The Anti-Prom (6 page)

“Nothing yet.” She’s rifling through desk drawers now. “I’ll check if she wrote it down.”

Great.

“Your present, OK. I have, umm . . .” I dig through my bag, flipping past the items that won’t — or, rather, shouldn’t — interest a preteen. But there’s nothing that might win her over. No sparkly gadgets or cool little toys or anything colored pink.

“How about a Twinkie?” I hold up the package with defeat. But she snatches it from my hand and happily tears off the wrapper. Soon, she’s sitting cross-legged in the corner, devouring the snack with rapturous abandon.

I raise my eyebrows at Bliss.

“Kaitlin’s mom is really into health food.” She shrugs. “The house is like, a sugar-free zone.”

“Lucky us.”

Suddenly, I hear footsteps coming up the stairs. “Quick!” I hiss, scooping Avery into my arms again. I pull her behind the door and crouch there. “Keep quiet, and I’ll give you another Twinkie,” I whisper, listening as the steps come closer. Avery’s eyes widen, and she nods, mouth smeared with crumbs.

“Bliss, how are you doing?”

“Great, Mrs. C.!” From my huddled corner, I can see Bliss give another innocent smile. “I’m just trying to find the right one. See, it can’t be dark, because then it would show through the dress, and it can’t have straps, or lace, because that would totally screw up the line of the bust, and —”

“That’s fine, hon.” Mrs. Carter cuts off her inane chatter. She pauses. “Where’s your friend?”

“Oh, she’s just in the bathroom!”

“OK. You girls make sure to keep it down. Little Avery is fast asleep.”

“Of course.”

The door closes, and I sigh with relief, handing Avery the other snack cake. God bless refined sugar products.

“I can’t stall her forever.” Bliss closes the door again and helps me up.

“I know.” I nod grimly. Who knew Kaitlin would be so smart? “So what do you want to do?”

Bliss shrugs helplessly.

“Great.” I sigh. “You know, this was easier for Harriet the Spy. They all just kept journals with their darkest secrets. Nice, solid things with padlocks and
keep out
scrawled across the front.”

“Like Kaitlin’s special secret book?”

We look around. Avery has finished the Twinkie in record speed and is licking off her fingers.

Bliss brightens. “Kaitlin has a secret book?”

Avery nods.

“Well?” I prompt. “Where is it?”

“I want another present.”

I give Bliss a look. “That was my last one,” I whisper.

“So what do we do?”

What I always do. When in doubt, bribe.

“Avery, hon. I don’t have another Twinkie”— she opens her mouth to complain, but I quickly cut her off — “but I do have money. Well, Bliss does. Which means you can buy your own Twinkies. As many as you want!”

She pauses, furrowing her evil, demonic brow. “How much?”

“Five dollars!” I announce. Avery shakes her head. “Ten?” She shakes it again. Man, kids these days. I had to save for weeks for the latest Harry Potter when I was her age. “Twenty dollars?” I try, impatient. At least it’s not my money. “That would buy you . . . twenty whole Twinkies.”

Avery’s eyes widen at the thought of all that pure, unadulterated sugar. “Yes.” She nods. “Twenty.”

I turn to Bliss. “You heard the kid.”

“You’re bribing a ten-year-old?” She looks shocked.

I roll my eyes. “Do you want the book or not?”

Reluctantly, she pulls a twenty from her bodice. And there I was thinking there was nothing but double-sided tape behind that dress.

Avery reaches for the money, but I dangle it just out of reach. “Not until you show us where it’s hidden.”

She heads straight for the closet.

“I thought you checked there.” Bliss gives me a scathing look.

“I did,” I snap back as Avery expertly clambers up the shelves and reaches into a pile of jeans. She pulls out a blue journal: leather-bound and surprisingly tasteful for the girl who dressed as a burlesque dancer for our last school fund-raiser. Our daytime school fund-raiser.

“My present!” Avery demands. I hand her the twenty; Bliss snatches the diary.

“You can’t tell anyone you saw us,” I say. “You’ll get in trouble for not being in bed.”

She nods and then scampers away — no doubt back to her lair of doom.

“We did it!” Bliss bounces up and down with joy, but I know better than to celebrate too soon. I quickly pluck a beige strapless bra from the pile and shut the wardrobe.

“Come on. We should bail, before Meg has a breakdown and walks home.”

We hurry downstairs. Mrs. Carter is in the living room, watching some Real Housewives episode on the big-screen TV, so Bliss calls through. “Thanks, Mrs. C., we’re just leaving now!”

“Hang on, girls, I just want to —”

We don’t wait. Bursting out the front door, we race across the lawn. The sprinklers switch on, and Bliss cries out as the cold water hits her skin. I ignore her shrieks, dragging her through the jets and down the street. I’m full of familiar adrenaline, that breathless excitement of making it out, free. From the gleeful expression on Bliss’s face, she’s buzzing too.

Meg’s car is still loitering on the corner, thank God. I throw open the front door and pile in. “Go, go!”

“What?” Meg stares at me, panicked. “Did you get caught?”

Bliss tumbles into the backseat. “No!” She laughs. “We got it!”

I glance back at the street, just to be sure, but we’re all clear. I give Meg a nod.

“Stage One is complete. Now go!”

“Didn’t you hear me?” Jolene drums an impatient rhythm on the seat beside her. “I said get the hell out of here!”

I’m wound so tight with tension, I slam my foot hard on the gas, speeding away with a painful screech. Damn. I hit the brake, overcompensating with another amateur lurch. We shudder to a halt.

“The point of a getaway car is to, you know, get away!” Jolene gives me a look of utter exasperation.

I blush. I scored perfectly on my driver’s test; my dad made me practice drills until I could parallel park in my sleep. Eighteen months without so much as a single ticket, but, of course, I have to fall apart now, when it actually matters, when they’re depending on me.

Focus, Meg!

I force myself to take a deep breath and then finally drive away like a normal human being — even remembering the obligatory pause at the stop sign at the end of the block.

“Did they suspect anything?” I ask, glancing in the rearview mirror.

“Not at all,” Jolene declares proudly. She lets out a whoop as we turn out of the quiet subdivision and head toward town, the windows down and a warm breeze whipping through the car.

“Thanks to who?” Bliss leans forward between us, her hair falling in the kind of effortless, glossy cascade it took me two hours of trying — and failing — to achieve. “Uh, my cover story was brilliant, thanks very much.”

Jolene makes a noise of protest. “And who silenced the demon child with nothing but her powers of persuasion and some sugary treats?”

“And half my emergency money!” Bliss cries, indignant.

“Whatever, like you’ll miss it.”

I exhale a slow sigh of relief as they bicker beside me. Finally, after that agonizing wait, my nerves are beginning to ease, blossoming into a kind of fluttering excitement as I absorb their rush of laughter.

We did it!

Well,
they
did, I correct myself. You just waited down the block, flinching every time a car passed by and wondering whether the Stanford admissions people would ever overlook a misdemeanor charge.

“So where now?” I ask, excited. “Back to prom?”

“Nope.” Bliss speaks up from the backseat. She’s got some kind of journal, and she’s flipping through the pages with a wicked smile on her face. “We’re going to Brooks. The campus is down I-32. Just make the exit out of town.”

The college? “I know where it is, but why —?”

“We’re going to deliver this little gem to Kaitlin’s boyfriend.” Bliss doesn’t even wait for me to ask the question; she’s already crowing over her grand plan. “Jason will freak when he finds out she’s been cheating. And his roommate hooks up with Brianna sometimes, so she’ll be, like, the first to find out. If we plant it so he doesn’t know it came from me, I’ll be completely clear.”

“Right,” I say quietly. I knew the high-school hierarchies were complicated, but this level of strategy and planning is almost Machiavellian. I glance in the rearview mirror again and wonder if I’m getting in over my head.

Jolene must be thinking the same thing, because she nudges me. “I’m kind of surprised you’re still with us.” She gives me a long look. “Figured maybe you’d get out and walk.”

“I said I was in,” I repeat firmly.

“Come on, you were tempted though, right?”

I shake my head. Even if the thought did cross my mind, oh, a few dozen times, I don’t want either of them to know. “We made a deal; I’m not backing out.”

I feel Jolene study me for a moment as I try not to wilt under her steady gaze, then to my relief she turns to Bliss. “Let me see it,” she orders, reaching back. Bliss hesitates, clutching the diary to her chest, but then Jolene snaps her fingers and Bliss relents.

“OK, but read it aloud. I want to hear everything!”

“‘March twenty-sixth.’” Jolene kicks her bare feet up on the dashboard and begins to read, mimicking Kaitlin’s nasal voice. “‘Brianna was bugging me all through lunch today. She wants me to fix her up with Duncan —’”

“Jason’s roommate,” Bliss adds.

“‘— but she doesn’t know he already told Jase he thinks she’s only, like, a seven. He’ll hook up with her, but he said she acts like such a slut.’ Ugh.” Jolene slams the book shut and tosses it back. “You keep delightful company, you really do.”

I have to agree, but in the mirror, I see Bliss shrug. “Uh, who are you to judge? JD McGraw? That Eric guy?” Her voice is dubious. “Those guys are, like, walking felonies.”

Jolene stiffens. “At least when they fight, they do it to your face.”

“They would hit a girl?” Bliss’s voice rises.

“No.” I don’t look over, but I can practically hear the eye roll in Jolene’s reply. “It was a metaphor. Instead of stabbing you in the back, like your crowd does.”

Immediately, I can feel the mood shift. “So I need to take the next exit ahead?” I pipe up, before they can launch into a vicious showdown.

Bliss stops, turning to me as if she’d forgotten I was even here. “Yeah, and then it’s straight through for like, twenty miles.”

“OK.”

They fall silent as I merge onto the highway. Jolene settles back, scratching at the pink polish on her nails as she gazes out the window, while Bliss curls up in the backseat with the journal. Slowly, the stretch of used-car lots and industrial warehouses on the outskirts of town makes way for open countryside and the occasional shadow of half-built suburban developments, houses standing empty in unfinished rows. I keep a careful eye on the road and wonder yet again what strange forces brought the two of them together. Because despite Jolene’s whole explanation about revenge on Kaitlin and Cameron, something just doesn’t add up.

That’s the thing about being invisible, I suppose: they might not know who on earth I am, but I know plenty about them. Bliss and her clique don’t pause for breath during their girls’ bathroom bitch-sessions when I slip in, but the moment someone else — someone real — walks through that door, there’s nothing but “Shh!” and giggles and whispers until they leave. Jolene’s just the same. I work a few shifts in the front office for extra credit, so I see her all the time, dragged in after they catch her smoking, or fighting, or answering back. She waits, slouching in the chairs right opposite me, but has never even looked my way.

But here they are. In my car. Together.

Jolene begins searching in the glove compartment, flipping through CDs with a noisy rattle. She looks up suddenly and catches my eye, holding it as if she’s challenging me. I look away, embarrassed, but she really doesn’t care; she never has.

“You know, this stuff isn’t bad.” She’s looking at my music selection with a frown, as if she can’t believe I could possibly have any taste at all.

“Oh. Thanks.” I murmur a response, and then look up to find that she’s holding one of my dad’s classic country mixes, not any of the vaguely-cool indie music I threw in there. With a swift movement, she slams in the CD, and suddenly, the loud guitar chords make way for a gentle bluegrass twang.

“What?” Bliss protests immediately. “Come on!”

Jolene ignores her, humming happily along to the old song.

“You like that stuff?” I venture.

“It’s in my blood. Can’t you tell?” She gives a wry laugh. “Born and raised with nothing else on the radio.”

Her name, of course.

“I was lucky,” Jolene continues, adjusting the seat so she’s lounging way back — forcing Bliss to shift over to the other side. “She nearly named me Dolly. If there’s one thing I can thank my dad for, it’s convincing her otherwise. Can you imagine?”

I give a nervous laugh of agreement.

“Dolly?” Bliss lets out a sharp squeal, kicking the back of my seat in the process. “Who would even call their kid that?”

“Says the girl named after a freaking state of mind,” Jolene snaps back.