The Boyfriend Thief (9 page)

“Pass the potatoes,” Ian grunted in my general direction. He refused to look at me and only muttered a low “thank you” when I handed him the bowl.

My brother and I hadn’t spoken much since the scene at the mall. I hadn’t said anything to Dad about Ian wanting to get Trisha a Mother’s Day gift. I wasn’t sure how to bring it up. “Hey, Dad, I think you should stop dating because Ian wants to pretend your girlfriend is his mom. It’s not healthy for him.”

I wished I knew how to keep my brother detached. I had spent so much time protecting myself from everyone else, I had forgotten to teach Ian how to do that as well.

“How is your art project coming?” I asked in an attempt to mend things between us.

Ian shrugged. “Lots of photos. That’s about it.”

I smiled. “I’d love to see them.”

He studied me cautiously, as if he didn’t believe me. I kept smiling, my fist clenched around my fork. After a moment, Ian turned back to his food without saying anything else.

My shoulders slumped. I reached over and adjusted the position of my plate on the green checkered placemat until it was perfectly centered.

“How is work?” I asked, turning to Dad.

“Same as usual,” he told me. “Sales have slowed down again because of this heat wave. No one wants to be outside.”

“Maybe things will pick up soon,” I told him. My dad was assistant manager for a sports equipment store, specializing mostly in bikes, kayaks, and accessories. We didn’t get snow in our area, so winter was usually a rough time, except for Christmas when everyone wanted a bike for their kid. Each year, we faced the same struggle of trying to make ends meet while Dad worked fewer hours.

“How is the hot dog business?” he asked me, grinning. Dad always threatened to come by Diggity Dog House and take pictures of me dressed up as Bob and I always threatened to divorce him if he did.

“Smelly and busy, as usual. We debuted a slightly less fattening corn dog, with turkey instead of pork and baked instead of fried. Big hit with the older crowd. It’s selling much better than the hot dog ice cream Mr. Throckmorton thought up last month.”

Dad made a face. “The words ice cream and hot dogs in the same phrase are enough to make me stay far away.”

“I tried explaining that to Mr. Throckmorton before he added it to the menu, but he didn’t listen.”

My gaze shifted to Ian, who sat silently, tapping his fork on his mound of mashed potatoes. He didn’t even attempt to get involved in the conversation, which was very unusual. My brother usually talked so much it was hard for Dad and me to get in any words around him.

Dad cleared his throat as he wiped his mouth with his napkin and then crumpled it in his fist. “Trisha and I have been talking,” he began in a slow, nervous voice.

My chest felt as if it had suddenly iced over. I stared at Dad, unable to break my gaze away from the side of his face, my pulse pounding in my ears so loud I almost couldn’t hear him. The words I had said to my brother repeated themselves in my head:
Trisha is not our mother. Trisha is not our mother.

“And we thought it would be nice if all of us did something together this weekend,” Dad went on. “Like a picnic or something?”

The breath I’d been holding in rushed out of me all at once. I flexed my fingers from the tightly coiled fists I’d been holding them in since he’d started talking. For a second, every horrible nightmare I could imagine had filled my head—Trisha moving in here, Trisha and Dad getting married, Ian buying her a lifetime supply of stupid Mother’s Day teddy bears.

“I have to work this weekend,” I said.

Dad raised his eyebrows at me. “All weekend?”

“Most of it. And the rest of the time I’m not working, I’ll be helping Zac with our business project.”

“I think maybe he could spare you for an hour or so.”

“I can’t afford to get a bad grade on this assignment,” I said. “If I fail anything between now and the end of my senior year, I definitely will not be valedictorian at graduation. Do you want that to happen?”

“Salutatorian is still a special honor,” Dad told me.

I laughed. “That’s what people who aren’t good enough say. Salutatorian means somewhere along the way I messed up and ruined everything. That’s
not
going to happen. Sorry, but no, I can’t come to your little picnic with your girlfriend.”

Dad opened his mouth, but it was Ian who spoke up.

“Everything has to be the way you want it to be, doesn’t it?” My brother glared across the table at me over his mushy pile of potatoes. “You can’t stand it if someone else has a different opinion than you do.”

“That’s not true,” I protested.

“It is! Maybe the rest of us
want
to have a picnic. Have you ever thought about what other people want, or is it ‘all Avery, all the time’?”

Dad looked completely flabbergasted at Ian’s sudden change in behavior. He blinked at my brother. “Ian, what is this all about?”

Ian’s face had turned a deep red shade all the way to the tips of his ears. He stood up, letting out a long breath. “Nothing. It doesn’t matter anyway. It never has.”

He stomped out of the room and a moment later we heard his bedroom door slam. Dad’s gaze shifted to me.

“Care to explain?” he asked.

I tried to look as confused as he did. “I have no idea. Probably too much chocolate. I think he’s been hiding it in his room again.”

Dad sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. “Let him have his candy, Avery. It’s not hurting him.”

“Should I print out studies on the effects of processed sugar for you to read again? It is in fact hurting him quite a bit.”

He gave me a hard stare. “Drop it. The candy stays.”

I threw up my hands. “Of course. Like the self-help books stay.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“You and Ian depend entirely too much on your fantasy lives, where everything is easily fixed by candy or some book written by a psychiatric quack who doesn’t know anything. Trisha is not the answer to all of your problems, Dad.”

A vein in his forehead throbbed, the sure sign that I had stepped into dangerous territory. “I never said she was. But what is wrong with me trying to find someone to spend my life with?”

“The problem is you’re hurting Ian and me.” My voice trembled slightly, but I sucked in a deep breath to try to steady myself. “Don’t you think that every time another girlfriend disappears, never to be heard from, we remember Mom’s leaving all over again?”

The soft tick of the clock on the wall over Dad’s head echoed throughout the kitchen for a few seconds as my words hung in the air.

“Not everyone is like your mom. Not everyone will leave.” Dad’s voice was low and he stared at his plate, his hands frozen above it.

“What about Vanessa? Or Pam? Or Jennifer? Kate? Julie?” I spouted off the names of previous girlfriends who had made themselves at home in our lives for a few months and made promises about the future.

But in the end, they had all gone away. It was always the same. Only the faces changed.

“Stop trying to fix us with these books and girlfriends,” I told him.

Dad slammed his fist down on the table, causing the dishes to clatter against each other. “Stop trying to control my life, Avery. You are the child here, I’m the parent.”

“You’re one to talk about controlling someone else!” I didn’t know how we’d gotten to this point, this shouting at each other across the table while Ian hid in his room, probably stuffing Hershey’s Kisses in his mouth. This wasn’t what my family was supposed to be like. “Every time I talk about Costa Rica, you change the subject. You can’t bear the thought that maybe I have different plans for my life than you do.”

“We can’t afford Costa Rica,” Dad said. “We can barely afford this house. I’m a single parent here, trying raise you and your brother on the one salary I have.”

“Well, don’t worry about it anymore,” I told him. “By next month, I’ll have all the money I need, which I earned all on my own.”

He looked at me with panic in his eyes. “Avery—”

I set my fork down parallel to my plate, stood up from the table, and then pushed my chair in so that it lined up perfectly with the table. “I may not be able to control what you do, but my own life is the one thing I do have complete control of. I’m not having a faux family picnic with Trisha or anyone else. And come summer, once she’s disappeared like the rest of them, I’ll be gone and
you
can figure out how to fix everything around here on your own.”

“So?” asked Delia Greeley. Her smile looked like her brother’s. She resembled him in other ways too, with the same dark brown hair and tanned skin. She even had that same sparkle in her eyes that Zac did.

She was not, however, quite as energetic as her brother. While Zac sat with one knee bouncing constantly, Delia managed to keep all of her limbs still.

I sat in the Greeleys’ den, melted into the plush couch, and had just listened to Delia give a presentation on her preliminary plans for our website.

A website for a matchmaking business that
didn’t really exist.

Once I’d arrived at the Greeley house before heading to work, Zac had surprise-attacked me with an entire presentation on how the website for our business project would work. Delia, who it turned out was studying graphic design in college, already had several mockups done and pasted onto big sheets of poster board, which she set up in chairs around the room. Delia had also printed out a ten-page description of the basic setup, along with screenshots of the data collection part, where customers would submit their information.

I held one of these reports in my hand while I stared back at her. The ambush had left me a bit dazed and panicked. I had barely said hello to Zac before he whisked me into the den where his sister was waiting. Now he and Delia looked at me, waiting for my response.

“Um,” I said, trying to sort out the thoughts swirling through my head. “Isn’t this all a bit much for a school project?”

Zac’s eyes sparkled. “This could be much more than a school project. It could be something real to help people.”

“What do you mean by real?” I asked.

“As in, a real matchmaking business. Run by the two of us.”

The laugh burst out of me before I could stop it. “Are you insane?”

His smile faltered a bit. “What’s wrong with that? We’ve done all the planning already. We have everything we need to start this.”

“I just...,” I began, taking a deep breath, “I don’t know if I want this to be more than a school project.”

Delia’s eyes moved between her brother and me. “Okay,” she said in a perky voice. “Maybe I’ll leave you two alone for a moment to discuss things.”

When she slipped out the door and closed it behind her, Zac said, “Embrace the
passion
, Avery.”

“This stuff doesn’t work,” I said. “How can a computer calculate your perfect match?”

“I’ll admit it might not be one hundred percent accurate. I’m sure there could be matches that wouldn’t work out. But the majority probably would be good. And even if the matches didn’t work out forever, they could at least give people a little romance in their lives for a while. What’s wrong with that?”

Zac talked as if this were a simple thing. As if this proposed business idea didn’t toy with people’s emotions and lives. “There are all kinds of factors a computer program could never work into the equation,” I said. “What if someone got into a bad accident, hit their head, went into a coma, and then woke up with a completely different personality that no longer matches the person we originally set them up with?”

Zac raised his eyebrows at me. “Avery. I doubt every single customer we have will go into a coma and wake up as a different person. But if it makes you feel better we could offer a money back guarantee for the people who do develop a different personality than what they first had when they purchased our service.”

I flailed my arms in agitation. “It was an example of the many things that
could
happen. My point is, the computer won’t know everything.”

“Of course not,” Zac said. “That’s what makes life interesting. You never know how something will work out until you go for it. Maybe the matches won’t work, but what do you have to gain by never putting yourself out there?”

I felt myself almost wavering as I looked into Zac’s dark eyes. What was it that made me feel so weird whenever I was around him?

This had to stop. I had to regain control of this whole thing and get the money for Costa Rica. The money was the only thing that mattered.

I moved across the couch, closer to Zac. “I don’t believe a computer can tell you who you’re supposed to be with. How can a computer factor in chemistry between two people?”

I made sure Zac had a good view of my legs beneath the denim mini skirt I wore. It was close to being obscenely short, since I’d grown a few inches since I’d bought it years ago. His gaze darted down toward my legs, then back up. He kept trying to look at the wall behind me, but his eyes flickered to meet mine every few seconds, as if he couldn’t force himself to look away.

“Chemistry?” Zac repeated. The muscles in his neck twitched as he swallowed.

“Yeah,” I said. “That unseen force that pulls two people together, even though every matchmaking program in the world says they don’t make a good match. What about that?”

“There will always be exceptions,” Zac said. “Some things can never be planned.”

“I like plans,” I told him.

He laughed a little. “That doesn’t surprise me.”

His tone was light, but the words struck deep into me. He sounded as if he knew me, as if he had me all figured out. And the fact that I hadn’t even begun to figure him out annoyed me.

“Things are better when they have order to them.” I crossed my arms tightly over my chest and moved away from him, building up the wall between us. “Life makes sense that way.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Maybe life isn’t supposed to make sense.”

“Then life sucks.” I pulled in a ragged breath, suddenly fighting back a wave of tears. If Zac was right, if life wasn’t supposed to make sense, then it meant everything that happened had no reason. It meant my mom could walk out of my life forever without an explanation. It meant Hannah could be valedictorian, class queen, and whatever else she wanted in life while squashing me under her shoe. My dad would marry Trisha or some other brainless girlfriend-of-the-month he decided to bring home next time and there would be nothing I could do to stop it.

“Hey.” Zac’s voice sounded very close. “You okay?”

I lowered my hands and opened my eyes to find him kneeling in front of me. One of his hands rested on my knee and the other on my shoulder. I shivered slightly at the contact with his skin.

“Fine,” I said, pushing Zac away. No, Zac was wrong. Life had order to it. I could fix things. I had been doing exactly that for the past four years.

“I’m
fine
,” I repeated in a firmer voice. Putting things in order began with winning over Zac and making it to Costa Rica. If that meant I had to go along with one of his crazy plans, so be it. “Let’s find Delia and tell her we’re doing the website.”

Zac broke into a huge grin at my words. “We are? Awesome! You won’t regret it. We’ll have the best project in the whole class.”

Zac grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet. He bounced out of the room and into the hall, calling out, “Delia! She said yes!”

“Who said yes about what?” asked a voice behind us. A tall, beautiful woman stepped through the front door, carrying a grocery bag in one arm. She had the shiniest black hair I’d ever seen and I could detect a slight accent in her words.

“Hi, Mom,” Zac greeted her. “This is Avery, my business partner. She said yes to building a website for our matchmaking service.”

Mrs. Greeley’s gaze flickered downward, taking in the sight of Zac still holding my hand, our fingers entwined. I pulled my hand away quickly and hid it behind my back.

“Isn’t this a school project?” Mrs. Greeley asked. Zac and I followed her into the kitchen, where she set the bag of groceries on the counter. “Are all the teams building a website too?”

“No,” Zac admitted. “But our project is different. We’re making it into a real working business that we can keep up after the class is over.”

 “I’ll get to work on building the site,” Delia said as she walked into the room. “And you’ll talk with the programmer, right?” she asked her brother.

“Programmer?” I asked. “I thought you were doing all the work.”

Delia leaned against the counter and laughed. “You don’t want me building your database. Zac found someone else to do that. What did you say her name was, Zac? Holly?”

“Molly,” he said. He cleared his throat and glanced quickly at me. “Um, Molly Pinski.”

“You hired
Molly
to build our project?” I exclaimed. When had Molly and Zac talked behind my back? And why hadn’t she told me?

Zac nodded. “She’s the best computer expert I know. So I talked to her about the idea and she said it wouldn’t take her any time at all to build it. And she’s doing it for a very low price.”

“How low?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Zac said. “I’m handling it.”

“Zac,” I said in the sternest voice I could manage. “How low?”

“Free,” he said. “She only asked for ten percent of our profits from the business.”

Leave it to Molly to work out a deal to benefit herself in the long run. If the matchmaking thing was successful, she could earn more money than she would have from a one-time payment on her work.

Not that I expected this matchmaking business to work. There couldn’t be many people at Willowbrook High who were stupid enough to fall for this scam.

“I can’t believe you got Molly roped into our project,” I said, shaking my head. “You know she’s in that class too. She has her own project to worry about.”

“Zac,” Mrs. Greeley said, scowling at him. “You don’t need to convince all of your classmates to follow one of your ideas.”

“I’m not!” Zac said, flailing his arms in frustration. “I talked it all over with Molly and she assured me it would be no problem. She
wanted
to help out.” He reached over and patted my shoulder. “You worry too much, Avery.”

Mrs. Greeley raised her eyebrows, then looked at me. “I hope Zacarías isn’t talking you into one of his crazy ideas. He has a wild imagination, always has. I used to find him convincing the neighborhood kids to buy pieces of mud pies for a dollar each. He told them they were a new kind of chocolate.”

I couldn’t help the small giggle that escaped my lips at this. Zac’s cheeks reddened.

“Mom, I was seven,” Zac reminded her. “I’ve grown up a bit since mud pies.”

“Not much,” Delia said as she reached up to tousle Zac’s already messy hair. “You’re still the same crazy kid, but your ideas have gotten bigger and crazier.”

Zac looked a little annoyed at his mother’s and sister’s teasing. “You guys never take me seriously.”

“How can we?” Delia asked. “You don’t take yourself seriously.”

“You sound like Dad,” Zac snapped at her.

“Your father wants you to succeed in life,” Mrs. Greeley told him. She unpacked the grocery bag, setting the tomatoes and cucumbers she’d bought in a neat row.

“No, Dad wants me to be like him,” Zac corrected her. “And I am not a locksmith who makes keys and unlocks car doors all day!”

The scene had gone way past uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure if the Greeleys even remembered I was there.

I took a step backward, toward the door. “I need to go,” I said. “I have to get to work.”

At the front door, my gaze fell on a family portrait of the Greeleys. Mr. and Mrs. Greeley looked so well-dressed, perfectly groomed and poised. Even Delia looked as if she had been posed just so to reflect a perfect teenage daughter. And then there was Zac, hair falling in his eyes, crooked tie, and a smudge of dirt on his chin.

His smile was infectious, like in real life. I couldn’t help smiling as I looked at the picture.

The Zac in the picture was a huge contrast to the slumped, moping guy next to me. He looked so dejected, as if his family’s teasing and chiding had stripped away the easygoing attitude he usually had. I felt the urge to cheer him up, as if I needed to see his smile again.

“The website is a really good idea,” I told him.

Zac gave me a half-smile. “You think so?”

I nodded. “I think if anyone can convince everyone at school to sign up for a matchmaking business, it’s you.”

Zac tapped a finger on his chin. “I am very persuasive.”

“Not to mention modest,” I added, rolling my eyes.

A tingling sensation spread through me, from scalp to toes, when his face cracked into a wide grin. “Thanks for putting up with my wild ideas,” he said, reaching out to squeeze my hand.

The contact felt as if I’d been stung. Electric currents flowed up my arm, mingling with the warmth spreading through my body that his smile had caused. I gasped and pulled my hand back quickly.

I stepped away from him, toward the door, fumbling for the handle. “I’ve already followed your wild ideas this far,” I said, sounding a lot more breathless than I had intended. “I might as well follow this project through at this point, failure or success.”

“Grim determination,” Zac said, nodding. I hoped he couldn’t see the strange effect his touch had on me. “That’s what I like about you, Avery. You’re not patronizing. You tell it like it is.”

I wondered if this was a good thing. But his smile was still doing strange things to my body and the overwhelming desire to run hit me. Run out the door as fast and as far as I could.

Running was in my genes. It was the only thing I knew to do when things got weird. And right then, the way my stomach exploded into a thousand butterflies whenever Zac smiled at me had gone way beyond weird.