by Piper Banks
“Besides,” I said, “it’s not like you’re exactly the town’s Bad Girl.”
Hannah could be selfish and was maybe the most narcissistic person I’d ever met. But she didn’t drink or take drugs, either. I wasn’t sure if her disdain for such substances was for moral or aesthetic reasons. I’d once overheard her disparaging some girls in her class at Orange Cove High for being partiers, finishing by tossing her hair and saying, “Don’t they know that drinking makes your skin all gross and puffy and stuff?”
Of course, she did throw a party a few months earlier, when my dad and her mom were off on a romantic weekend in Miami. That was certainly wilder than anything I’d done. But I don’t think Hannah enjoyed the party much. She mostly just seemed annoyed at the mess her friends had left for her to clean up.
But now Hannah smiled enigmatically. “Like I’d waste my time making a splash in this Podunk town,” she said.
That was a sentiment I hadn’t heard my stepsister express before. Hannah was one of the reigning princesses of Orange Cove High. She’d always seemed to revel in her local popularity.
“As soon as I’m old enough, I’m going to move to Manhattan,” Hannah continued.
At this, Peyton stopped sniping at my dad and fell silent. I could see her face in profile, and it seemed to grow even more pinched and twitchy than usual. Clearly, Hannah’s trip to Manhattan had made an impression on her. . . . And Peyton didn’t seem too happy about it.
“Are you going to go to college there?” I asked.
Hannah shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t really see the point of college. I just want to be one of those women who goes to parties and gallery openings and things like that.”
“A socialite?” I asked.
“Exactly,” Hannah said, favoring me with her prettiest smile.
The fact that someone so vapid and shallow could be so beautiful had often made me seriously doubt in the existence of a fair and just God.
“That’s your life’s ambition? To be a regular on the Manhattan party circuit?” I asked, shocked that anyone—even Hannah—could aspire to such a goal. “Don’t you want a career?”
“A career?” Hannah wrinkled her nose, as though I’d just suggested she volunteer her free time giving pedicures at a homeless shelter. “No way. It would totally get in the way of all of the events I’d want to attend. Once I’m really old, like thirty or so, I’ll probably decide to settle down and marry someone. As long as he has his own jet and a house in the Hamptons.”
“It’s good to have standards,” I said.
Hannah nodded seriously, not realizing I was being sarcastic.
“And will you and this jet-owning man have kids?” I asked.
Hannah looked horrified at the idea. “No way! Do you have any idea what having a baby does to your body? It makes it all stretched out and saggy.” She shuddered in horror at the idea. “No, we’ll adopt. Like Angelina Jolie did. She has all of those kids she got from third world countries. I’d totally do that. . . . If I could pick out the kid, of course. I’d want to make sure I got a cute one.”
This left me speechless. I gaped at my stepsister.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Hannah,” Peyton said, jumping into the conversation. “You’re going to college. And that’s the end of it.”
“Why? Jackie didn’t go to college,” Hannah said.
“Who’s Jackie?” I asked.
“My stepmom,” Hannah said proudly. “And she’s had an amazing life. She used to go to Studio 54, and she knew Mick Jagger and . . . and . . . well, a bunch of other celebrities who I can’t remember. They’re all really old now, anyway. But it was all very glamorous and exciting. Jackie said she’d have died if she’d had to miss out on all of it just to go to some boring college.”
“Jackie,” Peyton said, “has never worked a day in her life.”
I thought this was a bit ironic coming from Peyton, who had inherited millions from her family in mouthwash money. But I decided it wouldn’t be prudent to point this out at the moment, not while Peyton was still fuming about waiting so long for my arrival.
“She did too work,” Hannah protested. “She was a model.”
Peyton snorted. “Participating in a charity fashion show is not a modeling career.”
“She was in a hair commercial, too,” Hannah said.
Peyton glanced back at Hannah. “There’ll be plenty of time for you to move to New York after you get your education. I don’t want to hear any more nonsense about not going to college. And if I have to make that a condition of your trust fund, believe me, I will.”
Her sharp tone startled me. I’d never heard Peyton be so strict with Hannah. And Hannah was obviously surprised, too, because for once she didn’t argue back. Instead she crossed her arms again and slumped back in her seat.
“Miranda,” Peyton said, turning to stare coldly at me. I had just unwrapped my Kit Kat bar and had it halfway to my mouth when she spoke. I froze under her icy gaze. “I don’t want you eating in my car.”
“Honey, Miranda’s starving,” Dad protested mildly. “She needs a snack.”
Peyton pursed her lips so tightly together, they were lined in white.
“I’d better not find any chocolate smears on the leather,” she finally said, her tone menacing.
“Okay,” I mumbled through a mouthful of Kit Kat.
We rode the rest of the way home in total silence.
Back at the beach house, I greeted my brindle greyhound, Willow, who was overjoyed at our reunion. She romped around me, slurping at my hands with her long pink tongue and grinning up at me. Her long, skinny tail wagged happily.
“Hi, girl. I missed you, too,” I said, dropping to my knees and hugging her.
Once Willow had settled down, I ate a few slices of leftover pizza I found in the fridge, managed to stand up long enough to take a shower, and finally dropped into bed, exhausted. I pulled the sheets up to my nose, closed my eyes, and immediately fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep.
I awoke to the sound of a voice. More specifically, Hannah’s voice.
“Miranda?” she was saying. “Mi-ran-da . . . wake up!”
She appeared to be sitting on the edge of my bed. I decided to ignore her, hoping she’d go away.
“Are you asleep?” she asked. This time she bounced up and down on the edge of the bed, jostling me.
“Yes. Go away,” I said.
“You can’t be asleep if you’re talking to me,” Hannah said triumphantly.
“I’m talking in my sleep,” I grumbled.
“Really?”
“Yes. Go. Away.”
“Come on. This is important,” Hannah said. She bounced again.
I opened my eyes and gave her what I thought was my evilest of evil looks.
“Why are you squinting like that?” she asked. “Does your nose itch?”
“Hannah, what do you want?” I asked groggily.
“How was your trip?” she asked.
I stared at her and then turned to look at my alarm clock. A red 9:52 was glowing at me. I groaned and fell back against my pillow.
“You woke me up to ask me how my trip was?”
“We didn’t get a chance to talk earlier,” Hannah said.
“We were sitting side by side in the car for over an hour.”
“I didn’t feel like talking then.” Hannah reached over and switched on my bedside lamp. The light was so bright, it felt like it was piercing my eyeballs. I groaned and pulled the covers up over my head.
“Have you talked to Dex yet?” Hannah asked.
“No,” I said through the soft weight of the down comforter.
“Why not?”
She sounded genuinely concerned, so I threw back the comforter and looked at her.
“He’s dating someone else,” I said.
“No!” Hannah said, looking shocked. “But he was so into you!”
I shrugged, trying to disguise my pain by feigning indifference. “He never got in
touch with me when I was in London. Then my best friend said she saw him out at the movies on a date.”
“How did she know he was on a date? Did she ask him?”
“Of course not!”
“Well, why not?”
“Because that would have been weird. She’s only met him once. She couldn’t exactly march up to a guy she barely knows and demand to know if the girl he was with was his date,” I said.
“She could have done it in a subtle way. Besides, that’s not the point,” Hannah said.
“It’s not?”
“No. The point is that before you jump to, like, conclusions about this other girl, you should find out if it was even really a date,” Hannah said. She crossed her legs and tossed her golden blond hair over her shoulder.
“First of all, he couldn’t have been cheating on me, because we weren’t officially going out. We only had one date. And it wasn’t even a real date. I mean, he didn’t ask me out or anything. And second, I told you, he hasn’t gotten in touch with me since that night. I think it’s pretty obvious that he doesn’t like me,” I said.
“But I know he likes you.”
My heart gave a little skitter of hope. “Did he tell you that?”
“Well . . . no,” Hannah conceded. My heart stopped skittering. “But I could totally tell from the way he was looking at you at the Snowflake,” Hannah said. “And when I asked Dex to meet you at the dance, he was really into the idea.”
“Yeah, well.” I shrugged, wishing Hannah would go away and let me get back to sleep. This conversation was too depressing to stay awake for. “I guess we were both wrong.”
“I still think you should find out what happened. I’ll talk to him for you.”
“No!” I practically shouted. Having my stepsister interrogate Dex about why he’d dumped me for the Laughing Girl was pretty much the one thing that could make this situation even more mortifying than it already was. “Please don’t say anything to him, Hannah. Please.”
“Okay, okay, I won’t say anything,” Hannah said, a bit too airily for my comfort.
“Promise,” I insisted.
Hannah inhaled deeply and then sighed. “Fine. I promise I won’t say anything to him. But for someone who’s supposed to be a genius, you’re being really dumb.”
“Gee, thanks,” I said.
“I mean it. If I saw Emmett out with another girl, I wouldn’t automatically assume that they were on a date, or that he didn’t like me anymore. I’d wait and make him explain,” Hannah continued.
I just looked at her. Only someone as gorgeous as Hannah would have the self-confidence to assume that her boyfriend wasn’t cheating on her if she caught him out with another girl. But, then, who would cheat on Hannah? Emmett certainly wouldn’t. He adored her.
Emmett was a junior at Geek High, and absolutely beautiful. He had chiseled cheekbones, wide shoulders, and sun-bleached blond hair. I used to have a major crush on him, but then he and Hannah started dating. At first I’d been traumatized by their romance, but eventually, I got over it and Emmett. I had to admit, he and Hannah made an adorable couple. They both looked like they’d walked hand in hand off the pages of a J.Crew catalogue.
“So, guess what?” Hannah said, tiring of a conversation that didn’t revolve around her. “Mom’s throwing me a sweet-sixteen birthday party next weekend.”
I had a sudden vision of all of Hannah’s friends sitting around the living room, wearing birthday hats and looking bored, while Peyton tried to talk them into hitting a piñata with a broomstick.
“At first I was like, no way. Birthday parties are soooooo juvenile. But then Mom told me it’s going to be at the Canyon,” Hannah continued.
“The canyon?” I repeated, confused. We didn’t have canyons in Florida. Was it possible Hannah was throwing her party somewhere out West? Like in California or Nevada?
“Yeah. That new restaurant downtown. Mom planned the whole thing while I was away as a welcome-home surprise for me,” Hannah said. “We’re going to have the restaurant all to ourselves, and there’s going to be a band and everything.”
I couldn’t help but wonder if Peyton had planned the party in order to compete with Hannah’s stepmom, Jackie, who always spoiled Hannah rotten whenever she visited. Then again, as evil as Peyton was, she did seem to genuinely love Hannah. Sure, she expressed that love by showering her daughter with material goods, but even so. There was real affection there. It’s pretty much the only thing that’s convinced me so far that Peyton isn’t directly employed by the devil to wreak chaos and misery on the world. Unless the minions of Satan are capable of love . . .I wasn’t sure about that. It might require some Internet research.
“Anyway, you have to come,” Hannah continued.
“Really? You want me there?” I asked, surprised. Hannah and I had reached a détente in our previously hostile relationship. . . . But that didn’t necessarily mean she was going to start being nice to me in front of her friends.
“Uh-huh. It’ll be fun. And you should bring a date,” Hannah continued.
“Can I bring my friend Charlie?” I asked.
Even though Hannah had met Charlie at the Snowflake Gala— which Hannah attended as Emmett’s date—she looked at me blankly.
“Boy or girl?” she asked.
“Girl. You met her. Remember? My best friend? The artist?” I reminded her.
Hannah still looked blank.
“She has pink hair?” I tried again.
“Oh . . . right. I remember. No, you can’t bring her,” Hannah said.
“Why not?” I asked, stung.
“Because you have to bring a real date. A guy. Like Dex,” Hannah said.
I sighed heavily. “I’m not bringing Dex,” I said.
“So who are you going to bring?” she asked.
I could always bring Finn, I thought. But, then again, probably not the best idea. Finn is incapable of missing the opportunity to pull a prank. He’d end up doing something that he alone would find funny—like switching out the Diet Coke with the full-sugar, full-calorie Coke to screw with the girls who had eating disorders—but that would tick off almost everyone else. And I’d end up in trouble by association.
“I’m not. I’ll just come on my own,” I said.
Hannah pouted. “But you can’t. Everyone’s going to have a date,” she said.
It was the story of my life: dateless among the dated. I wondered briefly if Henry would consider flying out for the event, before dismissing that idea as crazy.
“I’m going back to sleep,” I said.
I shut my eyes. Hannah sighed heavily. I felt the bed shift as she stood, and then a moment later my door squeaked open and closed with a soft thud. I was finally, blessedly, alone.
Chapter 10
Still on London time, I was up and dressed by five the next morning. As a result, I was the first one to arrive at geology class, a subject I was just starting that semester. While I waited for the rest of the class to arrive, I opened my new laptop and checked my e-mail.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Greetings from London
Hi Miranda,
Hope you had a nice flight back. Think of me here in cold, gloomy London while you’re basking in the Florida sunshine.
Top Three Reasons I want to visit America, in reverse order:
3. Not having to wait for all of the top movies to be released.
2. Getting to hear people refer to their trousers as “pants.”
1. To see you.
Yours,
Henry
I felt a little squirm of pleasure in my stomach. Henry wanted to see me! Maybe it hadn’t just been a holiday fling after all! Okay, it was crazy to think that we could have a proper relationship living so far away from one another, and on different continents at that. But even so . . .he was thinking about me. And that was a very, very nice feeling. Especially after the sting of being so summarily rejected by Dex.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Greetings from Florida
Hi Henry,
It may be sunny here, but trust me, I’d much rather be walking through St. James’s Park playing Top Three with you than sitting here in boring old Geek High.
Top Three Reasons You Should Visit America, in reverse order:
3. Hamburgers and onion rings at the Orange Cove Grill.
2. Going to the beach (have you ever surfed?).
1. I’m here.
I read my e-mail over a few times before sending it, hoping it didn’t sound too dorky, and even then I felt a nervous flutter in my stomach as I hit the send button. We were flirting via e-mail! I’d never done that before. Then again, I’d hardly ever flirted before, even in person.
“Hey, world traveler,” a familiar voice said.
I looked up and saw Finn loping into class. He had his knapsack slung over one shoulder, his laptop tucked under his arm, and he was grinning at me. Finn was very tall, very thin, and very pale. He had shaggy brown hair that fell into his blue-gray eyes and a scar over his mouth from the surgery he had as a baby to correct a cleft lip.
“Hey!” I said. “I thought you were taking Environmental Science?”
“And miss out on Rocks for Jocks? Not a chance,” Finn said, swinging into the chair next to mine.
“Rocks for Jocks?” I asked, amused. Geek High isn’t exactly known for its jock population. In fact, the only sports teams the school fronted were golf and tennis. “You do know Mr. Douglass is teaching this class, don’t you?”
Finn paled. “Douglass? I thought Keegan was teaching it,” he said.
Mr. Douglass was the only teacher at Geek High that Finn feared. Well, maybe feared wasn’t the right word. . . . I don’t think Finn was actually afraid of Douglass. But the two of them had certainly never gotten along. Most of the Geek High faculty found Finn’s easy humor and good-natured antics charming, but not Douglass. He was an old grouch who lectured in a monotone and was always happy to hand out detentions to anyone not paying attention in his class. And Douglass detentions were the worst. Usually, getting a detention at Geek High just involved sitting in the teacher’s room after school, working quietly. And let’s face it—in a high school full of geeks, the opportunity for some quiet study time wasn’t that onerous of a punishment.