by Jen Brady
I don’t know if it was because I was already on edge from having to spend the afternoon working with Rick or the nagging sense of betrayal squeezing my heart at Ted being buddy-buddy with Mya again, but being around him wasn’t doing its usual calming job. In fact, my irritation had ratcheted up several notches just standing in the garage with him.
“I can’t believe you got me into this,” I snapped.
He had the gall to laugh. “Does that mean the Bhaerly Unbelievable movie isn’t exactly edge-of-your-seat material?”
“Not at all.”
“So we would have beaten it?”
“A hundred percent.”
Of that, I was sure. The Witch’s Curse was way better than Superhero Mall Heroes, or whatever he’d called it. There’s no way it would place in the competition, not in its current state. I would have to fix it enough so it at least caught Vance Sanders’s attention or we wouldn’t even be getting a shout-out.
There was no way I was going to suffer through hours of putting up with Angry Scruffy Bench Guy and not even get a couple of links and/or shares out of it.
“What’s he like?” Ted asked. “I’m guessing neat-freak, type-A, spreadsheet-scheduling king.”
I let out a laugh that sounded more like a snort than a laugh. Mya’s girly giggle sounded in my brain, along with my own critical comparison: my laugh sounded like a horse next to hers.
“Actually, he’s a huge slob.”
“No way,” Ted said, his smile widening. Ugh. He was loving that I was stuck working on Rick’s boring movie while he got to drive princess cheerleaders home from cheer practice.
“Yeah, you should see his room.”
His laugh died suddenly, and his eyebrows knit together. “Wait. You were in his room?”
“Yeah, so what?” I rolled my eyes.
“Did he hit on you?”
“No! And why would you care anyway? There’s no way he’d hit on me. Cute guys never do.”
I realized my mistake as Ted’s eyes got big and his mouth dropped open in exaggerated, amused surprise.
I put up a hand in protest. “No. I didn’t mean—”
“You think he’s cute. You like him.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do. Your face is getting all red. You have a crush on Crabby Ugly Bench Dude.”
“It’s Angry Scruffy Bench Guy,” I corrected. “And I don’t have a crush on him. He’s annoying. And messy . . . and a know-it-all . . . and . . . needs a haircut!”
Ted leaned in and grinned. “Oh, so you noticed his hair, huh?”
An image of Rick running his hands through his messy hair flashed through my mind, and I had to blink hard to force it away.
“Shut up, Ted.” I punched him hard right in his broad shoulder. He just laughed. “That’s not why I came over anyway.” I put my hands on my hips and glared up at him. “Why’d you give Mya a ride?”
“Because it’s winter.” His tone of voice said I was really dumb for having to ask. “And we were leaving school at the same time and we live next door to each other.”
I threw my hands up in frustration. His apathy over what she’d done was driving me nuts.
“How are you not upset about our movie?”
“I am upset. You know that. What she did sucks.”
The correct words were coming out of his mouth, but his tone and demeanor didn’t match.
“You’re not acting like it,” I pointed out.
His jaw clenched. Good. He should be irked at me calling him out. “I’m not going to mope around, if that’s what you mean.”
“I am not moping around!” He had no right to make my feelings out to be unjustified. He wasn’t the one who had spent hours and hours editing that thing to perfection. “And someone who’s upset wouldn’t play chauffeur for Princess McBratface after what she did.”
His face softened. “JoJo, she didn’t mean it.”
“Oh, I’m so sure. She just happened to be standing near the river admiring how lovely the flash drive was, and the wind blew it out of her hand.”
He gave me a semi-dirty look. “You know what I mean. She thought we had it backed up on the Cloud. She’s apologized to me like fifty times in the past week. She feels really bad.”
His words sliced through me. Mya had apologized to him. More than once. I’d assumed her lack of apology to me was fueled by ignorance of the enormity of what she’d done, like she didn’t realize what a big deal it was. But she had no problem groveling at Ted’s feet.
“Good. She should feel bad.” Tears prickled in the back of my eyes. “But she hasn’t once apologized to me, her own sister.”
“That might be because you won’t speak to her. It’s hard to apologize to someone who won’t give you the time of day.”
Ugh. Was every guy I knew going to be impossible today?
“Whose side are you on?”
“Yours, of course.” He reached out and took my upper arms in his hands. “Like always. But you don’t need to be so vindictive. She’s just a kid—”
“She’s fifteen. She knew what she was doing.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “She felt left out.”
I pulled away from him and pushed his chest with both of my palms. He stumbled back against the Porsche.
“You liar,” I accused. “You’re taking her side, and you know it. You’re being a crappy friend.”
“No, I’m being a nice person. You’re being a crappy sister.”
I couldn’t stand to be around him right now. I turned and marched out of the garage.
“JoJo!” he called after me. “Don’t leave! Jeez, you don’t need to be such a whiner about it!”
I stomped through the snow to my house. I took a swipe at one of the bushes on the side of the house, and a huge clump of snow fell off of them. It felt good to slam the door behind me as I walked inside.
Warmth enveloped me as I kicked off my boots. I went right to the kitchen. This was exactly the sort of day that called for drowning your sorrows in ice cream right out of the carton.
My mom sat at the table, a plate of yesterday’s leftover spaghetti in front of her. It smelled delicious, but I still went straight for the freezer and dug out the carton of chocolate peanut butter ice cream.
“What’s wrong, sweetie?” Mom asked.
“He is impossible!”
Mom’s concern turned into a small smile. “What are you two arguing about this time?”
I sighed and plopped into a chair across the table from her, slapping the ice cream carton down in front of me. No matter how old I got or how long it had been since we’d had a heart-to-heart talk, she was still the same easy-to-talk-to Mom I’d always had. We picked up right where we left off, and I could count on her to listen and say exactly what I needed to hear.
I let the first spoonful of cold tastiness melt in my mouth, then grumbled, “He’s being nice to Mya.”
Mom gasped. “What a horrible boy,” she said, mock shock in her tone. “Being nice to your sister. How dare he? I don’t think you two should be friends anymore.”
“She ruined our movie!” I exclaimed, like Mom hadn’t heard about it eight million times that week. “All our hard work. Gone. Because little Princess Mya wanted to go to a stupid movie with us. And he still talks to her. He even gave her a ride home from cheerleading. It’s like he doesn’t care about what she did.”
Mom took a bite of spaghetti and stared off into space as she chewed. How many double shifts had she put in this week? Three? I couldn’t remember. She looked back at me.
“I think he’s forgiven her.”
Yep, he obviously had. Just like that. So quickly, even though she’d done nothing to deserve his forgiveness but pout and bat her eyes at him.
I pointed my spoon at Mom. “Well, I haven’t. I’m never going to forgive her. She’s dead to me.”
I shoved another spoonful of ice cream in my mouth and reveled in its deliciousness. It almost made it better. Almost.
“I knew you’d take her side. You always take her side. Everyone does.”
Mom reached across the table and covered her hand with mine. I wanted to pull away to show my annoyance at her defending Mya, but I didn’t have the heart to. Her lined face looked so tired. She worked hard to provide for us, and I didn’t want to add more stress to her life.
“Forgiveness isn’t about taking sides, sweetie. It’s about allowing yourself to heal. Haven’t you ever heard that saying about how holding a grudge is like drinking poison every day and expecting it to hurt the person you’re angry with? It doesn’t. It only hurts you. Again and again. I don’t want to see you poisoning yourself.”
I let her words sink in. Logically, I realized the wisdom of them, but my heart still felt emotionally battered over the loss of my movie. It had been my ticket to film school . . . to New York . . . to getting out of this tiny town and doing something amazing with my life someday. And she’d stolen that from me. Over a trip to a movie that hadn’t been that great anyway.
“How can you forgive someone who’s done something so rotten to you?”
“There are a lot of people I could be holding a grudge against right now,” Mom said.
I wondered who she was talking about. Aunt Deb, who hadn’t helped us out financially when we needed her most? My dad, who had taken off to follow his passion of saving the world without a backward glance at the girls who needed him most? Those things were probably worse than deleting a few project files, yet Mom sat across from me looking completely at peace.
“But the thing is,” she went on, “grudges never hurt the person you’re angry with. They only steal your own joy.”
“Mya stole my joy,” I argued.
Mom nodded slowly. “Maybe at first. But the longer you stay angry, the more joy you’ll miss out on.”
“I guess,” I muttered, partly because I saw her point, but mostly because I didn’t want to talk about Mya anymore.
I TRIED TO GO TO BED early, but I tossed and turned so much my blankets ended up a tangled mess. I wasn’t ready to make up with Mya, but I hate fighting with Ted. We’re so close it’s almost like we’re two halves of the same person, so being angry with him was like being angry with myself, and it felt awful. Looking at it that way made me understand my mom’s whole poison/grudge analogy better.
I got up, slipped my feet into a pair of old purple Crocs, and ran downstairs to grab my coat. I headed outside, even though I’d promised Megs to never again wear those shoes in public. She’s convinced my terrible fashion “don’t” will reflect poorly on her somehow, even though they’re my feet and my ugly Crocs. It was January in Massachusetts, after all; dark and cold. Nobody would see me.
As I made my way across the snowy yard, trying to limit the amount of snow that found its way into my Crocs by stepping only in already-packed-down footprints, a shadowy figure approached from the other direction. We met at about the halfway point.
The figure stuck his hands in his pants pockets and ducked his head, sheepishly.
“Sorry,” Ted said.
“Me, too.”
He opened his arms and I fell into his embrace. We really do need to do something about our hot tempers. Maybe we should go to anger management classes together.
At least we always make up right away. I don’t know what I’d do without Ted.
12
RICK
I ARRIVED AT THE MALL on Saturday fifteen minutes ahead of schedule. I wanted time to go over my questions and double-check the locations I planned to film. We were going to start outside, ask a few quick questions, then move inside for the majority of the interview. If Mr. Matthews had been easier to set up a time to meet with, I could have done the majority of the filming outdoors, but since it was now January and I didn’t want to freeze out my interviewee, that wasn’t the most practical option.
I parked in the old lot and headed for the front entrance. When the parking garage had been built several years ago, they’d expanded part of the mall into the old lot and left the rest for employee parking. Customers were supposed to park in the garage and pay, but the mall cops rarely checked the employee lot, so I figured I’d chance it.
The cold bit my cheeks and chin as I walked. Going clean-shaven in the winter always stinks. But I’d shaved and also tamed my hair with gel for the day of filming. My shoe hit an icy patch, and I had to do a little dance to avoid crashing to the ground. I glanced around and luckily didn’t spot any witnesses. The bad treads on the soles of dress shoes is part of the reason I avoid wearing them whenever possible.
I claimed a bench that was unoccupied (thank goodness) and set my tripod and folder full of notes on it.
Joanna arrived not more than five minutes after I had and almost walked right past me. I had to call her name and wave before she turned and carefully made her way over the icy sidewalk to me. She stood in front of me with an adorable surprised look on her face.
“Wow. You look . . . um . . . you look . . . .”
She slowly lowered the camera bag from her shoulder and set it on the bench we stood in front of.
“Yes?” I drew out the word. I tried to raise one eyebrow in an alluring expression that would fluster her more, but I felt the other eyebrow follow, so I probably just looked confused.
Her eyes dropped from my face to my short, fitted dress coat and creased navy blue pants. My heart thudded in my chest. Was this the Joanna March way of checking a guy out? Even though her fresh, natural, girl-next-door, subtle beauty had hooked me even before we met in person, she’d never seemed the least bit impressed with my looks. Maybe the clean-shaven, hair-combed-and-gelled, no-holed pants look was more her thing.
Puke. I was dressed like Laurence. Of course, that would dawn on me now when there was no way to change. But if that’s what did it for her, maybe the sacrifice would be worth it.
She studied my shiny black shoes. Then her eyes snapped back up to meet mine and she shrugged. “Like you’re going to church.”
So much for impressing her. At least looking like I was going to church was marginally better than looking like I was about to attend a funeral. Unless she meant I looked like I was going to church to attend a funeral.
Why did I care so much what she thought? She made videos about putting 5000 bath bombs in an old man’s backyard pool. So she was pretty and had that sultry voice I could listen to all day. So what? It’s not like I needed to impress her. She was with Laurence anyway. She wouldn’t care what I looked like.
At least she hadn’t brought any snacks. She’d come over yesterday to work and had, once again, brought an apple to smack away on throughout our session. If she started crunching during the interview, my jaw was going to end up permanently clamped shut from all the teeth grinding I’d have to do to get through it.
I took my tripod off the bench and slid one leg out, then the others. I reached for Joanna’s camera bag. My hand barely brushed the strap before she snatched it away.
“You don’t have to do that,” she said quickly. “I’ll film it for you.”
“I’d rather set it up on the tripod.”
I leaned in to take it from her, but she sidestepped me, rolling her shoulder and pulling her other arm in to shield the camera. She looked like a quarterback cradling her camera football, and I felt an amused smile playing at my lips.
“What?” She glared at me. I loved the fire in her eyes. It was way better than the gloomy, drab look from the other day. “You broke yours.”
My smile flattened. This girl was infuriating. “I didn’t break mine. A switch shorted.”
“I’ll handle the filming,” she insisted. “That’s what I’m here for, right?”
Great. I really didn’t want my final interview done in the style of bumpity-shake-shake-jiggle-a-roo the way her videos looked. When Joanna and Laurence were both on-screen, whoever handled the camera (one of her sisters, I think) did so
with minimal jostling, but whenever they did their own camerawork, they gave that shaky Blair Witch movie a run for its money. The last thing I needed was viewers—or worse, judges—vomiting due to motion sickness.
“I prefer a still vibe to my camerawork,” I said gently, biting back the Blair Witch comment and any mention of vomit. If she had paid as much attention to the work-in-progress she’d watched the other day as she had her apple and phone, she would know that.
“But that’s so flat and blah and boring.” Apparently, she wasn’t going to return the favor of censoring her critical comments.
“How professional of me,” I shot back, which earned me a “look.”
“It’s not going to impress Vance,” she said, as if she were close personal friends with the famous YouTuber.
If I did any more biting of my tongue, the interview questions I asked in a few minutes were going to sound like they were coming from someone who’d just had dental work. Instead, I clamped my mouth shut and worked on pulling the legs of my tripod into position.
“I’d really appreciate it if you’d just hit the record button and let it go.”
“Then what’s the point of me being here? You don’t need someone to do that. You can start it, get into frame, and edit the beginning seconds out.”
“Feel free to take off,” I said. I nodded toward the mall. “You could go in and warm up. Go shopping or something.”
Her eyes blazed. Her hands flew to her hips. I had to fight to keep my smile at bay at the sight of her trying to pull off a fierce stance in her puffy purple winter coat, the camera bag awkwardly dangling from one of her hip-clenching hands.
“One,” she said, holding up an index finger, “I do not want to go shopping or something.” The disgusted face she made as she said it would have been more appropriate if I’d suggested she jump into the dumpster on the far side of the lot. “Two.” Another finger sprang up. “We’re supposed to be partners.”
“Not partners, really,” I corrected before I could stop myself. Partners implied an equal stake in the project and its outcome. This was my film. She was just loaning me equipment and coming along for the ride because I had no other options.