“Phone call for Theo,” called Mrs. Kim from the other room.
Mimi made a noise of relief to watch him go. “It’s so cheesy how my brother talks to you. He takes total advantage. And you just giggle and let him.”
“I don’t think he said anything cheesy,” I said. “Also, I don’t giggle.”
“Kind of though, you do,” said Gage.
“It’s not as much what he says, it’s how he says it.” Mimi looked too prickly for me to disagree. “Anyway, I don’t know why he bothers flirting with you. Violetta is so beautiful and she’s a double major, English lit and biology, and she can speak four languages.”
“That’s so sickening, her so gorgeous and him a model,” said Gage.
“Theo’s not a real model!” Mimi laughed. “And Violetta isn’t a model, either. I’m just saying she’s beautiful based on pictures I saw, and the fact that Theo is shallow.”
“Still, they must be the most disgustingly model-y couple on campus,” said Gage with a sniff.
I deftly pronged a dumpling from the bamboo steamer. In the other room, I could hear the rumble of Theo’s voice. I wondered what he and Violetta were talking about, if their conversations were anything like Matt’s and mine. I imagined Violetta sitting on her bed and staring at her phone, getting up her nerve to punch the Kims’ phone number—the first number I had ever memorized, after my own family’s. Crossing her fingers that it’d be Theo picking up, so she wouldn’t have to ask Mimi or one of his parents to put him on the line.
Later Theo went out with friends and the rest of us crashed out in the TV room. Mrs. Kim brought in dessert served on her blooming-cabbage-roses tea set, with a plate of lemon pound cake and Fudge Stripes cookies. The brown sofa that took up a full quarter of the room nestled us all in close. I hadn’t been to Mimi’s in a long time, and I loved the homey feeling of being tucked in with the familiar furniture and photographs. I could feel this year and memories of years before all rolled up like a soft hug.
The only thing on TV was Perfect Strangers, which was awful but I always suspected Gage was sort of in love with Balki, since I watched this show only when she was around. Mimi dozed off in the armchair, another tradition—she swore turkey put her to sleep. Sitting together, legs up on the coffee table, Gage and I hooked our feet, something she hadn’t done since we were kids.
“I was thinking you’d blow off Leftovers Friday,” she said.
“Me? No way.”
“You’ve gotten so cool.”
“Shut up.”
Larry and Balki were flailing around in a muddy riverbed—a high-budget episode for holiday viewers. Gage was trying to act like she thought the comedy was stupid, but I could tell by her attention that she found it hilarious, and it made me feel sort of protective of her. Back in fourth grade, she’d been the same way about a visiting puppet show—quietly enthralled while pretending to scoff at it with the rest of us.
She waited until the commercial to ask me, “So by the way, my parents are renting again at Mad River during that week between Christmas and New Year’s. Any interest?”
“Ha,” I snorted. “I don’t even know how to ski. I’d have two left feet.”
“If you don’t want to, just say. I only mentioned it because last year, you’d said you might want to go. I didn’t realize you weren’t serious.” Her voice sharpened.
I stared at Gage. A blush was spreading across her cheeks. She thought I was rejecting her. “I don’t have ski stuff, Gagey. I couldn’t pay for anything. I’d be leaning on you way too hard.” The truth was awkward, but I didn’t want her to think anything worse.
“I know,” said Gage quietly. “But meals and everything are paid for. I can give you lessons myself, and I’ve got tons of ski stuff to lend you. As for my parents, I’ve already cleared it with them. They’re psyched.”
“I mean, do you really want me?” I asked. “Do you really want to take a nonskiing person skiing for a week? I’d be on the bunny slopes the whole time.”
“There’s a scene up there.” Gage’s voice softened. “And I’m hopeless when it comes to meeting new people. But last New Year’s Eve, I was sort of unprepared for it, and I ended up playing Parcheesi and drinking sparkling cider with Helena after my parents went to bed, while everyone else was partying together. If I had a friend up with me, it’d be different. I’m getting too old to hide . . . and you’re better at being social.”
“If you don’t mind me borrowing your stuff and being on the kiddie slope, I think we’d have a good time.”
“Yeah, I think so, too.” Balki was back on, hamming it up. We watched for a while. Gage never said more than she meant, and she’d said a lot. So I was surprised at the next ad break when she turned to me again. “I do perm my hair,” she confessed softly, her eyes darting to Mimi to make sure she was sound asleep.
“Oh, yeah?”
“It never works out the exact way I want. I think I’m doing it wrong, maybe. And I was thinking, if you didn’t mind, you could give me some help, next time? Since your hair is a home job. I’m not saying like a full makeover.”
“Sure. Count on me. It’ll be fun.”
“Yeah, no big deal if you can’t.”
“I totally can help.”
“Only if you want to. It’s not even anything I care about, it’s nothing, only if you want to.”
I kept my eyes on the screen; Gage’s vulnerability was like a force field to keep me from looking at her. “Yeah, but I totally want to. No big deal at all.”
twenty-eight
“You need to know something.”
I looked up from where I was rummaging around at the bottom of my locker, scavenging for stray lunch tickets. I’d been trying to catch up with this morning ever since I slept through my alarm, dressing in a rush to dash outside, unbreakfasted, on Mom’s third honk. Mom liked an early start on any back-from-break Monday, but now all I wanted was a bagel and a burnt-roast cup of cafeteria coffee.
But without any cash or lunch tickets, I had no way to pay for either.
Lordy, I was so broke all the time.
And now Claire’s voice sank my heart to the floor of my stomach. Here it was. She was finally coming after me about Jay’s letters.
“What is it?” I stood. My feet felt stuck as I let the spasm of panic pass through my body. I wanted to run.
“Last night, right when I got back from Florida, I called Dave. That band I’d been wanting to hear, the Painted Bandits, was playing over at Wallbanger’s, down on Second Street. I drove into the city and we met up. He’d brought along Matt.”
“Oh.” When I hadn’t heard from Matt last night, I’d gone to bed with an ear tuned for a call that never came. At the time, I hadn’t thought much of it.
“We all hung out together. It was spontaneous. But then I felt bad, because it was like we went out without you included. But it wasn’t behind your back.”
“Right,” I said. “But why didn’t Matt call me?” I spoke my insecurity out loud and instantly wished I hadn’t.
Claire looked defensive. “Don’t ask me. He didn’t say anything about that to me. We were out late. After Wallbanger’s, we found this dive club on Quince Street.”
“So I guess you really hit it off with Dave.”
She paused. “I guess so.”
Her story sounded flimsy, but what was there to say? “Thanks for telling me.”
“Sure. It was really no big deal.” She smiled. “Your hair’s freaking awesome.”
Claire never gave fake compliments. “Thanks. My parents are not in agreement.”
“Then they wouldn’t be parents, right?”
I smiled in answer, but I felt confused as I watched Claire glide on down the hall. What exactly had just happened here?
That afternoon at Ludington, Matt dropped by with a bunch of red flowers in his hand.<
br />
“Carnations,” he said. “My mom said they’re the apology flower. Stripes, you made your hair stripy! Bleached it? I like.”
“Thanks.” I took the flowers and ran my fingers through my hair. “Apology for what? For going out last night?”
“Yeah, I was hanging out with Dave when Claire called, and it was one of those plans that seems good at the time—and then after Wallbanger’s, we went—”
“To a bar on Quince Street, I heard.”
“Right.” He cleared his throat. “It was too late to phone you.”
“It’s fine.” Everyone had so much explaining for me.
“You’re usually deep into homework on Sundays. Not like the rest of us slackers.”
“You’re not a slacker. You already admitted once that your name has been known to show up on the honor roll.” But my mind couldn’t leave it alone, this image of Dave and Claire and Matt at the concert, then the bar, triplets cut from the same long, lean cloth, looking like college kids, sharing those private, edgy stories that had kept them all up that night in Philadelphia. Did the guys jostle for Claire’s attention? Was there some kind of deeper connection among the three of them that could happen only when I was out of the picture?
“Hey, can you promise me something?” I had to ask it, forcing the gear switch that raised Matt’s eyebrows. “If you’re in love with Claire Reynolds, will you please just come clean and tell me?”
Matt drew back from me sharply, unsettled. “Is that what you think?”
“I don’t know what to think. All this talking about last night, and me not there. You and Claire both have made a thing about it. As if something happened. Which makes me think—was it so innocent?” My casual shrug couldn’t compensate for the catch in my voice.
He leaned in, his fingertips anchoring him to the desk as his eyes made the promise to mine. “I’m not in love with Claire Reynolds. Not now, or ever.”
There was a heartbeat in that next moment when I could feel my hope lifting for a next, possible confession—I’m not in love with Claire because I’m falling in love with you, Stripes. But Matt didn’t speak those words.
twenty-nine
The Mastercard envelope was waiting for me later that evening, when I got home from my shift. Mom had left it on the kitchen table. My heart was pounding as I ripped it open.
$374.03.
I’d barely been able to pay my credit card bill last month, and this month was worse by double. My two library checks, totaling just over one hundred and fifty dollars, wouldn’t even begin to cover my latest run-up of charges.
I sat. The new pair of Doc Martens made up a full one-third of the statement costs. My black Benetton jeans, Claire’s and my way-too-expensive Philadelphia tavern dinner, that time I’d picked up Matt’s and my Lupini’s milk shakes—nothing was forgotten, but the bill was even higher than my mental tab, because I’d also spent on so many little, forgettable items: a pair of dance-uniform tights and a pot of pink glitter gloss at the drugstore, the twelve-dollar charge for an Argyll ’89ers senior class mug, a Philadelphia Flyers sweatshirt for Peter’s birthday.
I’d taken out more ATM money than usual this month, too, and I also had to tally for the cleared thirty-six-dollar check to Strickland for the yearbook. Lately I’d wanted so many things, and I’d spent so recklessly to get them. How would I possibly pay this down?
There was one quick, partial solution. Skating past my parents, who were watching Dan Rather in the living room, I went upstairs and called Mrs. Binswanger.
“More hours?” she sniffed, interested. “I have been wanting to stop my Wednesdays. But I thought fifteen hours a week was as much as your mother said you could work.”
“She’ll see it my way, I promise.”
If I took Mrs. Binswanger’s Wednesdays, I’d clock in four more hours a week. And if I went cold turkey on my spending, I could use the next three months to pay off the card in installments.
When I came downstairs to help with dinner and tell Mom my plan, she was predictably displeased. “Lizzy, we let you keep Ludington because you can do some studying there, and because more than one hundred and fifty dollars a month equals a pretty good allowance, wouldn’t you say? Why do you need more spending money than that?”
“Okay, first of all, it’s a paycheck. I wish you’d stop saying allowance, like this is something you and Dad are providing. Second, I can handle the extra hours. Third, I need to pay down some new charges on my credit card.”
Mom snapped to a different kind of attention.
“What kinds of charges?”
“It’s been expensive—as you know—to be a senior at a school like Argyll.”
She winced. Day to day, Mom and I both saw how typical Argyll-family lifestyles differed from our own budget-pinching ways. Her voice softened as she reached out a hand. “Do you mind if I take a look at the statement?”
I pulled it from where I’d tucked it into a notebook. Mom stared at the page for a long time, her face furrowed in her looking-at-bills expression I knew all too well.
“Well, those boots, really Lizzy, you could have waited for Christmas, Dad and I would have been happy to get them. The designer jeans also seem like a splurge? But what I really don’t understand is your spending fifty-six dollars for dinner in Philadelphia.”
“It was me plus Claire. Her card was declined.”
“Jane Sleighmaker’s niece, Claire, from the cat mansion?” Mom looked up.
I nodded.
“You’re kidding me. She could easily pay this. Is thirty dollars, her half of dinner, all she owes you?”
I flinched at the idea of “owe,” but if I added last month’s sushi and the cover for Liz’s party, and all those train and taxi costs around and from Philadelphia, Claire’s tab with me was over sixty dollars. “A little more.”
“How much more?”
“Maybe double.”
“Okay, so how about you end this nonsense right now, of picking up costs for a Sleighmaker.” Mom looked exasperatedly relieved, as if she’d solved the whole dilemma. “Jane Sleighmaker has millions. The business office just did some research on that family, and I am not exaggerating. We’re going to approach her for our capital funds campaign.”
“You don’t get it, Claire’s aunt is a total tightwad. There’s no way I can—”
“You don’t get it, Lizzy. Your carelessness has put you in the red for almost four hundred dollars. You’ll be charged twelve percent interest on whatever it is you can’t pay this month. This is how people sink into perpetual debt, and the timing couldn’t be worse. Do you think that the student loans you’ll need to take out for Princeton are chump change?”
“Listen, I can handle this, okay?” I was shaking my head back and forth, wishing Mom would stop, but suddenly she grabbed both of my forearms in a lock.
“No,” she said. “You listen. I’ll let you take the extra shift at Ludington, but you’ve got to ask Claire Reynolds for your sixty dollars back.”
“Mom, you’re not listening to me. There is no way.”
“Find a way.”
“Ludington isn’t so bad. With four more hours each week, I can earn about fifty extra a month, and if I’m careful, I’ll have it all paid back by the end of January.”
“There’s a difference between what you could do and what you should do. It’s not a lot of money on Claire’s end. Not compared with all the work you’ll need to do. Explain to her that you lost control of your spending. It happens. It’s not the end of the world.” Mom cupped my face in her hands, imploringly. “Claire seems like a good girl. Would you have asked Mimi or Gage to pay a debt?”
I nodded. Of course I could have gotten Mimi and Gage to pay me back.
But they also knew my situation, so they never would have borrowed.
“If Claire’s a real friend, she’ll want to get y
ou out of your predicament. Right?”
“I don’t know.” It probably wasn’t crazy, what Mom was asking me. But just imagining that talk with Claire, I was already coming undone.
thirty
“You’re blowing this out of whack.” Matt switched lanes to get off at his exit. “Claire’s not hurting for cash. She’ll repay you, easy.” Even though we’d talked about it on the phone late last night, I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
“It feels awkward to ask.”
“It’s worse if you don’t. Last year, my friend Jake went to his girlfriend’s prom and he wanted to wear my formal stuff, including my tie and cummerbund. I was cool to lend it all to him—but he kept forgetting to bring it back for months, till I called him out in front of all the guys.”
“I could never do that.”
“Yeah you could if it’s the only way to get your stuff back.”
“Right, but . . .” Matt didn’t understand that it was different with girls. Or maybe it was different with new friendships. Or maybe it was just different with Claire.
The Ashleys lived in an important-looking brick house that Gage and I had driven past last year, on my dare, right when she’d just gotten her license and we had nowhere to go. It was quietly thrilling to walk through its red-painted front door now, though I halfway wished that Gage were with me, just for the laugh.
Inside, I felt the hush of prim decisions, from the tick of the grandfather clock to the sheen of the silvery silk wallpaper. On my side, Matt had gone quiet.
“So pretty,” I whispered.
“You’ve been here before, right? Downstairs.”
“Nope, never.”
“My party, remember?” He gave me a quick look. “You told me . . .”
My cheeks got hot. “It looks different in the daylight.” But now it seemed stupid to lie to him. “Okay, I’m busted. I was too intimidated to go to Matt Ashley’s homecoming party. I lied to impress you.”
He burst out laughing. “You goofball.”
Tell Me No Lies Page 14