Handcuffs (4 page)

Raye knows this, but she still offers. Raye is kind of a pusher.

“I have a little bit of Christmas money.”

“And you have that check for one hundred dollars in your jewelry box.”

Rachel Tannahill is my best friend. She knows things about me that nobody else knows.

“You keep saying that about the child support, people are going to think you have a bunch of babies running around,” I say to change the subject.

“With a body like this?” Raye flashes white teeth at me. She wears her dark hair short, with all these wild edges that look even wilder because of her big dark eyes. She’s one of the few people on earth who can wear any color of eye shadow, even purple, and still look cool. Raye’s dad left her mom for a younger woman five years ago. Her mom turned around and married a dentist. To show her colossal disdain for her ex-husband, Raye’s mom just has his child support check deposited into a checking account for Rachel Tannahill. I have to say, the loot went a lot further before Raye developed an astronomical car payment. Guess I should chip in some gas money sometime.

We walk into the Gap, my favorite place to buy solid-colored V-neck sweaters. Raye walks straight to a circular rack of shirts and starts flipping through them, but I feel like I’m attached to the planks of the hardwood floor. The first thing I see as I scan the store is Marion Henessy, my ex-neighbor. She’s standing in a fairly long line of day-after Christmas shoppers. It’s funny how I pick her out immediately, even though I’m not looking for her, or anything else, really. Just wasting time. Marion turns and sees us and her mouth scrunches up like she’s tasting something sour.

She’s stocky and not very tall, and her hair is curly. When we were little she used to wear it in these two long pigtails. Now it’s medium length and kind of blah. What my sister would call unstylish.

The customer in front of Marion signs a credit card slip and walks away.

“Can I help you?” the guy behind the counter asks. Raye has abandoned the rack of shirts and is standing beside me now.

“No.” Marion sounds like she’s ready to cry. “No, I’ll come back later.” She gives me a venomous look, holds the bag of stuff that she must’ve been returning close to her chest, and stomps out the door. The salesguy blinks a couple of times and then turns to the next customer.

“Boy, she really hates you.” Raye is as mesmerized by Marion’s clumsy stomping retreat as I am.

“Yeah, she can really hold a grudge.”

“I like this shirt,” Raye drags me over to the rack where she was browsing and picks up a hot-pink T-shirt with long sleeves, very punk chic.

I reach out and touch the sleeve. It’s a nice soft cotton.

“Marion can’t seem to understand that the thing with Paige and her brother has nothing to do with me, or with her, either.” It makes me so mad, the way she treats me like a leper or something.

“I heard they had to put Kyle into a center for depression a few months ago, that he was completely suicidal before they hospitalized him,” Raye says.

“No way. That didn’t happen.”

“How do you know?” Raye puts down the shirt. I pick it up.

“I would know. I would’ve heard.”

“From who, Marion? She won’t speak to you, and she’s not going to put anything bad about Saint Kyle on her blog, that’s for sure.” Marion has this blog that’s a big deal around our school, even though Marion herself is not.

“I just think I would’ve heard.” I hold up the shirt she put down. “You don’t like this?”

“I already have a shirt that same color. You want it?” I hold the hanger up and away from me and look at the shirt, thinking about how much Marion cares for Kyle. They’re like a different species than me and my sister. Paige wouldn’t care if I fell off a building and got a concussion, unless blood splattered on her and messed up her outfit.

“I don’t think I own anything hot pink” is what I say.

“You should get it, that color would look good on you.”

“Yeah?” I look at the price tag. “We really need to go.” I put the shirt back on the rack, remembering that I have no disposable income. None. “We should go down to the food court.” I suggest this but don’t leave the store until Raye glances at one last shirt and then turns and walks out. I’m two steps behind her. I take a deep breath.

“I visited the basement yesterday.” I’ve been putting off telling her this, but all of a sudden I need to talk.

“No!”

“Yeah.”

“I thought he told you not to come over again unless you were willing to . . .” I grab her arm and she laughs. “Just because you don’t want to do it doesn’t mean I can’t say it, Parker!”

“Whatever.” I put my hands into the pockets of my jeans and shuffle my feet around a little.

“So did you?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Are you back together?”

“No.”

“So you didn’t?”

“It was Christmas, Raye.”

“What does that even mean?”

I shake my head at her and we walk along in silence.

The mall is a sad shrine to materialism. The wreaths are crooked, the boughs of holly are falling down, and the happy holidays sign over the entrance is askew. The mallployees were perhaps too overwhelmed on Christmas Eve to do more than ring up the pathetic last-minute shoppers. Now there are lines and lines of people returning crappy gifts. I wonder if the Things Remembered store would like to have a key returned. Piece of crap probably came from Wal-Mart, anyway. Or the hardware store. It’s in my pocket now, jingling around on my vintage Hello Kitty key chain.

“You have that dreamy look on your face.”

“I don’t.”

“You do. You’re thinking about lover boy.”

“I wasn’t. But I am now.” I feel my mouth curving into this goofy grin that feels pretty good.

“God, Parker. You should just marry him and move into his basement lair.”

“Maybe I will.” I smile at her. She knows he makes me crazy. She knows why we broke up. There isn’t any reason to go back over it now. Not here in the middle of the mall between the hordes of preteens flocking to Limited Too and the chunky post-teens flocking to the Great American Cookie Company.

“So how about it, you want to go on a date? There’s this guy I’ve been checking out, and he has a friend.” Raye has access to a much wider pool of boys than the rest of us because her dad lives in this gated community all the way across town. So the boys in her dad’s neighborhood go to a totally different school, and she’s always meeting guys who ask her out. Once I spent the night with her at her dad’s and some guy from down the street turned and looked at me like twice, but he never asked me out, which is good because I would have said no. Probably. It’s obvious that even with a wider assortment of possible dates, I would never get asked out even half as often as Raye. She always looks guys right in the eye and smiles really slowly. She could have a different date every night of the week if she wanted.

“Don’t they all,” I say.

“What?”

“Don’t they all have some single friend?” Meaning guys, and Raye’s guys in particular.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t we both single at the moment?”

I nod, unwilling to proclaim my newly bereaved status aloud, though I did break up with him, sort of, by default.

“And are we not short on funds?”

I can’t help picturing the hot-pink shirt. It might be nice to own something bright like that. I nod.

Raye and I have had this strategy since we were fifteen. That’s when my parents first started letting me out of the house for dates. Seriously, I couldn’t wear mascara until I was a freshman. Paige was drinking vodka and doing it in the back of some college guy’s BMW and I had to sneak eye shadow into the school bathroom and try to apply it really fast while Ms. Rolland yelled for me to hurry up so the other girls could get in and pee.

So now that I can officially wear makeup and go out with boys, the strategy is as follows: One weekend night is reserved for us, Parker and Raye, to hang out, watch a movie, eat mall pizza, whatever. While we were dating someone, the other weekend night is for boys. Movies, popcorn, and big soft mall pretzels on the guys’ dollars. What could be better? Especially since I don’t have an abundance of dollars anymore.

See, this date is kind of a friendship necessity thing. Raye went through a really bad breakup at the beginning of the school year. I mean, as much as I’ve second-guessed my decision to walk away from the basement, and despite the three and a half times I’ve slunk back down there, I did keep some dignity. Raye got totally dumped and cheated on. The girl her slimeball boyfriend Ian cheated on her with wasn’t even the girl he dumped her for. It was ugly, really ugly. So I’ll probably go along on the planned excursion to meet this guy she thinks she might want to go out with. I’ll probably go for Raye, with no other reason, but what happens next makes it definite.

Raye grabs my arm and says, “Let’s go into the sunglasses place.”

“What?” We never go into the Sunglass Hut. Raye is a pretty bad liar sometimes. I look into the sunglasses store, because I’m the kind of girl who has to look when someone says not to look, and there reflected back at me is my ex-boyfriend walking beside Kandace Freemont. I guess Raye was trying to get me to dive in there and avoid them or something.

“Hi, Rachel,” Kandace says. She doesn’t say anything to me, just stands back kind of behind him. He and Raye circle each other warily, two cowpokes with itchy trigger fingers. Raye is always suspicious around him. I guess I would be suspicious too if I saw my best friend reduced to quivering jelly by some guy. And now, since the breakup, I suspect it’s going to get worse. He’s bringing Kandace Freemont to the mall. He’s crossed some kind of invisible line now, and Raye is unlikely to forgive him, ever. She’s like that sometimes.

“Hey, Kandace, what’re you guys doing here?” Raye sounds bored but she looks concerned. Am I that big of a social retard that she thinks I’ll foam at the mouth or something?

“We’re shopping for hats,” he says. Raye gives him a dirty look. She doesn’t like it when she asks someone else a question and he answers. Though in the past it was his answering for me that she objected to.

“I think the Santa at Sears got drunk and left his hat in the Dumpster. If you hurry you can get there before they pick up the trash,” I say.

He flashes me a smile so sudden and sincere that it makes my heart stop. Kandace and Raye don’t know what the hell we’re talking about, and that makes my heart beat faster. Stop. Start. Stop. Start. God, he keeps me so off balance.

“You must really like that new sweater, huh?” Oh my God. I’m wearing the same sweater from last night. This morning it just seemed like the only thing in my closet with any appeal. Because it’s new and pretty is what I told myself. Because he said I looked good when I was wearing this sweater and because it was pressed next to him for nearly ten minutes is what I know to be the truth. Again they are looking at us like we are speaking a foreign language. And then he does something unprecedented.

“Parker wore that sweater last night,” he tells Kandace. She glares at me. She has been working so hard to ignore my existence, and now he has forced her to acknowledge me. He’s such a social sadist.

“Look, I really need a cappuccino and a cheesecake brownie.” Raye grabs my arm to pull me away.

“Prescott,” he calls after me, “I liked your e-mail. I know you aren’t a dude.” I can feel my face burning. Raye is pulling me away. I don’t look back because I don’t want him to see me blushing. Raye doesn’t ask about the e-mail, but I see her frown, her eyes turning down at the corners.

“Cappuccino,” Raye says soothingly. “Cheesecake brownie. You can even have one of those awful cookies with M&M’s on top that you love so much.” She doesn’t say anything about the basement or ask me about the e-mail. She went through a breakup. She knows how crazy it can all get. She won’t even ask me about it later. I hope.

“Do you think Cute Cookie Guy will be there?” My voice sounds fine. My voice sounds normal. Doesn’t it?

“Cute Cookie Guy will totally be there.”

“Did you notice?”

“That he was wearing that ratty corduroy jacket you despise?”

“No, Raye.”

“That Kandace Freemont wears bright red lipstick to the mall?”

“No, Raye.”

“That Sunglass Hut had Ray-Bans on sale so you can play cops and robbers in your trailer-park bedroom?”

“No.” Loud sigh. “Raye.”

“What, Park?”

“He was explaining things to her. He never explains himself.”

“That’s because he’s an absolute tool.”

“No, Raye. It’s because he can’t stand idiots. He doesn’t like to have to slow down for people.”

“Because he’s an absolute tool. And Parker, I don’t think he’s hanging out with Kandace Freemont for her intelligence.” I push my hair out of my face and feel myself sagging, deflated. He was with me last night. He kissed me. He got my e-mail and read those things that I said I wanted to do with him. And yet he’s here today with Kandace. There is no way to deal with this unless I admit that I am in serious pain, the kind of emotional breakdown that you can’t hide, not even if you’re an ice princess.