“Oh yeah,” West said without taking his eyes off the Avengers comic in his hand. “Nothing like the usual kettle corn and bobbing for apples crap we normally do.”
“Really?” Meg asked, skipping around the graphic novels table to stand with us.
“No,” Jack Donnelly said, striding toward us. “It’s going to be exactly like that.”
I jumped. I’d already forgotten that he was in the store. He may have been equally as massive as Peter, but he had a habit of clinging to the shadows. I think it was the way his forehead jutted out more than his brother’s. It was like a skull visor, providing him with extra shadows.
“Not exactly,” Peter said, suddenly sheepish.
“Right,” Jack drawled. “We bought a fog machine for the haunted house.”
“That’s cool,” Meg said.
Ignoring this, Jack tucked his single comic under his arm. “Let’s go,” he said to his brother.
Peter’s mouth curved into a frown that was more confused than insulted. “We just got here.”
“I’m good to go,” West said, his hands heavy with a stack of books roughly the same size as mine. He slammed them onto the counter. “I just need the new Buffy and we can roll out.”
“Buffy?” Jack repeated with a derisive laugh. “Come on. Get your porn off the Internet like everyone else.”
“It’s not porn,” West said with a sneer. “It’s Whedon. The man does Marvel and Shakespeare. Joss is the nerd pope and Buffy is the first goddamn testament.”
“Hear, hear!” cried Meg.
I choked down my disgust. It was bad enough that West was in my comic book store. I did not need him to also start bandwagonning my fandoms. Was nothing sacred anymore?
“Well said, Ben,” Ralph said, scooping up the books and drawing them through the window. “Unfortunately, my last three copies are on hold for your female associates.”
West’s head flopped back, exposing the lump of his Adam’s apple. He aimed a groan of frustration toward the heavens.
“Of course they are.” He waved Jack in front of him and stepped aside, grinding the heel of his hand over his eyes as Ralph accepted Jack’s money.
I stepped into line, examining West’s apparent agony with relish.
“See this?” I waved a hand over him, indicating his tense shoulders and clenched jaw. “This is just a fraction of the devastation you’ll be feeling in June when I beat you in rank once and for all.”
His chin snapped down, the joints in his neck audibly popping.
“Fat chance, Medusa,” he breathed, low enough that Jack was the only person who could have heard.
“You can take my copy of Buffy, Ben,” Harper said quickly, hopping into view with Cornell in tow.
West bowed to her. “You are a gentlewoman and a scholar, Harper Leonard.”
“I’m already way past my limit. I’ll read Trixie’s copy,” she said. She turned to Cornell, holding up her pile of books. “Okay, which ones can I live without?”
He gingerly lifted four books out of her pile. “There. Go ahead.”
Jack grabbed his receipt from Ralph and jerked his head toward Peter, who followed him out of the store, limping slightly. I paid for my own stack and made Ralph promise to continue putting aside one issue of Buffy for me every month for the foreseeable future. West let Harper and Meg go ahead of him in line. I waited for them next to the door, anxious to get in the car where I could demand to know when Harper had planned our not-so-accidental meeting with most of the student council.
Meg joined me near the door and we watched as Harper and Cornell exchanged a painfully awkward goodbye. I started to tell them to make out and get it over with already, but Meg caught me with a tiny pointed elbow in the stomach and I closed my mouth.
Harper adjusted her glasses, smiling dreamily as she followed me and Meg out of the store. Jack and Peter were standing in front of a silver hybrid, appearing—as usual—just as similar as they were different. Peter was drumming his fingers against the hood. Jack had buried his face in his comic again. I squinted at the cover and leaned over to Meg.
“Vault of Evil,” I murmured. “That’s comforting.”
“Bye, guys,” Harper said, eyeing the door as though waiting for Cornell to burst through and declare his undying love for her.
Jack didn’t move, but Peter waved.
We started to walk back toward the yoga studio, but Cornell did, in fact, burst through Busby’s door, calling Harper’s name. Hair whipping around her like a ship’s sail, she turned, unable to stop herself from looking delighted. She seemed to shake herself, her face settling into a slightly unnatural reserve.
“What’s up?” she asked, her face flushing the same pink as the frames of her glasses.
Meg and I backtracked toward the boys as West walked out of the store. He jerked his head, indicating that we move away from Harper and Cornell. Meg grabbed my wrist and yanked until I obeyed, moving to stand in front of the hybrid.
A bright-blue plastic bag swung from Cornell’s fingers. From its depths, he withdrew the four comics he had removed from Harper’s original bounty. He held them out to her with a shaky smile.
“You needed all of them,” he said softly.
“Cornell,” she said, gasping. “You didn’t have to…”
He grinned. “I know. But I wanted to.”
Meg made an involuntary sound, somewhere between cooing and moaning in jealousy.
“Dear God,” Jack grumbled into his comic. “Someone let me into the car.”
Peter shoved him, but Harper and Cornell didn’t seem to notice that any of us were standing barely six feet away from them. Harper was staring up at him with wide eyes like a cartoon rabbit about to be trampled. She took the books, hugging them to her chest without looking away from him once.
I glanced over at West, who seemed vaguely queasy at the proceedings.
“Okay,” I muttered. “You were right.”
He quirked an eyebrow, glancing at me sidelong. “Usually. But about what in particular?”
I jerked my head to indicate Cornell and Harper’s saccharine expressions. It was as though an invisible hand had cranked up their adorable quotient to the breaking point.
“Triplets,” I said simply.
West snorted and I was momentarily afraid that the pressure would suck his mustache right up his nose. “I think we have progressed into sextuplets.”
“You always go one too far.” I sighed. “That was a cheap pun.”
“All puns are cheap,” he said. “It’s still accurate.”
“We could attempt to distract them,” I offered. “I bet if I ripped that thing off your face, they’d mellow out.”
His hand flew up to his face protectively. He seemed to realize that I’d found the chink in his armor and he glowered at me as he smoothed his fingertips over his whiskers.
“I’ll be working for the first half,” Cornell was saying to Harper. “But maybe we could meet up after I’m done?”
“That would be—” Harper faltered, unable to access the thesaurus that lived inside of that massive brain of hers. I guessed it would be difficult to find a word that encapsulated all of her dreams coming true. She settled on, “Wonderful.”
“Yeah?” Cornell exhaled a shocked laugh through a toothy grin. “Great. I’ll um…”
“See you tomorrow,” Ben prompted.
The moment ended like it’d been doused in ice water. Harper and Cornell scuttled away from each other, registering that they were being watched by five other people.
“Nothing ruins a tender moment faster than the dulcet braying of Benedick West,” I said.
West whirled on me. “It’s Benedict, Dr. Freud.”
“Is it?” I tapped my chin with my index finger, scrunching my forehead as I pretended to think about this. “I could have sworn it was Benedick.”
“It was in sixth grade.” Peter chuckled.
“Have you sunk so low?” West asked. He was doing his best to remain cavalier, but I
could see that the renaissance of the school yard nickname was starting to creep under his skin. I didn’t go in for DC analogies, but it was kryptonite, pure and simple. “What’s next? You want to find a set of monkey bars? I’d gladly throw you over—”
My hand shot out and two fingers wrapped around the edge of his mustache. I yanked, just once. He yowled like a jungle cat and staggered away from me.
“Hmm,” Meg said. “It is real.”
I nodded. “Who knew, right?”
“Of course it’s real,” West snarled, stretching his face as he rubbed the injured portion. “God, you miserable harpy. I haven’t reached out and grabbed your—”
“If you make one more comment about my chest,” I said, brandishing a threatening finger, “so help me, West, I will end you.”
Peter slid his cell phone out of his pocket and consulted it thoughtfully. “Five minutes. That’s a new record for you guys.”
“It was four minutes too long,” West said. He glared at Cornell. “Geronimo, dude.”
“Yes,” I agreed, taking Meg’s elbow and giving her an indelicate shove forward. “Let’s go.”
“Finally,” Jack said to no one in particular.
Cornell reached into his pocket and withdrew a set of keys. He pushed a button and the silver hybrid’s doors unlocked with an electronic whirr. Jack and West threw themselves inside without another word. Peter waved again before sliding into the backseat.
Harper, failing at concealing the crestfallen set of her mouth, gave a single sad cluck. Cornell smiled at her, rocked forward on the balls of his feet for a second as he debated following through on some kind of physical contact. He thought better of it and retreated toward the car, bidding all of us a fond farewell.
Two chickens in love.
Meg and I walked arm in arm with Harper shuffling behind us. We silently climbed into the car and buckled our seat belts. Three plastic bags rustled as they were set on the floor and shoved into backpacks. Harper was taking shallow breaths in through her nose, her hand hovering over the ignition.
“So,” I said, wedging my tongue into my cheek. “Slurpees? The park? Or should we just hightail it to the fabric store so I can start sewing your wedding dress?”
“Oh my God, Harper!” Meg strained against her seat belt and shook Harper’s seat with both hands. “Oh my God! Oh my Superman, Sandman, and Thor!”
“Multiple pantheons, even.” I giggled.
Harper closed her eyes, biting down hard on her lower lip. Her jaw was trembling. For a minute, I was terrified that she was going to dissolve into tears. It’d been so long since I’d seen her cry that I couldn’t really tell the signs anymore.
“Harper?” Meg asked, tapping on the back of the driver’s seat again. “Hello? Harper?”
Harper opened her mouth. A breath of air went in silently and then a squeal rushed out. Her arms flailed against the steering wheel and her feet stomped a hollow report against the floor. Her hair flew around her face until even her freckles seemed to vibrate. It was the battle cry of the newly not-single nerd girl, the polar opposite of every furtive sigh she’d sacrificed to the altar of unrequited love for the last three years.
Meg bounced in the backseat, giggling uncontrollably as I bent over laughing. Harper came back to herself, staring blindly ahead at the yoga studio, where the dozen contorted sweaty people squinted back in horror. She adjusted her glasses.
“I am going to the harvest festival with Cornell Aaron,” she said tremulously. “He bought me comic books. I don’t think I can even read them. Okay, no, that’s crazy. I’m totally going to read them. But that does not diminish the fact that he bought me comics.”
“I know!” Meg crowed.
“The festival isn’t for another week, though,” I said, carefully trying to avoid pricking the bubble of joy that had filled the car.
Harper turned to me. Her face was alight. “Then we have time to put together costumes. I know that you have a ton of homework, Trix, but can we please go to the fabric store and start picking out patterns?”
“Sure. I finished Anna Karenina, so I’m ahead of the game. I can bust out all three of our costumes over the weekend.”
“Thank you,” she said, running her fingertips over the steering wheel before she turned over the engine. “Thank you so much. I’ll pay for the fabric and keep you in Slurpees every day from now until forever—”
I interrupted her with a laugh. “It’s okay. Find a way to keep me and West as far away from each other as possible and everything will be peachy.”
“He’s not that bad,” Meg said. “Ben, I mean. You guys managed to have a fairly civil conversation while Harper and Cornell were talking. You were the one who decided to try to rip off his mustache.”
“I tested a hypothesis,” I said. “Turns out the mustache is real. Come on. We were all wondering about it.”
Harper waved an unconcerned hand, too flush with girly joy to be bothered with chastising me. “Stay close to Peter. He’s a good buffer.”
“It is his civic duty as our president to maintain domestic peace,” I said.
Harper made a vague sound of assent, watching the road with a goofy grin. I could almost see the big Valentine hearts swimming in her pupils.
“We’ve lost her,” I said to Meg.
“Oh yeah.” She nodded. “It’s okay. Now no one will roll their eyes when we point out that DC is a vastly inferior brand—”
“June 1938,” Harper said into the rearview mirror. “Action comics number one. The introduction of Superman. Detective comics number twenty-seven, May 1939, the introduction of Batman. And when, pray tell, was the first Marvel comic released?”
Meg lifted her chin, twirling her hand in the air. “The Human Torch. October 1939.”
“And there is your answer. Marvel is completely derivative,” Harper said. “DC invented the superhero and then Marvel came along like it was their idea—”
Well, maybe she wasn’t completely lost.
Not that I was going to let that dig against Marvel stand.
[8:03 PM]
Harper
I don’t think I’ve stopped smiling. Am I broken?
[8:05 PM]
Me
Yes.
5
Anyone who says that uniforms mean you don’t have to think about what you wear to school is a filthy liar. It wasn’t quite cold enough yet to have to worry about whether to wear a pullover sweater or a cardigan, but there was still the endless supply of khaki pants, skirts, and shorts to thumb through. I thought about how much worse things must have been for Harper that morning. She would be standing in her bedroom across town, trying on polo after polo trying to find the perfect collar to match her mushy smile.
I snickered to myself at the thought and grabbed the closest pair of long khaki shorts in the name of soaking up the last few days of summer. I took a moment to daydream about a world where I could walk into school in jeans. Soft, stretchy jeans and shoes that were not made of patent leather.
College, I mused as I wandered into the bathroom, would be wonderful if for no other reason than getting to look like myself every day. I had a dresser teeming with beautiful, barely worn T-shirts. As much as I wanted to go to a good college and devote myself entirely to whatever major I decided on, I really just wanted to escape the Mess and be the kind of girl who came to class in a Princess Peach shirt and still managed to decimate everyone in an argument about Kierkegaard. Because that’s the girl that I was in my head. Proudly geeky, not only about comics or sci-fi but about everything I loved.
I patted the remnants of face wash from my cheeks with a fluffy white towel and wrinkled my nose at my reflection. I wasn’t adorable like Meg or a lost Disney princess like Harper or elegant like Mary-Anne France. I had brown hair and overcast eyes and small lips. Nothing particularly exciting unless you counted my being two inches above the national average height for Caucasian women.
The elastic band holding my ponytail slipped down. I gr
abbed two ends of my hair and yanked until I felt the ponytail secure itself to the base of my skull. It was shameful to be dissecting my own appearance. I blamed Cornell Aaron and the way he stared at Harper, as though he’d picked her out of a claw machine and couldn’t believe his luck. I wasn’t jealous, exactly. I certainly had no designs on Cornell for myself. He was a nice guy and good-looking, but nothing like the vague idea I had in mind for a male companion.
But that was the problem. Harper only wanted Cornell. Meg only wanted to see what the hype was about without letting her limbic system get the best of her. And I didn’t really want anything. Not anything concrete. I didn’t want to waste my time. I didn’t want someone who wouldn’t understand when I referenced Tony Stark, Mal Reynolds, and Alexander Hamilton in the same breath—all handsome rogues, obviously. I wanted someone who didn’t need me to backtrack and explain everything. Someone who would escort me to midnight showings but never ask me to dress up to attend. Someone who knew that I always, always, always wanted a Slurpee, but especially when it was snowing.
A boyfriend, I concluded, should be like a new best friend. Which didn’t help me at all considering I hadn’t made a new best friend since I was eight and Meg transferred to Aragon. Even in a world full of people as smart as I was, there weren’t that many people I wanted on my team.
I pushed the thought away. It didn’t do any good to spend too much time dwelling on it. I was content to be a singular kind of person, to focus on comics and homework and surviving senior year. If I went the way of Harper and Meg and started prematurely melting down about the harvest festival or the spring fling or any of the other Messina Academy social events, our group would undoubtedly explode in an array of hormones and prom dresses. I had to hold down the sanity quadrant.
And yet, a prickle of wistfulness crept across my shoulders like the feeling of trying to remember the details of a dream that remained elusive. It lasted throughout my walk to school. I tried to shake myself like an Etch A Sketch, but the feeling persisted, fraying my patience. Maybe Harper’s and Meg’s boyfriend-centric insanity had started the same way. Had they gone to bed normal and woken up unable to think about anything else? Perhaps it was a communicable disease and I’d spent too long being infected by their chatter.
The Only Thing Worse Than Me Is You Page 4