The Princesses of Iowa (23 page)

“Fine,” Lacey snapped. “Who wants to take care of that?”

“I will,” I said, surprising myself. Tyler snorted, but the look on Lacey’s face was worth the weight of everyone else’s stares. Jake gave me a questioning look, and I shrugged. “I just want to help,” I said sweetly.

“Fabulous!” Jeremy said. “That’s taken care of.”

Lacey’s voice was razor sharp. “Get that done today please, Paige.”

“Great.” Dr. Coulter sighed and settled back in his chair. “What’s next on the agenda, Lacey?”

Nikki raised her hand. “We need to talk about DIEDD.”

Across the room, Geneva leaned over to whisper something to Randy, who looked at me and laughed. I dug my fingernails into my palms and didn’t look up again for the rest of the meeting.

We wrapped up a minute before the period ended, and people moved around the room, chatting. Nikki turned to me, slinging her heavy backpack across her frail shoulders. “Thanks for coming.”

“No problem,” I lied.

“Can you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Can you write a eulogy for the DIEDD thing?”

I frowned. “What? A eulogy? Like, for a funeral?”

“Yeah,” she said, “it’s going to be really intense, and, like, we’re going to have this thing where people are —” The bell rang, cutting her off, and we moved toward the door.

“You know, I’m really busy,” I said. “And I have to go talk to Mr. Tremont about the dance or whatever, so . . .” I swung my arm to include the whole room, as if the entire world were encroaching on my free time and ability to do favors.

Nikki looked away. “Yeah, no problem, that’s fine,” she said, and released at last, I left.

Out in the hallways, the entire school population pushed toward the parking lot like water sucked to sea before a tsunami. I fought my way upstream, trying to lose my thoughts in the noise of the crowd. As I moved, head down, my ears began to pick up a familiar note buried beneath the swell. My cell phone. I leaned against a pillar for a second, out of the current. The number was one I didn’t recognize, but I answered anyway. “Hello?”

“Hi! It’s Shanti!”

“Oh,” I said. “Hi.”

“I’m across the commons. Look up! I’m by the pop machines!” She stood between the water-and-juice machine (available all day) and the soda machine (available after school only) and waved. Her voice came through my phone as she walked toward me. “Hi! So, what are you doing?”

“I’m talking to you,” I said into the phone.

She stood in front of me, grinning. “So, when do we hang up?”

“Now.” I put the phone back in my bag. “What area code is that?”

“Madison. I’m on my dad’s plan, from when I stayed with him last summer,” Shanti said. “The 608 forever, man.” She shook her head to flip her hair behind her shoulder. “So seriously, what are you doing right now? Because you should come hang out with me.”

She interrupted herself, pointing at a poster on yellow butcher paper. “Why can’t anyone in this school use an apostrophe correctly?”

I looked to where she was pointing.
HOMECOMING TICKET’S $20,
the poster announced. Next to it, a glittery poster encouraged us to
SUPPORT YOUR CLASS! BUY SPIRIT LINKZ, LEI’S, T-SHIRTS!

“It’s not that hard!” Shanti said. “Are any of these words possessive? No!”

Jeremy walked up to us. “Okay, okay. Settle down, girl.” He looked at me. “Wanna take bets on how soon she’ll be locked up in a padded room, rocking back and forth and muttering about grammar?”

“Isn’t it weird how big of a deal homecoming is here?” Shanti asked, ignoring him. “It’s like we’re still in the Eisenhower administration or something.”

“It’s a tradition,” Jeremy said, “and people love traditions. It makes them feel like they have roots, which is really hard to do these days, when the economy is in shambles, the family farm is dead, and the cornfields are all turning into condos and McMansions.”

Shanti squinched up her mouth. “I guess. It’s just, sometimes I feel like I’m in a John Hughes movie or something. But not in a good way. In a weird way.”

Jeremy put his hands on his hips. “Girl, if you’re going to be a writer, you’re going to have to learn how to empathize with all kinds of people, which includes the good people of Willow Grove.”

“Praise the Hornets, America, and Jesus, in that order!” She saluted, and he whacked her.

“I guess it gives people a chance to feel like they’re a part of a legacy,” I said. “Like, my mom was homecoming queen a million years ago, and now she wants me to be, too.”

Jeremy nodded. “Like mother, like daughter. Except . . . not exactly.” He smiled at me.

Shanti shifted her weight impatiently. “I guess. Anyway, I think it’s sexist and dumb. But that’s not the point. The point is, what are you doing right now, Paige? Because I really think that you should hang out with me this afternoon.”

“I don’t know,” I said.

Shanti wiggled her eyebrows. “I’ll buy you a latte. . . .”

Jeremy laughed. “Is that a bribe?”

“Maybe.” She looked at me. “Is it working?”

“I have to talk to Mr. Tremont,” I said.

“I’ll wait for you here,” Shanti said. “But really? You have no choice. I’m kidnapping you.”

“It’s a talent of hers,” Jeremy told me.

I nodded. “I’m noticing.”

“Go work your magic for me, girl,” he said. “Show a little leg if you have to.”

I laughed and started walking backward across the commons.

“Okay,” Shanti said. “I’ll hang out here — and inveigle you when you get back.”

“Inveigle?” Jeremy asked.

“Shut up, it’s an SAT word.” She punched him and called after me. “See you in a few, Paige! I’m not above using duct tape if I have to!”

“Oooh,” Jeremy said. “Kinky!”

It was the first time I’d talked to Mr. Tremont outside class since yesterday morning, when I hadn’t turned a story in, and I had a moment of fear that he would turn on me and demand to know why I was thinking about homecoming when I should be writing. But of course I needn’t have worried — another teacher might guilt-trip me, but not Mr. Tremont.

He seemed interested in the bonfire. “Walk me out to my car.” He neatly zipped a stack of papers into a black briefcase, slipped in a yellow legal pad, and surveyed his desk for anything else. “Keys? Wallet?” he asked himself.

I hung back, watching his hands through the arms of his plants. There was an ink stain on his right index finger, and what looked like words at the base of his hand near his watch. He wore a plain silver band on his right ring finger. His thumbnails were square and broad.

“So, a bonfire? How does that work exactly? As I recall from my long-ago high school days, teenagers and fire don’t exactly mix.”

“Hence the chaperones,” I said.

“Ahh. So my job would be to prevent self-immolation?” He ushered me through the door, flipping off the lights and locking the door behind us.

“Self-immolation’s fine, as long as no school property is damaged,” I said.

Mr. Tremont laughed. “Oh, of course. Priorities!” He headed toward a back door, and I matched his pace along the waxed tile. “It’s weird. I pretty much stayed away from school-spirit-type events when I was in high school, and now someone wants me to be a chaperone?”

“Did you guys do a homecoming bonfire?”

He squinted. “I don’t think so. . . . We definitely had a dance, and I think we had a half day with a parade and a pep rally, because my friend and I skipped out to go to a diner and then got rear-ended, and it was as though the School Spirits themselves were mad at us.”

“Well,” I said, “this would be your chance to make it up to them. Good karma and whatnot.”

“Good point. I make it a personal policy to piss off as few spirits as possible.” He pushed the door open and held it for me, nodding to the wide sky. “Looks like rain, huh?”

I followed his gaze to the broad white canvas stretched out above the sullen highway. “Yeah,” I said. “This has been a weird fall.”

“Wild nights — wild nights!”
He grinned to himself. “I’ll do it.”

“You will?” I asked. “Really?” He nodded. “Okay, cool. Thanks, Mr. Tremont.” It took me a second to realize that I was standing half in and half out of the school, awkwardly close to his outstretched arm. He smelled like soap, with a hint of sandalwood. I hopped backward over the threshold, catching myself on the shiny floor. “Okay, great. Thanks.”

Mr. Tremont looked amused. “Hey, Paige?”

“Um, yes?”

“In all seriousness, would it be inappropriate to bring a friend?”

Friend? Like . . . a
boy
friend? My heart thumped in my chest.
Shut up,
I told it.
Settle the hell down.
“Of course not,” I said without breathing. “No problem.”

Mr. Tremont smiled. “Awesome.”

“See you tomorrow,” I said, waving like a dumb girl until the door closed between us and I could safely flee. I hurried down the empty hallways toward the other end of the school, my cheeks hot. Mr. Tremont probably thought I was . . . God, I didn’t even want to think about it. I’d been askew all year, like I was standing just off center and couldn’t catch my balance, and now I was forgetting how to talk to teachers without completely embarrassing myself. I used to be good at this. I used to be charming, convincing, smiling, fun. I used to be like Lacey . . . but, then again, so did she. She used to be smiling and fun; now she was brittle glass, unyielding. No wonder Nikki was freaking out. We’d both changed.

I slowed, my feet measuring steps in inches. Who knew it would all come to this? All those years of working and strategizing and showing up to the correct parties and never saying too much or too little and paying strict attention to the cut of our jeans and the texture of our hair and being nice to everyone to their faces and then cutting them down with a single observation the second they left the room, and wooing the teachers and the administration and holding one another up and checking one another, constantly, for stray hairs and uneven hems and smudged lip gloss and cakey foundation and food in our teeth and things in our noses and weird breath and clumpy mascara and the slightest hint of body odor . . . all the business of popularity, and in the end, it had eclipsed our actual friendship. What had happened to the house of Lacey and Paige, built on a foundation of shared secrets and inside jokes, of notes signed
LYLAS
, of late-night confessions and endless walks through the dusky spring streets, and of promises never to let a boy get between us?

“Hi, babe.” Jake materialized from nowhere, appearing before me in the empty hallway.

I jumped. “Jesus!”

“No, Jake. But I can see why you’d get confused.” He kissed me on the cheek. “What are you doing down here? You’re like, just standing in the middle of the hallway.”

“Um.” I blinked twice. “Sorry. Lost in my thoughts.”

Jake leaned against a bank of lockers, spreading his fingers in a fan against the aqua metal. “Planning tomorrow’s outfit in your head?”

“No,” I said, more forcefully than I’d intended.

“Hey,” he said.

“What?”

Abruptly, he reached out and grabbed my face, his hands rough against my cheekbones, and kissed me.

I wobbled when he pulled away, but managed to find my voice. “Where did that come from?”

He shrugged, staring into my eyes. “I miss you. I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever, between school and working at my dad’s office and everything.”

Everything meaning Lacey,
my mind whispered, but I ignored it. “I miss you, too.” I reached for his wrist, which was wider and flatter than Mr. Tremont’s. Junior year, we used to drive around for hours, talking and listening to music and pulling off the road in secluded clusters of trees to make out. Everything seemed so simple back then: Jake liked me and I liked him, and nobody hurt anyone else and nobody kept secrets. Maybe it wasn’t too late to reclaim those days, and the simpler, happier person I’d been. Maybe it was like my mother said: it was up to me to make things right with us.

“Hey,” I said, running my hand up the back of his neck. “We have a whole afternoon in front of us. We could go back to my house, if my mother isn’t around, bribe Miranda to get out . . .”

He sighed. “I’d love to, but I have to run,” he said. “Extra practice.”

“Really?” I pouted, twining my fingers through his hair. “We haven’t hung out in forever, and you have a bye tomorrow. Can’t you skip?”

He smiled at me, tugging on the edge of my shirt. “I wish.”

“What about after?” I leaned into him, trapping his hand between us.

He squinted and glanced somewhere behind me. “I can’t, babe. I told Lacey —”

My bones calcified beneath my skin, turned to stone. I pulled back. “Oh. Lacey.”

“Paige, don’t be like that.”

“I’m not being like anything.”

“She’s just really having a hard time lately.”

If one more person said that, I was going to scream. I took a breath. “Well, I actually have plans anyway. So it’s cool.”

“You do?” He sounded surprised. “With who?”

I crossed my arms. “Just a friend.”

Jake seemed suddenly present, a laser of attention pointed at my face. “A friend? Which friend? Nikki?”

“Shanti Kale.” He didn’t react enough, so I added, “Maybe some other people, too. Like Jeremy Carpenter, Ethan James —”

Jake raised his eyebrows. “That freshman dude?”

“He’s not a freshman,” I said, and looked at him slyly. “Are you jealous?”

“Should I be?” he teased. “Are you going to leave me for a freshman?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“Well, I guess I’ll just have to kick his ass, then,” Jake joked. His voice softened. “God, babe, I really do wish I could hang with you. Lacey’s drama is getting old.” He ran a finger down the inside of my forearm, making me shiver. “But she really needs a friend right now.”

“So I’ve heard.”

Jake looked at me with all the intensity of the first time, and for a moment it was that day on the bleachers in the sun, and no one else existed.

“I have to go. Call me later, okay?” And though I actually reached out to hold him there, he turned more quickly than I could grasp, and was gone.

Shanti was sitting cross-legged on top of a lone cafeteria table, scribbling in her notebook. At my footsteps, she looked up and grinned. “Yay!” She jumped from the table and took off down a side hallway, tucking her notebook into her bag as she walked. “I just have to grab something,” she said over her shoulder. I followed without paying attention, eager to be gone. At the blue dot, she swung through the open doorway of the newspaper room. “Hi! Sorry — sorry — excuse me.” She wove through kids hunched over computers in tight rows and stopped behind Ethan. “Hey, Jeremy!” she called.