Populazzi (20 page)

For her part, Claudia had called and texted pretty much constantly, from the time she woke up to the time she got to school in the morning, trying to convince me not to jeopardize my position on the Ladder. It hadn't worked. Her fallback was to hope Nate's and my schedules would mismatch all week long, giving me time to find and go after a Penultimate while securely ensconced in a DangerZone relationship.

I didn't bother to tell Claudia she was delusional if she thought I could land a new boyfriend—a
Penultimate
boyfriend—in a matter of days. It had happened that way with Nate, sure, but I'd had Archer help with the introduction. This time I was on my own.

I got to school just as lunch was starting ... but I had trouble getting out of the car. I'd never broken up with anyone. I wondered how Nate would react. Though if I was honest with myself, I knew. He would deal with the breakup like he dealt with everything else between us: with pure, unbridled apathy.

It wouldn't exactly be an ego boost.

Eventually I bundled up and trudged outside to seek Nate, Rock, and Guitar: my Holy Trinity of these past weeks. I was in luck; they were all there. It was fascinating watching Nate as I approached. He was still gorgeous. He was still passionate, talented, deep, and brooding ... but there was no full-body frizzle at the sight of him. I was over it.

"Hey," I said when I reached his side.

"Hey."

The last time I'd seen him, I was rushing angrily out of his house. A small part of me wondered if he'd ask about that, or at least look a little concerned when he saw me. He didn't. He glanced up from his guitar, just like always, then scooted over so I could sit next to him. I considered it, but it didn't seem right. I tried standing, but that felt too strident. Instead I sat on a patch of grass. From this angle, I had a far better view of Nate's crotch than his face, and the frosted grass was seeping through both my ratty pea coat and my jeans, leaving me with a cold, wet butt. Not a good call.

"Hey!" said a voice.

I recognized the guy, even though I didn't know him. His name was Eddie Riegert, and he was a Penultimate. He wore jeans and a T-shirt featuring a glasses-wearing, book-reading dinosaur labeled
THE-SAURUS
. He was muscular without being buff and had wavy, reddish-brown hair. He looked cold; he clearly didn't intend to be outside very long.

Nate looked up at Eddie but said nothing. I didn't either—Eddie was looking at Nate, not me.

After several moments, Eddie seemed to realize Nate's stare was all the acknowledgment he was going to get. He laughed. "Cool, okay. Look, I'm having a party at my house Saturday. Punch in your e-mail. I'll send you the stuff."

Eddie held his cell to Nate, but Nate didn't take it. He just looked at it and kept strumming his guitar.

"Dude, if you don't want to come, that's cool, but say it," Eddie said. "Don't leave me hanging. I'm freezing my ass off out here."

Nate took the phone and punched in his information, then handed it back. He still hadn't said a word.

Eddie gave a sarcastic bow. "Thanks."

He started trotting back to the building. I felt bad for him. He was just being nice; he didn't deserve to be ignored.

"Thanks to you, too!" I called after him, and immediately blushed at my own idiocy.
Thanks to you, too?
It sounded either desperately dorky or completely sarcastic and rude, neither of which I'd intended. Nate scrunched his face at me, and Eddie stopped in his tracks to stare, like I was some alien life-form. He trotted back and handed me his cell.

"Here," he said. "Punch in your e-mail, too."

Really?

I did what he asked, then tried to salvage some dignity by giving him my best DangerZone emo-girl stare as I handed back the phone.

Eddie laughed out loud. "Thanks"—he looked down at his screen—"Cara. I'll e-mail you guys."

He darted back to the warmth of the building.

Amazing. I had just been invited to a Populazzi party. A
Populazzi
party! Or at least I was invited to be invited to a Populazzi party.

Wait—was Eddie actually inviting
me,
or was he inviting Nate-and-Cara: DangerZone couple? Because in about two minutes, that couple wouldn't exist.

"Nate..." I began.

The bell rang.

"Gotta take a final." Nate scowled. "I'm here tomorrow. Or you can come study later."

He gave me one of his half smiles, then strode to the building.

"Nate, wait!" I tried to get up and follow him, but my butt had gone completely numb from the cold and wet, and I immediately fell back down. By the time I got up, Nate was inside, and I had to run to make my French exam.

I called Claudia on the way home. "Do you have any idea how close you came to complete Armageddon?" she asked.

I didn't answer. I had a pretty strong feeling she'd tell me soon enough.

"This party is
exactly
the steppingstone you need to make the transition from DangerZone to Penultimate! You can't possibly break up with Nate until it's over!"

"Claude, I can't stay with him just to go to a party."

"A
Populazzi
party."

"Even a Populazzi party." I parked my car at Wegmans and strode across the lot. "Believe me, I want to go. I
really
want to go. I mean, seriously, this is the kind of thing you and I have been talking about since long before the Ladder. But I can't stay with Nate to do it. I don't feel good about myself anymore when I'm with him. And—"

"
CARA?
"

The scream took me by surprise.

Especially since it had come from my mother.

Oh God. OhGodOhGodOhGod.

This was not supposed to happen. My mom does
not
shop at Wegmans on Monday afternoons. She has a very specific shopping schedule she picked up from some self-help organize-your-life website, and she follows it religiously. Sunday night is for clipping coupons, planning the week's menus, and writing up the shopping list. Monday night after dinner is for shopping. By that time in the evening, most people are long since done running errands, and she can get in and out with ease. My mom is very proud of this schedule and its efficacy, and she would never dream of messing it up by doing something wild and crazy like shopping between the hours of four and seven—
prime shopping hours
for people on their way from work or school.

And yet here she was.

I had no idea how I was going to explain the way I looked. None. Every synapse in my brain was tap-dancing, but I was coming up completely blank.

This was so, so bad.

"Hi, Mom," I said with a weak smile.

She smiled back.

Wait—she smiled back?

"Cara, you surprised me! What are you wearing? Is this for your French final?"

I couldn't believe it. It was just like in old cartoons. The sky opened up, the sun shone its light on me, and a choir of angels sang "Hallelujah." My mother—my wonderful, loving, trusting, incredibly perfect mother—had given me a way out. She was getting the best Mother's Day present ever this year.

I released all my tension into a laugh, hoping it didn't sound too maniacal.

"Oral presentation," I said. "French pop culture. There's this whole 'emo' movement going on there. It's here, too, but bigger over there." I gave a sweeping gesture to indicate my raccoon-makeup eyes, my clingy tee and hoodie, my black skirt, my fuchsia zebra-striped leggings, my boots, and my wrist warmers. My abused blanket of a coat was back in the car. "I figured I'd add visual aids."

"I hope you got a good grade, because you look ridiculous. What would someone think if they saw you?"

"That I obviously had some kind of school project?" I offered.

Mom laughed. "Come on, let's go home. You'll want to wash up before Karl sees you." She started pushing her cart, then remembered I'd been headed inside. "Did you need to get something?"

"Just a snack."

"Don't bother. I got all your favorite things." As I accompanied her to her car and helped her load the bags into the trunk, Mom explained the inexplicable. "Shelley got a twofer coupon to P.F. Chang's, so we made a day out of it. Manis and pedis, then lunch. Very decadent. I knew I wouldn't want to come back out later, so I decided to suck it up and shop a little early. It really was nowhere near as bad as I thought it would be."

For me either,
I almost chirped. Somehow I refrained.

I cranked the radio on the ride home, singing and dancing along in a state of sheer euphoria. Claudia didn't answer her phone, but I left a giddy voice mail. I swore Karl should take me to Atlantic City immediately and pass me off as twenty-one, because I was clearly the luckiest human being in the world.

I pulled into the driveway right behind my mom and grabbed two grocery bags to take in. I could've carried thirty—to me they were light as air. We walked into the house laughing about some ridiculous story Shelley had told Mom about the cockatiel Shelley's husband was trying to get to speak, but the moment we stepped over the threshold, Karl boomed from upstairs.

"
Harriet?
"

A cold shower of fear washed over me, and my laughter dried up in my throat.

Karl
never
called my mother Harriet. He
loathed
the name. That's one of the main reasons he jumped at the "Helloooo/ Lo-Lo" thing. He so actively disliked my mother's name that he couldn't say it with any kind of affection whatsoever. If Karl was calling Mom Harriet, things were about to get very ugly.

Mom and I exchanged a worried glance, then she called up as brightly as possible, "Yes?"

"Please tell me when your daughter gets home," he said.

The wave of fear became a tsunami, and I suddenly couldn't breathe.

He'd referred to me as "your daughter." My mom's daughter. Not his. And in that moment I knew exactly what had happened. It was so stupid. I knew it was out there—a time bomb waiting to explode in my face—but I'd been so wrapped up in the drama and excitement of Archer and Nate and the Ladder that I honestly hadn't even thought about it.

Karl had opened the credit card bill.

Mom looked confused. She turned to me. I must have looked as nauseous as I felt, because her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "She's already here," Mom called.

My outfit. My makeup. OhGodNo—Karl could
not
see me like this. I had to wash my face. I had to change. I had to
move.
I staggered toward the bathroom. "I'm just going to—"

"Stay right there," Mom warned.

Karl's footsteps thundered downstairs. I could see the credit card bill in his hand. He stopped halfway down the steps, his piercing eyes taking me in. Then they shifted to my mother.

"How long have you known?" he spat.

"Known what?" Mom said. "Cara told me she got dressed up for an oral presentation as part of her French exam."

Karl walked down the rest of the staircase with me fixed in his glare. "So you lied to your mother. Very nice," he said.

I could never be a criminal. The torture of waiting for Karl's revelation and everything that would come next was unbearable. Karl handed Mom the bill and watched my face as she read it.

"I don't understand..." Mom began.

"Of course you don't," Karl said. "Luckily, I'm smarter than the both of you, so I do. The biggest bill is the hair, which we knew about but which you never told us cost anywhere near this much. I'd expect more responsibility from you, Cara. At least I
used to
expect more responsibility from you."

"Karl, I'm sorry. I—"

He held up a finger. "Did I say I was done? Now, the second highest bill is from a store called Hot Topic. It's not one I frequent, so I used something called 'the Internet' and looked it up. Turns out the store has some very cute clothes. That made me think, 'If Cara bought some very cute clothes—even if she spent a little too much money on them—why wouldn't she show them to her mother and me? After all, she always shows us when she buys something she's excited about.' So I poked around the store's website a little more, and I realized that in addition to some very cute clothes, they also sell some very inappropriate clothes. Could Cara have bought these inappropriate clothes—a very sizable amount of these inappropriate clothes—and hidden the purchase from us?"

My mom's eyes were wide now. "Cara?"

Karl shook his head. "Not yet, Harriet."

He turned back to me. "So I went through your room. And sure enough, tucked away behind other things in your drawers and your closet was a whole other wardrobe of clothing. Clothing not dissimilar to what you're wearing now. Of course, not all of it was put away. Quite a bit of the clothing was balled up in your closet—dirty, one would imagine, from being worn. Now, until this moment,
I
haven't seen you wearing any of this clothing. Harriet, have you?"

"No," my mom said, looking at me with a terrible mix of anger and brutal disappointment.

"Which can only lead me to believe that you've been fooling us, wearing one set of clothes when we've seen you and another when you get somewhere else. Presumably to school. Would that be correct?"

There was no point in saying otherwise. "Yes," I admitted.

Karl smiled, triumphant. Mom looked like I had punched her in the stomach.

"So our whole conversation ... you were lying to me? To my face?" she asked.

I couldn't answer out loud. I just nodded.

"Excellent." Karl beamed at the confession. "So here's what I've done so far: I've confiscated all your clothing and all your makeup."

"You...
what?
"

"When you want to get dressed in the morning, you will ask your mother to pick you out an outfit. If you want makeup, your mother can apply it for you."

"Karl—" Mom said, but Karl shut her up with a glare.

"Since you have proven you can't be trusted with privacy, you'll notice your room no longer has a door," Karl said. "Your bathroom
does
have a door, but that door no longer can lock. Both rooms are subject to spot checks at my discretion, and I reserve the right to confiscate whatever I see fit. For example, the pile of diaries under your bed is now mine, and I look forward to perusing them at my leisure."