Cameron’s voice came muffled from behind a throw pillow. “He’s upstairs getting ready.”
“Ready for what?” Connor asked.
Cameron shrugged. He peeked at me over the pillow, giggled, and then hid himself again.
“Curtis, turn the TV down, buddy,” Brian said as he carried a platter of barbecued chicken through the living room. The smell of not-lasagna made my mouth water.
“Can I pet your dog yet?” Abbie asked.
Cameron lowered the pillow from his face. “Yeah, you’re safe.”
She scratched behind his ears. “What’s his name?”
“Kevin,” Cameron answered. “But with a C so he doesn’t feel left out.”
I smiled. Should an eight-year-old make me smile more in five minutes than my boyfriend had all week?
Chris emerged from upstairs with a casual, “Hey.” He sat beside Cameron and turned his eyes to the television, feigning indifference to our presence. The intense cologne smell he brought with him testified otherwise, as did his frequent glances at my sister.
Amy called us into the dining room. With cloth napkins and an abundance of food, this seemed more like Thanksgiving than August 24.
Cameron grinned as he handed me the basket of homemade rolls. “Do you like bread?”
“Yep.”
He beamed up at me. “Me too,” he said, as if this made us soul mates.
I ignored this and passed the rolls.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” he asked.
Everyone but me found this hilarious, even Mom, who became irritated when strangers suggested I was popular with boys.
“Focus on your food, Cam,” Brian said. “There’ll be plenty of time after dinner for flirting with Skylar.”
Mom laughed and chose a piece of chicken for herself. “Sorry, Cameron, but Skylar isn’t allowed to date until college.” I couldn’t keep from glancing at Connor, who looked back at me with surprise.
“Why not?” Cameron asked.
“It’s the rules,” Mom said.
Okay, time for a new subject. “Everything looks wonderful, Amy and Brian,” I said as I heaped mashed potatoes onto my plate. When had I last eaten non-instant mashed potatoes?
“Skylar.” Mom used her voice reserved for rebuking. “It’s Mister and Missus Ross.”
“Oh, please call us Brian and Amy,” Brian said.
Mom shook her head. “She knows better.”
“But we prefer it,” Amy insisted. “To me, Mrs. Ross is my mother-in-law.”
“Kids don’t respect adults the way they used to,” Dad said. He launched into an anecdote conveying how he never would have thought to call an adult by their first name when he was a kid.
But despite my disrespect of calling Amy and Brian what they preferred, the evening went well. So well, in fact, that during dessert my mother felt compelled to initiate a carpool.
“We live practically around the corner from each other. It doesn’t make sense for both you and Skylar to drive all the way to the high school,” Mom said. “Skylar will happily take Connor and Chris.”
Amy stirred cream into her coffee as she contemplated this. “We plan to get Connor a car soon. They could trade off weeks or something. If it’s okay with Skylar, it’d be a great help.”
“Of course it’s okay with Skylar.” Mom turned to me, eyes commanding me to agree.
“Sure.” I forced up the corners of my mouth. “It’s no problem.”
How did this happen? Six weeks ago, Connor was just an annoying guy who my best friend liked. Now our dads had a standing golf date, our moms were swapping recipes (as if mine cooked), and I’d be hauling him and his little brother to and from school.
And of course, we got stuck together after dessert. Cameron and Curtis splashed about the pool, and Chris and Abbie occupied the swing set. Their conversation appeared intimate, leaving me with no option but to join Connor on the back porch swing.
“So, you’re not allowed to date until college,” Connor said as I sat.
I groaned. I should have interrupted Chris and Abbie. “Something like that.”
“That’s interesting. Since you have a boyfriend.”
“Do you have a point?”
“No, no point.” He pushed his feet against the ground, lulling the swing into motion. “It just seems strange that—”
“Are you incapable of having a nice, normal conversation?” I said. “Whatever happened to questions like, how’d you do on the bio test, or, where are you thinking of going to college?”
Connor grinned. “Where are you thinking of going to college?”
I gave him a look. “You really want to know?”
“I’m in a hospitable kind of mood.”
“Great,” I said with a laugh.
A long silence ensued as I watched Cameron and Curtis compete for the best belly flop.
“So, are you going to answer the question?” Connor asked.
“Oh, sorry. I think I’ll just go to Johnson County Community. I don’t know what I want to do, so . . .”
“Yeah, same here.” Connor folded his arms behind his head. “I’d like to stay at home awhile longer.”
I relaxed against the swing. “That might be the only reason I apply somewhere else.”
He followed my gaze to Abbie. “How’s everything going with . . . that?”
“I thought we agreed you’d never bring it up,” I said in a frosty voice.
“Right.” But he seemed completely unintimidated by my ice princess act. “So. Is Eli the first guy you’ve dated?”
I rolled my eyes. “Connor.”
“You dated a guy named Connor?”
“No, I meant I don’t want to talk about this anymore.”
“So you didn’t date a guy named Connor.”
“No.”
“Am I the only Connor in your life?”
“There isn’t room for another Connor. You’re more Connor than I can handle.”
He laughed. “You know, you’re really funny. You should be this way when we’re with other people.”
“Funny?”
“No,” Connor said. “Yourself.”
I looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“When we’re with other people, you’re so . . .”
“I’m so what?” I attempted to sound forceful enough to make Connor rethink this whole line of conversation.
“Cliché,” he said.
“Cliché!” Far worse than the profane description I assumed he’d assign me. “I’m anything but a cliché.”
His eyes widened. “I didn’t know you’d take it so personally.” “I’ve never been told something so offensive in my entire life.” I could feel the twitch of my left eye as I struggled to hold in tears. “What makes me a cliché?”
“Maybe that’s not the right word,” Connor said, fidgeting. “You just come across like the typical rich, popular girl.”
“That’s not true.” I heard Aaron’s voice in my head, saying I was different than my friends. “My friends, they’re the ones who are typical popular girls.”
“I’m not saying you are a typical popular girl. Just that you pretend to fit in. But not all the time. Only when we’re at school. Or church. Or around our families.” He set the swing into motion again. “But now, when it’s just us, you’re different. You’re being yourself. Not putting on a show.”
“Putting on a show?” How could he possibly think such horrible things when everything about me screamed “unique”? Would someone desperate to fit in wear clothes like I did? My stupid friends would certainly never attempt my outfits. They wore nothing without Gap’s stamp of approval.
My tears broke through. “I can’t believe that’s what you think of me.”
“Are you crying?” Connor looked at me with wide eyes. “I’m so sorry. We can go back to me bugging you about Eli and you telling me to shut up. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“You know, I thought we were going to be friends.” I
didn’t realize this until the words spilled from my mouth.
Connor appeared panicked. “We are.”
“Leave me alone,” I said as I stood.
He gripped my arm, holding me there beside him. “Skylar, please. I want us to be friends too. Please forgive me.”
I looked at him, into his eyes. He looked sincere. “Regardless of what you think, I’m not putting on a show or trying to fit in. I mean, look at me.”
He did. I squirmed. “Should clothes be what make you unique?”
“It’s not just my clothes.”
“Please, just forget about it. All I was trying to say is I’m having fun with you tonight.”
Connor’s expression, soft and hopeful, convinced me to reclaim my seat. I sucked in a wobbly breath, hoping to dissipate the tears still pooling behind my eyes. “I think we should strive to have one of those relationships where we don’t really talk to each other. It seems safer.”
“Okay,” he said, and we swung in silence as the sunlight faded.
A soft knock sounded on the door between my room and the bathroom. Then it slid open and Abbie peeked through the crack. “Skylar?” She’d been crying.
I sat up. “What’s wrong?”
“Can I get in bed with you?”
“Sure.” I scooted against the wall. She settled beside me, careful not to touch.
After a minute’s silence, she said, “I don’t know what to do. Somehow I have to tell Mom and Dad.”
I searched for the right words but came up with nothing. “Yeah . . .”
“They’re going to kill me, right? I mean, there’s no chance of them, like, driving to Babies R Us and buying up the store. They’ll kick me out.”
I didn’t answer.
“This sucks.” Abbie pounded her fist into my mattress. “This is why you’re not supposed to have sex. And you want to know what else sucks? For the first time, I’ve actually met a really sweet, cute, Christian guy, and he’s not even interested in me.”
“What are you talking about?” I said. “Couldn’t you smell Chris when he came downstairs? He’s crazy about you.”
Her voice emerged tight as she spoke through tears. “Only because he doesn’t know me yet.”
I smoothed her hair, like I’d seen mothers do on TV when they consoled their daughters, but it made Abbie cry harder.
As Abbie dozed off, I thought about Mom and Dad, ignorant across the hall. They deserved to know their fifteen-year-old daughter was pregnant. How much longer should I wait for Abbie to tell them? Would spilling Abbie’s secret make me a responsible sister or a lousy one?
I fell asleep with these questions unanswered.
6
“I don’t see what the big deal is,” Mom said, watching from the kitchen table as I toasted a Pop-Tart. “Their house is on your way. It hardly adds any time to your drive.”
I stared at my reflection in the toaster. “Maybe it’s about more than time.”
“I don’t understand. You and Connor seemed to get along so well last night.”
Just the sound of his name made my mouth go dry, my shoulders tighten. “We don’t get along at all.” But I could hear it in my voice. I liked him. How could I like him when I didn’t want to like him? Shouldn’t a person have some kind of control over that?
Abbie drained the last of her orange juice. “You ready?”
I forced the toaster to relinquish my Pop-Tart and we left.
At the Rosses’, I’d barely pulled into the driveway when Cameron burst out the door in his pajamas. He frolicked barefoot to my side of the car.
“Look!” he cried as my window slid down. He opened his mouth and wiggled a bottom tooth.
I tried not to cringe. Even as a kid, loose teeth grossed me out. “Wow.”
“I noticed it last night when I brushed my teeth. I worked on it ’til I fell asleep.”
Crumbs of some kind dusted his hair. “Cameron, why are there crumbs in your hair?”
He shrugged as I brushed them away.
“Hey.”
I jumped at the sound of Connor’s voice. “You scared me.”
He laughed. “By saying ‘hey’? You need to get out more.” Through the window, he handed me a paper plate with two warm, oversized muffins. “From Mom. She says as long as you’re taking us to school, she’ll provide breakfast for you guys.”
“Wow, that’s so nice,” Abbie said, taking the muffins from me.
Amy stood in the doorway in sweatpants and sleepy eyes. She waved. “Thank you!”
I waved back. “Thank you!”
Why did Amy seem to care more about our day than our own mom, who’d lounged at the kitchen table while we scrounged up our own breakfast, and then didn’t even say good-bye?
“Your mom is really great,” I said to Connor at school after we’d split off from Abbie and Chris. “Have a bite of this muffin.”
He smiled and shook his head. “No thanks, I already had two.”
“You’re so lucky.” I popped the bite in my mouth. “I’d be so fat if I lived at your house. Do you guys eat like this all the time?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean? Real mashed potatoes, homemade muffins.”
“You’re crazy,” Connor said.
“And you’re spoiled.”
Instead of responding, Connor changed the subject. “You know, I think it would surprise people to know how good you are with kids.”
I looked at him. Was he teasing? “I stink with kids.”
“You’re great with Cameron and Curtis.”
“I have no idea how to talk to anyone under age ten. You never know what they’re going to say. That freaks me out.”
“I wouldn’t have guessed from how you are with my brothers.”
A compliment from him, which normally I wouldn’t notice, now made my head fuzzy, as if I’d chugged a bottle of NyQuil. I stole a peek at him. He hadn’t cut his hair in a while, causing dormant curls to reveal themselves at his temples. All last week I’d found this maddening. I’d grabbed the scissors from my pencil bag and joked with Alexis about taking matters into my own hands. Now the curls seemed endearing. What was wrong with me?
We rounded the corner into the senior hall to find Eli and Jodi deeply involved in conversation. Eli leaned against the wall, arms crossed to flatter his biceps. Jodi twirled the ends of her hair onto a finger, her signature flirting move. When they spotted us, Eli straightened and Jodi’s hands fell to her sides. They said in unison, “Hey.”
Eli kissed me. “How was dinner?”
I shrugged as Connor said, “You should have seen Skylar with my brothers. They loved her.”
“Skylar?” Jodi said. “She’s horrible with kids.”
Triumphant, I turned to Connor. “Told you so.”
“Last Halloween,” Jodi added, “when she was giving out candy, she made a little girl cry.”
“This is true,” I said.
Connor wagged his head. “How is that possible? They ring the doorbell, you give them candy, and they leave.”
Jodi noticed the remainder of my muffin. “That looks good. Are they selling those in the cafeteria?”
“Amy gave it to me.”
“Amy?”
“Connor’s mom.”
“Because Skylar took us all to school,” Connor said.
“How come?” Eli asked. He kept running his fingers through my hair, reminding me why I rarely wore it loose around him.
“Oh, something our moms arranged.” I waved my hand to show its insignificance.
“So, over the weekend my parents and I started discussing plans for my birthday party,” Jodi said, twirling her hair again. “It’s gonna be great. We’ll have a catered dinner at my parents’ house, and then they’re going to rent a suite for us at the Raphael, and then—”
“What’s this for?” Alexis asked as she joined us. “Your birthday?”
Jodi nodded. “Doesn’t it sound perfect?”
“T
he perfectest.”
“That’s not a word,” Connor said.
Alexis giggled and turned a toothy smile on him. “It is so a word.” Did she have to be so flirty all the time?
“No it’s not.”
“Well, it should be.”
“There’s no need to improve the word ‘perfect.’ It doesn’t get any better than perfect.”
“Like Skylar,” Eli said.
I blinked at him. “What?”
“No need for improvement.” He smiled, proud of the compliment.
I forced myself to smile back. “I need to get to class early. I’ll see you there.”
“Nah, I’ll come with you.” He nodded at Jodi. “See you in Spanish.”
As if Jodi merited her own special good-bye.
We started down the hall, and I searched his face for clues about what I’d just witnessed. Feeling my gaze, he turned to me. “You okay?”
“Oh yeah,” I said in a bright voice.
His smile took on a tender nature. “She got moved into my Spanish class. That’s why I said it.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“Oh, I thought you were wondering why I said goodbye to Jodi.”
“Did you?” I shrugged. “I didn’t notice.”
He tucked an arm around my waist. “That’s because you’re the best girlfriend ever.”
But the best girlfriend ever probably wouldn’t smile at her boyfriend while glancing beyond him to spy on a friend of his. Who happened to have his arm around my best friend.
7
The bathroom pocket door was open, granting me a view of Abbie sprawled across her bed. She’d been lethargic all week, but still it surprised me that she appeared to have no plans on a Friday night. Even our parents had plans. Dinner with a client of my dad’s, but still.
I thought she was asleep until I looked at her a second time while waiting for my curl to set. Her eyes were open.
“Where are you going tonight?” she asked.
I told her the same thing I’d told Mom. “Slumber party at Alexis’s.”
Her eyes noted my black mini and sequined shoes. “Girls night, huh?”
“Something like that.” I released the lever of the iron. A steaming curl fell to my shoulder. “What are you doing tonight?”
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