Autumn Falls (4 page)

Stupid lump. Stupid sky cam. Stupid Erick.

I feel like walking right back out of this place, but it’s not in my DNA to do something like that. I have Good Girl on autopilot. So I stay in school. I keep my head down and my mouth shut, and reach up every two seconds to tug on my bangs and make sure they cover my forehead deformity.

In other words, I look like a mental patient.

The one time I do open my mouth, it’s to practice
r
trills in French, and I end up trilling a piece of gum out of my mouth and onto my neighbor’s desk.

Lunch offers a welcome relief. At least I expect that to suck. After I finally drop my stuff in my locker, I walk through “the Tube,” the long cafeteria building where everyone buys their food. I take my time snagging the least toxic-looking options. Eventually, though, I have to come out to the big grassy courtyard and the giant sea of
strangers gathered in well-established groups at picnic tables or spots on the lawn.

Better to sit alone than stand around looking lost. I head for an empty spot on the grass, off to the side where I won’t be noticed. It’s Jenna’s lunch period back in Stillwater too. Maybe she’ll have her phone on.

“Autumn!
Autumn!
”

I wheel around and see J.J. waving to me, a big smile on his face.

He’s with two other people: a scrawny, sandy-blond guy bent over his cell phone, and a short, curvy girl in a clingy tangerine-colored dress. She’s sprawled sideways on the lawn, propped up on one elbow.

“Hey, J.J.”

“Hey. Autumn, this is Jack Rivers and Amalita Leibowitz, alternatively known as Vicar’s Jerk and Await A Zombie Lilt. In keeping with your theory, Amalita’s Thing is cosmetics, while Jack’s is comic books. In other words, Ames is dedicated to inspiring attraction between men and women, while Jack is dedicated to poisoning it.”

“Dude, you’re crazy,” Jack retorts. “Girls love superheroes.”

“Girls love guys who play superheroes in movies,” Amalita counters, “not pasty boys who read about them.”

“Watch with the pasty,” J.J. says. “I prefer vampire chic.”

Jack looks up at me for the first time. “Oh, hey—you spit gum on Carrie Amernick’s desk in French class. Well done. She’s evil.”

“Not every girl who rejects you is evil,” Amalita says. Then she turns to me and adds, “
Esta como una cabra
because she wouldn’t go out with him but she went out with J.J.”

“You speak Spanish?” I ask.

“Fine, so she’s not evil,” Jack says. “She just has crap taste.”

“
Or
she likes talking about things other than villainous plans to take over Megalopolis,” J.J. says.

“
Metropolis
, dude.” Jack turns to me, but gestures to J.J. “He’s a—”

“Yeah?” J.J. cuts him off. “Well, you’re a—”

Amalita holds up a hand to ward them off and turns back to me.
“Sí. Y tu?”

“Solo un poco,”
I say. “I’m half Cuban.”

“Me too!” Amalita says. “I’m a PuertoMecuadorbano Jew. My mom’s side is
Puerto
Rican,
Mex
ican, E
cuador
ian, and Cu
bano
 … and my dad won’t mix milk and meat.”

“With me, it’s my dad,” I say. “He’s—”

Was
. He
was
. I blink back tears and hope they don’t notice.

“Give me your face,” Amalita says.

That’s a bad idea. All she’ll do is give me crap about my forehead and I swear I can’t handle any more of it.

I also can’t handle fighting back right this second, and there’s no room in her eyes for a no. I lean forward, and Amalita’s earrings and all her bracelets jangle as she sits up and takes my chin in her hands.

“Here’s what I’d say,” she offers after several long minutes. “You need to stay natural. Swap the lipstick for gloss. Peachy. Kill the eye shadow. Brown liner. Smudge it on top. On the bottom you need powder, the tiniest bit. Right now it’s running down your face. Just a little, don’t freak out, but it won’t do that with the powder. Tiny bit of bronzer right here, on the apples of your cheeks. I see you wearing more, I smack you and take it away. We’ll go to the mall after school and get everything you need, fifty dollars tops. Plus a little arnica gel. Put that on your head, ice it up tonight, the lump is gone by morning.”

This time I don’t even feel the tears coming. I just start to cry.

It’s ridiculous. All she did was give me a beauty regimen. Now she probably thinks I’m crazy.

I clench my fists and take a deep shaky breath. Two more and I’m back to normal. I blot my eyes with a napkin and laugh it off. “Sorry,” I say. “That was weird.”

Amalita, J.J., and Jack exchange a look, no doubt silently figuring out how to slip away and enjoy the rest of their lunch period without the insane new girl. Then Amalita puts her hand on mine.

“We’re sorry about your dad,” she says softly.

Tears well up again and I have to swallow hard to stop them.

“How did you know?”

“I Googled you,” Jack says sheepishly. “Beginning of lunch. J.J. wouldn’t keep his mouth shut about you, so—”

He stops talking when J.J. punches his arm. J.J.’s face is the color of his sunburned neck. “There was an article in the paper about your mom’s dog rescue,” he explains. “It mentioned what happened. I’m really sorry.”

I don’t know if he means he’s sorry about my dad or looking me up, but I guess it doesn’t matter. I know the article Jack found. Mom had worked hard to set up the Aventura branch of Catches Falls before we even left Maryland, and she’d been happy to do an interview about it. She just didn’t expect them to go with the tragic angle.

It actually feels good that someone here knows, but I can’t say that out loud without crying again so I just nod.

“Oh, hell …”

J.J. says it under his breath and at first I think it’s about me. Then I realize he’s looking at Amalita, who’s getting to her feet.

“Taylor!” she cries, waving her arm. “Tee! Hey, it’s me! Don’t you want to come hang out?”

“She’s going to get us killed,” Jack mutters.

I follow Amalita’s gaze and my stomach turns. She’s waving across the lawn to Miss Supermodel from first period. She walks in a pack with a tall blonde, the beast from class, and a couple of his equally beefy friends.

“What’s the matter, Tee?” Amalita cries. “Did you lose your hearing and vision along with your memory? I’m right here!”

People everywhere are staring. The blonde looks furious. She and the supermodel have some kind of a conversation,
but they’re too far away to tell what it is. The guys stand around with their arms folded, like angry bodyguards. Then the blonde shakes her head and walks our way.

“At least she’s alone,” Jack says.

“Ames, let it go,” J.J. advises. “No good will come of this.”

If Amalita hears him, she doesn’t show it. She waits for the girl with a huge smile on her face.

“What’s going on?” I ask J.J.

“That’s Taylor Danport,” he says, nodding at the blonde. “She and Ames were best friends until exactly three months ago, when Taylor ditched her to start hanging out with Reenzie.”

“Reenzie?”

“Marina Tresca. The brunette.”

“She’s evil,” Jack says.

“For real this time,” J.J. says. “It’s true.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Taylor hisses when she gets close to Amalita. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”

“I’m not embarrassed at all,” Amalita says way too loudly. “Maybe you’re the one who’s embarrassed because you know what you did.”

“Let it go,” Taylor says, dropping her voice even lower.

“Let
what
go?” Amalita asks innocently. “The fact that you’re a complete fake? That before this year your new
cuate
didn’t even care that you were alive?”

“Hey there!” Reenzie chirps. I hadn’t even noticed her
walking this way, but now she’s at Taylor’s side. She’s a couple inches shorter than Taylor, but it’s pretty obvious she’s the one in charge. She smiles down at J.J. and Jack. “Guys, I don’t know if you’re aware, but there’s still a ban on pit bulls in Miami-Dade County. I’d recommend you get yours to stop barking, or it’ll have to be destroyed.”

“Hi, Reenzie,” Amalita says. “How was your break? Did you talk to Kaitlin? You know, the friend you ditched before you stole away Tee? Or how about Evelyn, the one before her? It’s funny, you’d kind of have to be brain-dead to think you’d actually be loyal to anyone.”

“Ames. Do you seriously think this makes me want to hang out with you again?” Taylor doesn’t wait for an answer. She stalks off.

“Lighter fabrics,” Reenzie says to Amalita. “They won’t bunch and wrinkle so much in unsightly places.” Then she turns to me. “Glad to see you’ve found your people. Pro tip,” she adds, gesturing to my forehead, “you want to take care of that out here. Heat can make breakouts even worse.”

As Reenzie joins Taylor, Amalita calls after them, “Hey, Tee! Don’t forget I have pictures of you dressed as Super Grover! From
last year
!” She plops back on the grass and turns on the guys. “What is wrong with you? You didn’t stick up for me. What are you, afraid of her?”

“You started it,” Jack points out.

“And no, we’re not afraid of Marina Tresca,” J.J. adds. “But yes, if possible, we’d rather avoid her steroid mafia.”

“Ignore them,” Amalita tells me as I self-consciously touch my golf ball–sized lump. “Nothing she says matters.”

But I can tell by her defiant yet sad expression that it does.

“Hey … did you mean it about hitting the mall after school?” I ask. “ ’Cause the stuff you were talking about … it sounds really good.”

Amalita breaks out a smile. “Meet me at the front door right after eighth period,” she says, her eyes smiling. “You will love what happens when you put yourself in my hands.”

I kind of already do.

We’re coming out of the cosmetics store when we see them. This is after Amalita and I spent two hours sampling products and comparing brands. Amalita clearly knows her stuff. She gave a running commentary on each one’s quality, coverage, and staying power and explained which celebrities endorse the brand versus which ones actually use the product and look good. Kyler Leeds’s stylist, apparently, is a big fan of Amalita’s favorite hair-care line, and that little nugget of information leads us both into a major Kyler lovefest, during which we realize we’ll doubtlessly have to wrestle to the death one day to decide which of us gets to be with him.

Reenzie, Taylor, and the big guy are coming down the escalator. They don’t see us. Yet.

I grab Amalita’s arm. “We should go back in the store. I think I do want to get that under-eye moisturizer after all.”

“I’m not afraid of Reenzie,” she says, staring at them. “You shouldn’t be either.”

“I’m not. It’s just when I see a hornet’s nest, I don’t go out of my way to stomp on it.”

“You sound like Jack and J.J.” She gives me a stony-eyed look. “If you want to go stealth, you’re hanging out with the wrong girl. I put it out there.”

“I think that’s great, I just—”

“Autumn!”

Amalita and I both look up. It’s Sean. He must have been behind his giant friend. I haven’t seen him since first period, and I thought maybe I’d overblown in my head how gorgeous he was.

I hadn’t. And now he’s walking right up to me.

“I thought maybe we’d have another class together, but I guess not,” he says.

“No, guess not,” I echo stupidly.

This is weird. Last time I saw him he was smack in the middle of a crowd of people laughing at me, but now he’s saying he was looking for me in his classes?

I want to keep my bull detector on high alert, but it’s hard when I can’t think about anything beyond his eyes and his smile.

“Oh, did you guys officially meet?” he asks, as if just realizing he’s with three other people. “Taylor, Reenzie, Zach … this is Autumn.”

The three of them still hang back several feet. Zach
holds up a hand; Reenzie and Taylor give pained smiles, which I return. I don’t even want to look and see what Amalita’s doing next to me.

“Are you having dinner here?” Sean asks. “We were talking about heading to the food court. Maybe you could join us.”

“That’s a fantastic idea!” Amalita gushes. “Isn’t that a fantastic idea, Tay? We could eat at Blackbeard’s Burgers. Remember when you weren’t all about what everyone else thought and we’d always put on the pirate hats? Here, I think I have pictures.”

She pulls out her phone, and I’m convinced Taylor’s going to swat it out of her hands. Before she can, Reenzie pipes up.

“Ooooh, wish we could.” She sounds as sincere as a reality-show villain. “But I just got a text from my mom. She made food for us already. We’ve got to go.”

“Oh,” Sean says, then gives me a smile. “Sorry. See you tomorrow?”

“Sure!” I chirp, then inwardly swat myself for chirping. Still, when I watch him walk away, I’m rewarded by seeing him turn around to smile again. Twice.

Amalita laughs. “So much for stealth. You are on that girl’s list.”

I look at her. “What do you mean?”

“Did you not see Reenzie’s death glare? She’s going to make your life miserable.”

“Why?” I ask, feeling nervous. “What did I do?”