Puddin'

by Julie Murphy

  We listen to more music, and when there are a few more songs he wants me to hear, we take a couple extra laps around my neighborhood as he holds my hand.

  When he pulls up in front of my house, I let out a big yawn that I’ve been sitting on for a while. It’s already three in the morning. I don’t have to be at the gym until noon, but I know that tonight I’ll barely be able to sleep.

  In his car, we share one more kiss. And this one feels more urgent, like we’re trying to hold on to something we’re not quite sure we can re-create.

  When I crawl back in through the window, I lose my balance and somersault inside, nearly knocking over my nightstand in the process. It sounds like an elephant is bowling just down the hall from my parents.

  I sit there in the dark for a moment, expecting one of them to rush in. But nothing. I slip back into my pj’s and crawl into bed. I can’t shake my disbelief. Malik and I went on a date. I think it’s safe to call it a date. He said he liked me—with his mouth! Then he used that same mouth to kiss me. After I kissed him first, which—OH MY GOSH—I’m just realizing is a thing I did. (Willowdean—and maybe even Callie, too!—would be so proud, I bet.) And I snuck out for the first time ever and I didn’t even get caught.

  If somehow each person in the world is only allotted a certain amount of good luck in life, I’m scared I’ve spent all of mine tonight.

  Callie

  Eighteen

  On Saturday, I get to work at noon for my shift with Millie, and I find Inga tapping her toe behind the counter. “I have to go,” she says the moment she sees me.

  “Okay.” The door hasn’t even swung shut behind me. “You don’t want to fire me first?”

  She squints at me like she’s actually considering it. “Vernon is home with the babies and they’re all sick as pigs.”

  “I think the phrase is sick as dogs,” I tell her.

  She shoves her sweater into her bag and hoists it onto her shoulder. “Well, you’ve obviously never seen a sick pig.”

  I nearly laugh. “You’re right. I haven’t.” I glance up at the clock. Millie should be here by now. “I’ve never worked alone before.”

  She pushes open the front door. “Try not to break any windows.” She points up to the camera behind the counter. “I’ll be watching.”

  “Ha, ha,” I say dryly, but she’s already halfway to her car.

  The only people in the gym are two older guys on the stair climbers and one dad-aged guy on the punching bags. Logically I know that nothing will go wrong, but I also hate that I’m solely responsible for this place when I’ve already done enough damage and shouldered plenty of the blame.

  Those bitches. I know the one I should be most angry with right now is Bryce. But I can’t shake that this all started with the Shamrocks, specifically Melissa. I have no way of proving they were all here with me that night. The offer from Sheriff Bell to rat out my cohorts is definitely off the table anyway. But I’ve got dirt on all those girls, and I think it’s time to air some dirty laundry.

  Out of habit, I pull out the glass cleaner and get to work. For all I know, Inga is watching me right now via some spy software on her phone. I wouldn’t put it past her.

  It’s another twenty minutes before Millie races through the door, her hair mussed and her shoelaces untied. “Oh my gosh,” she pants. “I’m so sorry. I overslept.” But she doesn’t look sleepy. Instead her cheeks are flushed and she’s got a bounce in her step.

  “No big,” I tell her.

  “I was out super late last night,” she whispers loudly.

  I can tell she wants me to ask her what kept her out so late. I can feel the energy vibrating off her. But I’m not taking the bait. Not after the week I had.

  When I wasn’t completely drenched in guilt from the dumb thing I said to Millie in front of Mitch, I was busy being broken up with and making a very public display of it. I suffered through school on Thursday, but my mom didn’t push it when I feigned sick on Friday morning.

  I cringe whenever I think about how much time I’ve spent with Bryce, and what now? It was all just a giant waste? And yeah, I feel like shit. Bryce was my first boyfriend, but somehow I was always sure that if we ever broke up, it would be me who made that decision. If what I had with Bryce was so easily disposable, who’s to say what’s real and what’s not?

  But right now, the only thing I want to focus on is revenge.

  Millie drops her bag behind the counter and gets busy making her rounds around the gym, wishing all three of our members a happy afternoon while she checks out all the equipment. “Callie,” she calls while she’s got her leg propped up on a weight machine as she ties her shoes. “Can you get started on these towels?”

  I groan silently. “Sure thing.” I make a circle around the gym, picking up all the towels from the various hampers and taking them all back to the utility closet where the washer and dryer are located.

  “I kissed him,” says Millie, like she might explode if she doesn’t say it out loud.

  She startles me so much I drop the detergent into the machine, cup and all. For a fat girl, she sure is light on her feet.

  I reach down into the machine for the cup. “Kissed who?” I ask, not bothering to hide my bewilderment.

  “The guy I said I liked, remember? The one who wouldn’t make a move?”

  “Oh, right, okay.” I faintly recall a conversation we had before her mom picked her up for that emergency dentist appointment. Most people would probably tell Millie the best way to snag a guy would be to drop the weight. And while that might be true in certain cases, I kind of also think that there are definitely people out there who might be into what Millie’s serving.

  “Well, you told me I should give him another chance. So I did! And he kissed me back.”

  I turn around after dumping the towels into the machine. “You’re not mad at me?” I ask over the running water.

  “About what?” she asks. And then she remembers. I can see it on her face. “Oh, the gym equipment comment?”

  I nod, trying to keep my face blank.

  “Well,” she says, the word coming out like a sigh, “I heard you had quite the week yourself, so I thought I’d let it slide.”

  I can tell from the ways her lips are pursed together that she has more to say, and I guess the nice thing would be to encourage her to talk. But I don’t need another damn lecture. Especially about some stupid joke.

  The bell at the front of the gym dings. “You want to get it?” asks Millie. “I’ve got some stuff to do back here.”

  I nod and shut the lid of the washing machine. “Yeah, okay.” I wait a moment. “Be there in a sec!” I call. “Um, I’m glad for you that it worked out. With the kissing situation.”

  Millie beams and bounces on her toes. “Me too.”

  I head out front, where I find Mitch waiting at the counter. I’m suddenly self-conscious in a way that’s hard for me to process. There’s no telling what Patrick and Bryce probably told him about me. “Hey,” I say.

  He stands up a little straighter and flips his card out between two fingers. “Mitch Lewis, Esquire.”

  “Very impressive.” I’m not entertained. Or maybe I am. I don’t know.

  “Real talk: I don’t even think I know what ‘esquire’ means.”

  It means lawyer, but rather than saying so, I just take his card.

  “Hey. I didn’t see you in school yesterday.” He coughs into his fist. “I wasn’t, like, stalking you or anything. But, like, I usually pass you in the hall between third and fourth.”

  I nod. “That doesn’t sound stalkery at all,” I mumble as I sit down on the stool behind the counter and pull out the box where we keep member cards to file his away. “I was feeling kind of sick. From, like, the state of my life.”

  “Um, well,” he says. “I hope your life is feeling better.”

  “Things aren’t looking very good. We had to pull the plug on my social life. My reputation is basically on life support.”

>   He grins, pushing a hand through his curls. “I’ll have my people send flowers.”

  I tap my feet against the stool and smile with my lips closed. “Finally. Something to look forward to. I love watching dead flowers wilt.”

  Crickets. Nothing. I sure do know how to take a conversation a step too far.

  After a long bout of silence, he knocks his fist on the counter and surveys the equipment behind me. “Cool, cool, cool.”

  I watch as he heads toward the weight machines. He puts the pin in his preferred weight limit for the leg machine and studies it for a minute. Without warning, he doubles back to me and knocks his fist against the counter again.

  Great. More reasons to clean the glass counter. Again.

  “Hey, so are you, like, okay?” he asks.

  I stare at him blankly. “Are you okay?” I ask, like it’s some great comeback. I’m unreasonably annoyed by his concern. Something about it presumes that I’m a wounded bird after my big public breakup with Bryce.

  “Yeah,” he says. “I just meant after everything this week.”

  “It was just the one thing. So other than that super-public breakup with my longtime boyfriend, I’m totally good.”

  “Cool.” He nods a little too aggressively. “Bryce is sort of a punk.”

  Surely this is a trap. I squint at him, trying to decipher how to proceed. “Aren’t you friends with him?”

  He pushes his fingers through his overgrown curls. “Well, I’m friends with lots of people.”

  Oh hell, do I get that. So much of living in a town the size of Clover City means hanging out with people you might not choose for yourself if you lived in a bigger city or went to a bigger school.

  I stand up from my stool and grab my trusty glass cleaner to hopefully send this guy packing.

  “I better let you get back to work,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say, my voice flat. “I’m swamped.”

  While he heads off to the weight machines, I get busy spraying whatever free surfaces I can find. If this job has given me one skill, it’s the ability to look hella busy. I should add that to my résumé.

  My phone dings, and I pull it from my backpack. I really did miss that sound.

  MAMA BEAR: might be a few minutes late picking you up.

  “You got your phone back?” Millie turns the corner from the office and sits down on one of the stools.

  “Miraculously, yes.” I wipe the last of the glass cleaner from the front door and join her behind the desk. “My mom was really feeling the guilt after this week.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Her voice sounds so concerned that it almost feels fake.

  “What’s there to talk about?”

  “Are you, like, a robot or something?” she asks. I even sense the slightest bit of irritation. “I mean, how do you process stuff without friends to talk to?”

  I whip my head around to face her. Oh, she totally just stepped in it. And she knows it. “How do you know I don’t have any friends?” I ask, my voice too high, too sweet.

  “Well . . . I just . . .” She stammers for a moment.

  This is the problem with nice people. If you’re gonna say something, you have to mean it. “Well,” I say. “You just what?”

  She clears her throat into her doughy fist and sits up a little straighter. “I just have noticed that since leaving the dance team, and now with all that happened this week, you seem to be, well, missing some people in your life.”

  Sisterhood. The word taunts me as I remember what Sam said to the whole team just hours before Melissa ratted me out and I took a bullet for all of them. “Those bitches were never my friends,” I say. “Nothing in this town is real. It’s not. We’re all just stuck here without any better options, trying to make the best with what we have. And some of us are better at that than others.”

  She turns away, focusing on the (very clean, if I do say so myself) window in front of her.

  She knows I’m right. The sooner she gets what the reality of living in this town really is, the better.

  After a moment, she says, “Callie, I reject that.”

  “What?”

  “You’re wrong,” she says simply. “And I’m going to prove it to you.”

  “Um, okay? With what? Scientifically gathered evidence?”

  “No. Maybe. You’re joining my slumber-party club.”

  I sputter laughter that I try to cover with a cough. “Your what?”

  “My slumber-party club. Well, it’s not an official club. Hannah would kill me if I actually called us that,” she says. “You left all that hay in her locker last year, because your friends decided she looked like a horse. Remember?”

  Oh damn. She just called me out. My stomach tenses. It was a sort of asshole thing to do. It was just a joke at the time, but something about the memory makes me uneasy. “That wasn’t me.”

  She doesn’t flinch. “Amanda saw you.”

  “Who’s Amanda?” I ask.

  She grins, but it’s too polite to be genuine. “Amanda sees lots of things. But you’ll know her when you see her. Anyway, tonight is Ellen’s turn to host. I think y’all used to work together.”

  “No,” I tell her. “No thank you. Definitely not.” I have no interest in seeing Ellen Dryver. No one ditches Callie Reyes. Except for Ellen Dryver apparently.

  “You can’t say something like what you said about nothing in this town being real without giving me the chance to prove you wrong.”

  “I’m grounded,” I tell her. “Remember?”

  “For now,” she says.

  I roll my eyes, but she’s already hard at work printing membership applications.

  After work, Mom is late like she said she’d be, so I plop down on the curb and wait.

  “Where’s your ride?” asks Millie.

  “Late.”

  She lowers herself down beside me. “I’ll wait with you.”

  “That’s really not necessary.”

  “Well, I do unnecessary things all the time.”

  I pull out my phone and scroll through my various social media accounts. It’s moments like these that I’m happier than I can even describe to have my phone back. No awkward small talk with Millie Michalchuk. No thank you.

  The first thing on my feed is a real killjoy though.

  Melissa Gutierrez checked into Clay Dooley Dodge Service Department with Bryce Dooley, Sam Crawford, and Jill Royce. COME ON DOWN TO OUR CAR WASH, Y’ALL! HELP GET THE SHAMROCKS TO STATE!

  I shove the phone in my back pocket. Maybe I was better off without technology. That’s fine. I can sit here silently forever. I’ve spent the whole afternoon with this girl. My capacity for small talk is more than depleted.

  Millie leans back, bracing herself with her palms pressed into the sidewalk. If she’s annoyed by my blatant decision to ignore her, she doesn’t show it.

  Finally, my mom pulls into the parking lot and I pounce up from the sidewalk as fast as I can, trying to avoid any interaction between my mom and Millie. Honestly, Millie’s the kind of girl who you just know is parental crack. She’s cheerful, polite, and fat. A parent’s dream come true for their daughter’s BFF. There’s no way anyone is getting into trouble with Millie.

  But it’s too late. My mom has already rolled down the window. “Is that Millicent?” she calls.

  Oh, shit.

  “Yes, ma’am,” calls Millie as she pushes herself up from where we were sitting on the curb. “Is that my favorite school secretary?”

  “Callie,” my mom says, “can you believe that last fall on Secretary’s Day, Millie and her mom brought me that sweet little cactus I keep on my desk? They even knitted sweet little seasonally appropriate cozy-looking things for the pot.”

  I shake my head and climb in the front seat. “Yup,” I say. “Totally believe it.”

  Millie leans through my open window and says, “You know, my mom always says succulents and sweet tea are the surest way to the heart of a true Texan woman.”

>   “Well,” says Mama, “between succulents, sweet tea, and the perfect barbecue sauce, I think your mama is right.”

  I turn to my mom. “I have homework. We should go.”

  “Baby,” my mom says, “it’s a Saturday night. And you’re grounded. You’re in absolutely no rush to be anywhere.”

  Millie sighs and cranes her head to the side like a perfect little golden retriever. “I sure do hope Callie’s grounding is up soon. I invited her to a slumber party this evening with some of my favorite young ladies.”

  Ugh. She’s really laying it on thick. I swear, she’s a master manipulator.

  “Oh,” my mom croons. “That is so precious of you.”

  My mom glances to me, and I try to discreetly shake my head. I’ve got big plans tonight, and they include an entire box of microwave popcorn shaken up in a bag with chocolate syrup and a private viewing of whatever trash reality TV shows I can find, but ideally something where people have to survive in the wilderness for weeks without killing each other or eating poisonous berries.

  “It has been a hard week,” she says. “I bet some girl time would do you good.” Mama turns to Millie with a sparkle in her eye. “I think I can make an exception.”

  Millie claps her hands together and twirls in a circle like a spinning-top toy. “Oh, how wonderful!” She turns back to me. “It’s five thirty now. How about you pack a bag and I’ll pick you up at seven thirty?”

  “Great,” I answer flatly. I turn my whole body to face her, so my mom can’t see me mouth, You’re a monster.

  If Millie can read lips, she doesn’t falter as she says bye to my adoring mother and offers me a completely vicious wink.

  One thing’s for sure: I have totally underestimated this girl.

  When Ellen’s mother opens the door to Millie and me on her doorstep, we are greeted by a petite woman in a fitted denim dress and sculpted brown hair. “I best get out of y’all’s business before the real fun starts!” She squeezes past the two of us with a clutch wedged under her arm. “Bob, you stay out of the girls’ way! Go to bed early or something! It’s gonna be a late one for me!” She turns to us. “Off to go dancing!”