by Laura Bowers
But unlike the catcher, I knew her game. Same with Belinda, my stepmother, who stopped working at the concession stand long enough to bring us both hot dogs even though I despise them. Still, I took a small bite of mine and tried not to gag when Belinda kissed my father hard on the lips. I hate seeing them kiss. For some reason, it makes him seem more like a man rather than my father.
Belinda sat in the empty chair beside him and pulled off her baseball cap, fluffing her high/low highlights that I suspect cover a boatload of gray hair. “Sabrina, I’m sorry you missed Angela’s birthday party. We even had a small gift for you so you wouldn’t feel left out,” she said with enthusiasm, as though I should be grateful for my consolation present or for my “bedroom” in their basement that’s nothing but a glorified dungeon. But I didn’t realize last weekend was Angela’s birthday. That would have been a nightmare, so okay, even though Mom was totally in the wrong for making me stay with her … it was a slight blessing in disguise.
Very slight.
Belinda pulled a small photo album from her bulging Vera Bradley bag and tossed it to me. “Want to see the pictures? The flowers were so gorgeous—your father picked them out. And hey, they’re doubles, so you can keep them, Sabrina, in case you’d like some current pictures of your dad.”
Keep them, was she kidding me? Her offer might sound innocent, but I knew what she was up to. The pictures of the three of them were a reminder that Dad is a member of their family now, not mine. And she was probably hoping I’d refuse them in front of him, making me the bad guy once again. So I squinted at a photo of them taken near a floral arrangement and said, “They are gorgeous, Belinda! My mother adores tiger lilies. They’re her favorite, so I’ll be sure to show her these.”
She frowned as I casually tossed the album in my purse.
My mother does love tiger lilies, that part is true, but I will never show her these pictures. That would be too cruel, no matter how angry she makes me. However, seeing the realization that the flowers Dad had picked are my mother’s favorite pass over Belinda’s face made being forced to watch another softball game so, so worth it.
Score one for me.
* * *
Torrance, Bridget, and I are almost ready for the party when the front door crashes open and footsteps pound across the kitchen floor hard enough to make the windows rattle. Great. Mom’s home early from her date with what’s-his-name so my bedroom will be her first stop after seeing Torrance’s BMW parked out front. Sure enough, Mom with her perpetual desire to be a teenager again bursts through the door seconds later.
“Sabrina, I’m in, sweetheart, I’m in!”
As Mom grabs my hands, I notice Torrance giving Bridget a good thing she’s not my mother look. I try to pull away but Mom squeezes harder. “Jane Barton called and they need a replacement, so let’s get cracking, young lady!”
What? Oh, no, I don’t think so.
It was bad enough that Mom stopped by Barton’s this morning despite me telling her how Chuck may not appreciate her soliciting his competition—true—and how it’s been rumored that Jane Barton discriminates when hiring employees—which, okay, wasn’t true.
It was also bad enough that Mom complained to me on my cell during Angela’s entire sixth inning about how Jane hardly paid attention to her. But now Mom thinks we’re going anywhere near Dee’s home, let alone working for her? Oh, no. Absolutely no.
“Well, you should cancel, Mother, since she was so rude to you today. Besides, I have plans. We’re going to Prescott’s party.”
Normally, any mention of Prescott, whose single father is the mayor of Riverside, would cause Mom to nonchalantly finger a lock of hair while asking how that nice Prescott boy is doing and wouldn’t it be fun if we all got together? But she ignores me and makes a dive for my closet instead, rifling through my clothes as though the Royal Ball is in one hour and her fairy godmother is stuck in traffic. “Are you crazy, Sabrina, and miss an opportunity like this?” she says, looking at me over her shoulder with a sparkle in her eye. “Don’t worry—after one night, Jane will love me, so cancel them plans, sweetie. And wear something western. They got a cute Wild West theme going on tonight. Ooo, I’ll wear my cowboy boots! And where’s that new skirt you bought on—”
“Torrance is wearing it,” I quickly say before she can let out my eBay secret. “And you really want me to miss Prescott’s party? Prescott Mannings?”
Mom stops rifling, her expression fiery as she points at me with one of her Billy Joel nails that are painted black with white musical notes. “Sabrina, I want to make a good impression tonight, so you, young lady, will be there, am I clear?”
I know from experience that Storm Mona is about to blow, and how the humiliating damage in front of my friends would be far worse than any eBay confessions. So I concede by saying, “When are we leaving?”
Mom smiles, the danger gone. She gives me a Billy Joel thumbs-up. “Twenty minutes. And don’t worry, sweetie, tonight’s going to be such a hootenanny you won’t miss any party! And stop calling me Mother!”
After she flounces out of the room, taking my brand-new Old Navy tank that won’t survive her D cups, Torrance stares at me in disbelief. “Hootenanny? What’s a hootenanny? And don’t you dare tell me you’re bailing on Prescott’s. We’re supposed to go together, remember, because Blaine has other plans and Danny is spending the night getting ready for his race tomorrow.”
Like I have a choice. But the last thing I want is for them to go to the party and gossip about me, so it looks like I’ll just have to play a trick of my own. “Well, girls, you might want to come with me, considering who else will be there.”
“Who?” Torrance says, still sulking as she reaches for her Coach purse that, unlike my Kate Spade, is definitely not faux.
“Desperate Dee.”
Torrance’s eyes light up, enough to make her stop fishing for her keys. “Dee Barton? That’s right, I totally forgot she lives at a trailer park. We could have fun with that, couldn’t we?”
“Exactly. And—” Time to lay down my last card. “Her friend, Nose-Pick Natalie, might be there as well. So are you in?”
Torrance seems intrigued, her pretty face scrunched up in concentration over the possibilities. But then she says, “No, we’ll stick with Prescott’s. Bridget and I will be thinking of you, though.”
* * *
By the time Mom settles on an outfit and redoes her makeup, we are fifteen minutes late. She climbs into the Trooper and backs out of the driveway. “By the way, Sabrina, I forgot to tell you. Blaine called while you were loading the equipment.”
I pat my shorts pockets. Empty. Seriously, I have to stop leaving my cell within her reach! “He did? What did he say?”
Mom hands me my phone and then throws the Trooper in drive before cranking up her favorite Tanya Tucker song. “Oh, he wanted to know what you were doing.”
Panic shoots through me as she shimmies to the beat with the wind from the open window already starting to frizz her blown-out hair. “Mom, did you tell him where we were going?” I half shout.
Please say you didn’t. I do not want Blaine to know we’re working at Dee’s in case he decides to stop by. But that’s ridiculous. If I were a guy, I would never go to my ex-girlfriend’s home with my new girlfriend.
Unless … I still had feelings for my ex.
“Darling, do you think I’m stupid?” Mom huffs out an exasperated sigh just as a bug slams against the windshield. “Of course I told him, in case he wanted to see me perform. And do you know what that sweet boy said? He said he wouldn’t miss it for the world!”
My stomach drops.
She told him. How could she do that? Now I almost wish I hadn’t hid Belinda’s photo album before she could see it.
Almost.
The Superflirt Chronicles
… blogs from a teenage flirtologist
Saturday evening, June 19
WEEKEND FLIRT REPORT TAKE TWO
MOOD: Determined
MUSIC: “S
hine,” Laura Izibor
Well, well, well, things certainly have gotten rather interesting here at the campground.
Mercedes is here.
Yes, you read that correctly. Mercedes, the jerk who once made me feel bad about myself. Bad, guilty, insecure, ashamed, paranoid, and hopeless. The scum who took my heart, rolled it in dirt, and jammed it through a paper shredder now actually has the nerve to set foot on my turf.
But wait—it gets worse.
Mercedes is here with his evil girlfriend.
Yeah, I know.
So, if you will excuse me, I think I’m going to leave the store and run to my bedroom for a good long cry before burying myself in a canoe-sized tub of Cookies ‘N Cream ice cream. No, Rocky Road. Yes, Rocky Road ice cream, and then another good cry.
Hmm.
Surely you don’t believe that, now, do you?
Good. Because what I’m really going to do is give Mercedes his own Rocky Road by finding myself a cute but gullible dude to flirt with right in front of him and make that jerk perfectly aware of what he’s missing because—sorry—Evil Girlfriend’s legs will never be as good as mine. Or, better yet, I might fight off my gag reflex and flirt with Mercedes myself and then move on to my cute but gullible dude. After all, the song “Shine” does say, “Let the sun shine on your face.”
My sun is so ready to shine.
Until then, please allow me to make the following public service announcement for all women out there who have either been through or who are currently in a bad relationship:
*Ahem.*
Relationships are supposed to make you feel good.
Relationships are NOT supposed to make you feel bad.
Or guilty, insecure, ashamed, paranoid, or hopeless.
Good.
So when a relationship makes you feel bad, guilty, insecure, ashamed, paranoid, or hopeless, end it. Get over him. Move on.
Flirt.
6 Sabrina
“Excuse me, lady, can I sing this?”
Sweat trickles down my back as I heave a speaker onto its stand. A little girl in a saggy-bottomed yellow swimsuit holds out a song selection slip, but I hardly pay attention to her or any of the other campers who are clustered around the song books like vocal vultures.
I can’t believe Blaine.
I can’t believe he doesn’t see anything wrong with his being here. When Mom and I drove in earlier, there he was, leaning against the fender of his Mercedes with his ankles crossed and his elbows on its hood as though we were meeting at the mall and not at his ex-girlfriend’s.
“Hey, lady, can I sing this song, huh?”
The girl pulls at my shorts, pleading, with grape Kool-Aid stains around her lips. Ugh, it’s going to be a long night. I snatch the slip from her and read it. “‘Shake That’ by Eminem? Did your mommy give you permission to sing this?”
“Uh-huh, honest.”
The little liar. I crumple her request. “Oh, no, that song is for grownups.”
“Sabrina, honey, that’s not how we talk to our guests,” Mom says, clicking over in her high-heeled cowboy boots, silver concho belt, and matching earrings that could double as drink coasters. She plugs in a speaker wire and gives the girl a toothy grin. “Sweetie, you can sing whatever your little heart desires!”
“Mom,” I hiss before following her to the Trooper. “She can’t sing that! It’s not appropriate for someone her age.”
“Don’t be such a fuddy-duddy, Sabrina, it’s just a song.” Mom leans over to check her reflection in the side mirror, wiping cherry red lipstick from the corners of her mouth and smoothing her flat-ironed hair. “Oh, why did I straighten my hair tonight? I should have worn it curly. I always do better when I’m curly.”
Come to think of it, she does do better when she’s curly. But instead of mentioning this, I grab a speaker and motion to her low-cut shirt. “Yeah, and maybe you’ll do better if you button up, too. We’re not at Chuck’s, remember?”
This place is different—more traditional, more like a campground instead of an outdoor nightclub, so Mom’s cleavage may not go over as well. She sighs and fastens two buttons. “There, happy now? Lord, you are a fuddy-duddy, Sabrina.”
Blaine pulls the last of the equipment from the Trooper and gives me an amused wink. “Yeah, Sabbie, don’t be a fuddy-duddy.”
I fight off the urge to smack him. It’s one thing for him to show up here, but it is quite another to take my mother’s side. You just don’t do that. Mom, of course, loves it. She pinches his cheek and says, “Oh, you sweet boy! And what do you think, Blaine, is my hair okay straight? Or should I have done it curly?”
“You look wonderful either way, Ms. Mona.”
“Aw, such a charmer, just like your father!” She waggles a Billy Joel at him and then nudges my arm. “Better hold on to this one, Sabrina. And be a dearie and get your momma a soda, will ya? Might help calm my nerves. Tonight’s an important night and I’m as nervous as a pig at a livestock auction!”
She walks away before I can tell her that caffeine isn’t exactly a good relaxer, but I’ve been fuddy-duddied enough. Instead, I go to the back of the Trooper and open the cooler. Blaine wraps his arms around my waist, his breath hot on my ear as he says, “You heard the woman. You better hold on to me.”
I concentrate on pouring Mom’s drink into the tumbler she always uses with a straw to keep her Crest White-Strip teeth from staining and say nothing, not trusting myself to speak. Blaine kisses my neck, causing electric shivers to run up my arm. “Hey, is that the only kind of soda your mom has, generic?”
Yes, it is, because we’re on a budget and generic is just fine.
“Eh, no big deal, I’ll get my own later.” Blaine squeezes me. He must feel my body stiffen, though, from the way he asks, “Sabbie, are you mad at me?”
Don’t start a fight, don’t start a fight.
The last thing a girl should do when her boyfriend happens to show up at his ex-girlfriend’s place is start a fight. But despite my best efforts, I can’t help but blurt out, “No, I’m not mad, but it’s real funny how once you found out we were working here, lo and behold, those plans with your father changed.”
His arms become rigid. He steps back, the spot on my neck where he kissed me turning cold as he gives me a wounded look. “Babe, I canceled my plans before your mom told me because I knew you wanted to spend time with me. But now I’m not so sure.”
“Blaine, I never said that—” I stop myself from reassuring him that of course I want to be with him. Blaine is so good at this, turning my words around to make me feel like the guilty one. “Look. It’s just … well, wouldn’t you be upset if I wanted to spend the evening at an ex-boyfriend’s?”
“No, I wouldn’t.” Blaine shoves his hands deep into his pockets. “But I trust you. So maybe I should leave if you’re going to be like this all night.”
Panic shoots up my spine as he takes a step away.
Why didn’t I keep my mouth shut? For the past month, I’ve done nothing but push him away. “Blaine, no, don’t. I’m sorry—I’m being way too sensitive.”
He wraps his arms around me once more, the scent of his lemony Armani cologne almost as comforting as Dad’s Old Spice. “Okay. Only if you promise to trust me.”
For some reason, I think about how Mom struggled to quit smoking years ago. Sometimes she’d go for weeks without a cigarette, sometimes only an hour. But then she watched the movie Dead Again where Robin Williams played a psychologist who said, “Someone is either a smoker or a nonsmoker. There’s no in-between. The trick is to find out which one you are, and be that.” Mom kept rewinding and playing that line over and over until she decided: she was a nonsmoker. And she hasn’t had a cigarette since. It’s time for me to do the same. Either I’m going to trust Blaine once and for all and stop nagging him or I’m going to lose him.
I choose trust.
“Of course, sweetheart,” I say, pressing my body against his and giving him a lingering kiss. “I’m gla
d you’re here. You’ll make it fun.”
Blaine’s lips tickle when he nuzzles my ear. “It’d be more fun if we got out of here early. Dad’s out on a date so we could have the entire place to ourselves.”
It’s as though the heavens sent me a sign. I made the right decision. Blaine does want to be with me. I long to kiss him hard, but Mom calls me over to the pavilion. She thanks me for the soda and then gestures toward a grassy knoll overlooking the common area where two skinny twin brothers wearing fake sheriff’s badges and belted toy guns are picking teams for kickball. “Sabrina, honey, you see that girl sitting by herself ? Be a sweetie and take a song book over and introduce yourself. Poor thing must be bored.”
I follow her gaze to a lone girl with short-cropped red hair and a hideous outfit straight out of a Tomboys ’R Us catalog. Haven’t I seen her before? Oh, yeah, at the house being built beside Blaine’s. She looked like a whiny pouter back then and she looks even more whiny now. “Uh, Mom, I don’t think she’s going to be interested in karaoke.”
“Now, honey, you can’t assume that.” Mom places a song book in my hands. She spins me around to face the girl and gives me a nudge. “Go on, it’s not nice to make people feel like outsiders.”
Please, it’s their choice to be outsiders. People like her are so annoying, the ones who mope from the sidelines rather than make an effort to fit in. I’m not from a wealthy family nor do I have the right pedigree, but I’m among the most popular at school and I was Prom Queen. Things like that don’t happen from luck. You have to work for it and, yes, sometimes put up with a little crap. But I guess it is decent of Mom to want her to be included, so I force myself to walk over.
“Hey, I’m Sabrina. Do you, like, want a song book?”
“Hey, like, I’m Roxanne and no, like, I don’t.”
Well, if she isn’t quite the charmer.
Mom is still watching, though, so I say, “Fine, then, Roxanne, if you change your mind, you know what to do.”
She lets out a condescending snort. “What, did your mommy send you over?”