“My family isn’t big on alliteration.” His eyes narrowed as I spoke. “Repeated consonant sounds—”
“I know what it is. I was wondering about the look on your face.”
I glanced away. “It’s a sensitive subject.”
“Alliteration?”
“No.”
“Your family?”
“No! My name.”
“But—”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay.” He held up both hands in surrender. The line shuffled forward a few paces.
“Rebecca Rowena Randall.”
Alex looked questioningly at me.
“That’s a good name, if you want to get alliterative. She was a character in a book named after characters from a different book.”
He whistled. “That’s much better than my idea.”
Don’t ask; it’s what he wants you to do. I held out for a full five seconds. “What was your idea?”
“Mary Christmas. It’s so cheerful.”
I maintained a frosty silence.
“That Will guy probably doesn’t make jokes,” he continued, as though thinking aloud. “Was that the attraction?”
“Actually, he can make jokes in several languages.”
“He could, but does he? I’m going to go out on a limb and guess nein.”
From where we were standing it was just possible to glimpse the less than boisterous grouping of Will, Terry, and Arden. As we watched, he angled his phone above himself and Terry. She started to smile, but a glance at Will’s pained expression nipped that in the bud.
“Does he think they’re in a perfume commercial?” Alex whispered, bending close to my ear.
“He’s probably very artistic,” I retorted. “Look at how he dresses, and his . . . deportment.”
“Yeah. You could take a guy like that anywhere. Libraries. The opera. Funerals.”
“You’re just—” I bit back the word jealous. That hit a little too close to home, though I felt I’d behaved with admirable magnanimity in ceding the field to Terry.
“Please.” He swept a hand through the air. “Enlighten me.”
“He’s a better match for her, okay? I’m sorry if that wounds your ego.”
Alex glanced across the bleachers. “You think those two make a good couple?”
“There’s potential.” At the very least they’d look good in stark black-and-white photos.
He shook his head. “No way.”
“Excuse me if I question your objectivity.” That was easier than asking myself how I’d ended up on this side of an increasingly ridiculous argument.
“Suit yourself.” He shrugged as if it didn’t matter to him. “But when it all falls apart, remember I called it first. No spark.”
I crossed my arms, looking away. “We’ll see.”
“Zero chemistry,” he murmured, standing near enough that my fingers would have brushed his shirt if I hadn’t been clenching them so tightly. “If she was interested in him, she wouldn’t keep looking over here.”
I darted a glance at Terry, but she was listening to Will, who had unbent sufficiently to use hand gestures as he spoke.
“Maybe she wants me to get her some candy.”
“Are you sure that’s all it is?”
“As opposed to what?” It sounded like he thought Terry was looking at him.
His eyes glinted in an extremely disreputable fashion. “The two of you might be, you know—”
It was the eyebrow twitch that tipped me off. “Having a torrid affair involving lots of pillow fights in our skimpy pajamas?”
“I was going to say, ‘plotting something,’ but I like your version better. What kind of jammies are we talking about? Those little short sets or a nightie?”
“You’re incorrigible. Has anyone ever told you that?”
“I can honestly say you’re the first, Mary.” It was a testament to his Vronsky-ish ways that he made even my name sound suggestive. He could probably give a word like mucilage a saucy twist.
“Answer me this,” I said with as much dignity as possible. “Would you tell your best friend to date you?”
“Absolutely not. Jake’s a pig. I don’t think he even knows where his toothbrush is. There’s no way I’m letting that tongue in my mouth.”
I closed my eyes. “You know what I mean. How about your sister? And obviously not the literal you, because that would be incest, but someone like you.”
“Which sister? I have three.”
My eyes flew open. “You—” I swallowed the urge to compare notes or ask if by chance he had an annoying little brother too. “It’s a hypothetical question.”
He hit me with the slow blink. “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”
Whatever riposte I might have made fell by the wayside when the boy in front of me moved and a harried parent volunteer said, “What can I get you?”
I rattled off the order. After a momentary hesitation, I turned to Alex. “Do you want anything?” He’d been standing in line a long time, ostensibly for a reason other than needling me.
“I hope you don’t expect something at the end of the night just because you bought me Skittles.”
“Skittles?”
“Are you mocking my taste in candy?”
I shook my head; what could you say to someone so lost to all reason?
The woman behind the counter set a bag of Skittles next to the candy bars. “Is that it?”
Alex squinted at the menu, pretending to consider.
“He’s fine,” I told her, handing over the money.
“Oh, I know, honey.” She slid the change to me with a wink.
“See how you are?” I hissed when we’d edged away from the concession stand.
His expression was all innocence. “What did I do?”
“Maybe it’s unconscious. A reflex.” I’d been speaking mostly to myself, but Alex looked intrigued—not surprising, given that he was the subject of my ruminations.
“What is?”
“The way you act.” I waved a candy bar at him. “Those looks you’re always giving people and the hair—”
His hand flew to his head. “What’s wrong with my hair?”
“You can’t pretend you wake up looking like that. How long does it take you to style yourself every morning?” His mouth opened; I pointed at him to show I wasn’t finished. “And the way you smiled at that lady, who by the way is someone’s mom—”
“I was thanking her.”
“You were giving her heart palpitations.”
“Really?” Alex grinned. “How do you figure?”
He wanted me to admit that I’d been affected too, but I had no intention of revealing any such thing. It was bad enough I could feel myself blushing. My eyes cast about for an escape. The band kicked into an up-tempo number, signaling the end of the first quarter.
“There’s my sister,” I said, as though I’d been looking for her all along. Hurrying to the low chain-link fence bordering the playing field, I waved at Cam, who was chugging from a water bottle. Alex didn’t follow, nor did I look back, though the prickling between my shoulder blades suggested he was still watching.
“How’s it going?” I asked her, trying to sound normal and winding up closer to crazed fan.
Cam swiped her forearm across her sweaty forehead. “We’re winning,” she said dryly.
I nodded, racking my brain for a more informed remark about a match I’d barely watched. Cam’s almost-smile faded.
“I need to go,” she said abruptly. Turning on her heel, she marched over to the coach, saying something I couldn’t hear.
From the corner of my eye, I spotted a tall figure staring in the same direction. A quick glance led to another, and then a third, as a vague sense of he looks familiar shifted to Oh! It’s that brawny guy. The one I’d noticed lurking near Cam at the party. It was the breadth of the shoulders that gave him away. Well, that and—
“I didn’t know you were into m
an buns,” Lydia whispered, sidling up next to me. She pointed to the back of her head, lest I mistake the kind of buns she meant.
“What?”
She held up both hands, palms out. “No judgment. I’m sure he’s more fun than what’s-his-name—Herr Skeletor.”
“I think we should go back there.”
Lydia turned so that we were both looking at the scene on the bleachers. Will was regaling Terry with what appeared to be a long and involved story. Arden was absorbed in her phone.
“Why?” Lydia asked, pulling out her own phone. “I could just text her, tell her where to meet us.”
“They might need our support. And it’s possible he’s not as bad as he seems. Some people get nervous in unfamiliar settings.” All of these were plausible excuses, and much better than confessing my desire to prove Alex Ritter wrong.
“Fine,” Lydia sighed. I handed her a Snickers, to soften the blow.
As we approached, Will was holding forth about American literature, dropping names and titles as if scattering seeds on virgin soil. From what I could tell, his tastes ran mostly to stories of neurotic white guys lamenting their self-inflicted tragedies while the women and people of color dealt with real problems somewhere off stage.
It never would have worked, I thought, bidding adieu to the last trace of regret at being overlooked in favor of a more beautiful friend. I held my M&M’s out to Terry, so she’d know there weren’t any hard feelings.
“You eat these?” Will’s tone would have made more sense if Terry had started nibbling on her toenails. Lydia’s eyes narrowed.
“You guys!” Arden jumped in. “What a coincidence! We were just talking about books.” Her smile was strained. “Will was, anyway.”
“Mary’s a serious reader,” Terry said. I got the feeling both she and Arden had been trying to interject for some time.
Will glanced at Lydia, sniffing with amusement. “What, the vampire books?”
“I’m Lydia.” She bared her teeth. “That’s Mary.”
He appeared to find this a trifling distinction. “You are such a puritanical culture. Obsessed with sex, but too much like children to call it that, no, it has to be teeth instead.”
“Holy cow,” I said, staring at him.
His lips curved patronizingly. “You never realized what it means when the fangs penetrate and the girl bleeds? Sorry to melt your bubble.”
“Actually, that’s pretty basic. I mean, gothic literature has been around for centuries.” If someone was going to sneer at me, they could at least have the decency to scrape up something better than bargain-basement symbolism.
“Excuse me, but I am German. I think I know more about what is gothic than—” He gestured mutely at me.
“Than what, a girl?”
He shrugged, as if to say, Close enough.
How had I ever found him handsome? Features I’d considered sculpted now struck me as pinched. “‘You’re the sort who can’t know anyone intimately, least of all a woman,’” I quoted. “That’s from A Room with a View. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”
He rolled his eyes. “I don’t watch your teenager beach house reality shows.”
“It’s a novel,” I corrected. “By the great English writer E. M. Forster.”
“The British!” He made a sound of disgust at the back of his throat. “So repressive, with their manners and their teacups. I prefer something real, not this, ‘Oh, I must wave my handkerchief.’”
I heard a roaring in my ears. Had he just dismissed the entire tradition of English literature? Lydia rubbed her hands together. “Go ahead, Mary. Don’t hold back.”
“I think it’s time for us to go,” I said in my most dignified manner.
“Yes, okay,” he snorted, “keep hiding in your Hollywood chewing gum world, instead of opening your eyes to reality.”
“Right,” said Arden, standing up. “That’s all the reality I can handle. Ready, Terry?”
Will frowned at Terry. “You’re leaving with them?”
“I—yes,” she said. “I’m going with my friends.”
Crossing his legs, he angled his body away from us. We were officially beneath his notice.
It was much less painful to be snubbed as part of a group, I reflected as we made our escape. It also helped to know that the person doing the disdaining was a total prig, as opposed to a friend you’d had since childhood.
Not that I aspired to become a connoisseur of such things.
Dear Diary,
The purpose of the Scoundrel List isn’t to point out the obvious villains: guys who steal your inheritance or lock you in a tower or invite their mistress to move into the guest room. It’s about finding the ones who conceal their treachery behind a smiling façade. That’s the kind of nefariousness you have to watch out for.
M.P.M.
Chapter 15
As the flies and mosquitoes had vanished with the coming of cooler weather, forgotten and unmourned, so too did the memory of Mall Guy dwindle in the following weeks. There were plenty of distractions: homework, helping the twins with play prep, trying to keep track of Arden’s many and varied afterschool commitments. The only lingering sting was my unspoken worry that the incident reflected poorly on my judgment. Fortunately my friends were too generous for recriminations, placing the blame squarely on Will (whom we did not mention by name).
One afternoon when even Arden had no extracurricular obligations, the four of us met in the parking lot after the final bell for another excursion. All I knew about the agenda was that it involved food, followed by what Arden termed housekeeping. Which was almost certainly code for something far more enticing.
“I’m feeling salty,” Arden announced as she fastened her seat belt.
“Also the title of my memoir.” Lydia tapped out a rimshot on the dashboard.
We drove to the less picturesque part of town, where our destination proved to be McDonald’s. I could practically hear my mother’s squawk of horror.
Arden slowed the car to a crawl as she negotiated the narrow lane between parked cars. “It’s packed.” Her shoulders had hiked until they nearly bracketed her ears.
“The good McDonald’s is always crowded.” Lydia pointed through the windshield. “What about over there?”
“Are you kidding? I’d have to parallel park.”
“I don’t see anything else,” Terry murmured as we rounded the building.
A second later, Arden stepped on the brake. “Oh no.”
“What?” Lydia asked.
“That’s Aaron Masterson’s car.”
Lydia leaned forward in her seat to inspect the offending vehicle. “Crap.”
He was on the Scoundrel List as a card-carrying Willoughby, the faithless paramour from Sense and Sensibility who forsakes Marianne for being poor, then gets maudlin about how she was the perfect woman once she finds someone better to marry. Aaron’s version was showing up whenever his ex-boyfriend (whom he had dumped) went out with a new guy. Apparently he thought it was romantic to stare longingly at the person whose heart he had broken, when in fact he was being a fickle jerk.
“I told Thomas I would be extremely disappointed if he got back together with him,” Lydia said, trying to peer through the windows of the restaurant.
“She did,” Arden confirmed. “It was intense. I was shaking in my boots.”
Lydia gave a modest shrug. “I do what I can.”
“Okay, but we can’t go in there now. He’s even worse if there’s an audience.” Arden gripped the steering wheel with both hands.
Terry nodded. “A lot of sociopaths have an exhibitionist streak.”
“What’s option B?” Lydia half turned in her seat, directing the question to all three of us.
Arden lowered the volume on the stereo. “It can’t be pancakes. That’s late-night food.” Not for the first time, I was amazed by the arcane knowledge my friends possessed.
Seconds ticked past. When it appeared no one else was going to speak up, I cleared
my throat.
“I know a place.” But was it the right kind of place? I tried to think of a way to describe it that wouldn’t raise their hopes too high. “They have angled parking.”
“Works for me,” said Arden, flicking on her blinker.
* * *
“Freaky place for a café,” Lydia observed as we descended the stairs to Tome Raider—or, as it was known in my family, Shaggy Doug’s.
“When Doug and Noreen split up this was all he could afford,” I explained. “He bases all his baked goods on famous children’s books.”
Terry tried to peer through the dingy glass of the front door. “Like what?”
“It’s different every day. I’m not big on the Turkish delight, like the White Witch gives Edmund in the Chronicles of Narnia, but everything else I’ve tasted is great.” Pulling the door open, I ushered them inside.
We settled at a small wrought-iron table in the corner, a relic from someone’s garden. The only other furniture was a sagging couch the color of Dijon mustard, currently occupied by Cadbury, Doug’s tabby cat.
“Would you like to see a menu?” asked Doug, who had crept from behind the nearest bookshelf so stealthily we all jumped at the sound of his voice. His thinning hair was pulled into a straggly ponytail. Unlike the top of his head, the rest of Doug’s body was thickly furred; hence the nickname.
When I nodded yes to the menu question he blinked owlishly at me. “Hello—not one of the twins.”
“Mary,” Lydia prompted.
Doug snapped his fingers. “Right. I knew you weren’t Cam.”
That was me: the other Porter-Malcolm daughter. Old what’s-her-name. I forced a smile as he set down a single sheet of lined paper, edge still ruffled where it had been torn from a spiral notebook. His cursive was surprisingly neat, like that of an elementary school teacher.
“The Wonderland Sampler,” Arden read aloud. “What’s that?”
“A selection of eat me cakes and drink me elixirs in cute little vials.” He held his fingers and thumb a few inches apart, indicating the size. “All the colorings are natural. Fruit concentrates.”
Natural or not, it was clear from Terry’s expression that she had no intention of drinking anything served in a vial, especially not in the subterranean lair of a scruffy middle-aged man.
By the Book Page 12
