I risked a glance at her ref lection.
She had short, silvery-blond hair, which seemed to me like an obvious effort to look spunky and fun. She had long eyelashes, and the smooth skin I had always assured myself was just airbrushing in magazines and pictures of celebrities. Her arms were thin, just like the rest of her. She was wearing a dress that was bound to be “in” soon. She was still scrubbing her hands.
Then she spoke, taking me off guard. It was like I’d forgotten she could see me, too.
“Pen exploded. I didn’t kill a squid or anything.” She smiled, exposing straight, white teeth. “I’m Anna, by the way.”
I nodded curtly and smiled back. “Hi, Anna.”
I didn’t tell her who I was. I had to see if she already knew.
Had
to.
“And you are…Bridget Duke?”
My mind eased. What had I been worried about?
“Yes, I am.” I waited a moment before deciding that, yes, I needed validation. “How did you know that?”
3 3
“Oh, sorry, that must seem creepy. I saw the name on the corner of the paper sticking out of your bag. I’m new here.”
I paused as the disappointment set in.
“Okay, then.” I turned back to my mirror and started fuss-ing over my eye makeup.
I tried desperately to think of something cool to say while she nonchalantly applied ChapStick to her lips (which didn’t seem to need it).
“Actually,” Anna started, still not looking at me, “I think Liam mentioned your name. Do you know Liam?”
I mused over the simplicity of the question, and the under-statement that would be my answer.
“Yes, I know him.”
“Hmm. He told me to look out for you.”
She glanced at me, smiled again and waved goodbye.
My face was frozen in shock as I stared at the doorway until she was gone and her footsteps faded. It felt like she’d just pulled the pin out of a grenade, and I had no idea how to stop it from exploding.
I left the bathroom—the scene of the crime—in a daze.
I was analyzing, picking at and utterly disassembling what Anna had told me Liam had said. I’d done this many times with things he’d said to me, each time shredding his words so thoroughly that I worked myself into a fit. Sure, this was she-said he-said, but it didn’t matter. Liam said a lot of cryptic things, seemingly not on purpose.
I’d particularly agonized over what he’d said when he broke up with me. He’d said that of course it wasn’t what he wanted, and that maybe sometime in the future…
Oh, he’d given me plenty to mull over that night.
So, there I was, putting on the familiar thinking cap spe-3 4
P A I G E H A R B I S O N
cifically designed for figuring out what the
hell
Liam meant by what he said.
He told me to look out for you.
Because she should get to know me, or because I am someone to avoid?
I decided I would definitely have to use one of my other favorite techniques: bringing Liam up into every single conversation and asking what everyone else thought he might have meant.
I had just decided to go to the nurse’s office because of imaginary cramps and say that I was really not able to stay the rest of the day when Brett popped up out of nowhere.
“Hey, Bridget—ready for this test in NSL?”
I always hated small talk about classes, particularly National, State and Local Government.
Blech.
“Ugh, Brett, what are you—” Wait. “What test?”
“What
test?
” He repeated my words with an entirely different inf lection, one that implied that I was very, very stupid.
“The midterm, Bridget. You studied for it, right?”
“No? When is it?”
“Today, in like—” he looked at his watch—which, incidentally, looked like it was taken from the personal wardrobe of Inspector Gadget “—forty-six minutes.”
He was still looking horrified at my unpreparedness.
“How much is it worth?” I asked, feeling a little breathless.
Today sucks,
I thought.
“Thirty percent, just like the final, and then the other forty percent is homework and the other quizzes and stuff.”
Oh, no. I had gotten a D on the last quiz and forgotten about three homework assignments. On last week’s progress report I’d had a seventy-two percent in the class. I had to pass.
“Brett, there’s no way I can study enough during this lunch 3 5
period. You have to help me.” I said this last part like it was obvious.
“I can’t help you study, Bridget, I have no time—”
“No, not study,
Brett,
you have to help me during the test.”
Technically, I was asking for a favor and, really, one shouldn’t treat the person she wants a favor from like he’s stupid. But Brett didn’t seem to notice. His expression just turned from worry for me to worry for himself.
He understood exactly what I was saying. “I can’t, Bridget.
If we got caught, I’d fail this test, then my grade would drop down to a sixty-six percent. I have to work really hard to keep my grades high enough to get into college.” He shook his head. “There’s no way.”
“Oh, my God, we’re not going to get caught.” I had no idea if we’d get caught, but I tried to sound confident. “This’ll be so simple, she’ll never notice. Okay, are you right-handed?”
“Yes?”
“Okay, then you sit to my left, and I’ll sit behind Walco, he’s huge, Mrs. Remeley won’t be able to see me look at your paper. All you have to do is write really clearly and keep your paper diagonal toward me. It’ll be no problem, it’s how most people write, anyway.”
He looked firm on his refusal. And then the obvious struck me.
“Michelle. I’ll trade you Michelle!” I said it like I’d figured out the Da Vinci Code or something.
Brett had had a totally annoying crush on Michelle since, like, first grade. She and I hadn’t really been friends yet at that age, but my mom knew her mom, so we played with each other. She used to get secret-admirer cards and letters. A fact I teased her about because I was positively green with envy, and resentful that no one sent any to me. Except for that one 3 6
P A I G E H A R B I S O N
I’d written to myself once, and claimed it was from resident cutie J.R.
We didn’t know for sure who was writing them to her until one day in fifth grade, when I caught Brett in the cubby room writing one while everyone else was playing Heads Up Seven Up. I’d been cold and going to get my jacket when I found him.
There he was, sitting in the corner with a piece of pink construction paper on his lap, writing in the boyish handwriting I recognized from all the other valentines over the years.
Lying on the f loor next to him were several failed attempts.
I remember the validation of my suspicions that it was he who had been writing them feeling like a victory.
Snatching the card from his lap, I ran out of the cubby room shouting “Brett loves Miche-elle” in that singsong voice strictly used in this particular brand of torture. Everyone’s head had shot up, and I read the poem aloud.
Though my love goes unrequited
I’ll love you beyond when the pigs are f lighted.
Though I may be a snowball, and you the heat I’ll melt with you if you stay as sweet.
You are Michelle, my belle,
And without you, this place would be…
Brett would later insist that he hadn’t intended to put
hell
at the end of the poem, but was going to somehow rhyme
dwell.
But to us, it might as well have been written there.
None of us knew the real meanings behind the words. Even so, the class got what the poem meant: it meant that Brett wanted to be K-I-S-S-I-N-G Michelle. Sitting in a tree, if you went by our prediction.
Brett had stayed in the cubby room the entire time I read 3 7
it, and the only other person, besides him and our dimwitted teacher, not joining in the roar of laughter was Michelle. She had turned a deep shade of red and then run to the bathroom.
Brett went to the office and got picked up early that day.
All the while, our teacher handed out bags of heart-shaped candies, an uncomprehending smile on her face.
A few years later, when we all entered middle school, Brett had come in with a seriously misguided attempt at dyed black hair, which had come out a sort of awful, metallic blue, and a newfound interest in all things rebellious. He didn’t start dressing normally again (i.e., not wearing the goth-style pants that looked like an entire f lap of a circus tent had been stitched together) and stop skipping school until tenth grade. That was also when he started obsessing about the grades he couldn’t seem to keep up very easily.
Judging by the way Brett never spoke to Michelle again and instead gazed at her every chance he got, I was pretty sure he still wanted to sit in a tree with her. Lucky for me, his expression when I said her name removed all doubt from my mind.
“What about Michelle? What do you mean you’ll trade her?”
“I’ll get you a date with her if you give me the answers.”
He hesitated. I saw something that looked like the tiniest bit of consideration in his eyes. I jumped at it.
“Come on, Brett, it’s totally worth it. It’s not like we’ll get caught. And, be real, when else are you going to have a chance with Michelle?” He looked a little offended and, for some reason I could not imagine, amused.
I would have felt bad saying that he didn’t have a shot with her except that it was true. And just because I pointed out the obvious didn’t mean it was my fault that he never would have asked her out.
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P A I G E H A R B I S O N
“It’s not right, you can’t expect to just trade her like money or something.” He seemed to give himself an idea. “Here, just ask her to talk to me. I’ll ask her out myself.”
Ha! He was making this way too easy.
“So we have a deal.” It wasn’t a question. I wanted him to feel like he had already agreed. “She’ll sit with you Monday at lunch.”
I snickered to myself and walked past him to the cafeteria.
But as soon as I walked away, Liam loomed in my mind again, removing any trace of laughter.
I stayed quiet throughout the lunch period, ignoring the gossip Jillian was imparting to Michelle. Instead of participat-ing, I spent the whole period looking through my
Allure
magazine and glancing at Liam as furtively and often as possible.
He was about six foot three, his body lean and toned. His hair was the dark, shiny brown that you might see in a shampoo commercial, and reached down just past his dark, straight eyebrows. His eyes, though I couldn’t see them from where I sat, I knew to be the same light color of a swimming pool. The dark circle of his pupil and his thick, dark, straight eyelashes made the color seem even more striking.
He was sitting with Anna, who was taking a bite out of a cheeseburger. Eyeing the bottle of Coke Classic that sat in front of her, I wondered how she ate like that and still stayed so thin. Even if we
had
been friends, though, I never would have asked her that—that was what people asked
me.
Not the other way around.
I decided that of all things, I didn’t have the energy to look at the pair of them.
“Bridget?”
I blinked away images of times Liam’s eyes had been close enough to mine that I could memorize them.
3 9
“What?” I snapped, and looked up to see a girl named Laura’s eager-looking face.
She recoiled slightly at the harshness in my tone. “Um.
Well, I was, uh…” she nervously tripped over her words
“…wondering if you guys wanted to come over to my house tonight. I mean, it’s not going to be like a big deal party or anything. Not like
your
parties.”
“Have you ever actually
been
to one of my parties?” I asked impatiently, barely interested in the conversation.
“Um. No, but, I mean, I hear they’re great.”
I narrowed my eyes at her and cocked my head a bit to the side. She cleared her throat.
“Well, anyway, it’s just going to be like board games and stuff. My parents will be there.” She looked sheepish.
I waited to see if she said anything else. When she didn’t, and instead shifted her weight uncomfortably, I smiled.
“Uh-huh. Well, I know that I’ll be busy tonight. I don’t know about the other girls. Michelle? Jillian? Busy tonight?
Want to go play some board games with Laura and her parents?”
Michelle shook her head down at her food, her face red.
Jillian looked sympathetically at Laura and then said something about plans with her mom.
I crinkled my nose, and made a tsk-ing sound as I turned back to Laura looking regretful.
“Aw, that’s too bad. Maybe next time?” I smiled dismis-sively, and looked back down at my magazine.
“You know what, Bridget?” Laura asked, her ears turning red.
I gave her a challenging look. “What’s that?”
“You’re
just…”
There was a lurch in my stomach. I would not be told off, and I could tell that was where this was going. But I’d learned 4 0
P A I G E H A R B I S O N
long ago to def lect this sort of thing. “I’d stop now, if I were you. Which thank
God
I’m not.”
I watched her fury grow, and I felt the growing sense that I’d really gone too far.
“I’d always rather be me than you.” And she walked away.
I scrambled to think of something to say. I thought of nothing. I’d never
had
to. Since when did anyone challenge me?
I knew I’d been unnecessarily cruel to her, and I felt kind of guilty. But my day had sucked so far, too, and no one was apologizing to
me.
“Bridget—”
“So I ran into Anna today,” I started, cutting off Michelle.
I knew she was going to give me grief and I just couldn’t deal with
that
on top of it all. Plus, I had to pretend that what had just happened didn’t bother me. “And she introduced herself to me and all—she already knew my name—and then told me that Liam had told her to ‘look out for’ me. What do you suppose that means?”
Jillian, always interested in a good outrage, gasped and dropped her celery stick. “He said that?”