The Art of Lainey

by Paula Stokes

  Bianca puts an arm around me and squeezes. “But you’ve never believed in your mom’s tea-reading stuff. Why start now?”

  I’ve actually always kind of believed in my mom’s readings. I only pretend not to because—and this might be an understatement—tea leaves are not cool. But according to Mom, when she got pregnant, her doctor told her I was going to be a boy and she kept disagreeing because she dreamed I was a girl. Then her doula, aka the world’s biggest hippie, saw something feminine when she was reading Mom’s leaves and that clinched it—Mom asked for all pink baby clothes. Of course Dad and her friends thought she was having a breakdown so they bought lots of green and yellow stuff to be safe. And then I popped out looking all girly and perfect and Mom got to go around shrieking “in your face” at everyone. Well, maybe it didn’t go down exactly like that, but she’s been reading tea leaves herself ever since. And sometimes I listen.

  But it’s not an exact science. She can look at a cupful of glop and pretty much see what she wants to see. And since she and the rest of the world knew Kendall had recently jetted off to New York after being selected for the special teen edition of So You Think You Can Model, I wasn’t too worried about the separation reading.

  “I don’t know. But apparently this time Mom nailed it. What are we going to do?”. Okay, so it’s technically my problem, not Bianca’s, but any crisis of mine is a crisis of hers, and vice versa. That’s just how we roll.

  She pulls a pair of wooden chopsticks out of her bun and shakes out her thick Latina hair. “Maybe you should try to call Kendall and see if she’s got any inside information.”

  “Ooh, good idea.” Not only is Kendall closer to Jay than anyone else, she also knows how to “handle situations,” as she likes to say.

  I send her a quick 911 text, but she doesn’t respond right away like usual. I tell myself it’s no biggie, that she’s probably off somewhere posing in body paint or getting an überchic pixie haircut. Still, nothing stings quite like an unanswered text message.

  I wait five whole minutes and check my phone again. “I think she’s forgotten about me,” I say, only half kidding.

  “She’s probably not allowed to use her cell phone,” Bianca says. “Didn’t you say they wouldn’t even let her email anyone during filming?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” It’s nice of Bee to make excuses for Kendall, considering that they don’t like each other very much, which sucks because the three of us all play varsity soccer now and I wish we could hang out together. Bianca’s been my best friend forever, but being around Kendall is like getting swept away by a tornado, in a good way. She and Jason lived in Los Angeles until eighth grade when their mom got transferred here for work, and there’s just something glamorous and unpredictable about everything she does. When we go out, I never know where we’ll end up.

  Kendall makes me better too. If it weren’t for her excellent assist, I wouldn’t have scored the winning goal at the championships. I probably wouldn’t have gotten together with Jason either. She pushes me to do things I’d be too scared to try on my own. Bianca finds her “a bit overbearing.”

  “You’re probably right,” I tell Bee. “Maybe she’s getting ready for a shoot, being draped in some glamorous dress while a team of designers revolve around her, brows furrowed, mouths full of pins.” Kendall’s mom is the district manager of a chain of fashion boutiques and she’s always making her daughter try on outfits before she lets the buyers order them. Kendall bitches about being a human Barbie Doll, but she gets to keep all the samples. Talk about having the best wardrobe in school.

  As for me, my mom’s an anthropology professor, which means all I have is the best collection of creepy tribal masks. They used to hang on the wall of my room, but last year I finally said enough and put them up in the coffee shop. You have no idea what it’s like to be fooling around with your boyfriend and look up to see a bunch of painted-up African warriors glaring at you. Major mood killer.

  Now my walls are full of pictures and posters. My lower lip gets quivery as my eyes land on a framed photo of Jay and me from last year’s junior prom. Him in his tux, and me in a long pale blue gown. Both of us tall, tan, blinding smiles. We look like the little people on top of a wedding cake.

  “I can’t figure out what happened.” My voice wavers. “Everything was fine last week.”

  “No warning at all?” Bee asks.

  I shake my head violently, and my brain is assaulted by thoughts of Jason from all sides, from the pictures on the wall, to the DVDs he loaned me scattered across my desk, to the three bottles of perfume—one for each Valentine’s day—arranged in a line on my dresser. An old soccer jersey of his that I sometimes sleep in lies crumpled on the floor. As I pick it up and toss it toward the hamper, I catch sight of my jewelry box on the highest shelf of my dresser. There are only a couple of necklaces inside it—one of which is the golden soccer-ball pendant Jay gave me when I turned sixteen.

  He and Kendall threw me a pool party that night. It was epic—I bet at least a hundred people came. Then, after everyone left, Kendall distracted their mom while Jay snuck me into his room. I lost my virginity that night, and while it was everything people said that it would be—awkward and nerve-wracking and a little painful—Jason was so amazingly sweet that I wasn’t afraid. I just . . . trusted him. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. I never thought he would hurt me.

  Until now.

  I bite back tears. That was also the night he told me he loved me for the first time. It took him almost a year to say it, but I didn’t mind because to me that showed he really meant it, you know?

  Sniffling, I turn to Bianca. “I mean, did I do something wrong?”

  Bianca hands me a tissue. “This isn’t about you.”

  I want to believe her, but it’s hard. I guess it sounds stupid, but a little part of me thought Jason might be “the one.” My parents met when Mom was twenty and Dad was twenty-two, which isn’t much different from meeting in high school. Even though I’m hoping to go to college on a soccer scholarship, I never planned on going far enough away to risk my relationship with Jay.

  “He’s just confused,” Bee continues as I wipe my eyes. “Maybe it has to do with meeting his father for the first time.”

  “I guess that’s possible.” But he didn’t seem too traumatized when his dad showed up in town last month. Especially when the first thing he did was toss Jay the keys to a sweet condo. But his parents have been estranged since before he and Kendall were born, and Kendall still refuses to speak to her dad. When all you know about your father is that he’s a professional photographer who lives out of a suitcase and never wanted kids, having him suddenly arrive and buy a place in town is probably a big deal. I don’t know. Maybe it messed with Jason’s head more than he let on. “You know what? I’m going to text him.” Before Bianca can stop me, I’ve got my phone out and I’m rattling off an “Is this about your dad?” text.

  Bee chews on her naturally plump lower lip. “I’m not sure if—”

  I wave her quiet with the back of my hand. Thirty seconds. Forty-five seconds. A minute. There is no way Jason is not going to answer me. He always answers me.

  Another minute passes. Bianca sees me teetering on the edge of pathetic and tries to pull me back. “We need a plan,” she announces, grabbing my laptop from my desk. I’ve got about eight windows open—most of them to soccer or gossip websites, one of them to CalebWaters.com. “Oooh, Caleb,” she says, immediately distracted. She enlarges a picture of him at a red-carpet premier and turns the laptop toward me. “This will cheer you up.”

  I give her a halfhearted smile. Caleb Waters is a former pro soccer player and the star of Victory Dance and Only One Shot. He’s currently shooting a movie called Flyboys in cities all across the Midwest. I’ve been checking his page a lot for updates in case they shoot some scenes in nearby St. Louis. Meeting Caleb Waters is one of my major life goals.

  “Do you think Flyboys will be as good as the other movies?” Bee asks. “You
know, since he doesn’t get to play soccer in it?”

  “I’m sure it’ll be awesome.” I blot my eyes with the tissue again. “Maybe he’s reinventing himself as a serious actor.”

  “Hopefully not.” She peers at the screen. “What good is a Caleb Waters movie if he doesn’t get sweaty and take his shirt off?”

  As wrecked as I am right now, I have to giggle a little at that. Bianca may act all prim and proper most of the time, but when it comes to Caleb Waters she’s every bit as obsessed as me. I force my face back into a serious expression. “Enough celebrity stalking. We have a different soccer star to focus on, remember? I thought you were coming up with a plan to fix my life.”

  “Right. Sorry. A life-fixing plan.” Bee opens another window to a search engine. “I don’t think I’ve fixed your life since that time in seventh grade when you tried to give yourself highlights and ended up looking like a crooked skunk.”

  I shudder. “Thank God that color fixer stuff worked.” I lean over Bianca’s shoulder while she types in various permutations of “how to win back your ex-boyfriend.” Hundreds of thousands of hits come up. “Wow. A lot of people get dumped.” I feel a tiny twinge of relief. Somehow, it’s better knowing I’m not the only one.

  “Yeah, but I’m not sure if we’ll find anything useful.” Bee scrolls through a bunch of websites that are trying to sell thirty-dollar e-books with “secret psychological techniques.” Some are written by people whose grasp of the English language is debatable.

  Undaunted, Bee keeps clicking. A pink-and-gray page pops up. “This one looks good.” She nibbles at a pinkie nail. “Tips from Maverick the Master Dater, MD in Loveology.”

  “Clever. Probably some thirty-year-old virgin living in his mommy’s basement, but what do I have to lose?” I read over her shoulder. Maverick has a basic list of Dos and Don’ts.

  • Do keep on living. Even though you’re sad, you need to keep going to school or work.

  • Don’t wallow. It’s pathetic, and you don’t want him to realize how much the breakup has affected you.

  “I can do those,” I say. “I’m pretty sure my parents wouldn’t even give me the option of bailing on my shifts at Denali, and I definitely don’t want to seem pathetic.”

  Next:

  • Don’t contact him. At all. No emails, text messages, phone calls, letters, unannounced drive-bys, etc. for at least three weeks. Men inherently crave what isn’t readily available. If you stay away, he’ll wonder why. And he’ll come sniffing around to find out.

  A strangled sound works its way out of my throat. “Three weeks without any contact from Jason would seem like several lifetimes. No way,” I tell Bianca. “Find something else.”

  A rattling sound from the floor makes me flinch. Bee’s backpack is vibrating. While she digs around for her phone, I click desperately through links from so-called relationship experts, but they all seem to say the same thing: the best way to win back a guy is to avoid him . . . for weeks!

  “There has to be a better way,” I say.

  Bianca peeks quickly at the text message and puts her phone away without replying. She holds up a tattered red-and-black paperback.

  “Maybe there is.”

  Chapter 3

  “ALL WARFARE IS BASED ON DECEPTION.”

  —Sun Tzu, The Art of War

  “The Art of War?” I raise an eyebrow. It sounds vaguely familiar, like I heard it referenced in a movie or something. It also sounds as old as dirt. “Why do you have that?”

  “Seriously? It’s on our summer reading list. Don’t you ever do your schoolwork?” Bee slaps me on the leg with the book. “It’s by a Chinese military strategist named Sun Tzu. It’s mostly about war, but people have applied it to all kinds of scenarios—business, law, college, sports, relationships.”

  I squint at the cover. It figures brilliant Bianca would turn to some dusty schoolbook for advice. “You think a dead Chinese guy can help me get Jason back?”

  “A dead Chinese warlord,” Bianca corrects.

  My eyebrow creeps up even farther. “My world is ending and you’re channeling your inner warlord?”

  Bee smiles. “Hear me out.” She flips the book over and starts reading the back cover. “‘Master Sun Tzu’s military treatise is required reading on battlefields and in boardrooms. Countless people of all ages have benefited from his wisdom.’” She tosses the book to me.

  I snatch it out of the air. “This is never going to help.” The cover is decorated with a bunch of symbols that look like tic-tac-toe boards on crack. I flip past the introduction and start skimming from the top of a page. “‘The art of war, then, is governed by five constant factors, to be taken into account in one’s deliberations, when seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in the field.’” I roll my eyes. “Whatever that means.”

  “Read them,” Bianca says. “The five factors.”

  “‘Moral law, heaven, earth, the commander, method and discipline.’” I clear my throat. “Which is six things, not five. I’m supposed to take advice from some dead guy who can’t count?”

  Bee ignores me. “So you can think of those as loyalty, timing, natural resources, leadership, and organization. These are the things you need going your way to be successful.”

  “Super. All I have to do to win Jason back is become my mother.”

  “No, really, Lainey. Give it a chance. Millions of readers can’t be wrong.”

  “That’s like saying millions of boy-band fans can’t be wrong,” I mutter, but I flip through a few more pages. They’re full of words I’ve never heard of, like ramparts and bulwark. Even the words I do understand don’t make much sense. My eyes start to glaze over. “Is there a translation?”

  “This is a translation.”

  “Is there maybe a translation to the translation? The Art of War for Dummies?”

  “You can do this.” Bee reads over my shoulder. “‘All warfare is based on deception.’” She points at the next page. “‘Hold out baits to entice the enemy. . . . Attack him where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected.’”

  I stare down at the text. “So how do I use that to win back Jason? Sneak up on him when he’s at the gym and offer him a protein smoothie?”

  “You have to read the book first,” she says. “Then we’ll make a plan.”

  “You’re giving me a homework assignment?” I ask. “Because honestly, I don’t feel like reading a book right now. I feel like hunting Jason down and forcing him to tell me what I did.” I sigh dramatically. “Which was nothing. So if I can make him see that, show him we’re fine and he’s just being mental, then he has to take me back, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Bee says. “About the assignment. Sorry, no about everything else. And you need to stay away from him at least for a few days, give him space, don’t be clingy.”

  “I am not clingy,” I snap. At least I don’t think I am. Crap, now I’m having doubts about everything. “Fine. You’re right. I’ll stay away.” I pause. “But maybe I should call him just to see if he still wants me to play on his coed summer team. He was talking about it last time we hung out and sign-ups are really soon.”

  She shakes her head. “How would that conversation go? ‘Hey, I know you just crushed me publicly, but I’m wondering if we’re still going to play soccer together?’ Sun Tzu would not approve.”

  “Okay. Stupid idea,” I admit. “But I have his varsity jacket, and his jersey, and some DVDs. I shouldn’t keep that stuff . . .” I trail off hopefully.

  Bianca’s too nice to laugh at me but the look on her face says exactly what she’s thinking—that I am the lamest person alive. “Keep it temporarily. Like Sun Tzu says, attack when the enemy isn’t expecting it. Right now Jason is probably expecting you to be all over him.”

  “Fine.” I wrinkle my nose at the paperback. “And I’ll read this book, if you really think it’ll help.” My general reading consists of soccer and gossip magazines, so struggling through The Art of War is goi
ng to feel like self-mandated summer school. But hey, at least it’s short. And if it works for armies and athletes, maybe it can work for me. I’m a girl who believes in fighting for what she wants.

  Kendall calls me the next day. “Laineykins!” She half screams into the phone when I answer. “I miss you so much.”

  “I miss you too.” There’s a lot of chatter in the background. I hold the earpiece slightly away from my head. “How is everything going?”

  “I swear.” She huffs. “I have to share a room with three other girls and they are all treating me like I’m a farmer because I live in the Midwest.”

  “That sucks.” Kendall is supersensitive to being treated like a hick since she and Jason grew up in LA.

  “You have no idea,” she continues. “And the people running this place have so many rules. Eleven p.m. curfew. Seven a.m. group breakfast. It’s like military school.”

  “That sucks too,” I say. “Why don’t you just quit?”

  “Because quitting means I lose, and losing is for . . . losers,” she says. “If I win this thing I get a hundred grand. If I leave, my mom will be all pissed and I’ll also get to deal with that waste of space who likes to call himself my dad.”

  I suspected that Kendall mostly tried out for So You Think You Can Model to get away from her parents for the summer, but this is the first time she’s basically confirmed it. Don’t get me wrong, she loves the idea of being on TV, but I know she has no desire to actually work in the fashion industry. Her mom was a high-fashion model before she got pregnant and she seems determined to make Kendall to take over where she left off. She’s forced her to do lots of catalog stuff for the boutique, and Kendall says it all sucks. Apparently the designers and photographers poke and prod at her like she’s an alien and act like it’s her fault if she gets a freckle or—God forbid—a zit.

  I’m pretty sure the only reason she even made it on the show is because her mom called in some favors from people she used to work with. Then again, Kendall is gorgeous and she does have the perfect confrontational attitude for reality TV.