Daddy's Little Angel (7 page)

I glanced at the class out of the corner of my eye. Everybody was watching me. I needed to make them—and Cole—understand. “I’ve seen a ton of bees buzzing around here lately. It’s probably the forsythia bush outside the window. I have one just like it at my house, and there’s always a whole swarm of bees.” I couldn’t keep the words from tumbling out of my mouth. “There might even be a nest. I’m really glad no one got stung,” I continued to babble. Nothing could stop my mouth. I just kept spewing bee facts. “Their bites are awful. I got one a couple of years ago, and—”

“Okay,” Mrs. Laurel said from the front of the class, unknowingly coming to my rescue. “Let’s focus up here, everyone.”

The scene played over and over in my head until the bell rang. I felt so stupid. I had never been more thankful for the end of class in my life. “Sorry,” I said to the back of Cole’s head, and booked toward the door before he had a chance to respond. I bumped into two of my classmates in the process, but I didn’t care. I had to get out.

My forehead was practically glued to my locker by the time Gabi caught up to me.

“What happened?”

I didn’t turn around. “Just the devil at work, making me mutilate the cutest boy in the whole school.”

She leaned in close. “It was your dad?”

I let out a sigh. “Yep.”

“That stinks,” she said.

“Tell me about it.” I knew Lou wanted to convince me to let him into my life, but that was so not the way. It was like blackmail, and I wasn’t going to reward that.

Gabi put her hand on my back. “On the upside, you finally got to touch Cole’s hair.”

That was a slight consolation prize, but not enough to undo the image of me lunging forward at Cole. “What about you? What did Mrs. Torin want?”

“She offered me the assistant director position for
Charlie Brown.
” Gabi rested her back against the locker. “I’m going to do it. I never thought about directing before, but it sounds fun. I’ll get to help make decisions about the show and be second in command after Mrs. Torin.”

“Congratulations, that’s great,” I said. But I worried she was just putting on a brave face. I wasn’t the only one getting stuck with a consolation prize today.

With my head down, I rushed over to my usual lunch table in the back, right-hand corner of the cafeteria and dropped down my tray. Gabi was already there. She had a seat with her back to the room. I sat down next to her.

Gabi scrunched up her nose. “Why are you sitting on this side?”

I couldn’t tell her the truth. That I didn’t want Courtney to see me and think I was snubbing her lunch invitation. Gabi just wouldn’t understand. She didn’t want to be a part of Courtney’s circle the way I did. “Everyone’s been watching me because of the whole Mara’s Daughters thing,” I said. “And after that whole homeroom fiasco, I’m paranoid about doing something else stupid.” It wasn’t a complete lie. I was nervous about humiliating myself again.

My answer must have made sense to Gabi because she got up and moved to the other side of the table to face me. But a couple of times during our conversation, I couldn’t help but glance backward toward Courtney’s table.

“What are you looking at?” Gabi asked the fifth time I turned around.

“Nothing,” I said, picking at my fish sticks.

Gabi dropped her grilled chicken sandwich back onto her lunch bag, crossed her arms, and stared at me. “If you want to sit with her, you should just go.”

“I don’t. I want to sit with you. Really.”

“Right.” She started eating her sandwich again, but I knew she was annoyed. She barely spoke for the next ten minutes, which was so not her. Gabi giving the silent treatment was the equivalent of a hyper baseball fan passing up World Series tickets so she could get a good night of sleep instead. It just wasn’t natural. I tried to get her to talk, but she only gave me one- or two-word answers. I didn’t know what to do.

Gabi picked up her organic apple juice box, but froze just before it hit her lips. The only part of her that was moving was her eyes. They were following something. Or as it turned out—someone—three someones. Courtney, Jaydin, and Lana were now standing at the end of our table.

“Thought you were going to sit with us today,” Courtney said to me. Her hands were on her hips and she did not look pleased.

“I wasn’t sure where you were sitting,” I said, giving her a small smile. She had to know that wasn’t true.
Everyone
knew where she ate lunch. At the table right at the center of the room, and no one was allowed to sit there without her permission.

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to show you. Come on.” Courtney took a few steps away and looked back at me. “Are you coming or not? I’m not going to ask you again.”

I really wanted to go. But I looked at Gabi who was pretending to study the ingredients label on her juice, and I knew I couldn’t. “Gabi too, right?” I was hoping for a miracle.

Instead I got a snort. “What do you think?” Lana asked.

My three seconds of membership to the middle school elite was about to come to an end. “I, it’s just,
umm
,” I stuttered. “There’s—”

Gabi stopped me. “It’s okay. I have to go anyway. I’m supposed to meet with Mrs. Torin about the show.”

“Why would
you
need to know anything about it?
You
didn’t get in,” Courtney gloated.

“Because I’m going to be the assistant director,” Gabi said, her face looking stony. She stood up and collected her trash. “The person who tells
you
what to do.”

“Never gonna happen,” Courtney snapped back.

Gabi just walked away. My heart was beating fast. I felt awful.

“Let’s go,” Courtney said.

I nodded and followed her to the table, but the whole way I watched Gabi head for the exit. A good friend would have seen that she only left because she was afraid I would ditch her. A good friend would have run after her and stopped her. A good friend would have told Courtney to get lost. But I wasn’t a good friend. I was the devil’s daughter.

Courtney made everyone push over so I could sit right next to her. Lana did not look happy about losing her spot, but she didn’t say a word.

I took my seat and scanned the table. Everyone there was completely A-list. In addition to Courtney and Lana, Jaydin was there; Brooke Baum, who once modeled for the Macy’s catalog and was even in a Colgate commercial; Allison Cheng, star of the school’s volleyball team and head cheerleader; and Bronwyn Jinkins, who got the part of Sally in
You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown
. And that was just the girls. The guys were just as impressive. I was completely intimidated. Even though it was Courtney herself who’d invited me to the table, I still felt like I was being judged. Like I was in the elimination round on a reality TV show, and these were the people who could vote me off.

As if all that wasn’t enough pressure, Cole came over and joined us. “Hey, everyone,” he said, then gave me a half-nod and sat down right next to me.

I should have been overjoyed but it was all so nerve-racking. I tried to stay engrossed as Courtney chatted away about how
Charlie Brown
was going to launch her acting career. After all, she was the head judge and the one I needed to impress—but it was difficult to concentrate with Cole sitting so close by, talking to Reid. Especially since he sounded as if he was upset with someone.

“Can you believe what she did? I hate her,” I heard him say.

Who was
her
? Was he talking about me? It suddenly occurred to me that maybe he was really angry about the hair pulling incident.

“Dude, relax. It’s not that bad,” Reid told him.

But then Cole came back with, “It’s pretty bad, all right,” and I felt I had to chime in.

“I’m so sorry, Cole,” I told him. My voice cracked a little, but I don’t think he noticed.

“Thanks.” He shook his head. “But my whole year is over.”

My God. What had I done that was so unforgivable? I knew it was bad, but enough to destroy his whole eighth-grade experience? At this rate it was only a matter of seconds before he had me banished from the table and his life. “I feel terrible,” I added.

“Thanks.” He gripped the back of his head. “Did you hear what she said?”

Did he just say
she?
She
was good.
She
meant it wasn’t me he was talking about this whole time. I shook my head no.

“Right after homeroom, Mrs. Laurel reamed me out for never handing in my homework last week. In front of everyone,” Cole began. “She said if I keep it up, she’s going to have the coach pull me from the basketball team.”

Such good news!
Well, not that Cole was in danger of getting kicked off of the team, but that it was our science teacher, Mrs. Laurel, whom he hated and not me.

My relief must have messed with my brain because the next thing I knew I was offering to help him with his science homework. “I’m pretty good at science,” I told him. I couldn’t believe myself. Partially because I’d just offered to help
Cole Daniels
and partially because I stink at science.

“Enough already,” Courtney whined. “This is
my
day. We’re supposed to be celebrating
my
part.” Then she turned her whole body my direction. “Besides, didn’t you get enough attention when you practically tore Cole’s head off in class this morning? I heard it was crazy embarrassing.” She bit off part of a french fry for emphasis.

Someone needed to kill me right then.

“I was just trying to save him from a bee,” I tried to explain.

“Whatever. Still embarrassing.”

The expression on my face must have shown just how mortified I was because Courtney burst out laughing.

“Hey, do you protect everyone, or just Cole?” Reid said. “I wouldn’t mind a personal body guard. Especially one who is on a first-name basis with Mara’s Daughters.”

“Everyone,” I said quickly. “If anyone sees a bee, just give me a holler. I’m here to help. Cole was just my first.” Hopefully that little bit of acting was enough to throw people off the scent of my crush.

The top of Cole’s cheeks turned a light shade of red, and he quickly picked up his juice and took a gulp. He was blushing. I allowed myself to pretend it was because he had a crush on me, before I faced the fact that he was probably just embarrassed. “No way,” Courtney shrieked just in time to break up the one-way staring contest I was having with Cole before I blew my own cover.

Courtney was reacting to a huge ketchup blob on her sweater—right on her left boob. She turned away so she wasn’t facing the boys and furiously rubbed a napkin over the spot.

“You need water,” Jaydin said, and squirted some from her bottle onto the stain.

“Cut it out. You’re making it worse. Just great,” Courtney hissed. “Like anyone needs another reason to stare at my chest.”

I wished I had her problem. The big chest, not the ketchup stain. “Do you want me to get you a shirt from your locker?” I asked.

“I don’t have an extra one,” she moaned.

“I might. I can go look.”

She gave me a once-over. “Please. Like anything of yours would fit over my chest.”

Ouch. She didn’t need to rub it in. But I didn’t let that dissuade me from helping her. “I have an idea. Take your ponytail down.”

“Why?”

“Simple,” I said as she let her hair fall loosely around her. “It’s long enough. It can cover the stain.”

Courtney cocked her head to one side and scrutinized me. “It looks like you may come in handy after all. Congratulations, Angel. You pass. You get to sit with us from now on.”

Thank goodness! I did it! I made it to the next round on
Survivor: Goode Middle School
. I was golden. Better than golden. I was platinum. This ranked even higher than going on stage with Mara’s Daughters.

It was amazing, and yet it was incredibly awful, too. What on earth was I supposed to do about Gabi?

From the moment I left school that day, I couldn’t stop thinking about Gabi. What kind of person ditched their best friend in the cafeteria and wanted to do it again? I was a horrible human being. If that’s what I even was. Maybe my devil half had taken control of my mind. The old me would never have considered leaving Gabi to fend for herself at lunch.

At home, I found my mother standing over the stove stirring white rose petals, sugar, and honey into a pot of boiling liquid. I recognized this one, all right. She was putting the final touches on her “Sweetness Serum.” She’s made me have a shot of it once a week, ever since I was two.

“Love and kindness fill this brew. Make the drinker a good person in everything they do,” she chanted, and the more I watched, the more anger (or maybe it was the bad blood I inherited) bubbled up inside of me. I wasn’t good. I never was. And this was her fault. She helped make me this way. How could
my mother
—a woman who was always searching for a way to ward off evil and find eternal bliss—wind up with the devil for a husband and me for a kid?

“How could you marry the devil?” I finally shouted.

Mom dropped her spoon in the pot. “Angel, you startled me,” she said, fishing out the utensil with a ladle. Her back was still toward me.

“Well?”

Mom lowered the stove to a simmer and took a few of her meditation breaths.
“Ohm. Ohm. Ohmmmm.”

“Mom,” I interrupted.

“Just a few more. Please,” she said. “You too.”

I joined in, if only because I didn’t want my bad side to take over again. But I couldn’t focus. I didn’t want to breathe. Well, not that kind of breathing, anyway. So, I let her take two more breaths, and then I demanded an answer.

“I knew you’d ask,” she said as she moved to sit on Buddha. I took the seat next to her. “I thought I’d know what to say,” she started, “but I don’t.” There was a moment of silence, then it all started pouring out.