by Sam Mariano
“Okay, no problem. We’ll keep it simple, get you some staples. I’m thinking a great pair of jeans, some black leggings, a couple tops, a stylish jacket. Oh, this is going to be so much fun,” she enthuses, flashing me a big grin.
I try to smile back, but I’m definitely feeling intimidated. “Yeah, so much fun.”
Chapter Five
It turns out shopping with Hunter’s mom is fun.
She’s a lot to absorb right off the bat, but the more time I spend with her as she hauls me through stores collecting more bags than I wanted to take home, the more I realize she just lives in her own world. She regales me with horrifying stories of “fun” things she did back in her modeling days, but recounts it all with fondness, like it’s nothing to be ashamed of. She buys me things I think are really pretty, and a few things I try to talk her out of because I know I’ll never wear them.
“Camel looks so good on you,” she insists, holding up a top that… well, I’m not sure if it’s a shirt or a bandana, but it doesn’t cover nearly enough skin.
“I’m never going to wear it,” I tell her, shaking my head. “It doesn’t matter how pretty it looks.”
“Nonsense. It looks great. We’re buying it,” she announces, draping it over her arm.
“I really think we should stop,” I tell her, glancing anxiously at the stuff she has already bought me. “We already have so many bags. I feel bad about you spending so much money on me.”
“Nonsense.” She waves me off. “When I got pregnant with Hunter, I hoped so hard he’d be a little girl so I’d have a daughter to doll up and shop with. Obviously, he was not a girl. I still dressed him cute, but boy clothes just aren’t as much fun as girl clothes.” Suddenly inspired, she says, “Oh, we need to get you a couple dresses! Every girl needs a little black dress and a little red dress in her closet.”
“I don’t really have a lot of occasions I need to wear a dress to,” I tell her.
“You’ve got those middle school dances, right? Picture this walking into your next one: you’re rocking heels and a flirty red dress, a black leather jacket, and a cute clutch purse. Oh, we need to get you a clutch. And makeup. We need to get you mascara. Your eyes are beautiful, a little mascara will really make them pop.”
I look around at the five shopping bags we have already accumulated. “I literally cannot take all this stuff home with me. My mom sent me to the mall with twenty dollars.”
“We’ll condense before we send you home,” she assures me. “It only looks like a lot because of all the bags, we can easily fit everything in just a couple. Don’t worry so much. Is your mom really going to be mad that you got to go on a shopping spree she didn’t have to pay for? Come on, now.”
She will, though. Not least of all because it’s not just some shopping spree she didn’t have to pay for—it’s a shopping spree sponsored by Hunter’s mom, and anything having to do with Hunter sets my mom on edge.
“Heeled boots,” she says, suddenly inspired. “Black heeled boots.”
“I don’t think…”
But she isn’t listening. She’s wandering off to the cash register to pay for the shirt I told her I’m not going to wear so we can go shop for boots I’ll also never wear.
___
After a full day of shopping, Venus and I have returned to the food court. She bought us bubble teas and sat me down to give me a makeup tutorial.
She only bought me a few makeup items, but she taps each one as she tells me what I need to know. She bought me a moisturizer, too. Apparently, Venus Keller believes it’s never too soon to start moisturizing.
“You’re not going to wear a lot of makeup, and you’re definitely not going to look like you wear a lot of makeup,” she tells me now, as she carefully applies a coat of mascara to my lashes.
I try to keep from blinking, but I feel like she’s going to poke me right in the eye.
“Your everyday makeup is only intended to enhance your natural beauty, so you don’t want to use a heavy hand. For an evening look or a special occasion you can get a little more dramatic, but for a day at the mall?” She shakes her head. “Take Valerie, for example.”
I stiffen a little just hearing her name.
“Valerie is a very pretty girl, but she’s trying too hard; she needs to tone it down. The pale blue eye shadow she’s wearing today? No woman needs to own that awful shade of eye shadow. I did the same thing when I was your age, though,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Tried so hard to look pretty I just ended up looking like a clown. When I started modeling, I learned a better way, so I’ll just teach you now and save you the painfully awkward stage.”
I crack a smile. “I appreciate the effort, but I don’t wear makeup daily. I don’t really wear it at all.”
“Maybe not now, but you’ll probably start to soon. It usually starts around the time you notice boys,” she says lightly. She finishes my mascara and leans back, smiling at her handiwork. “Beautiful.”
“Can I see?”
She nods, screwing the cap back on the mascara and opening the powder compact she bought me.
I take it, checking out my reflection. I look the same, of course, but she’s right—somehow my eyes look even bluer with the mascara. “It looks pretty. Thank you.”
“That’s the thing about makeup,” she tells me. “It’s not always about looking good, it’s about feeling good. I just feel better when I wear it.”
I flash her a smile and close the compact, handing it back to her to put in the bag.
“You can put it in your purse.” She hands me the mascara, too. “We’ve got to condense bags and hide the evidence anyway, right?” she teases.
“Right,” I murmur, sliding the makeup into my purse.
She said it like she was joking, but as she folds up the bag, she echoes a question her son has already asked me. “Is your mom super strict?”
I shake my head. “No, not really. Aside from Sara, my mom’s my best friend. I think she’s just worried that I might be starting to like a boy, and she’s not ready for it,” I explain, even though it makes my face heat up to admit it—and to his mom, no less.
“I get that. My mom was the same way when I was your age, believe it or not. But the more restrictions she put on me, the more it convinced me that I must be missing out on something really exciting. It didn’t keep me from boys, just made me sneakier. I was a bit of a rebel,” she confides.
I smile faintly. “I’m not.”
“I can see that,” she says dryly.
Ordinarily, I would never dream of asking an adult to explain their relationship, but since Venus has shared so much with me already today, I try to think how to ask her what’s going on with her husband. Hunter is convinced she’s in the process of leaving him, but nothing I’ve seen and nothing she’s said today has backed that up.
At the same time, she has to be, right? He hit her son. He hit him so hard he had a black eye, and I saw the hostility between them the day I was over at his house. Surely it’s not okay with Venus that the man she’s in a relationship with dislikes her son so vehemently.
One time, my mom had a boyfriend that didn’t like me. It wasn’t that he was mean to me (and he certainly never laid a hand on me), but he seemed disinterested in getting to know me or interacting with me more than he absolutely had to. She thought maybe he was just being shy at first so she brought him around more to break the ice, but he always seemed mildly annoyed when I was around.
She ended up dumping him. Mom told me she couldn’t be with someone who didn’t treat her favorite person right, and that was that—we never saw him again.
Before I can figure out a way to approach it with Venus, though, Hunter and his friends find us in the food court. His mom just finished condensing everything she bought down to two bags, so she passes them to me under the table before asking us if we’re getting hungry.
“I am,” I volunteer, since only the guys have spoken up so far.
“Of course she is,” Valerie murmurs under her bre
ath to her friend, who chortles.
I look at her, frowning mildly. “I’m sorry, was that supposed to be an insult?”
“Of course not,” Valerie says innocently. “It must be nice, that’s all. I’m on a diet so I’ll just have a salad.”
“Okay. I’m going to have bourbon chicken with a heaping plate of fried rice,” I tell her. “It’s going to be delicious.”
Hunter smirks. “That does sound good. I think I’ll have that, too.”
Valerie gets even pissier when everyone decides what they’re eating and Hunter and I walk alone to the Asian place with the bourbon chicken.
“You and Valerie seem to be hitting it off,” he jokes, grabbing two trays and passing one to me.
“She’s mean,” I inform him, not bothering to mince words.
“She’s a little mean,” he acknowledges. “It grows on you, though.”
“Why would I want it to? I don’t like her, she doesn’t like me—I’d say that’s that.”
He moves down the line, placing his tray on the counter. “Our moms are friends, so she’s kind of hard to get away from. We’ve always been pushed together since kindergarten. There was a brief period one summer when Valerie’s mom thought her husband had flirted with my mom at some cook-out and we stopped hanging out, but come August, everything was fine again.”
“Your mom is… interesting,” I tell him, placing my tray down beside his.
He smiles faintly, glancing back at me. “She is. She talks a lot. Has she been telling you stories?”
I nod my head. “Apparently you’re a bully, but your dad was also a huge jerk so you can’t help it and that’s okay.”
His eyes widen slightly and his eyebrows rise in genuine surprise. “Wow, thanks for talking me up, Mom,” he says sarcastically.
“She’s very honest.”
“You think I’m a jerk?”
Usually there would be an undertone of humor when we’re going back and forth, but there’s no amusement when he asks that. His gaze slides to mine and even though he doesn’t say anything more, I get the distinct feeling that my answer matters to him.
My heart gives under the weight of his gaze. I have heard things today that reinforce my previous belief that he might be a jerk, but he hasn’t been a jerk to me. I also don’t want to believe he’s a jerk because I like him. I don’t know what to say, though.
Before I have to answer, the lady on the other side of the counter interrupts to ask what we want. We don’t speak to each other while we’re ordering, then we slide down the counter to pay. I start to dig my money out of my purse, but Hunter tells the cashier we’re together and pays for both our meals.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I murmur, feeling a little awkward.
“Wanted to,” he says simply, not looking at me.
I look up at him, wanting to say something but unsure of what. His silence weighs on me more heavily than anything else could, and even though my rational mind brings up the best friend he apparently turned on and chased out of school, my heart counters with the image of him carrying my broken backpack home for me and then buying me a new one, him reading my favorite book and then calling me Catnip.
There’s evidence he might have done some bad things I don’t know about, but there’s irrefutable evidence that he’s done good, too.
He picks up his tray and turns to head back to the table. I don’t think he’ll say anything else to me right now if I don’t initiate, but it’s bursting out of me anyway, so I blurt, “Hunter.”
His steps slow ever so slightly and he looks at me.
I meet his gaze, my heart in my throat, feeling strangely vulnerable. “I don’t think you’re a jerk.”
His gaze locked on mine, he doesn’t respond right away. He holds his silence long enough that I start to get anxious, then he finally says, “No?”
I shake my head vehemently.
A faint trace of humor returns to his tone and his lips curve up ever so slightly. “What am I, then?”
I don’t know how to answer. I don’t know who he is yet, but I’ve seen enough that I want to find out.
I know I’m drawn to him. I know I’m somehow comfortable with him, even though he’s the last person I would ever expect to be comfortable around. It doesn’t bother me to be completely myself when we’re together. We might have some problems, but it’s all superficial stuff, nothing that really matters. Not to me, anyway. Maybe it matters to him, but I don’t care that much what other people think. If Hunter and I could be alone in the world, just us, I don’t think we’d ever have any problems.
I picture us alone together, just the two of us on the footbridge in the woods with no external forces causing conflict—no parents or friends or social hierarchy at school. We’re free to be on the same level—and when we’re alone, we are.
The answer to his question hits me all of a sudden.
I smile, anticipating with pleasure him laughing and telling me what a dork I am. “You’re my Gale.”
He doesn’t call me a dork, but his brown eyes fill up with pleasure and his lips tug up in a smile that makes my heart stutter. “Oh yeah?”
I nod my head, my cheeks flaming. “Yeah.”
The playfulness returns to his tone. “I guess I can live with that.”
Chapter Six
While getting food with Hunter was nice, as soon as we get back to the table—back to his world—the comfort I felt when it was just us disappears. Valerie Johnson has never zeroed in on me before—I only disliked her on Sara’s behalf—but now bad vibes are radiating from her and I am definitely the target. Even when she’s not saying anything to pick at me, I can feel her stewing in my presence. Anytime I speak, she looks aggravated.
Hunter definitely notices, I can tell by the subtle ways he keeps reinforcing that he’s backing my presence here when his friends undoubtedly don’t understand it. He doesn’t say anything to her, though. He must think I can handle it on my own. And he’s right—it’s just annoying.
It’s also annoying that she likes him. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Lots of girls in our grade have crushes on Hunter, but I guess I feel like they don’t know him the way I do. They like his image more than they actually like him, and that’s not real. It’s like being attracted to a single photograph of a person, then seeing them in real life and realizing it was just the angle.
I like him from all angles. I bet Valerie doesn’t.
At least Sara is having a genuinely good time, though.
By the time we finish eating, I’m already tired of the hostility from stupid Valerie. I don’t think of myself as a mean person, but she’s certainly filling my head with mean thoughts. Maybe it’s the casual way she lashes out at me with her constant digs and “jokes,” maybe it’s blatant jealousy because even though I hate her, she’s Hunter’s friend so he still talks to her. Whatever it is, I’ve had enough of it.
When I take my tray over to the garbage can to empty it, I also text my mom and let her know we’re ready to leave.
I don’t say anything to anyone about it when I get back to the table. I want to tell Sara so she’s not taken by surprise when my mom gets here, but she is so swept up in our day pass to the cool table, she doesn’t even look at me long enough to shoot her a look to check her text messages. It kind of annoys me because she even fawns over Valerie, who—besides being rude to me all day—has been passively mean to Sara since first grade.
“What time does the movie start?” Valerie asks Hunter, scrolling through her phone.
I didn’t pay attention to which one they were seeing since I knew we would be gone by then, but I am a little bummed to miss out on going to a movie with Hunter. I’d like to, I’d just like to go with him alone—not him and his friends.
My mom would never let me though. It would seem too much like a date.
I sigh, momentarily hit by how difficult it will be to build any kind of relationship with Hunter, friends or more. I don’t like his friends and my mom d
oesn’t like him—which is so stupid, because she doesn’t even know him.
Maybe I can find a way to make her like him. Give her a peek at the side of him I see. Instead of getting together for something like this with his friends, I could have him over to my house. Maybe he could come over for dinner and Mom would get to talk to him and see that he’s perfectly harmless.
It is kind of stupid that she won’t let me have a male friend. Just because he’s a guy doesn’t mean hanging out with him would automatically be a date. I want to keep spending time with him even if it’s only as friends; I just don’t want to have to also spend time with people I don’t like to spend time with him.
Everyone else is finally gathering up their trash and taking it to the nearest receptacle. I notice Hunter doesn’t clean up his own; he adorably—and annoyingly—messes with Valerie, stacking his plate on top of hers and then sliding his empty tray under hers, too.
He smiles at her. “Thanks, Val, you’re the best.”
She sighs, trying to look annoyed with him, but she’s as bad at it as I am. “You suck.” Hunter cocks an eyebrow at her and her eyes light up with scandalized horror. “Oh my god, shut up, perv.”
Their easy familiarity bums me out even more. Hunter and I have that; he’s not supposed to have it with her, too.
“I didn’t even say anything,” Hunter says, like he’s innocent. “Now be a good girl and go throw away my trash.”
“I hate you,” she lies as she hauls the tray to the trash can.
I sorta wish she hated him. I tell myself that’s stupid. It shouldn’t matter how she feels about him if he likes me… it’s just, I don’t know if he likes me that way, and since I never want to hang out with his friends again, it will be much easier for him to spend time with her than me.
I’m starting to see what he means about me making his life easier if I could win his friends over.
I’m starting to see why it doesn’t even matter if he likes me the way I want him to—this is never going to work.