by Inda Herwood
“Does that mean I get his place?” Rosy smiles, batting his lashes at him.
Moon doesn’t look impressed. “Just for that terrible flirting, you’re now my fourth.”
I close my eyes as they argue over the friend-point system, Rosy trying to make his case.
I think I just need new friends.
***
Serendipity, the lit sign says above my head, couples and small families walking around me to enter through the glass doors. This is where she chose for us to meet. An ice cream parlor.
Moon laughs, staring up at it. “If you don’t marry her, I will.” And then he’s walking through the doors, his favorite books piled high in his arms as he uses his back to open them.
I should have ditched him at the restaurant.
Taking a deep, calming breath, I try not to get my hopes too high as I follow after him.
We find her on the second floor, a giant, quadruple fudge sundae sitting in the middle of the table with two spoons stuck in it, a girl with bright blonde hair sitting opposite her, giving me pause. Looks like I wasn’t the only one that brought along a friend.
It’s then I notice on the floor next to Cyvil’s legs is an equally large pile of hardcovers meant for Tag Along Tommy.
He doesn’t hesitate to walk up to her table, his signature, enthusiastic smile already on his lips as he places his books down next to hers, giving her a hug, as though they have known each other for years. She reciprocates, smiling back at him with ease.
Since I probably look like a total weirdo for standing here, staring at her in the middle of the restaurant, I force my feet to move in her direction. Already Moon has stolen two other chairs from the adjacent table, sitting down in the one closest to Cyvil. I try not to let it annoy me as I park it next to him.
“Hello,” Cyvil says with the same smile she gave Moon, if not just a little bit stiffer. But still, I count it as an improvement compared to her not being able to look at me just yesterday.
“Hi,” I say in return, my eyes catching on the other girl’s. “Hello,” I say to her as well, dipping my head.
“Wow, you really are hot,” she says with a pleased smile, nodding at Cyvil. “Google images doesn’t really do him justice, does it?”
Um, what?
“See, this is why I can’t take you anywhere,” Cyvil mutters at her while looking at me apologetically, cheeks slightly pink. “Sorry, this is my hormonal sister, Atillia. She’s nearly nine months pregnant and has no life, so she wanted to tag along.”
Atillia grins in spite of her sister’s less than positive description of her, one hand resting on her large stomach which I didn’t notice before, the other outstretched toward me. “Nice to meet you, handsome.”
I reciprocate, still a little thrown off by her presence. And frankness. Speaking of which. “This is my friend, Moon,” I say, nodding to the imbecile next to me. “He coincidentally has the same problem.”
“You’re pregnant?” Cyvil chuckles.
“Yep, just two months along, though. Not showing yet,” he says without missing a beat, somehow finding a third, abnormally long spoon and dipping it into their sundae. He takes a brownie piece off the top and pops it in his mouth with a grin.
I swear he was raised by wolves.
I look to the ceiling when the others go silent, wondering why I ever let him sit at my table in the eighth grade.
“Well if we’re all sharing, I think we’ll need a second one.” Standing up unsteadily, I grab Atillia’s hand before she can topple, balancing her. She gives me a grateful smile. “Pretty and a gentleman. Where were you when I was eighteen?”
Her blue eyes seem completely serious. I have to laugh.
“Till, please leave now before they decide to do it first.” Cyvil’s contrasting golden irises widen with pleading, and her sister huffs.
“Whatever. I’ll be back once I find more chocolate.” She hobbles away, her hand waving us goodbye as she hunts down a waitress.
“Wait, do they have white hot chocolate here?” Moon asks no one in particular, looking intently at a small menu.
“I think so –” Cyvil begins to respond, but before she can finish, he’s already up and moving, probably in the same direction her sister had taken.
And then there were two.
“I get it now,” I say understandingly.
She tilts her head to the side, her auburn locks swishing with the movement. “Get what?”
“How you accepted my friends so quickly. Clearly we are both experienced with those without a filter.”
She laughs quietly, grabbing the spoon closest to her and loading it up with ice cream. “Yes, but then if we’re okay with it, does that make us crazy as well?”
Put that way, “Probably.”
She takes the bite, still smiling. Dipping the spoon back into the ridiculous dessert, she says, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you what this was all about on the phone. I just felt it’d be easier to explain in person.”
I lean back in the metal chair, watching her stare back at me. She seems more peaceful today, her shoulders relaxed, eyes bright and vibrant. Not a speck of makeup on her face. And with a smile like that, it’s hard to even notice the scars. I wonder what’s changed.
“What is it that you wanted to explain?”
The grin widens, and I feel like I should be filled with trepidation at that mischievous look. But I’m not. Instead, I’m curious. “My new game plan,” she says easily.
I pause, letting the sound of the restaurant fill the silence as I try to figure out what she means by that. Spoons hitting the bottoms of empty glasses, shakes being sucked up through red and white striped straws. Kids laughing. All the while I still have no idea what she’s talking about when she says “game plan”.
“Okay, so there are some things I never really explained to you,” she says somewhat guiltily when I remain mute.
I raise an eyebrow at her. “What things?”
Her fingers mess with the napkin sitting closest to her, eyes focused on it when she says, “Like why my dad really wants me to marry you.”
My brow creases, and she says, “Should I start from the beginning?”
“Wait, how far back does this go?”
She winces, pauses, then says, “From when I was seven.”
Wow.
“Am I going to need sugar for this?” I ask, dead serious.
A shrug. “It probably wouldn’t hurt.”
I nod, flagging down a waiter as I tell her, “Go ahead then.”
Twenty minutes later I get the full story, with Atillia and Moon having come back to hear the second half of it after they got their sugar fix. Just like my father said, she was hurt pretty severely when she was a kid, though she never said how or why, but that it left her weaker because of it. She also said how her parents always worried about her picking a career, afraid she wouldn’t be strong enough for it, and then when she said she wanted to be an ER doctor, it confirmed their worst fears.
“And that brings me back to why my father wants me to marry you.” She swallows, looking unsure for the first time since before she started this story. “I want to go to college overseas. Oxford, actually. And without my father’s financial help, I’m not going to be able to make that happen.”
“I still don’t get it,” Moon says through the slurp of his straw, looking at her strangely. “How does this have anything to do with marriage?”
He took the words right out of my mouth.
“Our parents think she needs a man to fall back on if it doesn’t work out. So our father is holding her college dreams ransom unless she marries you,” Atillia answers helpfully when she noticed her sister was a little slow with the trigger.
“Again, this is why I can’t take you anywhere.” Cyvil sighs, half her face covered by her hand, eyes closed. “You put things as subtly as a bomb going off in a clown car.”
Atillia shrugs, not arguing with that.
“Seriously? Your dad won’t fund y
our college tuition unless you get hitched first? That’s messed up, man.” Moon shakes his head, taking another pull from his hot chocolate. When I glare at him for his rudeness, he says, “What? Am I wrong?”
“No, you’re not,” Cyvil says, much to my surprise. “It’s ridiculous. Just like your father using you to solve his financial problems.” She nods at me. “That’s why I’ve come up with a plan where we both win but without having to sign a marriage certificate.”
I can honestly say that I did not expect to come here tonight and hear all this, much less discover that she seems to have found some kind of loophole for us. I had figured her parents wanted her to marry because they didn’t think she ever would without their help. Apparently, it goes a lot deeper than that, and honestly, I feel really bad for her. After seeing what she could do yesterday when she saved that woman, and her ability to get into such a school as Oxford, I don’t doubt she has the brains and the ability to help people. And if she somehow found a way for the both of us to get out of this situation while still getting what we want, then I’m all ears.
“Alright,” I say after a minute. “What do you have in mind?”
Her body deflates in what I assume is a relieved sigh before she reiterates, “I want to go to college, and you want to be free from marrying me. But you also want to help your dad out, right?”
“Right.”
“So what if we did this. We pretend to accept their ultimatum and get engaged. We set a date for the wedding in the winter, and make sure my dad promises to send the money transfer to Wells Investments the day after we make the announcement. By then I’ll have my tuition and be enrolled in school, so all we have to do is call it off the day of the wedding, and we all get what we want.”
“Minus your father,” I remind her, thinking of the logistics of her plan.
“Yes, minus my father.”
I stare at her and those determined eyes, impressed. I never would have thought of something so devious. And smart. “So…you want us to fake it till we make it.”
She nods, arms folded across each other. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“I think it’s brilliant,” Moon says, looking at Cyvil with an approving gleam in his eyes. “Sounds like something I would have come up with.”
I snort at that. “But you didn’t.”
“Not the point.”
“It kind of is.”
“Alright girls,” Atillia says, putting her hands up to quiet us. “So, are you in or are you out?”
“Till, he can have a few days to think about it. There isn’t a deadline,” Cyvil hisses at her.
“Actually, there kind of is.” Guilt starts to climb up my back, tensing my muscles. I hate to admit this to her, but since she was honest with me about the whole college thing, I feel I owe her, especially after she came up with a way to help us. “After the night we met, your dad pretty much wanted to call the whole thing off. So I…I asked him to give me a month to win you over. That deal ends next week.”
“Oh, man! I totally forgot about the whole ninja thing. That was awesome, by the way,” Moon winks at Cyvil, her expression rightly confused. “You wouldn’t by chance have security cam footage of it or anything, would you?”
“Moon?” I say, gritting my teeth.
He looks at me, face completely innocent. “Yeah?”
“Shut up.”
Ignoring us both, Cyvil says simply, “I’m surprised.”
The guilt multiplies. “I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner.”
“No,” she shakes her head. “I mean…I’m surprised you still tried after that. If I were you, I would have run for the hills.”
“Amen,” her sister mutters as she finishes the last bite of her second caramel sundae, smile satisfied.
“I don’t like to give up.” Not until there’s no hope left, which in this situation, I didn’t think there was. Until now.
She laughs quietly, somehow finding that funny. “I know. And that’s why I think this could work. If we keep up enough of a charade, my dad won’t suspect a thing until it’s too late.”
As she says this, I suddenly think of two holes in her plan. Big holes. For both her and me. “Wait, what will happen when your second year of school comes around? He obviously won’t be paying for it after the stunt you want to pull.”
As though she expected me to bring this up, her response is immediate and thought out. “My father isn’t the type to do payments. He’ll hand the school a check to cover as many years as I’ll need. And by the time they cash it and he figures it out, it’ll be too late.”
“And what about the money he plans to give my dad?” I say, bringing up my second concern. “What’s keeping him from calling the whole thing void when he discovers I didn’t hold up my end of the deal?”
Again, she has a solution on the tip of her tongue. “People like our fathers always have iron clad contracts for such large transactions. He wouldn’t be able to get it back lest he sued your father. And unless my dad wants to explain to a court that he used his eighteen-year-old daughter as a bargaining chip, then I don’t see that being a problem.”
I stare at her, mute and amazed. She really did think of everything – managed to fix all of our major problems with a single idea. Which means if we do this, then my family’s business will be saved, and she’ll get to go to school. I won’t have to give my freedom away, and her dad learns a lesson about human trafficking in the process.
Thinking about all of the benefits with its little risk of fallback, I can’t find a reason not to do it. Well, other than the fact that it’s lying to our fathers, and manipulating hers for our gain and his loss. It’s not necessarily right or moral, but then neither is forcing your teenage daughter into marriage because you think her too weak to stand on her own.
I think this is what they call karma.
“What do you think?” she finally asks, hands clutching each other in front of her on the table. All is silent except for the obnoxious slurping coming from Moon and his hot chocolate.
“I think we have a new plan,” I say with a slow smile.
“Excellent.” She nods at me in a business-like gesture, and with it, I can feel a change in the weather of my father’s future. My future. And also hers.
Cyvil
I can’t believe it. For the first time in my life, I’ll actually be one step ahead of my mogul of a father. The man that is the tower of industry, someone to be reckoned with. I know I should feel bad about what’s going to happen to him at the end of all this. Not only will he be out a large sum of money, but I’ll have beat him at his own game. Somehow, though, the guilt of it hasn’t kicked in yet. And I think it’s because deep down I know this is my only option. If I could convince him to call it all off, I would. But I tried that, and it didn’t work. Only severe action will bring results. And damn if this isn’t the most severe thing I’ve ever done.
In a way, he should be proud.
All I’m doing is taking his beloved business practices and using them on him for a change.
Stepping out into the cool, New York air, Jagger keeps step next to me until we reach the curb, him holding all of my newly borrowed books. Moon stands a few feet away, his own arms swamped in my impressive Cassandra Clare collection. He and my sister are chatting about something I’m unable to hear over the sounds of taxi’s hitting their horns, exhausts rumbling in the dark, and people yelling to each other across the street.
The city is always so alive with noise, electricity, a sense of happening. I’m the type of girl that craves quiet walks by the lake and sitting on the couch with a good book in my hands. The constant chaos of the city sets my nerves on edge – creates a jittery feeling in my bones. Which is kind of ironic considering that I want a career in one of the most stressful environments on earth. But I think it’s the idea behind a hospital that gives it a sense of rightness to me instead of fear. Heart monitors sound better to me than horns blaring in Times Square. Rushing feet on tile has more meaning than
the sound of the subway pulling away from the station. I guess it’s the significance behind the noise of an ER that makes it much more tolerable than the hectic life surrounding me. That sound is creating a difference, saving a life.
I’ve gotten so lost in my own musings that I don’t catch what Jagger just said to me. I only know he said anything at all by the expectant look on his face as he stares down at me, a street lamp highlighting one side of his face.
“Sorry?” I say, trying not to look as guilty as I feel.
“How do you want to go about this? Should we see your father first?”
Oh. Right. “Yeah, I think that’d probably make it seem more realistic, especially since I haven’t exactly been shy about my resistance to the whole idea.” And because of that, I have a nagging fear that he’ll find my new-found acceptance suspicious. I only hope we are good enough actors to pull it off and squash those doubts.
“Text me when you want to set up the meeting. I’m busy on Fridays and Saturdays, but any other time is fine.”
I put my hand out to flag down a cab, saying over my shoulder, “Alright. I’ll set something up this week.” But then what he said finally hits me and I turn around, looking at him with a question in my eyes. “What do you do on Fridays and Saturdays, if you don’t mind me asking?”
He shrugs but doesn’t answer, eyes staring up into the starless sky.
Hmph.
Eventually I flag down a cab for him and Moon since they took one into the city, and I brought my car. We say goodbye to them, me taking my books from Jagger before they go, and then Till and I find my Volkswagen up the street where I parked it. I keep a slower pace so my sister can keep up, the books also weighing me down.
“I think that went well,” she comments once I unlock the doors, put the books in the backseat, and help her in, all while she slaps my hands away at the added assistance.
“Oh, so Jagger can help you but I can’t,” I say haughtily, giving her a look.
“It’s not every day I have a Jagger Wells offering me his hand.” Her eyes go overly dreamy and I want to barf. Instead, I settle for grabbing her seatbelt, ignoring her glare as I do.