Forget that,
M.J.
reasons.
Who needs these girls? Why waste time with them when Jackson might still be around?
Before I can decide which voice to listen to, Cassie stands up and waves me over.
I wave back weakly and start toward their table at a pace slightly under the speed of a glacier.
There’s one empty chair at the table, next to Star. She’s wearing khakis and a white shirt, unbuttoned to the legal limit. Her makeup is perfect, and her hair’s been curled into long, flowing locks, suitable for a princess.
Instead of taking the empty seat, I greet everybody and escape to the serving counter, where I order a Diet Coke. This doesn’t take very long, and I have to trudge back to the table and take the seat they’ve obviously set up for me.
“How was work?” Cassie asks.
The others are dead silent, even though they were laughing their heads off when I was on my Diet Coke mission.
“Just another day in the pretzel mines,” I answer.
Nobody chuckles.
“Nice sweater, Mary Jane,” Star says.
I’m almost sure she sneers as she says this. I’m wearing an ugly brown fuzz sweater that I’d only wear when I knew I’d be getting pretzel goo on me. My mother got it in a going-out-of-business sale, and it explains why that store was going out of business. This sweater is
not
nice.
I glance around the table, then back to Star. Her smirk is gone, and I know I was the only one who saw it.
“You’ve had that sweater for ages, haven’t you?” Cassie comments. “I’ll bet it’s warm.”
I try to smile at Cassie because I almost feel sorry for her. She’s working hard to make this little reunion fly. It’s obvious she’s called us all together to patch things up. But this isn’t how things work in high school, and Cassie should know that. Nothing’s ever solved directly with girls. It’s some kind of high school rule, I think. Problems are fixed through third parties. Someone calls on behalf of someone else, and then everybody pretends things are fine.
Maybe that’s what we’re doing now, pretending things are fine.
I want to come right out and ask if they’ve heard the four-minute rumor. I want to swear on a stack of French fries that the rumor is a big, fat, greasy lie. But what if they haven’t heard it? What if the rumor never left the locker room guys? Then
I’d
be the one spreading it. It would be like gossiping about myself.
We’re too quiet, so Cassie tries again. “Anyway, I need to get a job. I think it’s great, Mary Jane, the way you hold down a job, keep up with school, babysit for your sister.”
“I agree,” Star says. “I guess it doesn’t leave you much time for a dating life, huh?”
I feel her words like tiny arrows, barbed at the tip. But the other girls nod sympathetically, agreeing with her.
Man, she’s good!
M.J.
exclaims, giving credit where credit is due. She vows that the brown sweater will go straight into the trash, never to be worn again.
Plain Jane
is still obsessing over the fact that Mom bought that sweater out of the goodness of her heart and that it
is
very warm. Plus, the color matches my eyes.
I sip my Diet Coke and try to keep myself in on conversations that range from Sigh Fry to the sale at Music World, to taking our ACTs. We carefully stay away from guy-talk, which cuts our usual topic selection in half.
But as we sit here together, a strange thing happens. I relax. If these girls, The Girls, have heard stupid rumors about me, they obviously don’t believe them. I start enjoying myself, enjoying my friends. My laughter is real, blending with theirs. When Cassie gossips about Trish, this girl we knew last year who dropped out of school, I’m really into it. And when Nicole rags on her little stepbrother, I feel sorry for both of them.
“Hey!” Cassie exclaims. “Why don’t we all go to the game together? We can hang at my place afterwards.”
“That’d be fun,” I say, feeling almost like my old self again. It’s embarrassing not to have a date to the game on a Saturday night. But there’s strength in numbers. If we all went together, nobody would think we were losers.
“I’ve got a date,” Star says as if she’s apologizing.
“Me too,” Nicole’s quick to add.
“Wes is meeting me outside”—Samantha checks her watch—“in about five minutes.”
“But you girls go and have fun,” Star advises Cassie and me.
And I wonder if I’m the only one who hears the false pity in her voice.
What if I’m wrong about Star? I mean, what if I’ve imagined the sneer, the smirk, and the false pity? Could I really be imagining the tension between Star and me?
Objects may be
closer than they appear.
And if I’ve imagined that, have I imagined everything, including Jackson and me?
I need answers. I want to know right now where Jackson and Star really stand. Jackson said they’d been having trouble. How much? What kind? What would Star say about their relationship? I have to know. And Star Simons is the only one who can tell me.
“Star,” I begin, not sure how to phrase this.
“Hey! Hi, honey!” Star stands up and waves directly over my head as if she’s flagging down a cab. She scoots back her chair and swoops around the table.
Coming toward us is Jackson House.
I am speechless. Breathless. Brainless.
Star throws herself at Jackson, hugging him and kissing his cheek.
“I thought you’d never get here!” Star says, slipping her arm around Jackson’s waist and pulling him back to our table. They’re dressed alike—khakis and white shirts.
Now I suspect that Cassie wasn’t the one who set up this little reunion. This show is for my benefit. Star leads him right to where she was sitting, next to me.
Jackson smiles down at me, but it’s not a better smile than he aims at Nicole and Cassie.
“We girls have had the best time!” Star exclaims. Smiling broadly, she leans back against the table. Her painted fingernails are spread out on the table, inches from me. Her perfume is strong.
She leans farther back, revealing that her unbuttoned white shirt may have exceeded the legal limit.
I see her fingers sliding toward my Diet Coke. Then, before I can get a sound out, her hand moves in a tiny sweeping motion.
“Don’t!” I plead. My Coke glass wipes out. Diet Coke and ice spatter all over me. I feel it seeping into the brown fuzz and soaking my bra and stomach.
“Oh no!” Star cries. “Mary Jane, what did you do? Here. Let me help.” She picks up napkins and dabs at my sweater.
I shove her hand away. “I’ve got it.”
Cassie offers me a fistful of napkins.
I take them and try to soak up the syrupy mess.
“Well . . .” Star picks up her coat from her chair. “We’ve got to get going.”
Nicole and Samantha stand up. “Me too,” Nicole says.
“Have fun, guys,” Samantha says to nobody in particular as she puts on her coat. She and Nicole walk off together.
Star hands her coat to Jackson, who helps her on with it. She pokes her arms through the sleeves, then turns to smile at him. Her back is to me, but her painted fingernails and the hand that spilled Diet Coke are just inches away.
Then, a nanosecond before she grabs Jackson’s arm, Star’s hand lifts in the air . . .
And she gives me the finger.
14
Bucker-Uppers
"Did you see that?"
I demand of Cassie, when she finishes waving good-bye to our “friends.”
“See what?” she asks, which pretty much gives me my answer.
“Star gave me the finger!”
Cassie smiles at me like I smile at Sandy sometimes. “Oh, Mary Jane, she did not.”
“Yeah! She did!” But I can already see Cassie’s not going to believe me, even if mall security caught it on tape and hands it over to us.
“You’re just upset because you ruined your sweater and—”
“I didn’t ruin my sweater!” I shout. People at other tables turn and stare at us. At me. “Not that it would have mattered. I hate this sweater. But that was Star, too!”
Cassie gives a sigh worthy of Sigh Fry. “Admit it, Mary Jane. You’re jealous of Star.”
Duh,
Plain Jane
agrees.
Me? Jealous of that skinny, two-faced witch?
M.J.
challenges.
My soaked sweater is sticking to me, combining syrupy cola with fuzz and making me itch. “I’m going home,” I say, grabbing my coat and making for the exit.
“But what about the game?” Cassie calls after me.
“Tell them they’ll have to play without Mary Jane Ettermeyer! ” I shout.
By the time I pull into the driveway, both Fred and I smell like rusty mothballs. My anger has morphed through the three or four stages of grief we had to read about in my psych class. Denial, anger, sadness, and I forget the others because I’m stuck deep in the middle of sadness.
I really thought Jackson liked me. I was so sure he and Star were history, an ugly blot on the timeline of the past. But there he was, hugging Star and barely glancing at me.
I hope he chokes on his pretzels.
The rents are waiting for me when I walk in. Mom’s pixie nose turns up, and I know it’s because I smell like the shaggy dog they’d never let me have for a pet when I was a kid.
She takes a step back. “Your brown sweater! What—? How—? I
loved
that sweater. Mary Jane, what happened to you?”
“Diet Coke,” I answer.
"But . . . how . . . ?”
All I want to do is take a hot shower. And never come out. “Long story, and I’m beat. I’m just going to turn in early.” I start to walk past them.
“Now? Tonight?” Dad asks. “Isn’t there a game tonight?”
I’m surprised he’s in tune enough to know this, but I nod. I find that it takes all my energy reserves to move my head up and down.
Mom takes over the interrogation. “So why are you staying home?”
I’m thinking I can’t win. They were crazy when I came in late, and they’re crazy when I’m early. Rents. “I have homework ?” This is not a lie. It also has nothing to do with why I’m staying home.
I start to push past them again, but they’re not done.
“Mary Jane,” Mom says without looking at me, “we need to talk.”
I’m getting the distinct feeling that there’s more going on here than my cola-soaked sweater and an early Saturday night appearance. I don’t know what’s coming, but it’s been the kind of day that could bring anything. I realize that I need to brace myself, to buck up. But there’s nothing left in me but wet fuzz. I may be the daughter of the Queen of the Bucker-Uppers, but I’m no princess. She didn’t pass me that particular DNA. I wait.
“The phone’s been ringing all day,” Mom says.
Then I get it. The calls didn’t stop just because I wasn’t home. Stupid as it was, I guess I’d hoped it would all go away, that the rumor would be as dead as my relationship with Jackson House. “Sorry?” I say weakly.
“Living room,” orders my dad, a man of few words, except when he’s in court, which is what this is starting to feel like. “Now.”
The three of us sit together in the living room, and I try to remember the last time we gathered like this. I think it was right after Alicia and I made crank calls to our neighbors accusing them of shoplifting, only they all recognized my voice and told my mother.
Dad begins for the prosecution. “Your mother says you’ve been receiving a large number of phone calls, all of them from boys. What do you know about this, Mary Jane?”
I don’t know what to say, so I repeat. “A large number of phone calls? From boys?”
“A
very
large number of calls,” Mom confirms. “All of them from boys.”
I nod, taking in this information and buying time. I could make up something. I’m pretty sure I could get Dad to believe me.
It’s a science experiment. It’s our communications assignment.
“Well?” My dad can say more in that one word than most people can in entire speeches.
Mom’s sitting on the edge of her chair. “Something is very, very wrong here. I can feel it. Is there something you need to tell us, Mary Jane? Why are these boys calling you?”
This is beyond embarrassing. How do you tell your rents that every guy in the school is calling you to have sex? Probably. Or at least some form thereof. And if you do tell them, how do you convince them that the only reason guys think this is because of a measly missing four minutes?
Dad comes over and sits beside me on the couch. “Mary Jane, what is it? You can tell us.” His voice is calm. It makes me want to confess, but there’s nothing
to
confess. He should be a priest.
“I didn’t do anything.” But I can’t look at them, so I doubt I’m believable. I stare at my hands as my fingers nervously pick brown fuzz from my sweater. “I swear. I haven’t done anything wrong. They just think I did. Or will. Or would.”
“Are we talking about slander, Mary Jane? Is someone spreading rumors about you to these boys?” My dad has turned back into Thomas Ettermeyer, Attorney at Law. I think he smells a lawsuit. “I want names.”
Even if I wanted to supply this information, I can’t. I believed Jackson when he said he hadn’t made up anything to anyone about our
four minutes
together. Then again, I believed him when he said he and Star were as good as over.
“I don’t have names, Dad,” I plead.
I watch his face collapse. For an instant, he thought he could fix all this with a solid defamation of character suit.
But I think the reality is sinking in that even a class action against my class wouldn’t help.
I’m starting to feel sorry for him.
“What
can
we do then, honey? Those boys can’t just say things like that, can they? Can you tell your principal? We can’t let them ruin your reputation.” Mom appears to be a mascara-laden eyelash away from tears.