown out the pounding and kicking at my door. Fuck up or not, I’d never let her drive drunk. You’d think she’d give me points for that.
The trip might clear out my lifesavings, but if I can just have a week away from her, it’s worth it.
After twenty minutes I pull out one of the buds. The banging has stopped. I take out the other and ease my door open. Her purse is off the floor, yellow pages opened on the table, which means she called a cab to get to work. At least now I won’t have to worry about her driving home drunk.
Not that she ever does. Someone usually takes pity on her and drops her off at the curb. On a few occasions I found her sleeping on the lawn, but for the most part, she makes it inside.
I pick up a pair of jeans I already checked. Please God, just give me a break. I reach into the front and back pockets again.
Nothing.
I throw them back into the pile and go back into my closet. My summer clothes are put away in a big Tupperware-looking box on the top shelf. My last resort. I reach up and grab it. At least God gave me height.
The box comes down awkwardly, knocking me off balance and sending me into my winter sweaters. I let go of the box, and it hits the floor sideways, spilling clothes onto the floor as I grab for the sweaters engulfing me.
My midsection arches, my body goes backwards, and I pull on the sweaters in my hands to propel me up. The cheap hangers I got at the dollar store bend at the weight and with a loud snap I go tumbling backwards. My head smacks the wall and a sweater falls on my face.
Perfect. Just perfect.
Chapter 4
Ryan
“Come on, Mr. Miller. There’s gotta be some sort of program to let students go when they can’t afford it.”
Our homeroom teacher runs his hand through his gray goatee as he shakes his head. “There was, Ryan. But the deadline’s passed. Sorry, it wouldn’t be fair to the other students who got their applications in on time.”
He picks up his briefcase and heads for the door.
“Come on,” I grumble again. “It’s Lexie. She won’t say anything to anyone, and she’s got the grades for it. Just…can you give her a break?”
It looks like I’ve almost wore him down. He throws me a flicker of a smile and hesitates, hand resting on the doorknob. He sighs.
“Really, I wish I could. But she had the same opportunity as everyone else. If she wants to go, she’ll have to pay her way.” He opens the door. “Sorry.”
So much for Plan A. I walk out of the classroom, and he follows, locking the door behind me before taking off down the empty hallway. I’ve been arguing with Mr. Miller for about an hour since the bell rang. Anything to keep Lex from using her piggy bank to go on the trip. She needs that money to find an apartment and stuff when she graduates. No way am I letting her waste it just so she can chase after some douchebag.
“So?” Kaylee stands up from the floor, dusting off her butt and shouldering her backpack.
I shake my head, and her lip goes into a deep pout.
“Dang it. I thought for sure Mr. Miller was our best bet.”
Yeah, me too.
I shrug, and she links her arm in the crook of mine as we walk to my car.
“Maybe we could all pull together some money. Between the four of us we could come up with eleven hundred.”
“She wouldn’t accept that, and you know it.” I give her the halfhearted grin I usually save for Lexie. The one I use when I know I’m right, but I wish I weren’t.
“We’ll think of something.”
I nod, and that’s it for conversation. Well, at least on my side. Kaylee’s talking but mostly to herself and under her breath. She does that when she’s thinking too hard. Everyone tries to sit next to her during tests.
I drop Kaylee off at Nate’s house. She’s still talking under her breath as she waves to me. None of what she’s thinking will work. Trying to pull together some class charity thing, asking my grandparents, or having Nate charge twenty bucks a head for one of his magic shows—which I’m pretty sure only Kaylee and I will show up to—yeah, Lex won’t fall for any of that.
Which means I have to come up with something that won’t get her suspicious. In simple terms, that means I have to lie. Just thinking about it makes my palms sweat. I don’t lie to Lexie. Sure, I omit things. Like the whole, “I’m in love with you, but I’m not telling you because it would make things weird,” but I don’t flat out lie. She knows all my tells.
There was this one time when her favorite dog, Limbo died, I didn’t have the guts to tell her, so I made up some bull about his owners deciding to go with another dog walker ‘cause they needed someone during the midmorning while she was at school. I know, crap lie at best, and she saw right through it. She looked at me and said, “Ryan, what’s up with your face?” Apparently the scar along my eyebrow did this twitch thing and my face went purple.
She’s also discovered my voice cracks, my ears flame, and I stop breathing for a good twenty seconds or so. Hence the purple face.
So, yeah. I don’t lie to Lexie.
“You’re home late,” Pop-pop says from his recliner when I walk through the door. “Do I need to give you the lecture again?” His toothless grin widens with his joke, and I slide onto the couch next to him.
“Sorry, dealing with school stuff.”
“Ah,” he says, turning his attention back to his John Grisham book, “I thought maybe it had something to do with that Alexis. I was about to tell your grandmother to get the guest room ready.”
My grandparents are so cool. I’m man enough to admit that. And like Lex, my mom isn’t exactly the prime example of mother of the year, but unlike Lex, I’ve got people who are willing to yank me out of the situation. I swear Pop-pop and Grams would adopt Lexie too if they could. Instead, they just give her a room and fawn over her when her alcoholic mom is having one of her “episodes.”
“Not tonight. At least, I don’t think so.”
“All right, then. I’ll skip The Talk then.”
I throw my head back against the cushion of the couch. The infamous Talk. The “if you dare enter that guest room I’ll skewer your scrotum and cook it for breakfast the next morning.” At first I thought it was all a big joke, but one look at Grams with the butcher knife wiped the smile right off my face.
I start to doze off, the pages of Pop-pop’s book turning like a metronome. All I can think about, even in sleep, is how am I supposed to get Lex on that trip without her knowing how I got her there?
“Dinner!”
Shooting up with a big snort, I wipe the sleep from my eyes and the drool from my chin. Pop-pop’s stifling his laughter as he puts down the recliner and hobbles into the kitchen, rubbing hi
s hands together.
I can smell the vegetarian pizza, and I start rubbing my hands too. Nothing like mounds of cheese and olives to take my mind off everything.
My grandparent’s side of the pizza has a bunch of sausage and pepperoni, stuff that makes my stomach churn. I don’t care if other people eat that stuff—I mean, Lexie is a freaking carnivore—but it tastes funky to me.
I snarf my half of the pizza and head across the hall to my room. It’s an old people house for sure—all on one level. But it’s a better deal than the alternative, which is listening to my mom screw a different guy every other night.
Plopping in my desk chair, I pull open the laptop and then log on my bank account. I fixed an engine in a Honda Civic last week and stuffed that money in savings. It’s my college fund, but I can set up some oil changes. Pop-pop usually pays me for helping him get the Lincoln to pass safety and emissions. I’ll make the money back before September.
I click on my savings account and the green number blares across my screen.
$1323.19.
Okay, okay. Better me than her. I tab to Facebook and hope Lex is online. She’s working at the coffee house this afternoon and is just about on her break. Internet is better anyway. She won’t catch me lying my ass off.
She’s not there yet, but Nate is. I better take care of him and Kaylee first, or I’ll be caught before I can hit the snoozer tonight.
Hey, man. Tell Kaylee I got Lex covered. Mr. M gave in.
I don’t lie to them either, but let’s test the bait.
No way! That’s gr8. Four of us are gonna rock that ski resort.
Something drops in the pit of my stomach. That darn guilt that comes with lying to your best friends, but I chalk it up to that saying…I’m doing it for the best.
