For Keeps

by Natasha Friend

  Liv thinks the whole thing is hilarious. When Riggs and I finally break eye contact and enter our separate locker rooms, she elbows me in the ribs. “Easy, Hester,” she says. As in Hester Prynne. As in The Scarlett Letter, which we read in sophomore lit and which has haunted me ever since.

  “Ha-ha,” I say.

  Liv thinks now that Missy and Riggs have broken up and Missy has left for Stanford, I should stop feeling so bad about what happened last year and “jump his bones already.” Liv says the sexual tension is so thick between us, “you could chop it with a hatchet.” She is full of little nuggets of sex wisdom that she gets from the magazines Dodd brings home from the hair salon where he works. Liv’s message is always the same: Look, Josie, you can’t stay a virgin forever, and you certainly don’t want to be one of those poor girls who hold out until college and lose it on a La-Z-Boy at a frat party, so what are you waiting for?

  Well, I’ll tell you what I’m waiting for. I’m waiting for a guy who’s not going to break my heart. Is that so crazy?

  Not that I’ve experienced heartbreak firsthand, but I look at my mom and her deer-in-the-headlights approach to dating, and I get it. She’s been crushed. She doesn’t want to start all over with some new guy, just to get blindsided by another Arizona girlfriend.

  I hate that Paul Tucci broke my mother’s heart, but to be honest, a small, secret part of me is glad he did. If he hadn’t, I wouldn’t know what I know, which is that a girl has to protect herself. And I don’t mean Trojans! Because no matter what those sex-ed teachers say about how great condoms are, there’s not a condom in the world that can protect you from heartbreak.

  When I get to work, Boss Bob is on his knees, scrubbing the floor with his bare hands. This is supposed to be my job, after the customers leave, and I use a mop. But sometimes Bob can’t help himself. He also can’t help disinfecting the ice-cream scoopers and wiping nonexistent caramel smears off the counter every two seconds. Scrub, scrub, scrub. Wipe, wipe, wipe. It’s like his mission in life, to make everything sanitary. I almost feel bad for him, but then I think, If you hate messes so much, why run an ice-cream shop? Why not a bleach factory?

  The fact is, Bob does hate Bananarama. The only reason he works there is he inherited the business from his parents. Ever since they died, he’s been coming up with new business schemes. First he wanted to start a bead shop. After that it was a pizza parlor. For the past few months his big dream has been to open Elmherst’s first European-style café. FedEx packages keep arriving on the doorstep. Not that Bob tells me what’s in them. My job isn’t to ask questions; it’s to lug boxes down to the basement and stack them in perfectly symmetrical rows against the back wall. Bob is just a bitof a control freak.

  “You’re late,” he says now, looking up from the floor. His eyebrows imply half an hour, not five minutes.

  “I know,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  I slip on my brown polyester apron with its smattering of embossed sprinkles. Bananarama! Forty-one Flavors of Fun!

  “I need you to restock the napkin dispensers,” Bob says. At full height, his head comes up to my shoulder. His hair is a coppery fringe around a shiny circle of scalp—quite possibly the cleanest scalp in the universe.

  “No problem,” I tell him.

  “Did you wash your hands?”

  Of course I washed my hands. Hand washing is Commandment Number One around here, like this is the ER, and every day we’re performing surgery on the pope.

  Bottom line: I need to wash again.

  I walk to the sink and turn on the hot water.

  “Mom working today?” Bob asks. As if he doesn’t know. Twilight Books is two stores down from Bananarama, and my mom’s Volkswagen—aka the Green Hornet—is parked outside.

  Bob’s crush on my mother is so obvious, it’s painful to behold. Give it up, I want to tell him. It’s never going to happen . Instead I nod and say, “Yeah. She’s working today.”

  Of course, I can’t blame Bob for feeling the way he feels. He isn’t the first, and he certainly won’t be the last to fall under the Kate Gardner spell. In eighth grade, my earth science teacher, Mr. Bond, could barely get the words out around her at Parents’ Night. He kept saying the same thing: “Y-You’re . . . J-Josie’s mother?” Then there was the cable guy, Russell, who after he installed our modem made about five hundred excuses to drop by and see how things were “working out.” There’s Len from the post office. And Kara Ballensweig’s dad, who flirts with my mom during soccer games, even with Kara’s mother sitting right there. I could go on and on. But now, as I’m beginning to fill the napkin dispenser, Bob is snapping his fingers in my face.

  “You have a customer.” Snap, snap. His hands are milky white and pudgy at the knuckles, like a toddler’s. “Customers first. Napkins after. OK?”

  “OK,” I say. Bob is such a stress ball. It can’t be healthy. I want to tell him to close his eyes and breathe, picture a babbling brook. Instead, I assume the ice-cream position. “Welcome to Bananarama! Forty-one Flavors of Fun!”

  I know. The first time I said those words I felt like a moron. But I’m used to it now.

  “What do you think, monkeys?” It’s a woman with frizzy red hair, about my mom’s age, and two freckly boys in matching dump-truck shirts. “Pistachio? Butter pecan? Peach?”

  They take about a year to decide, which doesn’t surprise me. Forty-one is too many choices for a kid.

  Finally, the mother orders—two chocolate cones, waffle variety, with sprinkles, rainbow for Joel and, uh—“Do you want sprinkles, Matt? . . . Chocolate or rainbow? . . . OK, Matt wants rainbow too.”

  Matt.

  Well, now my cheeks are burning and I’m glad to have an excuse to stick my head in the freezer.

  I am so not going to think about Matt Rigby right now. In fact, I’m not going to think about him for the rest of the day. Because, let me tell you, I have many more worthwhile things to think about.

  Three

  LIV’S DADS INVITE us for Sunday dinner. It’s a two-part celebration: me, Liv, and Wyatt going back to school and Dodd’s promotion at work. Now instead of being Trillium Salon and Day Spa’s assistant stylist, he’s the expert colorist. This may not sound like a big deal, but Pops couldn’t be prouder. There’s shrimp on the grill, champagne, and a huge cake in the shape of a woman’s head, with yellow Twizzlers for hair.

  Liv made up business cards on her computer: Todd Longo, Colorist to the Stars. Todd is his real name. When Liv was little she couldn’t pronounce her T’s, and “Dodd” just stuck.

  Now, about fifteen minutes into dinner, Pops starts telling the story of how he and Dodd met.

  “So he took one look at me and said, ‘Sweet Christ, what are we going to do with all that hair?’ ”

  Even though she’s heard the story a million times, my mom throws back her head and laughs. I do too. Because the thing is, Pops does have crazy hair—thick and dark and curly. When it grows out, it becomes a Jackson Five fro, which is pretty funny when you think about where he works: Sterling, Weiss & Lowe, this ultraconservative law firm in Worcester. Pops is Gregory James Weiss—the “Weiss” in Sterling, Weiss & Lowe. He wears custom-made suits to work every day.

  Dodd wears jeans.

  Pops is also a sports fanatic, whereas Dodd couldn’t hit a baseball if his life depended on it. Pops drinks scotch; Dodd drinks Fresca. Basically, if you didn’t know how perfect they were together, you’d take one look at them and think, Huh? But Pops and Dodd are, bar none, the happiest couple I know.

  Which makes it all the more cringe-worthy when halfway through the meal Pops turns to my mom and says, “So, Kate. I heard you had quite the shopping trip the other night.”

  Come on. Does Liv really need to tell her dads everything? Is nothing sacred?

  My mom gives me a look. I kick Liv under the table.

  “Ow!”

  Liv’s twelve-year-old brother, Wyatt, raises his eyebrows at me. “Kidney stone?”

  “What?�
�

  “You seem to be in pain. When Pops had one, he said it hurt like—”

  “Oh, honey,” Dodd says, reaching out to caress my mom’s hand. “How are you?” His green eyes are wide with tragedy, as if instead of seeing Paul Tucci’s parents buying shampoo, my mom had witnessed a murder.

  “I’m fine,” she says, waving a shrimp through the air. “Absolutely fine. . . . I haven’t even thought about it.”

  Bald-faced lie. I saw the yearbook on her bed last night, and I know she was looking at Paul Tucci’s picture. Maybe the close-up—his senior portrait. Or the full-body shot of him at the foul line, shooting a free throw. If that’s not “thinking about it,” what is?

  “Thought about what?” Wyatt says. His long strawberry-blond bangs flop gracefully over one eye—the latest of Dodd’s creations.

  “Kate ran into some old friends at the grocery store,” Pops explains. “Some friends she hadn’t expected to see again.”

  And the Euphemism of the Year Award goes to . . .

  “Josie’s dad’s parents,” Liv says, which compels me to kick her under the table once more. And once more she says, “Ow!” Then, “What?” Liv looks from me to my mom and back to me. “We all know the story. What’s the big secret? We’re family!”

  My mom nods and jams the fork in her mouth. She chews for a second, then blurts out something that sounds like “Family comes in many forms,” sending little bits of shrimp sailing through the air like confetti.

  Wyatt cocks an eyebrow at her. “Say it, don’t spray it.” And my mom laughs. If anyone is a good sport, it’s Kate Gardner. If anyone is going to smile and say, “Now, how ’bout that hair cake?” it’s my mom.

  Still, I know she’s hurting. Those Tuccis are stuck in her brain like shards of glass. But she’s not going to let on, believe me.

  I watch as my mom raises her glass to Dodd. “To the best expert colorist this side of the Mississippi.”

  “Hear, hear!” Pops says.

  “Hair, hair!” my mom says, and everyone laughs.

  I love this about her, the way she makes other people feel like a million bucks. Instead of throwing a pity party for herself, she’s always the first to say “Good for you” to someone else. It’s a wonderful trait. Also kind of twisted. I mean, why should Kate Gardner, this amazingly caring and giving person, not have what Pops and Dodd have? Someone who loves her back? Even someone who is completely tone-deaf like Pops, who right now is holding up the hair cake and singing, “Isn’t she loooovely”at the top of his lungs while Dodd gazes up at him with big, starry eyes. It’s the sweetest thing ever. Sweeter than hair cake.

  It’s 7:40 a.m. and I am back on Liv’s porch, ringing the doorbell. Since Liv is a May birthday and I’m June, all we have is our learner’s permits. We can’t drive to school yet, so we figured we’d ride the bus like we have every day since first grade (Liv: window seat, me: aisle), but for some reason my mom insisted on chauffeuring. Now she is sneaking little glances at us in the rearview mirror and saying things like, “Junior year. I can’t believe it. This is huge.”

  She’s fresh from the shower, fully caffeinated, and smiling, but I can just see the thought bubble rising over her head: Junior year. The year my life went to hell in a handbasket. My mom only got to be a junior for three months. Three months before she peed on a stick and saw that little pink plus sign.

  “One more year and you’ll be seniors,” she says. “Two more and you’ll be in college.”

  College, the one place my mother never got to go. Instead she got her GED. And a big, fat belly.

  One time I asked her why she didn’t go back to high school after I was born, to finish her senior year, and she said, “It wasn’t my choice, Josie.” It was Grandma Gardner who wanted her to work, who pushed her to take the job at the bookstore.

  “College,” my mom says again, shaking her head. “I can’t believe it.”

  “I know, right?” Liv says, shaking her head right along with my mom. “Six more years and we won’t even be in school.”

  You would think that Liv, being an expert in the art of sarcasm delivery, is mocking my mother, but she’s not. Liv loves school. There is no one, and I mean no onewho embraces the first day like Olivia Weiss-Longo. For as long as I can remember, she has been the kid with the fifty-pack of perfectly sharpened #2 pencils in her book bag and an apple for the teacher.

  She’s also the one in the crazy outfit. In middle school, if all the girls were wearing jeans on the first day, Liv would show up in a peasant dress. If miniskirts were the rage, she’d wear camouflage. Liv is so anti-cool, she actually raises coolness to new heights. So I had to laugh when I saw her this morning, in kneesocks and a plaid kilt fastened with one of those giant safety pins. I guarantee tomorrow half the freshman girls will be wearing the same thing.

  At a stoplight, Liv scrambles into the front seat next to my mom. “O licensed driver over the age of twenty-one, can I drive?”

  “No, you may not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if I let you drive, then I would not have the pleasure of chauffeuring you on the first day of your junior year.”

  “Pleeeeeease, Kate?”

  “Noooooooo, Liv.”

  Liv pretends to pout, but she doesn’t mean it. She loves my mom. My mom is the mom Liv never got to have. Her and Wyatt’s biological mother is an egg donor/surrogate from Minnesota, a Princeton grad with a genius IQ. Pops and Dodd joke about this, saying next year Liv can apply to Princeton as a legacy, but we all know she’s so smart she would get in anyway.

  “Who do you have for English?” I ask from the backseat.

  Liv looks at her schedule. “Uh . . . Montrose. Fifth period.”

  “AP?”

  “Yup.”

  Advanced Placement English. I rest my case. I’m about to ask about math when Liv changes the subject. “Look, Jose,” she says, pointing out the window. “Wendy Geruntino is wearing a thong!”

  Sucker that I am, I look.

  Wendy Geruntino, walking along the sidewalk with the same wheely pink backpack she’s had since seventh grade, is wearing baggy jeans and a sweater down to her knees.

  “Ha-ha,” I say.

  Liv crosses her eyes and grins.

  Wendy Geruntino would never in her life wear a thong. Wendy Geruntino is secretary of the student council and co-chair of the Christian Students Fellowship. She is also the founder and president of Elmherst High School’s Chastity Club, which is essentially a society for virgins. Last year in assembly she tried to get the entire student body to sign a purity pledge, inspiring a bunch of senior guys to yell, “Eat me!” from the back of the auditorium.

  It’s mind-boggling how Wendy keeps up the cause, trying to convince everyone to “stay pure” until marriage, when ninety percent of the school rags on her.

  “I don’t know why anyone would wear a thong,” my mom says. “They seem so uncomfortable.”

  “Don’t knock it till you try it, Kate,” Liv says.

  “Please,” I say. “Don’t encourage her.”

  The last thing I need is my mom showing up to one of my soccer games in dental-floss underwear. It’s bad enough that she’s barely aged since high school—that her butt looks as good in low-rise jeans as my friends’ do, and that guys my own age check her out. She’s my mother.

  We pull up to the curb in front of school.

  “Junior year,” my mom says again, gripping the steering wheel. “I still can’t believe it.” She leans over to kiss Liv’s cheek, then turns back to me.

  “J-Bear.”

  There’s no stopping her from using that nickname or from flinging her arms around my neck, burying her nose in my ear, and whispering how proud she is of me.

  Minutes pass, and she’s not letting go.

  “Mom,” I say.

  Liv has hopped out of the car and our friends are beginning to gather on the sidewalk, whispering, laughing.

  “Mom. Everyone’s waiting.”

&nb
sp; Finally—and I can tell how hard this is for her to do—she tears herself away.

  A lot of my friends would be rolling their eyes by now, saying, God, Mother. There’s a reason teenagers don’t let their parents drive them to school.

  But I don’t say that. Instead I say, “It’s just another school year.”

  My mom nods, smiles a little. “I know.” She eyes the shirt I’m wearing, gauzy and white, with the lace camisole underneath—tight, but not too tight. “Are you sure you don’t want a sweater? I have a sweater in the—”

  “Mom,” I say.

  “OK, OK.” She holds up her hands.

  “Just . . . I’ll be fine.”

  “I know.”

  “OK?”

  She nods.

  “I’ll stop by the store tonight.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “Good,” I say, and hop out of the car to join my friends.

  My mother beeps, waves, drives away.

  And what do I feel? Relief. OK, and a tiny sprinkling of guilt on top. But that is not going to stop me, let me tell you. This is my junior year! My junior year, and I have no intention of screwing it up.

  I sit in the back row of Mr. Catenzaro’s homeroom, between Kimmy Gustofson and Lorelei Hill, who screamed when they saw me and launched right in, telling me every detail of their summers. They were both lifeguards at Lake Wyola (big shocker there; Kimmy and Lorelei have been attached at the hip since kindergarten). They both dated fellow lifeguards (uh-uh). Total hotties (of course). Who just so happened to be twin brothers: Andy and Randy (ach).

  Fluorescent lights crackle overhead. The air is a potpourri of chalk dust, armpits, and those wood shavings the janitor throws on the floor when someone pukes.