by Paula Stokes
“You don’t have to.” Leo glances around furtively and lowers his voice. “I’ve been talking to this new girl, actually. I might not have had the courage to if you hadn’t given me that pep talk the night of the play.”
My eyes light up. “Awesome. Did you ask her out?”
He holds up his hands. “No, I’m not ready for all that yet. But getting to know her is making things hurt less. Not like she’s replacing Riley or anything, but just the idea that there’s more than one person out there for each of us.”
I nod. It’s really similar to what Bee said. Maybe Jason hasn’t called because it’s not meant to be. I should ask my mom to do one of her tea-leaf readings about it. Not yet though. It’s my turn for a fake date. Maybe the second one will turn out better than the first. I’m not ready to accept that things are over.
“Well, let me know if you change your mind.” I glance over at Bianca. Coach Halstead has made his way up to the register, and his wife has found them a table near the front window. Bee appears to be explaining some of the menu choices while Ebony waits patiently to take his order. “I’m going to go say hi to them.”
Leo gives me a little wave and then goes back to his book. I bound over to the register. “Hey, Coach,” I say. “Welcome to the coolest coffee shop in town.”
Ebony bites on her tongue ring as she rolls her eyes. “No thanks to you,” she mutters under her breath.
As usual, I ignore her.
“Mitchell.” Coach smiles. “Staying in shape this summer?”
“You know it.” I sling an arm around Bianca’s shoulders. “We just got done running in fact.”
Coach orders two café lattes and a Death-by-Chocolate-Moose brownie. Ebony takes his credit card and swipes it. “Well, keep it up and don’t lose focus,” he says as we move down the line to the end of the counter. “I’ve had a few colleges inquiring about both you and Kendall Chase.” He flashes Bianca an apologetic look. “There’s nothing that says they might not notice you too,” he adds kindly.
“No problem,” she says. “I’m going for a nerdier academic scholarship. Soccer is just a hobby for me.”
“What kind of colleges?” I ask, my curiosity piqued. I shift my weight from one foot to the other.
“Mostly local ones, so far,” he says. “But that could change. I expect to see you on a select team for the fall, right?”
“I should be playing for the Archers again,” I say.
“Good,” Coach says. “They’re a solid organization.”
Ebony sets a brownie and two steaming eco-mugs on the counter. “Maybe one of you can help him carry those?” she suggests.
“Got it,” I say.
Coach grabs the plate with the brownie and one of the lattes and I grab the other one. We head over to the table where his wife is browsing through the latest issue of the Riverfront Times. She looks up with a smile as I set the cup gently on the table.
“Erin, you remember Lainey Mitchell, right?” Coach says. “She’s one of my star forwards.”
“Of course,” his wife says. “Winning goal at state, right?”
I smile so wide that my face actually hurts. It is so awesome to be reminded of that moment right about now. “Nice to see you again,” I say. “Let me know if you guys need anything.”
“Will do,” Coach says. He calls after me as I head back to Bianca and Leo, “I meant what I said, Mitchell. Don’t lose focus. Your whole future could be riding on it.”
Chapter 23
“HE WINS HIS BATTLES BY MAKING NO MISTAKES.”
—SUN TZU, The Art of War
Coach Halstead’s words weigh heavy in my brain for the rest of the afternoon. If it weren’t for the breakup with Jason, I’d be playing competitive soccer this summer. Sure, just a recreational league, but better practice than one-on-one with Bianca. Maybe if we get back together, Jason will let me sub in for the remaining games.
Keeping the Alex pictures under wraps is killing me, but I know Leo is right. Sooner or later, an opportunity will present itself. When it does, I’ll seize it and fall like a thunderbolt. In the meantime, I’m going on another fake date with Micah, to Beat, Hazelton’s only teen dance club.
I peek my head into the study. My mom is tapping away on her laptop. Today, she’s got her hair done up into two reddish-brown braids that are graying at the roots.
“Going out, Mom,” I say.
She looks up from the screen. Her eyes trace the hemline of my T-shirt dress. “With whom, may I ask?”
“His name is Micah. I know him from work.”
My mom smiles. “Ah, that nice mohawked boy your father is afraid of.”
I laugh. “Yeah. There’s nothing to be scared of, though. I promise.”
“Is he the one who took you to the play?”
“No, that was a different guy.”
“Different,” she murmurs. “Lots of changes this summer. I can barely keep up with who you are anymore.”
Me neither, Mom. Me neither.
“I know it can be tough,” my mom continues, “splitting with your first love. I remember when the first boy I was intimate with broke up with me—”
Oh. No. No, please. “Wow, look at the time,” I say brightly. I ram my fingers in my ears and head for the door but she follows me into the living room. And out the front door.
“I had no idea things could be so much better. I thought he was the only one in the world. But then when your father and I got together, things felt completely different—”
Please God, kill me dead. “Lalalalalalalala,” I sing, heading across the dewy front lawn as fast as my strappy sandals will carry me. The last thing I want to hear about is my mom and dad’s sex life.
Mom pauses at the end of the sidewalk. “Anyway, I’m not naive. Just be sure you continue to be safe, okay?”
I stop so quickly I almost pitch forward and land facedown on the driveway. “Wait, what do you mean continue to be safe? Are you saying you think Jason and I . . .” I can’t say it. I cannot say the words “had sex” in front of my mother.
“Lainey. I have a PhD.” My mom winks. “You have to be smart to get one of those.”
“But if you knew, why haven’t you freaked out?”
“The smart thing again,” she says. “And I might have found your stash of birth control pills when I was putting away your laundry. You do understand those don’t protect against—”
“Yeah. I got it, Mom.” Crap. I knew my underwear drawer wasn’t a good enough hiding place. Kendall and I went together to a local clinic to get pills at the beginning of tenth grade. I never told my mom because it never occurred to me she’d be okay with me sleeping with Jason.
“I’m not okay with it,” she says, reading my mind. “I’d prefer you wait until you graduate . . . from college. But you’re an adult now, and I know there’s nothing I can do that will change your mind. Just be smart, and safe, and know that your mother is here if you want advice from a boring old lady.” She clears her throat. “With a PhD.”
I surprise both of us by backtracking up the driveway to give her a quick hug. “Don’t worry, Mom. Jason is the only guy I’ve ever, you know, and I don’t think that’ll be happening anymore. Micah—we’re not. Trust me.”
My mom exhales a big breath of air. “Oh, good. I’ll call the nunnery and see if they’ll still take you.”
“Funny.” I tug on one of her braids. “By the way, I don’t think senior citizens are supposed to be rocking pigtails.”
Mom slaps my hand away. “Senior citizen? I’m forty-six.”
“Fine. Elderly people,” I say with a gleam in my eye.
My mom smiles. “One day you’ll be old and gray too,” she promises.
I shudder as I point my keychain at the Civic and unlock the door. “No way. They’re going to perfect that serum that keeps people young before I get old.”
“You and your brother are the serum that keeps me young.” She reaches out to brush my hair back from my face. “It’s g
ood to see you smiling again.”
After talking to Bianca, I realize I may have gotten a little too flirty with Micah at The Devil’s Doorstep. My plan is to pull back on this date so I don’t give him the wrong idea. No more breaking the rules.
He’s home alone when I arrive to pick him up. “So where are you taking me?” he asks.
I stand in the living room with him, wondering where Trinity is tonight. “Oh, nowhere special. Just a little place called Beat.”
Micah scrunches up his face like he smells something rancid. “This is what I get for being nice,” he says. “I hate dance clubs. The music is always complete crap. Can I refuse?”
“Of course you can refuse.” I give him my best doe-eyed look. “But I suffered through a whole night of what you call music.”
He’s not buying it. “You ended up liking what I call music,” he says. “Pretty sure I know I don’t like to dance.”
“Don’t like it? Or don’t know how?” I pause, biting back a laugh at the thought of Micah tearing up the dance floor to the newest hip-hop beats. “Look, you don’t have to dance with me. Just lean up against the wall and look bored.”
“Okay.” He nods at me. “Do I have to dress like a douche bag?”
“You can wear that,” I say charitably. He’s wearing a pair of jeans with both knees ripped out and a black Hannah in Handcuffs T-shirt that hugs his slender frame. His silver anarchy pendant lies flat against his chest and the barbell through his eyebrow reflects the overhead light. He does have sort of an edgy bad-boy thing going on with the mohawk and eyebrow piercing. Plus I have to be honest, I’m starting to like his hair. Every other guy I know will be working the same part-spiky, part–bed head, all-boy-band look.
“Is what’s-his-face going to be there?” Micah unearths a pen from a coffee table cluttered with magazines and scribbles his mom a note.
“I couldn’t exactly call him and ask,” I say. “But tonight is a full-moon party. Everyone who is anyone will be there.”
Beat is a square, flat building that somebody decided to build in the abandoned lower parking area of the Hazelton Mall. Micah mutters something about getting epilepsy as we pass through the front door and into the main room of the club. Streaks of colored neon slash across a field of smoke so thick I can barely make out the clusters of gyrating bodies. On the big screen, a popular hip-hop music video is playing, but somehow the club has jacked up the color scheme so the singer’s skin is purple and the sky is green.
We stand right inside the door, watching the disembodied forms of the dancers move rhythmically in the haze. Some of them are dressed up like werewolves. A handful of Hazelton High recent grads push in behind us. The girls giggle as the guys in the group all burst into spontaneous howling. The DJ whistles and flashes a giant full-moon symbol on the ceiling of the club.
“You have got to be kidding me,” Micah mutters.
We move out of the doorway, against the near wall. It’s cinder-block gray, graffitied with glow-in-the-dark spray paint. The whole club is just a wide-open square with a few card tables in one corner and a bar where you can buy sodas and packaged snacks. The far side of the room has a door that leads out onto a patio. There are a lot of people going in and out, I guess to check out the full moon. Micah waves a hand in front of his face as the smoke machine makes a belching noise and a thick ribbon of haze billows out.
He leans close to me. “You didn’t say anything about getting cancer,” he yells over the pulsing music. “Pretty sure that smoke is toxic.”
“Gee, that’d be a real convincing argument if you didn’t spend half of every shift outside the back door puffing on cigarettes.”
I expect a snappy retort but to my surprise he smiles, like I’ve one-upped him and he knows it. I lead him through the smoke and we sit across from each other at one of the card tables.
“Fancy.” He wobbles back and forth in his chair to show me the legs are uneven.
“Yeah. They spend all their money on the lights and smoke.”
“They definitely don’t spend it on the sound system,” he says as the recording cuts out and a burst of static pulses through the speakers.
I search the lingering fog and quickly spot Jason in his standard knee-length shorts and backward hat. He’s one of the only boys actually dancing. Alex is standing a couple feet from him, wearing a strapless red dress that’s so low cut she’ll probably flash nipple if she leans over. I suddenly feel completely frumpy in my T-shirt dress.
“Did you find him?” Micah asks. He squints.
“Yeah. And his new girlfriend.” I angle my head in their direction. “The one who’s about ready to fall out of her dress.”
“She looks all right, but I’m not really into girls with huge boobs.” Micah furrows his brow in concentration as if he’s giving the matter a great deal of thought.
“That’s crass,” I say. “But sweet in a messed-up kind of way.”
“Sorry. It slipped out.” He fiddles with his barbed-wire bracelet. “So what’s her deal? Does she go to school with us?”
I tell him about Alex being nineteen, and then about how Leo took pictures of her with some other guy. “What do you think I should do with them?” I ask.
“Not sure how you can get them to him without looking like a crazy stalker chick,” Micah says.
“You think I’m a crazy stalker chick?”
“You’re using an ancient war manual to try and win back your boyfriend. I think you’re a girl who will do whatever it takes to get what she wants,” he says. “Hey, at least you’re committed.”
I turn back to Jason and Alex. The music has speeded up. Alex and her breasts are bouncing up and down and a wardrobe malfunction appears imminent. Maybe it’s just me, but after you reach a certain degree of ginormousness, strapless anything seems like a bad idea. “We’ve got to get closer to them or they’re not going to see us. Dance with me for one song.” I give Micah my best pleading face.
He points to his ear. “Do they play anything here that doesn’t completely suck? I can’t dance to this shit, Lainey. I don’t even know any of these songs.”
Right at that moment, the DJ hollers something about taking it down a notch. A popular slow song starts to play. It’s the kind of song that you can hear playing on six different radio stations simultaneously. Micah has to know it. And every guy can slow dance, right? I watch for a second to see if Alex and Jason are going to keep dancing. They do.
“Come on,” I beg. “It’s perfect. Just stand next to me and move back and forth.”
Micah groans, but allows me to lead him out onto the dance floor. We stay a few feet away from Jay and Alex. I don’t want it to be too obvious. For a second we stand there in the smoke, unsure of how to join ourselves together. Our hands bump as we reach for each other. His fingers are warm. Eventually both his hands end up on my waist, and mine around his neck.
I keep a small slice of space between our stomachs and chests, but even still there’s no way to really assume this position without being very close. I end up pressing my cheek to his temple, mostly so I don’t have to look at him. I angle my nose away so I’m not exhaling directly into his ear.
“Your hair smells good,” he says.
Random. He must feel as awkward as I do.
I watch Jason and Alex over Micah’s shoulder. There’s no awkwardness there. If they dance any closer, Alex is going to need a pregnancy test.
“Relax already,” Micah says. “Stop staring at them.”
“How do you know—”
“I can tell. Your whole body is stiff. It’s like I’m dancing with the Tin Man.”
“Oh, so now you’re a dancing expert?” I murmur, leaning back slightly.
Micah pulls me in close again. “I didn’t say I couldn’t dance. I said I don’t like to.”
Jason leans down and starts kissing the side of Alex’s neck. Her hands slide under the back of his T-shirt. This time even I can feel my muscles turn to metal.
“T
in Man,” Micah whispers.
I resist the urge to punch him in the gut. He rotates us so I can’t see Alex and Jason anymore. I close my eyes and try to feel the music as it moves through me. Gradually the stiffness fades away and we move closer together. Micah is so warm. I try to relax my whole body, one muscle group at a time. I pretend his arms are the only thing keeping me from collapsing to the floor. My fingertips accidentally brush against the tail of his mohawk. It’s soft, yet spiky. I reach up and run my other hand through the full length of his strip of hair, my fingernails gently grazing his scalp.
Micah’s steel-toed boot comes down hard on my bare toes. I yelp and stumble backward, losing my hold on Micah and bumping into someone else. I’m afraid to even look behind me, but I do.
I hit Jason. It figures. He turns around, probably to cuss out whatever klutzy bastard slammed into him, but his mouth snaps shut in surprise when he sees it’s me.
“Hey, Lainey,” he says, his eyes flicking back and forth between me and Micah. “What’s going on?”
Chapter 24
“THUS ONE WHO IS SKILLFUL AT KEEPING THE ENEMY ON THE MOVE MAINTAINS DECEITFUL APPEARANCES, ACCORDING TO WHICH THE ENEMY WILL ACT.”
—SUN TZU, The Art of War
I stand there, speechless, thankful at least that the flashing lights and smoke are probably obscuring my blush.
“My fault,” Micah says. “I told her I sucked at dancing, but you know women. They don’t take no for an answer.” He holds out his hand. “I’m Micah.”
“Jay.” Jason gives Micah his trademark bone-crushing handshake.
I hadn’t exactly planned for the two of them to formally meet, and it is every bit as weird as you might imagine. Both of them turn to look at me.
“Right,” I fumble. “This is, um, Micah.” Smooth.
“Yeah, we’ve covered that,” Jason says, his voice going flat. He lifts his baseball cap off his head and runs a hand through his thick, blond hair, replacing the cap at a slightly skewed angle. Very suburban gangsta.