“We have problems, okay? But he’s my dad. And now he’s ticked off, and they’re watching us. My whole family is messed up. You should have just stayed out of it.”
How could he not understand? “I thought you wanted help. That’s why you wrote me, isn’t it?”
“I wanted you to tell me how to deal with it on my own, not call the stupid authorities.”
I sighed, totally exasperated. How many times were we going to have this conversation? “I didn’t call them—Mr. Leffert did. And you were expecting a whole lot of me, you know that? You came to me for help, and I had to ask for help too. This isn’t a problem that can just be solved overnight.”
He shook his head, disgust radiating out of his every pore. “Yeah, well, I think you should get out of the advice game. You obviously have no clue what you’re doing.”
“Now, just wait a second. I’m pretty good at what I do.” Some blows were just too low.
Bruce laughed. “You think? I’m not so sure. Some of the stuff you tell people . . .”
“What? What about it?”
“It’s all baloney. It doesn’t work in the real world. And then the people who try to take your advice and get burned? They’re left feeling like dorks for listening to you.”
I crossed my arms across my chest, trying to protect myself from the barbs he was throwing at me. Not really effective, but it was all I had. “And have you taken a poll of the people I’ve helped? Do you have some scientific data to back this up?”
“I hear people talk. And I’ve decided that you need to know what it feels like to take your own advice.”
I raised an eyebrow, totally confused. “What do you mean?”
“I want you to go through the back issues of the school paper and make a list of all the advice you’ve given this year. And then you need to take every single piece of advice you’ve handed out.”
“Huh?” I didn’t mean to sound totally clueless, but . . . I was totally clueless.
“You heard me. You have to do everything you’ve told other people to do. So, last week, you told a girl to tell the guy she likes that she likes him. You have to do it too.”
I had a sudden terrible vision of me walking up to Colby and blurting out my feelings. It sent a sick feeling all the way through the very core of me. I snorted to cover the dread. “And just how do you intend to make me do that?”
Bruce smirked. “See, Gina works in the office. And Gina’s brother has some mad computer skills. He hacked into the school’s computer and into the email account Ms. Young uses to collect the questions. He made me a list of all the original email addresses, the ones no one’s supposed to know.” He waved a list in my face. “I know who sent in your questions, and I’m more than ready to print this off a couple hundred times and hand them out. We’re talking, public humiliation times fifty.”
“No. Bruce, you can’t do that.” Chills raced down my arms at the thought of how very, very bad that would be. Amanda was on that list of names, and she would die if everyone knew she’d asked about a boy in her language class. They’d put two and two together soon enough and know she meant Mario—you can’t like a boy without showing it just a little bit—and what with him having a boyfriend all . . . yeah. Humiliation times fifty, since all the kids who’d written in would feel the same way.
“That’s just mean. Why would you do that just to get revenge on me?”
“That’s why. To get revenge on you.” He looked down at me, obviously feeling very sure of himself. “So, what’s it going to be?”
I opened and closed my mouth a few times, so infuriated that I couldn’t even decide what I wanted to say. “You’re whacked, you know that?” I finally managed. “I’m right, and you’re wrong, but you’d rather cause a whole lot of embarrassment for an entire school than to admit it. What’s keeping me from just telling Ms. Young that you have the list? She’d have you on all kinds of disciplinary action for hacking into the school’s computer.”
“See, there’s the thing. In order for a threat to work, I have to care. And I don’t care anymore. Go ahead and tell Ms. Young. In fact, do it right now. And while you’re gone, I’ll just hand this list off to someone, and they’ll be more than happy to pass it along.”
“But . . . but . . . “ While I fished around, trying to come up with some sort of response, some kind of name to call him that would even remotely suit him, I realized something. He was hurting. Deeply. And while I didn’t approve of his choices—not by a long shot—I realized that revenge was the only way he knew how to make himself feel better. I felt sorry for him, but not sorry enough to back down. He was still responsible for his own choices.
“You’re a toad, you know that?” I said after a long moment. “I can’t believe you’d threaten me with doing something that would be so hurtful to so many people.”
“I’m not going to stand here all day and listen to you talk about how much you don’t like what I’m doing. You don’t have to like it. Do we have a deal or not?”
“Fine,” I growled. “I’ll do it. I’ll take every piece of advice I’ve handed out. And if I do that, you promise that list stays confidential?”
“I promise. And yes, you can trust me on that.”
I shook my head. Bruce actually wanted me to trust him after he pulled this stunt? I didn’t see how it was possible.
“Hey, I promise. Football player’s honor.”
For some reason, that didn’t inspire very much confidence either, but I nodded once and strode off. From behind me, I heard him call out, “You have three weeks, Jill.”
Three weeks? That was so unfair.
I spun on my heel and faced him. “What if I gave two people the same piece of advice? Do I have to do it twice?”
He seemed to consider. “No, once is fine. But do it right. No cutting corners.”
“Fine.” I stalked away again, hoping I’d advised someone to murder a football player. That was an assignment I’d carry out with glee.
Chapter Seven
I might have come off a little melodramatic when I called an emergency meeting, but this . . . well, this was an emergency. I asked Dylan and Amanda to meet me at Baskin-Robbins after school. That might not have been the best choice, considering that it was pretty cold outside, but I needed chocolate in the worst way. I ordered a double-scoop of chocolate ice cream with chocolate stuff mixed in and chocolate syrup drizzled over the top. Amanda looked at me in horror—Dylan looked at me with curiosity.
“I’m not sure if we should or should not consider this a suicide attempt,” he said after watching me shovel in the first bite. “Are we supposed to call an ambulance after you go into a coma, or do you want us to sit here and hold your hand while you go toward the light?”
“This means something really bad has happened,” Amanda explained. “Chocolate with chocolate and chocolate . . . We’re talking, horribly, epically bad.”
“So your parents’ divorce is finally sinking in?” Dylan looked at me sympathetically. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“What?” Amanda stared at me, her jaw practically scraping the table. “Your parents are getting a divorce? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because they’ll change their minds,” I said, licking chocolate syrup off my spoon. “I know them—they’re in love. They just need more time and opportunities to remember it.”
“Ah. So you haven’t accepted it yet.” Dylan leaned back in his chair, his hot fudge sundae going untouched while he evaluated me with those eagle eyes. “If that’s not the awful thing that inspired your totally bizarre feast, what happened?”
I outlined my situation with Bruce, not using his actual name. Sure, he was a blackmailer and a really crummy human being, but I was still bound by my code of conduct.
“And I can’t just let him circulate that list of names. If it gets out there, every person who has sent me a letter will be humiliated, and that can’t happen. Not when I can stop it.”
Amanda’s eyes were huge. �
��Oh, please, please don’t let him release those names. I’m on there at least three times.”
“Three times?” I turned and looked at my friend. “Why so many? You could just ask me for advice face-to-face, couldn’t you?”
She played with her spoon, swirling it around in her ice cream. “You’re always too busy, Jill. I try talking to you, but you brush me off.”
I opened my mouth to retort, but then closed it again. This was the second time she’d made this kind of comment in the last couple of days. If it was bothering her enough to bring it up multiple times, maybe it was true.
“Are you going to do it? Go through all your columns and do everything you’ve told other people to do?” Dylan grinned at me.
“Your ice cream’s dripping on the table. And yes, I’m going to do it. He doesn’t care if he gets in trouble, so if I want to keep that list safe, I have to play by his rules. I hate it, but I just don’t see any other way.”
Dylan grabbed a napkin and wiped up the dribble. Then his face turned thoughtful. “So, you have three weeks. It sounds to me like you need a plan. We should count up how many pieces of advice you’ve given, cross out the duplicates, and then make up a schedule. If you divide the number of tasks to be done into the days you have left, you can spread it out evenly and not get stuck having to do seventeen things on the last day.”
“You make this all seem so logical,” I said. “Are you forgetting that this is likely to be very embarrassing for me?”
“So it wasn’t embarrassing to the people you advised in the first place? Why aren’t you willing to do things you told other people to do? Is it only a good idea as long as you’re not the one having to do it?”
After too many seconds of trying to think of a response, I said, “That’s not fair.” The guy sometimes left me without any defense at all.
“Sure it is. You tell a kid to do something and he’s supposed to do it, no questions asked, but when it’s your turn, you get all squirmy. Now who’s being unfair?”
“And who said you could move here one day and start analyzing me and following me around and telling me what to do?”
“Same person who said you could do the same thing to other kids.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Happy, quiet, nerdy little Dylan . . . who was suddenly not so happy, or quiet, or nerdy . . . I spooned up the last of my chocolate sauce and stood. “I have a chart to make.”
“And we’ll come with you.” Dylan stood up too, his ice cream dish in his hand.
“Are you sure you want to? I am, apparently, evil, from what you just said.”
“And evil people need minions.” He grinned, and I was confused. Did this guy have a split personality or something? One minute listing all my faults, and the next, ready to be my best buddy? It made me dizzy.
“Fine.” I walked out of the ice cream parlor, Dylan and Amanda behind me. I wasn’t sure if I felt supported or beat up.
“All right, here’s the file where I save all my columns.” I brought the folder up on my computer.
“Wow. That’s a lot of columns,” Dylan said.
“Well, it is a weekly newspaper.”
Dylan flipped open his notebook and balanced it on his knee. He sat cross-legged on my bedroom floor, somehow looking comfortable in the middle of all my stuffed animals and shoes and half-read books.
“So, how should we get started?” I asked.
“Read through the columns and tell us what advice you gave. I’ll write it down, and then we can type it up once we decide when you’re doing which thing.”
“And we should evaluate how hard it will be to do each thing,” Amanda added from her spot on my bed. “You should do, like, two easy things and one difficult thing each day. Otherwise, you’ll be killing yourself trying to do all the hard stuff at once.”
I was amazed at how calmly and methodically they were approaching this. Of course, they weren’t the ones putting themselves on the line here. It was more like a spectator sport for them. “Okay, let’s do it.”
An hour later, I was even more apprehensive than I’d been at the start. I’d thought my advice was awesome when I first wrote it, but now, seeing everything I’d have to do . . . maybe I should have gotten some ice cream to go. “That’s the last one,” I said, closing the final document.
“All right. It looks to me like you only need to do two things per day to get this done on time. I crossed out the duplicates and deducted Saturdays and Sundays from your time limit—you’ve got to have some time off, you know.” Dylan flashed me a grin. “Would you rather confront a cranky lunch lady about serving horse meat on a Tuesday or a Wednesday?”
I should have been paying more attention when Dylan made up the chart. But because math isn’t my thing, I was more than happy to leave all that equation stuff up to him, determining the difficulty level of each task and trying not to overwhelm me on any given day. But for some reason, he put the thing I dreaded the most on the very first day. That’s right—the first day. He’d made some kind of stupid statement about eating a frog. If you eat a frog for breakfast, everything else you do all day is easy. Whatever.
Then he’d said something almost equally as stupid. “Hard stuff is always easier to do if you hum the theme song from Mission: Impossible while you do it.” Double whatever.
I decided to get this over with before school officially started for the day. I stood in the doorway of the newspaper office, watching Colby at his desk. He was hunkered down over a stack of papers, making notes on them with his red pencil. I hated that red pencil. I think anyone who writes hates the red pencil. Red means bad, and bad means revisions, and I hate revisions.
I clung a little tighter to the string of the balloon I held in my left hand. Amanda had insisted that I go for the balloon instead of the candy bar. Said it would humble me or something—show my blackmailer that I was taking this seriously. A balloon had seemed like such a fun idea when I wrote it, but now, here, holding it and getting ready to walk up and blurt out my true feelings, I felt ridiculous. Like a little girl at the circus or something. All I needed now was some cotton candy. And walking all the way to school with it? Yeah, I needed a car.
I was so tempted to turn around and run down the hall, never to return, but I remembered the list. People were counting on me. And so I took a deep breath and started to hum. Softly, of course. Holding a balloon was awkward enough—announcing to the world that I had a theme song would have been beyond over the top.
I walked up to Colby’s desk, smiled, and said, “Good morning.”
He mumbled something that might or might not have been a reply.
“Hey, Colby. Do you have a minute? To talk?”
I’d never outright asked for his attention before, and to my surprise, he looked up, set his pencil down, and focused on me. “What can I do for you, Jill?”
“I, uh . . .” I’d never been met with the full blast of those incredible eyes before. They were even more gorgeously blue than I realized. My knees went a little trembly, and I swallowed. This was going to be harder than I’d thought. But I had to stay focused on the goal.
“I just wanted to tell you that I like you, and I would enjoy going out with you sometime. If you’d like to go out with me, that is. And here.” I held out the balloon. It was one of those silver Mylar things with a bright yellow smiley face on it. I was going for friendly, but without placing too much romantic expectation on the moment.
He took the string and looked up at me quizzically. “Um, thanks, Jill. No one’s ever given me a balloon before.” I couldn’t tell if he meant it was a happy surprise or a totally creepy one. “And I’m sorry, but I’m not dating this year. I’m buckling down to get ready for college. But thanks. That was nice.”
“Sure. No problem.” I smiled again, too brightly this time, and left the office. Nice? That was nice? What happened to, “Jill, I’m so relieved that you broke this awful silence between us. I’ve been yearning for you since the day we met, but I was too
shy to say anything. Come, my darling, let’s go get pizza together.” Seriously. Was that too much to ask?
I wanted to dash down the hall and disappear into chemistry class, but I was stopped short by Bruce. He had been waiting for me, from the looks of things.
“What?” I snapped.
“I saw you come in with a balloon, and I just had to see what happened next.” He smirked. “Colby? Head-in-the-books Colby?”
“So? Can’t a person choose for him or herself whom he or herself likes?”
“I’m not sure that sentence even made sense. But good for you—looks like you actually talked to him.”
“Yes, I did. I told him I liked him and I asked him out. Or I opened the door so he could ask me out, and he closed it. But that takes care of the first thing on my list, so if you’ll excuse me, I need to get to class.”
“I’m glad you’re holding up your end of the bargain.” I could feel Bruce’s gaze boring into the back of my head all the way down the hall.
Chapter Eight
Dylan and Amanda found me slumped over my lunch tray, contemplating the existence of canned peas. They were totally worthless as a food item, and not even visually appealing. Did they serve a purpose, or were they just there to mock us with their frequent reappearance on the menu?
“She’s doing her internal-dialogue avoidance thing again,” I heard Amanda say.
“What?” I looked up. “I’m not avoiding anything.”
“Sure you are. So, how did it go?” Dylan seemed a little too eager to learn about my utter humiliation, and I was getting ready to send him back to whatever puppy pound he’d escaped from.
“I guess you could say it went over like a lead balloon.”
Dylan seemed to think that my predictable reply was hysterically funny. He hooted and hollered while Amanda looked at me with sympathy.
“Colby thanked me, said no one had ever given him a balloon before, and then told me that he’s not dating at all this year.” I stirred my peas around and then started smashing them with the back of my fork. “But that’s one thing I can cross off my list.”
Take My Advice Page 5