by Pamela Wells
And Raven said, “Does he carry them in his pockets? And get all germaphobe about touching carts and door handles?”
When Kelly thought about it, she realized, yeah, he did carry them around and sometimes wiped the handles on shopping carts, complaining about grease or something sticky.
How did she ever fall for him? It was a mystery.
With the lists finished, they all headed into the kitchen, where Raven finally broke out the chocolate. It was the expensive kind, too. The ones where you had to follow a little illustrated map on the underside of the box lid just to figure out what chocolate was what. It was a game of treasure hunting, except the reward was chocolate!
Raven hoisted herself up on the laminated countertop, her long legs hanging over the edge. Sydney threw another bag of popcorn into the microwave and punched in a few numbers.
“Get off the counter,” she said, giving Raven a push. Raven rolled her eyes but slid down. Those two were always picking at each other. It drove Kelly nuts. But honestly, sometimes Sydney could be a brat.
“Thank you,” Sydney said, then, “Oh, there was something I needed to talk to you about. We talked about band uniforms at the last student council meeting.”
“Yeah?” Raven leaned against the counter and picked at a torn fingernail polished gothic purple.
Kelly leaned against the counter next to her and perused the chocolate box lid. Dark chocolate. Caramel-filled chocolate. Coconut chocolate. Oh, where to start?
Alexia picked a random piece out of the box and headed over to the fridge where she started alphabetizing the restaurant magnets.
“We were trying to decide on fundraisers and I came up with an open-mike night,” Sydney said. The microwave echoed with the sound of exploding corn. The smell of melted butter filled the air.
“That sounds like fun,” Kelly said before biting into a piece of chocolate filled with raspberry-flavored crème. Would Will go to an open-mike night or would he deem it too frivolous? Probably if they were still sorta-together, he would have talked her out of going when really she would have wanted to go.
“There’s just one thing.” Sydney grinned sheepishly. “We need a place to host it, and we need it for free. You think your mom would let us do it at Scrappe?”
Raven stopped picking at her nail to look up. Her long, black lashes nearly grazed her eyebrows. “Maybe. Sounds like the kind of thing she’d say would look good on my college application.”
“Well, it would. Tell her that.” Sydney took out the bag of popcorn and shook it. “Let me know what she says? We’re thinking about March thirty-first.”
“Got it.” Raven grabbed a second box of chocolates. Sydney wrapped her arm around the bowl of fresh popcorn and they all filed back into the living room.
Raven popped in her sister Jordan’s Gilmore Girls DVD. It was the season when Jess (as in Milo Ventimiglia) was a major character in the plot.
There was just something so yummy about a slightly short bad boy. Maybe Kelly should get her own bad boy? He would be the exact opposite of Will, if she ever found one. Probably that’s what she needed eventually but not now. The Code was starting to work, she thought, and dating another guy right now was definitely not in the rules.
Around midnight, Kelly’s cell rang in her purse. It was her brother.
“What?” she said by way of greeting.
“Dude, where are you?” Todd asked.
“I’m at Sydney’s. I told Mom that when I left. Why?”
“Oh,” he said. “You haven’t gone over there in forever.”
“So? What do you want?”
“Will just called here looking for you.”
Kelly’s heart suddenly hammered in her ears. Will had called for her? Did he miss her? Did he finally want her as a girlfriend?
“Did he just call?” Will was usually in bed by ten. He only stayed up late if he was working on a major project.
“Okay, okay.” Todd groaned. “He called about two hours ago, but I just remembered.”
“Thanks a lot, Todd!”
“Hey, I’m not your answering service.”
Anger blazed in her cheeks, but then she realized all of her friends were staring at her.
“Did Will call or something?” Sydney asked.
Kelly opened her mouth to make up an excuse, but she didn’t want to lie to her friends. And she didn’t want to start defending Will when they’d just had the liberating experience of reading The Ex’s flaws.
“Yeah,” she said. She took in a breath for courage. “But I’m not going to call him back.”
“Good for you!” Alexia squeezed Kelly’s shoulder. “See, The Code is working.”
“Hey! Hello!” Todd said.
Kelly turned her attention back to her brother. “Sorry. Anyway, I gotta go, Todd.”
“Wait. One more thing. Mom wants you home.”
“It’s getting late, Kelly,” Mrs. Waters said in the background.
“Did you hear that?” Todd said.
Kelly rolled her eyes. “Yes. I heard her.”
“See you soon!”
The phone went dead. She flipped it closed. “I gotta go,” she said.
Sydney paused the DVD.
“Yeah. I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”
“You won’t call Will back, will you?” Raven asked, raising her perfectly arched eyebrows.
“No. He called hours ago anyway. He’s probably in bed by now.”
“If you feel like you need to call him,” Alexia said, “call me instead, okay?”
Kelly smiled. “Sure.”
“Bye,” Sydney and Raven said in unison.
“See ya.” Kelly shut the door behind her.
“You know what?” Kelly said, as she put her coat away at home. “I really don’t like you right now.”
Maybe it was meant to be that Todd had forgotten Will called. With it being so late, there was no way Kelly could call over there, even if she’d been tempted to.
Todd grinned. “That’s fine, as long as you like me tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow is debatable. Depending on what you do then to ruin my life.” She stomped down the hall to her room, thankful that at least her parents had enough sense to buy a place big enough to house their three children. Kelly envied Sydney’s quiet house. It would be soooo nice to be an only child.
Though she shut her door behind her, Kelly’s brother ignored the privacy sign and barged in.
“You forget how to knock?” she said, slipping out of her boots.
Flopping back on her bed, messing her comforter, he said, “Why are you in such a bad mood?”
“How many other phone calls have you forgotten to tell me about?”
“None! Jeez! Well…” He looked at the ceiling as if trying to remember. “I guess I have forgotten a few of Jerkwad’s calls.”
Jerkwad was Todd’s nickname for Will. “He has a name, you know.” Kelly pulled a pair of shorts out of her dresser, then a tank top.
“Yeah, I know. Jerkwad.”
Did Todd know they’d broken up? He’d been pestering her to drop Will since she started hanging out with him, even going so far as to threaten Will behind her back. Of course, Willjust rolled his eyes and said, “Your brother is an imbecile,” when Kelly asked him about it. Which Todd was, but still, he was her brother. If Will was insulting her brother, was he insulting her?
“I’m not seeing Will anymore,” Kelly muttered, slipping several silver bangles off her wrist.
Todd sat up on the bed. “Seriously?”
She sighed, finally turning to him. “Yeah.”
“You…okay?” He furrowed his brow, clearly uncomfortable with the emotional stuff.
Was she okay? It’d already been a month since they’d sorta broken up. Some days the answer was yes, others, not so much. “I guess,” she answered, pulling the rubber band out of her hair (she’d heard rubber bands damaged hair when you slept on them and Kelly needed all the hair help she could get). She slipped on a stretchy black headband to
keep the hair off her face so that it wouldn’t leave grease behind on her skin and make her break out.
Todd stood. “Do you want me to kick his ass?” Hands clenched into fists, he threw a few punches in the air. “‘Cause I would get so much pleasure out of breaking his nose.”
She groaned. “No, I don’t want you to punch him, Todd. God.”
He let his hands fall. “Why not?”
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because fighting is dumb, and it wasn’t like Will deliberately hurt my feelings.”
“But he did hurt your feelings?”
She ignored that question, instead pushing Todd out into the hallway so she could change and get into bed.
“Who broke up with who?”
“Todd,” she moaned. “Go away.”
“So he broke up with you?”
With him in the hallway now, she put herself squarely in the door frame and crossed her arms over her chest. “Technically we weren’t even together. We were just friends dating…or something. Now, good night.”
She reached to shut the door, but Todd stopped her. “Seriously, sis, you’re okay though?”
“I’m okay,” she lied, looking him straight in the eye. She was good at lying to him. He was a guy, after all, and wasn’t very in tune with emotions. He was good on the basketball court and picking on her and Monica, but that was about it.
“‘Cause if you need me to kick his ass,” he went on, “just say the word.”
“You will not be kicking anyone’s behind, Todd,” their mom said, coming up the hallway. “And what have I told you about swearing in my house?”
“Sorry,” he said automatically, not at all concerned with the reprimand. Their mother never punished him. Todd could get away with just about anything, something Kelly was still trying to figure out. Maybe it was his ability to pretend sincerity and remorse. Okay, so maybe he was good at three things.
“‘Night,” Mrs. Waters said, kissing Kelly, then Todd on the forehead. She went into her room, their father’s snores carrying out into the hallway until their mother clicked the door shut behind her.
“Just say the word!” Todd whispered before he turned into his room.
Kelly rolled her eyes and went to bed.
SIXTEEN
Rule 12: You must never date a friend of The Ex.
Raven felt like she was going through DTs. How did anyone survive without a boyfriend? It wasn’t even really the absence of a boyfriend so much as it was the absence of someone to hang out with. There didn’t even need to be kissing or any of that. Raven just liked having someone to open doors for her. And someone to tell her how beautiful she was. And someone to hold her hand.
Would it technically be breaking the rules if she “hung out” with another boy and flirted? A boy who would open doors for her and tell her how beautiful she looked? It wasn’t like she was really going to hook up with him. Or accommodate him, as Rule 8 specifically said to avoid.
Besides, if Friday nights weren’t for hanging out, then what were they for? Certainly not Scrabble or homework. Or worse yet, hanging out with your mother.
There was one other option, and before Raven broke down and called a guy, she decided to check it out. She went across the hall and knocked on Jordan’s door.
“Come in,” Jordan called from the other side.
When Raven went in, Jordan said hi to her from her vanity mirror as she swooped her dark hair back into a jeweled barrette. There was a hint of blush on her cheeks. A swoop of mascara on her lashes. She looked like she had somewhere to go in her khaki cargo pants and oversize brown sweater.
“What’s up?” she said.
Raven shrugged and sat down on the edge of Jordan’s perfectly made bed. It was supposed to be one of their daily chores, but Raven never really got the habit down. Across the hall, her deep purple comforter was partially hanging on the floor.
“I’m bored,” she said, hoping her little sister would catch the hint, which was: Entertain me!
Jordan ran a fine-tooth comb through her hair, smoothing out the bumps. Her olive skin looked perfect even sans foundation. Jordan had gotten more of their mother than their father. She looked almost one hundred percent Italian. Raven was about eighty percent her father, which made her extremely exotic-looking. Without knowing her parents, people had a hard time figuring out her heritage.
“What about your friends?” Jordan asked.
Sighing, Raven picked at a loose string on the pink bed comforter. “Sydney is studying and going to bed early because she’s doing the SATs tomorrow. Alexia is having dinner with her parents, and Kelly has to babysit her little sister.”
“Bummer,” Jordan said absently, more involved with her hair than her sister’s problems. When her hair was perfect, completely bump-free, with a few wispy strands hanging around her oval face, she sat down next to Raven. “I’d do something with you, but me and Cindy are meeting up with a bunch of people at the movie theater.”
Raven grabbed the pink throw pillow with purple and green polka dots from the head of Jordan’s bed. She ran her hand up and down the velvet material, watching the sway of the fabric change. “What movie is it?”
“Underground.”
“Oh, I want to see that one. Can I come with?”
Jordan cocked a tweezed eyebrow. “No way. You’ll hit on all my friends.”
Raven gave her sister a playful shove. “I would not. Besides, your friends are fourteen. Too young for me.”
“You’re not coming. Sorry.”
Raven scrunched up her face in desperation. “Please!” If left to her own devices tonight, she wasn’t sure what would happen. She was over Caleb, but the desire to hang out with someone of the opposite sex might become stronger than sheer will.
Grabbing her bag, Jordan shook her head. “We’ll do something tomorrow.”
“You used to love hanging out with me.”
“Yeah, that was before I had a life.”
“Come on, Jordan, I’m cool!”
“Not cool enough to have a life!”
Raven growled and headed back into her own room. Soon after, a car beeped out front and Jordan called out, “I’m leaving,” through the house.
Since when did Jordan have more of a life than Raven?
Obviously, since now, but Raven was not going to let her little sister have more fun than her. She grabbed her cell phone and flipped through the phone book. Some of the names she’d forgotten were even in there. When she reached ZAC she stopped and tried to remember the last time she’d talked to him. He was a friend of Caleb’s. She’d probably talked to him a few parties ago.
She called his number and waited.
“Yeah?”
“Hey! Zac! It’s Raven.”
“Raven? What’s up?” Pots and pans banged in the background. A deep male voice barked out an order to “shut off the bacon.”
“You busy tonight?” she asked.
“I’m working right now, but I get off at nine. Why, is there a party or something?”
“No.” Raven sat down in her computer chair and propped one foot up on the edge of the cushioned seat. “I’m just bored and looking for someone to hang out with.”
“Cool. Meet me here around nine? I’ll call Kenny and we’ll all do something.”
“No,” she said too quickly. “No Kenny. Just you and me. We can go to the movies or something.”
“Seriously?”
She could almost hear his eyebrows rise.
“Yes, seriously. I like hanging out with you.”
“Oh.” He sounded surprised.
“So what do you say? You up to it?” she asked.
“Totally. I’ll meet you here?”
“Sure. I’ll see you at nine.”
Hanging up the phone, she smiled another pleased smile. Zac was a cool guy. She’d always thought he was the cutest one of Caleb’s friends. Maybe they’d have fun tonight. It’d been so long since she’d hung out with a guy, she was really looking forward to it.
Well, okay, it’d only been a month since Caleb broke up with her, but that was like nine months in dog years. Or would it be ten? She was never very good with numbers.
Closet light blazing, Raven flipped through her clothes. She had a few special outfits for nights like tonight, i.e., Boy Nights. There were her hot jeans that she thought hugged her butt perfectly and looked awesome with her black stretchy Soweto shirt.
Deciding on that outfit, she pulled the two items from the closet and got dressed. The weather had been mild today, but temps were still only low forties. Which jacket would look good with the outfit?
Back in the closet, she searched for the military-style jacket she’d bought at Two-One, a vintage store downtown. The jacket had dull gold snaps and a high collar. The faded army green would go perfectly with the black long-sleeved shirt.
She laid the jacket out on the bed and went down the hall to the bathroom she and Jordan shared. Looking in the mirror, she tried to decide what to do with her hair. Wanting it down but messy, she grabbed the tub of expensive hair product she’d bought online at Sephora and ran some of it through her hair. She bent over and scrunched the tresses, then flipped her head back. Now she had a messy, wavy look going.
Perfect.
With one swoop of mascara and a little bit of dark brown eyeliner, she was ready to go. Back in her room, she slipped into the jacket, sliding her cell phone in the pocket.
“Mom, I’m going out!” she called from the hallway.
“Where?” Ms. Valenti called from her workroom. She was probably piecing together another intricate scrapbook design for a class at Scrappe.
“The movies.”
“Which movie?”
Raven ducked her head in the workroom. Her mother was hunched over a long white table, paper and glue guns and markers spread out in disarray.
What was a safe answer? Anything rated R was out. Romance or family movies were usually on her mother’s OK list.
“Uh…Summer Camp.” Lots of PG action in that movie. Instead, she and Zac would probably skip the movie altogether, or see Underground, the one Jordan was going to.
“Okay,” Ms. Valenti said, whipping out a black marker. She turned in her seat. “Be home by midnight, okay?”