Of All the Stupid Things (6 page)

Too soon, he moves his lips away but his arms stay around me. “Sorry, it’s getting late. But can we do something over the weekend?”

“Definitely.” I don’t have to give it any thought.

“Awesome.” He kisses my nose and lets go. “I’ll call you.”

“Great!”

“Bye.”

“Bye,” I say, and watch him drive away. My feet are rooted to the ground, but my head seems to have detached itself to float in the clouds. For a second I imagine what it would be like to call home and say I need rescuing. I’m sure I can’t remember the way back. Instead, I stay in the parking lot for twenty-three minutes—that’s how long it takes to get myself calm enough to drive home. Hopefully I won’t get lost.

Whitney Blaire

I’VE FINISHED MY SALAD AND AM NOW HELPING MYSELF to the last of David’s fries. It’s the ultimate skinny rule: as long as you don’t order the food yourself, the calories don’t count. Besides, the iceberg and fries cancel each other out like positive and negative numbers so it’s like I’m practically eating nothing.

“So then…” I pause for effect but David isn’t paying attention to me. Instead, he has this little goofy smile on his face and is half blushing. He smiles like that at me sometimes, and it’s really cute, but it’s not me he’s smiling at now. I turn my head around to see what’s making him gawk.

There’s a girl I’ve never seen ordering food. And it’s not just David; every guy in the place has gone gaga checking her out. Don’t ask me why. For one thing she’s ugly as all hell. Her black hair looks like some kind of moth-eaten Halloween wig. As for her clothes, all I can say is that there’s a difference between being a size 1 and squeezing into it. And the worst is that she’s just a kid. She’s some little kid that went crazy with her mother’s makeup and stole an older sister’s bra to stuff with tube socks.

“Damn,” David whispers.

“Who’s that?” I demand.

David shrugs, his eyes still on the kid. “A tourist?”

“No tourists would come to this town.”

“Maybe she’s visiting someone. She can come visit me anytime.”

I hit him on the back of the head.

“What?” He turns away from the kid and stares at me.

“David, she’s like ten years old. That’s gross. Besides, you shouldn’t stare.” I shove down two more fries. I don’t care if me and David are never going to date in a million years. It’s totally wrong for him to act like a guppy.

David returns to what’s left of his fries. “I just wanted to see what everyone else was looking at. Besides, no way that girl’s ten.”

I look at her again. I know that if I was standing, she wouldn’t be much higher than my shoulders. And that’s without my heels. With heels, she wouldn’t reach my chest. No, David’s right. She’s not ten. More like eight.

The girl walks by us with her takeout bag. By the smug look on her face, I can tell she thinks she’s the shit and loves the fact that everyone is staring at her. She flicks her hair and swishes her hips. It’s like she’s daring someone to try and steal her attention. When she passes by us, she turns up her nose.

I turn my head around to look at her over my other shoulder. In the second it takes to change directions, a big figure blocks the light coming in from the door.

I recognize Brent, the Abercrombie lookalike, right away. Of course everyone else looks at him too. According to Tara, they’re taking a break, which I kind of feel like it’s my fault since I told her about that stupid thing, but maybe she has others reasons. But until she says she’s done with him for good, he’s not up for grabs. Of course the eight-year-old doesn’t let that stop her.

“Excuse me.” She places a hand on his arm. It looks like she’s moving him out of her way. It also looks like a sneaky way to feel up his arm.

Brent steps slightly to the side and gives her the once-over. “Hi. You need help carrying that?” He gestures to her takeout bag as if it were heavy.

“No, that’s okay.” The girl smiles up at him.

“You look really familiar.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Do I know you from school? Or maybe I’ve seen you on TV?”

She laughs and sticks out a hip. Her belly ring flashes as it catches the sun. “Not on something you’d want to watch,” she says.

Still, he raises his eyebrows and winks. “I wouldn’t be so sure.”

I push down the stupid plastic salad lid. It doesn’t close. I keep trying, but it just makes a lot of noise. Not enough noise, though. Brent carries on, “So, what’s your name?”

“Riley.”

Brent smiles. “I like that. Riley. I’m Brent, by the way.”

I have to do something. She’s all over Brent and I’m not going to let some little kid steal my best friend’s boyfriend.

“Brent, hi!” I call out. Leaping from my chair, I rush to hug him. I link my arm through his and hope he doesn’t pull away. “I didn’t know you were here.”

I glimpse the little girl trying to duck out. And then, I honestly don’t know what happened next. Seriously, I just stretched out my leg when all of the sudden, the girl is sprawled out on the floor. Her bag breaks and then there’s baked potato and orange juice all over the place. (Who goes to a burger joint for a baked potato and orange juice anyway?)

I look down at her as if I’m noticing her for the first time. “Oh, what happened? Are you okay?”

“Fine,” she snaps. What a bitch.

“Oh, man.” Brent holds out a hand. “Here, let me help.”

“I said I’m fine.” She looks from me to Brent and gets up on her own.

“Brent, be a dear and get us some napkins.” I smile sweetly at him. The second he leaves, I glare back at the girl. “He’s taken, so don’t even think of stealing him away. Or I will hurt you.”

The look the girl gives me is cold, but I don’t shiver. “You? Hurt me? With those fake nails?”

I’m about to say the ultimate comeback: something cool, something smart. Something any second now. But David gets between us and starts dragging me away. “Whitney, we got to go, because that sale my sister was telling us about at the mall, it’s going to end in like five minutes.”

I try to break away, but David leads me out of the burger joint. I turn around and see that Riley kid come out the door, alone. Good. Maybe she got the hint.

A few blocks down, and out of sight of the burger joint, I finally shake off David’s hand.

“A sale at the mall? How superficial can you make me look?” I place my hands on my hips. Okay, so yes, I do shop at any store that has a sale, but did he have to go and broadcast it to the whole world?

“C’mon, I had to get you out of there. That girl would’ve clobbered you.”

“She’s a shrimp.”

“She’s a fit shrimp. Did you see her shoulders and that sixpack?”

Her ugly belly piercing, not to mention the fact that she was practically jumping Brent’s bones, kept me from looking at her body. But it doesn’t help my mood that David had noticed it.

David is still going. “I mean, that girl was something. Like a small, dark Tara, but with curves—”

“Shut up.”

“—no wonder he was after her,” David finishes.

“I said shut up!” I hiss under my breath. “Such a bitch.”

David doesn’t say anything for a while. He keeps his hands shoved in his pockets as he kicks a pebble down the sidewalk. We walk a bit more before David finally says something. “Do you want to go home?”

“No,” I answer quickly.

Silence again.

David makes a sound in his throat. “You know, I think Sophie did mention something about a seventy-five-percent-off summer clearance.”

I lick my lips and turn to look at him. “Which store was this?”

When I get home with my bags, the entire house is spotless as usual. Mother has Carmen come about twice a week to clean, whether the house needs it or not. It never does; nobody’s ever home to dirty it. Sometimes I want to spit on the counter, just to make a mess. But then Carmen would make me clean it up. And cleaning is one thing you can’t pay me to do. Besides, it’s hard to tell when someone will be home. There’s no point in making a mess to make a statement if no one’s around to notice the statement, or the mess. My parents usually aren’t home, but sometimes I get surprised.

I’m not surprised today, though. My voice echoes through the house when I call out. When they’re in, Father reminds me not to shout and Mother goes on about the effectiveness of a calm tone and how I should use the intercom instead. I don’t have to look on the kitchen counter to know that Mother has left a twenty. She used to leave a note as well, saying that she and Father were working late and that I should order a pizza. In those notes she would even mention what time they’d be back and where I could reach them in case of an emergency. Nowadays, especially if they’re just working late, she doesn’t usually bother with a note. She just leaves the cash.

I grab the money and make my way through the house. I pass the lounge and Father’s study as I head up the stairs. I know without trying the door that it is locked. Father’s study is only ever unlocked when he’s actually in it, but even then I have to knock before entering. At the top of the stairs to the right is my parents’ room. That room isn’t locked, but I don’t usually bother going in there.

On the wall between Mother’s study and one of the guest bedrooms are the family photos. Not the kind at Pink’s house taken yearly at Sears with everyone looking happy because they’re all wearing matching snowman sweaters. The photos on our wall show our successes: Father after he won a multimillion-dollar case; Mother receiving the Citizens’ Choice award for the area’s favorite therapist; both of them with the vice president. The one of me was taken when I was three and crowned Little Miss Tiny Tot.

Farther along is another guest bedroom, a bathroom, my former playroom—which has been converted to my study, though I never use it for that—and then finally my bedroom with its own bathroom. My room has always been the farthest away from my parents’. Which means it’s the best room in the house.

I dump the bags on the floor and put the twenty in the leather wallet I keep between my sweaters on the top shelf of my closet. I can barely reach it so I know Carmen definitely can’t, though I don’t think she would. No one else comes into my room, so I know it’s safe. Then I call Pink to see if I can come over for dinner.

Pinkie

NASH HASN’T CALLED. I WONDER WHETHER HE LOST my number. I wonder if he ever had it. The whole group exchanged numbers at the beginning of the year, but he might not remember the list. I’ve called him a couple times before when I’ve needed his help with some trig problems. Always left a message. But he’s never called back. Probably because he was at work and figured I had solved the problem by the time he got the message. Which I had, but it still would have been nice if he had called back. But then again, how could he if he didn’t have my number?

I give him until four o’clock on Saturday and then call him up.

“Hi Nash, this is Pinkie, Pinkie D. Ricci. I thought we were doing something this weekend and since I haven’t heard from you, I was just making sure everything is all right. Can you give me a call? Maybe we can do something tonight or tomorrow, that is if you’re free and if you’re interested. So yeah, let me know if you’re all right and I hope to see you soon. Here’s my number.”