Marked (13 page)

I spent the entirety of my fourth period battling
out my mixed emotions, which lingered from third involving the two
of them. The thought that it was too soon for him to be over me and
moving on flooded my mind, but so did the guilt of me being a
hypocrite because I had already moved on, too. In fact, I was worse
than him; I had moved on the very next day. Even knowing this and
repeating it to myself over and over didn’t help. I still felt
angry and hurt thinking of Sam and Darcy together.

Maybe it was just her; maybe I was an even smaller
Darcy Miller fan than I’d initially thought. Or maybe I just knew
that if Sam chose to be with anyone, he could definitely do way
better than
her.

I felt raw and guilty and on an emotional overload
when the final bell of the day rang, releasing us all. My
flip-a-coin mood landed on completely sour when mom called as I was
walking through the parking lot to tell me she needed me to stop by
her shop and help her with something.

Flowers and Things was hardly eleven minutes from
the high school. I could have walked, but who knew what mom wanted
me to do and how long I’d be there.

I opened the green door with tiny ladybugs painted
on it and heard the familiar ding of the bell above it. “Mom?” I
called, inhaling the heavenly flowery scent mingling in the air as
I walked in.

Mom’s shop was small, but cute. She sold loads of
things besides flowers, like any outdoor decoration you could think
of.

“
I’m in the back.”

I moved to step around two stacks of three boxes and
managed to bust my shin, twice, getting to the back door. “What’s
with all the boxes?” I grumbled.

“
That… is what I need your help
with,” mom said. She was slouched over her long craft table with a
hot glue gun in one hand, gazing fixedly at a tall slender vase in
front of her. “Mrs. Grady stopped by this morning to inform me
she’d like me to make something for her. Twenty minutes after she
left the shop, all those boxes arrived. Thankfully I’d agreed to
the job or else she’d have been out of luck because she’d already
paid for them to be delivered here.”

“
What’s in them—what does she want
you to do?” I wondered.

“
Sixty glass vases,” mom said,
blowing a stray strand of blond hair from her forehead and becoming
lost in what she was doing again.

I waited a minute before rephrasing my question.
“What does Mrs. Grady need you to do with sixty glass vases?”

I glanced inside a box and pulled one out to look at
it more closely. The vases were slender cylinders made of frosted
glass with absolutely no curves in them. They were not the type of
vases my mother sold and to be perfectly honest, I thought they
were way too plain looking—especially for Mrs. Grady.

Mom set her glue gun down and glanced sideways at
me. “Do you remember Patricia, Mrs. Grady’s daughter?”

“
Of course, tall and anorexic
looking with the exact same pig nose as her mother.”

Mom smirked at my description. “Well, she’s getting
married at the end of the month and Mrs. Grady hired me to make all
of the flower arrangements.”

I scrunched up my face. “Someone is actually willing
to marry anorexic Ms. Piggy with the attitude from hell?”

“
Looks like, and watch your
language,” mom said, raising an eyebrow at me.

I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to sentence
themselves to a lifetime with that, but then again I was sure the
fact her family was loaded probably helped.

“
So what are you supposed to be
doing with these?” I asked, setting the plain vase on the table in
front of me.

Mom sighed, blowing the stray piece of blond hair
off her forehead again. “That’s where I need your help. I’m
supposed to glue these fall-colored leaves into this design.” She
spun the vase in front of her around to show me. “On two sides to
make them appear
festive
.”

The way she said the word festive lead me to believe
it hadn’t been her descriptive word of choice for the modge-podge
in front of her she was supposed to duplicate fifty-nine more
times.

I raised an eyebrow. “Nice.”

“
I know... from boring to blah and
you haven’t even seen the flowers that go inside.”

It wasn’t that my mother disliked creating bouquets,
baskets, or vases full of flowers based strictly on other’s wants.
It was the simple fact that neither Mrs. Grady, nor her daughter
apparently, had any sense of aesthetically pleasing beauty when it
came to flower arrangements, and I could clearly see how my mother
might find this as sheer torture.

“
Actually there’s a picture of a
completed vase on the counter up front. This one only shows the
detail of the leaves.”

I stood and went to search for the picture in the
front, curious to see what this monstrosity Patricia Grady was
planning to have at her wedding looked like.

When I found it, I realized it was just as gaudy as
I’d imagined. Some rich people had absolutely no taste.

“
Ugh, it’s so ugly,” I murmured,
staring at it while I walked back to where mom sat. As soon as I
plopped my butt back into the chair, the bell above the front door
dinged.

“
Honey, can you take care of that
for me. Please.”

“
Sure.” I sighed.

The person staring at garden gnomes and multicolored
stepping stones was not a person I’d expected to see. Jenna stared
back at me, looking just as shocked as I felt, before her face lit
up with that contagious smile of hers.

“
Hey!” She beamed. “I was hoping to
get a chance to see you again before I left.”

“
You’re leaving?” I asked, thinking
only of Shelby.

“
Oh no, not today. We actually are
leaving on Wednesday.”

“
Oh, cool,” I said, hoping adding
cool
mellowed out the disappointed
oh
that came
before it.

“
Do you work here, too?”

“
Sort of. Actually it’s my mom’s
shop. I’m just here helping her today because she got in a massive
order for some flower arrangements.”

“
That’s nice of you. This place is
amazing! I love all the metal art work.”

I leaned against the counter. “Me, too. I have that
crescent moon on my closet door,” I said, pointing to the
medium-sized, blue crescent moon hanging in the corner.

“
It’s pretty,” she said, appraising
it with her eyes. “I love this one, though.” She reached out and
grabbed a large metal tree with crooked branches and tiny green
metal leaves. Jewels had been sporadically placed throughout the
entire piece and when light reflected off of it, it seemed to
twinkle. “I’ll take it,” she said, setting it on the counter in
front of me.

After ringing up Jenna’s latest purchase, we stood
talking and of course our conversation steered toward Shelby.

“
I know you don’t like her, but you
might feel differently if you knew more about her,” Jenna said in a
calm tone.

I bit the inside of my lip, thinking that I doubted
anything she had to say would make me like Shelby, but also
realizing why Jenna had referred to herself as
the
peacemaker
.

“
Maybe,” I said.

“
Did you know that they’ve known
each other their whole life?” Jenna asked. “I know that doesn’t
make you like her any better, but it’s true.”

“
You’re right, telling me they’ve
been BFFs since birth does not help your case.”

“
I didn’t say BFFs. And I’m only
trying to get you to understand Shelby’s motives a little better,
to explain where her jealousy and anger toward you comes from.
Shelby has loved Jace since forever, and the fact that their
relationship didn’t even make it to the one month marker devastated
her.”

“
One month marker—they weren’t even
together for an entire month?” I asked, shocked. Now I could see
the big picture and exactly the type of crazy Shelby
was.

Jenna shook her head. “Nope, Jace told her he
thought they were better off as friends. Three days later, he came
here.”

“
Wow.” I gaped at Jenna. I didn’t
know how she was doing it, but she was actually making me feel
something for Shelby besides extreme dislike.

Having a crush on one of your guy friends for
forever and then having him admit he felt the same about you, only
to dump you a few weeks later and say he thought you were both
better off as friends, that’s harsh no matter how you looked at it.
No wonder Shelby hadn’t gotten over him yet.

“
He likes you, a lot,” Jenna said.
“He’d probably have heart failure if he knew I talked to you about
this, though.”

I laughed nervously, not sure how I should respond.
Thankfully the phone rang and I didn’t have to.

“
I’d better get going,” Jenna said,
starting toward the door. “I’ll tell Jace you said,
‘hi.’”

“
Thanks.” I smiled. “Flowers and
Things, this is Tessa,” I said, answering the phone.

Mrs. Grady’s nasally voice assaulted my ear.
Apparently sixty vases weren’t going to be enough; she’d decided
they needed four more, larger versions of the hideous flower
arrangements to be center pieces on the bridal table. I was
told—not asked, but told—to relay an important message to my
mother. The four vases would arrive tomorrow morning.

I slumped back down in the chair beside my mother
with a huff. “That was Mrs. Grady on the phone; she’s sending four
more vases tomorrow morning. They’re larger and supposed to sit on
the bridal table.”

“
Did she say how she wants them
decorated?” mom asked.

“
Same as the others.”

“
Okay.” Mom pinched the bridge of
her nose between her index finger and thumb. “I’m going to need
your help a lot this week. Do you know which days you work at the
diner?”

“
I checked the new schedule
yesterday. I only work three nights this week—Tuesday, Friday, and
Saturday.”

“
All right, I’ve got to have these
vases ready by Sunday, so I’ll need you here every day you don’t
work after school.”

“
Sunday
, she only gave you a
week? When is the wedding?” I asked, disbelieving the time
frame.

“
It’s next Saturday, the
twenty-second,” mom answered, while carefully gluing another leaf
into place. “I know it’s a very short time, but Mrs. Grady pays
well and frankly, Tessa, we could use the money right
now.”

Mrs. Grady paid well because she and her husband
were filthy rich. They owned a gigantic, rustic looking house on a
large piece of land near where Jace was staying. It was a mansion,
but they called it their
summer home
. This was where I
presumed their picture-perfect daughter, Patricia, would be getting
married.

“
Who was that girl you were talking
with out front? Is she a friend of Jace’s?” mom asked. She always
said his name like it left a sour taste in her mouth and I hated
it.

“
Jenna,” I answered, while plugging
in a glue gun for myself. “And yes, she is one of Jace’s friends in
town for a few days.”

“
And one of those friends happens
to be his ex-girlfriend, too, right?”

“
You know, eavesdropping is a nasty
habit,” I chided.

She raised her brown eyes to mine. “Not
eavesdropping
, just curious. I got the impression the two of
you haven’t gotten along. What’s been going on?” Her tone seemed
panicked, but I wrote it off as her trying to make small talk with
me while being stressed.

“
That would be Shelby. And yes, you
nailed it; I can’t stand her.”

“
Well, I heard that girl say they
would all be leaving on Wednesday, at least you won’t have to
tolerate her much longer. She sounds mentally unstable.”

I laughed out loud. “That’s exactly what I think of
her.”

* * *

Around seven o’clock we finally closed up shop. We’d
completed fourteen vases, leaving us with fifty more to do, plus
all sixty-four bouquets of flowers to make. I would be spending a
lot of time with my mother this week.

Jace didn’t come to my bedroom window like he had
the night I became grounded, which was an incredible let down
considering it had been a full twenty-four hours since I’d last
seen him. I’d also worn my sexiest pajamas for just in case—a
baby-blue camisole and my newest pair of white pajama bottoms.
Little daggers of anger stabbed away at my insides the entire
night. Not because it had been an entire day since I’d seen him,
but because of whom his company for the day had been.

My sour mood rolled over to the next day and
continued to ripen as the day went on.

I heard in first period from Rachel that Sam and
Darcy were an official couple now, which I was fine with. Today. In
fact, by the time chemistry was over, I actually felt like they
were made for each other, due to the simple fact I cared about as
much for each of them as I did for the gum on the bottom of my shoe
from the parking lot. During fourth period I found out I’d bombed
the test from the day before, making a whopping fifty-nine. Then,
as I was backing out of my parking space after school, some idiot
couldn’t wait two whole seconds for me to back out. Instead, he had
to swerve around me honking his horn like I was the one in the
wrong.