Miss Taken (11 page)

“Mom!” Then lowering my voice, “No, I am not
going anywhere with that creep.” I escaped up the stairs.

Although my exchange with Mom had not been
satisfying to say the least, it did make me think. Maybe Ned had
overreacted and therefore maybe he was already over it.

I ran to the phone in my parents’ room for
some privacy since Mom would soon be busy in the kitchen brewing
something awful for dinner. A few tears squeezed out of my eyes
thinking of the fabulous dinner I was sure Ned and I would have
been sharing. I had to put a stop to that quick. I absolutely could
not cry over the phone, especially not if I got one of Ned’s
parents.

I gulped down some air. My hands shook as I
tried to dial. With the way my day was going so far, I knew that
this would be the day his dad would answer. But Robin Jane must be
brave in all types of emergencies. Clearing things up with Ned was
more important than having to exchange a few words with some
super-high-power finance guy. I added the digits in Ned’s phone
number and then multiplied them to calm myself. I did it out loud
to make sure my voice was steady.

The phone was ringing.

It rang.

And rang.

Someone picked up. My heart stopped.

The answering machine.

All the blood drained out of my heart at
once, if that is possible. I replaced the receiver. A few more
beads of water escaped my eyeballs. Maybe it was time to remove the
contacts.

But if I did that, it meant definitely
admitting defeat about my date tonight.

More saline drops, and some difficulty
breathing. The reaction of my body’s autonomic nervous system to
this crisis would have made an interesting study if it hadn’t been
happening while I was supposed to be out on a big date.

I called back every twenty minutes. On my
third attempt, a real person picked up. My heart stopped again.
This can’t be healthy even in a person so young as I.

“Hello,” the voice singsonged. Ned’s mom.

“Hi, Mrs...Harley. It’s Jane. Is Ned there?”
My voice was shakier than I wanted. I should have recited a few
more geometry formulas before making the call.

“Why no, isn’t he supposed to be out with
you?”

“Oh, yeah, we had a little argument, I mean
misunderstanding...” I made myself shut up. I absolutely did not
need to blather the details to any more people.

As I was trying to figure out what to say
that didn’t make me sound like a pathetic loser and/or turn the
conversation toward possible careers in the fashion field, I heard
a sound that made me forget all selfish thoughts. It was the
doorbell.

“Oh, let me go, Harley. I hear the door now.
Maybe that’s him. Bye!” I hung up without waiting for her to reply.
Not the smartest thing to do when you want a person to hire you,
but it was too late to worry about future employment options. I
bounded down the stairs, hoping my true destiny awaited.

What awaited me at the door was not my true
destiny. At least, I hoped it wasn’t.

It was Diana with a tray of brownies. In an
extremely unflattering shirtwaist dress in the absolutely most
unflattering shade of orangey-red and knock-off sneakers for
heaven’s sake. The girl who can’t remember to bring them for gym
half the time promenades about town like this? I need to have that
fashion consultation with her, stat.

“Hey, Diana.”

Diana smiled expectantly. “Hello, Jane. Is
Trey at home?”

Oh, brother. I couldn’t even smile at my own
pun. “I’m not sure. I just got here myself.” Even though I had not
mentally checked into the house until a few minutes ago, it was odd
I hadn’t registered any of the usual Trey noises, such as his
snuffling around the pantry like a truffle pig.

“Well, can I come in?”

“Oh, sorry, of course,” I moved out of the
way. “Maybe he’s in the basement.”

He was there, on my laundry pile. Well,
technically they’re his clothes, but he’s too lazy to move them, so
I consider them to part of my lumbar support system. A sickish wave
washed over me as I wondered if he had overheard the scream session
I had had with Mom. I waved Diana off to the excitement of watching
a basketball game with Trey in the basement and went up to my
room.

It did not cheer me up at all to think that
my contour pile of laundry was being wasted on one poorly dressed
girl who was imagining that she was on a Valentine’s Day date with
my dorky brother who was probably totally unaware of this
fantasy.

I lay on my uncontoured bed and tried to
figure things out. Most important question: how dire was the
situation with Ned? I hoped he was just driving around, blowing off
steam and not out picking up a one night stand to drown his sorrows
in and from whom he would contract some incurable illness.

I pictured myself as Jane Nightingale sitting
loyally beside him as he lay on his deathbed, listening with great
forbearance as he apologized profusely for his mistake. Wiping his
sweaty brow, Jane Nightingale reminded him gently not to jump to
conclusions about things like a silly kiss at a locker and how it
definitely wasn’t worth catching deadly diseases over.

I was being ridiculously melodramatic, but
the whole thing was ridiculous. I, Jane Grey, who had never even
been kissed by a boy as of September of her freshman year of high
school now had two boys battling over me. I hoped Ned would do
battle for me. Images of pistols at thirty paces filled my mind.
Ned would be quite striking in a top hat and tails, but with that
lazy eye, Kyle would probably be the better shot.

Fantasies of jousting matches, rescues from
high towers and shoot-outs in tumbleweed strewn towns lasted until
Mom called me down for dinner.

Diana was still there, and apparently
staying, although there were some distinctly uncomfortable looks
crossing her face. Trey even seemed a little ill at ease, which was
unusual for him. I shuddered to think what Mom had cooked up as a
Valentine’s Day ‘treat’ and felt depressed all over again about the
great dinner I was missing out on with Ned.

“I’m sorry it’s not very exciting,” my mother
disclaimed. “Your father has a meeting tonight and I wasn’t really
expecting anyone else to be around.”

Using my magical laser contacts, I
incinerated my mother for her insensitivity about my lost date. But
when she rematerialized with a platter of spaghetti and meatballs,
I allowed her to live. Even though it was fabricated from turkey or
some other low-fat, unpopular animal that doesn’t taste nearly as
good as the stuff with all the cholesterol and she had combined it
with chewy whole grain pasta, it did the trick. I definitely felt
calmer.

Mom made a big deal over Diana’s brownies,
although I could see she was calculating how much butter went into
them and how little she thought that Diana needed the second
one.

Okay, so maybe I was thinking the same thing
after she scarfed down more than her fair share of truffles that
morning.

Thoughts of truffles reminded me of Ned. My
throat closed up.

Diana can have all the junk food she
wants.

Scooping up his fourth or fifth brownie -
it’s hard to keep track when a person eats that fast - Trey jumped
up from the table and mumbled through half-chewed brown goo, “I’m
going over to Matt’s.”

There is such an annoying double standard in
this house. Mom cleared her throat and stared at him significantly
but did not take him to task the way she would have if I had been
the one trying to pull that with a guest in the house.

Trey of course is impervious to hints. He
didn’t even wipe his mouth. He merely swallowed before saying,
“Thanks for the brownies, Diana. See ya at school.”

Mom got up and followed Trey out to the
kitchen. I heard her say, “Turn around, young man,” but I didn’t
have time to eavesdrop on that conversation because I calculated
there were fewer than ten seconds between now and the moment when
Diana would explode into tears.

Even though it was time to peel the scales
from her eyes about Trey, I didn’t want her to humiliate herself in
front of him. I had to get her away from Mom too. The last thing I
needed right now was to get caught in the middle of an anti-man
rant.

Even with her own heart breaking in two,
Robin Jane never forgets the feelings of others. I said quickly,
“You want to listen to some music in my room?”

She nodded, barely holding it together. I
pushed her up the stairs and kicked the door shut just as the first
sob escaped. Diana looked like her knees were giving out on her.
Shoving aside a stack of magazines on the bed, I made room so she
could sit down. I deftly sprinkled a few mismatched socks over them
so I didn’t have to hear an encore of her thoughts on the
exploitation of women in the media.

Diana’s blubbing was getting louder. There
was a record on the player. It’s nice that my dad not only buys
modern music, but allows me to store his collection in my room. I
put the needle down and turned the volume up.

It might have been wiser to scan the title
first. It was Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart. Not the
best choice in this situation, especially the way it started with,
“Turn around...”

Diana practically screamed. Then she stopped,
her attention arrested by something on the wall. Sniffing, she
nodded with her chin. “Did Ned make that?”

I turned my head to see what she was talking
about. Ned’s oil painting.

“Turn around...” came the voice over the
player.

Diana went into full banshee wail. I cranked
the volume up to max and joined her.

A funny thing happened somewhere in the
middle of the song. I stopped crying and started singing along. It
was more like yelling along, but it dried up Diana’s tears too. Our
eyes met and we were even able to smile a little. When we sang the
final “total eclipse of the heart,” we weren’t totally out of
harmony with each other.

Sifting through the junk on my dresser, I
located two hairbrushes. The round one I generously presented to
Diana.

I didn’t even get annoyed when she had the
nerve to recoil at the sight of a few hairs that were attached. For
gosh sakes, it’s a hairbrush. With a perfectly pleasant expression
on my face, I cleaned as much hair off it as I could and reoffered
it.

Once she finally accepted the blasted thing,
I went to put the needle back at the beginning of the record and we
sang it again, belting it out into our hairbrushes. The third time
we listened to it, Diana let me have the round brush and I took the
lead part. The fourth time, she was Bonnie and I was the guy who
sounds like a woman who sings the “turn around” part. To be honest,
Diana has a better voice. So the fifth time we sang, Diana was
Bonnie again and we shared the round brush. She tilted it in my
direction for the “turn around” parts.

After five rounds, I didn’t put it on again.
I think we both felt healed of our broken hearts, or at least
catharted of our Valentine’s Day misery. In an unspoken pact, Diana
and I decided not to discuss the sources of our unhappiness.

Instead we listened to more sappy songs,
yelling them into our hairbrushes. For more dramatic effect, we got
up, played air guitar and danced around the room. From the
possibility of what my Valentine’s Day was supposed to have been,
it wasn’t the worst ending.

Strange but true scientific fact about tears:
They flow for three reasons: basal tears clean and lubricate;
reflex tears form in response to an irritant like an onion; and
emotional tears...well, we all know why they happen.

My eyes have become more sensitive since
getting contacts. And I wish my mom would stop cutting up so many
onions.

The next morning I awoke with puffy eyes and
dread in my heart. I was supposed to meet Hannah for math tutoring.
Although I was feeling a little better after singing out my
sorrows, I didn’t think I was up to discussing what had happened
with Ned yet. And she would ask because I had indiscriminately
blabbed to her about my big Valentine’s Day date plans.

So I called and tried to reel out a story
about how I wasn’t feeling well. Hannah cut me off with, “Ooh, is
it because you were out doing X-rated things last night?”

Since she wasn’t going to let me off the
hook, I opted to confess in person. This had the added benefit of
putting me out of earshot of the rest of my family. It wasn’t
ideal, of course, because it would be taking place in a public
forum. If the waterworks started up again it would be
extra-humiliating to be in view of dozens of people even if they
were strangers. I prayed the presence of others would have a drying
effect on my lachrymal ducts.

I had a moment of weakness before leaving for
the library and called Ned’s house. Okay, two moments of weakness.
No answer either time.

We met at our usual table. Hannah didn’t even
sit down before demanding, “So?”

I was determined to have the refuge of
quadratic equations available to me. I opened a book and flipped
through the pages slowly. “Hmm?” I replied, raising my eyebrows as
if I hadn’t the foggiest notion in the world what she was referring
to.

“So how’d it go?”

“Oh,” I said, waving off my first and
possibly my last Valentine’s Day date ever as utterly trivial. “You
know.”

“No. I don’t actually. That’s why I’m asking.
So out with it.”

I took one last glance at my math book for
strength and told her. “We kind of got into a fight.”

“Oh, no!” Hannah seemed genuinely concerned,
which should have been a big red flag. She is not exactly Ned’s
biggest fan. “Where’d he take you?”

“Oh, um, we had the fight before it even
started, so we didn’t actually go anywhere.”

“Ohmigosh! What did you fight about that was
so bad he didn’t even want to go out anymore?”