by Robin Palmer
After we settled ourselves at a table with our Mexican food, Juliet took out a prescription pill bottle and twisted the top off. Oh my god, she was taking pills right in the middle of the mall. I choked back my gasp.
Was Juliet a drug addict? Was it to kill the pain of having to live a life of lies and go on the run? Devon had been addicted to pills for a while, but thankfully went to rehab, in Addled by Addiction, the one where she fell madly in love with a fellow rehabber who had been a big rock star in the eighties. Wait—maybe Juliet was manic depressive like Devon’s sister, Cassandra, and it was for that, so she wouldn’t stay up for three days in a row and then start taking off her clothes in the middle of Sunset Boulevard because she was so overtired that she thought a rain puddle was a swimming pool. That’s what happened in Insane with Instability.
I wasn’t sure if I should ask what they were, but since I was now living my life on the edge, I steeled my courage. “What is that?” I asked, pointing at the bottle.
“It’s Prevacid,” she replied, as she popped one in her mouth and washed it down with some Diet Coke. “It’s for my ulcer,” she explained. “I have to take it before I eat. Especially when I have spicy food.”
Oh. “I thought only old people got ulcers,” I said.
She shook her head. “My shrink says that lots of people who suffer from anxiety get it.”
Was I the only one in our class who didn’t go to a shrink?
“Hey, I heard you were going to Mexico with Jordan,” she said as she crunched on a tortilla chip. It’s funny, I had never noticed how crooked her teeth were.
“I was, but then it got cancelled, and I had to bring these candelabras to my grandmother that I thought were family heirlooms but that turned out to be from a French guy she had a fling with.”
“Wow…that sounds exciting,” she said, impressed. I had impressed Juliet DeStefano! I was carrying on a conversation with her! It was almost like she was…normal. Who would have figured?
Hmm. Had her forehead always been broken out like that? Now that Juliet had suddenly become a normal human being, I felt so much closer to her. Which is why I broke down and told her everything. Well, that and the fact that drama wasn’t very fun if you didn’t get to share it with anyone.
“And my boyfriend, Michael, was going to come and visit his grandmother too, but then he couldn’t because he got the chicken pox.” I reached for a chip. “And then soon after he pushed the pause button on our relationship, I met Jack on the plane,” I said, shoving more chips in my mouth. Just thinking about everything I had been through over the last week zapped my energy and made me hungry. “And then Michael decided to go from pause to stop,” I said, my mouth full. “Which wasn’t so bad, because then I could kiss Jack and not feel guilty.”
“Omigod,” she gasped. “Your life is like a novel or something!”
I told her about Jack buying me the motorcycle boots as a token of his love (she thought they were really cool) and the e-mail from Michael professing his love—even about Jean-Pierre. After I was done, I realized Juliet was right—my life was like a book. And now, instead of being something you’d find in the middle-grade section, it was something you’d find in adult fiction.
“So what do you think I should do about Michael and Jack?” I said, trying to catch my breath. “I mean, with all the boyfriends you’ve had, I’m sure you’ve been fought over tons of times.”
“What boyfriends?” she asked, taking a bite of her taco.
I took a sip of my soda. “Well…all the ones…you’ve had…” Now that I thought about it, I didn’t know for sure that she had a bunch, but she had to have had a few. She was Juliet DeStefano!
“I’ve only had one,” she replied. “Doug Barrington. My freshman year in Atlanta. For three weeks.”
“Okay, but what about the guys you’ve, you know—”
“Supposedly hooked up with?” she said bitterly. “Like the guys on the football team?”
“Well, uh…yeah,” I replied. “And, you know, the ones on the soccer team.”
She rolled her eyes. “Now they’re saying it’s the soccer team too? Great.”
“Wait—so you’re not—”
“The Castle Heights junior-class slut?” she asked.
I gave a shrod, which is a half-shrug/half-nod. Obviously, I wouldn’t have used that S-word, but well, yeah.
“No. I’m not.”
In light of everything else I had discovered about her in the last half hour, I guess that shouldn’t have surprised me. But still, even with the grandmother, the ulcer, and everything, it was still hard to think of her as just normal.
“Maybe because once I went out for pizza with Bobby Newman, and afterward he tried to maul me until I told him that I had a black belt in Ashtanga and would snap his neck in two if he didn’t stop.”
“Isn’t Ashtanga a form of yoga?” I asked.
“Yeah. But he’s so stupid, he didn’t know that,” she replied. “And when he found out he was pretty pissed.”
I laughed. Who knew Juliet liked to knit and was funny?
“Or maybe it’s because I have big boobs?” she went on.
I glanced at her tank top. They were pretty big.
“I know it makes me sound lame, but I’ve never done anything more than kissed a guy,” she confessed as she daintily dabbed at the corners of her mouth. “So as much as I’d like to help you, I have no idea what you should do.” She sighed. “You’re so lucky, Sophie—I wish my life were that exciting. Before the French club calendar, my life was as boring as it gets.” She sighed again. “I know I got voted in for every month as a joke, but at least now I have something to look forward to.”
I knew just what she meant. That’s exactly what I used to say whenever I heard Lulu had a new book coming out!
Wait—had Juliet DeStefano just said she wished she had my life?
I reached down and pinched my thigh. “Ow,” I said aloud. I guess she had. “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure,” she replied.
“Is your name really Juliet?”
She gave me a weird look. “Yeah. Why?”
I shrugged. “Never mind.” So much for thinking I had other people all figured out.
After lunch, Juliet and I went back to Always 16, where I helped her pick out some outfits for the calendar. Now that we had kind of become friends, I wasn’t bitter anymore about the calendar situation. (Although I had to admit that with a few of the things she chose, when she said, “Does this make my butt look big?” and I said no, it was a teeny bit of a lie.) As we said good-bye (she and her grandmother were heading off to Color Me Mine to paint some pottery) we exchanged e-mails and numbers so we could hang out when we got back to L.A.
“The boys still must be out,” Grandma Roz said when we got back to the Garden of Eden and saw that Art’s Cadillac wasn’t in its parking spot with the orange cones he used to make sure no one got within six feet of it.
But when we got inside the condo, Jack was there, in the living room, surrounded by files that said things like “stock statements” and “bond statements” and a big envelope that said TeePeeMatic, the company that made my great-grandfather a millionaire. I saw broken glass on the floor, and a shattered window behind him. Jack turned when he heard us come in, and looked really freaked out.
“Oy gevalt!” Grandma Roz bellowed, dropping her bags. “What’s going on here?!”
I dropped mine too, and my hand immediately clutched at my heart. “Yeah! What’s going on here?” Obviously, spending time with Grandma Roz had rubbed off on me.
“I don’t know,” Jack cried. “Right after you left, Mervyn, the motorcycle guy, texted me to say I could come pick up the bike, so instead of going to the track with Art, I took the bus to the trailer park where he lives. But the bike was not as advertised on eBay and was completely covered with rust—you can bet I’m contacting customer service about that seller—and when I got back, I found the window broken and all this stuff on the f
loor!”
“Oy, my heart. This just might be the one that puts me six feet under,” Grandma Roz moaned as she waddled over to the fake Picasso painting on the wall and took it down.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Checking the safe,” she replied, matter-of-factly.
There was a safe?! First the candelabras, and now this. What other secrets was I going to find out about my grandmother—that she had had a baby before my dad and gave it up for adoption?
When she twirled the lock and the door popped open, Jack whistled. “Man, check out all those jewelry boxes.”
I turned to him, the hair on the back of my neck standing up. He couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with the break-in…right?
She counted the boxes. “Oy, thank God they’re all here.” She opened a blue velvet one. “Ah, the diamond and sapphire earrings that Juan Carlo gave me—I don’t know what I’d do if I lost those.”
“Who’s Juan Carlo?” I asked.
She looked up. “He was a…friend,” she replied. “You don’t know him. It was before Art came into the picture.”
Another guy? How many boyfriends did she have? I peered over her shoulder into the safe. I could see that in addition to the jewelry boxes, there were two silver menorahs. “Did you get the menorahs from ‘friends’ as well?” I asked suspiciously. This woman wasn’t my grandmother—she was a stranger.
She shrugged. “What can I tell you? I’m quite the catch at the Garden of Eden.” She walked over to the phone. “I’m going to call the police and file a report.”
I started walking through the condo to check if any other windows were broken. I couldn’t believe how calm Grandma was—I was feeling shaky, but she was calm as could be. In between rooms, I’d peer into the living room to see what Jack was doing, but by this time he was settled on the couch watching Wheel of Fortune. “Everything else looks okay,” I called out.
“The important thing is that you’re okay, Jack,” Grandma Roz called out from the kitchen. “You must be hungry after all that drama, so right after I make this call, I’m going to go make you a bagel.”
“Yeah, a little something would be nice,” I heard him call out.
When I walked back into the living room, the TV was still on, but he wasn’t on the couch anymore. Instead he was standing in front of the safe, which was still open.
“What are you doing?” I demanded.
He jumped and whipped around. “Man, Red, you scared me.”
Did he look guilty, or was he just startled? Something wasn’t adding up. Jack still hadn’t paid me back for anything so far, but that didn’t mean he was a criminal, did it?
Or was this just like in Drowning in Doubt, when Devon found out that the rabbi she had fallen in lust with was actually a thief? If I remembered correctly, he stole silver menorahs too!
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“Uh, nothing,” I replied, glad I remembered from all those CSI episodes I had watched with Jeremy that the most important thing to do when around a criminal was to not let on that you knew they were a criminal. As nonchalantly as I could, I shut the safe and started picking up the stock certificates.
He walked over and put his arms around me. “You sure? You’re looking at me kind of weird.”
“Weird how?” I asked, nervously.
He shrugged. “Most of the time you look at me like you’re all into me, but now…I don’t know…it’s different.” A panicked look came over his face. “You still like me, right? What you said last night when we were making out—that I’m the coolest guy you’ve ever met in your entire life—that still stands, right?”
For someone who never worried because he always lived in the moment, he sounded completely freaked out. Almost like he was…insecure.
“Right, Red?” he said, anxiously.
Before I could respond, my iPhone rang. I glanced at the display. It was Michael! What was I going to do? I couldn’t take the call in front of Jack. Maybe he was a criminal, but that didn’t mean he deserved to be kicked when he was was feeling so unsure of himself.
Except that he had totally lost interest in me and was back on the couch watching TV.
“You’re supposed to be on a plane!” I whispered when I answered.
“Why haven’t you responded to any of my e-mails?” he demanded.
“I’ve been busy. Wait—you’re not using your phone when all electronic devices are supposed to be turned off, are you?”
“No. I’m already here in Florida. I got on an earlier flight. Hey, Sophie, you’re not really mad at me, are you?” he asked nervously.
I rolled my eyes. I wasn’t one of those girls who liked to play games, but it was obvious that the best way to get a guy to like you was to pretend you weren’t interested. “Can I call you back in a little while? I’m sort of in the middle of something,” I said.
Right then Jack sneezed. Maybe he was allergic to drama too.
“Is that your grandmother?” Michael asked.
“It’s the TV,” I said as I marched into the bathroom.
“Wait—where are you going?” Jack called after me. “Are you sure you’re not mad at me?”
As I stared at my arms, I could see the red welts starting to come back. I couldn’t take the stress anymore. Living an exciting life torn between two men was literally making me sick. Or at least very, very itchy. It was time for me to stop being what Devon’s sister called a “sneaky, conniving harlot” and return to my regular-girl roots. I sighed. “Michael, there’s something I need to tell you,” I said, scratching at my arm.
“What is it?”
“Well, I was very moved by the declarations of love you sent me today—”
“I didn’t say I loved you,” he said.
“Yes you did. You wrote ‘Love, Michael.’”
“Yeah, but that’s just a…whaddyacallit…salutation.”
“Actually, it’s a closing salutation,” I corrected. “Okay, maybe you didn’t say you loved me,” I admitted, “but you did say you wanted to get back together.”
“Do we really need to spend so much time talking about this?” he asked, uncomfortably. “Why does everything always need to be such a discussion?”
I ignored him and continued. “But the thing is, during the time when we were broken up, I—”
“Sophie, do you want a bagel too?” Grandma Roz yelled from the kitchen.
“No, thank you,” I yelled back.
“Ow. My ear!” Michael yelled.
“Sorry. Anyway, after we broke up…around the same time, actually…I met someone,” I admitted. “And…well, let’s just say it got pretty serious pretty quickly.” I felt horrible breaking his heart like this, but I had to stop spinning a web of lies. It was such a relief to finally come clean after holding my secret in for so long that my legs buckled and I had to sit on the toilet.
“What do you mean, you met someone?” Michael asked, confused. “You’ve been in Florida with old people.”
I scratched at my other arm. “I met him on the plane. His name is Jack. And, actually, he is a little older. And very well-traveled. He’s in a band. They’ve toured all over the Midwest.” I decided to leave out the part about him maybe being a criminal until I gathered more information.
“But we were together for three years!” Michael said. “You can’t just hook up with someone and in three days say it’s serious without giving me a chance. What kind of return policy is that?”
I had forgotten how funny Michael could be. Jack was hot, but he wasn’t all that funny. And funny was very important.
“Do you at least want something to drink?” Grandma Roz yelled. “I just made a new batch of Crystal Light!”
“No, I’m okay,” I yelled back.
“Ow,” Michael yelled.
“Sorry.”
“Do you yell in his ear and shatter his eardrums too?” he demanded. I could tell from the sound of his voice that not only was he heartbroken, but he was
also seething with jealousy, just like Juergen, the German architect in Reveling in Rapture, after Devon left him for a Hungarian violinist.
The stress of shattering Michael’s heart like this was so overwhelming I almost started hyperventilating. As I grabbed onto the side of the toilet to steady myself, I flushed it by mistake.
“What’s that noise?” he asked.
“The toilet flushing,” I admitted.
“While you’ve been telling me about how you’re cheating on me, you’ve been going to the bathroom?!”
“Okay, A) I was not cheating on you—I didn’t kiss him until you decided to ‘push the stop button’; and B) I pushed the toilet thingy by mistake,” I said. “I just wanted to have this conversation in private because my grandmother and Jack are in the living room. Probably watching The Sands of Time.”
“What?”
“A soap opera.”
“The guy you’re cheating on me with watches soap operas?!”
My neck started to itch. “Okay, C) he’s very in touch with his feminine side because of the musician thing; and D) I repeat—I am not cheating on you. I met him after we had semi-broken up.”
“Yeah, but everyone knows that there’s a two-week window after a breakup where either party gets to change their mind!” he cried.
There was? Usually, I was so good about Googling stuff, but I had gotten so caught up in Jack, I hadn’t had time to double-check the rules.
“I can’t believe this,” he grumbled. “I flew all the way to Florida to see you—”
“Um, excuse me—you flew to Florida because you were hanging around your house being annoying and your mother couldn’t take it anymore,” I corrected him.
“You’d think by dating someone for three years, you’d know them pretty well,” he went on, “but I guess not. I guess there’s nothing else to say then—”
“Michael, wait—” I cried. I couldn’t let it end like this. “See, the thing is, as compatible as Jack and I may be, the truth is…I’m torn.” Especially if it turned out Jack was a thief and the only time I’d be able to see him was during jail visits. “And sometimes I find myself missing you. A lot. Like a lot–a lot.” Okay, maybe the missing-him thing hadn’t happened until this phone call made me remember how funny he was, but it was definitely the case now.