She's So Dead to Us (28 page)

She looked happy. Which made me want to punch someone. Preferably Marshall Moss.

“Hey, Jake! Having fun?” Chloe perched on the chair next to mine.

Ally had just thrown her arm around Marshall’s neck. I tore my eyes away. Chloe looked at me knowingly. She was wearing a short white dress that was half-angelic, half-sexpot. Low cut, but not form fitting. I bet every guy in the room had thought about tearing it off once or twice. But that was the point of a dress like that, right?

“You like her, don’t you?” she said.

I swallowed, busted. My knee-jerk reaction was to deny, deny, deny, but then I decided, screw it. I was too pissed off to care anymore. “How’d you know?”

Chloe shrugged and took a sip of her sparkling cider. “Shannen was babbling something about it a while back, but I didn’t believe her.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I just didn’t see you two together,” Chloe said, gazing past me at Ally. “I mean, I’d never seen you talk or anything, but then I guess you did do that detention together. Was that where it all happened? Like some kind of prison romance?” she joked.

I laughed. Why was she being so cool about this when it had been drilled into my head over and over again that Ally was untouchable? “No. I don’t know when it happened. It’s not like it matters.”

“Why not?” She took another sip of her drink, smiling at Hammond as he passed by with a couple of guys from the team. “Doesn’t she like you back?”

There was an uncomfortable knot in my chest. “I don’t know. I thought she did. But now—”

We both looked at the dance floor. “Marshall Moss? Oh, please,” she said. “Who would want Marshall Moss if she could have you?”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “What’s with you? I thought you hated her.”

Chloe took a deep breath. She leaned forward, her elbows resting on the table, her posture as straight as ever. “The truth is, Jake, that was never me.”

“What?”

Chloe nibbled on a strawberry, then placed it down on her plate, her expression chagrined.

“I never hated Ally,” she said with a sigh. “It was just that Shannen and Faith and Ham were so crazy adamant about how we should freeze her out . . . I just went along.”

“Really?” I asked. I had wondered about that the night of her birthday, when she’d said she wished Ally were there. And she had kept the secret about Ally’s father way before any of the rest of us had been forced to start keeping it. “So all this time . . . you would have been hanging out with her.”

Chloe lifted her shoulders, then sat back in her chair again. “She was my best friend. It wasn’t her fault, what her dad did. It all seems so long ago now, anyway.” She touched her hair and sighed, then leaned her chin on her hand. “It’s exhausting sometimes, isn’t it? Caring so much about what other people think?”

She glanced over her shoulder at Hammond, who was laughing loudly over something one of the guys had said. I blinked. There couldn’t actually be trouble in Chlammond-land, could there?

“Whatever.” She sat up straight again. “The point is, I think you should go for it.”

This was unbelievable. Chloe, the girl who every other girl at this school worshipped, the person who could turn around opinion of Ally Ryan with a snap of her fingers, didn’t hate her. Even though she was the one person who had a good reason to. Not that she had any idea about that.

I felt guilty, suddenly, knowing something she maybe should have known but didn’t, and looked away.

“What’re you losers talking about?” Shannen asked. She dropped into the chair on my other side and grabbed some grapes off the fruit plate. The skinny strap on her black dress fell down her arm, but she made no move to fix it. Her face was sweaty, and her hair was all messed up.

“Whether or not Jake has the guts to ask out Ally,” Chloe said matter-of-factly.

Shannen’s gaze flicked to me. She dropped back in her chair violently. “I knew it. I
knew
it!”

I clenched my teeth. “Oh, so now you’re talking to me?”

It had been two months of dead silence from her. Ever since the morning after my birthday. Not a single word.

“Come on, Shannen. What’s the big deal?” Chloe asked, lifting her slim shoulders. “Aren’t we getting a little old for this whole Norm-Crestie thing?”

“That’s not what this is about,” Shannen shot back.

Chloe sighed and dusted off her fingers. “Then what is it about?”

Shannen stared at her. I could tell it was right on the tip of her tongue. She wanted to tell her about Hammond and Ally, and she was probably drunk enough to do it.

“Shannen,” I said in a warning tone.

She looked at me, startled, as if she were just waking up.

“You know what? Fine,” Shannen said, shoving back from the table. “You want to go out with her? Go out with her.”

“Shannen—”

She grabbed her bag and rolled her shoulders back, taking a deep breath. “No. I’m serious, Jake. I’m done. If you want to go slumming, that’s your problem.”

Then she turned and walked off to the bathroom in a huff.

“Don’t listen to her. She’s drunk,” Chloe said.

“I know,” I said with a sigh.

“So? Are you going to ask her out?” Chloe asked, leaning forward on the table to better see Ally.

“I think it’s too late for that,” I said.

“Why?”

“I fucked up,” I told her, toying with some of the silver vampire-fang confetti that was all over the table. “It’s a long story, but . . . I think she kind of hates me now.”

“So, make her not hate you,” Chloe said.

Like it was that simple. “How?”

“You need a grand gesture,” she told me. “The big romantic moment. Girls live for that stuff.” She got up and touched my back lightly, picking up her little round bag with her other hand. “You’ll figure it out.”

“But what about—”

“Everyone else?” she said with a smile. She lifted her arms casually. “Look at them. Do you really care what they think?” She looked at the guys, who were sneaking sips from a flask, then almost spitting the drink out their noses from laughing so hard. “Or them?” We glanced at the girls, who were dancing and gossiping at the same time, laughing behind their hands at some chubby girl’s dress. “Maybe we should both stop caring what they think.” Then she turned and sauntered off toward the bathroom after Shannen.

Ally was still dancing with her friends, carefree and happy and so gorgeous I could have died from wanting to be with her. A grand gesture. What did that mean exactly? All I knew was, I had to figure it out. Because I couldn’t spend one more second feeling like this.

“Coach! Can I get into the supply closet? A couple of us want to kick a ball around after school today, and I need guards.”

“Sure thing, Jake. I like the initiative,” Coach Martz said, getting up from his desk. “It’s not everyone who starts practicing for soccer season in May.”

“Yeah, well. You know me,” I replied.

“I do at that.” He got his keys from the top drawer of his desk and lumbered past me out the door.

My heart pounded like I was doing something wrong, even though I knew I wasn’t. It probably wasn’t going to work out anyway. If I were on the outside of this, I’d tell myself not to get my panties in a twist.

Coach opened the door and flicked on the light, which blinked a few times before dimly illuminating the room. Long metal shelves lined either side of the closet. They were packed with everything from bins of tennis balls to forgotten fencing equipment to boxes of ancient trophies no one cared about anymore.

I glanced at Coach Martz. Was he going to hang out and wait for me? Crap. This whole thing was pointless if he did. Then his cell phone vibrated. He whipped it out and checked the screen.

“Take what you need and lock up after yourself,” he said. “I gotta take this.”

I let out a sigh of relief and ducked inside. There was a bin of shin guards and knee pads just inside the door. When I heard Coach’s office door close, I turned toward the back of the closet. I had spotted it one day last year when Hammond and I had been in charge of rounding up cones and nets for soccer drills. I hadn’t even realized what I was looking at then. Now I just hoped it was still there.

On the second highest shelf, right under the trophies, was a long, thin box marked
DANCE POMS
. I shoved it aside, and there it was. A blue plastic bin with a piece of masking tape stuck to the side. On it, in pencil, someone had scrawled “rings and pins.”

I held my breath. Images of Indiana Jones flashed through my mind. But when I popped the top, no light shone out at me. There was no choir of angels. Just a ton of pins and tie tacks in plastic baggies. Plus three velvet boxes.

I opened up the first one. It was big, with a maroon stone and a football on the side. The second was a gymnastics ring. There was only one left. I took a breath, pried it open, and slowly smiled.

Score.

“Happy birthday, dear Ally! Happy birthday to you!”

My mother set a strawberry shortcake down in front of me at the table, and it was alight with seventeen birthday candles. I looked at the small crowd gathered around me—Mom, Gray, Annie, and Quinn—and I missed my father so much I could hardly breathe. Ever since arriving home from my driver’s test—which I had gleefully passed—that morning, I had been on edge, waiting for the phone to ring. But nothing. Nada. Zip. Where was he right then? Did he even realize it was my birthday? Did he even care?

Mom looked at me sadly, and I knew she knew what I was thinking. She’d gone to so much trouble, with the dozens of colorful balloons, the spaghetti dinner, the colorful paper plates—I hated for her to think I wasn’t happy. So I put on a big grin, took a breath, and blew out the candles. When they all went out with one blow, I thrust my arms in the air, mugging for Gray’s video camera. Just like I was supposed to.

“Yay! You got your wish!” Quinn cheered.

Too bad I’d forgotten to make one.

I pushed myself up from the table, and my mom gave me a kiss and a squeeze. “I’m so proud of you, hon.”

For what?
I wanted to say.
Making it to the ripe old age of seventeen?

But that was just the acerbic, annoyed, abandoned-daughter part of me talking. So instead I said, “Thanks, Mom.”

“Are you gonna open your presents?” Quinn asked. My mom gave her a quick squeeze, which caused a twinge in my heart. Every time I saw evidence of how close those two were getting, I wanted to hurl. But at least Quinn had gotten nicer as a result. That was something. If I was stuck with her for the entire summer, I was better off with this version of her instead of the stony-silent version.

“Sure.” I headed for the living room area while my mom whisked the cake away to cut it.

“So, what did you wish for?” Annie asked. “And don’t give me any of that ‘if I tell you it won’t come true’ crap.”

“I hope you didn’t wish for the bigger room at the shore house, because that’s mine,” Quinn said, dropping onto the couch.

“Quinn!” her father scolded. “Just for that I should give Ally the bigger room.”

“What? No! Daddy!” Quinn sat forward, whining up at him.

“It’s fine. I don’t need a big room. I’m planning on getting a job and working as many hours as humanly possible.”

“You go, party animal,” Annie said.

I smirked. “Don’t worry. When you come down to visit I promise to party.”

“Really!? I get to come visit? Yay!” She threw her arm around my neck. “So? What did you wish for?” Once she got on topic, she rarely got off until satisfied.

“Nothing,” I said, lifting my shoulders. “I forgot.”

“Well, what were you thinking about right before?” Quinn asked as her father turned his camera on me again. “World peace? Cuz that would be nice.”

Of course it would, future Miss America. I tried to conjure up a good lie, because I wasn’t about to tell her I’d been thinking about my father, but then the doorbell rang.

My heart fluttered, and I looked at my mother across the room. She froze with the cake cutter half inside the cake. Did her stomach suddenly feel like it was going to drop out of her body too?

“I’ll get it!” Gray announced, slapping his viewfinder closed.

“No!” my mom and I blurted.

But he was already at the door. I turned around slowly, holding my breath. Was my father really here? Had I somehow wished him to my doorstep? My blood rushed so loudly in my ears I couldn’t even hear Gray at the door. It was like trying to eavesdrop on the lifeguards from the deep end of the country club pool—which used to be Faith’s and my favorite summertime activity.

Finally, Gray returned, with our guest at his heels. For the first time since returning to Orchard Hill, I was disappointed to see Jake Graydon.

“Hey,” he said.

Tears stung my eyes, and I looked down at my feet. I breathed in slowly and let it out in one, long breath.

Don’t be a baby, Ally. You had to know it wasn’t going to be him.