Sarah Dessen (5 page)

“Now.”

He sighed, then sat back on the bed, letting his head bonk against the wall. “Okay,” he said, as if he were agreeing to a root canal, “go ahead.”

I pulled my knees up on the bed, then straightened my tank top. “Running in for something” had quickly morphed into “making a few phone calls” and then he was all over me, pushing me back against the pillows before I could even begin my slow easing into the dumpage. But now, I had his attention.

“The thing is,” I began, “things are really starting to change for me now.”

This was my lead-up. I’d learned, over the years, that there was a range of techniques involved in breaking up with someone. You had your types: some guys got all indignant and pissed, some whined and cried, some acted indifferent and cold, as if you couldn’t leave fast enough. I had Jonathan pegged as the last, but I couldn’t be completely sure.

“So anyway,” I continued, “I’ve just been thinking that—”

And then the phone rang, an electronic shriek, and I lost my momentum again. Jonathan grabbed it. “Hello?” Then there was a bit off umm-hmming, a couple of yeahs, and he stood up, walking across the room and into his bathroom, still mumbling.

I pulled my fingers through my hair, hating that my timing seemed to be off all night long. Still listening to him talking, I closed my eyes and stretched my arms over my head, then curled my fingers down the side of the mattress closest to the wall. And then I felt something.

When Jonathan finally hung up, checked himself in the mirror, and walked back into the bedroom, I was sitting there, cross-legged, with a pair of red satin bikini panties spread out on the bed in front of me. (I’d retrieved them using a Kleenex: like I’d
touch
them.) He came strolling in, all confident, and, seeing them, came to a dead, lurching stop.

“Ummpthz,” he said, or something like that, as he sucked in a breath, surprised, then quickly steadied himself. “Hey, um, what—”

“What the hell,” I said, my voice level, “are these?”

“They aren’t yours?”

I looked up at the ceiling, shaking my head. Like I’d wear cheap red, polyester panties. I mean, I had standards. Or did I? Look who I’d wasted the last six months on.

“How long,” I said.

“What?”

“How long have you been sleeping with someone else?”

“It wasn’t—”

“How long,” I repeated, biting off the words.

“I just don’t—”

“How long.”

He swallowed, and for a second it was the only sound in the room. Then he said, “Just a couple of weeks.”

I sat back, pressing my fingers to my temples. God, this was just great. Now not only was I cheated on, but other people had to know it, which made me a victim, which I hated most of all. Poor, poor Remy. I wanted to kill him.

“You’re an asshole,” I said. He was all flushed, quaky, and I realized that he might have even been a whiner or weeper, had things gone differently. Amazing. You just never knew.

“Remy. Let me—” He reached forward, touching my arm, but for once, finally, I was able to do what I wanted and yank it back as if he’d burned me.

“Don’t touch me,” I snapped. I grabbed my jacket, knotting it around my waist, and headed for the door, feeling him stumbling behind me. I slammed door after door as I moved through the house, finally hitting the front walk with such momentum I was at the mailbox before I even realized it. I could feel him watching me from the front steps as I walked away, but he didn’t call out or say anything. Not that I wanted him to, or would have reconsidered. But most guys would have at least had the decency to try.

So now I was walking through this neighborhood, full-out pissed, with no car, in the middle of a Friday night. My first Friday night as a grown-up, out of high school, in the Real World. Welcome to it.

“Not now.” She took my arm, pulling me through the crowd and back outside, where I saw Jess was in her car, the driver’s door open. “We have a situation.”

When I walked up to the car, I didn’t even see Lissa at first. She was balled up in the backseat, clutching a wad of those brown school-restaurant-public-bathroom kind of paper towels. Her face was red and tear streaked, and she was sobbing.

“What the hell happened?” I asked, yanking open the back door and sliding in beside her.

“Adam b-b-broke up with m-m-me,” she said, her voice gulping in air. “He just
d-d-dumped
me.”

“Oh, my God,” I said as Chloe climbed in the front seat, slamming the door behind her. Jess, already turned around facing us, looked at me and shook her head.

“When?”

Lissa took in another breath, then burst into tears again. “I can’t,” she mumbled, wiping her face with a paper towel. “I can’t e-e-ven—”

“Tonight, when she picked him up from work,” Chloe said to me. “She took him back to his house so he could take a shower and he did it there. No warning. Nothing.”

“I had to walk p-p-past his
p-p-parents,
” Lissa added, sniffling. “And they knew. They looked at me like I was a kicked d-d-dog.”

“What did he say?” I asked her.

“He told her,” Chloe said, clearly in her spokesperson role, “that he needed his freedom because it was summer and high school was over and he didn’t want either of them to miss any opportunities in college. He wanted to make sure that they—”

“M-m-made the most of our lives,” Lissa finished, wiping her eyes.

“Jerk,” Jess grumbled. “You’re better off.”

“I l-l-love him!” Lissa wailed, and I reached over, sliding my arm around her.

“It’s okay,” I said.

“And I had no idea,” she said, taking in a deep breath, which shuddered out, all bumpy, as she tossed aside the paper towel she was holding, letting it fall to the floor. “How could I not even have known?”

“Lissa, you’ll be okay,” Chloe told her, her voice soft.

“It’s like I’m Jonathan,” she sobbed, leaning into me. “We were just living our lives, picking up the dry cleaning—”

“What?” Jess said.

“. . . unaware,” Lissa finished, “that t-t-tonight we’d be
d-d-dumped.
”

“Speaking of,” Chloe said to me, “how’d that go?”

“Don’t ask,” I said.

Lissa was full-out crying now, her face buried in my shoulder. Over Chloe’s head I could see Bendo was fully packed, with a line out the door. “Let’s get out of here,” I said to Jess, and she nodded. “This night has sucked anyway.”

Chloe dropped down into the front passenger seat, punching in the car lighter as Jess cranked the engine. Lissa blew her nose in the paper towel I handed her, then settled into small, quick sobs, curling against me. As we pulled out I patted her head, knowing how much it had to hurt. There is nothing so bad as the first time.

I cut my eyes to the left, and sure enough, Adam and his friends were standing around in the parking lot in front of the Coffee Shack. What really bugged me was that he was
smiling.
Jerk.

I glanced behind me, but Lissa had her eyes closed, stretched out across the backseat, listening to the radio.

“Pull in,” I said to Jess. I turned around in my seat. “Hey Liss?”

“Hmmm?” she said.

“Be still, okay? Stay down.”

“Okay,” she said uncertainly.

We chugged along. Jess said, “You or me?”

“Me,” I told her, taking a last sip of my drink. “I need this tonight.”

Jess pushed the gas a little harder.

“You ready?” she asked me.

I nodded, my Zip Diet balanced in my hand. Perfect.

Jess gunned it, hard, and we were moving. By the time Adam looked over at us, it was too late.

It wasn’t my best. But it wasn’t bad either. As we whizzed by, the cup turned end over end in the air, seeming weightless. It hit him square in the back of the head, spilling Diet Coke and ice in a wave down his back.

“Goddammit!” he yelled after us as we blew past. “Lissa! Dammit! Remy! You bitch!”

He was still yelling when I lost sight of him.

I’d had such a bad night. I didn’t do this all the time, but some nights I just needed it. Nobody knew.

I curled up, pulling the blanket over me, and opened the folded towel, taking out my portable CD player and headphones. Then I slipped them on, turned off the light, and skipped to track seven. There was a skylight in my closet, and if I lay just right, the moonlight fell in a square right across me. Sometimes I could even see stars.

The song starts slowly. A bit of guitar, just a few chords. Then a voice, one I knew so well. The words I knew by heart. They did mean something to me. Nobody had to know. But they did.

“Oh, suuuugggaaarrr!”

In the waiting room, the two ladies on deck for manicures looked at each other, then at me.

“Bikini wax,” I explained.

“Oh,” said one, and went back to her magazine. The other just sat there, ears perked like a hunting hound, waiting for the next shriek. It wasn’t long before Mrs. Michaels, enduring her monthly appointment, delivered.

“
H-E-
double-hockey-sticks!” Mrs. Michaels was the wife of one of the local ministers, and loved God almost as much as having a smooth, hairless body. In the year I’d worked at Joie Salon, I’d heard more cussing from the back room where Talinga worked her wax strips than all the other rooms combined. And that included bad manicures, botched haircuts, and even one woman who was near perturbed about a seaweed body wrap that turned her the color of key lime pie.

Not that Joie was a bad place. It was just that you couldn’t please everyone, especially women, when it came to their looks. That’s why Lola, who owned Joie, had just given me a raise in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, I’d turn my back on going to Stanford and stay at her reception desk forever, keeping people under control.

I’d gotten the job because I wanted a car. My mother had offered to give me her car, a nice Camry, and buy herself a new one, but it was important to me that I do this on my own. I loved my mother, but I’d learned long ago not to enter into any more agreements with her than I had to. Her whims were legendary, and I could just see her taking the car back when she decided she no longer was happy with her new one.

So I emptied out my savings account—which consisted mostly of baby-sitting and Christmas money I’d hoarded forever—got out
Consumer Reports,
and did all the research I could on new models before hitting the dealerships. I wrangled and argued and bluffed and put up with so much car-salesman bullshit it almost killed me, but in the end I got the car I wanted, a new Civic with a sunroof and automatic everything, at a price way off the manufacturer’s suggested rip-off retail. The day I picked it up, I drove over to Joie and filled out an application, having seen a RECEPTIONIST WANTED sign in their front window a week or so earlier. And just like that, I had a car payment and a job, all before my senior year even began.

Now, the phone rang as Mrs. Michaels emerged from the waxing room. At first I’d been startled by how bad people looked right afterward: like war victims, or casualties of a fire. She was walking stiffly—bikini waxes were especially brutal—as she came up to my desk.

“Joie Salon,” I said into the phone. “Remy speaking.”

“Remy, hello, this is Lauren Baker,” the woman on the other end said in a rushed voice. Mrs. Baker was always all wispy sounding and out of breath. “Oh, you just
have
to fit me in for a manicure today. Carl’s got some big client and we’re going to La Corolla and this week I restripped the coffee table and my hands are just—”

“One second please,” I said, in my clipped, oh-so-professional voice, and hit the hold button. Above me, Mrs. Michaels grimaced as she pulled out her wallet, sliding a gold credit card across to me. “That’s seventy-eight, ma’am.”

She nodded, and I swiped the card, handing it back to her. Her face was so red, the area around her eyebrows practically raw. Ouch. She signed the slip, then glanced at herself in the mirror behind me, making a face.

“Oh, goodness,” she said. “I guess I can’t go to the post office looking like this.”

“Nonsense!” Talinga, the waxer, said as she breezed in, ostensibly for some good reason but actually to make sure Mrs. Michaels’s tip was big enough and made it into her envelope. “No one will even notice. I’ll see you next month, okay?”

Mrs. Michaels waggled her fingers, then walked out the door, still moving stiffly. Once she hit the curb Talinga grabbed her envelope, leafed through the bills there, and made a
hmmph
kind of noise before flopping down in a chair and crossing her legs to await her next appointment.

“Moving on,” I said, hitting the button for line one. I could hear Mrs. Baker panting before I even started talking. “Let’s see, I could squeeze you in at three-thirty, but you have to be here right on the dot, because Amanda’s got a firm four o’clock.”

“Three-thirty?” Mrs. Baker said. “Well, you see, earlier would be better, actually, because I have this—”

“Three-thirty,” I repeated, clipping my vowels. “Take it or leave it.”

There was a pause, some anxious breathing, and then she said, “I’ll be there.”

“Okay. We’ll see you then.”

As I hung up the phone, penciling her in, Talinga looked at me and said, “Remygirl, you are such a hard-ass.”

I shrugged. The truth was, I could deal with these women because most of them had that used-to-having-everything, me-me-me mentality, in which I was well versed because of my mother. They wanted to bend the rules, to get things for free, to run into other people’s appointments and still have everyone love them just
so
much. So I was good at this job, if only because I had a lifetime of previous experience.

In the next hour I got the two women waiting to their manicures, ordered lunch for Lola, did the receipts from the day before, and between two eyebrow waxings and an underarm job I heard every gory detail about Talinga’s most recent disastrous blind date. But by two o’clock, things had slowed down a bit, and I was just sitting there at the desk, drinking a Diet Coke and staring out at the parking lot.

Joie was located in a glorified strip mall called Mayor’s Village. It was all concrete, right on the highway, but there were some nice landscaped trees and a fountain to make it look more upscale. To our right was Mayor’s Market, which sold expensive organic food. There was also Jump Java, the coffee place, as well as a video store, a bank, and a one-hour photo.

As I was staring out, I saw a beat-up white van pull into the parking lot, taking a space by Gone to the Birds, the specialty bird feeder store. The front and side doors of the van opened and three guys got out, all about my age, all in dress shirts and ties and jeans. They huddled for a second, discussing something, then split up, each heading into a different store. A short guy with red curly hair came toward us, tucking in his shirt as he got closer.

“Oh boy,” I said. “Here come the Mormons.” Although we had a very nice sign in the window that read PLEASE—NO SOLICITING, I was always having to chase away people selling candy bars or Bibles. I took a sip of my Diet Coke, readying myself as the door chime clanged and he came in.

“Hello,” he said, walking right up. He was mighty freckled, which I guess a lot of red-headed guys are, but his eyes were a nice deep green and he had a decent smile. His dress shirt, upon closer inspection, had a stain on the pocket, however, and looked decidedly thrift store-esque. Plus, the tie was a clip-on. I mean, it was obvious.

“Hello,” I said. “Can I help you?”

“I was wondering if perhaps you were hiring?”

I looked at him. No men worked at Joie: it wasn’t a conscious thing on Lola’s part, just that frankly the work didn’t appeal to most men. We’d had one male stylist, Eric, but he’d jumped to Sunset Salon, our biggest competition, earlier in the year, taking one of our best manicurists with him. Since then it was all estrogen, all the time.

“Nope,” I said. “We’re not.”

“You’re sure?”

“Positive.”

He didn’t seem convinced, but he was still smiling. “I wonder,” he said, all charming, “if perhaps I could fill out an application in case an opening became available?”

“Sure,” I said, pulling open the bottom drawer of the desk, where we kept the pad of applications. I ripped one off, handed it to him, along with one of my pens.

“Thanks so much,” he said, taking a seat in the corner by the window. I watched from where I was as he wrote his name across the top in neat block letters, then wrinkled his brow, contemplating the questions.

“Remy,” Lola called out, walking into the waiting area, “did we ever get that shipment from Redken?”

“Not yet,” I told her. Lola was a big woman who wore tight, bright clothes. She had a huge laugh to match her huge frame and inspired such respect and fear in her clients that no one even came in with a picture or anything when they had a hair appointment: they just let her decide. Now, she glanced over at the guy in the corner.

“Why are you here?” she asked him.

He looked up, hardly startled. I had to admire that. “Applying for a job,” he told her.

She looked him up and down. “Is that a clip-on tie?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, nodding at her. “It sure is.”

Lola looked at me, then back at him, then burst into laughter. “Oh, Lord, look at this boy. And you want to work for me?”

“Yes, ma’am, I sure do.” He was so polite I could see him gaining points, quickly. Lola was big on respect.

“Can you give a manicure?”

He considered this. “No. But I’m a fast learner.”

“Can you bikini wax?”

“Nope.”

“Cut hair?”

“No, I sure can’t.”

She cocked her head to the side, smiling at him. “Honey,” she said finally, “you’re useless.”

He nodded. “My mother always said that,” he told her. “But I’m in this band and we all have to get jobs today, so I’m trying anything.”

Lola laughed again. It sounded like it came all the way from her stomach, bubbling up. “You’re in a band?”

“Yes, ma’am. We just came down from Virginia, for the summer. And we all have to get day jobs, so we came here and split up.”

So they’re not Mormons, I thought. They’re musicians. Even worse.

“What do you play?” Lola asked.

“Drums,” he said.

“Like Ringo?”

“Exactly.” He grinned, then added, in a lower voice, “You know they always put the redheaded guy in the back. Otherwise all the ladies would be on me.”

Lola exploded in laughter, so loudly that Talinga and one of the manicurists, Amanda, poked their heads around the corner.

“What in the world?” Amanda asked.

“Good God, is that a clip-on tie?” Talinga said.

“Look,” Lola said, catching her breath, “we’ve got nothing for you here. But you come down to the coffee place with me and I’ll get you a job. That girl owes me a favor.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “But come on. I don’t have all day.”

He leapt up, the pen he was holding clattering to the floor. He bent down to get it, then brought the application back to me. “Thanks anyway,” he said.

“No problem.”

“Let’s go, Ringo!” Lola yelled from the door.

He jumped, grinning, then leaned a little closer and said to me, “You know, he’s still talking about you.”

“Who is?”

“Dexter.”

Of course. Just my luck. He’s not just in a band, he’s in that band. “Why?” I said. “He doesn’t even know me.”

“Doesn’t matter,” he said, shrugging. “You’re officially a challenge. He’ll never give up now.”

I just sat there, shaking my head. Ridiculous.

He didn’t seem to notice, instead just patted his hand on the desk, as if we’d made a deal or something, before walking over to Lola.

Once they’d left, Talinga looked at me and said, “You know him?”

“No,” I said, grabbing the phone as it rang again. Small world, small town. It was just a coincidence. “I don’t.”