Getting Caught (13 page)

So, tonight’s the night. And I can’t wait for some serious payback. Bryn and I are sitting with our feet on opposite sides of an L-shaped couch, our heads together in the middle, our hair nearly touching. She’s filing her nails, as sitting still has never been her forte. I’m staring up at the textured ceiling, trying to find shapes in the texture, but all I see are Harvard seals, one after another.

I sit back on the couch, all at once feeling the weight of her words. I sigh and rub my forehead. “I’m sorry. I know sometimes I can be a little self-absorbed—”

“A little?”

I look up at her. “Okay, a lot. I know. I’m really sorry, Bryn. I had no idea you’d even applied. But SIXTEEN? I mean, that’s freaking amazing!”

She’s never been good at being angry with me, and right now she just grins. “I know. It’s a whole year, so I’m going to get an apartment in Hollywood. It’ll be just like THE HILLS!”

I smile back at her. I know sometimes I don’t even think of her as her own person. Sometimes I treat her like she’s just my shadow-slash-assistant. And if I’m really being honest, it’s not even sometimes. It’s most of the time.

Right now, I’m really, really happy for her. There are a thousand lame metaphors for spreading your wings running through my head, but I don’t say anything of them. I just reach out and squeeze her hand and repeat “congrats” and “ohmigod” about a thousand times, and we collapse back onto the couches and start decorating Bryn’s imaginary apartment with posters and bright green couches.

We’ve known all along that I was going to Harvard and she was going…well…anywhere else. It’s been this unspoken thing with us, that eventually we’d just split apart and go our separate ways, and that would be that.

And now I know that Bryn can get into fashion and pop culture and she’s going to be where she belongs. Working for a killer magazine in L.A.

Before long, guests start arriving, and we all hang out in Bryn’s living room, watching TV and drinking. There’s no major drama yet, except when Ken Greeley pisses Bryn off by asking me for a lap dance. I guess I don’t know my own strength; my
Grease
butt-shaking has once again aroused his interest. Unfortunately.

An hour after the first guest arrives, I open Bryn’s front door and stare straight at the chest of Dave Ashworth. He’s one of the last to show. Up until that minute, I’d been worried he and Jess bailed on Bryn’s party.

“Come in,” I say, as if this palatial mansion is
my
house. Even though I don’t ask them to, they kick off their shoes in the travertine-tiled entry, with the pile of others. Jess is wearing a corduroy mini and these weird orange clogs that clash with everything else she has on, but once they’re off, she looks almost cute. Her shirt is even semi-normal: a satin black V-neck. But then she’s got on these mesh sleeve things that are all tattooed, and it makes her look like she’s spent thirty hours in a tattoo parlor. And her nails are blood-red.

Dave looks typically…Dave. He’s got on a Willow High baseball tee and wide-legged jeans. His socks have a hole in the toe, and they don’t match. He seems completely unbothered by this. It feels weird to be standing next to both of them at the same time, seeing how different they are and knowing he’s only asked her here because I made him date her and Jess has no clue.

It’s hard not to grin when she glances up at him, all doe-eyed. He’s reeling her in, hook, line and sinker.

Payback’s a bitch.

“Everyone’s in the other room,” I say, and they follow me across the foyer. Bryn’s house has this amazing great-room concept, with a cook’s dream kitchen overlooking a huge living room with dark teak floors and a big screen hanging over a gas fireplace. There’s enough space for four full-sized leather couches in complementary colors, and half the football team is already seated at them.

There’s this weird moment of silence when Jess walks in. The guys seem to look back and forth between the two of us at least a dozen times.

I roll my eyes. “It’s a prank war, guys. We’re not going to start mud-wrestling.”

The team heaves a collective sigh of disappointment and turns back to a sports newscaster on the big screen.

Jess and Dave navigate the living room and end up next to the ping-pong table, where two girls from the cast of
Grease
are failing miserably. They can’t even get the ball across the net, let alone hit it back a second time. They hand off the paddles without a word to Dave and Jess.

Twenty-five minutes later, Jess and Dave are standing in the middle of Bryn’s party, laughing and beating everyone else in couples’ ping-pong. Since pigs already flew and hell already froze over when Jess attended the school musical, I’m sure something else apocalyptic is happening. Because dating Dave has morphed Jess into someone…normal.

Someone who has now smiled more times in ten minutes than in her entire high school existence. For a brief moment, I can actually see the old Jess behind the rebel mask. I’m feeling pretty happy about this, because it’s going to make my prank that much better when Dave dumps her sorry ass at prom.

And I know that it’s time for my next prank, when Jess least expects it. She’s going down. Before she beats the only two people left to play ping-pong: Bryn and me.

I open one of the kitchen cupboards and pull out the CD I’d slid in between two unopened boxes of Cheerios. Bryn’s big screen is equipped with a DVD drive, so I slide the disk in just as Dave slams the final ball over the net and it ricochets into the kitchen.

I don’t need to say anything to get everyone’s attention. The sound of Black Eyed Peas’ “My Humps” is enough to draw the crowd toward the big screen.

And then the slide show starts, and I have to force myself not to smile. On screen, it’s a montage of pictures of Jess—in between each scene I’ve cut out pieces of notes, in her handwriting, that she’d written to me in middle school. So it’s Jess in a Minnie Mouse swimsuit with a mega-wedgie.
Do you think Dave Ashworth likes me?
Jess with a toilet plunger on her head.
Dave is so cute, I just want to kiss him over and over!
Jess eating a banana in a totally suggestive manner.
Dave is a big beautiful hunk of love!
Jess hanging upside down from the school monkey bars, her dress around her red face and her Rainbow Brite underwear in clear view.
I love Dave, I love Dave, I LOVE DAVE 4-EVER! Signed, Mrs. Jessica Ashworth.

I look across the living room. Jess is red-faced. I can see her wheels turning; she’s already running scenarios in her head, trying to find a way to spin it, turn it around on someone else. But I can see she has nothing.

These pictures were in the day before her defenses were up, before she
tried
to look like an outcast. Back when the two of us didn’t know what a social ladder was, happily oblivious in our friendship.

The slideshow ends with the grand finale: freshman year, the only time I’ve seen Jess drunk. She’s sitting on a toilet but her pants are still on and she’s puking on the bathroom floor. Everyone in the room groans and looks away, and then the title slide comes on:
Jess Hill, Dave Ashworth Groupie
.

There’s silence in the room as it ends, and everyone turns to look at her.

For a long, quiet moment, as I stare at her like everyone else, I regret what I’ve just done. Because for the first time, undefeatable Jess looks downright miserable. I wonder for a moment if I’ve broken something, if I’ve gone somewhere I shouldn’t have. I’d gathered all the pictures of our past and cackled to myself as I put them together on my computer, but now that the plan has been executed, it seems unreasonably cruel.

For a minute, I don’t like myself anymore.

And then Dave turns to Jess and says, “Well, at least my groupie is a hot one.”

Everyone in the room stares in shock as he puts one hand on the side of her face, his thumb on her chin, and tips her face up towards his. And then he
kisses her
, like it’s the most natural thing in the world, like there aren’t thirty or forty people staring at him. I know by the way her eyes bug out that this is their first kiss.

Monday, I need to have a serious talk with Dave. Even though I’m sure he’s just trying to convince her their relationship is real, he doesn’t have to go that far. I should have specified.

Chapter Eighteen

Jess

I’m sitting at a table in the Food Court before my Saturday shift at Pet Pantry, eating chicken nuggets and reading
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance,
when Dave collapses into the chair across from me.

“Good book?”

“The best,” I mutter.

My lukewarm reply doesn’t do a thing to deter him. “So, like, tell me. Where did the plunger on the head come in?” He reaches into my container for a McNugget, pops it whole into his mouth, and gives me an expectant look.

“Do not touch my nuggets,” I growl, only half-kidding as I shield them with my hands. I’m so not in the mood to share
anything
with him.

“Mmm, I love your nuggets, baby,” he says with a sly smile. “Seriously. Tell me. You can’t continue the Miss Mysterious routine now that I’ve seen your cartoon underwear.”

“Don’t you have some browsing to do at Radio Shack or Losers R Us or something?” Ever since the party two weeks ago, he’s been hounding me about those pictures and letters. They’re from a time I’d rather not remember, a time I
was
pathetic, a time when I trusted people. It still stings to think Peyton cared so little about our one-time friendship that she could use those things against me like that. I’d sooner have burned them, but at the time, since only Peyton and I knew about them and we were such good friends, I thought I was safe. Big mistake. At least things had worked out, and the joke had been put back on Peyton. Because of the kiss. That kiss, in front of everyone, had been…

I wipe my mouth on my napkin, still feeling the pressure of his lips on mine. I spent two weeks replaying all three seconds of it in my mind, and it’s as fresh as if it had just happened. Though I’d been surprised as hell, I can still feel the gentle tug of his fingers on my chin, pulling my face up to meet his. I can smell his cologne, mingling with the salty-sweet taste of his lips. Afterwards, on Bryn’s front porch, he’d grinned at me and said, “How’s that for coming through for you?” As if the kiss was the only thing he could think of at the time to help pull me out of the prank’s humiliation. As if it was just part of the deal and wasn’t something he’d wanted.

Still, he’d been a man of his word. And the kiss had been
amazing
.

But since then, things fizzled instead of sizzled. Two weeks have passed since the lip-lock, and
nothing
. When he dropped me off at home after the party, he’d walked me to the door, and I expected a replay. After all, he was the one who said, all breathlessly and sexy, “Let’s get out of here,” as if he wanted me,
now
. So I’d wet my lips with my tongue and waited. Instead, he touched my chin and said, “See you, cutie,” like I was his dog or a four-year-old girl. Then, during the concert last night, I thought,
This has to be it.
We were so high from the wild, throbbing beat of the music I knew he’d just let it take him away, that he would have to pull me in his arms as the crowd thrashed around us and lay one on me. But nothing.
Nothing.

“Why are you here?” I ask, not looking up from the book. “I have to be at work in ten minutes.”

“Yeah, I know.” He turns the chair around and straddles it, then cocks his head to one side. With his baseball cap on backwards, he looks younger. “I just wanted to make sure things were okay with us.”

“Why wouldn’t they be?”

“Last night. Before you went inside. You gave me a look.”

I know exactly what look he’s talking about, even though I’m not going to let on. It was the impatient,
put your lips on mine already, you moron!
glare. I’d grown sick of the hot and cold, and I just couldn’t hide it anymore.

I sigh, annoyed. “What look was that?”

He points at my face. “
That
look.”

I shrug innocently. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You do. Stop playing.”

I laugh bitterly. “Oh,
I’m
the one playing?”

Before he can respond, I pile my materials on my tray, throw my book into my Army knapsack, and head off.

As I’m dumping the empty food wrappers in the trash, he comes up beside me. “What? You think I’m playing with you?”

I take a sip of my Coke and toss it in the garbage too. “Yep.” Then I hurry down the steps toward the pet store. I can feel him, close on my heels.

When I’m at the foot of the stairs, he grabs me by the elbow and whirls me around. “I’m not, I’m…” his expression is uncomfortable. “Where did you get that idea?”

I shake my head, and bitter words come spewing out. “Where
didn’t
I get that idea? First you’re hot, then you’re cold. First you want to be with me, then you ignore me. One minute you’re kissing me, then you act like I have the plague. And you think
I’m
playing? Unbelievable.”