Art Geeks and Prom Queens (21 page)

I roll my eyes. “Mom, Mr. Klein
owns
this restaurant, and several others.”

“Why’d we come here?” she whispers, fake-smiling at the busboy as he sets our water glasses on the table.

“You chose it,” I say, picking up the menu.

“Well, I’m certainly glad you’re not hanging with that Jas character anymore.” She looks around the dining room with complete disdain, even though it’s actually really nice.

“Mom, stop. You don’t know what you’re talking about. He’s not so bad. Now can we please just order?”

“Fine,” she says, picking up her menu. “But if I were you, I’d stick with the salad after that loaf of bread you just ate.”

I don’t respond to that. Just like I rarely respond when Kristi does that to me.

But when our waitress comes to take our order, I make sure I ask for pasta with extra sauce.

After she clears our plates, the waitress comes back with two small bowls of creme brulee that she places in front of us. “Excuse me, we did not order this.” My mom points at the dessert like it’s a big, smelly bowl of dog shit.

“Jas made it,” she says. “He wanted you to try it.”

“Oh, how nice.” She fake-smiles and lifts her spoon like she’s actually going to eat some. But the second the waitress leaves she drops the spoon on the white tablecloth, looks at me, and goes, “You’re not going to eat that, are you?”

“Mom, lay off,” I say, tapping on the caramelized sugar, until it breaks through to the creamy good stuff below.

“That boy is trying to sabotage you,” she whispers.

“You think he poisoned it?” I ask, spooning it into my mouth and swallowing.

“Worse, he’s trying to make you
fat.
” She nods, having totally convinced herself.

“Why would he bother?”

“Trust me,” she says, still nodding, but offering no further evidence.

“Do
you
think I’m fat?” I take another bite.

“No. Not yet.” She raises her eyebrows at me.

“Then leave me alone.”

“What?” she asks, sounding shocked and hurt.

“I mean it. I am so sick of you and Kristi constantly measuring everything I put in my mouth. God, Mom, it’s hard enough dealing with all the pressure I have at school to be perfect all the time. I really don’t need to get the same crap from you.” I push the bowl away, cross my arms, and glare at her.

My mom looks frantically around the restaurant, trying to determine if anyone was privy to my little outburst.

“I’m serious,” I say, louder than she would like. “Just leave me alone.”

“Are things not going well at school?” she whispers, more upset by that than the way I just spoke to her.

I roll my eyes. “Things are great. Apparently Kristi’s out and I’m in. I’m the new ‘It’ girl.”

“Really? You’re more popular than Kristi?” she asks carefully, just in case she misheard.

“She doesn’t even have a date for the Moondance,” I say.

“But it’s just a few weeks away!” Her eyes go wide with shock and awe.

I just shrug and look across the room where Jas is laughing and joking with two girls at the bar. One of them reaches out and touches his arm, her hand lingering against his skin.

Then I look back at my mom sitting across from me, looking really happy and proud.

When we got home from dinner I went straight to my room and crashed. The coke I’d done the night before had totally caught up with me, and all I wanted was to go to bed and just black out on my life for a while. Then at ten o’clock when my cell phone rang, I woke up just long enough to turn it off.

The next morning I got to school pretty late since I slept through my alarm, and when my mom came into my room all frantic, I told her I wasn’t feeling well. Then I figured, if I’m gonna miss first period, then I may as well miss second and third, right? But by lunch, I was wide-awake and feeling much better, so I decided to go.

As my mom drove me to school she kept going on and on about how I might still be sick and that maybe I should stay home and rest until I got better.

“You don’t want to be sick for the dance,” she said.

“Mom, it’s like three weeks away.” I rolled my eyes.

“But still.”

“I’ll see you later.” I slammed the car door and headed for the lunch tables, feeling bad about faking sick, but probably not as bad as I should.

Someone comes up behind me and puts his hands around my eyes. “Guess who?” he says.

Okay, maybe he’s not the smartest guy in school, but if he’d let go of my face I could confirm that he’s still the cutest. “Hey, Tyler.”

“You knew.” He sounds disappointed. “Where’ve you been? I tried your cell but it was off.”

“I slept late, I wasn’t feeling well,” I tell him.

“Are you sick?” he asks, quickly dropping the hand he had just been holding.

“No, just tired.”

“Oh.” He nods, taking my hand again. “Why don’t you come hang with us?” He starts pulling me toward the table where the cool seniors sit.

“Well, my friends are kind of waiting for me,” I say, looking over at Kristi, Kayla, and Jen Jen as they totally gawk at me.

“I want you to meet everyone,” he says, ignoring my protest and wrapping his arm around my waist.

So I go with him. And I spend the entire lunch hanging with the alpha seniors. And every time I look over at my friends, they look away.

After school Tyler doesn’t have practice so he offers me another “driving lesson.” And after navigating the short drive to my house, we end up inside.

Upstairs.

In my bedroom.

We’re on my bed totally making out, and words cannot express how much better it is with Tyler. I mean, JC was like a dumb, needy
little boy.
But Tyler is like a hot, sexy, older
guy.
But I’m still determined to take it slow. Not that it’s easy with him being so cute and all, but I really am trying.

My top is somewhere on the floor, but I’ve got my bra on, so I’m still in control. But then he starts sliding his hands down my jeans. And even though part of me is really tempted, there’s just no way I’m letting that happen. Especially since my mom could walk through the front door at any moment.

So I go, “Tyler, no, okay?” Then I grasp his hand and pull it back up into the “safe zone,” which is anywhere north of my navel.

“Why?” he mumbles, still kissing me.

“My mom’s gonna be home any minute,” I say, grabbing his hand again and pulling it back up again.

He stops kissing me. “Is that really why?”

He’s looking right at me, waiting for an answer, and I don’t know what to say. But then I just close my eyes and tell him the truth. Because being a virgin is nothing to be embarrassed about.
Is it?

“For real?” He seems pretty shocked. Which makes me wonder if JC has circulated some false rumor about me. But then he goes, “I didn’t know there were any left, except for maybe a few of the freshmen.”

I just shrug.

Then he pulls me close and whispers, “I wanna be your first.”

I just lie there, not saying anything. Then finally I go, “Oh, okay.” I mean, I don’t really know what to say, since it’s not like I’m holding auditions or anything.

Then as luck would have it, I hear my mom open the front door and yell, “Rio! Come down and see what Michael and I picked out for the study!”

I look at Tyler and go, “You’re not gonna want to stick around for this, trust me.”

I’m totally dating Tyler now, and I’m telling you, it’s like the best thing that ever happened to me. I know I used to think that being with a junior jock was pretty cool. But that’s only because I had no idea how off-the-charts amazing it is to be with a varsity stud. I mean, Tyler’s, like, not only the hottest guy in school, but he’s also a star athlete, super-wealthy (his dad owns a bunch of luxury car dealerships), and he just got an early-acceptance football scholarship to USC (which my dad points out is
not
an Ivy League school, even though everyone here in Newport Beach—with their USC vanity plates—seems to think it is).

And it’s so cool because now I hang with
all
the seniors, and the girls are starting to be way nicer to me than they were in the beginning. They’re always telling me how lucky I am because Tyler is sooo amazingly hot, and even though he’s hooked up with a lot of girls, apparently I’m the first he ever wanted to be exclusive with. So even though sometimes it feels like we don’t have that much in common, it really doesn’t seem important like it did with JC.

But unfortunately my complete happiness is causing all this tension
with my friends. And Kayla, Jen Jen, and Kristi are getting pretty upset about all the time I spend with the seniors now. Just the other day they actually accused me of putting Tyler first. Which is so not fair since I recently invited them to come to a party with us at some house in Corona del Mar. Not to mention that every now and then I even let them sit with us at lunch. Although, to be honest, most of the time Kristi acts so bitchy toward me, I end up wishing she’d just stayed at her old table.

Look, it’s not my fault the dance is less than two weeks away and she still hasn’t been asked.

Oh, yeah, and I’ve finally found a focus for my art project—Tyler! When he offered to help Michael move a bookcase into the study that day, Michael went as crazy over him as he did over me. Okay, maybe he went a little crazier over Tyler because he kept poking at him under the pretense of “assessing his model potential.” (Which was pretty much just an excuse to grope him.)

He told Tyler he should get into “the industry,” and then Tyler confessed he always wanted to be an actor (which was news to me, I thought he wanted to play pro football). So Michael told him he could set up a shoot with Mario Saldana.

I’m starting to think Michael is Mario’s pimp.

But it turns out that Mario is superbooked for like the next six months. And Tyler was so disappointed that I told him I’d do it. At first he laughed, but then I showed him some of my photos, and he agreed.

So now I’m shooting his portfolio, which I’m also going to use for my art project. And it still fits under the category of Beauty, because he really is beautiful.

Sometimes I can’t believe how lucky I am and how great my life is. I mean, just the other day I was replacing that picture on my night-stand of me, Paige, and Hud with one of Tyler’s headshots. I was just about to crinkle it up and toss it in the bin when something caught my eye. I sat on the edge of my bed and peered at it closely, trying to remember what it felt like to be that smiling girl in the photo. She seemed like such a stranger.

I mean, I may have looked happy then, but that’s only because I didn’t know any better.

So Sunday afternoon we’re in my room and Kayla, Jen Jen, and Kristi are helping me choose an outfit for Tyler’s USC early-acceptance party, which, by the way, has already started.

“I would go with the cords and the shrunken tweed blazer,” Kayla says.

I start to scrunch my nose and make a face, but then I notice she’s wearing cords, so I go, “Well, I kind of need something dressier since it’s the first time I’m going to meet his parents.”

“What about this?” Jen Jen says, holding up a green chiffon handkerchief-hemmed dress.

“Yeah, but I also don’t want to be overdressed and look like I’m trying too hard,” I say, noticing how the discard pile is starting to out-number the maybes.

“Uh, hello? You
are
trying too hard,” Kristi says, dropping her magazine and rolling her eyes.

When I look at her I remind myself:
She’s just jealous. She still doesn’t have a date for the dance. Don’t react!
Which I have to do more and more these days, just to tolerate her.

“You’re gonna meet them for what? Thirty seconds?” She shakes her head. “You act like you’re having a private dinner when the fact is, it’s a
party,
and they’ll be hanging with their friends and Tyler will be hanging with his and you might not even see them.”

“You don’t know that,” I say.

“FYI Rio, I’ve been to my share of Lido Isle wingdings. My dad lives right down the street, you know” She reaches for her purse, pulls out her lip gloss, and applies another layer while I stand there in my robe, glaring at her. “I’m just saying you shouldn’t stress because it’s not gonna be the big formal introduction like you think.” Then she gets up, reaches into my closet, and says, “Trust me, it’s way more important to have your boyfriend think you’re hot than to have his parents think you’re adorable. Especially since by the time we get there they’ll be on their third or fourth drink and they won’t know the difference anyway. Now, this is what you should wear.”