Complete Nothing (9 page)

I saw Claudia’s face again. My fingers curled tight on my helmet’s grill. But I had to do it, right? I couldn’t take her pushing me away anymore. I couldn’t take the pressure. I couldn’t live my life waiting for the inevitable day when
she
would dump
me
and head off into her perfect future. I’d taken control of the situation. I’d done what I had to do.

“Excuse me?” he shouted.

“I understand, Coach,” I said more loudly, my chest heaving. I felt like I wanted to punch something, and he was standing so close I actually imagined doing it—punching him square in the jaw. But I didn’t. Of course I didn’t. Instead I said a silent prayer.

Get me out of here. Please just let me get out of here.

A stiff breeze rustled the leaves on the trees around the field and cooled off my neck. I took a breath.

“I swear it won’t happen again,” I said, looking him in the eye.

“Good,” he said. “Now go shower and screw your head back on. I want to see the QB I know and respect back here tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir.”

I turned around and walked as fast as I could toward the school. Gavin, Lester, and Mitchell jogged to catch up with me. My heart pressed against my chest over and over and over again, and each time it felt as if something sharp was pressing right back, puncturing its outer wall.

“What the hell was that about?” Mitchell asked.

“What do you think?”

“So you had one bad practice,” Gavin said. “Why’re you so pissed?”

“I broke up with Claudia,” I snapped.

“What?” Gavin stopped in his tracks. The rest of us kept walking, so that he had to run to catch up with us.

“Dude! That’s awesome!” Mitchell crowed. “We are so gonna to party this weekend!”

“Shut up, man,” I said, my brain racing. I wanted to call Claudia so bad right then it was killing me. I wanted to tell her how Coach had come down on me. Let her tell me it was no big deal, that tomorrow was another day (her favorite saying). Whatever she wanted to say. Who cared? It was her I wanted to talk to. Always her.

What had I been thinking, breaking up with her?

“What? This is great. Now you can take advantage!” Lester threw his arm out toward the girls hanging out behind the gym. The huge pack of freshmen, the JV cheerleaders, the smaller, sexier klatches of juniors. These girls were always, always waiting, like our own personal fan club. Normally, Claudia would have been there too, if Boosters got out early or she didn’t have another club meeting. I scanned their faces, looking for Claudia’s pale skin, her freckles, her thick hair. But of course she wasn’t going to be there. Why would she be? I’d broken her heart.

You had to do it,
a voice inside my head told me.
Why put off the inevitable?

Because she’d be here. She’d be here right now.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” Gavin said. “Are you sure about this? I thought you—I mean, I thought you and Claudia were like . . .”

“What?” I demanded, really wanting to know. “We were like what?”

“Amish people?” Lester said.

“Repressed Amish people?” Mitchell supplied with a laugh.

I shook my head and kept walking.

“Look, the point is now you can be free,” Lester said, jogging next to me. “Enjoy your senior year. Dude, we’re going to the city this weekend. It’s gonna be epic!”

He and Mitchell slapped hands. Gavin looked confused. Hurt, almost. Like I’d just told him I’d run over his dog. Seriously. The guy loved his dog more than anything. Even his mom.

Lester stopped walking and slapped my shoulder pad. “Just look at that, man. This could all be yours.”

The JV cheerleaders were practicing some dance routine, looking right at us. One of the girls, a dark-haired hottie with an incredible body, did this bent-over move that was like something out of a porn video. She looked back at me past her butt and smiled.

I got hot behind my ears, feeling guilty for looking, but then I realized I didn’t have to feel guilty. I was single. I was a free man. There was no one waiting for me. No one reminding me to study or forcing me to figure out my life. No one I had to worry about losing, because she’d already been lost. There was only this girl, dancing like she was dancing just for me.

“Seeing the beauty of your decision?” Mitchell said.

I said nothing, and the guys laughed.

“Hey, Pete!” Orion shouted. “A bunch of us are going to the diner. You guys wanna come with?”

He was standing with some other juniors, including our starting linebacker Josh Moskowitz; his girlfriend, Veronica Vine; and her hottie friend Darla Shayne, plus some of the other girls who always hung around with them. I glanced at my friends, and Gavin shrugged. I might not be ready for slutty cheerleaders, but I could
hang with my teammates and their girls. Their admittedly hot, popular girls.

“Yeah. I’m in,” I said, happy at least, for the distraction.

“It’s the first day of the rest of your life!” Lester crowed as he kneaded my shoulder with one hand.

I smiled, but my heart felt heavy. The rest of my life, without Claudia.

“I don’t get it,” my sister, Casey, said, shoving a heaping spoonful of ice cream into her mouth.

“Don’t get what?”

We were leaned back against my velvet headboard, watching
The Lucky One
on the big-screen TV hung on the opposite wall, with huge bowls of ice cream in our laps. My sister, only ten months younger than me, with the same red hair and fair skin, prescribed movies and ice cream as soon as I’d told her the story of my day, and she now sat cuddled into my side, her pedicured toes touching mine. Casey was a varsity cheerleader, a star of the track team, and one of the most popular girls in the junior class. Unlike myself, she’d gone through a string of boyfriends and breakups, so she knew exactly what to do in this situation. As I sucked some chocolate off my fingertip, Zac Efron grabbed Taylor Schilling by the face and laid a kiss on her like nothing I’d ever experienced. I’d always wanted Peter to grab me and kiss me like that, like his life depended on it, but he never did. And now he never would.

My stomach turned, and I set my half-empty bowl aside.

“I told you not to pick a love story.” Casey shook her head. “We
should be watching
Sucker Punch
or
Texas Chainsaw Massacre
. Not this crap.”

I opened my mouth to automatically contradict her, but then I realized she was right. This was not making me feel better. I picked up the remote and pressed the all off button. The room went quiet and dark. Outside, crickets chirped, and I could hear the horn on the Lake Carmody commuter train blare in the distance. My father was probably on that train. In fifteen minutes he’d come striding through the door and ask about our day. I just couldn’t wait to share the gory details of my afternoon again.

LOL.

“So . . . now what?” I asked.

“I always give myself a makeover,” Casey suggested. “Showing up at school tomorrow looking as hot as humanly possible will make you feel so much better.”

I sighed and glanced at my vanity table. Somehow, a makeover seemed exhausting.

At that moment the door to my room opened, and my best friend, Lauren, bounded in. Her black curls bounced around her face, and she wore baggy sweats with a wide-necked T-shirt from the Studio. She flicked the lights on, and I saw that she’d bitten her nails to the nub, the green polish we’d applied just yesterday jagged and chipped. We’d already spoken on the phone, so she’d heard the whole story.

“Ice cream?” she demanded.

“Don’t judge. She’s heartbroken,” Casey said.

“I’m not judging!” Lauren replied, crawling onto the bed. “Gimme!”

I sucked off my spoon and gave it to her. Gross, I know, but we were besties. We shared food and drinks all the time. So far neither one of us had died. Casey wrinkled her nose, then rose gracefully
from her side of the bed and walked over to my closet. She kicked aside the huge basket full of goodies I’d gathered so I could make the perfect basket for Peter for this weekend—such fun that would be, making a spirit basket for the guy who’d just dumped me—and started to flick through my clothes with her practiced fashionista eye.

“So? How are you doing?” Lauren asked, licking a bit of chocolate off her lip.

“She’s fine,” Casey replied over her shoulder. “She doesn’t need a guy to complete her.”

“But this is Peter we’re talking about,” Lauren said, wide-eyed. “You guys are soul mates.”

My heart twisted, and Casey threw up her hands. “Lauren!”

“Sorry.” Lauren took a huge bite of ice cream as if trying to shut herself up.

“Actually, I’m working on a plan to get him back,” I said, biting my bottom lip.

“You are?” Lauren asked.

Casey turned around with her arms full of sundresses and narrowed her eyes. “What plan?”

“You know that new girl . . . True?” I said, squirming slightly, since I’d recently told them both I thought the new girl was possibly certifiably insane. “She had an idea.”

“The klepto?” Lauren asked, her eyebrows popping up.

Casey tossed the clothes over the back of my chair and sat at the foot of my bed, one long leg crossed over the other, her posture perfect. “We’re taking advice from the crazies now?”

I laughed. “Well, it turns out she’s not that crazy. She thinks if I make Peter jealous, he’ll come crawling back to me.”

Lauren and Casey locked eyes. “How are you going to make him jealous?” they said at the same time.

“She’s going to find me some guy to go out with. Someone from another school,” I said, my nerves fluttering. I pulled my feet up under me.

“Who’s the guy?” Lauren asked.

“We don’t know yet. But in the meantime, she thinks we should float a rumor that I’m already, like, in a relationship.”

Lauren grinned and whipped out her cell phone from the pocket of her sweats. “OMG, I
love
it.”

She started to type at the speed of light.

“What’re you doing?” Casey asked, leaning over her shoulder.

“I’m texting Mia.”

Our sophomore friend from ballet, Mia Ross, had a brother on the football team and was a notorious gossip. If Casey told her something, half the team would know within ten minutes.

“What are you texting?” I demanded.

She hit send and turned her phone around.

DID U HEAR? CLAUDE & PETE BROKE UP!!! CLAUDE IS ON PROWL 4 HC DATE. SHE’S ALREADY GOT SOME PROSPECTS.

Casey and I giggled. “By the time we get to pep rally practice tomorrow,
everyone
is going to be talking about you.”

My stomach clenched, and I had to shove aside the feeling that this was somehow wrong. We’d only just broken up. Would I really be “on the prowl” so quickly? But if I wanted Peter back, it was now or never. The text alert sounded, and Lauren quickly read it with a laugh, then showed it to us.

AWESOME! GO GIRL! PETES A JERK ANYWAY. :P

“This is perfect!” Casey said, grabbing the dresses off my chair. “Now we really have to find you a killer outfit for tomorrow.”

“Fashion show!” Lauren crowed, shoving me off the bed. “Show me what you got, Claudia!”

I took a few options from Casey and headed into the bathroom that connected our two bedrooms. As I undressed, the stereo in my room flicked on, and I could hear the two of them chatting and laughing. For the first time in hours, I felt a real flutter of hope. I looked into my own eyes, squared my shoulders, and felt my confidence return.

Maybe True’s crazy plan would actually work. Maybe this time tomorrow, Peter and I would be back together.

“Are you okay?”

I glanced up from my plate, where I was busy pressing my thumb into the chocolate crumbs. Tasha Montgomery, one of my coworkers at Goddess Cupcakes, pushed her square-framed glasses higher on the bridge of her nose. She had a comforting, open expression on her face, as if she was used to listening to other people’s problems and solving them. Perhaps she was studying to be a therapist. Or a talk show host.

I lifted my thumb to my mouth.

“Yes. Of course. I’m fine,” I replied, pushing the plate behind my hip. “Why do you ask?”

“You just wiped out the last of the triple chocolate stock,” Tasha replied. “Last I checked there were half a dozen left. You do know you have to pay for those, right?”

The dry crumbs caught in my throat, and I coughed. “Of course.” My eyes burned and I held my hand over my mouth. “I knew that.”

Tasha quickly filled a plastic cup with water from the sink and handed it to me. I gulped it down, crushed the cup, and launched
it toward the garbage can. It bounced off the rim and hit the floor. I suppressed a sigh. If I could have used my telekinesis, I never would have missed. But my father was right. I shouldn’t use it unless I really needed it, and garbage-can b-ball didn’t count.

“Want to talk about it?” she asked, leaning into the counter next to me. One of her two dark-blond braids fell forward, and the reflection of the fluorescent lights gleamed in the panes of her glasses.

Normally we never would have had this much time to chat. Goddess Cupcakes was the number one cool hangout for the kids from Lake Carmody High as well as several surrounding schools. But we were less than an hour from closing, and the crowd had thinned out considerably. The only tables still occupied were the big round one in the far corner, which was packed with cute boys in green-and-gold varsity jackets, the two-top where my first couple—Katrina Ramos and Charlie Cox—were splitting a red velvet, and a four-top where two girls in private-school uniforms pored over books on ancient Greece. I’d been peeking over their shoulders since they’d arrived to see if the writers had gotten anything even close to correct, but I’d had to stop when they’d complained to the manager.

From what I
had
been able to read, the writers knew nothing about history.

“It’s my parents,” I said glumly, avoiding the impossible topic of Orion. “I just found out some things about them that I definitely didn’t want to know.”