Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
1 - The Rents
2 - The Girls
3 - Betrayal
4 - Plain Jane us. Lunch
5 - M.J. us. the Jocks
6 - Intrigue
7 - Bullies
8 - The Dragons
9 - Durling Phones
10 - Jackson!
11 - Stallions
12 - The Twisted Pretzel
13 - Mall Matters
14 - Bucker-Uppers
15 - Midnight Madness
16 - It
17 - Aha!
18 - The Battle of Attila Ill
19 - Starless Night
20 - The Girlfriend
21 - Fallingg ...
22 - And Falling ...
23 - The Plan
24 - Thanksgiving
25 - Alicia at Last
26 - The Main Event
27 - Voices
The way thigs are doesn’t mean it’s the way things are meant to be.
Nicole is still blocking my path. “You need to talk to Star, Mary Jane. You know she and Jackson are going together.”
I smile at Nicole. I could nod and be done with this. That’s what I should do, what Plain Jane in my head would very likely tell me to do if she were talking to me. But taking the easy way out is not M.J.’s style. And before I can stop her voice, I’m echoing it: “I know Star and Jackson have been going out, Nicole. You know they’ve been going out. Jackson must know it too, right? Star certainly knows this, at least most of the time, when her interests don’t lie elsewhere and she’s not going out with someone else.”
Nicole starts to interrupt, but I won’t let her.
“So if it’s true love and all,” I continue with impeccable logic, “what are you girls so worried about?”
I move around her and take two steps before she wheels on me and shouts, “Just don’t forget the way things are around here!” This is tree talk. To Nicole, Star hangs at the top of The Girls’ family tree. She is our leader, our guide, the most powerful Girl. If Star decides to claim one guy as hers, with half a dozen guys on the side, then those of us on the lower branches should just go along with it.
I take a deep breath, then turn back to face her. “And you, Nicole, don’t forget that the way things are doesn’t mean it’s the way things are meant to be.”
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SPEAK
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published in the United States of America by Dutton Children’s Books,
a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2007
Published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2008
Copyright © Dandi Daley Mackall, 2007 All rights reserved
eISBN : 978-1-4406-3074-3
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To Jen and Dave, who are also “Crazy in Love”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to thank my wonderful editor, Maureen Sullivan, who has just the right editorial touch. Thanks for seeing the promise of this story and for helping me get it there. I’m very glad you are one of the voices in my head.
Thanks to Dutton Children’s Books, with whom I’m “crazy in love.”
1
The Rents
Okay, so I do hear voices in my head, but they’re all mine. And before you go dialing Psychiatrists-R-Us, consider the fact that I’m going to need all the help I can get just to have a fingers-crossed, fighting chance of getting through today.
My senior year was not supposed to start out like this. Not after the best summer ever, hanging with my gal pals and dreaming about being totally free next year when we’d all sail away to college but keep in touch with each other and still be us forever and always: The Girls.
I admit that I had my doubts about the greatness of the summer when Alicia, my all-time best friend, left early for college. But Cassie and Jessica and I visited nine college campuses, including fraternity rows and mixed dorms, even though Cassie and I had already settled on Illinois State University. We exhausted every possible joke connected with the fact that our university is located in Normal, Illinois, which means we’ll be meeting Normal guys and dabbling in Normal nightlife, and having Normal love affairs.
On other long summer days Cassie and I met up with Jessica and Samantha to sun at Jessica’s pool because, cancer or no cancer, tan fat looks better than white fat. On occasion, Nicole and Star and Company would meet us at the mall. We’d hook up with some of the guys and see a crummy summer movie half a dozen times just to make fun of it or drive up to Six Flags Great America and flirt shamelessly with Bugs and Daffy and try to get them to fight over us.
So how did I get from that all-American summer to this soap-opera-worthy mess?
“Mary Jane!” Mom yells up the stairs like a normal person would yell only in the event of a life-threatening fire. “Your fah-ther and I need to talk with you.”
Mom only calls Dad my “fah-ther” when she wants to conjure up images of 1950s head-of-the-household, better-be-real-scared-of-me men. Although she also calls my fah-ther “Tom,” “Thomas,” “your dad,” and “Daddy,” according the need of the moment, she has only one name for me, her younger daughter.
Mary Jane. Like the shoes, which I wouldn’t wear if they were the last foot-covering on a desert island.
I told you the voices in my head are mine. But I blame my mother for encouraging Plain Jane to take up residence in my head. Like the shoes that bear my name, Plain Jane is not so much plain as timeless, classic, loved by mothers everywhere, a good investment, a good bet, a good buy . . . and so not fun.
I try very hard not to listen to her.
“Now, Mary Jane!” screams my mother.
“Coming, Mom!” I shout, reaching for my red lipstick. But then I hear Plain Jane in my head, reminding me that my mother hates red lipstick and says it makes me look like one of those street people, and she’s not talking about mimes.
&nbs
p; In spite of myself, I put down the Flame Red tube and apply wholesome lip gloss to my lips. I have nice lips, if I do say so myself. Very kissable, says M.J. (another voice in my crowded head, a voice that can only be described as sexy). Plain Jane, on the other hand, hates my lips. She says they do not go with my eyes, which are small and brown and ordinary, the eye color of three-quarters of the earth’s inhabitants. Plain Jane never misses an opportunity to point out my plainness, and she adds that I should simply be thankful for the good vision provided by my plain eyes. M.J. counters that these eyes are intense, sexy even.
Before Mom can shout again, I dash from the bathroom back to my bedroom and grab my pack, in case I need to make a fast getaway.
I think about sliding down the banister, but Plain Jane’s voice is shouting that normal people do not slide down banisters, and I go with her voice, since this battle is with the rents. They love Plain Jane.
They’re in the kitchen, sitting together at the table. If my parents belonged to someone else, I’d probably think they were nice-looking, for middle-aged rents. Dad has all of his hair, which is brown and matches his eyes. And mine. And three-quarters of the known world’s. The fact that he isn’t balding is a point of pride for him, since his younger brother, my Uncle Jim, has just about lost all his hair. Dad’s in pretty good shape for a lawyer. And he doesn’t have the stereotypical lawyer personality. He doesn’t even hate lawyer jokes, although I’m not always sure he gets them.
Mom is small, five feet two, to Dad’s six-two, with me taking the middle at five-eight. She’s blonde, blue-eyed, and bubbly, in a sincere way. If they have ugly secret lives, I don’t know about them yet. But I’m only seventeen.
“Have a seat, Mary Jane,” Dad says. Even now, when I know he’s been up all night obsessing about me, his voice is warm, like a radio announcer’s before the game.
I sit. As always, Mom has set the table for breakfast, even though I skip it half the time because I’m running late. I pour Grape-Nuts into my bowl, hoping to ease the tension with the appearance of normality and healthy bits of grain.
Mom obviously can’t take the waiting anymore. “Mary Jane,” she begins, and her disappointment is so thick in only those two words that, in spite of myself, I feel guilty. I know this disappointment. It’s like a second skin to me, a fur coat in the dead of summer.
Throughout my colorful past, the Plain Jane in my head has arranged my rents’ disappointment into words of various patterns: “After all they’ve done for you, how can you do this to them?” “Why can’t you think of someone besides yourself?” “You owe them everything, and all they ask is that you live by their rules. What is wrong with you?”
Mom glances at Dad to get the okay. Gets it. Goes on. “Honey, we heard you come in last night.”
“Sorry,” I say, before thinking enough. “I tried to be quiet. I didn’t mean to wake you.” This is what the M.J. in my head was saying, and I knew better than to listen to her.
“You know good and well that’s not the point,” Dad says, his voice firmer now. He and M.J. are seldom on the same side. They know how to push each other’s buttons. “Let’s not play games, okay? I thought we’d gotten over this phase.”
"Sorry,” I say, pouring the milk and trying hard to tune out the smart aleck in my head. “I know. It was late.”
“One a.m.,” Mom helpfully supplies.
“School-night curfew is still ten unless you check with us first,” Dad reminds me. “Your mother and I were very worried about you.”
“I called,” I offer. “Did you get the message?”
“We called, too,” Mom says. “Your cell was off.”
M.J. is whispering a dozen excuses to me, just like that. She’s so good. You called my cell? Really? I have to remember to plug in that phone every night. Or, Are you sure you called the right number? I didn’t get a message. Or, One of the kids I was with needed to call her parents, and they talked forever.
I’m smart enough to pass on the M.J. excuses just now. “That was stupid of me,” I admit. “I should have known you’d try to call back. I turned off my cell because we were trying to watch the end of the movie. I’m sorry. I just didn’t think.”
“That’s the problem, Mary Jane. You haven’t been thinking, ” Dad agrees. “One o’clock on a school night? You’ve been working hard all these years to get into a good school like ISU. Don’t lose it your senior year. College isn’t—”
“I thought you were studying at Cassandra’s house,” Mom interrupts. “That’s what you told me.”
“I was!” I protest. “We’re having a quiz in English on Julius Caesar today. We were watching the Shakespeare production. That’s what we were doing. It’s a really long movie. We just didn’t get it started in time.”
All truth. Nothing but the truth.
Not the whole truth.
The movie was running, but we didn’t do much watching. Unless you count watching each other. I spent most of the time watching Jackson House. Six-foot senior, long brown hair, killer smile. Star Simons’s boyfriend. The M.J. in my head firmly believes that anyone named Star Simons doesn’t deserve a boyfriend like Jackson House. And it’s not just the name. Star would be the first one to tell you Jackson belongs to her. But that doesn’t stop her from sneaking in dates with other guys. I have this on reliable authority.
And there’s more. There’s a sadness in those big brown eyes of Jackson House. I’ve seen it. It’s kept me awake nights. And I can make him laugh! Which turns befriending him into a kind of community service, when you think about it. And I do. Think about it. Constantly.
“Mary Jane?”
“Sorry. Thinking about the exam.”
“There’s still no excuse for being out that late,” Dad continues. “You shouldn’t wait until the last minute to study. The habits you form now are the habits you’ll carry with you to ISU.” His voice is already softening, and so are his eyes. He is so easy. It’s enough to make the Plain Jane in me say, Shame on you.
“You’re right, Daddy.” And he is. Still, I don’t think I’m going to get grounded. I almost never do, thanks to Plain Jane, who is highly trustworthy. I don’t think Dad’s even going to yell at me. I can’t imagine what Alicia’s parents would do to her if she’d gotten home that late. Alicia is probably my best friend in the whole world, but I would never trade rents with her for five minutes.
I turn to Mom, who looks like she has a lot more to say on the subject. If I give her time, she’s going to ask who was there (fourteen of us) and where Cassie’s parents were (Kansas City or Des Moines, I think) and if I bothered to read the play before watching it on television (no). “I’m sorry I worried you, Mom. It won’t happen again.”
“I hope not,” she answers, her voice filled with hurt. And, yes, disappointment.
I gulp down a few bites of cereal.
“Don’t forget your sister’s game after school,” Dad says.
"I won’t,” I answer, although I had forgotten about Sandy’s game.
M.J. is singsonging in my head: Yes! Not even a grounding! I win! I win!
But as I grab my pack and walk out of the kitchen, I have to admit that I feel a little guilty. It’s only 7:37 a.m., and already I’ve disappointed my rents, forgotten about my sister’s big game, and gotten myself a monster-truck-sized crush on somebody else’s boyfriend.
2
The Girls
I back Fred down the driveway. I refuse to use car mirrors, despite the warnings from my old driver’s ed instructor about the dangers of looking over one’s shoulder. So my head is turned backward while I inch onto Elm, gravel crunching as if I’m breaking it. How could turning around to back out be less safe than backing by mirrors? Side mirrors lie. They even admit it in tiny white letters that warn: OBJECTS IN MIRROR MAY BE CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR. How can you trust a mirror like that? It’s like thinking you’re skinny because you’re in front of the right mirror in the funhouse.
Fred is my Dodge Neon, bright blue, circa
1997. I love Fred. Dad turned it over to me when he got the Blazer.
Turned it over to you FREE and even paid your insurance, you ungrateful, ugly American, Plain Jane is quick to add.
It takes me about ten minutes to make the drive to Attila High, also known as Attila Ill here in Attila, Illinois. The sun’s still trying to find a spot in the gray sky where it can pop out. November in Illinois is no April in Paris.
I use the time to prepare myself for what I know will be waiting for me at school. Cassie, for sure. Jessica, Samantha, Nicole, Lauren. The Girls have probably been heating up the airwaves with cell phone energy, pooling information and observations about last night. They will not like what they undoubtedly see as a potentially dangerous development in the peaceful coexistence of our group.
A family tree diagram of The Girls would show two major branches. There’s the simple branch with Cassie, Jessica, Samantha, and me. And then there’s the slightly twisted branch with Star at the tip, supported by Nicole and Lauren. This twisted branch shoves its way to the top of the tree as it fights for a position above all other branches. To the casual observer, The Girls are one big happy family tree, with leaves connecting all branches and providing group shade. But from the inside, The Girls are all too aware of the delicate system of interlocking branches, the swaying and creaking of those branches in the wind.
The Girls will not like this perceived threat to the tranquility of the tree. They will not like it, but they will love talking about it.
For the millionth time, I wish Alicia hadn’t graduated ahead of me. Alicia Freedman is my true best friend. But now she’s off in another world at Southern Illinois University, with college and fraternity guys. And I’m back here, trying to survive high school . . . with all these high schoolers.
This morning, it will be up to me to say the right things that will preserve all remaining high school female friendships still available to me. I will have to convince The Girls that of course I would never do anything to hurt one of The Girls. And I wouldn’t. Of course. I was not, absolutely not, making a play for Star’s boyfriend, even though I know he’s unhappy with Star, who has never been known for her faithfulness to any boy. Even though said boyfriend does smell like the forest after a rain and is the only human worthy of the cliché about “eyes that twinkle.”
Crazy in Love Page 1