Perfect You (6 page)

I looked at it. "A. GUY."

He grinned. "Someone actually asked me what the A stood for," he said, his hand brushing mine as he took the tag back, sliding it into his pocket. "I said Larry."

I laughed and he smiled at me again, dimples flashing. It was the closest thing to a nice moment I'd had with anyone in ages. Or ever with a guy.

So, naturally, Will ruined it, saying, "So, what's the deal with your dad? We have a notice up in the back saying we're supposed to get a manager right away if he comes in."

"Like you don't know," I said. "Am I supposed to tell you stories about my dad and his wacky vitamin-selling adventures now?"

"Hey, I was just--"

"Oh, I can't wait to hear this."

He blinked at me. "I was just trying to talk to you."

I hated how hot he was and hated myself more for noticing. For always noticing, even now. "Sure you were. Because you said so much when you were listening to the coffee guy complain about him. Oh, no, wait. You just laughed."

"Not at you. I wouldn't--"

"Make fun of me? Please."

He stared at me for a moment, and then said, "Look, Kate, I'm sorry."

For some reason, that made me furious. I didn't want his pity. I was sick of the mall, of vitamins, of everything. I lifted one hand, to either shove him or slap him, and he caught it. Caught me.

I froze. It wasn't that I wasn't angry anymore, because I was. I just felt so much other stuff too, stuff I didn't even have a name for, and it hit me so hard I couldn't move.

He didn't either, and as we stared at each other I felt a weird prickling heat, like a blush but stronger, shiver though me, and I knew something was going to happen.

And then it did, and he kissed me.

My very first kiss. With Will. It was like something out a dream.

Except that I was standing by a trash bin outside the mall. And I was with Will, who had kissed just about every girl in school, and who I didn't want to like.

"You jackass," I said, pulling away and trying to ignore how I was shaking all over.

He stared at me like he'd never seen me before. "Jackass? You just shoved your tongue down my throat and now you're calling me names?"

"I didn't do that!"

"Did."

"Did not."

"Did," he said, and leaned in toward me.

"Did not," I said again, and then I--oh, this is the embarrassing part--I kissed him. I couldn't help it. The look on his face was so intense and the whole thing was so intense that I had to. I couldn't help myself.

And I didn't want to. At least not until the mall door opened and I heard someone say,

"Oh."

Then I bolted, grabbing a box and taking off like I was being chased.

Which I wasn't. Will didn't come after me. Not that I wanted him to, or anything.

Besides, when I got home, I forgot all about the kiss, at least for a while, because when Dad and I walked in, Grandma was there.

"Darling," she said as soon as I saw her standing in our front hallway, and swooped in for a hug, moving past Dad like he wasn't there.

"Hi, Grandma," I said, feeling as small and plain as I always did around her. Grandma was close to six feet tall, and had modeled when she was younger. She had pictures of herself up all over her house to prove it, and even though she was old now, she still had the kind of face that made people stop and stare.

"I should take you to a proper salon and get your eyebrows shaped," she said. "There must be one around here somewhere. You have my eyebrows, darling, and they must be tamed!"

"Mother, Kate doesn't need anything done to her eyebrows." Mom gave my arm a soft, reassuring squeeze, letting me untangle myself from Grandma. "Besides, remember what happened when you had yours done right before my sixteenth birthday party?"

Grandma sighed. "I can't believe you remember that, Sharon."

"Mother, you wouldn't get out of bed for a week. I had to have Mrs. Glick next door drive me back to school because Daddy was in Switzerland."

Grandma waved one hand, as if shooing Mom's words away, and Mom frowned before turning to Dad, who'd sidestepped Grandma and taken Mom in his arms.

"You guys, no one needs to see that," Todd said, clipping me with an elbow as he walked up behind me, his version of a greeting. "Dad, I got up to the last level of our game. Want to see it?"

Dad did, of course, so we all ended up in the living room, me and Mom and Grandma sitting on the sofa while Dad and Todd sat on the floor blowing up imaginary bad guys.

"I see Steve still has his little hobby," Grandma said to Mom, and from the huge, fixed--

and fake--smile on Dad's face, I could tell he was imagining that everyone on screen was Grandma.

"It helps me relax," he said without turning away from the game. "Sharon, are there any sandwiches?"

"Roast beef or ham?" Mom said, starting to get up, but Grandma put a hand on her knee.

"You were just saying how you wanted to sit and rest, darling."

Mom froze, then said, "Excuse me, Mother," her voice icy, and got up.

When she'd gone into the kitchen, Grandma looked at me. "You look tired, darling. Did you have a long day?" Long and weird. I thought about Will, and the kiss, and felt a little shiver race through me. "Sort of. But at least I didn't have to go to school."

"No school? So you spent the day with your friends?" She smiled at me. "What did you buy?"

Grandma had friends, or at least said she did, and only ever did one thing with them: shop. Every closet in her house was filled with clothes and shoes and purses, all color-coordinated and numbered according to some system she'd set up. Mom once told me her first memory was sitting in a store watching Grandma look at shoes. I don't mind shopping, but Grandma treated it like it was a religion.

"I worked with Dad," I said. He glanced back at me, a real smile on his face, and I grinned back.

"Working? But darling, you're only sixteen."

"She knows how old she is, Mother," Mom called from the kitchen. "Steve's business is a family business. That means everyone pitches in. I told you that earlier."

"But poor Todd and Kate, working so hard--"

"It's not so bad, Grandma," Todd said, looking over his shoulder at her and then glancing back at Dad, who was staring at the television screen with his fake smile burned across his face again. "Besides, didn't our grandfather work all the time?"

"He was a very important man," Grandma said. "And creating medicines isn't the sort of thing one takes a vacation from. But he never would have made me work, and your mother--oh, when she was a girl, she never wanted for anything. He took care of us and certainly wouldn't have quit his job to sell--" "Mother," Mom said, coming back in and handing Dad a sandwich, "he was addicted to the painkillers he developed, and never noticed anything or anyone when he was at home, which wasn't often. Let's not make him into a saint, shall we?"

Grandma cleared her throat, looking upset. Dad squeezed Mom's hand, smiling a tense and very fake smile. Mom looked mad.

Todd glanced at them and then shot me a look, saying, "Hey, Grandma, Kate and I didn't give you your birthday presents the last time you were here."

"Right," I said, realizing what he was doing. Distracting Grandma was a good idea, and luckily, it was easy. "Do you want your gifts now?"

Grandma grinned, and the tension in the room, so strong a second ago, lessened. Still, I didn't know how were we going to survive living with her, especially when it took her about a minute to rip open all her presents and say, "Well, those were unusual!" before looking at us like she was waiting for more.

"I just remembered I have to . . . bake a cake for tomorrow," Mom said, disappearing back into the kitchen. "There's a birthday at work."

Me and Dad and Todd all stared after her, and then Dad said, "Ice!"

He turned to Grandma. "I know you like lots of ice when you have a drink, and our freezer still only makes cubed ice, not crushed. I'd better go get you some."

"Ill go with--" I said at the same time Todd said, "I'll grab my keys, Dad, and we can take my car."

So I ended up sitting in the living room with Grandma, who smiled and then touched one perfectly manicured hand to the umbrella I'd given her.

"This is a very charming umbrella, darling," she said. "But this gift from your brother--

what is it, and why does he think I want to read about trees crying?"

"It's a poem, Grandma." Before he wanted to be an actor, Todd was going to be a poet.

"Weep, deep, seek--ah, rhyming. I see." She sighed. "I don't suppose you got the picture of the Tiffany bracelet I sent?"

"We did." Grandma was always sending us ads for things we could get her as gifts.

Usually they cost more than Todd's braces had, and Mom said we'd be paying for those until Todd had kids and they needed braces.

"Oh. Well, then, never mind," Grandma said, and looked around our living room, frowning at the stack of video games Dad had piled on the floor by the television. "I don't know how your mother's mind works. What kind of husband just sits around--?"

"Mother, stop," Mom called from the kitchen. "Why don't you come help me with this cake?"

"Darling, I'm fine out here. Did you ever get that nice book I sent about decorating on a budget?"

Mom came out of the kitchen, a cake mix box in one hand. "Yes, mother, but sadly, Steve and I don't have a spare twenty grand lying around to install specially textured walls in the living room. We'd rather send Kate to college."

"Oh darling, you could never change the walls in here. It would make the rest of the house look like even more of a disaster."

Mom rolled her eyes at me and went back into the kitchen.

I wondered how Grandma and my grandfather had produced my mother, who was always so sensible, and got up, telling Grandma I'd get her a drink. She always drank diet soda with a slice of lime and lots of ice. The ice would be wrong now, of course, which she wouldn't like, but at least I'd be able to get away from her for a minute or two.

Mom hugged me as soon as I came into the kitchen. "Grandma means well. She just doesn't always think before she speaks. Or acts."

I made a face. "I can tell. And I don't like the stuff she says about Dad. Plus she hated my gift."

"She didn't hate it. She . . . she believes everyone is just like her, Kate, and thinks only about clothing and jewelry and makeup. Buying useful gifts is not something my mother understands."

"You'd think she'd understand what an umbrella is for," I said, and got the glass Grandma always used out of the cabinet. "And how come she always says mean stuff about Dad?"

Mom sighed. "She doesn't understand him. My father was a workaholic, and when he was home . . . well, let's just say he wasn't happy. Your father, on the other hand, loves being home. He loves me and you kids. He likes to relax and have fun."

I opened the fridge and got out a lime, slicing off a piece and sticking it on the rim of the glass just like Grandma liked. "But your dad made lots of money, right?"

"He did," Mom said. "But it didn't do him or your grandmother or me much good." She handed me a diet soda, not meeting my eyes. Maybe it hadn't done her much good then, but I was pretty sure money was the only reason why Grandma was here now. I didn't say that though, because something in the way Mom wouldn't look at me stopped me.

I took Grandma her drink and then sat next to her when she patted the sofa. "I want to hear all about you, darling," she said, jiggling her glass and frowning briefly at the ice.

"How's school? Are there any boys in the picture?"

Great. I'd found something worse than working with Dad. "Um . . is that outfit new?"

"It is, darling. I caught a plane to New York last week and spent four days shopping.

Sometime you and I will have to go together. We'll make a little vacation out of it and--"

"No shopping vacations with Kate, Mother," Mom said, coming out of the kitchen. "The last thing she needs is to spend day after day trying on clothes and listening to you tell her how pretty she'd be if only she'd do this or that."

"Sharon, I'd never--"

"I haven't forgotten how we celebrated my eighteenth birthday, Mother."

"I haven't either," Grandma said, "A whole day together, and at the end of it you tell me you're going to college in California, never mind that you hadn't ever said a word about wanting to go there before."

"Yes, well, that's where Berkeley was," Mom said, her voice sharp. "And you managed well enough without me, didn't you?"

"We all do what we have to," Grandma said, her voice equally sharp, and I said I was tired and escaped to my room. I closed my door, resting one hand against it. I'd had a picture of me and Anna at the Jackson Jamboree taped there once. I used to see it every night before I fell asleep. I kept it in my desk drawer now.

I turned, looking around my room. On my bed was an empty space where the stuffed monkey she'd given me when I was eight used to be.

I wished I could call Anna now and tell her about Grandma, about everything, but I couldn't,

I got the monkey out of the back of my closet and looked at it until my eyes burned.

When I put it away, I told myself I wasn't crying, and ignored the wet spots that fell from my face onto the monkey's, closing the door before I could see it sitting there all alone.

Left behind and forgotten, just like me.

The next morning I was so nervous about seeing

Will that when I got to school, I didn't even look for Anna.

I had no idea what was going to happen, other than that I'd hoped things would be okay but was pretty sure they wouldn't be. I mean, in my heart it was all happy endings, but even then I was fuzzy on how to get there. And then there was the fact that I'd kissed Will, who'd been with so many girls--and who so clearly knew what he was doing--that he was basically a professional kisser. Plus I'd run away after the kiss, and I was positive that wasn't something your normal, well-adjusted sixteen-year-old girl would do.

I saw Will as soon as I walked into first period. That was normal, although the way my heart started pounding as soon as I saw him wasn't. He was looking at the door, like he was waiting for someone, and as I came in he looked right at me and smiled.