[4:31 PM]
Meg
Sending you ideas for my costume. I think cleavage is going to be essential to my thought experiment.
[4:45 PM]
Mom
Dinner in fifteen minutes.
3
I flipped over my arm, tracking down the note I’d made there in Russian Lit and crossed it out. Harper had wasted many years giving me planners and calendars for my birthday in an attempt to get me to stop writing on my arms, but with this, there was no way I could forget about any special assignments. Besides, it gave me something to do in class when the teachers went off on unrelated tangents.
I capped the pen and tossed it aside before uncurling myself and padding out of the room. Sherry, our Chocolate Lab, galloped toward me and thrust his head into my hand, taking a tentative lick at the nontoxic remnants of dayglo ink as I walked toward the kitchen.
Mom was standing in front of the slow cooker on the counter, carefully ladling a steaming rust-colored sludge into a soup bowl.
“Lentils?” I asked, holding back the urge to add, again?
Dad gave me a nod that commended me on my restraint. “With tomatoes and white beans.”
“And okra,” Mom said. She thrust the bowl into my hands, swatting Sherry away as he leapt up to try to filch some.
“Sherlock,” Dad said firmly.
Sherry lowered his head and trotted over to Dad, who rubbed his ears. I rolled my eyes and sat down at the table across from him.
“It would have been easier just to let him eat some,” I said, shaking a napkin into my lap to avoid staining my khakis. “You know he hates okra.”
“He hates it because it makes him vomit,” Mom said, unironically plopping lentils into her own bowl.
“How was school, Trix?” Dad asked, possibly to keep me from pointing out our meal’s resemblance to regurgitation.
“Mess-y.” I lifted my arm, showing him the long list of homework. “But it looks like you had an actual slapdash kind of first day.”
I twirled a finger in the air, outlining his face. There were tiny blue dots on his right temple.
He reached up and picked at one of the paint spots. It flaked off easily, but immediately fell into his lentils.
“Oh, you know,” he said. “The first day of kindergarten. Not a lot of criers this year, but there was an arts-and-crafts incident.”
Mom sat down next to him with a soppy grin. She reached over and brushed the remaining paint flecks off his face.
My parents’ marriage was its own special kind of statistical anomaly. Mom’s income ran laps around Dad’s. He spent his free time sitting at the family computer playing World of Warcraft. She knitted and read articles on pediatric medicine. Dad was wide and big eared with my flat grayish-blue eyes. Mom was polished, from her sleek brown hair to the button nose she’d bestowed upon me to her Doc Martens.
And yet, they’d been married for twenty years and remained utterly nauseating. I’d never figured out how it worked. It just did.
“How are the girls?” Mom asked me, smoothing a napkin over her lap.
I wished that we could have started the evening’s conversation with something less unsavory like classes or the current state of my hair.
“Boy crazy,” I admitted. “To the point of insanity.”
My parents shared one of those concerned adult looks, ready to blow my comment out of proportion.
“Not like fellating-guys-in-the-bathroom insane,” I amended. “The normal kind of talking about boys constantly. It’s starting to feel like being friends with an issue of Seventeen magazine.”
Mom blew delicately over the top of her laden spoon. “Well, as long as it’s Seventeen and not Cosmopolitan.”
“Cosmopolitan is lady porn,” Dad agreed.
“Really?” I asked. “We’re using the phrase ‘lady porn’ at the dinner table?”
“I thought I handled you saying ‘fellating’ fairly well.” He gestured to his ruddy cheeks. “Note my lack of fatherly weeping.”
“Greatly appreciated.” I laughed. “In other news, I have been trapped with Anna Karenina all afternoon. I have made the command decision to graduate third in my class. Since Harper got extra credit for those college classes she took over the summer—”
Mom’s bristle cut me off. “Greg is putting entirely too much pressure on Harper. It’s not healthy. I know he wants her to do well, but she’s still a little girl. I can’t imagine that Sa—” She paused, choking on the name of Harper’s mom. Mrs. Leonard had died when Harper and I were in first grade. I didn’t remember her very well, but she and my mom had been close.
“Harper’s fine,” I said, firmly rerouting the conversation. “But she and Cornell Aaron have a ridiculous head start on first and second. So, I will sweep third away from Ben West.”
Dad’s head popped up. “The boy who broke your arm?”
While my friends thought that West throwing me off a play structure happened too long ago to matter anymore, my parents remembered the incident like it had happened yesterday. It was, to date, the only time I had ever broken a bone. As the medical professional of the house, Mom had taken it fairly well, from what I remembered. Dad, on the other hand, had been more scarred than I was. He’d threatened to send me back to school in a giant hamster ball. Parents who care too much are the plight of an only child.
“The very same,” I said with a satisfied grin. “I have decided that crushing him under the heel of my Mary Jane shall be my greatest triumph. At least until college.”
Sherry darted under the table, slamming my legs against my chair. My spoon clattered into my bowl.
“Damn it, Sherry!” I shouted at the retreating waggle of his tail. “You are not a puppy anymore. Stop trying to fit into tight spaces. You are the size of a baby ox.”
Dad glanced over at Mom with a patient smile. “Dr. Watson, I believe it is time to feed Sherlock.”
They chuckled to themselves as though, in the four years that we’d had Sherry, no one had ever thought to make a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle joke. Mom slid her chair back. Sherry followed her toward his food bowl, woofing in anticipation.
“Well, I think that aiming for third in your class is a worthy endeavor, Trix,” Dad said, turning his attention back to me. “Even if it means locking yourself in your room with dusty Russian literature.”
“It’s my own fault,” I said, returning to my dinner with disgust. “I could have signed up for the Shakespeare class, but they were focusing on the authorship debate this year and I could give a crap who actually wrote the plays. I just want to enjoy the work.”
“‘The public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing.’”
“That’s Oscar Wilde,” I said with a mouthful of lentils. The added okra really brought out a fine sliminess to the dish heretofore unknown in the Watson household.
“It was relevant.” He pouted.
I laughed and continued shoveling lentils into my mouth, pausing to pepper the bowl until it was more black than russet, which helped the flavor but not the texture. I made a mental note to scour the Internet for better recipes. It would be worth the pause in studying to have decent food to look forward to, even if I had to set up the slow cooker myself.
I politely declined seconds, grabbed a glass of water, and retreated to my room. My phone, which I had silenced in the name of distraction-free reading, had a series of texts from Harper and Meg about costumes. I told them both to email me pictures of what they wanted and we’d figure out how to construct them at lunch the next day.
Pushing aside thoughts of how to make horns out of wire hangers and papier-mâché, I sat down in front of my desk and cracked open my Calculus book. Maybe if Harper kept worrying about how short to make her Supergirl skirt, I would be able to sneak into the salutatorian spot.
[5:32 AM]
Meg
First comic book day of the school year!!!
[5:33 AM]
Me
WHY ARE YOU UP SO EARLY?
[5:35 AM]
Harper
COMIC BOOK DAY!
4
The rest of the first week of school and beginning of the second continued without incident. I found a recipe for white beans that was much less disgusting than the other dinners we’d been enjoying. I worked as far ahead on my homework as humanly possible. My arm stayed covered in an endless list of reading assignments and quiz dates.
After a particularly lengthy classroom argument about the merits of the Linux system in Programming Languages that had ended with Mike Shepherd hyperventilating, Harper, Meg, and I met at the front gate of the Mess. I was itching to pick up two weeks’ worth of new releases from Busby Comics and pretend that I didn’t have a pile of homework to do.
Harper drove us the three blocks, abandoning her usual overly cautious crawl in favor of a breakneck speed of thirty-five. Meg dug lip gloss out of her bag and smeared some onto her mouth, taking a moment to whine about us always going to the comic book store in uniform.
“So what?” I asked, glancing back at her from the front seat.
“So, it makes it so obvious that we’re in high school.”
I assumed this meant that she was still considering the employees of Busby as spousal candidates and rolled my eyes at her, choosing not to point out how ridiculous that was.
The three of us walked into Busby, passing a row of locked bicycles next to the front door. The store was cramped with three walls of metal shelves covered in comics, divided by publisher. There were glass cases full of elaborately packaged action figures and limited-edition statues, including a full set of pewter Doctor Who figurines that I continually drooled over. They would look rad in my future dorm room, wherever that happened to be.
Meg moved to the heavy wooden table in the center of the store where graphic novels were precariously stacked and immediately started stroking the spines of The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec. Harper moved to the DC shelf, her hands fluttering over the preservation packages that housed glossy covers. She smoothed her hair as she read the titles.
“The Powerpuff Girls have arrived,” crowed a heavyset bearded man, appearing in the window where the cash register sat. “Is it three thirty already?”
“Three fifteen. We’re early,” I said, turning away from the Dalek statue that was still calling my name. Well, it was really shouting about exterminating me, but I knew it meant it with love.
The bearded man, who was wearing a massive Transformers T-shirt that was obviously vintage, glanced around at us to make sure that we hadn’t brought our backpacks in with us. Busby had a strict “no bags” policy.
“I saved three copies of the new Buffy for you guys in case you showed,” he said to me.
“We always show,” Meg said, clutching a book to her chest. She peered around the corner at the bearded man and her face fell. Obviously, she had been expecting the younger hipster gentleman who occasionally worked the register.
“Fair enough,” the bearded man said. He looked over at me. “Are you gonna buy those Who statues yet?”
“Are you going to give me a hefty discount?” I asked.
“They’re imported.”
“From England. And they’ve been sitting here mocking me for over a year.”
“Save up your pennies.”
I scoffed at this and moved over to the Marvel shelf, immediately pulling down three comics and tucking them under my arm. Harper slid over to me, clutching her own stack of books.
“Verbal foreplay?” she asked under her breath.
“Failed haggling,” I corrected sharply before turning my attention to the shelves.
The door opened and I looked up in time to see Jack Donnelly walk in. He pointedly ignored the bearded man behind the counter—and me, Harper, and Meg—as he made his way over to the indie release shelf. He ripped a book out of the plastic and pulled it close to his face. I cringed at this blatant disregard for comic-book-store etiquette.
The door creaked again. Harper sucked in a breath as Cornell led West and Peter inside. Meg’s eyes went wide at me as she retreated a few paces.
“And I said to the senator, ‘With all due respect, sir,’” West was crowing, “‘I think it might help if you held the chart right-side up!’”
“No way,” Peter said, laughing, somehow ignoring the twitching of West’s facial catastrophe.
“I promise you, he did,” Cornell said, shaking his head. “I thought the senator was going to kill him. We were just supposed to be updating the social media sites for a month.”
“Hey, man,” West said, veering right to perv my Doctor Who figures. “I was doing my part to save democracy. How’s that for a piece of fried gold?”
“Good day, gents,” the bearded man said. “Ben, still rocking the ’stache.”
West’s hand shot out and clasped the bearded man’s in a firm and somehow pompous shake. “Aw, you know. The chicks dig it.”
“Speaking on behalf of my gender,” I said as the door closed behind Peter, “I can assure you that we do not, in fact, dig it.”
Cornell, Peter, and the bearded guy laughed as West shot me a look of scorn that did not quite succeed in masking his surprise at the sound of my voice.
“Watch that one, Ralph,” he said, half-turning to the man behind the counter. “She spits acid.”
“If only,” I said with an innocent flutter of my eyelashes. “I could burn that thing off of your face. It’s so, hmm … flaccid?”
Meg buried her face deeper in her graphic novel. Jack Donnelly made a choked sound that might have been the mirthless guffaw of an evil twin. I watched with no small amount of pride as a crimson flush rose out of the starched white collar of West’s polo.
Ralph the comic book guy looked from me to West and back again.
“Ah,” he said with dawning understanding. “Exes.”
“What?” I squawked, nearly dropping my comics.
The very idea that Ben West and I had ever been anything other than bitter rivals was the most horrifying aspersion ever cast upon my character. Even worse than West himself accusing me of being a “fake geek girl” back in the sixth grade. I thought of his mustache getting near me and gagged audibly.
West waved his splayed fingers in wild and emphatic denial, also blustering an incoherent series of “No, no, no.” He looked to Cornell and Peter for backup, but they—like Harper and Meg—attempted to appear deaf, dumb, and blind to the situation.
Ralph threw Cornell and Peter a bemused smirk. “All right. Regardless, no turf wars in the store unless it’s Risk night. Play nice or bounce.”
“No problem,” West said, staring at me as though throwing down an invisible gauntlet between us.
“None at all,” I said, accepting the challenge with narrowed eyes.
Meg half-lowered the book from her face. “Should we draw a line down the center of the store?”
“No need,” I said. “I won’t get in the way of West getting the newest issue of Archie and Friends.”
West grunted, but he let the Archie comment slide. Pleased that I had managed to get the last word in, I turned my attention back to the Marvel shelf. I could sense the boys moving behind me. I had always been distantly aware that Ben West read comics, but I’d never seen him at Busby before. It felt like someone had defecated in my sanctuary. I prayed that it wouldn’t become a weekly problem.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as Cornell reached over the top of Harper’s head, pulling down an issue of Green Arrow, seemingly at random. They muttered a greeting to each other, low enough that I couldn’t make out the words. There was a clear lack of shocked bumbling on Harper’s part, however. While she was fraying the ends of her hair between her thumb and index finger, she did not appear to be stuttering or clucking.
It dawned on me that this was not a coincidence. Harper was utterly prepared to see Cornell—or, at least as prepared as she could be. They must have planned this meeting beforeh
and. I knew they had a class together sixth period. I never would have guessed that they’d actually talk to each other.
“Yeah,” sighed a mind-reading voice to my right. “It’s a coup.”
I whipped my head and found Peter’s towering frame leaning next to me. He blended in easily with the superheroes behind him. He nodded toward Harper and Cornell with a wry smile.
“Isn’t this what the kids call a tête-à-tête?” I whispered back, wrinkling my nose in distaste.
“No clue,” he said. “I took Mandarin.”
I snuck another peek at Harper and Cornell. “I should have known something was up. She refused to stop for Slurpees on the way.”
Peter chuckled softly, then winced as he adjusted his weight from his right leg to his left. The sound of his articular cartilage collapsing in on itself slipped through a time wrinkle and echoed in my ears.
“How’s the knee?” I asked. There was no way anyone would ever forget last year’s basketball playoffs. Peter had crumpled to the court like a felled tree, wearing his knee the wrong way around.
“Maimed,” he said. “I won’t be playing this year. Or possibly ever again. We’ll see.”
“I’m sorry.”
I’d never been the most athletic of individuals—other than a cricket ability that did not do me any good since the Mess had let me opt out of PE—but Peter had loved playing basketball since we were at Aragon Prep together. He always grinned when he was on the court, completely unstoppable. Now, he was permanently mortal.
“It’s okay,” he said. “I don’t really have time to play this year. I need to focus on my classes and the student council. Are you guys coming to the harvest festival next week?”
I glanced back at Harper and Cornell. She was holding up two issues of Green Lantern with her face screwed into a pensive frown.
“I couldn’t get out of it if I tried,” I grumbled.
“It’s going to be pretty cool this year,” Peter said. He looked over at West, who was yanking down Marvel titles left and right. “Right, Ben?”
The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You Page 3