League of Strays (18 page)

BETWEEN THE ARMY FATIGUES AND THE HOMEMADE OAT
meal and avocado mask, Zoe looked ready to hit the trenches. I snickered.

“Shut up, Charlotte!” she said, tossing a wet washcloth at me. “You’re next.”

Nora called from inside the bathroom. “Hurry up! This stuff is drying out.”

I stepped into the cluttered bathroom and eyed the bowl of gook on the counter. “Yum, what’s for dessert?”

Nora reached into her pink beach bag and brought out a box of hair dye. “Copper Penny. Perfect for your complexion.”

“No way!” I said. When Zoe opened her mouth to laugh, hardened flecks of goop plopped onto the tile floor.

Nora tossed me the box. “Relax, Charlotte. Change never killed anyone.”

“You guys are ganging up on me,” I moped. But secretly
I loved it. I’d done my time alone; having friends was a great improvement. They could dye my hair green if they wanted to.

Zoe took the box from me and flipped it over to inspect the shade chart. “It won’t look quite as bright as the babe on the front.”

I looked in the mirror. My hair was the color of a cardboard box. A little brightening might do me good.

“I’ll give you a haircut,” Zoe said. “I cut my mom’s hair all the time.”

Nora poured a smelly liquid into a bottle of thick cream. She covered the opening with her thumb and shook it like a castanet.

I made a face. “You sure it won’t make my hair fall out?”

“In thirty minutes, you’ll have gorgeous red curls.” She peeled the gloves off the instruction sheet and put them on, then applied the gel to my hair. After she combed it through, she gathered the gooey mess on top of my head, securing it with a clip.

I frowned at my reflection. “Ah, the Marge Simpson look.”

Twenty minutes later, I watched the stream of dye swirl down the drain. When I stepped out of the shower, wavy red strands clung to my cheeks.

Zoe reached for the scissors. “I’m thinking Hollywood-style. Side-swept bangs, that sort of thing.” She nodded toward the
Cosmopolitan
on the back of the toilet. I glanced at the model on the cover.

“Anything looks good on a perfect face attached to a six-foot, hundred-and-twenty-pound body,” I said.

“Jeez, Charlotte, don’t you look in the mirror?” Zoe asked.

“All the time, but usually I regret it.”

Zoe groaned. “Clueless.”

“Why, what’s wrong?” I leaned around Nora to take a peek. No food in my teeth.

“Nothing,” Zoe said. “You’re not half-bad-looking, that’s all.”

“Likewise,” I told her. The look on her face said she didn’t believe me.

“Copper Penny brings out your eyes, Charlotte,” Nora said, blinking. She was having a hard time getting used to her new contact lenses.

Now that I was getting a makeover myself, I took stock of how much Nora had changed recently. Not only were her glasses gone, she’d started wearing makeup. Smoky gray eyeliner, and mascara, too.

I stole a glance at myself in the mirror. Trying to see how you look to the rest of the world is like working too hard on a report; after a while, the parts are an inextricable mess. My eyes were too far apart; my nose was nondescript and veered up at the end; and let’s just say that my lips had landed me the nickname “Mick Jagger” in the seventh grade. I’d watched
America’s Top Model
long enough to know that my features, taken by themselves, were part of the mysterious recipe for beauty. But somehow, they’d been randomly applied to my face, just off-kilter enough to blow the whole deal.

“So what did your mother do when you said you weren’t going to Barrymore?” Nora asked.

I shrugged. “She told me to keep up with my private lessons,
just in case.” I hadn’t told them that I’d blown off the last three. I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone for some reason.

“That’s it?” Nora said. “She didn’t flip out, scream and yell, or throw things?”

I laughed. “No. I mean she was disappointed, but she gets that it’s my choice.”

“Wow. I thought your mother was really uptight. Kade said your parents try to control everything you do.”

Maybe my parents were too involved, but they meant well. I’d been pleasantly surprised by how easily Mom had accepted my decision. She wasn’t happy about it—that much was obvious—but she wasn’t going to keep me on a leash for the rest of my life, either.

Zoe ordered me to sit on the toilet seat. She moved the scissors through my hair, snipping fast enough to make me nervous, then stepped back to assess her work.

Nora whistled. “Oh my God. That’s fantastic!”

Kade’s words echoed through my head.
You know what’s amazing about you, Charlie? You don’t even know your potential.

They shifted to the side so I could see the New Charlotte. My hair hung down, not out, in soft curls. Frizzy ends littered the floor.

“I don’t look like me,” I said.

The first time I’d met Kade, he’d said I was beautiful. Or something like that. I needed my friends to tell me how I really was, I realized. Being alone made a person too nearsighted to see herself clearly.

“You look awesome,” Zoe said.

I squinted into the mirror.

Nora stepped in front of me, blocking my view. “Pay us back. Popcorn. Next to the microwave.”

When I returned with two large bowls, Zoe and Nora were sprawled on the bed, cotton balls wedged between their matching salmon-pink toes.

“Better than going to that insipid prom,” Nora was saying.

Zoe drew her foot to her mouth and blew on her wet nails. “Speak for yourself. Boys drop to their knees, begging me to go with them.”

“We could go to the prom by ourselves,” I said, climbing onto the bed. They curled their toenails away from me.

“I like Kade’s idea,” Nora said. “Think of the money we’ll save. No tickets. No overpriced dresses.”

Zoe wrinkled her nose. “I don’t do dresses.”

“What idea?” I asked, hurt that once again Kade had shared something with Nora first.

“Oh, he’s got something up his sleeve,” Nora said teasingly. “A huge surprise.”

Zoe rolled her eyes at Nora’s mysterious act. “Kade thinks we should skip the prom. The real one, anyway.”

“He wants us to have our own party at this really cool place,” Nora blurted out before Zoe could ruin her grand reveal. “Lowell’s Cemetery.”

“How do you know about Lowell’s?” I asked her.

“It’s his favorite place to hang out. Kade was dying to show me.”

“Without me?”

Her smile vanished, and I realized what I’d said. Nora looked at me as if she’d stepped in something disgusting. “I don’t know. Maybe you were at your
lesson
that day.”

“Think about all the money we’ll save,” Zoe said. “We can eat and drink in style. We can even afford our own graveyard caterers.” She turned to Nora. “What did Kade call it again?”

“The Prom with the Dead,” Nora answered.

“Yeah, that’s good.” Zoe’s eyes hopped from Nora to me, then back again.

Nora tossed a kernel of popcorn into the air. It missed her mouth, ricocheted off the headboard, and bounced into her purse, which lay open on the floor. A piece of paper, folded in thirds, peeked out of her wallet.

“You got a D!” Zoe gasped at the visible mark.

“You sound like I robbed a bank or something,” Nora said.

Zoe fanned her face as if she were feeling faint. “You mean Ms. Valedictorian blew a test?”

“I can’t keep up with hours of homework and have a social life, too. Those two don’t go together, OK?”

I stared at her. “Aren’t you worried what your parents will say?”

“I’m over that. Besides, I heard from Stanford a while ago. Early admission. There’s no point in killing myself any longer.”

“Stanford!” I cried. “I can’t believe you didn’t say anything. That’s major.”

“I accepted, but I haven’t decided yet.”

“Decided?” I said. “What do you mean?”

“There are other things to do besides college.”

“Are you crazy?” Zoe asked.

What could be more important than going to Stanford? Nora had said there were 34,000 applicants last year for 2,400 spaces, and she was thinking of turning them down?

“Some of us can barely afford Community,” Zoe added, resentment brewing under the surface.

“Maybe I want to travel,” Nora said. “Become a professional poker player. Get a black belt in taekwondo. Be a screenwriter. Whatever. Live life.” She stretched out a leg, kicking the purse under the bed. “Kade says you should find your own path and stop trying to be perfect by other people’s standards.”

“Yeah, right. Like he’s an expert on perfection,” Zoe grumbled.

“He seems to know a lot about life,” I said.

“You should know. You’ve been hanging on to his every word,” Nora said.

I looked at her, confused. Why was she angry with me when I was agreeing with her?

Zoe patted both of us on the thigh. “OK, OK, break it up. Who wants to play Truth or Dare? Or better yet, Truth or Truth.”

“Huh?” I said.

“We’re seniors,” Nora said. “Not twelve-year-olds.”

Zoe smirked. “Admit it. Neither of you has done anything worth confessing.”

I swallowed hard. That would have been true a few weeks ago, but now I’d done more.

If you tell, it will change things
, Kade had said.
In a million different ways.

I reached for the DVD. “Want to watch the movie?”

Nora took it from me and chucked it back onto the night-stand. “You go first, Charlotte. I’ll spill if you’ll spill.”

“I’ll make this easy for you both. The answer is nothing and nothing,” Zoe said.

The details of my love life were roiling inside me, on the verge of boiling over. This conversation wasn’t helping.

“I’ll bet my vintage army boots that Charlotte hasn’t even frenched a guy,” Zoe added.

“Not only have I kissed someone before, but it was recently,” I blurted out.

Zoe shrieked with glee, then yanked off her right boot and tossed it at me. I wrinkled my nose like it smelled bad before pitching it to Nora, who made no effort to catch it.

“How long ago is ‘recently’?” she said coolly.

I dug my toe into the shag carpet. “Well, um, I’m kind of seeing someone now.”

Zoe’s smile faded. Behind Nora’s back, she shook her head.

Had Kade told Zoe the news already? If so, I didn’t see any reason why I couldn’t share my personal life with my friends. “It’s Kade,” I announced.

Nora stared at me, stunned.

“Well, we didn’t want to tell anyone,” I explained. “I mean, it’s new to us, too.”

The words “we” and “us” sounded weird. It had been “I” and “me” forever.

“How did it happen?” she asked.

“When Dave Harper was in the hospital, I went to Kade’s
apartment.” I heard defensiveness seep into my voice. “I had to talk to someone about … everything that happened.”

“And one thing led to another,” Nora said.

I felt like a balloon with a slow leak. “Well, I spent the night there.”

“You
slept
with him?”

“No!” I backtracked. “I mean, I literally slept there. We fell asleep. I got home right before my alarm clock went off.”

The conversation was like a game I used to play called Perfection. Thirty seconds to fit the puzzle pieces into their slots before the whole thing popped in your face.

“Just because Kade and I are together doesn’t mean things have to change,” I added, offering a feeble smile.

Nora’s arm shot out and the bowl tumbled across the floor, scattering popcorn everywhere. She darted out of the room.

“Excellent work, Brody,” Zoe said.

“If she was my friend, she’d be happy for me,” I insisted.

“If you weren’t so busy falling all over Kade, you might’ve noticed Nora’s got a thing for him, too.”

“He’s not her type,” I said.

“He pays attention to her. Believe me, that’s her type.”

What, was I supposed to hand over Kade because Nora’s parents could only acknowledge her perfect report cards?

I held back my tears as we searched the house for her. I couldn’t believe we were fighting over a guy like a lame teenage cliché.

“Did Kade tell you about us?” I asked Zoe.

“No. Your bug-eyed, lovesick stare did.”

Crap. I’d jumped the gun, and now I’d breached Kade’s secrecy rule. He was right; telling the truth had messed things up. What if they all voted me out of the League?
You’ll be in the same boat as before, with no friends
… came a reasonable voice in my head. But that old boat had a crack in the bottom and was taking on water. My friends were keeping me afloat.

The backyard screen door slammed shut, rattling on its hinges. I leaped over a dirty litter pan and swung the door open. Nora was slumped on the bottom step, her face buried in her hands.

I moved closer. “I’m sorry … I didn’t mean …”

I looked back to Zoe for help. She stood by the door, plucking dried leaves off a potted plant.

Nora leveled me with an icy stare. “What happens to our group if you and Kade break up?”

I didn’t have an answer. For once in my life I’d been trying to live in the moment—I hadn’t thought about the future. I didn’t even know what I was going to do after graduation, now that I’d decided against Barrymore.

Nora stood up. “Just one thing. You should keep your eyes open. You might not know Kade Harlin as well as you think.” She disappeared into the house.

“What the hell does she mean by that?” I asked.

“She’s jealous,” Zoe said. “She’ll get over it.”

She followed Nora inside. I stayed on the splintered, peeling porch and shivered in the cool night air.