“But—”
Mom had stormed up the stairs with the garment bag before I could say anything, leaving me to wonder how the hell I was going to get Eden’s clothes back to her. Well, we’d almost had a normal day.
***
I needed to get out of the house for a while, so I took a walk. As I walked, I scrolled through articles about piranha on my phone. Ever since Bree told me what people really called the PIPs, I’d taken an interest in the hideous fish, making note of the things that stood out to me. I watched a piranha feeding frenzy that was pretty amazing. They’d devoured a large capybara, stripping it down to its bones, in less than a minute.
Three blocks from Gary’s house was a tiny convenience store called Mercy’s Market. Everything was overpriced, but it was close and fast—probably why it was called a convenience store, I guessed.
A few people were milling around the store. I grabbed a basket and let it hang over my forearm. My first stop was the freezer section, where I grabbed a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream.
Just as I was reaching for a bag of corn chips, my phone dinged. I pulled it from my back pocket. It was a text from Mom.
Be home by dinnertime.
I rolled my eyes. She was adamant about turning us into the perfect little family who ate meals together, though the two of us had never done that until Gary was in the picture. I didn’t know why it mattered whether I was there or not. Gary and I had barely said ten words to each other.
I grabbed a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and a bag of Hershey’s kisses and took my purchases to the front of the store. The sight of Hayden on the register brought a smile to my face.
He had just finished ringing up a customer, and he smiled when he saw me. “Granola!”
Hayden called me Granola because I had bought some on my first trip to Mercy’s. He kept calling me that, even though I had never bought it again. Hayden was cute, but he wasn’t my type. He had straight brown hair that went to his shoulders, small gray eyes, and a perpetual smirk. His cherry-red Mercy’s apron blended well with his flannel shirt and khakis.
“What’s up?” I asked.
He shrugged. “Just trying to adjust to the fact that my life is over. Two days, and I’m still trying to get used to it.”
I had to agree with him there. Nothing felt more like the Kiss of Death than the end of a carefree summer and the beginning of a school year. Hayden lived in the next town over and went to a public school there. He worked at Mercy’s some evenings and on the weekends.
“How’s it going at your fancy-schmancy school for geniuses?”
I placed the contents of my basket on the counter. “It’s not a school for geniuses. But it’s okay so far, I guess.” I pretended to be interested in a rack of souvenir keychains. “Hey, do you know a girl named Eden Blackwood?”
I didn’t think it was a crazy question to ask, considering she didn’t live far from the market.
He searched the bag of Hershey Kisses for the bar code. “Yes, I know Eden. Well… maybe I should say I know of Eden. She comes in here occasionally, and I’ve run into her at parties, but she’s not the type of person I would give the time of day.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You wouldn’t give her the time of day?”
“Nope. She’s a weirdo. She acts like a thirty-something-year-old from one of those rom-coms.”
I knew exactly what he meant. They all acted that way but especially Eden—way too sophisticated for sixteen and seventeen, or maybe they just weren’t what I was used to.
“Why?” Hayden asked as I handed him a few bills.
“Why what?”
“Why are you asking about Eden?”
I decided to be halfway honest. “She asked me to eat lunch with her today, and she wants to hang out. I wasn’t sure what to make of her.”
Hayden placed my ice cream in a paper bag. “She doesn’t seem like your type. I would stay away. She and those other girls she’s always with give off bad energy.”
I took the bag he handed me. “And I don’t?”
“No.” He looked me up and down. “Should you?”
“No.” Yes.
Hayden rested his elbows on the counter. “So, you’re one of the popular girls. You must be if Queen Blackwood wants to hang out with you.”
“I don’t think so. I think she’s interested in me because I’m new. That’s all. Anyway, I should go. See you around.”
He threw up the peace sign. “Don’t be a stranger, Granola.” He said that every time I left the store.
On the way home, Mom sent me another text telling me that Gary was home. I didn’t understand why I was supposed to care, so I didn’t respond. She was trying to force the relationship between the two of us, and it just wasn’t going to happen.
I did think a lot about what Hayden had said about Eden and her bad energy. He was the second person who had warned me about the PIPs, but I had yet to see why. I was eager to know what was so bad about them and how their bad measured up to my bad.
5
Obeezy
I’d never realized what a strong aversion to pink I had until I searched my entire wardrobe and couldn’t find a stitch of it anywhere. Plopping down on the bed in the room that wasn’t really mine, I weighed my options. I could run to the mall before it closed to buy something, but that would be stupid and way too much work. I could see what was in Mom’s closet, but I’d had enough of her crazy for the day.
I stared at the dainty pink flowers that covered the wallpaper. Gary was divorced. His ex-wife and daughter used to live in the house before that, but since then, they’d moved to Australia, where his ex-wife was originally from. He didn’t want his daughter’s room disturbed so it would be the same way she left it when she came to visit, but she hadn’t come since we’d moved in. Gary had given me the room his mother had passed away in after losing her battle with lung cancer. She actually died in that room. Her name was Dorothy, and she collected cat figurines. It was creepy sleeping in the room where a woman had died. The floral wallpaper and the antique furniture screamed old lady’s room.
My gaze fell on a wooden armoire that took up an entire corner of the room. I’d opened it before. It was full of Dorothy’s old things, but I had never gone through them. I wondered if Gary knew stuff was still in there. He had to. Maybe he was holding on to those things for memories. I knew how hard it was to pack up the stuff of someone you loved and shove it into boxes.
Slowly, I opened the doors and peeked inside. I rummaged through some clothing items until something caught my eye. A pink scarf. That would be perfect. Would a scarf count as ten percent of my outfit? Does it matter? It wasn’t as if those girls had some kind of formula to calculate what ten percent of an outfit really was.
I wasn’t sure what I would tell Eden when she asked about her outfit. I thought about stealing it back from Mom and changing into it at school, but I felt weird about going into Gary’s bedroom. The scarf would have to do, and I would think up something to tell the PIPs. I was good at making up stories.
***
Wednesday morning, I decided on a button-down denim dress with boots and wrapped the pink scarf around my neck. Before school, I struggled to get into my locker. For some reason, the stupid thing was refusing to open. It was the third day of school, so I should have known my locker combo.
“That’s my locker.” The words came from someone who happened to be standing way too close to me. I felt his breath on my ear.
I spun on my heel to face the space invader. It was the curly-haired kid who had yelled something as I walked by. He was the reason I had run into the PIPs and fallen on my ass. “Thanks a lot for the other day.”
He frowned, reaching past me to get to his locker. “Excuse me?”
“You passed me and said something about a stormtrooper.”
His eyes widened. “Oh, that. You’re pretty short for a stormtrooper. I said it because you were wearing a Princess Leia shirt.”
I stared at him blankly.
He watched me like he was waiting for me to get it. “Hello! That’s an iconic line of hers. You should know that.”
“I’m not into Star Wars.”
The boy slammed his locker shut and placed his palm on his forehead way too dramatically. “Unbelievable. How could you be wearing a Princess Leia shirt and not be into Star Wars?”
“I thought it was cute, so I bought it. That’s not a crime. Anyway, you’re the reason I bumped into those girls in the first place.”
He leaned in close to me. The kid really had an issue with personal space. “You should be thanking me then, right?”
“That is yet to be determined.” Yes, I should be thanking him. Bumping into the PIPs and getting them to notice me had been exactly what I needed, but he couldn’t know that. “Who are you anyway?”
“Owen Bynes, but everyone calls me Obeezy.”
I rolled my eyes. “Obeezy, huh?”
“Yes. Those awesome morning announcements we do? That’s my thing. I don’t actually read the announcements. They won’t let me on camera anymore. Long story. But the graphics and music and all that stuff—I do that.”
I hadn’t paid much attention to the morning announcements, but I was sure they were great. “Good for you, Owen. I’m not calling you Obeezy.”
He frowned. “Why not?”
“It sounds stupid.” He started to say something about that, but I cut him off. “I’m Lennox McRae, by the way.”
“Yeah. I know.”
He knows? What is he? Some kind of stalker? “What do you mean, you ‘know’? I don’t think we have any classes together.”
“A girl gets invited to sit with the PIPs, and suddenly, everyone knows her name. The real question is why would one sit with the Piranhas? Why would you voluntarily swim in Piranha-infested waters?”
I shrugged. “I refuse to call them Piranhas until I see some piranha-like behavior. I don’t believe the hype. They’re more like angelfish—pretty but harmless.”
He tugged at my scarf. “If you say so. Anyway, your outfit will not pass inspection. This isn’t pink. It’s coral. Coral is not an approved shade of the pink color wheel. Everyone knows that.”
I examined the scarf. Shit. He was right. In my room, the scarf had looked pink, but under the fluorescent lights of the hallway, it was definitely more orangey. Unfortunately, at that point, I couldn’t do anything but apologize profusely when I saw the PIPs.
I tossed the scarf over my shoulder as if I didn’t care. “Who says I was trying to wear pink anyway?”
Owen scoffed at my act. “Please, the Piranhas are like those stupid famous-for-nothing celebrities who never go away. The media forces them down your throat, and you hear things about them whether you want to or not. By now, everyone knows they’re considering you to be Carrington’s replacement. I’ve got to get to the TV room and set up, but good luck. And by good luck, I mean I hope you don’t get in.”
I almost laughed at that, but the expression on Owen’s face was dead serious and almost a warning. He patted my shoulder then disappeared down the hallway.
Just then, Maisie rounded the corner with Bree right on her heels. This is going to be awkward. I tried to avoid them by turning in the opposite direction.
“Hey, Lennox,” Maisie called. She was super loud—so loud that I couldn’t pretend not to hear her.
I stopped walking and let them catch up to me. Bree was quiet and didn’t make eye contact, but Maisie looked me up and down. “So, is it true? Did they really invite you to try out for the PIPs?”
I glanced at Bree, who was studying the black-and-white-checkered linoleum, and nodded. “Yeah.”
Maisie whistled. “Wow. What did they say when you laughed in their faces and told them where they could stuff their invitation?”
I shifted from foot to foot. “Um…”
“She didn’t do that, Maisie,” Bree said. “Look at her. She’s dressed different. Her hair’s curled. She went home with them yesterday, and that horrible scarf is some failed attempt to wear something pink.”
Damn. If I had feelings they would have been hurt. Bree was envious, but I wasn’t going to call her out on it, at least not yet. Deep inside, she was dying to be in my position.
I shrugged, seeing no use in lying about it. Though I could have explained to them why I was doing it, I didn’t owe them anything. They weren’t even my friends. We had only met two days before. “Well, they’ve been pretty nice to me, and when I hung out with them, I had a good time. I figure that if they choose me—and that’s a big if—and I don’t like it, I can just quit. No harm, no foul.”
Maisie glared at me as if I’d said the dumbest thing she’d heard in a long time. “If only it were that easy. You’d better ask Carrington—oh wait, you can’t because no one has heard a word from her since she moved away. She even deleted all her social media accounts.”
Bree grabbed Maisie’s arm and pulled her away. “Bell’s about to ring.”
I wanted to ask more questions, but that obviously wasn’t going to happen. There could be plenty of reasonable explanations for why no one had heard from Carrington. Right?
***
I’d had no intentions of running into the girls before school, but I had no idea where Eden’s locker was, and I just happened to pass it on my way to first period. The PIPs were deep in conversation when I tried to sneak by, pretending I hadn’t seen them.
“Lennox,” Kyla called.
I turned slowly on my heel. “Oh, hey, guys.”
They froze and stared me down.
“That’s not pink,” Daniella said as a greeting. “That’s like salmon or some shit that obviously doesn’t fall in the pink family.”
I unwrapped the scarf from my neck. “I think it’s coral, actually, and anyway, I’m sorry. At home, it really did look pink.”
Eden gave me a once-over. “What happened to the dress I let you borrow yesterday? That was pink.”
Here we go. “Well, this is kind of embarrassing, but my mom saw it and fell in love with it. She was going on a lunch date today, and she said the dress would be perfect for it. Next thing I knew, she was trying it on, and she wouldn’t give it back.”
They watched me for a minute as I thought about my Plan B story in case they weren’t buying the first one.
But Eden’s face broke into a huge grin. “My mom and my sisters do that to me all the time. Well, my mom has never snagged an outfit I was planning to wear the next day. That’s just cold. But hey, it is Chloe, and it’s a badass dress. Your mom must be hot if she can fit in it.”
“I don’t know. I guess.” I didn’t want to be known as the girl with the hot mom. Maybe it had been a mistake to bring her up in the first place. It would be much better if she simply remained an unspoken part of my life. “Anyway, I’ll have it dry cleaned and back to you ASAP.”
Eden was looking at her phone, already distracted by something else. “No worries.”
Seiko tossed a brown lunch bag into Eden’s locker. Since they didn’t eat lunch at school, I wondered what was in it. Seiko followed my gaze to the locker and slammed it shut. “Anyway. Nice chat. I guess we’ll see you around.”
They went back to their conversation, forming a huddle and blocking me out. I had been dismissed. Clearly, Eden was the only one who wanted me to be a PIP, and I was going to have to win the rest of the group over. It might take a little time, but it was definitely doable.
***
At lunch, I took my tray and headed for Bree and Maisie’s table. I wasn’t stupid enough to try to sit at the PIP table without being invited.
I found Maisie all alone with her weird food spread out on her white tablecloth. She held out a container filled with stinky cheese. “Brie?”
“No, thanks.” I only liked my cheese melted into a sandwich.
Maisie shrugged and took a piece for herself. “I brought Brie for Bree, but alas, my food pun will fall on deaf ears.”
“Where is Bree?” I asked.
Maisie pointed over my shoulder. I turned to see Bree settling down at the PIPs’ table. She sat across from them just as I had the day before.
I stabbed my fork into my spaghetti. “Seriously? This morning, she was giving me major attitude for hanging out with them, and now she’s doing it?”
Maisie nodded. “She’s wanted to be a PIP ever since they cursed the world with their existence during the ninth grade. She’s always talking about them and all in their business.”
I wanted to steal another look, but I didn’t want to be caught staring. Are they seriously considering Bree for their group? Why? What’s wrong with me? Why aren’t I an automatic shoo-in?
Sadness spread across Maisie’s face. If Bree became a PIP, they would probably have to stop being friends, and from what I could tell, Bree was the only friend Maisie had.
I patted Maisie’s hand before digging into my spaghetti. “Don’t worry. I doubt she’ll make it anyway.” That spot was mine.
Maisie stared at me for a second before stuffing another piece of cheese into her mouth.
***
That afternoon, Maisie gave me a ride home from school. “You can sit up front,” she said as we made our way across the parking lot. “She’s going home with them.”
I felt a pang of jealousy in my chest as I slid into the front seat and hoped Bree wasn’t witty or funny or that she burst out laughing at the PIP commandments like I had. They couldn’t like her more than me.
Consumed with thoughts of Bree hanging out in Eden’s room, I hadn’t realized Maisie and I had been sitting in awkward silence. I needed to think of something to say that didn’t involve the PIPs, because Maisie was clearly over it, but my mind drew a blank. My phone rang, and the words ANNOYING ASS REPORTER flashed across the screen. I hit the ignore button immediately and cleared my throat. “So, are you into any extracurricular activities?”
Piranhas in Pink: Piranhas in Pink Book One Page 5