“Until things go wrong, then they’re just crazy. They turn on each other like two Dobermans set loose in a ring. The things they’ve said to each other . . .” She shakes her head, clutching the steering wheel. “I couldn’t even repeat it, and you know me, I’d say anything.”
“I feel horrible you’ve been keeping this all to yourself.”
“You’ve got enough troubles.”
“Bad fashion sense is hardly having your world ripped apart.”
“I don’t know, you do bad fashion sense pretty well.” She laughs.
“When’s your mom coming back?”
“I don’t know. She thinks my dad is there. He thinks she’s there, so neither one of them is in a hurry. Apparently they need to be apart for the separation to officially start, so they’re both sticking their feet in the sand. My mother more literally.”
“Aren’t they at least calling to check up on you?”
“Sure, but they ask how things are, I tell them fine, and that’s it.” Claire gets a twinkle in her eye. The one that always gets me into trouble. “So since they’re both gone and this is our senior year, I think we should throw a party. The kind of party that kids will talk about at our reunion.”
“A party? Claire, your mother isn’t going to stay in Hawaii forever.”
Claire shrugs.
“You have to tell her about Marisa so she knows you’re alone.”
“Do I?”
“What about your dad? We’ll never get away with this. We’re not the types to throw parties, remember? First off, who would come?”
“My dad’s doing a teaching stint at New York University. He won’t be back until after the holidays. If he comes back at all. My mom seems to think he’ll find a twentysomething student and won’t come back. In the meantime, she’s drowning herself in Botox and hot rock massages on a Hawaiian beach.”
“Your dad’s coming back. Stop that. You cannot stay home alone for over a month.”
“You know, I was thinking of a party where we invite everyone from school.”
“Forget about your parents, my father would kill us,” I say with the inflection of “duh” in my voice. “I have to tell them you’re here alone.”
“Don’t you dare! Daisy Crispin, if you tell your parents about mine, I’ll . . . think of something.”
Which is worse than if she’d come up with revenge on the fly. If Claire has time to think about it, there’s no telling what I’d be up against.
“Your dad would be upset, Daisy.” She taps her finger on her chin. “If he found out about it, Chase might have to find out who sent him those secret admirer roses every Valentine’s Day since fourth grade.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
“Worse yet, if your dad did find out, he’d come to school and put on a play about it. Do you really think you’re up for that kind of humiliation senior year?”
“Claire, if our friendship means anything to you, you cannot tell Chase a thing. I can’t take that kind of humiliation. I’m going to prom this year.”
“You? Going to prom?” Claire starts to cackle. “Why would you want to go to prom?”
“What are you, the wicked stepsister? Yes, me going to prom. Why is that so ridiculous? Most girls want to go to prom.”
“Sorry, I thought you were joking.” She slows to face me and puts her colorful beanie on her head. “A party would give you a chance to spend time with Chase. Real time. Not the kind where Amber walks in and projectile vomits on you, or whatever she’s going to do for attention. Because we wouldn’t invite her. In fact, we’d uninvite her.”
Suddenly I don’t feel so goody-two-shoes. Or even remotely perfectionist, except about the party planning.
“A party would make us matter. Think about it, Daisy. The pool house out back. If my parents divorce, how long do you think we’ll have that?”
“A lot of kids can do a lot of damage.”
“We wouldn’t even have to let them in the house, and we would go down in history for having the most rockin’ party that St. James Academy has ever seen. ‘Class of 2011,’ they’ll say. ‘Now that was the year to be here.’”
“Christians have a phrase for karma, right? It’s called reaping what you sow. We already sow a lot of misery. What if we make it worse for ourselves?” I try to force the thoughts of my lies out of my head for the moment.
Claire raises her arm toward the distance. “Think about it. We could have Gossip Girl playing on the big screen outside. We could buy party supplies with my credit card. My parents would never know I bought eighty gallons of soda until after the fact.”
“We could pay cash for the supplies. We don’t have to add stealing to the mix.”
“We could personally uninvite Amber and Britney, and then that would be the last we’d have to worry about them. My mom told me that all the girls who are so beautiful and developed in high school will be fat and fake blonde by the reunion.”
“I can’t imagine your mother saying that.” But yeah, really I can. Claire’s mother is gorgeous. I’ve told Claire that if they ever do The Real Housewives of Silicon Valley, her mother has to star in the cast. She would make the current housewives appear tame.
The reality of Claire’s parents splitting strikes me. “We can’t do this to your parents, Claire. They’ve got to be under a lot of pressure.” My parents may be deranged, but at least they’re deranged together.
“So I guess you don’t really want to go to prom then. How’s Chase going to even ask you? At school, Amber stalks him, and at home, you can’t even use the phone.”
“He can Facebook me.”
“How romantic. Maybe when he asks you to marry him, he can tweet it.”
“Claire.” I snap my waistband on my flamingo jammies. “Gil says we should let a guy know how we feel. We can do that without a party. We should at least try it first. Do you have someone you’re crushing on? Maybe if we focus on that”—I swallow hard—“and not the party, and pray . . . you know, your parents’ thing will work itself out.”
“Gil? Since when do you listen to Gil?”
“Since he was popular and we’re not.”
She nods. “But when was he popular? 1960?”
“He graduated in 2004. He’s not that ancient.”
“He does look like Josh Lucas,” she reasons.
“There’s that.”
“But if Gil’s wrong, we’ve made complete idiots out of ourselves for nothing.”
“No!” I raise my finger. “Then we know the guy wasn’t that into us.”
“Why do I want to know that?” Claire asks. “Ignorance is bliss.”
“So we’re done with the party idea?”
“I didn’t say that, just that I’ll reconsider if shopping does the trick and brings back the thrill of the hunt. Regarding the party? You owe me, Daisy. I’ve put up with your second-grade schedule for twelve years. You’ll be leaving home in less than a year. It’s the party or I give up.”
“That’s blackmail. But I want to come back home at some point, not be unwelcome to return!”
Claire pulls into the parking lot of the mall. “There are gym pants in the back. Go ahead and change.”
I climb into the backseat and pull out her gym bag, which reeks. “These are foul.”
“Well, yeah. I was taking them home to get cleaned. Just get dressed so we can go explain to my manager why I can’t work.”
“I’m going to have a plume of stench following me!”
“Then wear your pajamas. They’re cute. Certainly no uglier than your regular outfits.”
I stick my tongue out and yank off my jammies. I pick up the hardened gym shorts. They’ve morphed into an unforgiving shape. “I can’t do it.”
“You are such a baby.”
“What are you going to wear? Won’t they want their uniform back when you tell them you’re not working?”
“I’ll work that out,” Claire says.
As I shimmy back into my jammies, I’m stru
ck by all Claire has kept inside about her parents, and my thoughts come tumbling out. “Are you testing how gullible I am again? I’ve never even seen your parents raise their voices. Not once.”
“My parents should be the actors. They’ve got a lot more experience than your parents. I don’t think anyone but me has ever seen them fight, and trust me, it is not pretty.”
“What’s one party?” I ask her. “I mean, in the scheme of things, we’ve been good kids.”
“I know, right?”
We both look at each other and break into laughter. Before this, the new Daisy was nothing more than a dream. Today the dream takes shape. Even as my conscience sears me with guilt.
8
I feel this surge of electricity as I enter the mall, much like when I’m in Chase’s presence. My endorphins are flowing and sparkling all over the place like fireworks. I’m going shopping! Even in my dorky pajamas, which I have to say seem as though I planned the look, I’m SpongeBob-happy.
“My endorphins are going crazy. I’m euphoric. I’m stupid-happy.”
“Okay . . .” Claire stops abruptly in front of the kiddie carts for hire and shakes her head. “You know, it’s not the numbers.”
“What’s not the numbers?”
“All this time, everyone said, ‘Daisy is so good with numbers. She’s brilliant with numbers.’”
“Am I missing something?”
“Naturally, you want to major in finance because you’re good with numbers, right?”
“And living on nothing,” I remind her. “Cheap is a fine art, and I am Michelangelo.”
“But you have just as many facts about sloths, endorphins, neurotoxins. Pretty much anything geeky.”
“Did you know sloths move so slowly that algae can grow on their fur?”
“See!” She points at me. “You can’t major in finance, Daisy. You have to do something in the sciences. That’s where your heart is.”
“My dad says it’s too hard to make money in that. We talked about neuroscience.”
“And yet your dad puts on puppet shows and your family’s all here. You’re eating and going to private school. My parents are on two different sides of the hemisphere—”
“Actually, New York and Hawaii are both in the Northern Hemisphere. Oh, and the Western too. They’re in the same hemisphere.”
“Enough, Daisy. If you drop one of your stupid facts at the party, our chances of being remembered for the greatest party ever are over. I’m only telling you about science because I think your career is headed the wrong direction. The clothes are the tip of the iceberg. You keep trying to make your parents happy, and you never think about what you want.”
“The sloth fact totally makes sense,” I say. I’m not going to let her simply tell me I’m crazy. “I was thinking of the energy that spiked when I walked in the mall with the hope that I’d be dressed differently on Monday, and it went together. The sloth extending so little energy.”
“It doesn’t go together. You have to speak the whole sentence, Daisy, not just half of it, or you don’t make any sense. Not that your facts make any sense to the rest of us. We are not listing facts today. You are not Spock. At least try for Uhura and be hot, all right? You are not the History Channel or Animal Planet, and you are not an accountant, so change your major!” Claire catches her breath before starting up again. “We’re shopping. If you would like to offer up a fact about a great purchase, I’m all ears, but if you have anything to say about the two-toed sloth or how many hemispheres may in fact exist, I don’t want to hear about it.”
“I read it in a novel.”
“And? That’s half a thought.”
“I read about the sloth in a novel.” I spin my wristlet around.
She stops the motion. “I’m not getting through. All right, what are you nervous about? Is it the idea we might throw a party and Chase might come?”
“What if I buy the wrong clothes? Worse yet, what if they make the wrong impression? Or no impression? What if it’s our party and no one talks to me?”
“Your parents took care of the ‘no impression’ yesterday. You’re covered there. People will talk to us or we’ll kick them out. I’m totally hiring a bouncer. He’s going to look like Chris Brown, and if anyone messes with us, I’m saying, ‘Do you want him to go all Chris Brown on you? He will, so get out!’” Claire shakes out her hair and lets out a deep breath. “Let’s focus. Clothes are about how you feel. You find clothes that you feel great in, and that emanates from every pore. So you give off this great energy. Great energy, magnetic presence with guys. It’s simple math, so even you ought to understand that.”
I don’t want to put too much faith in a new pair of jeans. Chances are, I’ll go back to school on Monday as the same dork who left on Friday.
“I’ve got to go quit and tell them I’ll turn in my uniform when the stores open. You want to come?”
“I wouldn’t miss it!”
The neon lights of the food court are dark, and the only noise is a song with differing languages. “I wonder if a food court really is supposed to be this international. Like, I wonder if in Topeka, you hear all these languages.”
Claire glares at me.
“Sorry.” Behind the bleached countertop at the hot-dog stand is some poor guy in a horizontal-striped shirt with unfortunate red pants—less intrusive than Claire’s full spectrum of primary colors, but certainly not masculine in any way, shape, or form. “That is just wrong,” I whisper to Claire. Not only does he have to dress like that, today he has to do it alone. “Tsk tsk. I’ll just wait over here.”
“Daisy?” The guy in the bad outfit stands up, and I freeze. Max Diaz is wrestling with a Lucite container of lemons and ice. He stops what he’s doing and wipes his hands on a towel. Oh my goodness, I think I’m speaking Spanish in my head.
“Muy guapo. Caliente.” I fan my face. “He makes that ridiculous outfit look good.”
“Thanks,” he says. His gorgeous olive skin turns crimson. So apparently I did say that out loud.
“You took French,” Claire says to me.
“I speak French too. I lived in the French section of Buenos Aires.” He stares at Claire in her matching obnoxious uniform. “You’re who I’m training today?”
“Well, actually, I came to tell you—”
“She’s here reporting for duty, Max.” I give him a salute.
“You need a job?” he asks Claire, who clearly, with her salon highlights and professional manicure, does not look the part of corn-dog queen.
“Yeah, I hired on with a Mexican manager yesterday. Juan somebody. He said to be here at ten.”
“That was my father,” Max says. “We’re from Argentina.”
Claire looks at me, and I can’t help but laugh.
“It’s in South America,” I tell her and look back at Max. “She’s not racist, just geographically challenged. We were friends with Angie Chen for three years before Claire realized Chinese wasn’t a language.” Max blinks. “Usually, it’s Mandarin or Cantonese,” I explain to Max, as I once did to Claire.
“Isn’t South America where Mexico is?” Claire asks, as though (1) Max can’t hear her, or (2) I might have a useless fact mixed up. Both of which are impossible.
“Mexico is Central America,” Max says. “Close.” He grins. “Well, not really. Mexico’s in the Northern Hemisphere, we’re in the Southern. Some of my country is close to Antarctica.”
“What is with you people and hemispheres? Who talks like that? I know Antarctica. Where the big penguins are!” Claire offers. “I saw Penguins.” She turns to me. “Daisy, did you hear that? He knows his hemispheres too. I cannot believe I have said that word twice in a day. Do you see what you’re doing to the good people of Silicon Valley?”
“You’re from Buenos Aires?” I’m staying pressed against the counter so that Max won’t notice I’m dressed like a street person in my jammies.
“Recoleta. We lived right by the famous cemetery where Eva Peron is
buried. It’s the French section of town—that’s why I speak French.”
“Don’t cry for me, Argentina!” Claire says. “My parents made me sit through that play in London. It wasn’t my favorite.”
“You saw a play in London,” I mumble. “Let me do the complaining here.”
Claire starts speaking loudly. “So what kind of houses do you have there? Tin roofs? Grass huts? Was it weird to get running water?”
The back of his jaw twitches on both sides. “We have French-inspired buildings. Buenos Aires is called the Paris of South America. About thirteen million people in the city and surrounding areas. Makes San Jose look like a paltry suburb.”
“Oh, so, like, you have indoor plumbing.”
“Yes, Claire. I think we might even be able to impress you there.”
I like how he’s not offended by Claire’s blatant ignorance. He’s very gentle with her, and his kindness endears me to him. The fact that he speaks three languages and knows what hemisphere he lives in doesn’t hurt either. Nor does the fact that he’s talking to me, plain and simple.
He steps down off the platform and comes beside me. He takes a look at my pink and green pajamas, smiles slightly, then grabs my waist and hand. “We are famous for the tango.” He starts to dance me around the food court. “Which is not only a dance but a style of music too. Did you hear that, Claire? A style of music,” he shouts over my shoulder. “We have ice cream delivery bikes to offer you a limon when you’re parched.”
I’m so lost in the movement, I forget what I’m wearing until I see Max focus on my legs. “I—uh—”
“Nice pants.” His eyes twinkle, and right then I think I’m in love because Max seems to find it charming that I’m in sleepwear. Chase who?
Claire sticks her head between us, and Max pulls away. “So, Max, Daisy and I were talking about the party we’re going to give. Maybe right after Halloween or so. Kind of an All Saints’ Day party. Do you know any good bands that we might get to play?”
“Bands?” I never said I’d go along with this.
“Bands?” Max asks.
I pull him away by the arm. “Never mind. We don’t need any bands.” I glare at Claire, then turn back to Max. “So if Buenos Aires is so fabulous, why come here?” I don’t make mention of the bad hot-dog suit. I figure he must have his reasons, and who am I to judge?
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