What's Your Status? (8 page)

“If you need help, just ask,” Schuyler said. “Tennis is over for the season, and Connor’s super busy Internet Liaising, so I have some free time.”

“I just might take you up on that,” I said, thinking about all the extra prom duties Kittson had been dumping on me. I leaned back in the armchair and closed my eyes, letting the much-needed caffeine kick in. When I opened them again, I made sure to avert my gaze from the wooden chair next to me—the chair that had always been Ruth’s.

“D’accord,”
Lisa said. “I have something to discuss.
But I wanted to wait until you got here, Mad.”

“OMG, me too!” I said, glad that I could finally get their take on the Nate sitch. “I also have something to discuss, I mean.”

“Well,
je suis la premiere.
I’m going first. Schuyler?” Lisa looked at her. “You want to get on the agenda?”

“After me,” I added quickly.

“Oh…no,” Schuyler said. She moved her long red ponytail to one side, leaned back against the couch, and smiled happily. “I’m good.” Things certainly appeared to be good with Schuyler. She was utterly smitten with Connor, and from what I could tell, it was mutual. Lately, Schuyler seemed to walk around in a state of half-focused bliss and the somewhat anxious expression she had occasionally worn was totally gone. She hadn’t chewed her hair in months.

“Bon,”
Lisa said. “So.” She made a big production of stirring some brown sugar cubes into her café au lait, and I realized that she was stalling. But it wasn’t exactly surprising. To say Lisa didn’t like to talk about her feelings was something of an understatement. “It’s Dave,” she said finally. I glanced at Schuyler, who shrugged. Apparently, this was news to her as well.

Dave Gold and Lisa had been going out all year, and as a result, Dave had become one of my really good friends. I was a little surprised to hear that there was an issue with them, since they had always seemed really solid—not embarrassingly over-the-top mushy like Jimmy and Liz, but rather, just pretty consistently crazy about each other.

“What is it?” Schuyler asked, leaning forward.

“Well,” Lisa said before taking a small sip of her drink. “Apparently, Dave is upset with the…pace…at which our relationship is progressing.” She looked at Schuyler and me.
“Nous comprenons?”

I nodded, then saw Schuyler’s mystified expression. “Sex,” I clarified, and Shy’s face turned the same color as her hair. “Right?” I asked Lisa, who nodded. Last I’d heard about this, Dave had been wanting things to move more quickly between them, but Lisa had wanted to wait until Bastille Day—she liked the symbolism of it, for reasons I’d never wanted explained to me.

“But what about Bastille Day?” Schuyler asked.

Lisa shook her head. “It seems David feels that July is too long to continue to wait.” I bit my lip. Whenever Lisa full-named Dave, you knew she was upset.

“Have you guys talked about this?” I asked. I was half-hoping that Lisa might just have made a verbal gaffe much like mine, and we could figure out how to handle our situations together.

“Non,”
Lisa said. “Not exactly. But he’s been dropping a lot of hints lately. And every movie we’ve watched in the last few months has been a losing-your-virginity-on-prom-night movie. I mean, it’s pretty obvious.”

“Wow,” Schuyler said. “So you think he’s planning on prom night?”

“
He
might be,” Lisa said huffily. “But I’m not. I mean, we had an agreement.”

“Do you…” I said slowly. I wasn’t exactly sure how to talk to her about this. I thought I’d have two more
months to figure it out. “I mean, do you
want
to sleep with him?”

Lisa looked from me to Schuyler, and took a breath as though she was about to say something. But then she just fluffed her curls, a gesture I realized she’d stolen from Marion Cotillard.
“Bof,”
she said. “That’s not the issue. The issue is that we had an understanding, and he’s trying to get around it in this underhanded way. And I just…” Lisa paused, and seemed to be having some sort of internal debate, but then just shook her head. “Never mind,” she said. “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Forget I said anything.” I opened my mouth to say something, but Lisa shook her head again.
“C’est fini,”
she said firmly.

“Mad?” Schuyler asked after a small pause, turning to me. “What did you want to talk about?”

I sighed and stared down at my ice cubes. “I think I accidentally asked Nate to sleep with me on prom night.”

Lisa’s mouth dropped open.
“Oh, mon Dieu,”
she murmured.

Schuyler frowned. “How do you
accidentally
ask someone that?” Lisa shot her a look. “I really want to know!” she said quickly. “I mean, so I don’t walk around doing it by mistake.”

“It was just a misunderstanding,” I said. “We were making out during lunch, and then the bell rang….” I told them what had happened, and about my unfortunate hand gesture. “But all I meant by it was that we could
keep making out
on prom night. I just didn’t want to say it out loud!”

“So you implied that you wanted to sleep with him instead?” Lisa asked, raising an eyebrow. “
Tres intelligent
, Mad.”

“It was a mistake!” I said desperately. “I just don’t know what to do now.”

“Do you,” Lisa said, adopting the same tone that I had just used a moment ago with her, “I mean, do you
want
to sleep with him?” I glared at her, but she just shrugged one shoulder. “It’s a valid question,” she said.

I knew it was, but it was one I hadn’t planned on addressing for a while. Like Lisa and Schuyler, I had never slept with anyone. I’d just always assumed that I would know when the time came along. That it would just feel right. And things with Nate had been progressing in a nice way, but at a pace that wouldn’t put us there for a while. I guess I’d thought that maybe we’d get there in a few months, maybe. Not in
five days.
“I just…” I said, shaking the ice in my plastic cup, realizing that I was also stalling. “I just don’t know what
he
thinks happened. I mean, maybe he didn’t take it that way at all. Maybe this is all for nothing. Right?”

“Maybe!” Schuyler said encouragingly.

“Maybe not,” Lisa said. “How did he react after you propositioned him?”

“It was a
hand gesture,
” I said impatiently. “But…well…” I thought about how stunned Nate had looked, and how awkward our goodbye had been. “He seemed kind of freaked out,” I said slowly. “Oh, God, this is bad.”

“Just talk to him,” Schuyler said. “I mean, relationships are about communication.”

“But Nate and I communicate all the time!” I protested. I never felt out of touch with him; if we weren’t texting, we were following each other’s Q updates or iChatting or talking on the phone.

“Isn’t it the best? Connor and I talk about everything,” Schuyler said, getting the dreamy expression that she was perpetually wearing these days. “In fact, I’m going to update my status so he’ll know that I miss him.”

Lisa rolled her eyes at me, but I shook my head, refusing to go along with mocking Schuyler. I was truly happy for her. Connor was her first real boyfriend, and Lisa had been just as bad—if not worse—when she’d started going out with Dave.

Schuyler pulled out her new iPhone and stared down at it for a long moment before tapping the screen tentatively. Her father had bought it for her a month before, hoping that having a new top-of-the-line phone would stop her from throwing it out the car window, as Schuyler had been wont to do with her phones whenever she was talking while driving and thought she’d been spotted by the police. The iPhone—or ShyPhone, as Lisa and I had taken to calling it—had come with pages of apps preinstalled, and as a result, Schuyler had almost no idea how to do simple things, like place a call.

“So,” Lisa said, turning to me. We both knew that Schuyler might be a while. “What are you going to do about Nate?”

“Talk to him, I guess,” I said. I glanced at Schuyler, who was now holding her phone up to her ear and shaking it. “I just wish I didn’t have to.”

“I know what you mean,” Lisa said, giving me a small smile. “
Donc,
what do you think we should do? Make a list? Pro and con?” As soon as she had finished saying this, her smile faded, as though she’d just realized what she’d said. We both looked over at the wooden chair that sat empty.

Making a list had been Ruth’s solution to any problem. Whenever we were talking through something, she’d be writing down the pros and cons, and when we were done, she’d hand over a piece of paper covered with her neat, curly handwriting, and somehow the problem no longer seemed so unmanageable.

“Well,” Lisa said quietly, looking from the chair to me and back again. I just nodded. There wasn’t a whole lot to say about it. But I forgot sometimes that Lisa and Schuyler had lost a friend as well.

“Okay!” Schuyler said triumphantly. “I unlocked it. Oh.” Her face fell as her phone beeped with a text. “I didn’t realize it was so late. I have to get going.”

“Already?” Lisa asked, pulling out her own phone and checking the time.

“Yeah,” Schuyler said, unfolding herself from the couch. “Peyton just got back from boarding school, and my stepmother wants us all to have dinner together.”

I tried to suppress a shudder. Peyton was Schuyler’s stepsister. I’d met her only once, as she seemed to spend most of her time in the Alp-y parts of Europe in boarding schools that she was always having to leave for reasons that Schuyler never fully understood. But once had been enough for me. Peyton made Lisa look calm and placid.

My own phone vibrated, and I looked down and saw that I had a text from my mother.

INBOX 1 of 54

From: Mom

Date: 5/20, 5:35
P.M
.

Hi hon! I’m running late & on my way to get your brother. Can you pick something up for dinner? Thank you! Love, Mom

I shook my head as I read it. My mother insisted on signing her texts, even though I’d told her repeatedly that it wasn’t necessary. “I better go, too,” I said, standing. “I have to bring home dinner.”

“D’accord,”
Lisa said a little huffily.

“What are you going to do about Dave?” Schuyler asked as we threw away our cups and headed out the front door, which was embossed with the Stubbs logo—a grizzled-looking sailor smoking a pipe and holding a mug of coffee, a whale’s tail arching behind him.

“Nothing at the moment,” Lisa said. “But I’m done watching the
American Pie
movies, I can tell you that much.”

“Well, you know you can always call me if you want to talk,” I said.

“Me too!” Schuyler said. Then she glanced at her phone doubtfully. “But, um, if you need to talk right away, maybe call my landline.”

“I’m fine,” Lisa said, waving our words away. “
Tres
fine.” She unlocked her convertible Bug with her clicker.
“But thank you,” she added more quietly. Schuyler gave Lisa a hug, then climbed into her SUV. Lisa got into her car, and both of them pulled out of the parking lot, Lisa waving goodbye to me through her open roof.

I stood alone by my car for a moment, feeling the loss of Ruth once more. Whenever the four of us had hung out, she and I would usually stay a little longer than the others and talk, just the two of us. I sighed, wondering why it was taking me so long to come to terms with the fact that things had changed between us and would never be the same again.

Feeling like some egg rolls might make me feel better, I headed to my car, planning to stop by The Good Person of Szechuan, my favorite Chinese restaurant. But just as I unlocked my door, my phone rang. DEMON SPAWN, the caller ID read. I answered it, wondering why my brother was bothering me.

“Travis?” I asked.

“Hey,” he said. “Go pick up pizza for dinner.”

“Um, excuse me?” I asked.

“Trav, honey, say please,” I heard my mother say—presumably from the driver’s seat.

“Please,” he muttered.

“I’m picking up Chinese,” I said, getting into my car and slamming the door.

“I already placed the order for pizza,” he said. “Go get pizza.”

“Travis,” I said warningly. “That’s really not a nice way to ask me, is it?” I made my tone as loaded as I could,
and from his worried intake of breath, I could tell that my message had gotten through.

“Sorry, Madison,” Travis said, his voice now polite and solicitous. “But would you mind picking up pizza? We’d really appreciate it.”

“Not at all,” I said. “See you at home.”

“Very impressive, honey!” I heard my mother say to Travis before I hung up. I normally had almost no influence over my younger brother, who was thirteen and had, it seemed, been placed on this earth to make my life miserable. But he’d recently started going out—or whatever the current eighth-grade terminology for it was—with Olivia Pearson, Kittson’s younger sister. Travis knew I was friends with Kittson, and seemed to live in fear that unless he stayed in my good graces, I would tell Kittson—who would then tell her sister—all my embarrassing stories about him.

And it had recently become
very important
to Travis that everything keep going well with Olivia, since they were going—as a couple—to Heidi Goldwater’s bat mitzvah on Saturday. I was well aware of this, and getting all the mileage I could out of it. The only downside was that the bat mitzvah was also being held at the Hyatt. But I had investigated, and our respective ballrooms were at opposite ends of the hotel, so chances were we wouldn’t see each other. And even if we did, we’d come to a mutual agreement to pretend we’d never met.

Giving up my dream of egg rolls, I started the car and steered it toward Putnam Pizza.

CHAPTER 4

Song: All The Boys/The Plus Ones

Quote: “As soon go kindle fire with snow, as seek to quench the fire of love with words.”

—Shakespeare

“Madison MacDonald!” a voice called as soon as I stepped into the restaurant. I saw Dave Gold standing in the back, near the ovens. “Fancy seeing you here.”