One Night That Changes Everything (3 page)

“Yeah,” he says. “Eliza …” I hear someone say something to him in the background, and then suddenly his tone changes. “Meet me there. At Cure. In an hour.”

“Tell him no,” Marissa whispers, her brown eyes flashing. “Tell him that you never want to see him again!”

“Ask him if he really turned you in to the dean’s office!” Clarice says. She picks up the letter from the dean’s office and waves it in the air in front of me.

“Are you there?” Cooper asks, all snottylike.

“Yes, I’m here,” I say. “Look, why do you want to meet me at Cure?”

“Don’t ask questions,” he says. “You’ll find out when you get there. And make sure you wear something sexy.”

I pull the phone away from my ear and look at it for a second, sure I’ve misheard him. “
‘Wear something sexy’?
Are you
crazy
?” I ask. “I’m not going.” This doesn’t sound like a “Come to Cure so I can apologize to you and make sure you forgive me for the horrible things I’ve done” kind of request. It sounds like a “Come to Cure so that something horrible can happen that may involve humiliating you further.”

Marissa nods her head and gives me a “You go, girl” look.

“Yes, you are,” Cooper says.

“No, I’m not,” I say.

“Yes, you are,” Cooper says. And then he says something horrible. Something I wouldn’t ever even imagine he would say in a million years. Something that is maybe quite possibly the worst thing he could ever say ever, ever,
ever.
“Because I have your purple notebook.” And then he hangs up.

7:37 p.m.

“What the hell is in the damn thing?” Marissa asks. The three of us have piled into Marissa’s car and are on the Mass Pike traveling at about eighty miles an hour. Usually I’m not a fan of Marissa (or anyone, really) driving that fast, but at this point, speed is the least of my worries. My first being, you know, that Cooper has my notebook, and the second being that I am on my way to Cure, and that I am wearing a ridiculous outfit.

“It’s just … I need it, okay?” I’m rummaging through my purse for my Passion Pink lip gloss. I slide the visor mirror down and smear the gloss on. Just because my life is potentially over doesn’t mean I don’t want to look good. Plus I’m going to see Cooper, and even if he is a total bastard, I might
as well look my best when I see him. Not that I care about Cooper, of course. But there will be other guys there too. Guys that might potentially be my future husband.

Plus, lipstick goes with this outfit, which consists of:

• tight skinny leg jeans

• gray shoes with platform heels and studs on the sides

• a backless silver shirt that plunges down so far in front I’m afraid my boobs are going to fall out

All of these items were left in my sister Kate’s closet when she left for college. Marissa insisted I wear them, since apparently nothing I owned was Cure-appropriate.

“Why are you putting lipstick on?” Clarice pipes up from the backseat. One of the good things about Clarice and Marissa having their little rivalry is that I always get to ride shotgun.

“Because we’re going to a club,” I say. I glance in the backseat. “You’re wearing lipstick,” I point out. Of course, this isn’t really the same thing. Clarice always wears lipstick. She’s mostly always dressed up. I think it’s part of her Southern upbringing. Like right now, for example. She’s wearing a sleeveless long white eyelet shirt over black leggings and delicate silver open-toed sandals. Her long blond hair is curled perfectly, and her makeup is flawless. This is how she showed up at my house this morning. At 9:00 a.m. When most normal people are dead to the world.

“Yeah,” Clarice says. “But I already had my lipstick on. You’re putting yours on now, like you’re getting ready for the club.”

“We are going to a club,” I repeat. “There’s nothing wrong with putting on makeup before we get to a club.”

“It’s because of Cooper, isn’t it?” Clarice asks. She flops back into the seat, her long blond curls bouncing. I’m not sure if it’s my imagination, but she almost seems …
happy
about it. That I might be dressing up for Cooper. Which would kind of make sense. Clarice is an eternal romantic, and she gets very caught up in the idea of people getting back together. Plus she always loved Cooper. I glare at her.

“Whatever,” Marissa says. She signals and changes lanes. “Are you going to tell us what’s in this notebook or what? That was part of the deal, remember?”

It took me a while to convince Marissa that we needed to go to Cure. One, she’s not really supposed to be driving her car into the city. Two, she didn’t understand why I was in such a rush to go off and meet Cooper. Which makes sense, given everything that he’s done to me. The only way I could get her to take me was to promise to tell her what was in the notebook.

“Look,” I say, taking a deep breath. “We are going to Cure, I am going to get the notebook back, and maybe then I will tell you what’s in it.”

“So I’m just supposed to take you down there, without any idea what’s going on?”

“Um, it’s called having faith in your friends, Marissa,” Clarice says from the backseat. She’s opened a bottle of nail polish and is painting her toenails a dark crimson color.

“Thank you, Clarice,” I say.

“Oh, I have faith in my friends, all right,” Marissa says. She pushes her bangs out of her face, and pulls the car onto the off-ramp. “But I also like to know what they’re doing so that I can watch out for them.” She glances in the rearview mirror and tries to catch Clarice’s eye, but she’s too busy with her nail polish. “You’d better not spill that,” she says. “My mom will kill me if my car gets messed up, and then I’ll kill you.”

“You won’t be able to kill me if you’re dead,” Clarice says sweetly. “And besides, I’m not going to spill it. I’m very good with balancing things.” She rolls her eyes like she can’t even fathom the possibility of spilling her nail polish, just as Marissa goes over a pothole, and the bottle almost drops onto the floor.

“Oops!” Clarice says holding it up triumphantly. “Close one.”

When we get to Cure, we breeze right by the bouncer without any sort of ID check, and once we’re inside, I become instantly grateful I took the time to change. Even though it’s mid-November and forty degrees outside, everyone in here is scantily clad. Most of the girls are in tight black pants or short skirts, with low-cut tops. In fact, it seems like the more skin and/or tightness, the better.

Marissa, Clarice, and I huddle in a corner and look around for Cooper.

“Do you see him?” Marissa asks, as we all scan the crowd. Dance music is pumping through the speakers at a ridiculously high volume, but no one’s really on the dance floor yet, and the tables set up around the perimeter of the club are mostly empty. At the bar, two guys are ordering drinks, and the bartender, a short girl with a lip piercing and a tight tank top, is laughing loudly at what they’re saying. I guess it’s too early for things to be really crazy in here.

“No,” I say. “I don’t think he’s here.”

“I’m going to get us some drinks and then we’re going to wait for him,” Clarice announces. She disappears and returns a few minutes later with two cosmopolitans (virgin for her—Clarice doesn’t drink, so she always orders cranberry juice and then calls it a virgin cosmo) and a bottle of water wedged under her arm for Marissa, since she’s driving. This doesn’t seem like the kind of place in which one should order a cosmopolitan, but I can’t really imagine Clarice ordering a rum and coke or a Bud Light or anything like that, and besides, I like cosmopolitans, so I’m not going to complain. We find a table in the middle section of the club, with a good view of the crowd, and sit down with our drinks.

“Now it’s important to be haughty,” Marissa is saying. “Don’t let him think he’s going to get one over on you.” Hmm. That’s great in theory, but I don’t think Marissa really has a
good grasp on what’s in that notebook, a.k.a. all the information you’d possibly need to ruin my life.

I start to feel a little faint thinking about it, and so I take a big sip of my drink. It’s cool and sweet going down, and I instantly feel better. Although I don’t think drinking cosmos is going to be a very good long-term solution because (a) alcohol dehydrates you, which is not a good thing when you’re already feeling light-headed, and (b) it’s going to do me no good to be drunk, since I’m going to need all my wits about me to deal with Cooper.

Marissa pulls her cell phone out and sets it down on the table next to her.

Clarice gets a disapproving look on her face.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Marissa asks.

“Because you’re taking your phone out just so you can wait for Jeremiah to call.”

“So?” Marissa asks. “Jeremiah is a guy I am dating; of course I’m going to wait for his call. There is nothing wrong with wanting to talk to the guy you are dating.”

Clarice takes a dainty sip of her drink and doesn’t say anything. Since Jeremiah and Marissa spend most of their time making out, their relationship goes against everything Clarice believes a true-to-life romance should be. (That’s Clarice’s term, by the way. Not mine. I would never say anything like “true-to-life romance.” Especially since I’m not the best one to be speaking about any kind of romance, true-to-life or not.)

Marissa opens her mouth to say something else, like
maybe she’s going to defend her relationship with Jeremiah, when I see him. Cooper. Sitting over in the corner at one of those big round booths. He’s by himself, wearing a navy blue long-sleeved T-shirt, and he’s sipping what looks like a soda, but if I know Cooper, there’s definitely some rum in that drink. Or maybe even tequila. Actually, that’s not true. Cooper’s not really a big drinker. I mean, he drinks, but he’s not one of those people who’s always falling all over themselves drunk every weekend. But for some reason it’s better if I assume he’s over there with some hard liquor. It makes him seem shadier. Not that he really needs any help in that department.

“There he is,” I say, cutting off Marissa as she’s about to launch into a long spiel involving the reasons Jeremiah is not just using her for sex. My voice sounds all strained, like I’m trying to talk around a mouthful of marbles.

“What?” Clarice asks. She leans in closer and I raise my voice to be heard over the music.

“There. He. Is,” I say. “Don’t look.” But of course the two of them do look, turning around on their swivel chairs until they’re facing him. Cooper looks up and locks eyes with me, and I quickly look away.

“Oh. My. God,” I say to Clarice and Marissa. “Is he … what is he doing, is he coming over here?”

“Um, no,” Clarice says. “He’s just …” she frowns, “… sitting.”

“Is he with anyone else?” I ask. “Do you see Tyler? Or any of the 318s?” The 318s are this secret society at our school, a sort of high school fraternity composed of all the most
popular (and jerkiest, IMO), guys at our school. No one knows exactly why they’re called the 318s, although the rumor is that the original three founding members had had sex with eighteen girls between them, and they apparently thought it would be a real hoot to incorporate that into their name.

Anyway, no one’s supposed to know who their members are, but it’s pretty much common knowledge that Tyler Twill is their president. And once you know that, you can kind of figure out who’s in by who’s hanging out with him. Although of course they’d never admit it. But I happen to know for a fact that Cooper is one of their members. They’re the ones who made him do the totally ridiculous, despicable thing that he did to me a few weeks ago. It was part of his initiation task.

“He seems like he’s alone,” Marissa says.

“Do you see my notebook anywhere?” I ask.

“Um, no,” Marissa says. “I don’t see a notebook anywhere. It could be on the seat next to him though.”

“You think?”

“I don’t know,” Marissa says. “If this is some kind of game, then he definitely wouldn’t bring it with him. Cooper Marriatti’s a lot of things, but he’s not stupid.”

“Or ugly,” Clarice says, sighing. I glare at her, even though she’s, of course, right. Cooper isn’t ugly. He’s really hot. But still. So not the time to bring it up.

“First of all,” I say, starting to feel angry. “He actually
is
kind of that stupid, because anyone who would get involved
with the 318s cannot be that smart. And second of all, he really isn’t even that cute.” Lie, lie, lie. “Did I ever tell you about the scar on his stomach? He’s totally deformed.”

Clarice and Marissa go all quiet and look at each other nervously, because of course I’ve told them about the scar on Cooper’s stomach and of course I’ve told them about how sexy it is.

He got it while he was snowmobiling and he fell off and the snowmobile RAN HIM OVER and Cooper didn’t even go to the hospital until later when they found out he had internal injuries. Of course, it’s totally possible that I just (used to) think the scar was sexy because of what we were doing the first time I saw it. I swallow around the lump in my throat.

“And furthermore,” I say, “I really wish you two would stop looking at each other like that. It’s kind of rude.” I take another sip of my drink. A big sip. But whatever. What is it they call alcohol? Liquid courage? Good. Fine. I’ll take all the courage I can get right now, liquid or otherwise. “I will be right back,” I announce. And then I hop off my chair and march right over to where Cooper is sitting.

“Hey,” Cooper says when he sees me. He doesn’t even look nervous. In fact, he looks totally relaxed, his arms draped across the back of the huge booth he’s sitting in. Doesn’t he know that if you are alone, you’re not supposed to take a big booth that is meant for larger parties? What a jerk. Also, why isn’t he nervous? I could totally freak out on him if I wanted.
I would have a right to freak out on him, in fact, after what he did to me. I could … I don’t know … punch him or scream at him or make a big scene, even.

“Give it back,” I demand and hold my hand out. Maybe he’ll get more nervous if he sees I’m bossing him around, that I am obviously a force to be reckoned with.

“I don’t have it,” Cooper says. He moves over in the booth, then pats the seat next to him and motions for me to sit down. I look over my shoulder to where Clarice and Marissa are sitting and then slide in next to him.