My Double Life

Table of Contents

 

 

ALSOBY JANETTE RALLISON

Just One Wish
My Fair Godmother
How to Take the Ex Out of Ex-Boyfriend
Revenge of the Cheerleaders
It’s a Mall World After All
Fame, Glory, and Other Things on My To Do List
Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Free Throws
All’s Fair in Love, War, and High School
Playing the Field

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

A DIVISION OF PENGUIN YOUNG READERS GROUP.

Published by The Penguin Group. Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.). Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England. Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd.). Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd). Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India. Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd). Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa. Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England.

Copyright © 2010 by Janette Rallison. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014. G. P. Putnam’s Sons, Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content. Published simultaneously in Canada.

 

 

 

Text set in Celeste.

 

 

eISBN : 978-1-101-18770-8

 

 

CHAPTER 1

I didn’t want to write this. Really, there’s a lot that’s happened in the last few months that I’d rather forget. But Mom says I need to have an autobiography on hand, that I need to record all the facts, in case someone writes a trashy tell-all book about me. Mom also told me I should describe her as ten pounds thinner, looking like a fashion model, and being an immaculate housekeeper. So here’s the disclaimer: Whatever else you might think about the events in this story, please keep in mind that my mom is gorgeous and our bathrooms were always clean.

Because autobiographies have pictures, I’m supposed to go through my photo album and come up with some representative snapshots that show what I was like before my life got swept away in stardust and celebrity glitter. None of the photos I have are truly representative of me though.

A snapshot couldn’t reveal what it’s like to grow up half white, half Latina in small-town West Virginia, or how missing your father your entire life changes everything. I could put in a picture of me sprawled on my couch with my best friend, Lori, but you wouldn’t catch the crucial details: that everything I’m wearing and the couch itself are secondhand. My brown shoulder-length hair always looks the same, not because I have a no-nonsense style, but because it was the only style my mother knew how to cut. I was too poor to go to a salon.

Since I don’t have a picture, I will describe a scene from my life, a day at the end of February when I asked Trevor Wilson to the Sadie Hawkins dance, the day that set so many other things in motion.

It started with Hector Domingas trailing me around the library. Since I’m bilingual, teachers always assigned me to sit by the Spanish-speaking kids who struggled with English. That way they had someone to explain anything they couldn’t understand. In world history that person was Hector.

I helped Hector a lot. And because the Morgantown High staff might someday read this, I won’t say more about his homework or any part I played in the completion of several five-paragraph essays.

The thing about Hector was that the last couple of days he’d been acting strange. He’d say bizarre things to me and then wouldn’t explain himself. He’d show up outside my classes and watch me walk past him. It was beginning to creep me out, and I wanted to spend as little time with him as possible, but on this day Hector needed help on our latest writing assignment:
Leaders Who Changed the World
. He wanted to do one about Cesar Chavez. Unfortunately, Hector couldn’t find any books on Chavez, and our teacher said we had to use books, not Internet sites.

I fingered the book I’d picked up on Churchill. “Choose someone else,” I told him.
“Solo escoge un libro del estante.”
Just pick a book off the shelf.

“Deben tener Chavez.”
They should have Chavez. He folded his arms over a T-shirt that was too big. Hector never seemed to fill out his clothes. He was shorter than me—and, granted, I’m five foot eight, but with his skinny arms and large brown eyes, he looked like a freshman instead of a senior.

“You can ask the librarian to find a book for you,” I said. I knew he wouldn’t. He hated conjugating enough English verbs to pull off a conversation with a teacher. He scowled at me, then turned and disappeared down one of the non-fiction aisles.

I did a quick check around the library to see where Trevor was. He sat at one of the tables in the middle of the room taking notes. His blond hair stayed perfectly in place, even though he was bent over a book. It was like his hair just knew what to do to make him look good.

My plan had been to sit down at the same table and strike up a conversation. I walked several steps toward him, felt my stomach bang into my ribs, then made a U-turn and hurried over to the table where Lori sat.

She had several books spread out in front of her but shook her head with disappointment as I sat down. She’d watched me head toward Trevor’s table and then bail out.

“Sadie Hawkins is nineteen days away,” she said.

She had reminded me to ask Trevor to the Sadie Hawkins dance every day for the last week. She kept suggesting cute little ways I could do it, like bringing him Chinese food and engineering a fortune cookie with a slip of paper that said
I’d be fortunate if you went to the dance with me. Please say yes.

Personally, I think asking a guy out is hard enough without turning the whole thing into some sort of reality show event. If you make it into a treasure hunt and he decides he doesn’t like the treasure, well, how humiliating is that?

Lori hadn’t asked anyone to the dance yet either. She wanted to double with me but couldn’t decide between three guys who kept calling her. Picking one guy would mean choosing a favorite and thus offending the other two. Lori’s life is so hard.

“I’ll ask him,” I said. “I just need to do it my way. You know, really casually.”

She leaned toward me over her books and papers. “You’re waiting for someone else to ask him so you don’t have to. You’re afraid to talk to him.”

I glanced at Trevor, then quickly glanced away so he didn’t catch me staring. “I am not.”

She took a
Seventeen
magazine from her bag and slid it across to me. “Exhibit one: the flirting quiz.”

I never should have taken that stupid test. Lori wasn’t going to let me forget that I flunked it.

Apparently if you see someone attractive staring at you, you’re supposed to either A) smile back at him playfully or B) send him a wink, not C) assume you have a wardrobe malfunction and check to make sure everything is zipped and buttoned.

And if a guy comes up to you and stands too close—it might mean A) he’s interested in you, instead of C) he’s trying to intimidate you by violating your personal space and you have every right to shove him away.

Luckily,
Seventeen
also wrote a “Rev Up Your Flirting Skills” article to remedy my near-hopeless situation. Lori made me read it. Three times.

Lori took a stealth glance at Trevor. “He’s alone. This is the perfect time to ask him.”

“I don’t even know if Trevor likes me.”

Which was my major problem. Trevor seemed interested in me during physics when he turned around at his desk to talk to me. Half the time he offered up some pointless trivia or made observations on my handwriting. He’d grab the pencil out of my hand and doodle comics on my assignment. Guys don’t do that sort of thing unless they want your attention.

But at lunchtime, I morphed into the invisible woman. He didn’t look at my table. He never spoke to me. Instead, he spent most of his time trying to get attention from Theresa Davidson, reigning popularity queen. He and his friends sat at the table next to hers and he’d do things like flip Cheetos onto her table. Theresa and her friends pretended to be annoyed about this, but they weren’t.

If it were anyone else that Trevor was flirting with, I would have accepted the fact that I had a rival and I would have tried harder. But Theresa and I had a history of bad blood. Back when I was a kid, we lived in an apartment in a rundown section of DC, and I was kind of a fighter. Not a gang member or anything; it’s just that you had to be tough to get left alone. Now that I think about it, I guess I did get in a couple of fights in the beginning of sixth grade, because that’s what convinced Mom that we needed to move back to Morgantown, West Virginia. She wanted a better environment for me. We’ve lived with my grandmother, my
abuela
, ever since.

Before I moved, my friend Armando told me, “I’ve been the new kid lots of times. What you need to do is figure out who the biggest bully is and take him on right away. You take on the bully, and it don’t even matter whether you win or not because everybody knows you got guts and you don’t back down. They’ll respect you, and you’ll fit in.”

When I made my entrance into my new school, I instantly pegged Theresa as the biggest bully. After all, the entire sixth grade seemed to hover around her, waiting to do her bidding. So there was this unfortunate incident where she cut in front of me in the lunch line and I pushed her, causing her to stumble into a cafeteria garbage can.

Apparently that’s not the best way to make friends at your new school. And this is the main reason I never take advice from guys anymore. They just live in different worlds.

Even though I apologized, Theresa and her friends never forgave me. They loved to remind everyone that I lived in a run-down neighborhood, that I walked to school instead of driving my own car, that I didn’t wear designer clothes—there are so many ways to rub in being poor. I retaliated in the only way that wouldn’t get me kicked out of school. I got straight A’s so I could look down at them for being stupid. I probably owe all my high school honor roll achievements to Theresa and the Cliquistas. Oh, and that’s another way I retaliated. I called them the Cliquistas. It’s not my fault the name stuck.