Gorgeous (9 page)

16

M
OM AND
D
AD WERE
both sitting in the kitchen waiting when I got there.

“What?” I asked them.

Their arms were crossed over their chests and their faces were serious. I looked back and forth to try to figure out if they were sad or angry—if somebody had died, or if I had done something wrong. It was hard to tell.

“Did I do something?” I asked.

“Sit down,” Mom said quietly. Angry. Yup. No question. I was toast.

“What did I do?”

“Sit. Down,” Mom repeated.

I sat. The only words in my head were all curses. I waited. Nothing I said was going to hurry them or help me. I picked at my cuticles.

“Where did you go when you cut school Monday?” my father asked.

“Who said I cut school?” I asked, not denying it but still thinking I should know who told on me. That’s a constitutional right, I reasoned.

“Did you?” Dad asked. Golly, they were both pale, even their lips.

“Let me assure you, Allison,” Mom growled, “if you lie again now, you will be in even deeper trouble than you already are.”

“How deep am I in?” I asked, wondering what she meant by
again
.

“Don’t you be cute, miss,” Mom barked, flattening me against my seat.

“I’m not.” She was totally pissed. I was used to getting in trouble, but this was beyond. Her ears were pegged back on her head like an angry dog’s. I had never seen her this mad, even at me.

“Where did you go?” Dad asked again, as patiently as if he were asking one of his balky kindergartners where she’d hidden the class gerbil.

“Into the city,” I said, unsure how much to say, wondering how much they knew already. If Quinn had told on me, it would be probably about cutting school, though it could be about getting my picture taken too. But she wouldn’t tell, not unless she was really worried. So that left Jade, who tells her mom way too much. If Jade’s mom’s nosiness won the internal battle with her appropriateness, she’d call my parents. In that case it would be about breaking my grounding over the weekend, and then Mom or Dad would have said,
No, Allison wasn’t grounded
…. That could explain the
again
comment about lying, maybe. So Jade was my number one suspect, I decided, possibly altering my career choice to detective, assuming I survived the afternoon.

“Where did you say you went?” Mom asked, meanwhile. She was no longer pale.
Uh-oh.

“The city,” I whispered again.

“Are you
kidding me
?”

Not sure if it was a real question or rhetorical, and not wanting to be cute, of all things, for the first time in my life, I started to shake my head, but then almost nodded, and then settled on a microshrug.

“With whom?” Dad asked.

“Roxie Green.”

Mom shook her head. I could see she was making an effort to stay in her chair. I appreciated that. I was starting to get weirdly giddy. It was, horrifyingly, an effort to keep from giggling, which would have been nonsensical as well as suicidal.

“And what did you do there?”

“Nothing,” I mumbled, keeping my jaw clenched.

“Nothing?” Mom repeated. “Nothing? Just wandered around the city? Like a couple of socialites with nothing to do?”

“No,” I said.

“That’s right, you didn’t,” Mom said. “I want to hear from your own little lipsticked mouth what you did there.”

That’s when it hit me—somebody must have called from
zip
. Mom and Dad must know I went, and got my picture taken without their permission, maybe even that I forged Dad’s signature.

“I-I can explain,” I stuttered.

Mom and Dad sat there, their eyes intense and their bodies still. I took a breath, trying to find the beginning of my explanation.

That’s when my phone went all-out in its unending attempt to screw up my life.

It buzzed with such intense vibrations I jumped off the chair, and then it was playing what sounded like traffic—horns beeping, tires screeching, metal crashing—all at top volume.

“Allison!” Dad said.

“I didn’t…” I flipped open the phone. It was a 212 number, and the caller ID said ZIP. I closed the phone. The traffic noises resumed, so I pressed the Power button.

“Shut it off,” Dad said sternly.

“I’m trying.” I held it up to show that I was pressing the Power button as hard as I could, but the traffic jam in my palm continued.

“Allison, I will throw that phone in the garbage disposal, so help me,” Mom yelled.

“I’m trying…” Nothing was working. Finally I opened the phone, said, “Hello, I can’t speak right now,” and then hung up.

Silence. I pressed the Power button and the phone, like the most obedient of appliances, shut down instantly, and without a peep.

“Give me the phone,” Mom demanded.

“I turned it off,” I said.

“I don’t care.” Mom held out her hand, exactly the way the devil had. “Give me that phone.”

I held it up to show her it was off and started saying, “It’s off. I will tell you exactly what happened and I’m sorry, okay, I know…”

And then my phone started playing birdcalls.

Loudly.

Just as I was turning it to see who was calling me now, Mom grabbed it out of my hand, opened it up, and said, “Hello?”

She waited, fuming, then said, “Well, it’s not going very well right now, Tyler Moss.”

My mouth dropped open.

“No, I’m not Allison. I am her mother.”

“Mom!”

“Yes, Tyler Moss, I will tell her that.”

She closed my phone and put it down on the counter.

“Tyler Moss will see you in school tomorrow,” she told me.

I let my head fall into my hands.

“You were about to tell us where you and your friend went instead of school on Monday, and why,” my father prompted.

The buzzing inside my head was louder than anything my phone had yet invented. It was hard even to think.

“Allison,” my dad said. “We’re waiting.”

“I know!” I said. They were both glaring at me. I took a few more breaths and tried to figure out how to explain. “Um, we went…It’s just…we, well…See Roxie…Roxie’s mom saw this…We just…The reason we went to—”

“Where?” Mom yelled, slamming her hand down on the counter. The slamming and yelling startled me so much I started to cry. The giggles I’d been squelching had flipped somewhere inside my chest and turned wet.

“Claire,” Daddy said to Mom. “Let’s stay calm….”

“Stay calm? Are you kidding me, Jed? Stay calm? What should we do, just say, ‘Oh, okay, Allison. That’s fine. Did you have fun? What a great idea—just take the train into the city when we think you are at school and wander around without telling anybody and throw your life in the toilet. Great, honey.’ Why? So we don’t damage her fragile self-esteem?”

“Claire,” Dad tried again.

“I want a detailed accounting,” Mom growled at me. “You are already grounded for a month, little miss. And if you think we’re letting you go to Tennis Europe, you’re sadly—”

“You’re not letting me go to Tennis Europe,” I yelled back. “And it has nothing to do with whether I cut school or not. I’m not going to Tennis Europe because you screwed up at work and got yourself fired, big miss.”

She picked up her hand like she was going to slap me, but I was too fast for her. I grabbed my phone and turned away.

Mom was fast, too. She grabbed my wrist and squeezed, hard.

“Drop that phone,” she said, low and slow.

I dropped it.

“Talk,” Mom said.

“We went into the city to go to a modeling tryout, for Roxie. I got my picture taken, too, because, well, otherwise I would have had to wait out on the street and I was scared to do that. Then we went to Starbucks, I got a doppio macchiato, she got a fribbiflabbichino something, and then we came home.”

“Is that the truth?” Dad asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“Go to your room,” Mom said. “Daddy and I need to think about how to handle this. Right now we are too angry to discuss it further with you.”

I swallowed hard and, relieved to be dismissed even temporarily, reached for my phone to make a quick getaway.

Mom grabbed my wrist again. “Leave the phone, take the cannolis.”

I looked up in her face. There was a slight possibility she was smiling, just with her eyes. Why was she paraphrasing
The Godfather
while still maintaining a death grip on my wrist?

When she let go, I grabbed my backpack and headed for the stairs. On the second step, I turned and asked, “When can I have my phone back?”

“We’ll see,” Dad said.

“I need it,” I started to explain, until I caught a glimpse of my mother’s jaw jutting forward and her eyes bulging out at me and changed my mind. Instead I took three steps at a time and didn’t slow down until I was pressing my back against the door in my room.

17

W
HEN
I
HEARD A QUIET
knock on my door about an hour later, I had a fleeting thought that maybe it was Mom, and that she’d come in and we’d sit on my bed together and chat the way Jade and her mom always did, every night, and probably Roxie and her mom did, too.

“Go away,” I said, not wanting to seem overeager.

“Let me in,” said a slow, whispery voice on the other side. Quinn. Oh. I got up and let her in, then went and flopped down on my bed. I didn’t even care that I was messing up all my neatly arranged white pillows.

“What happened?” Quinn asked, lying down next to me.

I dropped my arm over my eyes and told her the whole story. As always, she just listened quietly. After I finished, I waited for her to tell me what a jerk I was, how dangerous it was to cut school and go into the city, what a mess I had made of everything, what a terrible daughter and person I was. What could I even say to argue? I agreed. I was a total waste case. Not that that would have kept me from arguing; it just made me hate myself more.

But Quinn didn’t say anything about that, or anything at all.

Great,
I was thinking. I pour out my life trauma and it bores my sister so much she falls asleep? I gave it another few seconds and then peeked. She wasn’t sleeping, so I didn’t have to kill her. She was just lying there, blinking in her slow way.

“What?” I asked her, and then, since she wasn’t showing any initiative in the let’s-bust-Allison’s-chops department, prompted her with, “So I guess I deserve it, being grounded, but what am I supposed to do about my cell phone?”

“I think—” Quinn started.

“Therefore you are?” I guessed.

“I think an English muffin is a happy day.”

“What?”

She sat up and sang in her warbly voice, “An English muffin is a happy day, a happy day, a happy day.”

Then I remembered. It was from a show she and I had made up in the bathtub at our old house, when we were little. We used to put tons of shampoo on our hair and then stand up in the bath, singing at ourselves naked and sudsily coiffed in the mirror, doing the Quinn and Allison Show. And one of our best numbers was “An English Muffin Is a Happy Day.”

So there we were in my big bed, both of us big, and dry, and dressed, and we started singing that wacky old song at possibly the worst moment of my life. From “An English Muffin Is a Happy Day,” we moved quickly through our other great hits, like “Constipation: Lack of Doody-ation” and “Who Gassed?”

We were like eight-year-olds again, standing up, dancing on my bed, jumping around singing into our fists.

Eventually we wore ourselves out and flopped back down on my bed. “Well, that solved everything,” I said after a few minutes.

“Good,” she said. “Thought it might.” She got up to leave. On her way out, she stopped and turned around. “I didn’t tell on you.”

“I think it was Jade,” I said.

“She’s worried about you,” Quinn said.

“I know.”

“Should she be?”

I shrugged. “Hard to say. Do I seem out of control to you?”

“No,” Quinn said. “You just seem…kind of…happy, actually.”

“Yeah, sometimes,” I agreed. “Weird, huh?”

She shrugged. “You can use my cell phone if you need it.”

“That’s not the point!”

“I know, I’m just saying.” She left, adding, “You’re welcome.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled, but I doubt she heard.

A little later I went by Mom and Dad’s room and sort of lurked in the doorway for a while, until Mom looked up from her desk, where my phone was sitting near her pile of papers.

“I actually really need my phone,” I said.

“You actually really can’t have it right now,” she answered. “I’m not sure you understand how serious it is to cut school and just wander around the city, with nobody knowing where you are.”

I almost argued that Quinn knew where I was, but stopped myself before implicating her. Instead, I said, “I do know. I said I was sorry.”

She nodded. “I want to hear more about this thing you did, getting your picture taken—what the hell was that all about?”

“It was for a contest. Who’s the most gorgeous teen today, or something.”

“The most…what?”

“Gorgeous,” I said.

“And you thought you…Ugh. We need to talk about this, but I have to finish this thing right now and get it to the lawyer before five.” She checked her watch, cursed, then mumbled, “Most gorgeous teen, of all…,” and turned back to her work.

“I really need my phone,” I said. “You can use the landline,” she said without looking up. “I don’t even know the numbers,” I told her.

She groaned and turned around. “And who’s Tyler Moss?”

“A boy.”

“I gathered,” she said. “Are you going out with him?”

“Am I not allowed to go out with somebody?”

“That’s not what I said, Allison. I was just asking.”

“No,” I told her. “I’m not
going out
with him.”

“Just…interested in each other?”

This was torture. This should be outlawed by the UN. “I guess.”

“That’s why you need your phone back?”

“No!” Why did she have to be so impossible? “Yes, him. But also Jade, Roxie, other people. If you want to punish me, fine. Do whatever you want to me; I don’t care. But I have a life, you know, and I’m connected to it by my phone!”

“I don’t like your tone of voice, young lady,” Mom said to me.

“Well, it’s mutual!” I yelled.

“Go to your room,” she said, and turned back to her work again, dismissing me. I kicked her door as I left.

I had a bit of a tantrum in my room and then didn’t clean up afterward. (So there! Not that anybody would care but me, and it was driving me nuts, but I left it a mess on principle.) When they made me go down for dinner, I did, but I didn’t talk to anybody, just ate my dinner and cleared my plate. I went back up to my room and didn’t budge from in front of my computer, even when I heard my phone doing its own little version of the Grammy Awards down the hall on Mom’s desk. Phoebe knocked on my door a couple of times but I just couldn’t deal with her.

It took a while, but finally Roxie got online so we could chat. As expected, she’d been trying to text me. I told her what had happened and realized only when she seemed confused that she thought my parents had already found out about our big day in the city by a call from the school, and were cool with it.

Why didn’t u tell me the truth?
she asked.

IDK,
I responded.
I should have. Felt like a loser, I guess.

U can tell me anything, u know that! Well, so that sucks. A month?
She was as fast as I was: type, send, a good fast rhythm.

Yup,
I whipped back.

Kiss up. Maybe they’ll get past it.

Doubt it,
I sent back.

How’d they find out, then?

Jade, I think.

Jealous bitch,
she wrote instantly.

I laughed out loud, then typed,
Jealous? Of what
?

Well, of me, for one thing
.

Maybe
.

Also of you,
Roxie shot back.

Why wd she be jealous of me? Why wd
anybody
be jealous of ME?

It took maybe ten seconds to get her response:
Because you aren’t following her around all tense anymore like you have been all year. Because you hooked up with Tyler Moss. Because you look great, now that you’re not hiding under your hair so much and always frowning. Lots of reasons.

You’re just saying that,
I wrote back.

Just typing that. Not!

Before I could even respond, she sent:

How long r they keeping ur phone?

IDK,
I typed.
R u gonna go 2 Susannah’s party?

Not w/o u! Do u need Tyler’s # to call him back?

Yes!
I typed back.
Thanks!

No prob—getting it.

What do u think he was calling me about?

How hot u r,
she replied.

Hahaha,
I typed.

After she gave me his number, I typed,

Thanks. Not sure if I shd call him…

Hmmm, true, maybe make him wait a bit.

Yeah,
I agreed.
But what about the woman from
zip
?

I pressed Send before it hit me.

Shit.

I hit Delete but it was too late.

I hit Delete ten more times, even knowing it wouldn’t help.

All I could do was wait, and then up came her response:

What woman from
zip?

So there it was, choice time. What to do? I could try innocent:
huh?
Or muddleheaded:
Did I say
zip?
I meant the trip, Tennis Europe, who called. Earlier.
I could go with distraction:
Gotta go, my house just caught fire.
Or half-truths:
Some woman from
zip
called—I think I left my wallet when we went there.

I decided on half-truth, and had actually typed it but stopped with my pointer in midair before hitting Send. I deleted it and started over:

Please don’t hate me. I somehow got a callback. I don’t know why. Maybe I got the joke spot. I didn’t want to tell you because, well, this is what you wanted, not me—I was just along for the ride and now I feel like I accidentally stole your spot. Not that I could. I am a jerk. I’m sorry.

I reread it three times, hovered over Send, and then just sent it.

For about three hours (okay, maybe it was more like three minutes, but I swear I could feel myself aging) I sat and stared at my unmoving computer screen through my fingers.

Finally, her response flashed up:

Congratulations.

That was all. I quickly typed:

Are u mad?

GTG,
she typed back.
More l8r.

And then she signed out.

I sat in front of my computer for a few hours and, when I started twisting into a cramp, lay down on my bed, still watching the unchanging screen, cursing myself, wishing I could go back and redo everything.

Eventually I apparently fell asleep, because I woke up in the dark, still dressed, tangled in the stuff on my bed, and saw the devil sitting languidly on my couch, waiting for me to focus. He was wearing a beautiful gray suit and a crisp white shirt, open at the collar, and looked utterly at ease.

“Rough night?” he asked.

“No,” I said, squinting. “Yes.”

“That’s what I like,” he said. “Contrary, but absolute.”

I rubbed the heel of my right hand hard against my eyes. “It’s all your fault, isn’t it?”

“What is?”

“You’re totally messing with my phone—making it ring at crazy times and not putting my messages through, forcing my parents to take it away from me…”

“Why would I do that?”

I thought for a second. “Perversity?”

He smiled. “My favorite word.”

“Mine too,” I admitted. “You know it’s totally screwing up my entire life, right?”

“Is it?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “And not to put too fine a point on it, but you promised I would be gorgeous in return. Remember?”

“And you are.”

“No,” I said. That’s when I noticed he was flipping through the issue of
zip
I’d had tucked under my mattress. “That doesn’t count.”

He cocked his head at me. “You don’t think being chosen by the top new magazine, and my personal favorite, as one of the most gorgeous teens of the year counts?”

“So it was because of you,” I said.

“You were chosen because they thought you were gorgeous,” he argued softly, still flipping pages.

“Yeah, right.”

“It’s true.”

“What are you doing here?” I asked him.

“Just visiting,” he said, closing the magazine and smiling benignly with his lips closed. “As they say at the jail in Monopoly.”

“What?” I asked.

He squinted his green eyes slightly. “Tyler Moss, hmm?”

“What about him?”

“Interesting,” said the devil.

I sat up and crossed my legs. “In what way is Tyler Moss interesting?”

“Trust me,” he said.

I laughed. “Oh, great advice. Trust you?”

He laughed, too, and said, “Touché.”

We just sat there for a while not talking. It didn’t occur to me to ask him if he was real or if I was dreaming, not until the next day. I was thinking instead about Roxie, and Jade, and my parents—how everybody was disappointed in me. How I had screwed everything up. What I really needed right then was somebody whose advice I could trust. And what I had instead was the devil, sitting on my couch.

Why was he really there? I started wondering, and then it hit me. This was it, end of the line. Our deal was completed. I got to be seen as gorgeous by seven people—I tried counting them up in my head—and now that my life was in the toilet because of his stupid games with my phone, and all my relationships (which had admittedly never been so great to begin with) were wrecked because of it, he was done. The fun was finished.

So I’d be ugly again by morning.

Yeah? Screw him.

“You’re not just visiting,” I said, as Mom-like as I could, tough and icy. I should have known it would never last. I did know, had known all along. Was he expecting me to fight? Cry? No way.

“Why do you think I’m here, then?” he asked, cool as ever.

“To turn me back into a pumpkin? It must be past midnight. You got sick of playing with my ring tones. That’s it, right? You came to break the deal?”

He placed the magazine on my couch and stretched his long legs out in front of him. “I never break my deals,” he said.

“Oh. Point of honor?”

“If you wish,” he said.

“Because by my count, it’s not seven, or even six if I traded one. Roxie, maybe Tyler but I’m not sure, maybe that woman from
zip
, who else? Are you counting Susannah Millstein? Or those big gorillas from the party? Because I don’t think those people count. If those are the six, fine, but I think I could be justified in asking for a recount.”