Getting REVENGE on Lauren Wood (17 page)

I popped a cherry tomato from my salad into my mouth. “It was somewhat of a meet in the middle. I had my hand out there, but he took it.”

Bailey squealed. “I knew it! He likes you. He doesn’t strike me as the kind of guy to hold hands with someone by accident.”

I wondered if holding hands with someone by accident was something that came up a lot in Bailey’s world.

“Pretty impressive, Dantes,” Kyla said. “I can tell you, a lot of girls have had their eye on him. You move here and sweep him off his feet in record time. He must have been waiting for the right woman.”

“Maybe. He didn’t call last night and he hasn’t said anything to me today,” I pointed out.

Kyla waved away my concern. “Men. He has to prove he’s independent. It’s something to do with the testosterone they have. Let him come to you. Don’t come across as easy. Play hard to get.”

“Don’t come across as easy? Interesting advice coming from you.” Lauren smirked.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Kyla asked, dropping her fork.

Lauren leaned back. She wasn’t used to her lackeys speaking back to her. “Chill out. It was just a joke.”

“Not funny. Maybe you’re the one who shouldn’t be giving out relationship advice,” Kyla snapped.

All of us turned to look a few tables over, where Justin was sitting with Tiffany. She was an empty-headed sophomore girl who had more breasts than brains, but it was clear Justin had no trouble moving on post breakup.

“I said it was a joke.” Lauren’s face was flushed. “God, I was just sick of the conversation. They had one date and it wasn’t even a real date—they bumped into each other at a movie. Excuse me if I don’t want to spend my entire lunch hearing a blow-by-blow account.”

“It’s okay to be sad about your breakup.” Bailey patted Lauren’s arm. “But even if you’re sad, you should still be happy for your friends.”

Lauren wrenched her arm back. “Fine. I’m thrilled. The date sounds like it was freaking earth-shatteringly wonderful. I hope you have many more.” She got up from the table and stormed out of the cafeteria.

“The prima-donna thing is getting old.” Kyla stabbed a piece of lettuce. “She keeps that shit up and Justin isn’t the only one who isn’t going to want her around.”

I waited a beat, but even Bailey didn’t stick up for Lauren. Neither of them seemed remotely interested in following after her either.

I was still looking at the door where Lauren left when I saw Brenda standing with her tray a few rows over looking for a place. She smiled when she saw me. I spun back around. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to eat with her, but there was no way she could join
this table. Not now. Not when things were going so well. My control on things was too fragile. The quickest way to stop being the center of this new orbit was to admit someone to the system who clearly didn’t belong.

“So tell me again about what you guys talked about at the coffee shop,” Bailey prompted.

Maybe it was because I had told the story at least six times already, but it felt like all the fun was washed out of it. I pushed my lunch away. I was getting sick of salad.

Chapter Thirty

Guilt is a funny thing. You end up undertaking all kinds of things you didn’t picture yourself doing.

Brenda saw a posting about helping in the elementary school and got all excited. Something community service–related she could put on her applications. When she found out her assignment was helping second graders with an art unit, she convinced me to do the project with her. She didn’t mention how I blew her off at lunch, but it was still there between us. Agreeing to do the project with her seemed easier than saying I was sorry. Certainly less complicated.

Brenda, being Brenda, did piles of research on art history and artistic techniques such as perspective and horizon lines. She hadn’t counted on the fact that second graders are more interested in eating crayons than in learning how objects appear smaller when they are far away. There is a reason they make those things nontoxic. A group of second graders sat at our feet. A boy
waved his arm madly. Brenda gave a sigh. He had already asked a few questions, and I could tell they weren’t the kind of questions she had been hoping for.

“So the guy, van Gooey, who chopped off his ear, did he eat it?”

“His name was van Gogh. Wouldn’t you rather hear about his paintings?”

“Did he chop off any other parts of himself?” He made some swipes in the air with his imaginary sword.

“Lots,” I said, drawing out the word. “By the end of his career all that was left was one eye and a thumb.”

“Cool,” he whispered. Brenda shot me a look. The teacher wasn’t paying any attention at all. She was sitting in the back of the room reading
People
. We could have taught a class on sex education and she wouldn’t even have noticed. We could have had a room full of second graders strapping condoms on some bananas and she wouldn’t even have looked up from an article on George Clooney.

“Claire is joking around with you. He didn’t chop off anything else. Maybe somebody else has a question about art?” Brenda looked around the room with a hint of desperation in her eyes.

“If you eat green crayons, will you poop green?” the same boy asked. The class burst into giggles.

Brenda gave up and slumped down on the stool the teacher had provided.

“No. Trust me on this, because I’ve tried. It also doesn’t work if you eat poster paints,” I said.

“Gross,” a little girl who had at least a dozen barrettes in her hair said.

“Very gross,” I agreed.

“Way back then it was a time of artistic turmoil with competing views of what made something art,” Brenda said, still trying to educate tomorrow’s leaders on more than ear chopping and colored poop. The kids all turned to look at her and then back at me for clarity.

“‘Turmoil’ means really screwed up. No one could agree. It’s like how some people think SpongeBob is funny and other people think he’s disgusting.”

“You know what, let’s skip the rest of the art history lesson and go right into doing our own art!” Brenda said, changing gears. She pointed toward their desks, which had been pushed together in little islands around the room. The teacher had covered the desks with large pieces of paper and there were jars of bright poster paints sprinkled around. “We’re going to break into groups and paint pictures. We talked about all kinds of art today—landscapes, still life, portrait, and abstract. You can choose to paint whatever you want. This is what we call artistic freedom.”

“Can I paint people chopping off each other’s ears?” Guess Who yelled out. I was starting to think that kid was going to grow up to be a serial killer. If I lived in his neighborhood, I would keep a close eye out for pets going missing in the area.
Brenda looked at the teacher for some guidance. She had to clear her throat several times before the teacher looked up.

“No, Richard, you may not paint chopped-up people,” the teacher said in a bored voice before she went back to paging through her magazine.

“But then I’m not free,” Richard said, indicating that he grasped the concept of artistic freedom, which I would have guessed was way above the second-grade brain.

“That’s right. You’re not free. You’re in second grade,” the teacher said.

Richard kicked the carpet in frustration but went to sit at his desk. We stayed to help for a while. I would have stayed all afternoon. I like kids. It’s way easier to navigate elementary school than high school. Here I could be totally me. I didn’t have to worry about keeping up the Claire front. Being popular took so much energy. You had to smile at the right people, or risk being labeled a stuck-up bitch, and ignore the wrong people, or be labeled a loser lover. Besides, I like the way poster paints smell. When our time was up, the teacher gave us each a candy bar to thank us for coming down. Brenda tried to tell her that we didn’t mind at all, but I just said thank you. “Never turn down free chocolate” is one of my mottos.

I unpeeled the Kit Kat as we walked down the hall. I broke off one of the bars and handed it over to Brenda.

“Thanks for inviting me. It was fun, and not just because I got out of math,” I said.

“And you can put it on your college applications.”

“Right.”

“You know there’s still time to apply places.”

I nodded absently. I had a bunch of applications piled on my desk at home, but it seemed surreal that I was expected to just figure out where I wanted go, pick a major, and come up with some sort of plan for my life. How was I supposed to know what I wanted to do? How could the adults in my life, who didn’t trust me to choose to do the right thing after midnight, think I was supposed to make this kind of decision?

“I may take a gap year.”

“What would you
do
?” Brenda’s nose wrinkled up in confusion.

“I don’t know. That’s sort of the point of a gap year, isn’t it? To sort out what you want to do, have a gap.”

“You should apply to Boston University. Then if I get into MIT we’ll be in the same city.”

“Yeah, maybe.” I couldn’t imagine anything after this year. Everything had been about Lauren for so long that it was like I couldn’t imagine what would follow. Where my future should be, there was just a blank screen.

“We could get an apartment or something together after a year or two. My folks really want me to live in the dorms for a while though.”

“I don’t think you should count on me to be there for you,” I said.

Brenda looked over at me. “I’m getting that sense.”

“Look, it isn’t that I don’t want to hang out with you more. It’s just that I can’t. There’s all this stuff going on. Stuff I have to sort out.”

“So who hurt you?”

“No one hurt me.”

Brenda gave a disbelieving snort. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but I can still tell. You don’t let anyone get close to you. The thing is, no one can hurt you unless you let them.”

“If you think that, then no one has ever really burned you,” I pointed out.

“I don’t mean to make it sound simple. It’s just that if you hold on to a hurt then you never get over it. It’s like picking at a scab.”

“Let’s stop talking about my scabs, okay?”

“But if you want to move on then you have to let go of what is holding you back.”

“Look, Oprah, I asked you to drop it,” I snapped.

“Friends look out for each other,” Brenda countered.

“I didn’t ask you to look out for me. In fact, I specifically told you there was stuff I didn’t want to talk about, but all you do is push. Stop trying to make me into your friend.” Brenda stopped walking and looked at me, her eyes wide. “What? I thought things only hurt if you let them,” I said.

Brenda’s head snapped back like I had slapped her. I wished I could rewind time and take back that last sentence. If I was Helen I would, but I still had to be Claire. At least a bit longer. Lauren was so close to cracking. Brenda didn’t say anything else, just marched back toward the high school. Her shoulders drew up under ears and she started to do that weird Frankenstein lurch that she had just about given up. I watched her walk away, then kicked the wall.

Chapter Thirty-One

Christopher was leaning against my car after school. He had this way of standing like his limbs were just barely connected, sort of loose.

“Do you like parties?” Christopher asked as I walked up.

The real answer to the question was that I didn’t know. It was one of those things where I hadn’t been invited to many in the past couple of years. However, Claire would have been to a zillion. I put a hand on my hip. “It depends on who’s at the party.”

“Do you want to come to one with me tonight?” Christopher asked.

“Like a date?” I hated how my voice came out all high and screechy.

“That’s what I’d been thinking. I thought maybe we’d give the whole being together outside the movie theater thing a try.”

“I do better in the dark.” As soon as the words came out of my mouth I knew it didn’t come across like I meant.

“Well, that sounds promising.”

“I meant, I had a good time at the movie. You know, dark theater.” I decided I better change topics. “Who else is going to the party?”

“So are you saying you don’t want to go with me to the party unless your friends are there?”

“No, that’s not what I meant.” I didn’t add that while I wanted to go to the party with him, I especially wanted to go if Lauren could see us together. “I’ll go.”

“Well then, it’s a date,” Christopher said with a smile. He took a step forward and then paused. He was going to kiss me. My heart started to beat super fast like I was running a sprint. His hand reached over and cupped the end of my elbow, pulling me just a touch closer. I swallowed.
God, I hope I don’t have Kit Kat caught in my teeth
. That’s all I needed, for him to kiss me and end up finding a snack in there. No one likes secondhand chocolate. If I’d known he was going to kiss me, I would have gone to the bathroom and swished out my mouth first. I closed my eyes and I could feel his breath as he leaned in. His breath smelled like mints.

HONK!

We both jumped back. A car driving by gave another loud honk and someone leaned out the window, yelling at a kid on the school steps.

“Joe! Suck this!” The kid in the passenger seat turned around and pressed his butt cheeks against the window. The pasty butt,
quite hairy I might add, had a way of taking all the romance out of the moment. Christopher apparently felt the same way as he was rubbing his palms on the front of his jeans nervously and showing no signs of coming back in for a kiss.

“Yeah, so …” I wasn’t really sure what to say, so the sentence sort of trailed off.

“Yeah.” Christopher looked at me and then away. “How about I pick you up at your house around six? Julie Baker’s parents are out of town and she’s doing a sort of barbecue thing.”

“Sounds good.”

Christopher gave me a nod and walked off. It was framing up to be a very interesting evening.

Popularity Question: How do you know if a high school party is successful?

1.
There is at least one person throwing up outside in the flower beds.