Authors: Mar'ce Merrell

Wicked Sweet (14 page)

BOOK: Wicked Sweet

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Blindness
.

I
f you walked into my house, you would find rooms that adhered to these rules of successful decorating: furniture placed in conversational groupings, a selection of black-and-white photographs, and shelves with height-diverse objects in odd numbered clumps. If a person’s surroundings say a lot about them, you could say my family is cool and calculating, or cautious and orderly. Jillian’s house, with its last-chance-before-the-trash-bin furniture, chaotic patterned curtains made from Indian saris, and wall colors at the extreme ends of the spectrum, could reveal the disorganized and impulsive or represent spontaneity and a love for the quirky.

I expected Will’s house to echo his stubbornness, his disregard for social conventions. From outside appearances, it’s the last stop before assisted living, a plain bungalow with an arthritic foundation. Inside, I expected overstuffed and floral, a chaotic combination of spoon collections, beer cans, and sticky flypaper strips hanging from the ceiling.

When Mrs. Donovan opened the door and hurried me inside, I stopped and stared at the coordinating fabrics without a rose or hydrangea in sight. The walls with chocolate brown and quiet blue accents whispered sophistication. I wondered if Will’s mom watched the same decorating shows that I did. And the smell of vanilla and
sugar! Maybe she had a chef-crush on Nigella, too. Sure a pile of supermarket magazines staggered across the sofa, and under the coffee table a stack of high-cleavage romance novels stumbled, but those details were small leaks from Mrs. Donovan’s personality, as if she couldn’t be completely confined by the rules.

“Chantal.” She offered me a chair. “I’m taking some scones out of the oven. You’d like some tea, then?” We knew each other from volunteering at the food bank, one of those social responsibility things my dad insisted on. I’d never seen Will there, though. “I’ve got a lovely Earl Grey with lavender.”

“Great. Great.” Now I was going to eat her baking while perpetrating my fraud? I wondered if my guilt was flushing red on my cheeks. “Lovely.”

While I waited for her to return I recalculated my assumptions. Mrs. Donovan, from lonely and forlorn to lovely and happy. Will, from sullen and callous to … Honestly, I was stuck.

Scones arrived on a delicate plate, and a teacup on a saucer. As we talked I thought about how Mrs. Donovan resembled Nigella. She had dark hair that with a little product could end up in waves.

I sipped my tea and answered her questions about school and my summer and my parents, almost embarrassed at how much she seemed to like me. And how she wanted me to like her.

Mrs. Donovan had returned from the kitchen wearing a black-and-white paisley apron over her faded jeans and stretched sweatshirt. And she’d combed her hair, slipped on some lipstick in a too-pink color … still, her smile was real.

She didn’t know that her son was out to get me. Love is blind.

She finished the last bite of her scone. “So … you have some plans with Will then?”

I proceeded with caution. “Will’s friend Parker and my best friend Jillian are dating, so we’ve ended up … uh … spending time together.”
Her delight nearly broke my heart.

“I guess I should tell Will you’re here, then, shouldn’t I?” She got up from her chair and set her empty teacup aside.

“Um … sure. Thanks, Mrs. Donovan.”

Like the ingredients of a cake set out on my counter, I have to believe that I have the necessary ingredients to become a convincing imposter. I can think fast, I’m motivated, and I’m not willing to accept defeat.

“Uh … Chantal … uh … great to see you.” Will walks into the living room, his hands in his jean pockets and shoulders slouched. If this is great to see you I wonder what the opposite would be.

“Was I early?” I say. “Didn’t you say ten thirty?” I can’t keep the shaking out of my voice. Lies do not come easy for me.

Will looks uneasily at me and then at his mom. “Oh … um … I was listening to music. And I lost track of time. No. This is perfect.” He sits in the nearest chair to mine. “Perfect.” Will, though, is smooth and clearly practiced at lying.

We smile at each other and take turns looking toward the doorway at his mother. When she senses the awkwardness she retreats. “Oh … I’m going to do the dishes in the kitchen. Just holler if you need anything. Tea. Scones. Lunch.”

Will waits until she’s gone. He smiles. “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

And in that second, or maybe half-second, the way it happens in books and movies, I know the color drains from my face.
I can’t do this.
I want to come out with a quick response, something clever, but I don’t.
Didn’t I have a plan? What was it again? Crud.

“Seriously, Chantal.” Will’s intensity unsettles me further. “Not that I’m complaining or anything. It’s just …” Will listens for kitchen noise, reassurance that his mother is occupied. “Why are you here?”

“I … um … want …” It’s action time. Action. Action. “I want to do a summer project.”

“A what?”

I explain how Jillian and I have always had a summer project and how, now that she’s with Parker, there’s a good chance that there won’t be one. “I like to have a purpose for the summer.”

“So you want me to hang out with you all summer and, like, bake cookies for the day-camp kids?”

“What?” Bake cookies? Uh-oh.

“Well, isn’t that a summer project?”

“Oh. Yeah. No. I didn’t mean that just you and me would do the summer project. I meant that
we
could do a summer project. You and me and Parker and Jillian.”

“O-kay …”

He is not making this easy. “I need your help. Okay?”

He sits back in his chair, nods.

“Our best friends are dating and if I’m not friends with you then I’ll be the third point in a triangle and that’s always … awkward. But if it’s the four of us, I’ll get to hang out with Jillian and we can do a summer project.”

He says nothing, but his face says he’s skeptical.

The panic feeling comes in a rush. My hands shake. I wonder if I’m hypoglycemic, if I should risk pulling a cupcake from my bag. I could tell him it’s my emergency low-sugar stash. I press into the back of my chair. I can almost hear the squished cupcakes cry in protest.

“Well, I do want to do a summer project because it … gives structure … to the summer.” Even though I’m breathing hard between each sentence, I am communicating. Will is listening. “But I miss Jillian, too.” That is not a lie. Even though it’s not the entire truth.

Will strokes the patches of stubble on his chin. “I could be down with that. As long as I get something out of it.” He leans in so close
that when he talks I see three silver fillings in his bottom molars. “I need a girlfriend. And you can help me out there.”

“Um … um …” This is too strange. I’ve got Annelise convinced to flirt with Will to make Parker jealous and I’m planning to send him cakes that I’m sure he’ll believe are from Annelise and now he wants me to help him find a girlfriend? Some other girl could wreck everything. I think fast and, hopefully, smart. “My only real friend is Jillian, and she’s, like, taken. I’d help you if I could.”

“You can.” He stares at me. Really stares at me.

My eyes must go wide as the panic sets in again. He wants me to be his girlfriend?

“Relax.” He laughs, then, whispers, “You’re just for show.” He motions his head toward the kitchen.

Oh I get it. The classic villain move—make friends with the good guys to convince people that you’re good. He needs me to keep his mother happy.

“So … you’ll help me with getting the four of us to do a summer project if I pretend to be your girlfriend.” I cross my arms and sit back. I thought the summer project would keep Will busy and, more importantly, away from me. He could be in charge of one thing, me of another, and then I’d have lots of space to bake and deliver the cakes. And now he wants me to pretend to be his girlfriend? Doesn’t that imply time spent together, just the two of us? “Well, it could work, but we have to have rules.”

“Rules?” He clenches his jaw.

“Relax.” I smile. “I have rules for everything. It makes things easier, not harder.”

“It’s not a problem. I can come up with rules, too.”

“That’s fair, I guess.” I take a deep breath. This is not easy. “Um … fi rst … you and me … we are friends. Only friends. No physical contact. It’s … I don’t really need the complication.”

“Agreed.” He nods. “Except. Around my mom, we definitely need to make it look like we could be more than friends, okay?” He waits for my agreement. “And around everyone else at the lake, we’re just friends.”

I nod and keep my face neutral. They don’t need to know about this. He wants to make sure Annelise thinks he’s available. Yes. This works. I try to ignore the disappointment that twists in my stomach. I know I’m not what he, or any other guy wants. I try to imagine myself as fifteen or twenty pounds lighter. Would that make me better looking?

“This is a deal breaker.” He interrupts my self-flogging. “You’re going to have to trust me. Like if I hold your hand or something it’s only a part of our image. Okay? You can’t, like, debate with me in front of people.”

I nod. We go through some more rules: no dating other people because that could wreck our “image,” no showing up at each other’s house unannounced, but no refusing to come over when invited. Suddenly Will asks, “How do I know you’re not playing me after what happened at the party?”

“I have never been a vengeful person.” I say that straight up. I don’t think I have ever wanted to hurt someone, even if they’ve hurt me. Until now.

“Everyone wants revenge, Chantal. You just hide it.” I hate his smugness and, interestingly, anger fuels my ability to think.

“Trust me,” I say. “Like you said.”

Parker

Not a Masked Man
.

I
really wasn’t out to rescue her. I walked to her house as a test. See, if I could pass her house without knocking on the door, I knew she was a temporary date, not the kind of girl I wanted to date-date.

But, of course, it got complicated. My mother would have called the cops. I saw the swarm of boys wailing on that guy and his girlfriend’s truck with their hockey sticks and I was, like, holy crap, this is unbelievable. Jillian’s mom was screaming. The two littlest kids, and they were in diapers or those pull-up pants, they were calling him a bastard. By the time the truck tires screeched out of the cul-de-sac, the mom was gone and the boys surrounded Jillian. She covered her face with her hands, and I almost turned around to leave, but I was hooked, like watching some YouTube viral thing you know is too raw. It was, as Will would say, White Trash Central.

And this was the girl who beat me in a foot race, the girl who was number two in our class, the girl who didn’t sleep around, with anyone. She wasn’t white trash, no matter how much it looked like it from the outside.

I cheer for the underdog: the Edmonton Oilers, the Cleveland Browns, the Baltimore Orioles. I like Will even though he’s a scrapper. From where I live, it’s easy to succeed. For people like Will and Jillian, it’s not.

I walked up the driveway carrying one of the abandoned hockey sticks.

“Parker. It’s not a good time.” Jillian picked up both of the little boys, one on each side. They gripped her sweatshirt, strangely contorting her shape, and buried their runny noses in her neck. She didn’t seem to notice that she looked like hell; her hair was back in a greasy ponytail, her eyes ringed in yesterday’s makeup. I’d never seen Annelise that rough; even the times we’d fallen asleep watching a movie at her place she woke up near perfect.

“I … uh …” I searched Jillian’s face for what she wanted to hear. She chewed the flaky skin on her bottom lip. The boys seemed to be waiting to find out what I was going to say, because none of them moved. “Um … I just came by to see how you were doing.”

“It’s embarrassing.” Jillian stared at the ground, like the shoe gazer, trying to figure out which pedal to play next.

“It’s life.” I shrugged. Man, I was dying, like playing a show and realizing the crowd had drifted away. And then, channeling a geek philosopher/health teacher, I added, “Anyway. It’s not your fault.”

One of the three boys sniffled behind me. His brother punched him in the arm. “Quit cryin’, ya baby, or I’ll give you somethin’ to cry about.”

I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. Will used to punch me all the time to toughen me up. Just like us, these kids did stupid, brave shit like attack a grown man and his truck with hockey sticks. I pointed at the slivers of mirror spiking the driveway. I laughed. The three boys with the hockey sticks sort of came around.

“Hey, you got any nets?” I asked the crier. He looked up at me through his flop of brown hair. He frowned but I figured I had him. When I was his age and all my brothers were too busy to hang, sometimes a miracle happened and one of them would take me out to throw the ball. The three boys whooped to the backyard to get the nets and goalie pads.

“Thanks.” Jillian, I could tell, was more relieved than enthusiastic. “I’ll … um … get the Double Minor in some clothes.”

“Double Minor?”

“You know, two penalties at the same time. Hockey?”

“I know. It’s just … funny. Really funny.”

“You think so?”

I nodded.

“Well, if you’re still up for it, I guess we can go for ice cream.”

“Sure.” I wanted to reach out and kiss her. I wanted her to know that I wasn’t looking for the emergency exit.

BOOK: Wicked Sweet

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