“You must be using the wrong kind then,” she said, following me into the Dungeon. “Hmm, wait a sec.” She dug around in her bottomless purse and pulled out a small clear jar. “This is an all-natural mineral foundation. It won’t clog your pores.”
I took the jar and mumbled a half-hearted, “Thanks.” Jessica seemed bound and determined to fix me.
“Wear it tomorrow so I can see if it’s a good shade for you.” She surveyed the dim quarters of the Dungeon. “This area has horrible lighting. I’ve only been down here once, with Brent. We met Dylan here the other day. His locker is right there,” she said, gesturing to the locker four doors down from mine and Ashley’s.
“Dylan,” I said, twirling my combination lock. “The guy in our chemistry class, right? The one who’s always so serious?”
“He’s not like that all the time. I’ve known Dylan since seventh grade. He’s Brent’s friend too…they’re on the team together.”
“I’ve seen him down here. I didn’t realize you were friends with him.”
Then it occurred to me that this Dylan was the same guy Ashley had commented on about a week before. We’d been getting our books together at our locker at the end of the day when she’d suddenly elbowed me in the ribs.
“Ow,” I’d yelped. “What?”
She’d leaned in close and whispered, “He’s cute, isn’t he?”
“Who?”
She shushed me and cocked her head to the left of us. I followed her gaze to the nicely-built blond boy a few feet away, bent over his combination lock. I recognized him from chemistry as the guy who sat in back and never smiled. Or spoke. He was cute, if you liked the athletic type. Which Ashley obviously did. And Ashley rarely noticed members of the opposite sex. She was usually too busy with school, the millions of clubs she’d joined back in September, and her church youth group. I hadn’t seen this kind of spark in her eyes since we were twelve, when we watched Dirty Dancing on TV one night and she developed a massive crush on Patrick Swayze.
“Here you go,” I told Jessica now, handing over the chemistry notes.
“Thanks.” She put the papers in her purse. “I’d better catch up before we start labs, I guess.”
It hit me then—my brilliant plan. “Hey, you know what McDowell said about labs? About how we’ll work in groups of four? Well, maybe we could get a group together. Like you and me and my friend Ashley…and maybe Dylan?”
Jessica shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
I shut my locker, a pleased little smile on my face. Won’t Ashley be surprised when labs start, I thought. She’d never have to know about my involvement. Well, on second thought, if she and Dylan did end up getting together, maybe I’d tell them both how I’d orchestrated the whole thing. Ashley would be extremely grateful, of course, and Dylan might even crack a smile.
****
I promptly forgot about my matchmaking scheme a week later when Michael called with some news for me.
“I’m coming home this weekend.”
Suddenly, the room seemed a lot brighter. “Really?”
“I’m leaving Friday at noon, so I should get in around six or seven.”
“Best news I heard all day,” I said, smiling.
Finally, he was coming home. It had been almost six weeks since we’d last been together, the longest stretch ever. And I was happy because I knew, deep down, that everything would be okay again once we laid eyes on each other, face to face and in person. Everything would go back to being like it was before he left. I just knew it.
This phone call—which took place on a Tuesday—kicked off one of the longest weeks of my life. School was a total write-off; all I did was sit there like a lump, daydreaming. Most of my teachers assumed I was deep in thought, struck speechless by their inspiring lectures. Except of course for Madame Bedeau, who always took it personally when a student didn’t seem riveted to the discussion.
“Mademoiselle Tina!”
“Huh?” I said, coming to. Beside me, Jessica snickered.
“Attention, s'il vous plaît! Réveillez-vous!”
I cleared my throat and sat up straight, picking up my pen. “Je suis désolé.”
Madame Bedeau’s flinty eyes bored into mine for a moment, and then she continued with the lesson.
After class, Jessica started teasing me. “Taylor can’t stop thinking about her chéri,” she said, batting her eyes.
“Fermez la bouche, Jess.”
“Je parle la vérité, Taylor.”
“What?” Jessica was born in Montreal and had lived there until she was five, so her fluency in French equaled that of Madame Bedeau. This bugged the hell out of the old lady. I once asked Jessica why she bothered to take the course if she already knew the language, and she told me she liked to take French every year for two reasons: to bag an easy A and to annoy narcissistic teachers.
“Never mind.” She made a beeline for the nearest girl’s room. “I just need to fix my hair before we go to lunch.”
Her hair looked flawless to me, but I followed her into the washroom anyway. I knew better than to argue. To Jess, image was everything.
The washroom was mobbed with girls washing their hands and fixing their hair. Most of them simply ran wet fingers through their manes and left. But not Jess. She stood in front of the mirror for at least five minutes, smoothing and adjusting and using this conditioning spray that smelled like strawberries.
“Come here,” she said to me when she was finally done and her hair literally sparkled.
I stayed where I was, eyeing her with suspicion. She still had her index finger on the spray nozzle, poised and ready to go. “No,” I said.
She rolled her eyes so dramatically that her eye shadow began to flake. “You need some of this, Taylor. Those fly-aways are driving me mad.”
“You have issues.”
She inched her way over to me and began to spritz me down. “No, you do. You have this gorgeous, thick hair and you don’t take care of it properly. That’s like…a crime.”
I gritted my teeth until she had her fill of treating me like her favorite Barbie doll, and then it was time to break for lunch. We released our strawberry scent into the halls as we trotted to the cafeteria.
“You sitting with us today?” Jessica asked at the entrance to the caf.
“If you don’t mind.”
“Of course we don’t mind.”
I smiled at her gratefully. Because Ashley had joined practically every group and committee in school and rarely made it to the cafeteria anymore, and because Brooke and Alex were plastered together 24/7 and I refused to be a third wheel, I had recently started eating lunch with Jessica and her friends. This was my third day sitting with them, but I still didn’t feel comfortable. Not because they weren’t welcoming, because they were (for the most part). I just wasn’t sure how much I had in common with any of them. All the girls were like Jessica—trendy and chic, very much into appearances. As for the boys, most of them were typical jocks—competitive, boastful, and loud. Hopefully, with my new-and-improved hair and skin tone, I had a prayer of fitting in here. Maybe I’d even let my nails grow again.
“It’s about time,” Mallory said as Jess and I approached the table with our food. “I have a splitting headache and I know you must have some Advil in that personal drugstore you carry around.”
“At your service,” Jessica said, reaching into her magical purse and unearthing a small bottle. She handed it to Mallory, who shook two caplets into her palm and then swallowed them with a gulp of diet Coke. Mallory and Jessica were best friends, despite the fact that they were constantly at each other’s throats. I liked Mallory, even though she whined too much and her hair bothered me. She wore it waved over one eye, making me feel like I was eating lunch across from Cyclops.
“God, my head is pounding,” she whimpered.
“She’s been bitching since, like, this morning,” Lia told us. She was Jess’s other best friend, a tiny girl with beautiful, straight black hair that fell
almost to her waist. “I told her she should go home.”
“How would I get there?” Mallory said. “I can’t walk.” They both lived out in Rocky Lake too.
“Go to the nurse.” Jessica opened her diet Coke, their collective beverage of choice. “That’s what I do when I want to get out of physics. I just tell Nurse Margie that I have wicked cramps.”
“Who the hell has cramps, like, twice a week?” Lia said.
“Jessica has PPMS,” Mallory said with a smirk.
“Bite me,” Jess told her.
“PPMS?” I said, fighting with the plastic wrap on my pre-made sandwich. What did they seal these things with, crazy glue?
Mallory looked at me, flicking her hair off her face long enough for me to catch a quick glimpse of her other eye. Well, at least it existed. “Permanent pre-menstrual syndrome.”
“Oh.” I gave my plastic wrap another futile yank. Wordlessly, Jessica grabbed my sandwich and opened the wrap for me, using her talons to loosen the edges. “Thanks,” I said.
She squinted at my stubby nails. “You really should stop biting your nails. Not attractive.”
“I know.” I tucked my fingers into my palms, ashamed. They all had such beautiful, long, healthy-looking nails.
“My mom works at Cascades Spa in Weldon,” Lia told me. “Once your nails grow out, you should, like, come in for a manicure.”
“Okay,” I said, pleased. “Thanks.”
“Maybe you could get your eyebrows done while you’re there,” Mallory suggested.
I swallowed a mouthful of sandwich. “Um…sure.”
“Eyebrow waxes don’t hurt that much,” Jess told me.
“Ha,” Lia said. “A brow wax is a walk in the park compared to a Brazilian. Like, trust me.”
Did I even want to ask? No, I decided, I did not. I ate my sandwich, drank my milk, and kept quiet as the three of them discussed hair-removal procedures and how they compared, pain-wise. Listening to them, it was all I could do not to run away screaming.
“Where in the hell are the guys?” Mallory said when the topic of unwanted body hair finally died off. She craned her neck to survey the cafeteria. “Zach told me yesterday that he’d see me at lunch today.”
“They had some soccer meeting thingie,” Jessica said, draining her bottle of Coke. “Brent mentioned it this morning.”
Mallory rolled her eye. “Of course.”
“I’m so glad the season will be over soon.”
I’d noticed that none of them seemed to be big soccer fans. Or know much of anything about the sport, really. They just liked the status of being the girlfriends of big-deal sports guys. They didn’t even cheer on their boyfriends at the games half the time, claiming it was “too cold” out on the field this time of year. Our school’s team did really well too, always getting a lot of recognition in the school paper and during morning announcements.
Jessica suddenly stiffened beside me. “Oh joy. Look who’s headed this way.”
Mallory perked up. “The guys?”
Lia sighed. “No. It’s Jill.”
“Crap.”
They all sat very still, as if Jill were a carnivorous dinosaur that pounced only when it sensed movement. It didn’t work. Jill sidled up to our table and made herself right at home next to Jess. “Hi, girls,” she said, all perky.
“Hey,” we said in unison.
After only three days at this table, I already understood why most girls disliked Jill Holloway. She dated Austin Kerr, the unofficial “star player” on the soccer team, but this didn’t stop her from openly flirting with other girls’ boyfriends. She was attractive if you liked the obvious, trashy type (which plenty of boys did, believe me). Jill always tried her best to integrate herself with Jess and her group, and refused to take the hint when they snubbed her over and over again. Behind her back they referred to her as A.W., as in Attention Whore.
“I had to go get a coffee because I’m freezing,” Jill said, oblivious to the frosty reception she was receiving. “I wish they’d start turning the heat on in here before November.”
I peeked over at her to see what kind of outrageous outfit she had on today. Black mini skirt, tight blue top that showcased her ample cleavage, and sandals. No wonder she was freezing.
“You should, like, put a sweater on,” Lia said in this fake helpful voice. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jess’s mouth twitch.
“I didn’t bring one.” Jill folded her arms over her chest. “Everyone’s been staring at my high beams all morning.”
“How embarrassing,” Jessica said, though the entire school knew Jill thrived on that kind of attention. On the first day of school she came dressed in shorts that ended just below her butt cheeks and a low-cut tank top with spaghetti straps. She’d been sent home to change within an hour, but not before inciting whiplash in dozens of boys.
“So, um, we were just about to leave,” Mallory said, and began piling the remnants of her lunch onto a tray. We all followed suit while Jill stayed seated, her lips curled into a little pout.
“Oh,” she said, then gathered her bag and stood up with us. “I’ll see you all at the game later then, I guess.”
Jessica got this confused look on her face, and I knew this was the first she’d heard of any game later.
“We’ll be there,” Lia said, flicking her eyes to Mallory and then Jessica. They both stared back at her, baffled.
“See ya later.” Jill waved and slithered away.
When she was out of earshot, Mallory turned on Lia. “‘We’ll be there’?”
“If Jill’s going, then so am I,” Lia said. “Do you think I, like, want her anywhere near Nick when I’m not around?”
Mallory frowned. “You’ve got a point there.”
The four of us exited the cafeteria and headed for—you guessed it—the nearest washroom. Jess’s friends were almost as mirror-obsessed as she was. While they primped, I slid into a stall.
“I guess we’re going to the game then,” I heard Jessica say. “Great. Just what I want to be doing on a Thursday afternoon—freezing my tits off on a soccer field for two hours while my boyfriend chases after a stupid ball.”
“Would you rather he chase after Jill?” Mallory said.
Jessica made a scoffing sound. “Brent knows I’d kill him if he ever so much as looks twice at that skank.”
I flushed the toilet and came out of the stall. The three of them were still at it, freshening and fixing and admiring. Jessica watched me as I soaped up my hands at the sink next to her.
“Want to come, Taylor? It’s not as bad as I make it out to be. Cute guys in shorts…running and sweating…”
I felt a stab of disappointment. This was the first time she had asked me to do something with her outside of school, and I had to turn her down. “I have to work today.”
“Oh yeah.”
“Maybe next time,” Lia said, adjusting her headband. “The more girls we have keeping an eye on Jill, the better.”
I nodded. I had some personal experience with boyfriend-stealing piranhas like Jill. First there was Kara Neilson, who’d swooped in on Brian. Then there was Elena Brewster, who spent all of last year trying to steal Michael away from me whenever I turned my back. I couldn’t stand girls who thought they had a right to any male who struck their fancy, girlfriends be damned.
After lunch I daydreamed my way through math and English, both of which dragged on endlessly, and then met Ashley at our locker.
“Where were you at lunch?” I asked her.
“Yearbook meeting,” she said, unhooking her backpack from her shoulder. “I wish you’d join up, Taylor. We really need people. So does the Drug Awareness committee and the Interact Club and the—.”
“No, thanks.” She was always on me to join this or that, even though I’d told her a million times that I wasn’t the joiner type and was busy enough already with school and my job. “Do you need a drive home today?” I asked, easing her away from the subject. “Or do you have anoth
er meeting right now?”
“I have a piano lesson at four.” She rifled through the books and papers on the top shelf of our locker. “I need to go the library for a half hour first, then I’ll walk over to my teacher’s house.”
Ashley was the busiest sixteen-year-old I knew. In addition to school and her various clubs, she also played piano in the school band and at church, and on weekends she babysat her little cousins and volunteered at the local food bank. She was like a saint. She claimed that all of these things looked great on college applications and resumes, and that maybe I should start thinking ahead like she was obviously doing. Maybe, I thought. But there were only so many hours in a day. And I had a job. I’d worry about college applications next year.
Putting things off until the last minute was a talent of mine.
“Don’t forget about the chemistry quiz tomorrow,” Ashley said, yanking her jacket off its hook.
“How could I forget?” I stuffed my chemistry book in my bag along with everything else I’d need for tonight’s homework.
“We start lab work on Monday.”
“I hope McDowell doesn’t blow up the school,” I said, and as I straightened up I noticed Dylan standing at his locker a few feet away. Ever since the day I’d been struck with the plan of throwing him at Ashley, he seemed to be popping up everywhere. Or perhaps he’d been there all along and I just hadn’t been paying attention before. I nudged Ashley. “There’s your boyfriend,” I said, winking.
She closed the locker door with a bang. “Oh quit it,” she whispered fiercely. “I said he was cute once. Jeez. Like I have time for a boyfriend.”
“I’m sure you could squeeze him in somewhere.” I nudged her again, my grin getting wider. She was so innocent, and I loved to tease her.
“Taylor, I said quit it.” She peeked over at Dylan, who stood there in front of his open locker with a pen wedged between his teeth, not paying the least bit of attention to us. As usual, he looked solemn.
Someone Else Page 4