Ditched (13 page)

“He’s my date.” I wiggled, and she pul ed tighter. It was getting hard to breathe. For more than one reason.

“You guys are just friends. What are you getting al upset about?”

“We . . . we’re not just friends.” Wow. That felt weird to say. I mean, it’s not like I said we were boyfriend/girlfriend, but stil . It was a public declaration of wanting to be . . .

more.

Just then the safety pin holding my dress together popped. My dress fel to my waist. Al yson Moore got an eyeful of my boobs tucked in an extra-enhancing bra as they made their public appearance in the girls’ bathroom mirror.

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I yanked my dress back up and Al yson reached out.

“Here, let me help—”

“No! I’l figure it out!”

“Fine.” She dropped the broken safety pin back into her purse and zipped it closed. But not in your I’m-zipping-my-purse-like-a-normal-girl way. She zipped it slowly, so I could hear every click of the zipper.

She had a perfectly good zipper. I had none.

“Good luck tonight with Ian. I hope he thinks of you as more than friends, too.” On the way out the door she turned back. “I’l go tel him your dress can’t be fixed.”

“Don’t—”

But she was already gone. And off to have yet another talk with Ian. My date.

What did she mean she hoped he thinks of me as more than friends? Was she insinuating he didn’t? No, no way. Ian wanted me to be his girlfriend.

I was almost sure of it.

125

7

Funyuns

I DON’T TELL Gilda and Donna the part where I considered tying my dress together with the tampon string, before realizing the darn thing was too short.

There are some parts they don’t need to know.

“Tel me about this reputation of yours,” Donna says.

That part, too.

Gilda eyebal s her. “Let’s not go there.” Donna nonchalantly flips though a celebrity tabloid magazine. “I just think we have a bit of a mystery on our hands. Does Ian want to be her boyfriend or not? And in a juicy celebrity scandal, reputations are things that investigative reporters wil , you know . . . investigate.” 126

“They’re not investigative reporters, Donna.” Gilda gives her an irritated look. “They’re tabloid jerks. And Justina’s reputation has nothing to do with whether Ian loves her or not.”

Loves me or not—it feels weird to think of him possibly being in love with me. Or possibly not.

It also feels weird to have two grown women arguing over my love life. Because maybe there is no argument.

“Hold on.” I put my hand up to stop their analysis.

“Donna’s right. My reputation does play a part in this. I don’t know if it’s been long enough for it to suddenly not be a part of me anymore.”

Maybe that’s why you did what you did, Ian? Lose me before
I hurt you?

Donna stands next to me and puts her hand on my shoulder, like a TV game show host. “Let’s do the math, dol .” I peer up at her. “Math? This early in the morning?” She stuffs her hands in her pockets and walks back and forth the length of the counter. “Reputations can be erased by a simple mathematical formula. Take the number of infractions—so in your case, it’s the number of excessive kissing incidents—and multiply it by 2.5.” Gilda shakes her head and laughs. “Why 2.5?” Donna gives her a chal enging look, radiating superiority, even though the two seem to be equal y having fun with this.

“Every time you do a misdeed you must do the right thing 2.5

more times because people don’t just change their mind about 127

you when you do the right thing twice. It has to be more than just a fluke. And multiplying by 3 is just a pain. So 2.5.” They both stare at me, as if they’re waiting for an answer.

“What? Now? You want me to multiply the number of guys I’ve kissed by 2.5?”

They both nod energetical y.

I mumble under my breath, “Fifty-two weeks in a year . . .

multiplied by two . . . double that . . . minus Christmas vacations and Easter and that bout with bronchitis freshman year . . . add Jimmy DeFranco’s pool party . . . multiply by 2.5 . . . carry the one . . .”

Gilda taps at her watch. “You already told me how many guys you kissed. Why is this taking so long?” I bite at my lip. “I left out a few.”

Donna puts her hand on my shoulder again, back to playing game show host. “And the total number of days until your reputation is erased?”

I quickly carry the one and add. “Two hundred and twenty days.”

“Wow,” Gilda says. “According to Donna’s bril iant equation, Ian erased your reputation from his mind”—she looks up at the ceiling for a moment, then—“three weeks ago!” I quickly add up the days to figure out when that would’ve been. “Oh my god.” I can feel the blood rush out of my face and down to my feet. “Three weeks ago . . . that was the day Ian told me I looked pretty. I thought it was just the lip gloss. . . .”

128

Donna snatches a bag of Funyuns, rips them open, and gives me a satisfied wink. “Told ya.”

We al happily munch on Funyuns because even the name implies things are looking up.

“As long as you didn’t kiss another guy at prom or anything,” Gilda adds. And the two of them laugh.

But I don’t laugh with them. “Um. Does dancing with someone else count?” My voice is strained.

Gilda drops a Funyun and flops her head on the counter.

“Aw, honey.”

“It was an accident!” I say, hoping it isn’t a lie.

Donna raises an eyebrow and inspects my face. “How does one
accidental y
dance with a guy?” It’s clear to her I don’t have an answer, so she steps back and says, “Wait, are you sure
you’re
the one who got ditched?” I readjust my skirt, making the stains and rips very visible.

“Believe me, Ian ditched
me
,” I say.

“So this dancing”—Gilda lifts her face to look over my dress—“is that how you ended up with that rip?” I snatch one more Funyun and pop it in my mouth.

“Nope, that happened over on Lexington Avenue. After the bruise and the tattoo and the thing that happened with the Chihuahua.”

They both look at me like grandparents holding an iPhone . . . total y confused.

“Okay, so I accidental y danced with a guy just before I got this.” I point to a light brown stain. Thigh high.

129

8

Rubbery Chicken Marsala

AT THAT POINT, crying seemed like a ridiculous waste of time, given everything that needed to be done to get my dress back together. But it was the only solution I could come up with.

Just then two girls came into the bathroom. Platform heels. Animal print dresses. Mike’s and Other Mike’s girlfriends—the Ledbetter girls.

I was scrunched in the corner trying to stifle my tears, but they didn’t notice me. They were already mid-conversation.

“So? His
thing
. Is it, you know . . .
big
?”

“Like a zucchini!”

“Real y? Which kind?”

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“What do you mean which kind? The stir-fry kind.” I stayed smal and quiet, not wanting to interrupt their conversation. But also not wanting to hear their conversation.

I had heard rumors that Ledbetter girls like sex. And food. I just didn’t know they meant
together
.

The brunette fluffed up her hair in the mirror. “No, I mean like is it the mutant ginormous overripe kind you see at the state fair? Or is it one of those wimpy Italian zucchinis?” I did not want to know the answer to that question. Mike was my lab partner, for chemistry’s sake! “Hi,” I interrupted.

My voice must have sounded like a talking mouse in the corner.

They both turned to each other.

“Did you hear something?”

“Yeah. Eery. No more weed.”

“Down here,” I said, and they both looked down at me, probably relieved I wasn’t a talking mouse and the start of a bad hal ucination.

The blond one said, “Didn’t you come in here to fix your dress? Like a
while
ago?” Her tone was sharp. “Why are you just sitting on the floor?”

“The girl Ian sent in here was—”

“And dinner is almost over,” the brown-haired one chimed in. “Ian wasn’t too happy about eating alone.” Oh no. Why didn’t I just let Al yson help me? I could’ve been done, safely pinned into my dress and much closer to Ian’s lips if I’d just let her help. I needed to stop worrying 132

about what Al yson thought about Ian.

Except she seemed to have
lots
of thoughts about Ian.

I made an attempt to explain al this to the Ledbetter girls. “But the girl who tried to help me, she . . . she—”

“She what?” The blond girl squinted her eyes. “She smooshed you into a corner?”

“No, she was tel ing me about Ian’s different facial expressions, like she knew him, you know,
real y
knew him, and I assumed that she . . . you know . . .” Their faces were pinched. Like I wasn’t making any sense.

Crap. Me and my assumption problem. It always got in the way. I couldn’t believe I’d left him alone for most of dinner because of my assumption addiction.

The first step was admitting it. So there. I admitted it.

But I needed to get back to Ian and admit it to him—

which meant I was going to have to get help from the Ledbetter girls. Even though I was a little worried they actual y
were
going to smoosh me into the corner.

I decided to go with the gracious approach. “I could real y use some help. If you happened to have a safety pin in your purse, that’d be fantastic, um . . . I’m sorry, I don’t know your names.”

The dark-haired one cocked her head. “I’m Skank. And this is my friend Ho.”

And with that, the rift between Ledbetter and Huntington girls was on the table, open for discussion. I held my dress up as I wobbled and stood to face them. “Listen, I don’t know 133

why the girls at my school say bad things about Ledbetter girls, but—” I was trying to make my point about not being like the other Huntington High girls by adding some dramatic hand gestures but that’s when my dress fel down yet again. “Oh, sweet god, when wil you give me a break?” I whispered straight up at the ceiling.

They studied me careful y as I wriggled like a caterpil ar, trying to get my nasty, stained, zipperless dress to stay up. I think it suddenly dawned on them there was no explanation needed. . . . I was not a typical Huntington girl. It didn’t take an expert to see this dress did not include a designer label.

The dark-haired one dug around in her purse that looked more like an overnight bag. “I have an idea.” She rooted for a long time and eventual y got sidetracked.

“Oh my god, look at this picture of me and Mike up at the lake.”

Her friend nodded. “Hot. Does he shave his chest?” Wow, they were into details. I cleared my throat. “Find anything to fix my dress?”

“Yeah, see, here’s the thing.” She put her purse/overnight luggage on the counter and looked down at me—I was back to scrunching low against the wall. “Mike is always using this particular type of wire to clean out his bong, cuz it’s like the oldest scrappiest piece of glass ever. He should trash it in the dump yard, I swear. But he loves that thing. Thinks it pulls the cleanest smoke.”

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“But it gets al jammed up after a few hits,” her friend added.

“I know, right? Why doesn’t he get handmade glass?” I fake coughed. “My dress?”

“Your dress. Right, so that wire would be the perfect thing to sew your dress back together.”

“Bitchin’ idea.” Her friend high-fived her.

She snatched her purse back and rooted some more.

“Here it is!” She pul ed out some wire and bent off a piece about a foot long. “Let’s get on our Martha skil s!” They spun me around, and the dark-haired girl said, “I’m assuming you don’t mind if we ruin your dress?” I shook my head. “Not at al . It may even look better.” They both worked on punching through the fabric with the wire and lacing it together so that it stayed up. They hummed and giggled while they worked—like members of Snow White’s clan. “Thanks, you guys,” I said. “I don’t even know your names. I mean, your
real
names.”

“Serenity.”

“Bliss.”

I don’t know what I was expecting, but not that. “Cool,” I lied. Were they for real? “Were you . . . were you both
born
with those names?”

“Nah, Mike and Mike cal us by our
essence
. Not our names.”

As freaky as it sounded, it was also rather sweet.

“That’s why we came to your prom tonight, not ours,” 135

Serenity said. “Any guys who cal us by our essence are guys we want to fol ow.” The girls nodded and winked at each other.

“You mean it’s Ledbetter prom tonight, too?” Serenity yanked on my dress to squeeze it tight. “Yep.

But I had to come to this one. Mike was so excited about your prom color. Purple. His favorite shade of lava lamp.”